Skyhook (43 page)

“That order, Ms. O’Brien, was against the Coast Guard.”

“Yes sir, but I had also expanded the caption to include the entirety of the United States government.”

He nodded. “Very well. I missed that.”

“Your Honor, the problem here is that some agency of the government is attempting to cover up what may be perfectly legitimate military or civilian governmental tests of certain aircraft in the area, and they have apparently decided that the wreckage of my client’s aircraft may somehow lead to exposure of whatever they’re doing. In their pursuit of secrecy, they are causing great harm to the career, the reputation, the financial health, and the mental health of Captain Rosen, and if their actions have not already damaged or destroyed physical evidence that would vindicate him of the career-ending FAA charges against him, the actions they are about to take almost surely will.

Specifically, I’m referring to the broken propeller and evidence that Captain Rosen had a monstrous mechanical problem that caused the crash, rather than the crash resulting from negligent operation. This is why I’m also filing a complaint against the FAA—”

“Hold it, Ms. O’Brien. Don’t hand that to me yet.”

“Sir?”

“I’ll accept the first filing, and I’ll issue the restraining order just as you’ve drawn it. But I don’t think you want to file against the FAA here in Seattle.”

The rarity of dealing with a federal judge without an opposing lawyer present was strange enough, but to get legal advice from such a man was all but scary. Gracie felt herself wobble off-center, as though a spinning gyro had suddenly become unbalanced. She fought herself back to center and cocked her head.

“Your Honor, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. This action necessitates a TRO as well against the FAA for essentially collusive activity with other federal agencies in attempting to suppress, secrete, or destroy exculpatory evidence that would clear Captain Rosen immediately, thus preventing massive continuing harm.”

“Oh, I expected you were going to do that.”

“Yes, sir—”

“But who in the FAA are you planning to serve these papers on, if I accept them?”

“Well, the FAA has a large presence here, sir, especially in Renton.”

He nodded. “I know. The Northwestern Mountain Region.” He sighed.

“Let me suggest to you that a better forum would be Washington, D.C. All the major players are there, including the FAA administrator. Chasing the proper officials all over the local region can lead to heartfelt pleas to the court from government attorneys for schedule relief and reset hearings and other delays your client obviously does not need.”

“So … I should, perhaps, go to a federal district court for the District of Columbia?”

“Doesn’t that sound more reasonable? You’ve got the basic TRO, show-cause, and order for protection and production. I’ll sign those, postpone the show-cause hearing set for Monday, and stand by to transfer it all to D.C. Now, I will accept your suit against the FAA if you insist, but if you elect to file that in D.C. and request consolidation with a D.C. court, the cases could be transferred immediately.”

“Yes, sir. I see what you mean. I had not considered that. Okay, I’ll hang onto the FAA action.”

The judge began signing the various orders Gracie had prepared, checking the verbiage as he went and separating the small pile.

She took back the pleadings against the FAA as he handed over the signed copies. “These will be stamped with the case number Monday morning,” he said, getting to his feet and nodding toward the door. She thanked him and took her leave, slipping behind the wheel of her Corvette in a minor daze, the logistics of moving the fight to the nation’s capital running roughshod over the need to reexamine the best way to proceed.

/ really need to get Ted Greene on the phone!

Her irritation had built to the threshold of anger that the Beltway lawyer who was supposed to be so helpful had failed to return her calls for two days.

She reached in her purse for her PDA and found Ted Greene’s home number in Alexandria, Virginia. She’d given up leaving mes mesages on his beeper and voice mails on his office phone. Maybe, she thought, she’d catch him at home on a weekend.

Gracie entered the number but held off punching the send button, remembering she was still in the judge’s driveway. She backed out and maneuvered a half block down the street before pulling to the side.

Greene answered on the third ring.

“Ted? Gracie O’Brien. Thank heavens.”

“Yes.”

“In Seattle? Remember, the Rosen case?”

“Yes, Ms. O’Brien. What can I do for you so … late on a Saturday evening?”

She caught the unfriendly edge in his voice and glanced at her watch, realizing it was past nine p.m. in Alexandria and she hadn’t considered the time zones.

“I apologize for the hour, but I need to let you know what I am doing.” She outlined the actions she had just filed, the one filed the day before, and the judge’s recommendation regarding the FAA suit.

The voice from Alexandria was icy. “Oh, wonderful. Did you specifically name the Federal Aviation Administration in that TRO

action, Ms. O’Brien?”

“Call me Gracie, please.”

“Please answer the question.”

“Well, yes,” she said, much of her mind distracted by the obvious hostility in his voice. “I didn’t name the FAA as the only party, but I included them as a named arm of government to incorporate the possibility that they might be involved as a volitional party to these acts. Now I need to have you file this new action that is directly against them. I’ve got it all drawn up.”

“I see. So you retained me as a ranking expert on dealing with the FAA, but now you want to send me your work product and have me just accept your filing papers and find a court up here to file them in, or should I go do what you just did in Seattle and inconvenience a

federal judge on a Saturday night so you can fire an ill-timed broadside at a major federal agency and utterly destroy the work in progress?”

“What work in progress? And what do you mean, i\[-timed?”

“Ill-timed. Ridiculously timed, in fact.”

“Why? How?” She could feel herself flushing in potential embarrassment at the possibility she could have made a major mistake.

“Well, let’s see,” he was saying, his voice just short of a sneer. “For starters, I have just begun the delicate dance with the FAA I was retained to conduct, an interaction involving the careful and professional people I work with all the time at FAA headquarters, people whom I can deal with more often than not without litigation. But, if I follow your playbook, these same folks Monday morning would walk into eight hundred Independence Avenue only to discover that something that they thought was still very much in gentlemanly negotiation had turned into a godforsaken war over the weekend. And with my name associated, I’d be in the position of essentially breaking my implied word.”

“Implied … ? Mr. Greene, I think we have more than a few elements of misunderstanding here. First, I was under the impression that /hired you, yet you’re speaking to me as if I’m some misbehaving junior associate.”

“You retained me for the Rosens. I represent them. I allowed you to tag along as a baby lawyer playing cocounsel, especially after I read your curriculum vitae and discovered you had almost no experience. And here we are screwing up an otherwise lovely Saturday evening with the news that instead of consulting me, you’ve gone off halfcocked and sued the world.”

Gracie felt the embarrassment metastasizing into anger, her breathing becoming more rapid as the need for caution competed with the desire for counterattack. But she also needed his counsel and his representation, no matter how obnoxious he was.

And the captain, in particular, needed him.

“I take it, Mr. Greene,” she said, “that you don’t check your beeper or your office voice mail on the weekends. In fact, I left messages with your secretary all day yesterday and have been trying to reach you on the beeper since yesterday afternoon.”

There was silence for a few seconds from Alexandria.

So, / hear the first hesitation in your smug replies, huh, Teddy?

she thought.

“I … was in a deposition yesterday,” he said, recovering. “I was unaware you were trying to reach me. I will apologize for that.”

Interesting! Gracie thought. Not, “I do apologize,” but “I will.”

And when would that be?

“Well, sir,” she said, “the fact is, I did everything I could to reach you regarding developing matters of immense urgency on this case. I’m doubly sorry I was unable to get the benefit of your counsel, but I had an obligation to do what appeared to be the right thing given the circumstances.”

“Ms. O’Brien, I’m not terribly concerned about your enjoining the Coast Guard, but naming the FAA is a huge mistake and a significant problem for me.”

For you? she thought. It’s Arlie Rosen who’s lost his license.

“Why,” Gracie asked, “is it a problem to join them on this issue?

If they have no culpability, it’s a nonissue.”

She could hear his derisive chuckle on the other end, a caustic sound that echoed through her psyche into the dark recesses where she’d bottled up so many minor assaults over the years from those who thought the concept of a young, unpedigreed little girl taking on the real world in any way was simply contemptible.

There he was, droning on, unconcerned with the plight of his client or the sincerity of her efforts, merely rising to the challenge of puffing out his manly chest and showing her how stupid she really was. And she was expected to instantly accept that conclusion based on his position, his experience, his gender, and the Ivy League law degree that was undoubtedly hanging on his wall.

“Gentlemanly negotiation,” he’d said.

“Ms. O’Brien? Are you still there?”

Gracie shook herself back to the moment. “I’m sorry. I’m in a car.”

“I was saying that the problem here is that you’ve gone, skipping with unwarranted innocence, into a real-world minefield. You obviously don’t understand the FAA’s hair-trigger sensitivity to being joined in any lawsuit. On top of that, Captain Rosen is extremely vulnerable, but as long as he didn’t hit a ship or anything on the surface, which would prove he was too low, they really don’t have much chance of making the reckless flying charge stick in the long run. The FAA just doesn’t react well to challenge by lawsuit, and when threatened they tend to drop any deals or any reasonable treatment that might be pending and really attack.”

“Mr. Greene, they could hardly attack more effectively than pulling a 747 captains entire pilot’s license, for crying out loud!”

Another derisive sneer, or was that a snort?

“You’re whipping this into an artificial emergency, Ms. O’Brien.

These things take many months at best. Other than the loss of license and the man’s obvious desire to get it reinstated—which won’t happen rapidly, I can assure you—I don’t understand your panic.”

“My panic, as you call it, probably was fanned to white-hot status when I discovered this morning that some arm of the United States government has now raised and stolen the wreckage of Captain Rosen’s aircraft, although the condition of that aircraft is a key to his exoneration.”

” Stolen’ is a strong word,” he said.

Well, DUH! she thought.

“What do you mean, stolen’?” he added.

“Under admiralty law, Counselor,” Gracie began, choosing her words carefully and reminding herself over and over that they needed him. “How else should we look at a situation in which the owner has clearly not abandoned the wreck, has hired a salvage firm, has given no permission to anyone else to touch the wreckage, and the government does so anyway?”

“How did they inform you they were taking the wreckage?”

“How did they inform us?” She laughed. A short, singular sound of cumulative amazement and disgust carrying a far more complex message than he was willing to receive. “They informed us by creating a restricted area around the crash site and then leaving a few pieces on the ocean floor where the plane had formerly come to rest. That’s how. We have no idea when they took it or where it is. The FAA could be tampering with exculpatory evidence even as we speak. After all, I gave you extensive details of that FAA inspector’s hostility to the captain. They could easily damage the wreckage so that it would be impossible to determine whether a prop blade broke in flight.”

“Ms. O’Brien, I can assure you the FAA wasn’t responsible for taking that wreckage.”

“How do you know that, Mr. Greene?”

More silence.

Too much and too harsh! she chided herself. I’m going to lose him if I don’t calm down. But she could feel the battle between professional restraint and the supercritical desire to cut him to ribbons taking its toll on her judgment.

“Ms. O’Brien, as alien as this community seems to practitioners like yourself on the outside, the reality is that the FAA moves in a different time continuum from the rest of the universe. It would take them months to decide to salvage anything. In fact, they’d have a hard time deciding within a week to leave their building if it was on fire, for fear they might be criticized for doing it incorrectly.”

“These are the same careful and probative people you work with all the time? The ones you’re now disparaging?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

“Well, dignify this, if you please, Mr. Greene. Did you or did you not tell me several days ago that the FAA was conducting a vendetta of sorts and was determined to keep Captain Rosen grounded?”

“I … believe I said it appeared they were leaning in that direction, given my initial contacts.”

“You do? You believe you said that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you also believe you said these exact words: They’re gunning for him, Grade’? Because the fact is, you said the FAA tends to get that way with enforcement actions, and that you couldn’t get even the most cursory cooperation from the FAA in Captain Rosen’s case. You said, and I quote: It’s as if they’ve made an agency decision to go for broke and destroy him.””

“Well, I may have overstated the case a bit.”