Plane in the Lake Read online

  “This might be a dumb question, but I don’t know what bleeding the tanks means,” Penelope says.

  “You want to make sure you’ve worked any air bubbles out of the fuel tanks before flying,” Billy explains. “The last thing a pilot needs is to have an air pocket block a fuel line in flight.”

  I think of air in the fuel lines of lawn mowers and such. “No gas gets to the engine?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How long does the problem last?” Penelope asks.

  Billy meets her gaze. “Until the pilot manages to glide to a landing or the plane crashes.”

  Penelope winces. “Is that what you think happened?”

  “Could be, but nobody knows,” Billy replies. “I’m sure the NTSB will look into it.” Then he taps a finger on the paperwork he brought in. “I don’t get this lawsuit, guys. Shouldn’t it wait until the NTSB finishes investigating?”

  “Welcome into the pool with the legal sharks, pal,” I mutter.

  “This isn’t exactly our area of expertise, Mr. Likens,” Penelope says.

  “Billy, please.”

  Penelope smiles. “Billy it is. Are you sure you want us to represent you in this matter? We could do a little research and recommend a firm with more experience in air accidents.”

  Billy looks at me and shakes his head. “Mel trusted you. I trust you. I watched your dad’s trial and that business with the village where you saved Liberty Street from the wrecking ball. You folks are big time!” he concludes with a grin.

  “Big time, my ass,” I say with a chuckle. He’s referring to the one and only criminal trial I’ve been involved in, and what was essentially a zoning battle with a village of several thousand people. Both had gotten a little press about a gazillion media cycles ago.

  Penelope smiles at Billy. “Guess we’ve got a deal.”

  Bless her. No questions about billing, no equivocation whatsoever, just “How can we help?” This is why our firm’s monthly billings generally cover the rent with just enough left over to keep the partners in mac and cheese.

  Billy tells her about the Windy City invitation to drop by to discuss things, including a brief explanation of what he knows about the owners.

  Penelope’s eyes cut to mine. She doesn’t seem to like the idea any more than I do. She cups her chin in her hand and taps the end of her index finger on the tip of her button nose while she ponders the situation, then says, “I don’t like the idea of you meeting with the Windy City people.”

  “At least not by yourself,” I add.

  Penelope dons a half smile and shoots Billy a sideways glance. “Uh-oh. That’s his ‘Scheming Valenti’ tone of voice.”

  I feign an indignant expression. “Me? A schemer? Maybe I plan ahead a little now and then. That’s a crime?”

  “Come on,” Penelope says with a soft chuckle. “Out with it, partner. What have you got in mind?”

  “An observant fly on the wall in that meeting might learn quite a bit.”

  Penelope’s eyes twinkle. “Would this fly on the wall happen to go by the name of Tony Valenti?”

  I wink at Billy. “Behold the legal and feminine intuition of my partner, Billy, my boy. You’re in good hands.”

  Penelope may be smiling as she chuckles and shakes her head, but her eyes are wary as she looks at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You make for a pretty big fly.”

  She has a point. There aren’t many flies my size buzzing around town, not even in a city the size of Chicago.

  “You’re pretty recognizable these days, too,” Penelope adds.

  I shrug. Since the aforementioned murder trial and village squabble ended, I may as well be the Invisible Man. All that was months and months ago—ancient history in today’s media landscape. Besides, Billy’s would-be benefactors are Board of Trade creatures. “I doubt those people watch much news beyond the market reports.”

  “But they may recognize you,” she cautions.

  “I doubt they’ll shoot if they do.”

  Billy’s eyes have been tracking between Penelope and me as we’ve batted our ideas back and forth. His expression lightens and his eyes settle on mine when understanding finally dawns. “You’re coming with us?”

  Well, that hopeful expression settles things, doesn’t it? I can’t say no to that face, which is so similar to Mel’s. I reach over and squeeze his shoulder. “We can’t be sending an innocent little Christian boy like you off to the Board of Trade Colosseum to face those Chicago Loop lions all by yourself, can we?”

  Billy grins. Penelope looks mildly skeptical. I belatedly wonder what the hell I’m getting us into.

  Chapter Three

  “I’m not sure about seeing these guys without lawyers,” Oliver Franklin says uncertainly.

  “Don’t be a pussy,” scoffs Jonathan Walton, one of Franklin’s two partners in Franklin, Tyson, Walton Commodity Brokers, LLC. The trio also owns one hundred percent of Windy City Sky Tours. “We’re dealing with blue-collar troglodytes with grease under their nails, Franklin,” he adds. “That’s why all three of us are here. If this meeting is ever questioned, it’ll be our word against theirs.”

  Partner number three, Caitlyn Tyson, laughs in delight. “That’s hardly even fair.”

  They’re seated in the FTW corporate boardroom with Walton at the head of the conference table, as befits his status as their unofficial leader. Walton began life with a healthy leg up that he owed entirely to the family he was born into. His wealthy mother is a pillar of the Chicago philanthropic and fine-arts scenes, and his father is a prominent plastic surgeon whose services his handsome WASP son couldn’t conceivably need. Jonathan Walton has never quite had to grow up; he still wears ball caps backward away from work and talks more like a college frat boy than a professional trader.

  Walton taps his copy of the lawsuit paperwork. “We’re not going to get stuck paying for this, Franklin. A lawsuit like this is exactly why Windy City is set up the way it is. We’re golden.”

  Tyson, five foot nine of upper-crust sorority girl dabbling in the business world with a couple of decimal points worth of her family’s fortune, reaches over to cover Franklin’s hand with her own. “Jonathan’s right. No lawyers today. We can string these R & B dopes along with the BS that we’re all in this together, just business partners looking out for one another.” She grins wickedly and adds, “We’ll get our lawyers involved to screw over these bozos later. For now, let’s learn what we can about what happened out there. These two probably have some insights into what went wrong.”

  “They sure as hell know more about it than we do,” Walton agrees. “We can pass that along to our attorneys. That can’t do anything but help us.”

  Franklin’s eyes track between his partners while a tentative smile creeps across his face. “Okay, I see where you’re going with this. You two are considerably more Machiavellian than me.”

  So we are, Walton thinks with a grin. Franklin, a thin, plain former prep school and college buddy of his, can supposedly trace his lineage back to Benjamin Franklin. Even he thinks that’s most likely bullshit, but he’s happy to take advantage of the story. Given that his family trades on that tenuous connection for their social standing in lieu of conspicuous wealth, Franklin tends to be the most cautious of the partners. He’d been a straight arrow at school, the guy who got the mercurial Walton out of a few scrapes with schools and the law. Walton and Tyson sometimes chaff at his timidity, but both recognize that it tempers their more reckless tendencies.

  “It sucks to be down to a single airplane,” Tyson grumbles. “Having a plane available for a weekend or two was a nice little perk.”

  “It was nice,” Franklin adds with a wistful smile.

  Walton frowns. That does suck. Taking their only remaining aircraft out of service for personal jaunts is out of the question. They discussed replacing the lost Cessna out of pocket, but Franklin had persuaded them to wait until the insurance company paid up. He argued that
they were headed into the winter season and wouldn’t need a second aircraft until spring. Left unsaid was the fact that it would be a struggle for him to come up with his third of the cost.

  “I planned to use the Cessna for a shopping and clubbing trip to New York City next weekend,” Tyson gripes. “Now I’ll have to fly commercial.”

  Oh boo-hoo, Walton thinks. She can afford to charter a jet any time she wants to.

  Now in full-on annoyed mode, Tyson glares at the polished, black-granite wall clock. Its brushed aluminum hands point to a couple of minutes past two o’clock.

  “Where the hell are those fucking mechanics?” she snaps. “I have things to do!”

  “We’re gonna be late,” Billy complains to Rick and me as the Willis Tower elevator doors glide closed and he pushes the button for floor number sixty-seven.

  “No big deal,” I say as the elevator begins its ascent. “They’re probably annoyed that the help is keeping them waiting. Having them a little off balance isn’t going to hurt.” In fact, I’d lingered over a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ on West Adams Street until two o’clock sharp to ensure that we’d be five minutes late.

  Billy meets my gaze and shoots me an easy smile. “If you say so. You’re the lawyer.”

  “Don’t mention that upstairs,” I remind him with a grin as the elevator begins to slow. Brooks and Valenti hasn’t formally taken on the case, so I have no obligation to tell our hosts that I’m an attorney.

  “Man, these things are quick,” Rick marvels as the elevator slows to a smooth stop and dings to announce our arrival.

  It reminds me of the elevators at the former Sphinx Financial Tower in Atlanta, where I worked as a high-powered corporate attorney once upon a time. There are no elevators, of course—slow or fast—at the offices of Brook and Valenti, Strip Mall Attorneys at Law.

  The elevator spills us out into a hardwood vestibule flanked by a pair of generous reception areas behind glass walls. We pick Door Number Two: Franklin, Tyson, Walton Commodity Brokers LLC. I hang back, allowing Billy and Rick to take the lead. Both are decked out in Haggar slacks, button-down long-sleeve shirts, and deck shoes. I’ve dressed down to a pair of jeans, a black-and-gray striped short-sleeve shirt, and a pair of loafers—all the better not to look lawyerlike. I hope to become part of the wallpaper when the meeting gets underway.

  While Rick talks with the receptionist, I gaze around at the richly appointed reception area. My feet sink deeply into pile carpeting that threatens to swallow us whole. A burnished steel FTW logo stretches across the wall with the tagline Feeding the World just below it. Black-and-white photos of basic foodstuffs dot the walls—bushels of maize and soybeans, fields of grain. Feeding the world, my ass, I think as we’re shuttled toward a meeting room. I’ve done some reading up on these folks. FTW is a commodity-trading firm that works to manipulate the futures market to drive up prices. There seems to be nothing that the world’s bankers believe they shouldn’t be free to exploit, including food staples. I imagine that in their perfect world, bankers would pocket a penny or two with every bite.

  We’re shown into a large conference room. The smarmy smiles our hosts paste on their faces as they greet us heighten my suspicions about why they’ve invited Billy and Rick for a visit. I continue to hang back while my friends shake hands with their so-called partners. Then they sit down in a pair of brown leather chairs at the opposite end of the polished conference table. I take a seat alongside Billy, who nods toward me and introduces me as his friend Tony, “who we brought along today as a third set of ears.” I smile and nod at the jackals.

  The gaze of the woman introduced as Caitlyn Tyson lingers on me for a long moment after her partners dismiss me as unimportant. “Do I know you?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You look familiar,” she mutters as she continues to stare.

  I’m tempted to say something—anything that might prevent my cover from being blown—but decide to keep my mouth shut. I shrug and look away.

  Billy has the presence of mind to distract everyone. “Man, I’m so glad you guys called!” he gushes to our hosts. “Getting served with this lawsuit really shook us up.”

  Walton turns an oily smile on him. “Glad to help, buddy. We’re all in this together.”

  Of course, you are! I think while intuiting that Walton appears to be the leader of this unholy trinity. The guy’s got a streak of bullshit on him a mile long.

  “Thanks, man,” Billy says.

  Tyson leans closer to smile at Billy and waves a hand toward the window, beyond which the expanse of Lake Michigan stretches away to the horizon. “So? What do you think happened out there?”

  Billy turns his palms up. “No idea. The NTSB report should tell us.”

  The investigation will take at least two or three months. I advised Billy and Rick to keep their heads down as much as possible until the accident report is published. They’ve already been questioned by the NTSB Go Team and have turned over their maintenance records. Windy City doesn’t need to know any of that. I suspect the only reason we’re here today is to allow our hosts to pick Billy’s and Rick’s brains for ideas Windy City’s lawyers can exploit to dodge responsibility for the crash and pin the blame on their R & B “buddies.”

  “Sure,” Walton says agreeably to Billy. “But what do you guys think?”

  “You’re the experts,” Tyson adds while all but batting her big eyelashes. “What do you think? Bad fuel? Pilot error?”

  Her second guess draws a sharp look of disapproval from Walton. No surprise there. The pilot was his niece. It looks as if he intends to protect Megan… at least at this early stage. “Structural failure seems to be a possibility,” he says, pointing the finger away from the pilot and squarely at R & B.

  Yeah, yeah, you’re all in this together.

  Billy shrugs uncomfortably. Rick’s eyes narrow as he says, “The maintenance was all current.”

  “It was supposed to be, anyway,” Tyson says enigmatically, showing the first card the Windy City owners are likely to play in their bid to pin the blame on R & B.

  Walton taps the lawsuit paperwork. “According to the plaintiff’s lawyers, our plane fell out of the sky for no apparent reason, my friends. They contend this was almost certainly due to faulty maintenance—either mechanical failure or structural failure, both of which point directly at you guys, right?”

  “That’s bullshit,” Rick mutters.

  “That remains to be seen,” Walton says as he sits forward and smiles at Billy. “That leaves you vulnerable, buddy. We can help. We’ll have your back, but we have to work together to do so.”

  Billy’s shoulders relax. Walton, apparently seeing him as R & B’s potential weak link, is trying to lure him into the trap of trusting his so-called partners. It’s time for me to enter the fray.

  I lean in and smile at Walton. “Let’s all remember that you folks are the lead defendant in this lawsuit.”

  My intervention surprises Walton, whose eyes cut to me before turning back to Billy. He looks like a predator whose prey has just escaped its grasp.

  “There’s a reason for that,” I continue. “R & B is just an add-on defendant. Same with the fuel vendor and the airport.” I pause and make eye contact in turn with Walton, Tyson, and Franklin. “You folks do get that, don’t you?”

  The Windy City three exchange glances. Walton’s smugness has faltered, Franklin looks genuinely worried, and Tyson is once again eying me suspiciously.

  “Sure, sure, but we’re all vulnerable,” Walton says as his eyes again settle on Billy. “We’ve got good lawyers, buddy. The best. The more we can tell them about possible causes for the accident, the better.”

  “And the sooner, the better,” Franklin chimes in.

  I think back to the video of the NTSB Go Team media briefings I watched this morning while I prepared for this meeting. I can still hear the flat recounting of the facts being delivered in the bureaucratic legalese so typical of gover
nment spokespersons. Based upon air traffic control radar, the established facts of the accident are: The Windy City Cessna was flying straight and level in an eastward direction at an altitude of 3,100 feet and a groundspeed of seventy-three knots when it began to lose speed and altitude beginning at 9:03:15 a.m. By 9:04:05 a.m., the airplane had descended to 2,800 feet and was traveling at sixty-eight knots. The NTSB had no opinion on whether the pilot was executing a planned descent, but nothing in the flight profile indicated otherwise. At least not for twenty-two more seconds, at which time the plane was traveling fifty-seven knots at an altitude of 2,100 feet. The final sentence of the briefing has stuck in my mind, perhaps because the dispassionate recitation of tragedy had been so utterly bereft of emotion. “At 09:04:27 the aircraft initiated an abrupt left turn, at which point the aircraft commenced a vertical descent. Radar contact was lost at 09:04:41.”

  “Billy and Rick were right earlier,” I say. “The NTSB investigation will get to the bottom of what happened. Of course, that report can’t be used in court, so anything that gets said at this stage could turn out to be a problem. It’s probably best for all of us to sit back and let things play out.”

  Perhaps aware that I’m onto their scheme, Walton gives me a long, decidedly unfriendly look.

  Tyson slams an open palm on the tabletop and explodes, “You’re a fucking lawyer! You helped your father get away with murder!”

  Recognition dawns on Franklin’s face, as well. “You shot down Titan Development’s plans in Cedar Heights, too, didn’t you?”

  Penelope apparently called things correctly. I’m famous!

  Walton shoots to his feet and levels an accusing finger at me. “You didn’t tell us you’re a fucking lawyer! That’s unethical!” A sly smile curls his lips. “I’ll have your balls for this. Kiss your law license goodbye, asshole.”

  I smile back. “As Billy told you off the top, I’m just here doing a favor for a friend. I haven’t been retained to represent R & B.”