“On the way to the coast,” Eastman interjected helpfully, “everyone on board the plane would pass out. The plane would lose radio contact and then eventually crash, like that professional golfer’s plane a few years ago. Pilot, crew, and all passengers dead. Aaron Eastman and his mischievous ideas about a movie-à-clef implicating politicians and Tempus-Caveator Corporation in a plot to rig the Oscar awards and incidentally cover up treason are all conveniently gone. Evidence of the crime destroyed by the crash. Chalked up to oxygen system malfunction. Perfect crime.”
“Right, you can see why I didn’t believe it,” Selding said, as Rep and Eastman took off their oxygen masks. Selding did the same. “Are we below ten thousand feet yet?”
“We’ve never been above seven thousand feet since we left the ground,” Eastman said. “You’ve been conned, my friend. Some day I’m going to do a movie about the power of suggestion.”
“You don’t really believe any of that stuff I said, do you?” Selding said, flashing a nimble smile. “That was just a gag to get you to go down.”
“All right, counselor,” Eastman said, “it’s showtime.”
“Uh, right,” Rep said, acknowledging that he was now officially on. “You see, er, Mr. Selding, while that’s an understandable position for you to take under the circumstances, it really isn’t in your best interests.”
Selding responded with what the New York Times customarily refers to as a barnyard obscenity signifying disbelief. Then, as exasperation distorted what had up to then been Rep’s rather bland expression, he expanded on this commentary.
“Look, you’ve got nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything I said just now is hearsay.”
“It’s not, actually,” Rep said in a mildly puzzled tone. “In a criminal prosecution against you it would be an admission by a party—namely you—which is specifically defined as not hearsay by Rule 801(d)(2) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. And even if it were hearsay, it would be a declaration against penal interest, which is admissible as an exception to the hearsay restriction under Rule 804(b)(3).”
“Oh,” Selding said.
“So maybe this will go faster if I handle the legal stuff and you handle keeping your mouth shut. I’ll mostly skip over some of the obvious things, like your breaking down just now, and hit the subtler stuff. Like traces of PETN on my computer bag, which you handled only a few days before a helicopter that you’d had contact with blew up—helped along by PETN. And the fact that you had to help Mixler switch laptops with Charlotte at O’Hare, because you had the standard-issue Tavistock model just like she did, and you knew the basic approach to passwords.”
“You’re skipping that?” Selding asked.
“Right. See, the main thing is, only in Hollywood would this B-24 crash that someone had in mind be a perfect crime. In the real world, you couldn’t count on all the tanks being completely destroyed by the crash, so you couldn’t count on the FBI not figuring out that they were filled with nitrogen instead of oxygen. Especially when a helicopter blew up a hundred yards from the victim less than forty-eight hours before the crash. So you’d have to assume a murder investigation, and you’d have to have a scapegoat.”
“And you’re saying the scapegoat they have in mind is me?” Selding demanded.
“Of course not.” Rep shook his head. He hated it when he got schoolmarmish with people, but sometimes he just couldn’t help it. “The scapegoat is Charlotte Buchanan. Mixler lured her to Pomona.”
“I thought your theory was that he did that so he could pull the laptop switch at O’Hare and send an e-mail message that was supposed to be from her,” Selding objected.
“The question is, why did he want to send that e-mail? And the answer is that he wanted to implicate her—and me, but that’s incidental—in Aaron Eastman’s planned murder. That’s why Mixler had her run down a video of Green for Danger and check out an article about the NASA tragedy. When that’s investigated, it will seem like she was looking for over-the-top, amateurish, literary ways to sabotage the plane—one of which actually worked.”
“How did Mixler supposedly manipulate her into doing that stuff?”
“The same way he enticed her to drop everything and hustle out of town: by telling her that he could get Aaron to option a script that she’d write the story for, and she needed this background to get going on a treatment to show him when he landed Sunday evening. So she’s out there incommunicado in Pomona while a hostile takeover of her father’s company is under way. No one has been able to reach her since Friday afternoon. As soon as the B-24 crash is confirmed publicly, the plan is to kill her and make it look like a suicide following up on Aaron’s murder.”
“Without a note?” Selding asked skeptically.
“I bet there will be a note. Typed with her own fingers on her own keyboard as part of the story she’s supposedly working on.”
“And why is it supposedly in my interest to implicate myself in this mess?”
“Because they’re going to kill Charlotte Buchanan as soon as word gets out that the plan hasn’t worked, that’s why,” Rep said, with a pedantic little hiss of impatience.
“But if you’re right they’re going to kill her while I’m in custody, denying this silly story. I’ll be one person in the country who couldn’t possibly have committed the murder.”
“Ah, yes,” Rep said, brightening as he saw where the pedagogic problem lay. “That brings us to the Pinkerton Rule. I’m probably the only copyright lawyer in the country who’s an expert on that doctrine. We won’t go into why.”
“What’s the Pinkerton Rule?” Selding asked wearily.
“The Pinkerton Rule is that every member of a criminal conspiracy is guilty of every crime committed in furtherance of the conspiracy—including conspirators who personally had nothing to do with particular crimes. In other words, because you helped Mixler out with the laptop switch—never mind the helicopter explosion and the other stuff—you’d be as guilty of Charlotte Buchanan’s murder as the guy who actually pulls the trigger.”
“Oh,” Selding said.
“And as you may know, there’s sort of a reverse affirmative action push on capital punishment these days,” Rep said, in the same kind of trying-to-be-helpful voice he used when telling clients they should consider an intellectual property audit. “As an affluent white guy, you’d be sort of the ideal candidate for a federal execution.”
“Oh,” Selding said.
“So what you need to do is tell this story quickly to someone with a badge so that Charlotte Buchanan’s life can be saved.”
Selding looked, understandably, a bit nauseated. Not nauseous, Rep reminded himself—although that too, now that he thought about it.
“You have about fifteen minutes to consider your options,” Eastman said. “The nearest place with big airports at the moment is Chicago, and that’s where I’m heading. If we can get clearance, it won’t be too long before we’re on the ground.”
“They’re not going to let you land this boat at O’Hare, are they?” Rep asked in astonishment.
“Wouldn’t even try. Or at Midway. And I’m not going to count on Miegs Field even being open at this hour, assuming I could find it in the first place.”
“I see,” Rep said. “So what’s the plan?”
“Well, ten years ago I made a neat little flick called Water Rats about the Coast Guard. Sort of The Perfect Storm with Miranda warnings. Made it with Galaxy, in fact. We used a post-production facility that Galaxy subleased from Tavistock. It was less than a mile from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center outside Chicago, and because we were hyping good guys and an anti-drug message they let us land there sometimes.”
“Not to be a worrywart,” Rep said, “but why should they let you land there now?”
“Because I’m going to radio in about an emergency. Something about someone on board reporting a malfunction in the oxygen tanks.”
***
Forty-five minutes
later, Rep was sitting beside a functional, gray metal desk in a Spartan office, sipping coffee and thinking this was too good to be true. There actually was a United States Coast Guard office at the training center. The Coast Guard, as it happens, is the one branch of American armed services that routinely arrests civilians, and therefore has officers who are trained to act like cops. The first one they’d drawn here had acted like a bored and cranky cop, irritated at wasting his time preparing a routine report in triplicate on a bunch of amateurs who’d taken an antique airplane up without knowing how. Five minutes into Eastman’s emphatically non-routine account, however, the officer had gotten real interested—interested enough to call in two colleagues to share the fun.
One was now in a closed room having a detailed chat with Eastman. The second was interviewing Selding. And the original—younger than Rep, earnest, polite, thorough—was in this room getting Rep’s version on tape and in longhand.
“So what’s the connection between all this movie stuff and Tempus-Caveator trying to buy out a chemical company?” he asked.
“You know something,” Rep said, “I’m not sure. I haven’t thought that through yet.”
“I suppose they could be doing it to increase your client’s motivation—you know, despair over the problem she has created for her father’s company or something—but it seems like overkill.”
“You’re right,” Rep said. “That’s one of the answers I don’t have.”
“And here’s another thing. This phony e-mail—that was really slick. But if your client, what’s-her-name—”
“Charlotte Buchanan,” Rep said.
“—right, Charlotte Buchanan. If this Mixler guy had actually conned her into flying to northern California, why did he have to do the runaround with the laptops? Seems like he could have talked her into sending you the e-mail message herself.”
“Because if she’d done that there’d have been a risk that I’d e-mail her back.”
“Or go charging after her, I guess,” the young lieutenant said.
“Right,” Rep said.
Suddenly Rep paused with the cup three inches from his lips. “Go charging after her” ran through his mind.
“What’s the problem?” the Coast Guard officer asked.
“There’s something else wrong here,” Rep said. “Why would Mixler use a phony e-mail to tell me where Charlotte was actually going to be?”
“Well, if you’re right, and we assume a plane crash and an apparent suicide by your client followed by an investigation, Mixler would want you to tell the police about the e-mail. Because it would show that Buchanan knew Eastman was going to be in the air Sunday afternoon, and would show she was planning on intersecting with him.”
“Or was obsessing about him,” Rep said. “But we’re missing something. He absolutely would not want me to get in actual contact with her, so the one thing he wouldn’t tell me is where she was really going to be. Plus, for the whole Buchanan-scapegoat thing to work, she had to be in position to sabotage the plane. So she couldn’t be in northern California. She should be a lot closer to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Like, say, Fond du Lac. Or Milwaukee.”
“Or here,” the Coast Guardsman said. “After all, we know from your wife that Mixler himself was in Chicago very late Friday night.”
“Exactly!” Rep said. “I think you’re exactly right.”
“Of course, ‘Chicago’ doesn’t narrow it down too much.”
“Right, but I can think of one place we should check right away. Eastman said on the plane that there’s what he called a post-production facility near here that Galaxy Entertainment used to sublease from Tavistock. If Mixler really is holed up with her in this area, that would be a natural place. Can we send a couple of guys to take a look at it?”
“You have to be out of your ever-loving mind,” the officer said politely. “With all respect, what exactly have you been smoking?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re the Coast Guard. We have jurisdiction over waters that are navigable in interstate and foreign commerce. If we didn’t assume that that plane of yours was over Lake Michigan at some point, we’d be pushing the outside of the envelope just to take statements from you guys. We can’t send uniformed members of the United States armed forces barging into that post-production facility unless someone diverts the Chicago River through it.”
“Of course you can’t,” Rep said, deflated. “I should have known that. Can I talk to Eastman?”
“Not until my colleague opens that door you can’t. We can’t break into an official interview. This is a real interesting story you’re telling, but what we start with is, an airplane deviated from its flight plan and made an emergency landing on a military base, which is a no-no. He was the pilot, and there are some procedures we’re going to have to follow.”
“Okay,” Rep said. He drummed his fingers on the table in a rare show of frustrated petulance. “Right. But this woman’s life is in danger. What can we do?”
“Well, we can’t do much.”
Rep’s face brightened at the emphasis the Coast Guardsman put on the pronoun.
“Tell me this,” Rep said. “How would a civilian—say, a civilian who wasn’t the pilot and whose questioning has been completed—go about getting off of this United States military installation, without any officer here being responsible for it?”
“Now that’s an interesting question,” the officer said. “On The X-Files once I saw Mulder do it by hanging on the side of a truck that was conveniently on its way out the gate. Or maybe it was Scully and the truck was going in.”
“That sounds pretty ambitious.”
“Yeah, if I were you I wouldn’t try that. What I’d do if I were you is, I’d take that telephone book off the shelf there and make sure of your address, and then I’d call a cab. After that I’d stroll out the front gate. Give the guard there a nod on your way out.”
“So you’re, ah, not opposed to my just going?” Rep asked.
“With all respect, sir,” the young lieutenant said, “I am affirmatively in favor of your going. Affirmatively and strongly in favor.”
Chapter 16
Oooh-kaayyy, Rep thought as the cab pulled away, leaving him on the edge of a gravel and mud parking lot. What do I do now? Knock on the front door?
The four-story building about eighty feet away seemed out of place in the down-market urban frontier where the cab had dropped him. Its charcoal-gray brick and white-faced concrete suggested an effort at shabby elegance that should have graced an industrial park in some antiseptic exurb. Here it seemed vaguely effete, like a tweedy schoolmaster who had wandered into a salesmen’s convention.
A light shone dimly through third-floor windows on the side nearest Rep, well above the glaring haloes that were splashed along the outside of the first story by ground-mounted security lights. He made out a pale, blue glow through the plate glass dominating the first floor’s front wall. He crunched gingerly across the gravel until, about ten yards from the building, he could infer the source of the glow: small television monitors arrayed along the far arc of a large, C-shaped security desk. A guy with his feet propped inside the desk looked like he would have had to show i.d. to buy Marlboros, his blond hair lying in a surfer cut, his black muscle shirt displaying plenty of muscles. He was smoking something, handling whatever it was like a joint rather than a cigarette. If Rep had shown up yet on any of the monitors, the guy gave no sign of being concerned about it.
Of course, Rep thought, I wouldn’t be either if I were in his shoes. Or, in this case, sandals.
Keeping his ten-yard distance, Rep made a hesitant and unenthusiastic circuit of the building. The windows showing up in the haloes all looked like unopenable thermalpane. Around back he found a receiving dock with two heavy, steel, vertically opening doors at its rear. Rep would have bet heavily against forcing the lock on either with a credit card—or “’loiding” them, as Eastman had recently taught him to
call the process. On the far side of the building he spotted the inevitable outdoor smokers’ haven: a redwood picnic table amid three benches and a sand-filled bucket. A service door darker than the surrounding gray brick broke the face of the wall a few feet from the table. He could try the door, of course, but he knew it would turn out to be locked and that when he walked up to the well-lighted area he was sure to appear on one of the surveillance monitors.
Rep shrugged fecklessly. The devil-may-care, quick-witted private detectives he had watched on television while doing algebra and geometry homework as an adolescent wouldn’t have been stumped by a situation like this. They would have called for a pizza delivery to this address, and then fast-talked their way into the delivery guy’s uniform. Or rappelled up to the HVAC system on the roof, loosened a couple of screws with pocket change, and slipped in through the duct work. Or whistled the four-tone access code they’d somehow figured out, so that the security system would unlock the doors itself. But Rep wasn’t going to do any of those things. He still didn’t have any better idea than knocking on the front door.
He trudged toward the front corner, angling closer to the building with each stride. As he was about to turn he glanced up and, craning his neck, found himself staring directly into the lens of a surveillance camera. Startled, he smiled and waved in what he hoped the lens would translate as a friendly, non-threatening way. Then he hustled around to the massive front doors, peered in at the guard, and rapped on the thick glass.
No reaction.
Repeat performance, same result.
The guy at the desk looked stoned. Leaning back in his swivel chair, feet still on the desk, he kept his gaze intently on the ceiling, which seemed to fascinate him.
The fact that a third-shift security guard was smoking pot on the job didn’t surprise Rep in the slightest. He often wondered at the mentality of the first genius who’d said, “Hey, let’s find people who’ll work for minimum wage and give them guns!”
The sandals and the muscle shirt, on the other hand, seemed more and more anomalous the longer he thought about them. This was Chicago, the upper Midwest. People in the Midwest like uniforms. Really, really like them. Boy scout leaders, American Legion Post officers, firemen, train conductors, bus drivers, meter readers, animal control officers—none of them ever show up in mufti for anything remotely official if they can help it. They come with all the blue and gold and khaki and forest green and chenille patches and gold braid they can justify. Rep had seen rent-a-cops who could have taken command of the Coldstream Guards without changing a collar button. He had never before seen one in the Midwest who didn’t boast at least navy blue shirt and slacks with sleeve patches and an equipment belt. If this building had a regular night watchman, Rep figured, this guy wasn’t it.
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