Gray Mountain: A Novel(104)

Now, about your offer. A few specifics. Who are the other associates and where are they coming from? No *s, Andy, okay, I’m not working with a bunch of cutthroat gunners. What’s the male/female breakdown? No all-boys club. Who is Nick Spane and what’s his story? I’m sure he’s a great lawyer but is he a nice person? Solid marriage or serial bed-hopper? If he touches me I’ll sue for harassment and he needs to know that. Send me his bio, please. Where are the offices? I’m not subjecting myself to miserable working conditions. All I ever wanted was a small office—my office!—with a nice window, a little sunlight, and my own wall to hang whatever I choose. This fifty-hour-a-week guarantee—will you put that in writing? I’m currently on that schedule and it is delightful. Who will be the clients, other than the Koreans and Kuwaitis? I’m sure they’ll be large corporations and such, or big guys with big egos; whatever, the point is I will not be yelled at by a client. (My clients here call me Miss Sam and bring me cookies.) We can talk about this. Lastly, what’s the future? There’s not one here so I won’t be staying. I’m a New Yorker, Andy, more so now than three months ago, but I would like to know the structure of the new firm and where you and Spane see it ten years from now. Fair enough?

Thanks, Andy, for thinking of me. You were always fair; not always a sweetheart but then I’m not sure that’s in your DNA.

Let’s keep talking. Samantha





The temperature was somewhere under twenty degrees, and the snow was frozen and topped with a glaze that reflected moonlight. After a warm dinner with Annette and the kids, Samantha retired to her garage apartment, where the small furnace labored to break the chill. If she were paying a stiff rent in Manhattan she would have been giving someone an earful, but not in Brady. Not where there was no rent at all and her landlord was probably low on cash. So she bundled up and read in bed for two hours as the time slowly passed. She read a chapter, then put the book down and thought about New York, and Andy, and his brand-new firm. There were so many thoughts running through her mind.

There was no doubt she would say yes, and this excited her. The job was perfect; she would return to her home, to the city she loved, and to a job that was prestigious and promising. She could avoid the horrors of Big Law while pursuing a meaningful career. The bind was in the quitting. She could not simply walk away in a month or so and dump everything on Mattie. No, there had to be a more graceful and equitable exit. She was thinking of a short deferment—an acceptance now with an arrival on the job in six months or so. That would be fair, or as fair as possible. She could sell it to both Mattie and Andy, couldn’t she?

A phone was buzzing under a pile of clothing. She finally found it and said, “Yes.” It was Jeff’s spy phone, and he responded with “Are you cold?”

She smiled and asked, “Where are you?”

“I’m about forty feet away, hiding in the dark, leaning against the back of the garage, my feet stuck in eight inches of frozen snow. Can you hear my teeth chattering?”

“I think so. What are you doing here?”

“That should be obvious. Look, Annette just turned off the lights over there, so the coast is clear. I think you should make some coffee, decaf if you have it, and open the damned door. Trust me, no one will see me. The neighbors have been asleep for two hours. Once again, all of Brady is dead.”

She opened the door, and without as much as a squeak Jeff appeared from the dark stairs and pecked her on the lips. He took off his boots and parked them next to hers. “Staying, are we?” she asked as she poured water into the coffee machine.

He rubbed his hands together and said, “I think it’s warmer outside. Have you complained to the landlord?”

“Haven’t thought about it. No rent means no complaints. Nice to see you out of jail.”

“You’re not going to believe what I’ve dug up.”

“And that’s why you’re here, to tell me all about it.”

“Among other things.”

On the night Donovan died, his Cessna was parked at the Charleston airport for about seven hours, from 3:20 to 10:31 p.m., according to air traffic control records and data from the general aviation terminal. After he landed, he rented a car and took off to meet with his legal team. While he was gone, four small planes arrived at the ramp; two bought fuel, dropped off a passenger, and left, and the other two tied down for the night. One of these was a Beech Baron, the other a King Air 210, a popular twin-engine turboprop that seats six passengers. The King Air arrived at 7:35 p.m. with two pilots and one passenger. All three got off the airplane, entered the terminal, did their paperwork, and left with a guy in a van.

Samantha listened without a word and poured the decaf.

According to Brad, an employee who worked the ramp that night, there were actually two passengers on the King Air, one of whom stayed behind. That’s right—he spent the night on the airplane. As the two pilots were going through their postflight routines, Brad caught a glimpse of the passenger on the ground speaking to a passenger still on the plane. From a distance, he watched, and he waited, and sure enough the pilots closed the King Air’s only door. When their aircraft was secure for the night, they walked into the terminal, with the passenger, as if all was well.

Bizarre, but Brad had actually seen this once before, a couple of years earlier when a pilot landed late at night, had neither a hotel reservation nor a rental car, and decided to just sleep a few hours in the cockpit and take off at dawn. The difference was that that pilot had made his intentions known and the ramp guys knew what he was doing. With the King Air, though, only Brad knew what was happening. He kept an eye on the airplane until 10:00 p.m., when he punched out and went home. Two days later he was fired for missing work. He had never liked his job and hated his boss. His brother got him a job in Florida and he left town. No one had ever interviewed him about the events of that night. Until now, of course.