moves was cutting himself onstage. “We’re trying to match passengers with their possessions.”
“That’s easy. I had nothing. No luggage, just my phone. Charter plane broke down, I boarded this flight with about one minute to spare. Didn’t my manager tell you?”
“I haven’t spoken to him yet. I’m asking specifically about a large cabinet.”
Bolivar stared at him. “This some kind of mental test?”
“In the cargo area. An old box, partially filled with soil.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“You weren’t transporting it back from Germany? It seems like the kind of thing someone like you might collect.”
Bolivar frowned. “It’s an act, dude. A fucking show, a spectacle. Goth greasepaint and hard-core lyrics. Google me up—my father was a Methodist preacher and the only thing I collect is pussy. Speaking of which, when the hell am I getting out of here?”
Eph said, “We have a few more tests to run. We want to give you a clean bill of health before we let you go.”
“When do I get my phone back?”
“Soon,” said Eph, making his way out.
The administrator was having trouble with three men outside the entrance to the isolation ward. Two of the men towered over Eph, and had to be Bolivar’s bodyguards. The third was smaller and carried a briefcase, and smelled distinctly of lawyer.
Eph said, “Gentlemen, this is a restricted area.”
The lawyer said, “I’m here to discharge my client Gabriel Bolivar.”
“Mr. Bolivar is undergoing tests and will be released at the earliest possible convenience.”
“And when will that be?”
Eph shrugged. “Two, maybe three days, if all goes well.”
“Mr. Bolivar has petitioned for his release into the care of his personal physician. I have not only power of attorney, but I can function as his health care proxy if he is in any way disabled.”
“No one gets in to see him but me,” said Eph. To the administrator, he said, “Let’s post a guard here immediately.”
The attorney stepped up. “Listen, Doctor. I don’t know much about quarantine law, but I’m pretty sure it takes an executive order from the president to hold someone in medical isolation. May I, in fact, see said order?”
Eph smiled. “Mr. Bolivar is now a patient of mine, as well as the survivor of a mass casualty. If you leave your number at the nurses’ desk, I will do my best to keep you abreast of his recovery—with Mr. Bolivar’s consent, of course.”
“Look, Doc.” The attorney put his hand on Eph’s shoulder in a manner Eph did not like. “I can get quicker results than a court injunction simply by mobilizing my client’s rabid fan base.” He included the administrator in this threat. “You want a mob of Goth chicks and assorted freaks protesting outside this hospital, running wild through these halls, trying to get in to see him?”
Eph looked at the attorney’s hand until the attorney removed it from his shoulder. He had two more survivors to see. “Look, I really don’t have time for this. So let me just ask you some questions straight out. Does your client have any sexually transmitted diseases I should know about? Does he have any history of narcotics use? I’m only asking because, if I have to go look up his entire medical record, well, those things have a way of getting into the wrong hands. You wouldn’t want his full medical history leaked out to the press—right?”
The attorney stared at him. “That is privileged information. Releasing it would be a felony violation.”
“And a real potential embarrassment,” said Eph, holding the attorney’s eye another second for maximum impact. “I mean, imagine if somebody put
The attorney was speechless as Eph started away past the two bodyguards.
Joan Luss, law-firm partner, mother of two, Swarthmore grad, Bronxville resident, Junior League member, was sitting on a foam mattress in her isolation-ward hospital bed, still tied up in that ridiculous johnny, scribbling notes on the back of a mattress-pad wrapper. Scribbling and waiting and wiggling her bare toes. They wouldn’t give her back her phone; she’d had to cajole and threaten just to get a lead pencil.
She was about to buzz again when finally her nurse walked in the door. Joan turned on her get-me-results smile. “Hi, yes, there you are. I was wondering. What was the doctor’s name who was in here?”
“He’s not a doctor from the hospital.”
“I realize that. I was asking his name.”
“His name is Dr. Goodweather.”
“Goodweather.” She scribbled that down. “First name?”
“Doctor.” Her flat smile. “They all have the same first name to me—Doctor.”
Joan squinted as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard that right, and shifted a bit on the stiff sheets. “And he was dispatched here from the Centers for Disease Control?”
“I guess so, yes. He left orders for a number of tests—”
“How many others survived the crash?”
“Well, there was no crash.”
Joan smiled. Sometimes you had to pretend that English was their second language in order to make yourself understood. “What I am asking you is, how many others did not perish on Flight 753 from Berlin to New York?”
“There are three others in this wing with you. Now, Dr. Goodweather wants to take blood and…”
Joan tuned her out right there. The only reason she was still sitting in this sickroom was because she knew she could find out more by playing along. But that ploy was nearing its end. Joan Luss was a tort attorney, “tort” being a legal term meaning “a civil wrong,” recognized as grounds for a lawsuit. A plane full of passengers all die, except for four survivors—one of whom is a tort attorney.
Poor Regis Air. As far as they would be concerned, the wrong passenger had lived.
Joan said, talking right over the nurse’s instructions, “I would like a copy of my medical report to date, along with a complete list of lab tests already performed, and their results…”
“Mrs. Luss? Are you certain you feel all right?”
Joan had swooned for a moment, but it was just a remnant of whatever had overcome them at the end of that horrible flight. She smiled and shook her head fiercely, asserting herself anew. This anger she was feeling would power her through the next one thousand or so billable hours spent sorting through this catastrophe and bringing this dangerously negligent airline to trial.
She said, “Soon I will feel very well indeed.”
Regis Air Maintenance Hangar
“NO FLIES,” SAID EPH.
Nora said, “What?”
They were standing before rows of crash bags laid out before the airplane. The four refrigerated trucks had pulled inside the hangar, sides respectfully canvassed in black to obscure the fish market signage. Each body had already been identified and assigned a bar-coded toe tag by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York. This tragedy was a “closed universe” mass disaster, in their parlance, with a fixed and knowable number of casualties—the opposite of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Thanks to passport scans, passenger manifests, and the intact condition of the remains, identification of the decedents was a simple, straightforward task. Determining the cause of their deaths was to be the real challenge.
The tarp crinkled under the HAZMAT team’s boots as the blue vinyl bags were hoisted by straps at either end and loaded aboard their appointed truck with all solemnity.
