Impact (17 page)

They stood together grasping for diversions but finding only a strange accord.

A minute later they were in his car. Brenda lapsed into a trance, a den of raw psychology. Because he knew no words of comfort, Tollison remained silent as they drove toward the place where the airline and the county had collaborated to collect the leavings of the crash.

Traffic was thick and demanding, for which he was grateful for once. After two wrong turns and as many denunciations of the SurfAir person who instructed him when he'd called to ask directions, Tollison pulled up to a large concrete structure near the railroad district. A sign on the side of the building read
MCMANIS BROTHERS WHOLESALERS
, but it was faded to oblivion, a historic guidepost only.

Tollison parked and turned to Brenda. “Let me go first. I'll make sure it's the right place.”

She nodded mechanically, rigid at the prospect of following him, her imagination clearly rampant.

He got out of the car and went through the heavy metal door. Inside, a makeshift foyer had been fashioned out of a row of room dividers. In front of the wall, a woman in a Red Cross uniform sat behind a table, knitting. A coffee cup and several stacks of forms were precisely placed in front of her. A sign at her back read
QUIET, PLEASE.

When Tollison approached, she looked up and smiled. He was about to speak when he became conscious of the smell—sweet, penetrating, laced with the familiar scent of a deodorizer—that permeated the room.

The woman watched him wrinkle his nose. “It's jet fuel,” she said, her warm voice and ample bosom so reassuring it made him want to genuflect. “There's not much more we can do. Much of the fabric is far too fragile to clean effectively. Are you a relative of a passenger on the flight?”

He shook his head. “I'm a friend of a relative. A sister. She's out in the car. I thought I'd come in first and …” Tollison shrugged, uncertain of nomenclature.

The Red Cross woman picked up a pen and took the top sheet off a stack of printed forms. “If I may have the name of the sister and the name and address of the purported passenger, the person you are attempting to verify.”

He gave her what she asked. She looked at the papers in front of her and flipped through three of them. “I don't have that name listed. Did she go by any other, possibly?”

He shook his head. “We're not certain she was
on
that flight. We only know she disappeared a week before the crash, and we have some indication she might have gone to Los Angeles. So we have to see—”

Even the woman's squint was comforting. “Naturally. If there is anything I can do to assist you, please just ask. We have a medical unit here, and a chaplain, if you—”

“Thank you. That's very kind. I think I'll go in first, so I can … is that … do I just go look around?”

She nodded. “The material has been divided into sections. They are clearly labeled. Clothing—men's, women's, and children's. Footwear, the same. Jewelry—men's and women's, though of course some of the items are not easily classifiable by gender, so you should check both tables. Books. Luggage. Miscellaneous. And, of course, those items which are no longer classifiable. You should examine all the categories if you find nothing in the most logical places. Just to make sure.”

He nodded. “How long will this material be kept here?”

“As long as there is any question as to the identity of any of the remains, I imagine.”

“How many are still anonymous?”

“Twelve.”

He nodded. Before he was quite ready for it, he had backed beyond the barriers.

Ranks of tables ran the length of the warehouse, the kind found in church basements and school cafeterias. On them were mounds of matter, dark and indistinct from where he stood, not easily distinguishable even upon closer inspection due to the dimness of the room. He wondered if they kept it dark on purpose, to stifle extrapolation from the scorched and tattered garments to the fate of those who had worn them through the crash.

The few people in the room were as separated from each other as the layout would allow. Some strolled idly through the aisles as though they shopped for day-old pastry. Some stood transfixed, in the grip of inner visions. Others staved off knowledge by looking anywhere but at what they had come there to inspect. Some seemed uncertain of their mission; others pawed through the rummage as though they had a license to appropriate the bargains.

Tollison went to the table marked
WOMEN'S CLOTHING
. It was a jumble, a sale table on the morning after, a heap of torn and tangled apparel even markdowns couldn't move. Deep dark blots beyond the power of detergents had given the articles a common hue, except for a few pristine pieces so incongruous they seemed to have been added to the table by mistake.

Wiping his eyes, Tollison took one more look around, then retreated to the car. Brenda was staring at the blank wall of the warehouse. He slid inside and put his arm around her.

“It's not pleasant,” he began, “but you get used to it. There's all kinds of stuff in there, most of it pretty messed up. But it's not … gruesome.”

“Maybe that's because it's not your sister.”

When she didn't say anything further, he opened the door. “We'd better get started.”

Suddenly valiant, Brenda shrugged his arm off her shoulders, pushed open the door, and slid into the sunlight. He did the same, and took her hand as they went into the building, less the leader than an obsequious retainer.

The Red Cross worker gave them a maternal smile. Tollison smiled back. Brenda seemed not to notice. Careful not to overcome resistance, he guided her beyond the slim dividers.

The room seemed larger and the occupants more numerous than before. He paused to let Brenda sense the scene, to weigh its power against her own resources. When he felt a tremble he anticipated a retreat, but she made no move to leave. Encouraged, he led her to the table he had already inspected. “This is as good a place to start as any.”

She regarded it tentatively, as though the display were of questionable taste. Finally, she fingered a cotton blouse. Tollison doubted anything was registering, doubted the day could possibly prove anything except her courage.

He was wondering if there was a less arduous method of eliminating Carol from both the room and the event when Brenda spoke. “It's like the catacombs in here.”

“I know.”

“Ghosts and stuff. Do you believe in them?”

“No.”

“I didn't, either. But maybe I'll start.”

“Why?”

“Because Carol's here. And now I have to find her.”

Her eyes were clear, her strength immense. In its wake, Tollison grew timid. “Maybe we should go. Leave it for another time.”

Brenda shook her head. “It's not going to get any easier, Keith. Haven't you learned that yet?
Nothing
gets any easier.”

She stepped toward the table until her thighs were pressed against its edge. With one hand she reached out and touched another garment, a raglan sweater she fondled reverently, as though it had warmed a prophet. After a moment, she dropped its sleeve and touched a tattered piece of denim that was spotted by what was clearly blood. And another and another, poking, probing, searching for the clothing that, according to her revelation, her sister must have died in.

Finished with the first table, she moved to the second. Tollison walked with her, though carefully at her back, his eyes on Brenda rather than debris. She gave off an intensity he had only sensed when she had been searching for a cure for whatever ailed her son. He held his tongue and watched her work.

An hour later, she had finished the clothing and luggage but had found no sign of Carol. When he asked if she wanted to rest, she merely shook her head. They moved through footwear with the same result. At one point, somewhere behind them, a woman screamed and started crying.

People came and left; words were not exchanged. Earnest men and women moved through the room, examined the searchers from a distance, looked for signs of derangement and, finding none, departed. It was as mysterious as a mass, as transforming as communion. They moved along to jewelry.

The table glowed, the watches, rings, and necklaces bright testimony to the variety of taste and aspiration. A guard gave them a stiff acknowledgment; a sign disclosed that more valuable items were kept in a vault in the back.

Another groan rippled the heavy air, and Tollison turned to see if help was needed. When he turned back, Brenda was holding a wrist-watch, turning it in her fingers, canting it to the light.

A slight smile lifted her lips. “I bought it at Shreve's. For her thirtieth birthday. It was half off. I always get Carol nice things for her birthday—I buy them the day after Christmas. It's pretty, isn't it, Keith? See? It's quite pretty still, after all these years. I wonder what we do now?” she concluded softly.

Taking her hand, he led her toward the door. As they passed the Red Cross table, the woman asked if they had found anything.

When he nodded, the woman sobered. “In that case you should complete this form. Please. It will speed things immensely if you do it now.”

He guided Brenda to the table, where the woman took Brenda's hand in both of hers. “I'm afraid I have to tell you that all the survivors have been identified, so if your sister was on board the plane she is, necessarily, deceased.” The woman held up a paper. “This is an FBI identification form. If you will fill it out, it will be compared with postmortem examinations and matched with the appropriate remains. Then you will be notified as to the whereabouts of the body and instructed how to claim it.”

Brenda took the form and the pencil that came with it, bent over the table and began to fill the blanks, registering Carol's statistics. When she completed the form, she returned it.

“Be advised that the airline requires a twenty-five-gauge monoseal casket for removal of the remains,” the Red Cross woman said, “and an acceptable vehicle of the type normally used to transmit the deceased for burial. I am authorized to tell you that the airline will provide funeral services itself if you have made no arrangements of your own. This form describes their interment specifications. You must provide a casket, however. There are no more caskets in the South Bay area, due to the demands of the incident.”

Brenda shook her head, refusing the document. The woman returned it to its stack. “I will pray for your sister and for you. She is with the Lord. You can take solace in that.”

“Who did this?” Brenda asked, so softly Tollison almost missed it.

The Red Cross woman looked up from her papers. “What was that, my dear?”

“What made the airplane crash?”

“I don't know.”

“Who does?”

“I'm afraid I don't know.”

“
Who knows why this happened?
”

For the first time, the woman could transmit no solace. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. We can't always know His—”

“Well, there's
one
mystery He damn well better solve by the time I get back home,” Brenda declared in fury.

“Please. There is no need to blaspheme, though I understand your need to—”

Brenda could not have heard. “He'd better tell me how I'm going to
explain this to my son.”

PART II

To: MIKE

From: MARTHA

Subject: SURFAIR

We need to move forward with SurfAir. Alec will try the case if it comes to that, but his schedule is such, to say nothing of his health, that we can't assume he will do any of the pretrial. I have no time for SurfAir myself, so it's all yours.

The NTSB report on the crash is still not out, but our information is that they are inclined to think flight 617 had a near miss, and that in maneuvering to avoid the collision, it reached a stall condition and crashed. The other plane has not been identified, so it was most probably a rogue, an unregistered general aviation aircraft unlawfully occupying the San Francisco Terminal Control Area.

In some circumstances we would wait for the NTSB report before initiating our lawsuit, but in order to compete with Vic Scallini and others for plaintiffs, we need the publicity of a complaint with our name on it. Also, the Judicial Panel on Multidlstrict Litigation is meeting next month, and consolidation of the SurfAir cases is on the agenda, as is selection of the plaintiffs' committee. For Alec to be considered for chairman, we have to be of record. So we file, by the end of next week at the latest.

At this point we have four plaintiffs, not counting the actor Dan Griffin stole: Walter Warren, the surviving spouse of a wife and minor child who died in the crash; Alice Jastrow, wife of Stanley Jastrow—a sixty-four-year-old businessman who was going to retire in a month; and the parents of Lee Chen, a high-tech entrepreneur, age thirty-seven, who perished along with his wife and two children.

From an economic standpoint none is ideal. Mrs. Warren didn't work outside the home, Jastrow wouldn't have earned much more over the course of his life expectancy, and the parents of a married man are not usually considered to suffer significant economic loss from the death of their child. We want to maximize the damages that
were
suffered, however, so be sure to update our evidence on the money value of domestic services performed by women in the home. Also, the wife of the pilot in the Chicago crash got a million four in nonpecuniary damages—for loss of society and pain and suffering—so don't set our sights too low.

In the Chen case, Alec suggests an additional avenue. Talk to people at Berkeley and Stanford—sociologists, anthropologists, theologians, whatever—and find an expert to testify that whatever the case with American families, the Chinese (in particular, those observing the tenets of Buddhism) have a strong tradition of reverence for ancestors, which includes financial support far beyond what is normal in this country.