Free Marine One by James W. Huston

and began pacing. "How are we going to do this? If you do the criminal investigation, represent WorldCopter in the international inquiry, it might take three or four lawyers to staff it full-time. And if you keep going on this accident investigation, and some civil case comes out of it, one of the Secret Service widows wakes up and realizes there's a pot of gold waiting if this helicopter truly failed, you'll need five or ten people. We don't have anything close to that. If it's not properly staffed, it could go completely off track, and the case could be lost."
    "I'll take care of it."
    He sat again and forced himself to fold his hands on his knees to look calm. "If we lose this, it will ruin us. Financially. Our reputation will be shot and we could be sued for malpractice, for not preparing properly. We don't have the experience, or the depth."
    I stared at him in disbelief. I'd never seen him crack. He was absolutely unmovable in business negotiations and contracts, which is what he did. Now he was flipping out about what I was doing? I didn't need it. "What have you been smoking, Rick? I can handle this. If we need more people, I'll get more. And if it gets lost one way or another, it won't be because of me, I promise. Relax. And how could it ruin us financially? We're going to get paid whether we win or lose. Our regular hourly rate. Don't worry about it."
    "You think if you lose a case this big, they won't look for a scapegoat? They'll sue us for malpractice."
    "We have malpractice insurance, Rick."
    "Yeah, twenty million dollars. That won't cover a tenth of this case. Remember I wanted to get one hundred million dollars in coverage?"
    "Shit, Rick. That cost ten times as much. And if we make somebody lose a hundred mil, we deserve to go bankrupt." He was starting to bother me. "You've got to settle down. What's gotten into you?"
    He rubbed his tired, stubbled face. "One of the legal reporters was going on about how outmatched you were going to be, no matter what you ended up doing. He said it was like starting a Single A pitcher in the World Series. He said you were going to get shelled, and you and your whole firm would come down around your head."
    "Nice. And who was that?"
    "I don't know. I'd never heard of him."
    "And rather than shrug it off because you know me, because we started a firm together, starved together, you jump on that bandwagon and start pissing all over me? Damn, Rick!" I tried to control my anger.
    He shook his head. "I don't know, Mike. It's just such a huge deal. Big firms in New York or Washington handle huge cases like this, not a small shop in Annapolis with two partners. It's a lot of weight to carry, that's all."
    "No, it's an opportunity."
    He stared out the dark window without saying anything for an awkwardly long time. He put his hands in his back pockets and turned again toward me. His face was lined with stress. "You ever do any reading into the Kennedy assassination?"
    "Not much. Seemed like a UFO kind of thing to me."
    "Some of it. I take it that you don't think the helicopter failed."
    "Not sure, really. But I find it hard to believe it did."
    "Well, then, where does that lead?"
    "Meaning?"
    "Presidents don't die that often, Mike."
    "And?" I said, concerned with the look that was forming on his face.
    "And you're saying it wasn't from a mechanical thing."
    "I said I don't know, but I doubt it."
    "Then that means somebody wanted him dead. Right? Am I missing something? If it wasn't an accident, somebody was trying to kill him."
    "I didn't say that. Could have been the weather."
    "You don't believe that."
    "No, I don't, but it's possible."
    He waved his arm. "I'm talking about what
you
think. You say I should trust you? Well, I do. And I think that what you think is that someone wanted the president dead."
    "I'm not ready to jump to
any
conclusion. Can't do that at the start of an investigation. Colors your thinking."
    "But if you're right that it wasn't the helicopter's fault, then