Passenger jets depend on two devices to bring them to a stop: brakes and reverse thrusters. If either fails, and if the runway is as short as it is at Congonhas, skids can be fatal.
Hector approached the airport from the city center, passing on his right the blackened ruins of a warehouse. The area had been closed off by a brand-new fence now lined with flowers and teddy bears. Beyond the fence, bulldozers were demolishing walls and clearing rubble. Thirteen days earlier, a TAB flight from Porto Alegre, landing in light rain and with only one thruster functioning, had skidded off the runway to Hector’s left. The runway and the area around it were higher than the road. The Airbus had retained just enough momentum to clear the heavy rush-hour traffic before plunging into the warehouse.
Killed were 187 passengers on the plane, several employees working in the warehouse, and a few passersby, a grand total of 199 deaths. The authorities were still sorting out carbonized bodies, still trying to fix the blame for the disaster.
Hector parked in the underground garage, took the elevator up to the terminal, and asked to be directed to the airline’s personnel department.
“Aline Arriaga, Aline Arriaga,” the obliging young man repeated to himself, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “Ah, here she is. Works check-in on the noon to eight.”
The young man was wearing a red blazer and a name tag identifying him as G. Salcedo, Assistant Manager. He reached out for a telephone without taking his eyes off the screen.
And put it down as quickly as he’d picked it up.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Sorry, what?” Hector said.
“She’s off today. She works Saturdays and Sundays, takes Thursdays and Fridays off. She’ll be here on Saturday.”
“She live close by?”
Salcedo consulted his screen, “Not really. Mooca.”
The Mooca neighborhood was a long way from Congonhas.
“I’ll drop by her place tomorrow,” Hector said. He made a writing gesture. “Could you give me her address?”
“Sure.” Salcedo grabbed a ballpoint pen and made a note. “Can you tell me what this is about?”
“Sorry,” Hector said. “Police business. Confidential. But I can tell you that she isn’t a suspect. It’s just a routine inquiry.”
Salcedo passed the paper to Hector. Hector slipped it into his breast pocket.
“Something else,” he said. “Can you access the flight-crew assignments? Tell me which of your attendants was on which flight and when?”
“Which flights are you interested in?”
“Just one. The 8101 from Miami International to Sao Paulo on the twenty-second of November, specifically the business-class cabin.”
“You’re in luck.”
“Why?”
“Because the twenty-second of November was less than three months ago, and we only keep that kind of information for three months. Unless there’s an incident report, that is. Then we keep it longer.”
“Incident report?”
“Yeah, you know, reports on unusual occurrences, like a passenger getting physically abusive.”
“Happen often?”
“Not often. But when it does, we keep the records. It’s a crime, you know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then there are the subpoenas.”
“Subpoenas?”
“First thing a defense attorney does is subpoena our reports, looking for some loophole to get his client off.”
“Who makes the reports?”
“The chief steward. Then the captain signs off on it. What was that flight again?”
“The 8101 on the twenty-second of November.”
“The 8101 is a daily flight. Are we talking about departure or arrival?”
“Departure. The one that left on the twenty-second, and arrived on the twenty-third.”
Salcedo’s fingers returned to the keyboard. While he was at it, an older man approached his work station.
“Is there a problem, Gabriel?”
Hector glanced at the newcomer’s name tag. He was E. Dornelles, Manager.
“No, Senhor Dornelles. No problem. This man is from the police.”
“The police?” Dornelles raised a pair of bushy eyebrows. “How can we be of service?”
Hector told him what he wanted.
Dornelles asked him why he wanted it.
Hector told him the same thing he’d told Salcedo, that it was a police matter, confidential.
Dornelles turned to Salcedo. “The conversation between the two of you is over,” he said.
“But-”
“But nothing, Gabriel. It’s over. I’m sure you have other duties to attend to.”
Salcedo nodded but didn’t move.
Dornelles stared at him. “Well?” he said.
“This is my work station, Senhor.”
“Take a break. Go have coffee.”
When Salcedo was out of earshot, Dornelles turned back to Hector. “You have some kind of identification?”
“I showed it to Senhor Salcedo.”
“I’d like you to show it to me.”
Hector did.
Dornelles gave Hector’s warrant card close scrutiny and then handed it back. “All right, Delegado, I’m convinced you are who you say you are. But if you don’t tell me exactly why you want this information, I won’t give it to you.”
Hector bristled. “I can get a court order.”
Dornelles was unperturbed.
“You can,” he said. “And we’ll comply. Of course, it might take us a while to find the information you need. We have so many records. It might take us a week, maybe even two weeks. Do you have two weeks to spare, Delegado?”
Hector opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Dornelles continued. “On the other hand,” he said, “you can back off on the confidential bullshit and, if I’m convinced that what you want isn’t something that’s liable to cause any damage to this airline, I might be inclined to give it to you.”
“Might?”
Dornelles sighed. “Do you have any idea, Delegado, how many lawsuits are launched against this company each year?”
“No, and frankly, I don’t care.”
“Of course you don’t. Why should you? But I do.” He gestured in the general direction of the devastated warehouse. “What happened just across the street is a prime example. The relatives of those victims are still in a state of grief, and I can’t blame them, but they’re lawyering up just the same. Pretty soon the civil actions will begin. Are they going to sue the people who make the Airbus 320? You bet they are. Are they going to sue the airport, which means the government? You bet they are. And are they going to sue us? You bet your ass they are. But who do you think, in the end, is going to wind up carrying the can?”
“I don’t-”
“Yes, I know. You don’t care. But bear with me. Airbus is far away, in France. They’ve got deep pockets, but they’ll also have the data from the flight recorders, the famous black boxes-which, by the way, aren’t black, but orange.”
“What do the black boxes have to do with-”
“I’m explaining. Hear me out.”
Dornelles waited for Hector to nod before he went on:
“The Airbus people will say there wasn’t a damned thing wrong with the design of their aircraft. They’ll say that an indicator light pointing to a malfunction of one of the reverse thrusters was working perfectly. They’ll say the malfunction was detected before the flight took off from Porto Alegre. The black boxes and our own maintenance reports will prove them right. Unfortunately for us, the black boxes have been located, and the reports have already been impounded.”
“Where are you going with all of this?” Hector said.
Dornelles continued as if he hadn’t heard him: “That will leave this airline, and the government, as the only two defendants. The government should have fixed the goddamned runway years ago, but they didn’t. They didn’t because of corruption in the contracts, and because of incompetence, and because the politicians wanted to show their constituents a shiny new parking lot and a renovated terminal, instead of investing money in something invisible like grooving the fucking runway.