Jeff and his brother had come from a broken home. When their father finally left them and their alcoholic mother, the boys had little guidance and even less help. Jeff’s brother had been sixteen; he’d been old enough to make his own way, to attack life and take what he wanted. Jeff, however, had been ten years old — he’d been lost. Cooper’s mom had all but adopted him, given Jeff love, support and discipline when his birth mother provided none of the above. Jeff had spent at least half his high school years sleeping at Cooper’s place. To say the two of them had grown up together was more than just a figure of speech.
Cooper felt like an asshole. He could tell Jeff felt the same way. They’d both gone too far.
Jeff sighed. “Hungry?”
He opened the bag of food, offered Cooper a Styrofoam container.
One sniff told Cooper what it was. “Roma’s green tomato parmesan?”
Jeff raised his eyebrows twice in rapid succession. “Who’s your friend?” he said. “Who’s your buddy? I am, aren’t I?”
Cooper laughed. He couldn’t help it.
“Just because you’ve got a dead-on impression of Bill Murray from Stripes doesn’t mean we’re not broke.”
“Broke, schmoke,” Jeff said. “Something will come up. You gotta think on the bright —”
From Jeff’s pocket, his cell phone rang: the three-chord-crunch opening of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”
He answered. “JBS Salvage, we got the skills if you got the bills. This is Jeff himself speaking.” He listened for a few seconds. “You’re right outside? Sure, come on in.”
Jeff slid the phone back into his pocket and smiled at Cooper. “See? God provides, my son. A potential customer is coming in to talk to us.”
They walked onto the shop floor just as the main door opened. In came a skinny Asian kid. Early twenties, maybe. All of five-foot-eight, with shiny black hair that hung heavy almost to his eyes. His dark blue hoodie had BERKELEY on the chest in block yellow letters. A gray computer bag hung over his left shoulder. From the way the strap dug into the sweatshirt, it looked like he was carrying a lot more than just a computer.
Jeff and Cooper walked around the racing scow to meet the man.
“Hi there,” Jeff said. “Can we help you?”
The kid smiled uncomfortably. “Uh, yes. Are you Mister Brockman?”
Cooper had expected to hear an accent, Chinese or Korean, Japanese maybe, but not a trace.
Jeff flashed his trademark grin. “Depends on who’s asking,” he said. “If you’re a bill collector, my name is Hugo Chavez.”
The kid stared, blinked. “Chavez?” He shook his head. “Oh, no, I’m not a bill collector. My name is Steve Stanton. I want to hire your boat.”
Jeff looked at Cooper. Cooper knew what his partner was thinking — this kid certainly wasn’t the type who worked in the marine construction and salvage industry. Cooper shrugged.
Jeff offered his hand. “Jeff Brockman.” The kid shook the hand, winced a little at Jeff’s overzealous grip.
“Ah, sorry,” Jeff said. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength, know what I mean? This is my partner, Cooper Mitchell.”
“Nice to meet you,” Cooper said, shaking the kid’s hand. “What kind of work do you need?”
Stanton adjusted his computer bag. It was so heavy he had to lean to the side a little to balance himself.
“My boss is looking for Northwest Airlines Flight 2501.”
Cooper felt a spark of excitement, of hope — if this kid was some kind of treasure hunter, he might have money for the job. No one was going to find Flight 2501, but that didn’t matter if he could write a check that wouldn’t bounce.
“It went down in 1950 over Lake Michigan,” Stanton said. “It was a DC-4, flying from New York to Minneapolis, had to—”
“Reroute due to weather,” Jeff finished. “We’re familiar. Fifty-eight people died, worst crash in American history at the time, blah-blah-blah, and so on and so forth. It’s the Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes. No one has found the wreckage.”
Steve looked surprised that Jeff knew about the disaster. If this kid thought he’d discovered something unique, he didn’t know a damn thing about the Lakes culture.
“No, no one found the wreckage,” he said. “Or the bodies.”
Jeff smiled and looked to the ceiling. This wasn’t his overeager whatever it takes to win your business smile, but rather his I smell bullshit and you’re wasting my time smile. Cooper wanted to strangle his friend: just play along, you idiot.
“Got news for you,” Jeff said. “After all this time, there ain’t gonna be no bodies.”
Steve Stanton laughed, the sound short and choppy, overly loud. “That’s the point,” he said. “That’s why the insurance companies never paid out to the families of the crash victims, because no bodies were found.”
This was a play for insurance money?
Cooper’s hope sparked higher. “You don’t look like a lawyer, Mister Stanton.”
“I’m not, but my boss is,” Steve said. “He’s gathered a bunch of descendants together and is ready to file a huge lawsuit on their behalf. All kinds of compound interest and stuff, it’s gonna be mad stacks.”
Mad stacks? Cooper looked at Jeff. Jeff shrugged: he didn’t know what it meant either.
“Money,” the kid said. “A lot of money.”
That Cooper understood.
“But Northwest isn’t even around anymore.”
Steve nodded. “No. Delta is, though. They bought out Northwest, and they’ve got deep pockets.”
Jeff ran his fingers through his hair, lifted it, let the heavy strands drop down a few at a time.
“People have been looking for 2501 for decades,” he said. “Experts, people who make me look like I know nothing, and trust me, buddy, I know a lot. Besides… if it’s in the deep water, like below three hundred feet, we just don’t have the equipment for that.”
Cooper felt a pain in his jaw — he was grinding his teeth together. Couldn’t Jeff just be a little dishonest for once?
Steve Stanton smiled. “I don’t need you to find it, or go down and get it. I’m an engineer. I designed a remotely operated vehicle that can cover a lot of ground faster and better than anything that came before it. You guys take me out for a few days, maybe a week, we let the ROV survey the bottom for a few days, see if we get lucky and make my boss happy.”
Jeff sighed, crossed his arms. He tilted his head a little to the right, an expression Cooper knew all too well. Jeff was about to show Stanton the door. Cooper had to do something, fast, something that would change Jeff’s mind.
“It would be expensive,” Cooper said. “Jeff’s well-known reputation as a navigator, his expert knowledge of the lake, and the weather is going to be a factor, of course, and—”
Steve Stanton reached into his sweatshirt pocket, pulled out a neat, bank-bound bundle of hundred-dollar bills. He held it up.
“Will this get us started?”
Cooper stared at it. So did Jeff. That certainly wasn’t going to bounce. The bills smelled new. They smelled even better than the green tomato parmesan. That bundle alone would make the payment on the Mary Ellen and catch them up on three months of back utilities.
“Let me guess,” Jeff said. “That’s a mad stack?”
Steve laughed his too-loud laugh. “This one isn’t even a little ticked off, man. What will it cost to hire you?”