Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [82]
“Oh, get off it, Dad.”
The room was quiet for a few moments. “You going to call them back?” I asked.
Haston turned to me. “I know about you and my daughter.”
“What?”
“I know you’ve been taking advantage of her. She’s twenty-two years old, for cripes sake.”
Wes had put his head back in the doorway. A car outside was making noise, so it wasn’t obvious how much he could hear.
“I haven’t been doing anything with your daughter.”
“You weren’t kissing on her at the Christmas party?”
“Where did you hear that?” Karrie asked, outraged that our rendezvous on the sofa had become public knowledge.
“Never you mind, missy. You were acting like a whore.”
“Oh, Daddy. Grow up. This is so embarrassing. Okay. So we were making out at the Christmas party. We had too much to drink. So what?”
“I can’t believe you tried to cancel the committee,” Ben Arden said.
“I’ll make some calls. If there’s been a misunderstanding, I’ll put it to rights. But I’m not going to forget about Christmas.”
Haston stepped out the front door, forcing my former father-in-law away from his listening post. After the door closed, Ben slapped his hands together several times as if he’d just cleaned up.
Karrie said, “Sorry about that.”
“Do you?” I asked. “Have any symptoms?”
“No.”
“Good. I hope you don’t get any.”
“Thanks, Jim.”
35. GETTING SUCKED INTO THE HAY BALER
Icalled Jane’s again, but Hillburn and Dobson must have gotten through to them before I did. Nobody would talk to me. When I asked for Gray or Stuart, I was told they would both be in meetings for the rest of the day. I called Southeast Travelers Freight in Chattanooga, but that remained a dead end. They referred me to their law firm, and from there I was asked to write a letter requesting an interview.
When we still hadn’t heard from Marge DiMaggio by eleven, I said, “Does your aunt know I’m on a timer?”
“I don’t know what she knows. I’ll go see her. You stay here and—”
“No way. I’m coming with you.”
Stephanie insisted on driving, but rather than squeeze into Holly’s cramped Pontiac, we took the Lexus. Neither of us relaxed as we cruised up Highway 202 past lush farmland and treed hillsides, talking at length about our quest, painstakingly revisiting the details of our phone calls. I was virtually certain the source of our problems came from Jane’s California Propulsion, Inc., even more so after the way Dobson and Hillburn retreated when they found out we didn’t have any physical proof that their company was implicated. “Bastards!” I said.
“You may be overreacting simply because you didn’t like them,” Stephanie said. “I didn’t like them, either. But don’t let that affect your judgment. It might not be them.”
“I’m not overreacting.”
“I’m just trying to help you do this with your reason and not your emotion.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Much like the tough-nut farmer who cuts off his trapped arm with a piece of tin to keep the hay baler from pulling his whole body in, I was developing an incredible will to survive, to beat this any way I could.
After learning we’d spoken to Charlie Drago, the Chattanooga Fire Department PIO called us and handed out the official CFD account of the Southeast Travelers incident, sounding as smooth as melting butter and as sharp as a stomach cramp.
Her statement, which sounded as if she were reading it verbatim off a script, was riddled with buzzwords, evasive language, and carefully sculpted commentary. Yes, they did have three casualties, but whether or not those casualties were related to the Southeast Travelers incident or even to one another was still a question to be determined by law. Yes, the families were suing the shipping company in ongoing separate actions.
When I prodded for an off-the-record opinion, she would only say Charlie Drago had undergone psychiatric hospitalization after the incident and the last she’d heard he was still on Prolixin and Haldol, which I knew to be antipsychotic medications. I knew right away she was giving me this information to discredit