Different Circles

“Fuck yeah, it was worth it,” Coop replied. “What that asshole did was not cool. It ain’t the way the world is supposed to work. What happens on the road stays on the road. Everybody knows that. It’s fuckin’ sacred, man! That motherfucker violated that shit. That cannot go unanswered, especially not when he’s spreading shit about Celia and Teach and Suzie.”

Jake smiled and patted him on the back. “You really do say some profound shit sometimes, Coop.”

“Do I?” he asked.

Suzie called the home office and told them everything about Njord. She told them about the insubordination, the lack of crew cohesion, the misogynistic remarks he had made, and about how they had good information that he had spread vicious rumors about their passengers to the media—rumors that weren’t even true, not that that really made any difference. She told them that her passengers were demanding that he be removed from the assignment immediately—not that he would be cleared for resuming normal duties for at least a month thanks to Coop.

Pauline called the home office as well. She told them that she and her clients were absolutely outraged by the slanderous lies Suzie’s copilot had spread to the entertainment media for whatever twisted reason he had. She also told them that her clients had reported to her a string of sexual harassment and misogynistic statements they had heard Njord make in the course of his tenure with them. She cited her evidence that Njord was the culprit—highly circumstantial though it was—ticking off point by point, naming names, and repeating quotes. She told them that KVA Records would never agree to a contract with them again and would likely file lawsuits against them if this situation was not made right immediately.

Jake and Laura even got in on this action. Laura called first, telling them how her reputation was now in question because of the lies that Njord had spread. She told of how Njord had come onto her back in the beginning of his assignment and how, after she had shot him down, he had continued to come onto her until she had been forced to become firm with him. From that point on, he had seemed to have some sort of vendetta against her.

Jake simply echoed Pauline’s statement, though in more straightforward terms. One of their pilots had slandered his wife to the entertainment media. This was a gross violation of the trust they were supposed to enjoy in their air transport contractor. If this was not made right, not only would KVA never do business with Peterson Aviation again, not only would lawsuits be filed, but KVA would go out of their way to spread the information far and wide that Peterson Aviation could not be trusted to remain discrete, making sure that all potential future clients heard about it.

And so, Njord was summarily fired from his job at Peterson Aviation. They did not bother investigating the matter. Though he vehemently insisted (through his wired-shut jaw) to Jack Benton, the CEO of the company, when Jack called to sever the relationship, that he had not spoken to any reporters, that he had nothing to do with the leak, Jack did not listen. Peterson Aviation was not a union shop. Though Njord had a contract with the company, that contract specifically stated that it was subject to cancellation by either party for any or no reason and Benton was therefore invoking that clause on the grounds that he had strong reason to believe that Njord had violated the company policies related to sexual harassment, subordination to the chain of command, and, most significant, keeping his fucking mouth shut about the personal lives of the wealthy passengers they transported from place to place in their aircraft. Njord was free to file a complaint with the California Department of Fair Labor and Housing if he thought this was an unlawful termination, but he was advised quite sternly that Peterson’s lawyers would fight such a complaint with everything they had, would not settle under any circumstance, and would make sure that all of the claims made against Njord by Suzie, Laura and Celia would be aired and made public record for any potential future employers to peruse.

Njord, in a rare display of wisdom, decided to just accept the termination. He booked a flight back to Los Angeles at his own expense and tried to come up with a plausible story to tell his wife about how he had ended up unemployed with a broken jaw.

Peterson Aviation, meanwhile, dispatched a new hire copilot who had just cleared his training period on the King Air to Bangor to take over Njord’s duties. His name was Scott Fator. He was twenty-six years old and this was his first assignment after receiving his ATP-r certification after working for a small cargo carrier company for the past three years. He was completely awed by the fact that he would be flying Celia Valdez and her band around Canada as his first gig.