“SO I don’t know what this means, but he told me to tell you to meet him at Lucha Libre. You guys are wrestling fans?” Shemer sounded so confused, it was kind of funny.
“Not quite. Bed wrestling, maybe.”
“TMI, Kaplan!”
Benjamin chuckled, already moving to grab his keys and get out of the house. “How’d it go?”
“Like it was scripted by Spielberg, hot damn. Sheldon cornered that asshole like a pro—maybe we should hire him. Also found out Teague’s an anti-Semite. Who’da thunk?”
“It’ll play well with his base,” Benjamin said, giving the finger to the lone news reporter who was either desperate or got the shitty assignment of waiting for Benjamin to do something. He got in his car and broke a few rules of the road to get away before the reporter could even start their van.
“Sure, up until they realize he also just outed himself.” Shemer outright cackled, which on speakerphone sounded disturbing. “I’m going to go copy this and I’ll put it in our drop box. When is the ETA for posting?”
“I don’t know what Frank wants, so a lot rests on why he wants to see me.”
“You think he wants to kiss and make up?”
“More like punch me and run me over with his car, but sure.”
“There are worse ways to die than to get smashed by a Tesla, just saying.”
“Two to three hours before I post the tape. Goodbye.”
“Mazel tov!” Shemer yelled with malicious glee as Benjamin hung up.
He got to the airport and quickly walked to the Sheldon hangar, only to see that the plane was in the midst of being towed out. He jogged over to the flight offices. Frank was tensed tightly at the desk, angry and stern, glaring at the staff who were hustling to get the paperwork for his flight plan filed. Benjamin stood there and for the first time really imagined what Frank would have looked like as an officer, standing grim-faced in his blues or his flight suit. It was an impressive mental picture, and Benjamin would be lying if he didn’t admit it turned him on a little bit, but it also made him sad. Frank had really loved being in the Air Force and would no doubt have ended up a general if he had been allowed to stay. Benjamin wondered if there was any way to pursue reinstatement? Was that possible? Would Frank even want that anymore, after all the pain and grief?
Frank turned and looked at him. “Let’s go.” He marched out and right onto the tarmac toward where the plane was being fueled up. They stood silently until that was done and the ground crew got out of the way. Frank almost threw himself into the pilot’s seat, and Benjamin crawled into the copilot position without a word. They put on their headphones, and the silence continued. Benjamin was about to burst with curiosity, but he managed to keep his mouth shut through brute force of willpower. It was not a busy day, so they got airborne within twenty minutes, which Benjamin thought was probably a record of some kind.
He kept glancing at Frank but tried not to stare. The other man was flexing his jaw as he went through the motions of taking off, speaking only when necessary with the flight tower. Frank looked like a coiled snake ready to strike, so Benjamin was satisfied with staying out of range for the time being, turning his attention to the flight itself and putting his brain into pilot mode. It was still new enough that it got his heart rate up, and he could not help but smile as they rose in the air and the world spread out beneath them.
“He admitted it.” Frank’s voice came through the headphones, terse and to the point. Benjamin checked his own setup to make sure his mic was on.
“Shemer told me. He’s drop-boxing the file. I’ll post it when we get down on the ground.”
“He did it. That son of a bitch, he actually set me up to get discharged.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I mean, he’s an asshole.”
Frank nodded slowly, eyes still on the dashboard.
“You still okay with publishing the recording?” Benjamin also kept his focus forward, hoping he did not sound like he was pressuring him.
“Could I stop it?” Frank said, sounding far too resigned for Benjamin’s liking.
“Sure. I could stop it if you tell me to. Even if Fidanza tried to give it away, I can do some hacker shit and erase the file. Nothing’s guaranteed, but I would try, if that’s what you want.”
Frank looked over at him. “Yeah?”
“Hell yeah. Not like I was 100 percent behind this idea anyway. It’s what your father wants, I get that, but I don’t care about your father. Well. Too much. He’s scary, okay? You know that, right?”
Frank let out a short chuckle and shook his head. “He’s a bastard when he wants to be.”
“Exactly. I’m not keen on getting on his bad side. But I’m not in love with him. I love you. I’ll do anything to protect you. If I have to tear down the internet to erase that recording, I sure as fuck will do just that.”
Frank nodded slowly. “Then post it.”
“You’re sure?” Benjamin finally looked over at him.
“I’m sure I trust you.”
Benjamin’s heart caught in his throat. “Uh. Well. You know, some people might say that I, uh, led you on. Tricked you. With the whole MudzNewz thing.”
“You weren’t honest with me. You don’t trust me, which is different from me not trusting you. At least with this.” He glanced over at Benjamin. “And whatever you told my family, they seem to be on your side. Which I would not have put money on twenty-four hours ago, okay? So I’m still pissed off at you, and I’m hurt that you would lie to me. But I’m… I’m willing to hear your side of the story.” He raised one finger. “No promises. But you’ve got this one chance.”
Benjamin nodded slowly and paused to collect his thoughts. He hated telling Rachel’s story again, but she was right about the fact that it was all pretty much “cat out of the bag” anyway. So, he started at the beginning, with the rough times after their parents’ deaths, to targeting Lamarque via MudzNewz, and how that led, way down the road, to him agreeing to participate in a sting operation to take down Teague. “I had feelers out, requests for hot tips, but no bites. I figured he had a skeleton in his closet somewhere, but it wasn’t until, hmm, I think right before our first training flight that Corsak emailed me. I had already been looking at how to off-load Mudz, mostly because of how wrapped up with you I was getting, so I thought about shoving it onto the back burner and letting the next person deal with it. But I just couldn’t…. What Corsak told me meant that Teague had purposefully set you up to get caught with a guy, and get discharged for it. And I guess, you know, that made it personal.”
“Personal,” Frank repeated flatly.
“Teague hurt you, badly, and the last time a guy like him hurt someone I care about, I got that fucker sent to prison for forty years,” Benjamin snarled into the mic.
Frank glanced over at him, then back to the controls. It was quiet between them for a while, just the sounds of the plane slicing through the air filtering into Benjamin’s headphones.
“Can you jack your phone into the auxiliary?” Frank finally asked out of the literal blue. They were so high up that Benjamin thought they’d need oxygen soon.
“I don’t know. Can you turn your car on by sitting in it?” Benjamin grumbled. “This thing has more interfaces than Medusa has snakes. I got it.” He fumbled through the aux cords in the middle storage compartment until he found what he needed. Plugging in his phone was simple since the plane of course had multiple USB ports for charging and docking. It was designed so that people could listen to their playlists while they flew, so it was not that hard to get the two systems talking to each other. “Now what?”
“Now you take a video of me owning up to recording Paulie and why I did it.”
Benjamin let his mouth hang open for a second, then pulled up his camera app. They took a test run to make sure the audio was coming in through the auxiliary connection, and then Frank brought the plane down to a reasonable height and while still looking between the controls and the windscreen, began talking. Benjamin twisted around so he could get at least a two-third profile of Frank as he spoke. Frank somehow went from angry and grumpy to charming within the blink of an eye, despite the fact that he also looked stressed and exhausted. Benjamin felt like he was filming a movie star, a complete stranger. It struck him that this was the Francis Sheldon people expected to see, and was not at all the man he had come to know.
“We’re recording this while I’m flying because I love to fly. It’s in my blood, and I wanted nothing more than to be a pilot in the United States Air Force, serve my country while flying through the bright blue skies. But right now I’ve got dirty laundry to air out, and it seems like a few thousand feet above the earth is a good place to do it. You getting this, Benjamin?”
The only reason Frank would bother to say that was because he wanted people to know it was Benjamin recording him, so instead of just nodding, he replied with a “roger that.” Frank still didn’t look at him, but the corner of his mouth curled up in a half smile before he started up again.
“So I’m going to keep this short. Yes, Paulie, uh, Paulson Teague, and I were in a romantic relationship, and had been in one from the time we were teenagers. And by romantic I mean mostly we ran around in secret, had sex, and lied to everyone we knew about it. My father had no idea until I told him yesterday. It ended badly and yes, Paulie set me up to get discharged from the Air Force. I’m no angel—I was caught doing something I should not have been doing, and due to the rules of the time, the brass had the right to toss me out because of it. But Paulie planned it all out so I would get caught, because he wanted… you know what? I have no clue what he wanted. We had broken up and maybe it was his revenge, maybe he hoped I’d come crawling back to him, I don’t know. I don’t care anymore. I thought it was all way behind me.
“But it wasn’t. I didn’t know it, but Benjamin and my, uh, ex-lover Corsak set up a sting against Paulie, trying to prove that he’s unfit to be governor. That’s on them. I had no role in that at first, and sure as hell my sister didn’t. Benjamin was working without our knowledge, and I know it looks like the Sheldons bought off MudzNewz, but we didn’t. We had no idea about any of this. Then Benjamin got outed as the guy behind MudzNewz, and it was either step up to the plate or let Paulie get away with what he had done. He covered his tracks well, though, so what we really needed was a confession.
“As you have by now heard, I got that confession. I know recording him was illegal. I know outing Paulie is morally questionable, at best.” He checked the controls and then looked straight at the camera lens. “But I did it, and I have no regrets about it. I’ll pay whatever fines I have to pay; I don’t care if it’s on my permanent record. In addition, I fully support MudzNewz releasing the recording.”
He paused again, taking a deep breath. “I support this not just because I’m in business with Benjamin Kaplan, but because I fell in love with him.”