He paused. If I did that, if I got certified, would there be a place for me here long-term? I mean, not just as an apprentice. Malcolm looked at him. He thought about a 22-year-old who had worked two overnight shifts without complaint, who asked the right questions, who had installed a fuel bracket correctly on the first try because he understood that there were no second tries.
He thought about himself at 22. The shop where he'd started the older mechanic who had looked at him and said, "You can do this work if you're willing to do it right." "Get the certification," Malcolm said. "When you have it, come talk to me." Jerome nodded, turned to go. Jerome, Malcolm said. He stopped.
Don't rush it, Malcolm said. The certification is not the point. Understanding what you're certifying is the point. Take your time with the material. Yes, sir.
Jerome said, and left. Rachel appeared in the doorway where Jerome had just been. You realize he's going to get that certification in 18 months, she said. probably, Malcolm said. And then he's going to want a raise. He'll have earned one, Malcolm said.
She shook her head in the way she always shook her head, not in disagreement, in something that looked a lot like affection for a man who was incapable of doing things the easy way. The Charter Company meeting happened on a Thursday as scheduled. Six Aircraft Love Field, a family-owned operation that had been in business for 30 years and had never had a safety incident and wanted to keep it that way. The owner was a man named Roy Castillo, 63 years old, who shook Malcolm's hand with the firmness of someone who had built something real and knew what real looked like in other people. I heard what you did for Sterling Crown, Roy said.
I did what the job required, Malcolm said. That's what I heard, Roy said. That's why you're here. They talked for 90 minutes. Malcolm walked Roy through the inspection methodology, not the Sterling Crown story, not the fraud, not the federal investigation.
The methodology, the documentation discipline, the way every component got cross-referenced, every serial number, chased, every system accessed in the sequence it needed to be accessed. The way the log book was the product, not the aircraft. Roy listened the way Daniel listened, the way Delgato had listened with real attention. At the end, he said, "What's your rate," Malcolm quoted it? Roy didn't flinch.
"When can you start?" "3 weeks," Malcolm said. "We have existing commitments." "3 weeks works," Roy said. They shook hands again. On the drive back to the shop, Malcolm thought about what his operation looked like now versus what it had looked like 8 weeks ago. the lease that had 18 days left on its grace period, the equipment he'd sold. Maya asking in that steady, careful voice whether they were going to lose the hangar, the invoice that a woman had laughed at in a conference room full of attorneys.
He thought about how close the margin had been. And then he thought about the margin, about how it had never actually been financial. The financial margin was terrifying. Yes, but the real margin, the one that had mattered when everything was in the balance, had been much simpler. It was the distance between signing something and not signing something, between the key on the table and the key in his pocket, between what a man would accept and what a man would refuse.