Hard Landing (2 page)

"I can see the fucking aircraft from my office, Roger. It's sitting on the apron waiting for a gate. Send someone out there, they can hand the goddamned thing through the cockpit window."

The voice emanated from behind one of two closed doors. It was lean, tough, and rapid-fire, with a boxer's rhythm of quick cuts and clean jabs. I couldn't place the accent exactly, but Brooklyn was a good guess. Whoever it was, he was in early. I'd wanted to be the first one to the office on my first day.

"Roger, listen to me.
Would you listen to me?
We can't wait one more minute. The hospital's been on call for this thing for hours. For all I know, they already got the guy cut open."

The second office, I assumed, had belonged to my predecessor and would now be mine. I tried the knob. Locked. With nothing else to do, I checked out my new reception area. It was a typical back office operation for an airline, a neglected pocket of past history filled with forty-year-old furniture built to last twenty. This one had the extra-added features of being small and cramped. There was a gunmetal gray desk-unoccupied-that held a phone, a ten-key adding machine, a well-used ashtray, and an answering machine, of all things. Behind the desk on the floor was a computer. I could have written wash me in the dust on the monitor. The copy machine was ancient, the file cabinets were unlabeled, and the burnt orange chairs and low table that made up the seating area cried out for shag carpet. The whole office was light-years away from the smooth teakwood desks, sleek leather chairs, and turbocharged computers at headquarters in Denver.

I was so glad to be back in the field.

"I'm trying to tell you," thundered The Voice, "you don't
need
a gate for this. There's gotta be somebody around.
Jesus Christ,
Roger, I gotta do
everything
myself?"

The phone slammed, the door flew open, and he was past me, his voice trailing him down the corridor along with echoes of his hurried footsteps. "I'll be with you in a minute. I just gotta go… do…" And he was gone. I looked into the office he'd just vacated. Sitting quietly in a side chair was an uncommonly spindly young man, probably early twenties, with wavy blond hair, a pale complexion, and long legs covered with white cotton long johns. He wore a tight lime green bicycle shirt that emphasized his narrowness, and a pair of baggy shorts over the long underwear. A praying mantis in Birkenstocks. "Oh, hey," he said when he saw me.

"How are you?" is what I said, when "Who are you" would have worked much better.

"Kidney."

"What?"

"I'm waiting for the kidney," he said. "It was supposed to come in early this morning, but someone at the airlines screwed up. It just got here. I think the dude's going to get it himself."

Something clicked and the alternative dress made sense. "You're a courier."

He nodded. "Working for the hospital."

"Was that Dan Fallacaro?"

"That's what he told me." Something out on the ramp drew his attention. "There he is, man. Cool."

He unfolded himself from the chair and stepped over to the side wall of the office, which was a floor-to-ceiling window onto our ramp operation. Sure enough, the figure that had just about plowed me under was now sprinting across the concrete through the rain toward a B737 idling on the tarmac. He had on a company-issued heavy winter coat, but no hood or hat, and he carried a lightweight ladder. The courier and I stood side by side in the window watching as Dan Fallacaro climbed the ladder, banged on the cockpit window with his fist, then waited, soaked to the bone, to receive a small cooler about the size of a six-pack. He cradled it under his arm as he stepped down and collected his ladder. When he turned to jog, gently, back to the terminal, I saw that he hadn't even taken time to zip his jacket.

"Awesome," said the courier. "I didn't know you could do that."

"Some people wouldn't do that."

The courier checked his watch. Thinking about that fragile cargo, I had to ask, "Are you a bicycle courier?"

"In Boston? You think I'm crazy? I've got a Ford Explorer. See ya."

While I waited for Dan to reappear, I went back to the reception area. When the phone on the reception desk rang, I grabbed it. "Majestic Airlines."

"Hey, Molly…" It was a man's voice, strained, barely audible over the muffled whine of jet engines and the sound of other men's voices. "Molly, give Danny a message for me, wouldya?"

"This is not-"

"I can't hear you, Molly. It's crazy down here. Just tell him I got his package on board. I handed it to the captain myself. Make sure you tell him that part, that nobody else saw it."

"Who is this?"

"Who the hell do you think? This is Norm. And tell him I put her name on the manifest, but not the Form 12A, like he said. He'll know."

Norm signed off, assuming to the end that he'd been speaking to Molly.

The heavy door on the concourse opened and shut, those same hurried footsteps approached, and he was there. Dan Fallacaro in the flesh, out of breath, and
sans
cooler.

"Nice save," I said. "I'd hate to be responsible for the loss of a vital organ on my first day."

"Thanks." He peeled off the wet winter coat. Underneath, his sleeves were rolled up, his tie was at half-mast, and the front of his shirt was damp. It clung to his body, accentuating a chassis that was wiry, built for speed. From what I'd seen, his metabolism was too fast to sustain any spare fat.

"I'm Alex Shanahan," I said, extending my hand.

"I know who you are. I work for you." He wiped a wet palm on his suit pants and gave me a damp, perfunctory handshake. "Dan Fallacaro. How you doing?" Even though he looked past me, not at me, I could still see that he had interesting eyes, the kind that gray-eyed people like me always coveted. They were green, a mossy green that ran to dark brown around the edges of the irises. His phone rang and he shot past me into his office.

I waited at a polite distance until the call ended, then waited a while longer until it was clear he wasn't coming back and he wasn't going to invite me in. I moved just inside his doorway and found him sitting at his desk, drying his face and hands with a paper towel. If he felt any excitement about my arrival, he managed to keep it in check.

"What's the story with the kidney?" I asked.

"It got here late."

"How'd that happen?"

"Somebody in Chicago put it on the wrong flight. Had to be rerouted."

"You didn't have enough gates?"

"Nope."

"Because you're off schedule?"

"Yep."

"How come?"

"Winter."

"Uh-huh. Why'd you have to go get it yourself?"

He unfurled another towel from the roll on his desk and snapped it off. "Because Roger Shit-for-Brains is on in Operations this morning, I can't find my shift supervisor, and even if I could, no one would do what he says." He bent down to wipe off his shoes.

"By any chance, is Norm your shift supervisor?"

He popped up. "Did he call?"

"Just now," I said. "He gave-"

Dan grabbed the phone…

"He gave me a message for you."

…slammed the receiver to his ear…

"Do you want the message?"

…started to dial…

"The package you asked him to take care of is onboard."

…and stopped. "He told you that?"

"He said he put the name on the manifest but left it off the 12A. He handled it personally and no one else saw it."

He hung up the phone slowly, as if relinquishing the receiver would be a sign that he believed me, a sign of good faith he wasn't ready to offer. With one hand he tossed the wet paper towel into the metal trash can, where it landed with a thud. With the other he pulled a comb from his drawer and dragged it haphazardly through his thick, damp hair. "Molly can get you settled in." He raised his voice,
"Mol, you out there?"

If Molly was within a hundred yards, she would have heard him, but there was no response.

"For chrissakes, Molly, I saw you come in."

A woman's voice floated in. "I told you before, Danny, I wasn't going to answer when you bellowed."

Satisfied, he stood up and began gathering himself to leave. "She can get you set up," he said, grabbing a clipboard and keys from his desk. I could have been the droopy potted plant in the corner for all that I was registering with him.

"We need to talk about last night," I said as he walked out the door.

"What about last night?" he snapped, executing a crisp about-face.

"Since you weren't around and I was, maybe I can brief you."

He folded his arms across the clipboard and held it flat against his chest. "The shift supervisor wasn't answering his radio," he began, accepting the unspoken challenge, "and the cabin service crew chief was AWOL along with everyone else on his crew. No one was cleaning the cabins. The flight attendants wouldn't take the airplanes because they were dirty, and they wouldn't clean 'em themselves because it's not in their contract. The agents were trying to do quick pickups onboard just to get them turned when they should have been working the queues." His words came so fast he sounded like a machine gun. "Chicago was socked in. Miami took a mechanical, and there was only one functioning microphone which you used to make announcements while standing on top of the podium at Gate Forty-two."

"You didn't mention that I was barefoot."

"It's not because I didn't know." He had enough self-control not to actually sneer, but he couldn't do much about his brittle tone.

"And you didn't mention the hundreds of inconvenienced passengers, all of whom were jammed into the departure lounge screaming for blood. I thought we were going to have to offer up one of the agents as a human sacrifice."

His grip on the clipboard tightened. "What's your point?"

"My point is that the operation last night was a complete disaster, and there was some indication that it was all orchestrated for my benefit-some kind of 'Welcome to Boston' message from the union."

"Who told you that?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm now in charge of this place, you are my second in command, and I think we should talk about this. I want to understand what's going on."

"Last night is handled."

"What's handled?"

"I spoke to the shift supervisor about not answering his radio. As far as the crew chief on cabins, I've got a disciplinary hearing scheduled for Thursday. He was off the field. I know he was, everybody knows he was, but no one's going to speak up, much less give a statement, so I'll put another reprimand in his file, the union will grieve it, and you'll take it out. End of story."

"Is that how things work around here, or are you making a prediction about me?"

"I need to get to work," he said. "Is there anything else?"

"Could we… do you mind if we sit down for a minute? I'm having a hard time talking to the back of your head."

His jaw worked back and forth, his green eyes clouded over, and his deep sigh would have been a loud groan if he'd have given it voice. But he moved back behind his desk, immediately found a pencil, and proceeded to drum it against the arm of his chair.

I closed the door and settled into the seat across from him. "Dan, are you this rude, abrupt, and patronizing with everyone? Or is this behavior a reaction to me specifically? Or maybe you're unhappy with someone else, Roger-Shit-for-Brains, for example, and taking it out on me." I thought of another option. "Or maybe you're just an asshole."

His reaction was so typically male it was hard not to smile. He looked stunned, flabbergasted, as if my annoyance was totally unprovoked. Who, me?

"Why would I be mad at you? I don't even know you."

"Exactly my point. Most people have to get to know me before they truly dislike me."

He stared for a few seconds, then laid the pencil on his desk, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. When he was done, I noticed for the first time how thoroughly exhausted he looked. His eyeballs seemed to have sunk deeper into their sockets, his face was drawn, and his cheeks were hollowed out as if he hadn't had a hot meal or a good night's sleep in a week.

That's when I got it.

"You're upset about the ashes, aren't you?" He fixed those dark green eyes on me in a tired but riveting gaze. "The ones Norm handled for you."

"Goddamn him-" He was up on his feet and ready to go after Norm, and I knew I was right.

"Norm didn't tell me."

"Then who did?"

"I figured it out myself. Form 12A is a notification of human remains onboard. He said he put the box in the cockpit and not in the belly, so I have to assume the remains weren't in a coffin. And since your boss hung herself last week-"

"Last Monday. She died last Monday night."

"So another reason you might be this angry and upset is that you and Ellen Shepard were friends and I've walked in on a particularly difficult time because today is the day you're shipping her ashes home."

He sank back into his chair, dropped his head back, and closed his eyes. He looked as if he never wanted to get up again.

"Why all the mystery? Why not put her name on the manifest?"

"Because I didn't want the scumbags downstairs stubbing out cigarettes in her ashes."

"Tell me you're exaggerating."

"We're talking about the same guys who screwed over almost a thousand passengers last night just to send a 'fuck you' message."

I sat back in my chair, and felt my excitement about the new job and being back in the field drain away.

"I should have been here," he said, his head still back, eyes glued to the ceiling. "But I had to-I just should have been here."

He didn't actually say it, but that sounded as close to an apology as I was going to get. "I'm sorry about Ellen, Dan."

"Did you know her?"

"No."

His head popped up. "Then why would you be sorry?"

"Because you knew her."

This time when he bolted up, I couldn't have stopped him if I'd tackled him.

"Debrief is at 0900 sharp," he said, throwing the door open. "It's your meeting if you want it."