Hard Landing (20 page)

I'd spent the entire excruciating day with Lenny crawling through every inch of the operation, including the bomb damage. It had taken a monumental effort just to be civil around him, partly because I couldn't stand him, mostly because I couldn't stand myself with him. The last thing I wanted to do when I got back to my hotel was go out again. I'd collapsed facedown across the bed, fully clothed. If the carpet had been on fire, I'm not sure I could have roused myself to run for safety. But the phone rang and it turned out to be the one guy who could change my plans.

"I been trying to reach you most of the day."

John didn't say hello, but I recognized his voice. Boarding announcements blared in the background over the constant hum of milling crowds, so I knew he was at the airport, probably at a pay phone upstairs. I always pictured him on a pay phone when he called, huddled over with one hand cupped around the receiver and the other hiding his face.

"Are you on break?"

"Yeah, but I'm off in an hour. I got your message. What's up?"

If I had told him over the phone that his brother was about to be fired, I could have saved the trip. I could have stayed on the bed, ordered room service, and spent the evening feeling sorry for myself. But I was talking to a man who had gone out on one long limb for me. I changed my clothes and dragged myself out to meet him.

He came around the bend at Tremont, and I immediately picked him out of the crowd by his stevedore's build and his lightweight dress. What was it with this guy? Everyone on the street, including me, had every inch of flesh covered, and he looked as if he was going to a sailing regatta. Topsiders, jeans, a sweater, and a windbreaker. His one concession to the cold was a knit cap pulled down over his ears.

"Don't you ever get sick dressing like that?"

"Never. I love this weather. Great for working. What I can't stand is the heat in the summer. It makes you slow."

He took a deep, sustained breath and indeed seemed to draw energy from the cold. Just watching him made my lungs frost. "Can we at least get out of the wind?"

"Sure."

We weren't far from the Park Street T stop, so I suggested we get on a subway to nowhere.

"There's lots of guys on the ramp take the T to work," he said, shaking his head. "But that gives me another idea."

I followed him past a knot of sidewalk vendors clustered around steaming carts filled with roasted chestnuts and hot pretzels. We went through the swinging doors, down the wide concrete stairs to the underground station, and for the cost of two eighty-five-cent tokens, into the bowels of Boston mass transit. As we moved down the crowded platform, I noticed that most of the rush-hour commuters were dressed too warmly for the underground air, but seemed too tired to do anything but sweat. I could feel their collective exhaustion. It felt like my own.

John disappeared down another set of concrete stairs, into a narrow subtunnel. When I caught up, he was leaning against one of the tiled tunnel walls.

"Here?"

"You said you wanted to get out of the wind."

The sound of the trains grinding and creaking above rolled down into the tunnel, but didn't seem to disturb the man curled into a drunken fetal stupor to my right. He was breathing-I checked-and by the smell of him, other bodily functions were also in good working order. I wrinkled my nose and tried to shut out the fetid air. "You're comfortable down here?"

He laughed. "I told you I used to work on a fishing boat. What's the news on Terry?" he asked as I peeled off my hat, gloves, and scarf.

"Lenny Caseaux's in town."

"We heard."

Of course they had. "He's not enthusiastic about the way I've been handling things. He's going to bring Little Pete and Angelo back to work, and he's going to hear Terry's grievance himself."

"That's it then for Terry."

It would have been easier if I had seen some anger in him, or even cynicism. But there was nothing like that, just the hopelessness, and the bleak acceptance that showed on his face and made me ashamed to be in the same chain of command with Lenny. John deserved better. So did his brother. So did I, for that matter, and I was feeling like a total loser for not standing up to Lenny on behalf of all of us. "I can keep pushing him," I said, "but he's already trying to take me out of my job."

"He said that?"

"Pretty much."

"I know you did what you could," he said, showing at least as much concern for me as for his brother, "and it's not worth giving up your job. Besides, I'd rather have you as GM than some of the others he could bring in."

We were quiet, both staring at the floor. The ground was covered with discarded handbills, some wet and soaked through, promising all manner of lewd exhibition at a gentlemen's club down the street. I pushed a few of them around with the toe of my boot, trying to find a way to ask what I wanted to know. I decided on the direct approach. "John, do you know who planted the bomb?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Would you tell me if you did?"

He pushed his knit cap higher, then whipped it off altogether and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "I wouldn't tell you everything that goes on down there, but I would tell you that. Settin' off a bomb on the ramp so close to the fuel tanks, an aircraft sittin' right there on the gate-that's just stupid. People coulda been killed."

"I'm thinking it was Big Pete's idea."

"Nothing that big would happen without Big Pete knowing about it. But he didn't plant the thing, and you'd never find a way to prove it was him told someone to do it."

"What's the message?"

"They're trying to scare you, to let you know you're not in charge. You pissed 'em off when you took out Little Pete. They're not used to being challenged like that. The only other one ever did it was Ellen."

"And look what happened to her."

"What? I didn't hear you."

"Nothing." I hadn't even been aware that I'd said it out loud. "John, tell me what you know about the IBG contract vote, the one that triggered the merger."

"Why? You think it has something to do with all this?"

"Maybe. I keep running into references to the Majestic-Nor'easter deal, and the only link I can find to Boston is that IBG contract."

"Maybe it has to do with Big Pete tanking that contract."

I stared at John and not because I didn't believe him, because I did. It was just so amazing what came out of his mouth when I figured out the right questions to ask. And it all seemed to be common knowledge floating around downstairs that never made it upstairs. "How did he do that? I thought it was a company-wide vote. Would he have had that much influence?"

"He had as much as he needed. Back then at Nor'easter, Boston was the biggest local of the IBG by far. However the vote went here, that was how the vote was going to go for the company, and Big Pete wanted it killed."

"You wanted the proposal to pass?"

"The way I saw it, the union shouldna had to give nothing back, but I knew if we merged we'd lose jobs. It happens every time. A lot of guys agreed with me till their tires started getting slashed, or their windows got broken, or they got acid poured on their car. One guy's Rottweiler turned up dead. Broken back."

"Someone broke a Rottweiler's back?" My own vertebrae stiffened at the thought.

"I told you about Little Pete, how he acts when he gets drunk."

"It was him?"

"He couldn't keep his mouth shut about it. Wanted everyone to know how he used a baseball bat. The way I look at it, it was a lucky thing it was just the dog."

"Jesus Christ. What would be in it for Big Pete to kill the contract? What would he care? He was senior enough not to lose his job. So was the kid, right?"

"He was paid off, pure and simple. He tried to make it look like he was taking a hard line for labor, but that guy doesn't believe in anything, doesn't stand for anything."

"Who paid him?"

"I don't know. There were so many deals and payoffs back then, it was hard to keep them all straight."

I began sorting through the list of loose ends, hoping to find one that he could shed light on in his matter-of-fact way. I'd already asked him about the Beechcraft. I'd found out what "fish" meant. Still unexplained was the porno video and Ellen's secret liaisons.

"John, this is awkward… I'm not sure how well you knew Ellen, but I've found a couple of things I'm wondering about. We-I think that Ellen may have been seeing someone, taking secret trips to meet him. Given the amount of scrutiny she received, I was wondering if anyone downstairs-"

"You think she was going with someone on the ramp?"

He began shifting his considerable weight from side to side, foot to foot, and I had the momentary thought that it might have been him. Nah. "I was actually thinking that someone from the ramp might have seen or heard something. It seems like a subject that would draw interest among your colleagues." He was shifting faster and faster, and I knew I was on to something. "Is it true, John? Has someone said something to you?"

He turned and leaned one shoulder against the wall and looked straight down so I couldn't see his face. "I don't think I should talk about this. What good would it do now?"

A surge of excitement pushed through my tired muscles and exhausted brain. He
knew.
"It might help us figure out what happened to her."

He considered that for a moment as he let out a long sigh. "One of my guys was in Miami last year for a wedding. He had to fly back on United on an overnight to get back for his shift, and he saw the two of them at the airport that night. He was on Majestic and she was on my guy's flight on United. When she saw my guy, she started acting really antsy, trying to hide."

"Who, John? Who was the man on Majestic?"

"Lenny Caseaux."

I leaned against the wall next to him. "Your guy saw Ellen and Lenny together in Miami?"

"Yeah, but they were acting funny, like ignoring each other."

"Like two people act," I said, "when they don't want to be seen together." What a dispiriting thought. "So it's true after all."

"I made my guy promise not to tell anyone, and I don't think he ever did. I never heard anyone else talking about this."

"Ellen was good at keeping secrets"-I looked at him-"and you were a good friend to her." My second wind had blown out, and I was ready to go. "I think I'm going to get on one of those trains and head back to the airport. I'm out of gas."

"Before you do, there's something else I gotta tell that I wish I didn't have to."

I could tell by the catch in his voice that it was something I wasn't going to like. In fact, he was so uncomfortable that he couldn't even look at me. It was alarming. "What? What is it?"

"There's been some talk downstairs…"

"About what?"

"About you. About Little Pete. He's got nothing better to do these days but sit around and get plastered, and he's worked up a pretty good hard-on about you-" He caught himself and blushed. "I'm sorry, I-"

"Go on, what is he saying?"

"The word is that he's talking about how something could happen to you like it did the last one, to Ellen."

He was staring straight down, talking slower and slower with every new revelation. I wanted to grab him by those broad shoulders and shake him. "What
else
?"

"He's saying that suicide's no good. Who would believe two in a row, right? But an accident, maybe…" He didn't have to finish. He had finally made eye contact and was looking at me as if I was in real trouble.

"Oh, my God." I started pacing the narrow tunnel, back and forth, the soles of my boots slick on the damp floor. "This is… how can he…
what kind of a place is this?"

"I know," was all he could come up with.

We stared at each other for a moment, the dank air pressing in, feeling like more of a presence in the tunnel than the live human being curled up on the ground.

"Does he mean it? Should I be worried, or is it just talk?"

Before he could respond, a train rumbled overhead. He waited for the train to pass before answering. But I saw the answer in his eyes, and even standing in that stuffy passageway wearing too many clothes, I felt a chill, one that came from someplace deep and refused to pass. When it was quiet again, I asked him, "John, do you believe that Ellen was murdered?"

He checked the tunnel both ways and moved closer. "When you're downstairs, you worry most when it's quiet. A thing happens, something's going on, you can't go nowhere without you hear all about it, the stuff that's true and especially the stuff that isn't. GM dies. Kills herself. You'd expect nothing but talk about it, all day, every day."

"Nobody's talking?"

"Everybody's looking over their shoulder, but no one's talking."

"But you haven't heard anything definitive, right? You don't know anything for sure."

"That's the thing I'm saying. Nobody ever says it for sure, but that don't mean they don't know."

I started piling the rest of my layers back on-coat, hat, scarf. I felt claustrophobic in the tunnel. I wanted to be out in the open, around people. "I don't want to do this alone, John. I can't."

"I'll help you best I can."

"I know you will, but I'm talking about Dan. I want to tell him all this stuff."

He sucked in his upper lip and raised his eyes to the ceiling, and I knew I'd put him on the spot. Frankly, I didn't care. "I have to tell him I have a source, John. I won't tell him it's you, but I need his help, and if I don't tell him I'll never be able to explain where all this information is coming from. And I want to tell him about these threats. Please, John."

He switched to staring at the knit cap, which he was working with both hands. "You trust him?"

"I do trust him, and if you don't, I wish you'd tell me why."

His answer was a shrug. "All right. If you think you have to. But it's under the condition that you never use my name."

"Thank you. I've leaving and I know you don't want to walk with me, but will you keep an eye on me from a distance until I get onto the train? Better yet, I think I'll take a cab."