Hard Landing (25 page)

The track at the East Boston Memorial Stadium is right in Logan's front yard, encircled by a noisy four-lane road that loops into and out of the terminals. But as I came down the back stretch, the only sounds I heard were my feet pounding the track and my own labored breathing as I sprinted the last quarter mile at a pace I could barely sustain, pushing toward the finish, arms pumping, chest heaving, tapping into my last reserves of energy. When I was finished running this morning, I didn't want to have anything left.

Coming out of the last curve, a sharp, familiar pain flashed like a hot poker from behind my left knee straight up the back of my thigh, and I knew I'd pushed too hard. Again. My hamstring had been aggravated for two years, but I'd never stopped running long enough to let it completely heal. I shifted down to a trot and then a walk, hands on my hips and favoring the left side.

"Shanahan…"

I shielded my eyes so I could peer down the track, but I didn't need to see. The tenor and cadence of Dan's voice had become as familiar to me as my own. He was standing in the middle of my lane, completely out of place in his gray worsted suit, pant legs flapping around his Florsheim shoes. He had his hands stuck down in the pockets of his camel-hair coat, which was about an inch too long for his frame. Behind him, the traffic flowed over the access road nonstop, moving like sludge out of the airport. The sky over his head was bright and clean and blue.

"You pick the strangest places to have meetings, boss."

The jaunty tone was jarring. I'd been in a black pit in the hours since I'd talked to Big Pete, unable to sleep, too upset to eat. I was doing the only thing I knew would make me feel better. But there are only so many miles you can run before your body breaks down and you have to face the hard things in life, and there wasn't much that was harder than what I was about to face with Dan.

"How was the meeting last night?" he asked when I was closer.

"The meeting didn't happen," I said, wiping the sweat out of my eyes, "but I had a long talk with Big Pete."

My bag was over on the bleachers. The pain in my leg was getting worse. It felt sharp, serious, as if something important had ripped. Every step hurt worse than the last as I limped across the track and toward the bag. Dan was close on my heels. "What'd that piece of shit have to say?"

The last few words were drowned in the roar of an aircraft leaving the runway on the other side of the terminal. I glanced up, then he did, and we both stood and watched it climb out. The sun glinted off the clean lines and graceful curves of a B767, one of my favorite fleet types. As it banked over the harbor, the royal purple tail with the mountain-peak logo made it easily identifiable as one of ours. I watched until I couldn't see it anymore, then pulled a thin hotel towel from my bag and started wiping down, first my face, then my neck. I was breathing normally again, but the ache in my leg had migrated to my heart, which felt as if it was throbbing, not beating.

"Doesn't look much like there's a blizzard coming, does it? But that's what they're saying." He was still staring at the sky, but toward the west. "Tomorrow night at the latest."

The words came up and caught in my throat, but I finally spat them out. "What's locker thirty-nine, Dan?"

At first he didn't move, just kept staring at the sky, looking for that storm coming. Then he slowly rolled his head back and closed his eyes. His breath condensed in a thin stream as a long exhale left his lips. He looked as if the air was literally flowing out of him, like a balloon that would end up crumpled and shriveled at my feet.

"Fucking Pete Dwyer," he said quietly. It was not the reaction of an innocent man.

I leaned over and tried to stretch, telling myself I needed to ease some of the stiffness out of that hamstring, but really finding a reason to turn away. When I bent over and flattened my back, a rush of cold air sneaked under my jacket, found the moisture between my shoulder blades, and sent a sick shiver through my bones. Once I started shaking, I couldn't stop.

"What did he say about me?"

"That you were one of Lenny's guys. That you were the one who delivered the cash from Crescent Security in New Jersey to Lenny in Boston."

"That little pisshead." He smacked one of the metal benches hard with his fist, sending a loud, vibrating
bong
through the entire section of bleachers and, apparently, his arm.
"Goddammit."
He grabbed his wrist, whirled around, took a few steps away and came right back. "You've got to let me explain this, Shanahan." It was more a plea than a statement.

I looped the towel around my neck, packed my gear, and zipped the bag.

"You can't just walk away without-I can't believe this." The words spilled out as he paced in a crazy loop, stopping and starting, shaking out his wounded wrist.
"Fucking asshole
Dwyer. Ask me anything, just stay here and let me explain."

"I can't." My voice cracked. I could barely talk and I could feel myself shutting down, sector by sector.

"When, then? When can I explain this to you? Shanahan-" He grabbed my arm, panicked fingers digging through a jacket, a sweatshirt, and a layer of long underwear. He was probably holding tighter than he realized. I looked down at his shoes, black loafers covered with a light dusting of orange track sand. Athletic fairy dust. If only it could make this go away.

"What's locker thirty-nine?"

He loosened his grip, and when I looked into his eyes, I knew that he was going to break my heart. His hands fell to his sides as he turned to watch another liftoff. I watched him.

"Thirty-nine is Lenny's lucky number. He hit in Vegas one time, or maybe it was Atlantic City. I can't remember. Roulette or something. I guess he won big." His voice was steady, but he looked as if it hurt to keep his eyes open. My own eyes were burning as I watched him turn even farther away. "It's the airport locker where I made the drops. We had two keys so I'd put the envelope in there and he'd have someone pick it up."

A heaviness, a dreariness settled like a dull pain into my chest. I hadn't realized until that moment how much I had wanted this not to be true, how much hope I'd been holding out. I didn't want to let it go. I blamed him for making me let it go.

"Goddamn you.
Goddamn
you, Dan. All of this talk about honesty and integrity and honoring Ellen's memory. Going through the closed door. It's all bullshit. You're one of those guys behind the closed door."

He stood with his head down, taking whatever I had to dish out. If I'd wanted to shoot him, I don't think he would have objected. "Did Ellen know?" I asked.

"I-I never told her."

"Is that why she didn't tell you what she was doing? She thought you might tell Lenny?" My body had cooled down, but I was hot and getting hotter, fueled by a growing rage, the kind I hadn't felt in a long time. "Like you told him about the snitch."

His eyes grew wide. "I didn't tell him about Johnny. I swear I didn't."

I gaped at him as he chattered on, not believing that he didn't realize what he'd just said.

"…And I never betrayed Ellen. I told her the truth. And everything I've told you has been the truth."

"How did you know it was John?"

"What?" As I stared at him, his confusion slowly gave way to panic as he figured it out, too. "Somebody from the ramp told me. I don't even remember who it was."

"I don't believe you, Dan." I picked up my gym bag and slung it over my shoulder. "You're one of them… and I never saw it coming. Shame on me."

"What he's talking about, that stuff happened a long time ago. It had nothing to do with Ellen. It has nothing to do with you."

"How can you say that? I believed you. I trusted you and you lied to me."

"How? How did I lie?"

"By letting me believe you were someone you're not."

"I'm not even smart enough to be someone I'm not. Jesus
Christ.
I was gonna tell you-would you
stop,
please."

He reached for my arm, but this time I pulled away. We stood at the gate of the airport track facing each other, both breathing hard. The cars were blasting by just a few yards from where we were standing, and the noxious fumes were starting to make me sick. Something was making me sick, and I thought if I didn't get away from him, I was going to pass out. I stepped closer so I didn't have to yell over the road noise.

"The person I thought you were, Dan, I really liked that guy. Now I wish I'd never met you."

He stepped back, and we stared at each other for another trembling moment. The expression on his face moved with stunning speed from guilt to anger to sadness and finally to something that I could only describe as pure pain, like a big open wound. I could see that I had hurt him. It didn't make me feel any better.

Instead of walking up to the traffic light, I waited for an opening and made a limping dash across the four-lane road. I could still hear the blaring horns when I got to my room and slammed the door behind me. I took off my sweaty clothes layer by layer and left them in a damp pile on the floor. After my shower-history's longest hot shower-I went to the window to close the curtains, looked down, and saw him still there, sitting alone in the bleachers, hunched against the wind like an old man. I don't know how long he stayed there. I closed the curtains and never looked again.

I answered the phone without taking the cool, wet washcloth from my eyes.

"Lenny's going ballistic." Molly's voice broke through the dreamy haze between awake and asleep. "He says he hasn't seen you in two days and wants me to find out if you're ever coming back to work again."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you had an appointment downtown."

"Who am I meeting with?"

"One of our big freight forwarders. Are you going to make it in at all today, or should I make up something else?"

"Make up something else."

"He's not going to like it. You've already got him muttering to himself."

"What time is it?"

"They don't have clocks in that hotel?"

"Molly…"

"It's almost noon. You want to tell me what's going on?"

"Not really. Any messages?"

She was quiet, deciding if she was going to be put off that easily. She must have calculated her odds of success from the sound of my voice and found them to be not in her favor.

"Matt Levesque called. He wants you to call him back. And Johnny McTavish called."

"What did he say?"

"That he was returning your call."

"Did he leave a number?"

"Are you kidding? He wouldn't even leave his name, but I knew it was him."

"All right. Call me here if anything else comes up."

"Are you sure you're-"

"I'm fine, Molly."

"Suit yourself."

She hung up in a huff. I flipped the cloth to the cool side and drifted back into my half sleep.

I thought about letting the phone ring this time, but the hotel had no voice mail, just one overburdened desk clerk that might never get around to taking a message.

"Hello."

"Someone knows."

It was Matt. I'd been dozing long enough that the washcloth was dry and stiff. I pushed it off and covered my aching eyes with my hand. "Who knows what?"

"I got nailed. My boss called me in this morning. She wanted to know why I requested that pre-purchase agreement file from archives, and I couldn't exactly say it was for any project I'm working on now."

"How'd she know?"

"She didn't share that with me."

Dan was the only person who knew I had been talking to Matt and why. I tried not to think about that. "What did you tell her?"

"I told her the truth, that you called and asked me as a personal favor to pull the files. You didn't think I was going to throw myself in front of that train for you, did you?"

"I didn't ask you to lie for me. Did you say anything about Ellen?"

"She didn't ask and I didn't tell. But she did rip me a new asshole for not keeping her informed of a request from outside the department. I think that satisfied her for the time being."

"I'm sorry, Matt. I didn't intend for you to get into trouble. It's not worth it." I swung my feet to the floor, but couldn't find the energy to move from the edge of the bed. So that's where I sat, my head in my free hand. "None of this was worth it."

"I detect a note of despair, of profound disappointment, perhaps a hint of cynicism… definitely bitterness-"

"I'm not bitter," I snapped rather bitterly. "I'm just done. This was never my fight to begin with. And now it's over."

According to the clock-radio, it was 1:27 in the afternoon, but the room was still dark, almost all natural light blacked out by those mausoleum hotel draperies. Very disorienting. I went to the bathroom to check the damages in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot from crying, the bags underneath disturbingly pronounced, and my hair, which had been wet from the shower when I'd gone to bed, had dried into a free-form fright wig.

"Am I talking to myself here?"

"I'm sorry, Matt. Did you say something?"

He let out an exasperated sigh. "I said, when the files never showed up from archives, I started thinking about who else might have kept a copy of the pre-purchase adjustment schedule. And then it hit me-our outside accounting firm keeps copies of everything. So I called a guy who worked with us on the deal, one of the baby bean counters they had in here and he had it on disk. Pulled it right up. He was so proud of himself. Probably figures there's a promotion in it. What would that make him? A senior bean counter?"

"This is the schedule Ellen created? The one she was looking for?"

" 'Majestic Airlines Proposed Acquisition of Nor'easter Airlines. Pre-purchase Adjustments for the Twelve-Month Period August 1994 through July 1995.' I've got it right here in front of me. There's a list of vendors with the date and amounts paid. But if you don't want to hear about it, that's fine. It just seemed important to you at the time, which is why I went out on a limb for you, but don't let that influence your decision in any way. Don't worry about any possible damage to my career, and just forget the fact that I was sneaky enough to find-"

"Matt."

"What?"

"Be quiet."

"Okay."

I was trying to decide whether the soft pounding in my head was a headache or the faint heartbeat of a curiosity that refused to die. Across the room, a sliver of bright light shone through where the curtains almost met. The telephone cord was just long enough for me to walk over there. The drapes felt nubby when I ran my finger along the edges, and I wondered if I would see Dan if I opened them. The thought of him still sitting in the bleachers with his head down made me sad. Angry. No, sad.

"You're still there, right, because I don't have all day to work on this."

"I'm thinking," I said.

I could hang up. I could refuse to learn whatever it was he was dying to tell me. I could skate through the rest of my time in Boston, letting Big Pete run the place, doing what Lenny wanted, never questioning his motives, never knowing what really happened to Ellen, or what was in that package. I'd probably even get promoted. I'd become the first female vice president for Majestic Airlines in the field-my dream come true.

And it would never feel right. Never.

I pulled the curtains back and let the afternoon light come in. "Read me the list."

"Now you're talking." Matt began to read, ticking vendors off the list so quickly at first, I had to slow him down. We'd gone through about twenty names, and he was getting bored and speeding up again, when I heard it.

"Stop. Back up and read me that last one."

"Cavenaugh Leasing?"

"That one just after that."

"Crescent Consulting."

"Crescent Consulting? Not Security?"

"Believe it or not, I can read."

"Majestic made payments to Crescent Consulting? Is that what that means?"

"Yep."

"Before
the merger?"

"That's what this says."

"How much?"

Pages shuffled at his end while I looked around for my briefcase. Where the hell had I dropped it? The room wasn't that big.

"Roughly three quarters of a million bucks over eight months."

"Three quarters of a
million?"
My heart thumped an exclamation point. "That's it. That's got to be it."

"Got to be what?"

The corner of my briefcase peeked out from under the bedspread. I dropped to my knees, opened the case, and found the file on Crescent inside. With the phone wedged between my shoulder and ear, I began digging, looking for Molly's computer printout. "What was the timing of the payments, Matt?"

"Three installments-two hundred thousand in October '94, two hundred more in December of that year, and three hundred in July of '95."

I sat on the floor, leaned back against the bed, and flipped through the printout until I found what I needed. Molly had said that the IBG contract vote had ruined everyone's Thanksgiving. I'd made a note of the specific date-November 20, 1994. So, a payment in October, the contract vote in November, and a payment in December. Merry Christmas, Lenny.

"When did the Majestic-Nor'easter deal close?"

"July 21, 1995."

And one big incentive bonus the next year when the deal closed.

"Are you going to tell me what this Crescent Consulting is?"

"I told you before. It's that local vendor used by Nor'easter in Boston in the early nineties, allegedly for background checks and other odd jobs. It turns out that Crescent Security is also Lenny Caseaux. I suspect Crescent Consulting is, too."

"Can't be. It's a conflict of interest to be the vendor providing services to the company you work for."

"He didn't provide any services."

It took him a nanosecond to work through the logic. "No way."

"Way."

"That's embezzling."

"Yes, indeed." I flipped the printout closed and got to my feet so I could pace. "When Lenny Caseaux was the GM in Boston, he stole over two hundred grand from Nor'easter by paying fake invoices to this Crescent Security company. It was nickel-and-dime stuff- it took him five years-and it didn't seem like enough to buy a union contract. But seven hundred thousand in ten months would be plenty."

"Buy a contract? You lost me."

"Lenny paid Big Pete to make sure Nor'easter's IBG contract proposal failed."

"Who's Big-"

"Pete Dwyer," I said. "He runs the union up here."

"Lenny bought the contract-"

"-to make the merger happen." I paced around the bed and back again. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

"And then got Majestic to pay for it." Matt was getting into it now. "Brilliant. The guy's a genius."

"A genius? I think you're missing the bigger picture here."

"Okay, so he's an evil genius. I never would have guessed that Lenny Caseaux had the brains to pull off something like this and not get caught. Contract fraud, election tampering-you're talking federales here. The FBI. Probably the Securities and Exchange Commission since it impacted the value of the company. Definitely fertile ground for shareholder lawsuits. No wonder everyone wants to keep this buried. And he got away with it."

"That's the part I don't get. I can understand how he could approve payments to himself at Nor'easter, although why the auditors didn't catch it, I'll never know."

"From a financial controls standpoint, Nor'easter was a nightmare. That part would have been easy. The genius of the plan was getting Majestic to fund the payoffs."

"How could he have done that? He didn't work for Majestic at the time, and he couldn't approve those payments himself."

"You said that Crescent was a security company." I could hear Matt sucking on his pen as he talked, something he always did when he was into heavy thinking.

"A fake security company."

"Lenny could have set up Crescent as a provider of consulting services to the deal. As part of due diligence, they could have been hired to review training programs, check compliance, test checkpoints, stuff like that. With a deal like this, you can do just about anything. You've got consulting fees all over the place, and it just becomes part of the negotiation as to who's going to pay for what. He probably got an agreement that Crescent could bill Majestic instead of Nor'easter. It even makes sense because Nor'easter was short on cash at the time. And the fact that it was a pre-purchase adjustment makes it that much easier to hide. There's no budget, and two hundred grand a pop wouldn't really stick out compared to the other charges on this list." He snorted. "You should see the attorneys' fees."

"So Lenny and the other Nor'easter investors who wanted to cash out of the airline business anyway figured out a way to get Majestic to pay the kickbacks which ultimately insured that Majestic would buy their company-at a profit. And Lenny apparently set it up."

"I told you, pure genius," he said.

"I still don't get how he could even get Crescent considered as a vendor. As you said, someone would have to negotiate that."

"That's easy. Lenny Caseaux sat on the negotiating team for Nor'easter."

"He did?"

"Yeah, I thought you knew that. That's where I met him."

"Did Ellen know him back then?"

"We all knew him. He's not exactly shy. And he was always hanging around Ellen."

I thought about what Molly had said about how Ellen might have responded to Lenny, to someone who showed interest in her. "Did they seem… did they know each other well?"

"Who?"

"Lenny and Ellen."

"They spent a lot of time together, which is why it makes sense that she's the inside person."

"Ellen?"
The spiral phone cord caught on the frame at the foot of the bed and nearly sent the phone flying.

"As you pointed out, Lenny needed someone on the team to approve his invoices and not ask questions. Lenny Caseaux and Ellen Shepard spent so much time together people started thinking they had a thing going on. So it works like this: Lenny-who-is-Crescent sends her the invoices and she approves them. Majestic cuts a check to Crescent and the paperwork goes to file. Lenny buys the contract, the deal goes through, and he and his pals cash in. Ellen gets her promotion to a job for which she has not a single qualification. And there you have it. Makes perfect sense."

"Do you have any proof at all for what you're saying, or is it all just conjecture?"

"What do you think happened to the original of Ellen's pre-purchase agreement schedule, the one that was in archives?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell me."

"Ellen swiped it."

"What are you talking about?"

"After she called me and I told her where she could find the files, she flew to Denver, went out to the archives warehouse, and took it."

"How do you know this?"

"When the archivist couldn't find the file, I took a ride out there just to make sure he knew what to look for. When my secretary made the request, all she'd given him was a reference number. When I described to him the schedule that I wanted and told him that it was in the merger files, he told me that Ellen had been there in person. In the flesh."

"Does he know her?"

"He doesn't get that many visitors, and he remembered her red hair. It reminded him of his sister. She asked him to show her where the merger files were. Who else could it have been? Something must have happened to make her think that it was going to come out and she needed to hide the evidence."