Hard Landing (27 page)

"You're talking about the boss killed herself, right. Not this one." He nodded in my direction without looking at me, and I couldn't tell if he was genuinely confused or yanking Dan's chain.

"I'm talking about Ellen Shepard."

"How am I supposed to know what she wanted? I never even met her."

"Don't waste my fucking time, Angie. I'm not in the mood."

Angelo sat back and kicked one leg out, stretching as if he had a sore knee. "Why should I tell you anything? I can get the same deal from Big Pete without being no snitch."

"If Big Pete's going to bring you back, it means he's doing it through Lenny, and if Lenny wants to bring you back, he has to wait until after arbitration. Those are the rules, Angie, and who knows how long a hearing might take? Yours probably won't take much longer than what?" Dan checked with me. "Six months?"

"I once had a guy who waited a whole year," I offered helpfully.

"I'll take a little time off." Angelo glanced nervously from Dan to me and back. "Now's a good time anyway."

"Right," said Dan, "and at the end of your 'vacation,' maybe you're at work with full back pay. Then again, maybe you wait six months and never come back. Hard to say what happens with an arbitration panel. But let's say you do get back. Do you know what's waiting for you here?"

Angelo stared, his breathing growing shallow between drags.

"Me."

He'd been close to the edge from the beginning, and now I saw perspiration forming on his upper lip.

"If you come back off Lenny's deal, Angie, I'm going to make you my own personal rehabilitation project. I'm going to see to it that you never have time to think about stealing again because you'll be working your ass off."

Dan edged closer, pushing the ashtray out of the way. Angelo's eyes shifted back and forth, trying not to focus on Dan but unable to look anywhere else.

"I'll sit guys down to make sure you've got work to do, Angie. You won't have a second to yourself, and if you try to steal from me again, I'm gonna catch you and that's going to be it. You'll be out on your ass for good."

"That's harassment."

"Nothing in the contract says I can't make you do your job."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Danny." He stubbed out his butt, jamming so hard, stale ashes spilled onto the table. "I don't got enough problems without you threatening me all over the place?" He lowered his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and massaged his temples with the heels of his hands, turning his entire face crimson in the process. Between the cigarettes, the sick wife, pending unemployment, and Dan's pressure, I feared for the guy's vascular health.

"Angelo," I said, "here's another way to look at it. Your wife starts chemotherapy in two weeks."

He nodded, eyes still shut.

"Take our deal and your benefits will be restored tomorrow. Take Lenny's deal and you're going to have to sit out for six months, maybe longer, with no benefits and no guarantees. How are you going to pay the bills in the meantime?" His hands slipped around to cover his eyes. "Do you want your wife worrying about that when she's trying to get well? Your wife's peace of mind means a lot to you, I can tell. Tell us what you know, come back to work, and give her that peace of mind. It would be worth more to her than a TV."

He looked at me through bloodshot eyes. "Full back pay?"

"Yes."

"All my benefits, including flight bennies?"

"Of course."

He slumped back in his chair and studied the ceiling as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. When he finally sat forward, Dan and I leaned in, too. In that moment before he began, as we all stared at each other, I knew that this was as close as we'd been to the truth-any truth-about Ellen Shepard's death, and I could barely hold still. I watched Angelo's face and everything seemed to slip into slow motion as he opened his mouth and said, "I want a better deal."

"A better
deal?"
I couldn't believe I'd heard right.

"I want to retire today, but I want the last two years of my salary and full benefits, including my pension."

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Dan spoke for both of us.

"You got me in a position where I got no choices, Danny. I got forty-one years in, and I ain't walking away with nothing."

"You got yourself in this trick bag and you got some balls trying to use it to jack us up."

"Listen to what I'm saying to you." He looked around the diner and lowered his voice. "That lady boss of yours, the other one, she was right. I do know something. And if she knew it, too, that's why she's dead. So I'm askin' you, if they killed her, how long do you think I'd last down there on the ramp?"

Dan and I exchanged a glance. No one else was in the diner with us except the kid who was working the counter and doing his homework. I could hear the squeaking of his highlight pen as he marked his textbook. A prickly wave danced up the back of my neck and crawled underneath my hair. "Angelo." My heart was pounding in my throat, and I was surprised that my voice didn't waver. "Do you know that Ellen was murdered, that she didn't kill herself? Do you
know
this?"

He nodded. "I know too much for my own good."

"You
miserable motherfucker.
All this time you didn't say any-"

I laid my hand on Dan's arm. "Tell us what you know, Angelo, and I'll get you whatever you want." I looked into his eyes and I knew, no matter what Big Pete had promised him, that he was scared, that he loved his wife, and he wanted to get this over with. Even so, he held out as long as he could, until the corner of his mouth began to quiver. "There's two parts to this story," he said finally. "There's who killed her, and there's why. I'll give you the who tonight. You get me my deal and I'll give you the rest."

Dan pulled away from me and sat back, arms crossed tightly across his chest. I nodded to Angelo and he began.

"Big Pete, Little Pete, and Lenny-used to be Dickie, too, before he kicked the bucket-they was all involved in this thing happened here a few years back, and it turned out that she somehow knew this secret and was gonna blow the whistle."

"What secret?" I asked. "Was it the IBG vote?"

"I ain't sayin' what it had to do with until I get my deal, but it wasn't that. That was nothing. What I will tell you, certain people weren't where they said they were the night when she got killed."

The prickly feeling came back, only this time I felt it across my whole body.

"It so happens that night I was down at the employee parking lot taking care of some personal business. While I was there, Little Pete comes flying up in that big truck his pop bought for him. He's coming back to work in the middle of his shift, which was stranger than hell because once he's gone he never comes back."

"What time?" I asked.

"Around midnight."

"Was he drunk?" asked Dan.

"He'd had a few, but I've seen him a lot worse. I gave him a ride up to the line so he could find Big Pete. On the way up, he was jumpy, like he needed a drink. He couldn't stop yapping about how big changes was coming because of him and everything was going to get back to normal."

"What did you take that to mean?" My throat was tightening.

"Nothing. The kid's always spoutin' off about something. But he kept pushing, so I asked him, does he know this on account of his pop telling him? Because everybody knows that's the only way the kid ever knows anything is it comes from his pop, right? I tell him this and it pisses him off. He says his pop didn't know nothing about it, that he and Lenny had a scam going." Angelo lowered his eyes and blew out a long stream of smoke that scattered the wisps of ashes off the table. "Finally, he couldn't keep it in no more and he just comes right out and says it. The dumbfuck bastard sits right in my tug and tells me he just killed the lady boss."

Dan's fist slammed down on the table, dumping over Angelo's coffee cup. Angelo bounced back and out of the chair. I shot straight up. My chair flew back and tipped over as the hot liquid spread across the tabletop. Dan was the only one who didn't react. He sat there frozen, his arm still flat against the table, his fist squeezed so tight it was shaking. Hot coffee soaked the sleeve of his cotton shirt. I looked at him and he looked back. "Son of a bitch," he said. "That fucking son of a bitch killed her. I knew it."

I pulled a wad of napkins from the chrome napkin holder and dropped them into the spilled liquid. I lifted Dan's arm out of the mess and handed him a wad. Eventually, we settled back into our seats and I asked Angelo, "What else did he say?"

"I told him he was full of shit. To prove it." He glanced nervously at Dan. "He showed me the key to her house."

"Where did he get the key?" I asked.

"Lenny gave it to him."

The table was covered with wet, sepia-colored mounds that looked like sand dunes and smelled like stale French roast. The smell of cold coffee was making me sick, and I could barely put two thoughts together, but I tried. Ellen must have set up the date to meet Lenny at the house. Lenny gave the key and the security code to Little Pete and sent him in his place. So they both killed her. "Does anyone else know what happened that night?"

"No. Big Pete made sure of that after he found out. He was so mad, I thought he was going to kill that kid. He had me drive Little Pete home."

"So Big Pete knows everything."

"Absolutely."

"What about the package?" I asked.

"What package?"

"Dickie Flynn's package in the ceiling."

"I don't know nothing about no package."

"Tell us, Angelo," I asked, "why they had to kill her."

He shook his head.

"Will you tell the police?"

"I ain't saying dick to no cops, and I ain't telling you no more." He stood up and slipped his jacket on.

Then he leaned over the table and lowered his voice.

"Get me my deal and I'll give you what you need. It's time it all come out, anyway."

The windshield wipers in Dan's car were fighting a losing battle with the blowing snow. The car shuddered against another strong blast of wind. We were idling in the parking lot of the diner, waiting for the heat to kick in. Both of us were staring straight ahead. After a while I noticed that the window was fogged and we couldn't see anything. I tried to block out everything but the facts, because everything but the facts scared me to death.

"It's pretty strange," I said, blowing on my fingers, "that Angelo was willing to tell us that Ellen was murdered, that Lenny set it up, and that Little Pete did it. But he won't tell us why."

"He thinks he's got more leverage on the why. It's how he thinks he's going to get his deal."

"That's what I'm saying. He's telling us without telling us that the motive for Ellen's murder is bigger than the murder itself. What do you think it is?"

"I don't know and I don't give a fuck." Dan wasn't wearing his gloves, and his hands looked like bones wrapped around the steering wheel. "I'm going to kill Little Pete. And when I'm done with him, I'm going after that other prick Lenny. I'm going to wrap my hands around his fucking pencil neck just like-"

"We have to go to the police, Dan."

"Are you deaf? Angie just said he wouldn't talk to the police."

"They'll make him talk. That's what they do. I don't want the two of us to be the only ones who know what he said."

"The police already gave up on this, remember?" He put the car in reverse, wedged his arm behind my seat, and twisted to look behind him. He screeched backward, stopped quickly, and slid on the quickly icing concrete.

"Where do you want me to drop you off?" he asked, glowering at me through the dark.

"Drop me
off?
"

"You can do what you want. I'm going to the airport."

"Wait." I grabbed his arm, trying to think fast as he was about to put the car in gear and set in motion something that could only end badly. "I'll make a deal with you. I won't call the police until we find Dickie's package if you promise to stay clear of Little Pete."

"You don't think there is a package anymore, remember?"

"I don't know if there is or not, but let's keep looking."

He stared straight ahead, grinding his teeth and tapping one finger on the wheel. "I already looked everywhere I could think of for that package."

"We haven't really looked at the airport."

"It's not there."

"We haven't looked. You want to make sure that Lenny gets nailed for this, don't you? If there's evidence against Lenny, it's in the package."

He tapped a few more times, started to nod slowly, then put the car in gear and swung out onto the highway.

"Deal," he said, just before he hit the gas.

Dan was sitting with his legs crossed on the top of my desk, fidgeting with a ruler. He looked as if he were in a life raft on a sea of papers. In a final spasm of manic frustration, we'd taken Ellen's neatly labeled files and binders and dumped them all onto the floor- and found nothing. With no place else to look, we'd gone over every inch of that massive desk, thinking the package might be concealed in some secret compartment. That idea had turned out to be as flaky as it sounded.

"I still don't know why you thought it would be here," he said for the fifth time. "She never kept anything important at the airport. I keep trying to tell you that."

"It was worth a shot," I replied for the fifth time, "before we schlepped all the way up to Marblehead again."

I was sitting on the floor in the corner in a zombie-like trance. I was so tired, my brain was beginning to seize up like an engine running without oil. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten, and worst of all, the heat had kicked into high gear again and the temperature in the office was approaching critical. But I knew that if I let myself feel any of that, I'd never move from that spot, and I had to get Dan away from the airport. I had no idea if either of the Dwyers was on shift, but I didn't want to take any chances.

I checked my watch. Almost nine o'clock. "If we're going up to the house tonight, we'd better get moving."

A cell phone twittered and we locked eyes.

"Don't look at me," he said. "I don't carry one of those damn things." He jumped down from the desk, and I crawled over to the mound of papers, the apparent source of the ringing.

"Here it is." He pulled my backpack from under one of the piles and handed it over. I dug out my phone and punched up the call.

"I found you."

The sound of Bill's voice was like a rush of cool air in that arid desert of an office. The minute I heard it, I felt the muscles in my shoulders release and the tension flow out. In so many ways, he was exactly what I needed right then. "Can you hold on?"

"Is this a bad time?"

"No. Just give me a second." I covered the phone with my hand. "Dan, I'm sorry, I need to take this call."

He was scratching the top of his head with the ruler. It took him a moment, but he caught on. "Which means get the hell out of here." The ruler clattered onto the desk as he headed out the door and closed it behind him.

From the sound of the background noise, Bill was in his car. "I am so glad you called. Where are you?"

"I'm back in Colorado. What are you doing up there? Lenny's hysterical."

I started to move in a tight figure eight around the piles on the floor. "Did he call you?"

"Yes, he did, which means he's truly desperate because he never calls, even when he should. And who is this guy Angelo?"

I froze. "He mentioned Angelo?"

"He said you were trying to do an end-around and offer Angelo a deal without telling him. Lenny wants to approach the IBG International and make his own deal to bring him back to work. Should I let him?"

"No.
Absolutely not. Jesus." I paced a little faster and my shoulder muscles started to bunch again. Angelo must have told Lenny that he'd talked with us, but why on earth-maybe to play both ends against the middle. "Bill, whatever you do, don't let Lenny make that deal. If anything, Angelo needs to be protected from Lenny. Protected from himself, too, it sounds like."

"Tell me who he is and why any of this is significant."

"I told you about Angelo. He's the ramper that Ellen fired before she died. Dan and I met with him tonight, and he told us that Lenny had Ellen killed."

"He told you
what?"

"Little Pete killed her, but Lenny gave him the key to her house. Angelo actually saw it."

"Saw the murder?"

"No, the
key."
I was talking too fast, frustrated that he wasn't keeping up. "The night of the murder Little Pete came back to the airport and showed Angelo the key he used to get into Ellen's house, to get in the house and kill her."

"Where are you right now?"

"At the airport.
Are you listening to me?"

"Alex, you have to get out of there. If any of this is true-"

"I need one more day, and I need you to approve
my
deal for Angelo. He told us who killed her, but he wouldn't tell us why. I need to know why-"

"You
need to know?"

"Yes, I need to know." I kicked one of the piles of paper on the floor. "It has something to do with that package from Dickie Flynn and I think we can find the package if we have a little more time. And if we find the package, we get Lenny." Assuming there still was a package.

When I slowed down enough to notice, all I could hear was the sound of his breathing. And then I couldn't even hear that. "Bill, are you there?"

"Listen to me carefully," he said, his voice calm and steady. "Don't think about what you're going to say next. Just shut up and listen."

I stared up at the old yellow tiles in the ceiling. I couldn't believe how wound up I was-and how annoyed. I wanted him to be in a frenzy, too, to support my frenzied-ness. But he was so rational he was making me feel like a raving madwoman. I was losing perspective, which is exactly what he was about to tell me and exactly what I didn't want to hear. "I'm listening."

"If what you're saying is true-"

"It's all true, I know it-"

"I asked you to listen to me."

"I'm sorry. It's just… you sound as if you don't believe me."

"It doesn't matter what I believe. That's what I'm trying to make you see. If Lenny knows that Angelo talked to you, then it's not up to me how much time you have." He paused to let that sink in. "Do you understand now?"

I wiped the perspiration out of my eyes with the short sleeve of my T-shirt. He was right. If Lenny knew that Angelo had talked to us, then the Petes knew and that could not be a good thing for any of us- especially Angelo.

"I'm bringing in the FBI," he said, "and I'm sending Corporate Security out. Tom Gutekunst will be on the red-eye tonight. He can be in Boston first thing tomorrow morning."

"Angelo's not going to talk to Corporate Security or anyone else. Don't you…" I paused for a moment to get the shrillness under control. He was right; I was wrong. He was being reasonable, and I was being stubborn to the point of petulance. But I couldn't let it go. "Don't you want to know what Angelo knows, which is why Ellen was killed?"

Big sigh. "What about Fallacaro? What if he goes with Gutekunst tomorrow?"

"If it's too dangerous for me, it is for Dan, too."

"Maybe so. But I'm not in love with Dan Fallacaro."

"I'm not going to bail out and leave Dan to finish this-" What did he just say? I switched the phone to the other ear. Maybe I wasn't hearing right. "What did you say?"

"I said that I'm in love with you, Alex."

My knees almost gave way.

"I am hopelessly…"

My hands trembled.

"…desperately…"

Tears welled up in my eyes.

"…pathetically in love with you."

I had to reach around, find the edge of the desk and lean back. He'd never even said that he loved me- needed me, wanted me, but never that he loved me, much less desperately loved me, and even though I'd been aching to hear it, I'd never asked him to say it because I was afraid of what I might hear.

"I don't want to lose you again. I don't want a life without you in it."

I tried to keep my thoughts from racing. I dropped my head all the way back and let his words roll over me. He was in love with me. And I couldn't stop smiling.

"I'm out here in Denver," he went on, "completely helpless while you're running around in Boston with some people who are apparently quite dangerous. All I want is for you to exercise some good judgment. Is that so much to ask?" The background noise was gone, and I knew that his car had stopped. Without the interference he sounded closer, as if he were there with me, whispering in my ear. "If you're worried about Fallacaro, then tell him to leave, too. But whether he goes or not, I want you out, Alex. I want you safe." He let out another long sigh. "Now I have to go. I'm late for a dinner, and I've been sitting outside the restaurant for twenty minutes."

"There's so much more to this that I have to tell you." But at the moment my head happened to be in the clouds and I couldn't remember what it was.

"Tell me tonight. I'll call you. Right now I have people waiting for me inside. But I'm not going to hang up until you give me your word. Will you go home tonight and wait for help?"

I would jump off a cliff for him right now. "Yes, I'll go home."

"Good."

"But how about this? When Tom shows up tomorrow, I'll give him everything we've found out, but I'm going with him to talk to Angelo. And we have to go back up to Marblehead to look for that package."

"What about tonight?"

"I'll take Dan and we'll go home. Just don't let Lenny bring Angelo back."

The line began to pop and crackle, then grew into a steady stream of static, and I lost him for a moment. "Bill?"

"I heard you," he said, cutting in and out, "and I'm losing my battery. I'll call you later tonight, on the
hotel
phone."

"I'll be there. Bill…" He didn't answer. "Are you there?" Nothing. "I love you, too," I said softly, but the connection was gone.

Dan was in his office with his feet up on the desk. He had the computer keyboard in his lap, and he was scanning the monitor.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking the work schedule for tonight."

"You're looking for Little Pete."

"I just think it's a good idea to know where he is."

"And is he working?"

"Not according to the schedule posted yesterday."

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. "I'm sorry about kicking you out."

"I understand. You women all have your secrets."

"You should talk."

He allowed a little touché smile. "Can we get the hell out of here," he moaned, "before I melt? It's a long way up to Marblehead."

"I'm ready, but we're not going to Marblehead. I've got some things to tell you."

"Hey," he yelled as I headed back to my office, "what's all over your butt?"

"Excuse me?"

"You've been sitting in something. Your ass is all white."

I twisted one way and then the other, trying to see behind me. Sure enough, there was something that looked like chalk dust all over my jeans. "I don't know." I tried to dust it off and got it all over my sweaty hands. "I think it's from that corner over by the window where I was sitting. There's been a pile of this stuff on the floor since the day I got here. It doesn't say much for our cleaning crews."

"I can't take you anywhere, Shanahan. You're a mess."

I went back to my office and loaded up my backpack. While I waited for Dan, I went to the corner to investigate the strange white residue on the floor, the stuff that had reminded me of rat poison on my first day in the station. I crouched down and rubbed a bit of it between my fingers. It felt grainier and heavier than chalk dust. There was no obvious source at the base of the wall or around the window. I stood up, wiped my hands on my jeans, and was starting to go when I saw more of it on top of my two-drawer file cabinet. My backpack hit the ground with a thud as I stood and stared straight up at the ceiling. It wasn't chalk dust.

"Dan." He didn't answer.
"Dan,"
I yelled, climbing up on the cabinet, "Come in here."

"What?" he yelled back. "I'm coming."

He walked in just as I was pulling a brown envelope out through the space where the corner tile had been. More of the white stuff had fallen when I moved the tile. Acoustic tile shavings were in my eyes and stuck to the damp skin on my face. I had to blink several times before I could look down and see him standing next to the cabinet. I presented him with Dickie Flynn's package.

"You guys always said the ceiling was the best place to hide things."