Hard Landing (8 page)

"Good, because I'm not prepared to simply bring Angelo DiBiasi back on payroll because you threatened me." Given what had just transpired, I was inclined to never bring him back, no matter what Lenny wanted.

Big Pete was wistful. "If that's what you gotta do…"

"As for Dan, I've been here three days, he's been here three years. You can see how it would be difficult for me to question his judgment. That being said, there is something I want."

Big Pete turned away from the window suddenly very interested.

"I want the jokes about Ellen Shepard's death to stop. I want every cartoon, every drawing, and every sick reference to disappear from the field. Forever. If that could happen, then maybe Dan and I would both sleep better at night."

"And he'd be sleeping at home?"

"Yes."

"That can be arranged. But I really think you should reconsider on Angelo. It would mean a lot to me personally."

"And I think you should consider that leaving the field in the middle of a shift is as much grounds for termination as stealing a television." I glanced over at Little Pete, who was studying his thumbnail, and I was almost relieved when he didn't look up. I turned back to his father. "Let's call that friendly reminder my goodwill gesture."

Big Pete heaved a great, doleful sigh. When he stood, I noticed he was less than six feet tall, much less physically imposing than his son, but still a man who commanded all the attention in the room when he wanted to. When he started to move, so did everyone else. Before he walked out, he leaned across my desk, offering one hand and putting the other palm down on the glass. It made me think of the palm print I'd seen there on my first day. When I took his hand, it felt cold. "Welcome to Boston, miss. Working with you is going to be a real pleasure."

After they'd left, I stood for a long time with my arms wrapped around me. I couldn't tell which had given me the chill, Big Pete's cold hand or his gray eyes, which seemed even colder. I looked down at the palm print he'd left on my desk. Then I leaned over and, using the sleeve of my blouse, wiped every last trace of it away.

"I can't believe the balls on those scumbags, showing up like that." Dan slid down into the chair where first Little and then Big Pete had sat earlier in the day and started drumming the armrests with his fingertips. He'd called in just as the hearing had broken up. Once he'd heard that he'd missed all the fun, he'd spent most of the afternoon in the operation. "What else did they want?"

"Two things. For me to bring Angelo back and for you to stop your nightly surveillance."

"What did you tell them?"

"That I wouldn't bring Angelo back-not yet, anyway-and that you would stick to the day shift from now on."

"Why'd you make that deal?"

"Because I wanted to show the union I'd work with them, which I'm willing to do up to a point. Besides, I don't think we gave up much. It's dangerous for you to be lurking around the airport in the middle of the night, and you weren't finding anything anyway."

He was wounded-his finger tapping ceased-but it passed quickly. He started again almost immediately.

"Why is everyone so hot for me to bring Angelo back? He seems pretty small-time to me."

"Who's everyone?"

"Lenny wants me to deal him back. Now these guys are trying to turn the screws. The more people try to make me do it, the less I want to, and I don't even know the guy."

"Lenny's just a lazy bastard trying to make nice with his buddies in the union. Big Pete's trying to show you and everyone else that he's in charge. As far as anybody else, Angle's been around forever. Everybody knows him and his wife, knows she's been real sick. He's got these baby grandsons. They're twins and they're so cute, these kids. A lot of us went to their christening last year."

"You sound sympathetic."

He shifted his weight and started bouncing one knee in rhythm with the tapping. "I got no problem with what happened to Angelo. To me, stealing is stealing. By the same token, the thing you've got to understand is the guy's been doing it for years, ever since he's been on midnights, anyway. Dickie Flynn and Lenny before him, they knew what he was up to, but they couldn't be bothered."

The sharp vinegar flavor from the garbage still hung in the air. I joined Dan on the other side of the desk, taking the second guest chair and getting some distance from the smell. "Dickie Flynn was the guy Ellen replaced?"

"Yeah. He was the last Nor'easter GM."

"Did you work for him?"

"He had my job when I first got here from Newark, and I worked for him as a ramp supervisor. Dickie worked for Lenny, who was still the GM. Once the Majestic deal closed, Lenny moved up to vice president and down to D.C. Dickie and I both got bumped up."

"What was he like?"

"Dickie? A walking disaster. The guy was in the bag ninety-eight percent of the time. It's a miracle the place was still standing after he left."

"And Lenny put up with that?"

"Molly and I covered for him. She ran the admin stuff and I ran the operation. Besides, Lenny never saw the worst of it. It wasn't until after he left for D.C. that the hard boozing started."

"He had to have known."

Dan shrugged. "I never try to figure out what Lenny knows."

"What happened to Dickie?"

"His wife left him, took the kids, he lost all his money. Same things that happen to a lot of people in life, only he couldn't handle it. Started hitting the bottle."

"No, I meant why did he leave the company."

"Poor bastard got stomach cancer and died about six months ago."

"That's sad."

"A goddamned waste is what it was. I never met a better operations man than Dickie Flynn when he was sober. What I know about the operations function I learned from Dickie."

"Was he as good as Kevin?"

"Better. Dickie started out as an operations agent, then he went to the ramp and then freight. I think he also did a stint on the passenger side." He shook his head. "What a waste. The guy was a mess right up until the day he died."

"What about Lenny? Did you ever work for him?"

"Not directly."

"Why did you say the other night that he doesn't like you?"

"Because he doesn't. What do you want to do about Angelo?"

I laughed. "If you don't want to tell me, why don't you just say so?"

"It's not that. It's a long and boring story and not all that important and I'm tired."

"All right, let's talk about Angelo. He's sixty-three years old with a sick wife and forty-one years of service to the company. With a story like that, no arbitration panel is going to let a termination stand. Lenny wants me to bring him back, so I should do it before the panel does it and takes the credit. I score points with my boss and the union."

"You're probably right."

"Then why don't I want to do it?"

"Because you're stubborn."

"Are you sure he's harmless?" I asked.

"He's harmless."

"And you don't have a problem with it?"

"Not me, boss."

"All right."

"So you want me to bring him back?"

"All right means I'll think about it some more."

Dan laughed at me, then segued into a big yawn, which made me yawn and reminded me of just how long this day had been. I stood up to stretch. "Let me ask you something else. If Ellen did find something out about Little Pete, does it stand to reason Big Pete would be involved?"

"Little Pete wouldn't know what shirt to put on in the morning if it wasn't for his old man."

"That's what I thought. I was speculating on how things might be different around here if we could blow both Petes out the door. Victor is incredibly annoying, but I'd still prefer dealing with him over Big Pete. And I can't think of one good reason to have Little Pete around. He's scary."

"I told you."

I went over to the window and shifted the angle of the blinds so that it would be harder to see inside the office, if anyone had been so inclined. It was already dark again. I hadn't left the airport once in daylight. Come to think of it, it was dark in the morning when I came in. I was beginning to feel like a vampire. "Do you have any idea what Ellen may have had on father and son?"

"Drugs."

"Really?"

"I was thinking last night after I got home how out of the blue one day, for no reason, she starts asking me a bunch of questions about the Beeches."

"The Beechcraft? The commuter?"

"Yeah. Those little mosquitoes we fly down to D.C. three times a day. Our last flight of the day connects to the Caribbean."

"Southbound is the wrong way for drug trafficking."

"It connects on the inbound, too. Her questions were all about the cargo compartments, capacity, loading procedures. I think she was trying to figure how much extra weight they could take. Maybe where you could hide a package. She also asked me for a copy of the operating procedures for the ramp."

"Wait a second…" I went to the overhead cabinet of my credenza and opened it. "She had her own procedures manual. It's right here. Why would she want yours?"

Dan came around the desk and pointed at the logo emblazoned across the manual. "Those are Majestic's procedures."

"Not surprising, considering we are Majestic Airlines."

"We weren't always, not here in Boston, anyway. She wanted my old Nor'easter manual. I gave it to her and now it's gone."

"That's very odd." I slid the manual back onto the shelf. "You haven't been Nor'easter for over two years."

He went back to his seat while I turned around, opened the file drawer in my desk, and thumbed through the plastic tabs. "Something was in here the other night having to do with Nor'easter… here it is." When I reached down and pulled it up, all I had was an empty hanging file with a label. The Nor'easter/Majestic Merger file was missing. It was the only one that was. I showed Dan the empty file.

"Could mean nothing," I said.

"Nothing around here means nothing."

I left the file on my desk as a reminder to ask Molly about it. "I don't know about the merger or the Beechcraft or the procedures manual. What I do know is that you could go to jail for running drugs, to say nothing of losing your job."

I smiled at Dan and he smiled back. "I like the way you think, Shanahan."

"Are you free tomorrow night?"

"Friday night? Are you asking me out on a date, boss?"

"I got a call this afternoon from Human Resources in Denver. Ellen's Aunt Jo in California was named as beneficiary in Ellen's life insurance policy, and they were missing some information. Lenny wasn't around, so they called me and I in turn offered to contact Aunt Jo for them. Jo Shepard is her name. She's the older sister of Ellen's late father. Did you ever talk to her?"

"No."

"How did you know where to send the ashes?"

"Lenny left me a message. He's been dealing with her from the start."

"Yeah, from what I gather, Aunt Jo is older and doesn't travel much. When Lenny called to inform her about Ellen, he offered the company's assistance in handling her affairs. Selling her car, getting rid of the furniture, paying final bills. She took him up on his offer, had a power of attorney prepared and sent to him."

He slumped back in his chair and groaned. "We'll never get into that house."

"Not so. She's overnighting a copy to me. It should be here tomorrow."

The spark came back into his eyes. You could even have called it a gleam. "Are you shitting me?"

"I explained to her who I was. I told her who you were and that we were here in Boston and we wanted to help, too. I figured it was worth a shot. She was more than happy to have all the help she could get, and since the power of attorney designates 'authorized representatives of Majestic Airlines' as her proxy, it will work for us, too."

Dan was shaking his head, taking it all in. "Jesus Christ, Shanahan, I can't believe you did that. You're all right, I don't care what anyone says."

"I hope Lenny feels the same way when he finds out."

"Who cares what Lenny thinks? Better to ask forgiveness than permission. That's what I always say."

"I care what Lenny thinks, and look how well it's worked for you."

He bounced out of the chair and headed for the door, looking as if he had things to do and places to go.

"I've already talked to Pohan," I said, calling after him. He stopped just outside the door. "You call the landlord. We'll need to get a key. And see if he knows how to change the code on the burglar alarm. If he doesn't, call the security company. If you can get that done tomorrow, we can go tomorrow night-that is, if you're free."

I could have seen his ear-to-ear grin in the dark. "I'll clear my calendar."

The sound of the car doors slamming cracked so sharply in the sleepy neighborhood, I halfway expected the neighbors to come out on their porches to see about the disturbance. While Dan went to get the key from the landlord, I stood by his car and stared up at the house. No one had closed the curtains in Ellen's house or drawn the blinds, leaving the windows black, unblinking, the interior exposed to anyone who dared to approach. I had agreed to this search-I had made this search possible-but now that I was here, it seemed like a better idea in concept than in practice.

Dan arrived and handed me the key. There was no ring, no rabbit's foot, nothing but a slim, bright sliver that disappeared into the palm of my gloved hand.

"Let's go, boss. I'm freezin' my ass off out here."

"Aren't you…" I couldn't find the right word because I knew he wasn't afraid. A feeble gust of wind came up, sending long-dead leaves scuttling over the blacktop. "Aren't you even a little uneasy about going in there?"

"No. Why?"

I looked up again at the forbidding structure. "I don't know. I just think-"

"Shanahan, you're thinking too much. Follow me." And he was off. When I caught up, he was waiting for me on the porch. While he held open the aluminum screen door, I used the light from the street to find the dead bolt. It was dim, but I could still see that the cylinder was as shiny as a new quarter.

"New locks?"

He nodded. "She's the one who put in the security system, too. The landlord wouldn't pay for it."

I took off my glove and touched the lock face. It felt cold. "Something must have scared her."

The dead bolt slid back easily, and the same key worked in the knob. A piercing tone from the security system greeted us. I knew that it was just a reminder to disengage the alarm. Even so, it felt like one last warning from the house, one last chance to turn back. Dan slipped past me and, reading from a minuscule scrap of paper, punched a six-digit code into the keypad on the wall. The buzzer fell silent, leaving the house so still I almost wanted the noise back.

"I'm going to start in the basement," Dan said, already halfway to the back of the house.

"We need to reset this alarm," I called, making sure he could hear me. "Wasn't that the whole point of getting a new code?"

"Oh, yeah." He came back, referred again to his cheat sheet, and punched in a different string of numbers. "There you go, all safe and sound."

He was gone before I could respond. The air in the house was frigid. It felt dense and tasted stale, as if a damp breeze had drifted in from the ocean some time ago and never found a way out. And there was an odor. Faint. Sweet. From the body? How would I know? I didn't know what a dead body smelled like.

I shot the dead bolt, turning the interior knob on the shiny new lock Ellen had installed. She'd felt the presence of danger, taken reasonable precautions to keep it outside her door. But she had not been safe. If she had killed herself, then the real threat had been inside the house, inside with her. On the other hand, if she hadn't killed herself-I wrapped my coat a little tighter-then it was really dumb for us to be in here.

The rooms were slightly dilapidated, showing the house's age, but the residue of grander times lingered. Chandeliers hung from high ceilings, although some of the bulbs were out. The decor, at least the part Ellen had contributed, was impeccable-simple, spare pieces placed in sometimes surprising but always perfect relation to one another. And unlike those of her office, the walls were not bare. They were hung with paintings and prints that were contemporary and seemed to be carefully selected. Edward Hopper had been a favorite, with his haunting images of urban isolation and people staring into the middle distance, into their own desolation.

As I moved from room to room, I looked for evidence that intruders had been there. I saw no drawers open, no seat cushions askance. Still, I had an odd feeling that Dan was right, that the soul of the house had been disturbed, that Ellen's sanctuary had been violated in some way.

I had the same feeling upstairs, standing at the foot of her bed, staring at the brocade comforter and the elegant pile of matching pillows. I hadn't made my bed once since I'd moved out of my mother's house. I didn't see the point. Ellen had made her bed either the morning of the day she'd died, or-this was a really strange notion-would she have taken time to make it before she'd gone upstairs to kill herself?

The rest of the bedroom was predictably uncluttered, as was her bathroom, but when I opened her bedroom closet, I was stunned-and then I laughed out loud. I had finally found something about this woman that was authentic and unguarded and completely, delightfully out of control. Her walk-in closet was a riot. It wasn't messy as much as… relaxed. Especially compared to the rest of the house. It was as if her compulsion to shop had fought a battle with her obsession for order. Order never had a chance. Hanging racks to the left and right were crammed with silk blouses and little sweaters and wool suits and linen slacks and one linen blazer that I found particularly swanky. Her shoes had completely overwhelmed the handy shoe shelf and escaped to the floor.

It took a long time to search the closet-she'd owned a lot of handbags that I had to go through- and when I was finished, I didn't want to leave. For one thing, it was warmer in there. But mostly, standing in that closet I recognized Ellen as a real person, a person who had an obvious weakness for natural fibers and good leather pumps. I could have gone shopping with this woman, and we would have had a good time.

I was turning to leave when a single sheet of lined paper tacked to the inside of the closet door caught my attention. It had dates and distances and entries penciled in Ellen's hand, and when I looked around on the floor, I had to smile. There were two pairs of well-worn, mud-covered running shoes, the expensive kind, lined up right next to her trendy little flats. Ellen had been a runner, too. I did what all runners do- immediately checked her distances against mine. I might not have had her discipline-she ran more often than I did and on a schedule as rigid as everything else about her life-but I had endurance. I ran farther.

Something creaked in the ceiling directly above my head, something loud. Dan was supposed to be in the basement, but… there it was again. Loud, groaning footsteps. Definitely footsteps. I was on the second floor and the noise was coming from overhead, so either Dan wasn't in the basement anymore, or-I flinched at the sound of a muffled thud-someone was in the attic.

I stepped quietly into the hallway. A door was ajar, framed by a light from behind. Through the opening I could see the wooden steps inside that climbed, I assumed, to the attic.

More footsteps and then another loud crash. I held very still and listened, feeling every footstep in my chest as if it were my own ribs creaking under the weight rather than the dry hardwood planks overhead.

"Is that you, Dan?"

The second thud had a different quality, more like a deliberate kick, followed by "JesusChristsonova
bitch.
Yes, it's me."

I let out the deep breath I hadn't even known I'd been holding, climbed the steep stairs, and emerged through a planked floor into the attic. It smelled of mothballs and lumber, and my eyes were drawn immediately to the apex of that familiar pitched roof where I knew Ellen had hung from a rope until Dan had come to find her.

He was sitting on a trunk rubbing his shin. He must have left his coat and tie somewhere. His collar was unbuttoned and I could see the band of his cotton T-shirt. It was warmer in the attic than any other part of the house, except for Ellen's closet maybe, but still cold. I picked my way over to where he was sitting, careful not to step off the planks.

He looked up at me. "What do you think 'fish' means?"

"Is this a trick question?"

"Look at this." He handed me a page from a desk calendar for Monday, December 22, 1997, with the handwritten notation that said FISH 1016.96A.

"Fish? I have no idea. Was this in her office?"

"On the floor behind the desk."

"On the floor? Where's the rest of the calendar?"

"Gone. So's the tape from her answering machine."

"Which one? Inbound or outbound?"

"They're both gone."

"Wow," I said, "that sounds kind of… not random. As if whoever took them knew her and had talked to her on the phone. That wouldn't be Little Pete, would it?"

"It could have been if he was calling in threats to her."

"I guess you're right. The rest of the house doesn't look as if it's been searched. If someone's been in here, they were looking for something specific and they knew where to look." I tapped the calendar page with a fingernail as I tried to think about what we hadn't found. "Did you find any computer diskettes? Or maybe an organizer? Did she carry a briefcase?"

"There's no organizer or disks. Her briefcase is downstairs, but there's nothing in it but work stuff."

"What about her car?"

"It's in the garage. I checked it a few days ago. There's nothing in it."

I looked at the note again. Fish. What could that possibly have to do with anything? He waved me off when I tried to give it back to him. "You keep it. I'll just lose it."

I stuck the calendar page into the pocket of my coat and sat next to him on the trunk. "You have no idea what they might be looking for?"

"Not a clue."

The space was large for an attic. Several matching footlockers were randomly scattered around the floor, as was some old furniture, too tacky to have been Ellen's. For an attic the place was clean, but still not the image I would want to take to my grave. Several cardboard boxes were stacked neatly to one side. "Have you checked these boxes?"

"No. That's why I came up here. Want to take a look?"

We went through the boxes and lockers. Each one had a colored tag, the kind the movers use for inventory, and it made me think about my own moving boxes, which had tags on top of tags. We found nothing that you wouldn't expect to find in the attic- Christmas ornaments and old tax records and boxes of books and clothes. The most intriguing box was labeled personal mementos. I wanted to sit in the attic, take some time, and go through it piece by piece, but for reasons other than what we'd come for. I wanted to find out about Ellen.

When we were finished, Dan and I sat on a couple of the lockers and looked at each other. Illuminated by the bare bulb from the ceiling, his face was all pale angles and deep hollows.

"She didn't have any shoes on."

"What?"

"The rope was over that high beam there." He pointed up into the apex of the roof. "One end of it, anyway. The other end was knotted around that stud. The cops think she climbed up on this and kicked it over." He went over to one of the lockers and nudged it with his toe. "She was wearing some kind of a jogging suit thing, but nothing on her feet. They were white. That's what I saw first when I came up the stairs. Her feet were totally white and… I don't know… like wax or something. It's funny because it was pretty dark up here, but there was light coming from somewhere." He checked around the attic, finding a window at the far end covered with wooden slats, like blinds closed halfway. "Through there, I guess. She was facing me. Hanging, but perfectly still, which was weird. And her eyes… I thought your eyes closed when you died." He bowed his head, and when he raised it again, the light over his head showed every line in his face. "When I think about that day, I still think about her feet. I'd never seen her bare feet."

He found the trunk again, sat down, and put his face down in his hands. "I'm so tired tonight."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. I thought about what it must have been like for him standing by himself in the attic, looking at her that way. I wondered how something like that changes you. As I watched him rubbing his eyes, I found myself wishing I had known him before he had seen her that way.

"Did you see any mail when you were downstairs?" He'd summoned the energy to stand up.

"No, come to think of it. But I wasn't looking."

"I'm going down to see if I can find it."

"I'll be right down. I'm going to turn off the lights first." And I wanted something from her closet. I didn't know why, but I wanted her running log. As Dan clopped loudly down the wooden stairs, I took one last look around the attic and the personal mementos box caught my eye again. It had neat handles cut into the sides, and when I picked it up, it wasn't heavy. I decided to take it also because it didn't belong in the place where she'd died.

I carried the box and the running log to the bottom of the staircase and went back up to get the lights. Dan had not only left every light burning in every room he'd searched, he'd also left a couple of drawers open in Ellen's desk along with the cassette door on the answering machine. Dan was right. Both of the tapes were missing. I had closed everything up and reached over to turn off the desk lamp when I noticed the red light on the fax machine. It was out of paper. According to the message window, there was a fax stored in memory. I knew Ellen would have paper nearby, and it didn't take long to find it. I dropped it in the tray and waited. After a few beeps, the machine sprang to life, sucked one of the pages into the feeder, and started to turn it around, spitting it out, bit by tiny bit. With a surge of nervous anticipation I plucked it out. A second one started right behind it.

It was written in cutout letters like a ransom note. It wasn't addressed to me. It wasn't meant for me, but it still made me shaky enough that I had to sit down. It said, "Ellen Shepard is proof that dogs fuck monkeys." I sat in her chair and stared at it. It had to be from someone at the airport, from one of her employees, and how sick was that? Having to show up at work every day knowing that you might be glancing at or talking to or brushing past the person who wrote this? Thinking about harassment in the abstract was one thing. Holding it in your hands was another.

Probably because I knew what was coming, the second one seemed to take even longer. This one was handwritten, the message scrawled diagonally. "Mind your own business, cunt."