Hard Landing

by Lynne Heitman

  "Petey"-the elder Dwyer smacked his son on the back of his head with his glove-"sit up, boy. Show some respect."

  I was regarding Pete Sr. in a whole new light when Victor erupted again. "You got guys running all over the ramp trying to keep up. Someone's gonna get hurt out there, and it'll be on management's head." He took a quick breath, "On top of that, you got Danny Fallacaro sneaking around all hours of the night spying on your own workers. Spying on good men trying to do an honest day's work. George, what do they call that… that thing they did to Angelo?"

  "Entrapment."

  Holy cow. George could speak after all. "What's wrong with a manager visiting one of his shifts?" I asked. "That's his prerogative."

  "That's not what he's doing. He's-"

  Victor stopped. Pete Sr. had laid a discreet hand on his arm. "You're absolutely correct, miss. Danny's got a right to go anywhere in the operation at any time. Just as you would. The thing is," he paused for a pained smile, "an unexpected visit kinda sets the guys off. Makes everybody nervous. Makes 'em feel like they're doing something wrong even when they're not."

  "That ain't the thing, Pete."

  "Shut up, Victor." Big Pete's voice was low and calm and raspy, and it cut through Victor's blustering like a scythe through tall grass. "Do you mind if I sit?" he asked me, making it clear that the real meeting was about to begin.

  "Not at all."

  Without having to be told, Little Pete sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, leaving the chair vacant for his father. I was now staring across the desk at Big Pete. He had his son's square face and hair the color of my mother's silver when it hadn't been polished for a while. Between gray and brown, the color of tarnish, and it looked as if he cut it himself. Maybe without a mirror. His skin was weathered but reasonably unlined for a man who had spent much of his life on the ramp. Being out in the elements worked on people differently. Usually it aged them, but with this man it seemed to have worked in the opposite way, wearing away all but the hardest bedrock of bone, muscle, and gristle.

  "The problem I see," he began, "is the men are starting to feel nervous. And when the men get nervous, there's no telling what they'll do. The whole situation becomes"-he tilted his head one way, then the other as if the right word would shake out- "unpredictable."

  There were lots of people in the office, but Pete's manner, his tone of voice, the way he looked at me, excluded everyone but the two of us.

  "Unpredictable?"

  "Look at it this way." He tapped-my desk lightly with his index finger. "Boston's a high-profile city, high visibility-especially after what's just happened. You got a lot of people watching you. What I'm sayin', if things go good, all credit to you. If things go wrong, well…" He sat back, resting his hands lightly on the arms of the chair. "There's been some sat in your chair who didn't deal so good with that kind of pressure. But then, they didn't have your experience, neither."

  Pete Sr.'s eyes were an interesting shade of gray, an anti-color. They were cunning and observant and, I was sure now, conveying a message only I was meant to receive. Little Pete was all heat, but I understood now that I had far more to worry about from his father, who was ice cold. And at that moment, delivering a big fat threat.

  "It's like this thing with Angelo," he said. "You know about Angelo, right?"

  "I know what I need to know about Angelo."

  "The thing of it is, Angie's got forty-two years in-"

  "Forty-one."

  He smiled graciously. "I stand corrected, but can you imagine that? One night he's working his shift, doing his job, and he gets scooped up in some kind of a sting operation and fired over what amounts to some misunderstanding."

  "Which part was the misunderstanding? The part where he took a TV out of the freight house or the part where he was loading it into his car?"

  Pete was unfazed. "If he's left alone, you don't know but that misunderstanding coulda been cleared up to everyone's satisfaction without no one losing his job. That's what the union's for. But that's not my point. What the men out there are thinking is what kind of a place we got here when management sneaks around in the middle of the night laying traps for us? I don't think that's how you want to handle things."

  "How would I want to handle things?"

  "First off, we can forget about this manpower problem for now. We'll work with what we got. Then maybe, as a goodwill gesture to the men on the ramp, you could see your way clear to bringin' Angie back to finish out his forty-second-excuse me, forty-first year. And one more thing… Danny Fallacaro starts going home to bed at night."

  I leaned back in my chair and tried to figure out how that deal was good for me. Then I tried to figure out how we'd arrived at the point of talking about a deal for Angelo instead of reviewing Little Pete's lousy performance. It had happened when Big Pete had taken over the negotiation, and when had this become a negotiation, anyway? I scanned their faces. They were all watching me, but Big Pete was the only one who gave me the feeling he could read my thoughts.

  "Let me see if I can understand what's going on here," I said. "You show up in my office uninvited at a time when you know Dan is somewhere else." I nodded toward Victor. "Bad Cop here sets the table by making a demand for additional manning, something you know you're not going to get. Then you, Good Cop, graciously withdraw the request if I agree, as a 'goodwill gesture,' to bring back Angelo the thief, and by the way, keep Dan off the midnight shift. And nowhere in there is any acknowledgement of the fact that Pete Jr. spent most of his shift Sunday night somewhere else besides the airport."

  He smiled, letting me know that I had nailed the situation, and he didn't much care.

  "The problem I'm having is, I don't see your leverage," I said, "unless you're implying that a certain element of disruption will occur in the operation if you don't get what you want."

  By the time I was finished, the room had fallen completely silent. No coughing or shuffling or sniffing. I could smell the pungent vinegar dressing floating up from the salad plate in the bottom of the garbage. Big Pete was squinting out the window. "I didn't say nothing like that."

  "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.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "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 sh
owed 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."