Hard Landing

by Lynne Heitman

  "I have to get dressed." He was lying on his back with his eyes closed. Untangling his legs from mine, he rolled off the bed and found his towel, which had somehow ended up on the floor. Before he went into the bathroom, he pulled the sheet and then the blanket all the way up and tucked them under my chin. "Don't distract me anymore."

  By the time he came back out, I had gathered in all the pillows on the bed and propped myself up so that I could watch him. I'd always loved watching him dress.

  "I need to ask you something," I said.

  "What?"

  "Why do you have Lenny working for you?"

  "Because he's got valuable contacts in Washington, which has proved very helpful on some of these big route-authority cases. He's not my best operating guy, he's definitely high-maintenance, but I can get what I need from him." He chose two ties and held them against his suit for me to see.

  "I like the darker print," I said, "and Lenny doesn't get the job done. He hires fools like me or like Ellen who will go to any lengths not to fail, which means he won't fail."

  "Which means I won't fail. What's wrong with that?"

  "Don't you care about his methods?"

  He put the rejected tie back, then sat on the edge of the bed with his back to me, pulling on his socks. "Is that why you called? Because you're having problems with Lenny?"

  "Do you think I would call you to intervene in a dispute with my boss?" When he didn't answer, I poked him through the covers with my big toe. "Do you?"

  "No. So what is going on? And tell me fast because I've only got twenty minutes." He went into the bathroom, then came out searching. "Have you seen my watch?"

  "It's right here." I plucked it off the nightstand and tossed it to him. "I get twenty minutes?"

  "We would have had more time if we hadn't-"

  "All right, I'll give you the Cliff Notes version." I adjusted the pillows so that I could sit up straight. "I'm not sure that Ellen Shepard killed herself."

  He paused while buckling the watch and looked up. "That's a provocative statement."

  "It's possible someone killed her and made it look like a suicide."

  "I had a feeling that's what this was all about."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's a perfect setup for you. It appeals to all of your instincts as defender of the weak, pursuer of justice, she who rights all past wrongs-"

  "I take it you don't believe the rumors about Ellen's death."

  "All this talk, those dreadful drawings, that's the kind of mean-spirited gossip traded in by people with small minds who live in small worlds and have nothing better to do but chatter on about this sad woman. It's a tragic, tragic situation, and no one should be using it for their entertainment."

  "I don't have a small mind, I don't find this entertaining, and this is my twenty minutes."

  "It makes me angry."

  "So you said. You also said you'd listen to me."

  "I'm sorry. Go ahead."

  "Ellen got involved in something right before she died. It had to do with Big Pete Dwyer and his son and some guy who works on the ramp named Angelo who might be the key to everything. I think what it all may have to do with is someone paying off Big Pete Dwyer to tank the IBG contract vote that made the merger happen. I suspect Lenny's involved, too, but I don't know how yet."

  "First of all, Lenny didn't make the merger happen and neither did this Big Pete asshole. I made that deal happen. Second"-he was making one last check in the mirror, straightening his tie, smoothing his hair- "I hate to tell you this, but none of this is news."

  "It's not?"

  "That business about the contract has been rumored for years. And I can tell you exactly how Lenny would have been involved."

  "You can?"

  "He's the one who was supposed to have made the payoffs, and the reason is, when Nor'easter sold, he cashed in all his stock options. Don't ask me how he got them, but he had a pile of them with really low strike prices."

  "He did?"

  "The guy made a fortune."

  "So Lenny is part of this after all."

  "I didn't say that. I said it's been rumored. No one has ever proved anything."

  "The proof is in the package," I said, connecting the dots.

  "What package?"

  "Do you know who Dickie Flynn was?"

  "The drunk who used to run your station."

  "He died last year, but before he did, he sent Ellen a packet of material that he'd hidden in the ceiling of the men's locker room at the airport. I think it was a surveillance tape from the ramp, but whatever it was, I'm beginning to think she was killed for it."

  "Why didn't the police find any of this?"

  "No one in this Boston operation ever has or ever will talk to the police. But I've got a source, a guy I've been talking to down on the ramp."

  "How do you know he's not twisting you around for fun?"

  "He's not. I know he's not. He's the one who went and got the package for Ellen."

  "Does he have it?"

  "Nobody has it. We think Ellen may have stashed it-"

  "Who's 'we'?"

  "Dan and I, Dan Fallacaro. We haven't been able to find it yet. One thing I know is, we're not the only ones looking. Someone ransacked my hotel room, and it's pretty clear they were looking for Dickie's package."

  "What?"

  "That was the night I called and left you the message. I think it was Little Pete."

  "You're just telling me about this? Did you tell Corporate Security? I can call Ted Gutekunst right now-"

  "I told them, I told the police, I changed hotels, and I've calmed down a lot."

  He walked over to the bed, hands in his pockets, looking as if he was ready to handle the situation right then and there. "I'm not sure you should be calm about this."

  "I think I can find the package," I said, "this surveillance video. It would help you get rid of Lenny, wouldn't it?"

  "Maybe, but-"

  "Even if Lenny had nothing to do with any of this, he was guilty of not backing Ellen up. This is a hard job, and when she needed help he wasn't there. I suspect he may have even been working against her, which I can't understand because they were sleeping together. Maybe they had some kind of a falling-out."

  "How did you know they were sleeping together?"

  I looked at him. "How did you?"

  "I asked Lenny."

  "And he confirmed it?"

  "He denied it, which is all I needed to hear. He has a reputation for that sort of thing."

  "Then I'll ask you again, why is he still here?"

  "Look," he said, "I'm beginning to think we put Ellen in a job she couldn't handle to begin with, and that Lenny put too much pressure on her and made a tough situation worse by getting personally involved with her. He created an environment where she couldn't succeed. He's going to answer for it, don't worry. But in the end when she couldn't handle it, she made the final choice, not Lenny. And if she was involved with him, she made that choice, too. If I tried to police all the affairs in this company, illicit and otherwise, I'd never get anything else done."

  "That's a cop-out, Bill."

  "Did you know Ellen Shepard?"

  "No, but-"

  "I did. She was on my merger task force, and I can tell you this-she was more fragile than people think. And high-strung."

  "That doesn't mean-"

  "I knew her, Alex. And I know you. You can't save Ellen Shepard. It's too late. Don't let this thing be more about you than it is about her. You do that sometimes and you know it. I have whole squads of people who are trained for work like this. There's no reason for you to be involved. I don't want you to be. It's not good for you and it worries me." His attention wandered to the clock on the nightstand. "Alex, I have to get ready for this call. I'm sorry. We can talk more later. We should talk more about this." He disappeared into the next room.

  I found one of the hotel's thick white robes hanging on the back of the bathroom door. It wrapped around me one and a ha
lf times, but it did what I needed. He was out in the sitting area sorting through his briefcase.

  "I need just a couple more minutes," I pleaded. "I promise."

  He checked his watch again. "Well, they won't start without me, that's for sure. It might even be a good negotiating strategy to be a little late. Go ahead."

  "I need your help on one thing, Bill." I told him the tale of Little Pete and Terry McTavish.

  "You say you have a source?" he asked.

  "It's the same one I told you about before. He's a ramper and he's as close to Terry as you can get. He's not intimidated by the powers that be in the union. He's a good man. I trust him."

  "What about this Little Pete person? What are we doing about him?"

  "I heard on my way out tonight that Lenny's already brought him back to work."

  He didn't say it, but Lenny was in for a bad day. "Can you nail him again?"

  "We plan to make it a priority. Guys like him always give you another chance."

  "So you want this McTavish kid to have his Job back?"

  "He doesn't deserve to be fired."

  "Done."

  "Thank you," I said, "and I'm not finished talking to you about Ellen."

  "You can talk all you want," he said, picking up the phone. "Just don't do anything that might get you hurt. Please."

  After a night at the Four Seasons, my own hotel seemed alarmingly inadequate when I went back to change. As I passed the front desk, I picked up my messages. The first one said, "Where are you?" Dan had wanted to know at eight-thirty and again at nine-fifteen last night. But the message from Molly was the one that made me sorry to be running so late. "Re: Crescent Security," it said, "You're not going to believe this."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Dan savored the last of his fried potato skins. Stuffed to overflowing with sour cream and bacon, the skins made up one-third of the deceptively named Fisherman's Platter. The other two-thirds were fried onions and nachos. The cholesterol extravaganza was his typical order at The Lobster Pot, a cheesy, overpriced airport restaurant and our usual luncheon venue at the Majestic terminal.

  He noticed me staring. "What?"

  "Does the word angioplasty mean anything to you?"

  "Don't start with me, Shanahan." He licked the sour cream off his finger. "This is one of the few pleasures I have left in my life."

  The waitress slapped the check on our table while she was yelling something to the bartender. They knew us at The Lobster Pot, knew they didn't have to waste any service on a captive audience.

  "What did you want to talk about, boss?"

  I looked again around the restaurant, checking the bar and all the corners. "You haven't seen Lenny, have you?"

  "Lenny wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this. Besides, I think Scanlon has him running around on something. He hasn't been here much."

  I gave silent thanks to Bill. I hadn't even thought to ask him for a Lenny distraction. I scooted my chair around until I was right next to Dan. "Crescent Security," I said, "I know what it is."

  "And you waited all the way through lunch to tell me?"

  "I waited until Victor and his cronies left. They were sitting two tables over."

  He checked the tables across the room, now empty. "What did you find out?"

  I pulled the computer printout off the chair next to me, cleared a space on the table, and set it in front of him. He began thumbing through it. "What is this?"

  "Molly researched the station files for anything on Crescent Security. She looked as far back as the local files go, which is like-"

  "Seven years."

  "Right. She found nothing. So she called HDQ and had them run a summary of all payments to Crescent Security by either Boston Nor'easter or Boston Majestic. This is what she got."

  He turned the pages, running his index finger down the dollar column. "It looks like… what, fifty, sixty thousand a year?"

  "It averages out to forty grand a year for five years," I said. "Over two hundred thousand bucks in total."

  "What's it for?"

  "No one knows."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Molly has no recollection of processing a single payment to this company, there are no local records, and yet Crescent received a couple of hundred thousand dollars in payments which were approved out of this station."

  "What about Molly's ledger books? Have you ever seen those goddamned things? Even if the files were lost, she would have had it all in there, chapter and verse. That's why she does it that way, so nothing gets paid that's not supposed to."

  "I'm telling you, there are no local records. But Accounts Payable in Denver had copies of the invoices." I showed him the faxes Molly had given me, slick paper faxes that wouldn't stay flat. We had to be the last office operation in the world without a plain paper fax machine. "Check these out."

  He pinned the pages to the table and searched them one at a time. "Looks like they're coded right. These are the accounts Nor'easter used for security background checks, I think. They should have written that in the comments box. Signed by Lenny, but he would have signed if he was general manager. If Molly didn't code them, who did?"

  "Lenny."

  He let go of the faxes and they immediately curled. "Give me a break. Lenny would rather break his own arm than code an invoice. I don't think he's ever once cracked a chart of accounts since I've known him."

  "Molly recognized his handwriting in the coding box."

  Dan unfurled one page and looked again, concentrating on the handwritten account codes. He got the connection; I could see it on his face when he looked up at me. "The sevens."

  "Exactly. She says Lenny crossed his sevens like that, European style."

  "She's right. Fuckin' Lenny. Wants the world to think, he was born in France. In the meantime, he's from some backwater hick town down in Louisiana."

  "He's from New Orleans."

  "That's what I said. What did Crescent do for us? Forty grand is a lot of background checks."

  "I don't think they did anything. Here's what I think. Lenny had Crescent send these invoices to him directly. He'd code them, sign them, and forward them to Accounts Payable. Molly never saw them, and he kept no copies around for her to stumble over. Accounts Payable would cut the check and send it directly to Crescent."

  "But Crescent never did anything for the money and Lenny knew it."

  "Right."

  "Jesus Christ, you're saying he was stealing?"

  "Embezzling."

  He sat back and shook his head. "That makes no sense, Shanahan. Two hundred grand is tip money to Lenny. The guy is loaded."

  "From the deal."

  "Right. He hit the jackpot."

  "Why didn't anyone bother to tell me this?"

  "I figured you knew."

  "I didn't. And besides, this scam was going on before the deal."

  "True." He leaned over his plate and rummaged for an onion ring. "You don't know who these Crescent people are?"

  "The address on the payments was Elizabeth, New Jersey."

  "I know Elizabeth. That's not too far from where I grew up."

  "Wherever they were, they're gone now, but I figured out something else, too. Do you know what they call New Orleans?"

  "You mean like the French Quarter and Mardi Gras?"

  "When you fly into New Orleans at night from the south, you come in over the Gulf of Mexico and you can see the lights of the city. It's beautiful, and it's shaped like the moon-a crescent moon."

  He stared at me, onion ring poised over the cocktail sauce.

  "New Orleans is known as the Crescent City, Dan. Crescent Security was Lenny. It had to be."

  He dropped the onion ring, took the napkin from his lap, and slowly wiped the grease from his fingers. "I'll be damned."

  "Lenny was stealing from Nor'easter to pay himself. And I think he was using the money to make payoffs. That's what the stub was doing in Ellen's merger file. Remember the stub for ten thousand dollars?"<
br />
  "Yeah."

  "I'll bet it was a payoff and Crescent was some kind of a clearinghouse for him-a way to make his illegal payoffs look legitimate."

  Dan sat staling at the printout. His face was blank. I'd expected more of a reaction than that. Molly had given me the Crescent payments, but the rest I'd figured out, and it all fell into place. I loved when that happened, but he was unmoved. "What's the matter?"

  "Do you think this had anything to do with Ellen?"

  "Yeah, I do. The way we knew about Crescent was because of the reference in her files. My first thought was that this was the money used to buy the IBG contract. She found out about it, and that's what got her into trouble. That might be the connection."

  "But now you don't think so?"

  "I'm not sure. The payments started a long time before there was ever any thought of selling Nor'easter. And look at the last page of that printout."

  He flipped to the back and almost knocked over the lighthouse peppermill in the process. He was oblivious, but I caught it in time. I pointed at the last entry. "See how the payments stopped in August 1994. Molly told me that the contract vote wasn't until November. She said it screwed up everyone's Thanksgiving, so the timing doesn't work, but even if it did, there's less than thirty grand here for 1994. At first I thought it didn't seem like enough to buy a contract. But then I thought, How would I know? I heard about a guy on the news once who paid a professional hit man five thousand dollars to have his wife murdered. That seemed low to me, too."

  Dan was rubbing his forehead, looking worried.

  "What's the matter with you?"

  "Nothing. It's just… the thing is… I don't think that's what this money was for. I think that money had to come from somewhere else."

  "That's" what I'm saying, too, that this was the everyday fraud fund. There was a bigger one somewhere else for special occasions."

  "So, Ellen knew about this?"

  "She must have."

  "What else did you find out?"

  "That's it. I've got Molly doing more research. She's into it now. She's taking it personally that Lenny corrupted her system."

  "Yeah, she would."

  I paid the check. Lunch was on me to celebrate finding the dirt on Lenny. Dan still wasn't excited enough for me, and he was actually walking slower than I was as we headed down the concourse to the office. "Are you all right?"