Hard Landing

by Lynne Heitman

  I rolled into a ball on my side and covered my ears as the captain made a sharp right turn to taxi out. I saw Little Pete's boots as he tried to step aside. He had no time to scream. As the right wing passed over me, I closed my eyes, but even with my hands over my ears, I could still hear the sickening thump of a propeller interrupted.

  And then it was quiet. Everything stopped except the falling snow. It had stopped blowing. The captain killed the engines, and the noise vacuum was filled by the sound of the sirens. For the longest time I didn't move. I just lay there listening. When I opened my eyes, they wouldn't focus. And they hurt. My elbows hurt, and my legs and my back and the side of my head.

  I squinted down past my knees and saw a fireman leaning over something, reaching down to something toward the nose of the Beech. The second fireman to arrive looked down and turned away, gloved hand at his mouth. I turned on my back as someone arrived with a blanket and helped me sit up. The captain appeared, hatless in the snow. He bent over the body, looking where they were looking, put both hands on his head.

  A fireman was asking me questions. Was I hurt? Could I walk? Did I need help? What happened? I watched his hand coming toward me and mumbled something that might not have been coherent. He helped me to my feet and wrapped the blanket around me. I was shivering and I couldn't stop. My chin stung, and blood was running down the outside of my throat and maybe the inside because I could taste it. I smelled like rum. He tried to help me over to his rig, but I pulled him instead toward the bag room, dragging him with me and yelling for someone to call the EMTs. The whole jagged scene began to replay in my mind, especially the part where the lights went out and the gun went off and I remembered, didn't want to remember, but I remembered seeing Dan fall. I put my hands over my eyes. I was trying to sort it out, and when I looked up, he was there. He was standing in the doorway, gripping the doorjamb, one arm limp at his side.

  The fireman went for a stretcher. When I got close enough, Dan tilted his head back and looked at me through the blood running into his eyes. "Did you kill that cocksucker?"

  "The Beechcraft killed him."

  "Good."

  I put his arm around my neck, but I wasn't too stable myself. "Did he shoot you?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Your shoulder is bleeding. Let's wait for a stretcher."

  "Fuck no. I want to make sure that motherfucker is dead."

  "He's very dead, Dan. Take my word for it."

  The EMTs arrived and took us both to the truck. They were from the firehouse on the field, and Dan knew all of them, called them by name. He refused to go to the hospital, not unless they insisted, which they did.

  Someone was pushing through the circle of firefighters and EMTs orbiting around the body. I heard the noise and looked out. They tried to block him, but nothing was going to stop Big Pete from getting to his son. He sank to his knees, leaned over, and tried to pull Little Pete into his arms. When they wouldn't let him, he dropped his head back, opened his mouth, and let out a long, terrible scream that in the snow and dying wind sounded otherworldly, not even human. He did it again. And again. Then he was silent, motionless, bent over the body. Someone put a hand on his shoulder. He reached down to touch his son one last time, then stood on shaky legs. He searched the crowd that had formed, searched and searched. When he found me, he didn't move and neither did I as we stared at each other. I didn't hear the people yelling, machinery moving, and sirens blasting. I felt the snow on my face as he wiped the tears from his. I pulled the blanket around me, trying to stop shaking and watched as they led him away. He looked small and old and not so scary anymore. Not at all in control.

  I couldn't stop the shaking. I smelled like rum and I couldn't stop shaking.

  The coarse blanket scratched the back of my neck as I adjusted it around my shoulders. I had passed the first hours of the morning in the company of Massachusetts state troopers-and this blanket, the one the firefighter had given me on the ramp. Without thinking, I'd walked out wearing it, which turned out to be a good thing since it was now covering the blood stains on my shirt. Last night's events had thrown the operation out of whack, to say the least, and our concourse had the feel of leftovers, of all the ugly business left unfinished. It was still dark in the predawn hours, and the overhead fluorescents seemed to throw an unusually harsh light. Dunkin' Donuts napkins and pieces of the Boston Herald were everywhere. A few passengers with no place better to go were sacked out on the floor. Some were stuffed into the unyielding chairs in the departure lounges, chairs that weren't comfortable for sitting, never mind sleeping. One of our gate agents must have taken pity on these poor souls. Some of them were draped with those deep purple swatches of polyester that passed for blankets onboard our aircraft.

  I still had lingering shivers, violent aftershocks that came over me, mostly when I thought about how things could have turned out last night. And my nose wouldn't stop running. Reaching into my pocket for a tissue, I felt something flat and hard. The instant I touched it, I remembered what it was-the tiny cassette that had fallen from the ceiling of my office. I stood in the middle of the concourse cradling it in the palm of my hand, the missing tape from Ellen's answering machine. I stared at it. A clear plastic case with two miniature reels and a length of skinny black tape. That's all it was. It could wait. I started to stuff it back into my pocket. True, there would be no way to listen to it at my hotel-no answering machine- and if I left now it might have to wait for a while. Even if I wanted to listen to it, I'd have to go back to my office yet again, and I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to have to stare again at the gaping hole in the ceiling through which Lenny had apparently pulled Dickie Flynn's package of evidence. I looked at the tape. It was such a little tape. How important could it be? What more could we possibly need to know about the dirty business that Ellen had involved herself-and me-in? Could I even stand another revelation?

  I closed my hand around the cassette and started walking, slowly at first, then faster, and the faster I walked the angrier I felt. Pretty soon I was fuming, cursing the name of everyone who had made my recent life such a hell on earth. As far as I was concerned, being sliced up by a propeller was too good a fate for Little Pete Dwyer. And Big Pete, he deserved to lose his son that way for being such a cold, arrogant prick. And goddamned Lenny, the sleazy bastard, I hoped he rotted in jail for everything he'd done and maybe some stuff he hadn't. Even the thought of Dan made me simmer, just the idea that he had almost gotten himself killed right in front of me. All I wanted was a hot shower, hot food, and cool sheets. Every last cell in my body was screaming for it. But no. I had to reach into my pocket and pull out the last detail. The world's biggest question mark. The mother of all loose ends. God damn Ellen, too, for making this mess to begin with, and for leaving it here for me to deal with. I stood in the doorway of my office and wondered why couldn't she just leave me alone.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The sun was coming up. It slanted through the Venetian blinds in much the same way it had on the day I'd first walked into this office. The same bright ribbons of light lay across the old desk. Molly's answering machine sat atop the glass slab, in the center of the carved Nor'easter logo. The logo reminded me of what Molly had said that first day about why the desk had been hidden in Boston. "No one would ever look for anything good here," she'd said. I pressed the Play Message button and listened one more time to Ellen's final gift from beyond the grave. Molly was right. There was nothing good here.

  I should go, I kept thinking. I should get up and take this tape to the proper authorities. But all I did was sit and stare and watch the sun come up. I couldn't seem to do much else.

  The computer monitor flickered. Another report was up. I turned and looked, squinting at the bright screen to keep the characters from fuzzing together. When I saw what it said-same as the last one-the dull pain behind my right eye surged again, this time through the center of my skull. I pushed at it with the heel of my hand, but the throbbing wasn't goi
ng to stop unless my heart stopped beating. I punched Print Screen and slumped back in my chair.

  "It's good to see you in one piece."

  The voice, unmistakable, came from the doorway behind me. I hadn't heard him come in, but that's how Bill Scanlon always came into and out of my life- without warning and on his terms. I swiveled around to see him, too tired to be startled, too numb to have felt his presence.

  He leaned against the doorjamb with his leather briefcase in one hand and that familiar blue cashmere coat in the other. His suit hung perfectly from his lean frame, a deep charcoal gray that brought out the fine strains of silver in this thick black hair. Impeccable, as always.

  When I didn't answer, he stepped quietly into the office and put his coat and briefcase on the floor and closed the door. "Are you all right?"

  I wasn't all right, might never be again. The look on my face must have told him as much because be started to come to me. More than anything I wanted him to. I wanted to put my face against his chest and feel the steady comfort of his breathing, to feel strong arms against my back, keeping me from flying to pieces. But before he could round the desk, I shook my head and nodded toward the windows. Someone might see. He stopped, but his eyes seemed to be asking, "Are you sure?" When I nodded again, he moved to the chair across from mine and sat down. "Tell me," he said, "I want every detail."

  I couldn't find my voice. Instead, when he sat, I stood. Rising from my chair, my spine creaked and my muscles ached. Moving across the floor, I felt like a bent old woman that had lived too long. I felt him watching me as I stared out between the wide slats of the blinds, and I knew that he would sit quietly and wait for me, wait as long as I wanted.

  The snow that had been so cruel last night was brilliant this morning. Lit by the early morning sun, it was a glistening carpet that rolled from the far side of the runways all the way down to the bay. Beneath my window, rampers were filtering back to start the first shift, and the scene was beginning to look normal again. The only reminder of last night was the sweet, sticky odor that kept drifting up from the dried rum stains on my shirt. That and the answering machine on my desk.

  "It would be easier if you tell me what you already know," I said finally, without turning around. If I didn't have to look into his eyes, I could function at least marginally.

  "Actually, I already know quite a lot. I was on the phone all night from the airplane. I know that this Pete Dwyer person, the son, he killed a man, the one you were trying to meet with. Angelo, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Then he tried to kill you and Fallacaro. There was an altercation of some kind and he ended up hanging from a propeller. He's dead and you're a hero. Is that about the sum of it?"

  It was hard to get the words out, hard to keep from crying. "Keep going."

  I heard him stirring behind me, pictured him crossing his legs and leaning forward, elbows on the arms of the chair and hands clasped in front of him. He would be uncomfortable not asking all the questions, not directing the flow of the conversation. He didn't like not being in charge.

  "Lenny is in custody," he went on, "for reasons I can't figure out. There seems to be some indication that you were right, that this Little Pete did kill Ellen, but there's still no evidence to prove it and we don't know why he would do such a thing. As it turns out, with him gone, we might never know."

  The tears started to come, flowing down the tracks worn into my face from a night filled with crying. I put my head down and covered my eyes with my hand. When I heard him stand, my breath caught in my throat When I heard him move toward me, I told myself to step aside, to move away, to get out of reach before it was too late. But I felt so exposed. I felt as if my very skin had been stripped away and that even the air hurt where it touched me. I needed comfort so badly, and I knew that if I didn't turn from him right now, I might never turn away. Still, I didn't move. Couldn't. But I said the one thing I knew would make him stop. "The police have the package." Then I closed my eyes and waited.

  My computer hummed quietly on my desk. A shout came up from the ramp, a man's voice muffled by the heavy glass window. Bill said nothing. I wiped my eyes and turned to face him. "Lenny tried to destroy the evidence," I said. "He had it. He took it down to the ramp last night and tried to burn it in a trash barrel."

  His face was perfectly calm, placid even. When I tried to swallow, the front of my throat stuck to the back and it was hard to keep going. But I did. "The storm was so bad that he couldn't get it to burn. One of my crew chiefs caught him."

  The thought of John McTavish with his big hand around Lenny's wrist while his brother Terry pried the envelope loose gave me one tiny moment of satisfaction in an ocean of pain.

  "They saved the evidence, Bill. The confession, the video-the police have it all."

  There was the slightest hesitation before a smile spread across his face. "That's great," he said. "So there was a package. You were right about that, too." He probably would have fooled someone else. But I heard the forced enthusiasm, felt him straining under the veneer of graciousness. I knew with a certainty that was like a knife through my heart that the warm regard in his brown eyes, focused so intently on me right now, was false. He started moving casually away, tracing the edge of the desk with his index finger as he backed toward the window. "What was in this rescued package?"

  "Don't make me tell you what you already know."

  He smiled uncertainly. "I don't know what you mean."

  I went to my credenza, where the schedules I had printed were lying in the tray. I lifted the first one out, laid it on the desk, and pushed it across the glass-top surface, a distance that seemed like miles. "That's your travel schedule for the past twelve months." He looked down and read it, then looked at me as if to say, "So what?"

  I placed a second sheet next to the first, the list of Ellen's secret destinations, and tried to still the shuddering in my chest. "This is Ellen's. You were in the same city with her fifteen times out of a possible fifteen different occasions." I pulled the wrinkled page from my back pocket and smoothed it on the desk. Spots appeared like raindrops as my tears fell onto the page, bleeding into the paper, smearing the black ink as I read Ellen's note one more time.

  …I feel myself going under again, and the only thing that keeps my head above water is the motion of reaching up for him. And I can't let go. Because when I'm with him, I exist. Without him, I'm afraid I'll disappear. Disappear to a place where God can't save me and I can't save myself.

  I laid it on the desk in front of him. "She wrote that about you."

  He never looked at the second schedule. He never looked at Ellen's note. He looked at me. He fixed his gaze on me and wouldn't let go. "What are you trying to say, Alex?"

  "I don't have to say anything, Bill." I reached across the desk to the answering machine and started the tape.

  The voices had the hollow, tinny quality of a cheap answering machine, but there was no mistaking Ellen's voice with that light Southern accent, still so unexpected to me. The tape was queued up right where I'd left it, at the point where Ellen was talking, her words tumbling out in a torrent of anguish and pain.

  "Crescent Consulting. I know you remember this. We paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars. I signed the invoices. Crescent Con-"

  "Crescent Consulting. I get it." Bill's voice was a stark contrast-calm, rational, a little irritated underneath the clicking and popping of the static. He must have been in his car. "What about it?"

  "It was a sham. Nothing more than a bank account that Lenny used for kickbacks. You knew about this, Bill. You had to have known."

  "Let's not talk about this right now. I'm on a cell phone."

  "We're talking about this now." She sounded panicked, almost hysterical. "Don't you dare hang up on me."

  "All right, all right. Why would you say something like that?"

  "Because of the special signature authority. All that garbage about how much you trusted me. You set me up. The only reason you had me req
uest a higher limit was so that you wouldn't have to sign those invoices. Every single invoice from Crescent you forwarded to me. Every one. You knew, Bill"-she was fighting back tears-"and I can't believe you did this to me."

  Finally, she couldn't hold on anymore, and her voice dissolved into sobs, mighty, rolling sobs. As soon as one stopped, another one started, and I knew that they had come from someplace deep because when I had cried with her this morning the first time I'd heard this tape, the pain had come out of my whole body, through every part of me. It sounded like-felt like- a thousand years' worth of holding in.

  When she'd cried herself out, there was silence, and then Bill's voice, gentle and soothing. "I thought it was better if you didn't know."

  "Do you think anyone is going to believe that I didn't know?"

  "Ellen, you didn't do anything wrong. I'm the one who screwed up, and I'll protect you."

  "Tell me what you did. Tell me what you've gotten me involved in."

  "Back when we were working on the Nor'easter deal, Lenny came to me with this idea that we wouldn't have to wait for the vote… that he had some way of buying off the IBG-"

  "He didn't just buy the contract vote, Bill. He used the money to cover up this crash, this-the real cause of an aircraft accident, for God's sake. We gave him that money, Majestic did, you and me, and my name is all over-" She stopped as if she still couldn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. "That Nor'easter Beechcraft that went down in 1995… I've got this surveillance tape, this… these documents that Dickie Flynn had put away in the ceiling. It wasn't the pilots. It wasn't their fault. It was Little Pete Dwyer, and Dickie Flynn, and Lenny-"