Once In, Never Out

by Dan Mahoney

  “New York.”

  “No, I mean originally. What county?”

  “I’m not sure. My family’s been here a long time. My father tells me that my great-grandfather came here during the famine in forty-eight.” Since he needed information from Terry, McKenna didn’t think it the opportune moment to spoil the show and tell her that his mother’s family traced their origins to the Ukraine.

  “Probably Limerick,” Terry pronounced. “There’s McKennas all over County Limerick. It’s a proud name, you know. And what was your mother’s maiden name, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  McKenna was caught off balance by the question and his mind went blank. Chiml wouldn’t do, he knew, but for a moment, he couldn’t think of a single name that would sound Irish enough to Terry. “Murphy,” he finally told her.

  “Ah, Murphy,” she said, thinking. “Hard to tell, really. It’s another proud name all over Ireland, but enough of that. Where do you want me to send you?”

  “Terry, I’m not going anywhere myself right now. I’m here to talk to you about Meaghan Maher.”

  The smile left Terry’s face. “Meaghan? She’s not in any trouble, is she?”

  “Probably. As far as I can tell, this office is the last place she was seen in New York and that was on February nineteenth.”

  “She’s disappeared?”

  “Vanished, but I’ve got a feeling she’s in Brussels. Is that where you sent her?”

  “Not exactly, but that’s where she wanted to go. She came in on a Thursday, I think, and she wanted the cheapest fare she could get. But she was in a hurry and wanted to be in Brussels by Monday. Cheap and hurry don’t usually go together in this business, but I searched around and found her something.”

  “Did she say why she wanted to go to Brussels in such a hurry?”

  “She said only that she was meeting a friend over there. I never get too nosy.”

  “Okay, go on. What did you find her?”

  “Something good. Icelandair was running a special to Luxembourg with a free weekend stopover in Reykjavík, hotel included. Even with the stay, it was cheaper than anything else on such short notice and I managed to get her booked. Saved her over six hundred dollars.”

  Luxembourg? Another country, but just a skip and a jump from Brussels, McKenna thought. Very smart, Meaghan. But Iceland? “How can Icelandair be so much cheaper and still provide a hotel room?” he asked.

  “Simple. They do it to keep their planes in the air and stay in business. You see, the airline owns quite a few of the hotels there, but they make their money in the summer when they’ve got close to twenty-four hours of daylight there and nice temperatures in the sixties and seventies. Very smart destination for someone looking to beat the heat in someplace nice.”

  “But winter is tough on them?”

  “Tough, but the airline stays alive with their specials and they get people to see the place. Once they do, they all go back. I’ve got customers who go all the time, even in winter. They rave about it.”

  Not the first time I heard that, McKenna thought. Ray also raves about the place, but I always thought he was kidding me. “You’ve been there?”

  “In this business, I get to go everywhere,” Terry said proudly. “Been there winter and summer. Love it.”

  “Was Meaghan happy with the arrangement?”

  “Once I told her about it, she was. Since it was February, I managed to get her a little more. All-you-can-eat breakfast smorgasbord at the hotel, a snowmobile trip on one of their glaciers, and tickets to the Blue Lagoon.”

  “Iceland has a blue lagoon?”

  “It’s man-made, really. Hot water runs off one of their geothermal power plants, but it’s as blue as anything you’ll find in the tropics. She was happy to hear that she could go swimming there.”

  “Swimming in Iceland in February?” McKenna asked, astounded at the thought.

  “Sure, it’s usually warmer there than here. The thing to remember is that Iceland is green and Greenland is ice. Catch a nice day in February and swimming’s a delightful experience at the Blue Lagoon.”

  And right up Meaghan’s alley, McKenna thought. Snowmobiling and swimming. That accounts for her ski jacket being missing and she must have a bathing suit I don’t know about. But I was wrong on one point. She wasn’t shopping in Brussels with Owen on February twenty-first. She was spending her free weekend in Iceland then, but Owen knew she was coming and was buying her some welcome-to-Brussels gifts. Now it’s time for that sensitive question. “Was it harder to get her a flight out of Montreal than it would have been from New York?”

  Terry eyed him suspiciously. “Who said she left from Montreal?”

  “Me, and we both know why. I know she’s illegal, but that doesn’t matter to me. If I’m gonna find her, I need all her flight information from you and I can’t have you dancing around it.”

  Terry thought that over, then came to a decision. “You know, I wouldn’t be telling this to you if you weren’t a hundred percent Irish. You couldn’t beat it out of me, but you must understand how hard it is for them.”

  “You mean the Irish immigrants?”

  “Sure. They come to this country and work hard. While they’re breaking their backs to earn a living, they’re worrying all the time and looking over their shoulders because of those silly immigration quotas we have now. Meanwhile, we let in all those Koreans, Filipinos, and Indians and they don’t have a care in the world.”

  Those Koreans, Filipinos, and Indians she’s talking about aren’t exactly a bunch of slackers, either, McKenna thought, but he didn’t want to pursue that line with the very pro-Irish Terry. “How did she get to Montreal?”

  “I booked her on the Amtrak overnight.”

  “Was that included in the seven hundred and eighty-two dollars she charged here?”

  “No, she had to pay at the ticket counter at Penn Station. I booked her round-trip.”

  “So she left New York on Friday and was scheduled to fly from Montreal on Friday, February twentieth. Right?”

  “Yes, arriving in Iceland at eight in the morning on February twenty-first.”

  “When was she scheduled to return?”

  “That was a one-week excursion plan,” Terry said, looking at the calendar on her desk. “Back into Montreal on Saturday, February twenty-eighth.”

  “Does she go back through Iceland?”

  “Just changes planes there. Then she was booked on the overnight Amtrak again from Montreal. She should have been home on March first.”

  “How well do you know Meaghan?”

  “As well as I know a lot of those kids working the bars and restaurants in Manhattan. Only met her twice, but one of the others must have sent her to see me. I’ve got a pretty good reputation with them.”

  “I can see why,” McKenna said. “If I were in their position, I’d trust you myself.”

  Terry preened at the compliment. “Are you going to find her?” she asked.

  “Yes. Thanks to you, I’ll find her.”

  The way McKenna said it didn’t relieve Terry’s concern. “Do you think something bad happened to her?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  Nine

  As soon as he got back to the office McKenna called Timmy JFK and gave him all the Icelandair flight numbers he had obtained from Terry.

  “What do you want me to do now?” Timmy asked. “Make sure she caught all her flights?”

  “Please. I appreciate you going to all this trouble.”

  “Anything for Chip. Besides, you’re making this easy now,” Timmy said. “Get back to you in half an hour.”

  McKenna was feeling good about his progress, but, as usual, any time there was progress on a case, paperwork had to be done. He had many complaint follow-ups to do, with each step he had taken in the investigation described on a separate report. Timmy JKF’s half hour passed and he kept on typing. After an hour he had finished his paperwork and was growing apprehensive. He was just about to
call Timmy back when his phone rang.

  “She’s in Iceland,” Timmy said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Certain. She left Montreal on February twentieth, as scheduled, and got to Iceland all right. She was supposed to leave there at eight A.M. on the twenty-third on flight one-ten. She never showed. I checked every flight out of Reykjavík from the time she got there to now. She’s there.”

  “You check the other airlines?”

  “That’s what took me so long, but it wasn’t a big problem. The only airlines flying in or out of there are Icelandair and KLM. She didn’t leave on either one.”

  “Thanks a lot, Timmy. Any favor I can do for you, you got it.”

  “I know that. Hope this helps you some.”

  “It confuses me some, but I’ll start working on this new angle,” McKenna said before hanging up. Now what? he wondered, but only briefly. He knew just where to go with his problem. Ray was the one.

  Brunette and McKenna had a lot in common, and one of those things was that they both had served in the Marine Corps. However, Brunette was ten years older than McKenna and had enlisted in the peacetime Marine Corps in 1954. So, while McKenna had spent almost two tours as a machine-gunner in the hills and jungles of Vietnam, Brunette had spent a good part of his four years as a spit-and-polish marine guard at the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavík, Iceland. Consequently, Brunette had loved his time in the corps because he and McKenna had experienced different problems. While Brunette might have been worried about running out of shoe polish or Brasso, McKenna’s main fear had been running out of ammo.

  In Iceland Brunette had become friends with a young constable. A lovable giant, but a smart, tough guy was the way Brunette described him whenever he was in a reminiscing mood. They had kept in touch over the years and McKenna had even met him once when he had visited Brunette in New York. Brunette thought it ironic that both he and Janus had risen to head their departments, but McKenna dismissed the coincidence as just another case of smart people knowing other smart people.

  Before phoning Brunette, McKenna decided to call Mrs. Maher and fill her in on some of the latest developments. Sheeran was out to lunch, so McKenna went into his office and called Ireland. For the first time, his call didn’t catch her asleep. “We’re closer, Peggy,” he told her. “I’ve tracked her to Iceland.”

  “Iceland? What would she be doing in Iceland?”

  “She was on her way to Brussels to meet a friend. She was supposed to stay in Iceland for the weekend, but she never made her connecting flight. She’s still there.”

  “Since when?”

  “She got there on February twenty-first and had been scheduled to leave on the twenty-third.”

  “Then this really isn’t good news, is it? She doesn’t know anybody in Iceland.”

  “No, I don’t consider it good news, but I promised to keep you up to date.”

  “Was it her secret boyfriend she was meeting in Brussels?”

  The question caught McKenna by surprise. He had intended to dance around the subject for now, but Peggy already knew something. How much? he wondered. “Yes, she was on her way to meet her secret boyfriend. Did she tell you about him?”

  “Never mentioned a word, and she usually tells me about all the men in her life.”

  “Then how’d you know?”

  “Chris O’Malley. Whenever he calls, he never misses a chance to say that Meaghan being gone must have something to do with her secret boyfriend.”

  “How does O’Malley know about him?”

  “He doesn’t, for sure. He just suspects that there’s somebody else in Meaghan’s life and so do we. She hasn’t mentioned anything about a boyfriend in over a year.”

  “What about O’Malley. Didn’t she talk about him?”

  “She used to, but not for a while. Meaghan wants to get married and have children someday, but she’d never marry Chris.”

  “She ever say why?”

  “Because she doesn’t love him anymore. She never said so, but I think it has something to do with him being illegal over there, like she is.”

  “So you think Meaghan would only marry somebody who’s here legally?”

  “No, more than that. I think Meaghan would only marry an American. She loves it there and has always thought of herself as an American. I’m certain she’d want her children to be as well.”

  McKenna didn’t say it, but Meaghan marrying an American would make her legal and end her major problem in life. I’m sure she’s already figured that out, he thought.

  “Is her new boyfriend in some kind of trouble?” Mrs. Maher asked.

  “Not yet. He knew Meaghan was coming to meet him, but I don’t think he has anything to do with her disappearance. From what I know about him, he seems like a fine man.”

  “Thank God!” Mrs. Maher said, relieved. “Since Meaghan never told us about him, we were wondering if he was some kind of criminal.”

  “Not even close. He’s a soldier, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He’s stationed in Brussels now.”

  “A soldier? Just like Meaghan to fall in love with a soldier. Can you tell me his name?”

  “Owen Stafford.”

  “Stafford? That’s not an Irish name, but Meaghan never attached any importance to where a person’s family was from. But I’m still wondering why she never told us about him.”

  “I think she wanted it to be a surprise,” McKenna said, figuring he was making the understatement of the day.

  Brunette had a busy schedule that day, so it was six o’clock before he could see McKenna. After getting his reports signed and discussing the case with Sheeran, McKenna had an up-to-date case folder under his arm. He didn’t believe that his friendship with Brunette provided any excuses for shoddy work or casual lapses in procedure.

  “You hungry?” Brunette asked as soon as McKenna walked into his office.

  “I could be, but you know I can never be sure.”

  “Okay, I understand. Call Angelita and find out.”

  Since the arrival of the twins, McKenna knew that Angelita had her hands full and she counted on help from him. He had worked sixteen hours the day before, leaving everything to her, and she had mentioned something that morning about going out to dinner together. It was tough for them to get a baby-sitter with the crew they now had at home, but if she had, he didn’t want to disappoint her.

  Brunette really did understand. He had met Angelita a few weeks after McKenna, when she had been a rookie cop, and they had become fast friends over the years. The Job hadn’t been for Angelita, but she understood it most of the time and respected the work McKenna did, sometimes. She couldn’t see losing a minute of her time with McKenna unless he had to stay late working a case she would consider important.

  Over the years McKenna and Angelita had come to an understanding of what important was. One low-life drug dealer shooting another in some territorial dispute wasn’t important, and his note-passer cases certainly didn’t measure up. But if McKenna told her a case was important, then she knew it was and he would eventually have to give her the details.

  McKenna didn’t mind discussing his important cases with Angelita, and many times he looked forward to her input. She was loaded with insight, common sense, and had a true, unflattering understanding of human nature. Although he didn’t talk about it around the office, more than once she had helped him by catching a point he had missed because he had been standing too close to it.

  So McKenna called Angelita. For once, there was no crying in the background when she answered the phone and he felt relieved about that.

  “How was your day,” he asked.

  “Wonderful! Janine’s finally beginning to make some sense when she tries Spanish and the boys have been great. I had time to do my whole workout. Got muscles aching right now that I forgot I had.”

  “You still have your heart set on going to dinner?”

  “I could, but what’s that in your voice? Change of plans?”

  How d
oes she always know what I’m going to say before I say it? “This new case I’m working on is important and I have to talk it over with Ray. I haven’t eaten a thing all day and he’s hungry, so maybe we’ll talk over dinner.”

  “Just as well. I’m close, but I haven’t gotten anything definite on a baby-sitter. Where you going to eat?”

  “Probably Forlini’s.”

  “Good. Bon appétit and bring me home some of their eggplant parmigiana.”

  That was easy, McKenna thought. “You got it. Thanks, baby. I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Okay, let’s try this again,” Brunette said as soon as McKenna hung up. “You hungry?”

  “Now I’m absolutely certain of it. I’m starving.”

  Forlini’s is an old, moderately upscale Italian restaurant located on Baxter Street in Little Italy, a few blocks from police headquarters and the courts. It is a favored eating place and watering hole among detectives, lawyers, and judges, three groups of people who are usually mutually exclusive and have nothing but disdain for one another.

  In any other setting, lawyers, judges, and detectives would be quick to point out that everything wrong in society is due to the incompetence, laziness, avarice, and dishonesty inherent in the flawed characters of the other two groups. By tradition, in Forlini’s they all get along and members of one group even render grudging respect to members of the other two. It has been likened to a Frenchman, an Englishman, and an Irishman having dinner together on the space shuttle while orbiting the Earth.

  When McKenna and Brunette showed up at the door, they were met by Nicky, the son of the owner, and shown to their usual table in the rear. While passing though the dining room they exchanged handshakes, pleasantries, and compliments with many of the lawyers and judges eating there, about half of whom McKenna and Brunette despised.

  Over dinner McKenna explained everything he had done in the case so far, leaving out nothing. Brunette had few questions. While waiting for their espresso after dinner, Brunette asked to see the case folder.