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The Alex Shanahan Series

Page 13

by Lynne Heitman


  “Sleazy bastard,” he muttered.

  “He didn’t seem sleazy about it. He seemed to be covering the company’s ass and maybe his own. What is it between the two of you?”

  “Why? What did he say?”

  “He said … he said that you were the one who pushed Ellen into taking a hard line with the union and that the reason you’re so adamant about how she died was because you feel guilty. You can’t accept the fact that she might have killed herself.”

  Dan’s face started to flush. “And you believed him?”

  “I don’t know what to believe. I know that there’s something going on between you and Lenny that you won’t talk about. And I feel that there has to be more to your relationship with Ellen that you’re not telling me about. Did you two have a thing, because if you did, it doesn’t make any difference to me—”

  “Don’t ever say that, Shanahan. Don’t ever say that again. Everything I told you was the truth.”

  “But are there things you haven’t told me?”

  We stared at each other, and it became clear that he wasn’t going to dignify my question with a response. He countered with his own question. “Did Lenny offer you a promotion if you could make me stop asking questions?”

  “What?”

  “A promotion. That’s what you care about, right? Your career?”

  I slipped back in my seat and took a deep breath. I tried to keep in mind that he’d been up all night dealing with recalcitrant employees. But I wasn’t one of them. “You’re right,” I said evenly. “I do care about my career, and I don’t want to be made to feel that the things I want are any less important, or in some way less noble, than what you want. I don’t believe the issues are that simple.”

  He sat back, clasped his hands across his stomach, and stared up at the ceiling. His eyes were red and tired, and when he looked back at me, something in them had changed. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It’s easy for me to say I don’t care about my career because I don’t have one. And it’s been that way for so long, I forget sometimes what it might feel like if I did have something to lose. You’re right. This is not your fight.”

  He had an amazing ability to make me feel validated and guilty at the same time. “This isn’t my fight, but I do have a stake in how things turn out. If we can find a way to get rid of the Dwyers, I’d be most pleased. And you do have something to lose—at least Lenny thinks so.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “He said that if I wanted, he’d bust you down to ramp supervisor and move you out of Boston to a station as far away from New Jersey as he can find.”

  Dan’s face turned ashen, then, almost immediately, heart-attack red. “He said that?”

  “That’s exactly what he said.”

  “Son of a bitch.” He flung his napkin onto his plate. “Motherfucker.” When he shot out of his chair, he nearly tipped it backward, bumped the table with his thigh, and rattled all the silverware.

  The sleek one glanced up, but only long enough to turn the page of her newspaper.

  Dan paced an intense loop around a row of empty tables, came back to ours, then made the loop again. All I could do was hope he stayed in the coffee shop long enough to tell me what I’d said.

  “He couldn’t even say it to me directly,” he mumbled, making another loop. “Yellow ratfuck scumbag.”

  “Do you want to sit down and tell me what’s going on?”

  I could see a vein pulsing in the side of his throat as he settled back in and shoved the remains of his breakfast out of the way. “My kid lives in New Jersey. He’s threatening to send me away from my kid. That’s what’s going on.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “Did you just say you have a child?”

  “She lives with her mother and grandparents down in Newark. I can’t fucking believe he would even say that.” He banged the table with the heel of his hand and got jelly on his cuff. I gave him my napkin and he wiped it off, carelessly at first, then more deliberately. Even after it was clear the spot wasn’t going away, with his mouth set in a grim line and his eyes losing focus, he kept working it.

  I reached across the table and took the napkin away. “What’s her name?”

  “What?”

  “Your daughter, what’s her name?”

  “Michelle. Michelle Marie. She’s six.”

  “She lives in Newark, you said?”

  “Belleville. Just outside.” He checked his watch.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m gonna call him. As soon as he drags his ass to work, I’m gonna tell him—”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  He sat unusually still, avoiding eye contact. No fingers drumming, no knees bouncing up and down. “I need the key to Ellen’s house.”

  “You need to go home and get some sleep.”

  “Just give me the goddamned key.”

  This time he got the sleek woman’s attention. And the waiter’s. And mine. I stared at him, more confused than angry and hoping to chalk the outburst up to too much frustration and too little sleep.

  He let out a long, deflating sigh and appeared to regroup. “All I want is to put an end to this. I can’t take much more. I’m too tired and I’m afraid of what I’m going to do if Lenny threatens me like that again. If there’s a package in that house, I’m going to find it. So can I please have the key?”

  The waiter brought the check for me to sign. While Dan waited in the lobby, I went upstairs for the key to Ellen’s house. As I watched him walk out the front door with it, I couldn’t help but think that he’d never answered my question. Were there things he wasn’t telling me?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Pete Dwyer Sr. was waiting for me that morning, staked out in the reception area with a newspaper, a couple of bear claws from Dunkin’ Donuts, and a big cup of coffee. I knew he’d heard me coming down the corridor, but he didn’t bother to look up until I spoke.

  “Why is it so hot in here?” I asked, sliding out of my coat. It must have been ninety degrees in the office suite. Pete had peeled off most of his outer layers, and still he looked steamy and flushed, maybe because he was sipping hot coffee.

  “Damn heating system,” he said, almost spitting the words out. “One more thing around here that don’t work.”

  “Are we responsible or is the airport authority?”

  “It’s the airport. At least once every winter the heating system in the whole building goes wacky. Usually takes them a week to fix it.”

  “A week?” A withering prospect.

  He folded his paper, collected his breakfast, and stood right behind me as I unlocked my office door. Once inside, he settled into one of the desk chairs, looking more at home in my office than I did, and watched me with those cool gray eyes, cool despite the ambient temperature and the hot beverage.

  “I can’t believe you’re drinking hot coffee.”

  “I was outside working all night. It ain’t this hot out there.”

  “Then let’s go out there.” I didn’t wait for an answer, just grabbed my coat and walked out. After a stop for hot tea, we went to the outbound bag room, where it was noisy but forty-five degrees cooler than my office. It was also the heart of the downstairs operation at this time of the morning. Bags and boxes came down in a steady stream from the ticket counter and from skycaps on the curb into the cavernous concrete bag room to be sorted, loaded into carts, and driven to the airplanes—hopefully the right ones.

  I leaned in toward Pete and raised my voice to be heard over the grinding of the bag belts and the rumbling of the tugs streaming by with their bag-laden carts. “What can I do for you?”

  He stuffed the last of his bear claw into his mouth and licked the sugar off his thumb. “Let’s go to the office,” he said.

  I followed him to the far corner where a couple of flimsy Sheetrock walls with glass windows came together to form an office for the bag room crew chief. He took the desk chair for himself, lea
ving a rolling secretary’s chair with a cracked leather seat and one armrest for me. We could still see the action in the bag room through the windows, but the rumbling of the system was muted, the closed door offering some relief from the constant grinding of the belts. It was quiet enough that I could hear the sound of Big Pete’s palms polishing the skin of a grapefruit that had suddenly appeared in his hands. It must have been in the office. He took out a letter opener and began to peel it.

  “Is that grapefruit yours?”

  “You’re holding an innocent man out of service,” he announced, completely ignoring my question. “Petey was just an innocent bystander in this thing last night.”

  “I’m learning that no one is innocent here, and Victor’s the union president, so why are you talking to me about this?”

  “I don’t trust Victor to handle the important stuff—” his eyes cut to my face—“and neither do you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s true, ain’t it?”

  It was, of course, and though I didn’t want to believe I’d been that transparent, I appreciated the respect he showed by telling me that I had been. It meant I could be equally blunt in return. “If Little Pete was a bystander, why would he have twelve stitches in his head? And I don’t think Terry McTavish broke his own hand.”

  “Man jumps you from behind out of the clear blue and throws you down on the ramp, you’re entitled to protect yourself.”

  “I haven’t met Terry, but I’d like to meet the man who could sneak up on your son and throw him to the ground.”

  He suppressed a smile. “Must have been the element of surprise.”

  “Must have been. Look, I think I already know what happened last night.” He drew back and looked at me all stiff-necked and squinty-eyed. “So instead of you trying to convince me it didn’t, just tell me what you want.”

  He threw part of the peel in the trash, then leaned back and propped his feet up on the desk, his heels resting on the old, stained blotter. “All right. I know you’re in a position here. You got appearances to think about, and you got to take some kind of action.” As the peel fell away and the fresh citrus smell filled the office, I noticed that he had a hard time stripping the fruit because his fingernails were so short—painfully short—and ragged. They were not much more than nubs, and I knew that he was a nail biter because I had been, too. Big Pete Dwyer struck me as a lot of things, but a nail biter wasn’t one. I wondered what it was that made him nervous.

  He noticed me staring at his nails and dug his fingers into the fruit, pulling the sections apart. “To my way of thinking,” he continued, “Terry threw the first punch. You want to can his ass, we won’t fight you. I can guarantee he won’t even file a grievance.”

  “And what happens to Little Pete?”

  “He didn’t do nothing, so he should come back to work.” The grapefruit peel went into the garbage, and a slice of the fruit disappeared into his mouth.

  “It’s funny how that worked out.” I shifted to find a comfortable spot on the cracked leather seat. There wasn’t one, so I stood. “You and John McTavish get into a pissing contest the other night. The next thing I know, his brother Terry is in trouble under questionable circumstances. Is Terry aware that his union representative is offering up his job? More to the point, is John?”

  “You don’t need to worry about what goes on inside the union. You just need to worry about yourself.” For a moment he actually made eye contact and held it. “I’m trying to help you out here.”

  It might have been my imagination, but he seemed oddly sincere even though he was trying hard not to be. There was no question he was trying to help himself and his son, but it was also possible that he truly believed he was helping me, too. “I appreciate the gesture,” I said, “but it sounds as if your son is the one who needs help. I understand he has a problem with alcohol.”

  Pete didn’t even stop chewing. “Yeah? Who says so?”

  “He’s worked under the influence in the past, I think he’s doing it now, and I suspect he’s the one who instigated the trouble last night, not Terry McTavish.”

  “My son ain’t got no problem like that. If he did, nobody down here would tell you.”

  His face had betrayed nothing as he sucked another slice into his mouth and spat out a seed, but it wasn’t without effort. I heard it in his voice. It was in the measured way he spoke and the precise way he formed his words. The strain was there. It sounded old, scabbed over, and I thought maybe I understood what made him chew his nails. Big Pete was no different than any other father with a screw-up for a son. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “How much longer do you think you can cover for him? You can’t watch him all the time.”

  “You don’t have no case against my son.” He finished off the last wedge and wiped his fingers on a piece of paper from the trash can. “You never will.”

  “I don’t want him working around airplanes,” I said.

  “If he’s working the ramp, he’s working around airplanes.”

  “Then I’m going to have to find a way to make sure he’s not working the ramp. What if he causes an accident? Could you live with yourself?”

  “You shouldn’t even say something like that.”

  “It scares you, too, doesn’t it?”

  He stood up slowly, more like uncoiled, and brushed a few wayward flakes of glazed sugar from his uniform shirt. He started toward me and didn’t stop until I could smell the grapefruit on his breath. The muscles in my back tensed, and for the first time I felt uncomfortable with him. “My son is my responsibility,” he said. “You leave him to me and you won’t have no problems. But you push this thing, and you’re going to regret the day you ever asked for this job.”

  I started to breathe a little faster. “Are you threatening me?”

  He stepped around me, opened the door, and let the bag room noise come in. Then he leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Think about what happened to the girl who was here before you.” I stared straight ahead, fixing my gaze on the letter opener he’d left on top of the desk. “You’re all alone out here, just like she was, more alone than you think. I wouldn’t want you to get depressed and kill yourself.”

  I turned to look at his face, but he was already through the door and gone. I would never smell grapefruit again without that awful feeling of my heart dropping into the pit of my stomach.

  Molly was at her desk fanning herself and looking as if she might pass out.

  “Is someone working on fixing the heat?”

  “This happens every year,” she said breathlessly.

  “So I hear. Why don’t you go out and get some fans? Charge it to the company.”

  “It’s the middle of winter in Boston. Where am I going to find fans?”

  “How should I know, Molly? Just do something.”

  I went into my office and slammed the door. I went back to my desk and straight to my briefcase, where I found the fax from Ellen’s house, the one asking for a meeting at the same time, same place. I smoothed it flat on the desk and wrote directly on the page, “Saturday, 7:00 PM, Ciao Bella on Newbury Street.” It was the only restaurant in town that I knew. I signed my name, went out to the machine, and punched in the number to Sir Speedy in Nahant. My finger froze over the Enter button, giving me one last chance to appreciate what I was doing. I had no idea who had sent this message, and it was just my own instinct saying that it was friend, not foe. But I needed more people on my side, and if this was someone Ellen had trusted, maybe I could trust him or her, too.

  I punched the button, the machine whirred to life, and the message was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday afternoon was the worst possible day to cancel a flight. We’d taken two mechanicals back-to-back and cancelled them both. I’d spent the past several hours at the ticket counter helping to rebook a couple hundred inconvenienced passengers. Rebooking is a technical term. It means presenting hostile travelers with a list of terrible
alternatives and asking them to choose one. It usually takes a while.

  I was almost past Dan’s office door before I realized he was in there sitting at his desk, tie loosened and sleeves rolled up. He’d changed his shirt since breakfast yesterday morning, but his eyes were still bleary. He was using one hand to prop up his head and the other to turn the pages of something that had his complete attention.

  “If I’d known you were here, I would have invited you up to the ticket counter to take part in our latest disaster.”

  He responded without looking up. “I just got in. I’ve been up at Ellen’s house all day.”

  “Which means you’ve been up for two straight days.”

  “Here, before I forget…” He dug into his pocket and came out with Ellen’s house key. “I also went to the post office and got her mail forwarded to the airport.”

  “Good plan.” I sat down and peeled off my shoes. “Did you find anything? Answering machine tapes, perhaps? Or a fish?”

  He gave his head a weary shake. “I’ve searched every square inch of that place. Whatever she was hiding, I don’t think it’s in the house, unless it’s behind a secret panel or something. With that old place, who knows? But I did find out one thing.” He lowered his voice to the point that it was almost just a rumble. “I talked to the old guy, the landlord, and he said the alarm went off again the other night. The police came, but no one was there. You know what that means.” He didn’t need a response from me. “Someone tried to go in who didn’t have the new security code.”

  “Didn’t that make you nervous, being up there by yourself and knowing that?”

  He looked at me, and I knew there was no point in pursuing the subject.

  The item he’d been studying so intently was a wall calendar. “Are you planning your next vacation?”

  “This is Molly’s calendar from last year. My buddy over at United got me the list of Ellen’s destinations from their frequent flyer desk. Altogether she took fifteen trips, and thirteen of them she could have flown on us. The two we don’t fly are to Pittsburgh and Charleston. She got miles for every trip, so you were right. She bought tickets like a real passenger.”

 

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