The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  “Back here we use e-mail for that.”

  Usually Matt could make me laugh, but not tonight. There wasn’t much that could make me happy tonight. I found the remote and turned on the TV, leaving the sound off, so I could see if I’d made the late news. Then I dropped my shoes on the floor and shimmied on my back closer to the middle of the bed so I could elevate my feet. “Obviously, you’ve already heard.”

  “It would be hard not to. That’s all anyone’s been talking about around here. Your name is on everyone’s lips.”

  I knew Matt was right, and that was not a good thing. You never wanted to be a topic of conversation around headquarters, especially after the story had time to marinate into a juicy rumor. For the first time since I’d been in Boston, I wondered what Bill thought about my situation. I worried about what he was being told, and I really, really wanted his advice. Or maybe I just wanted someone to talk to, someone to be there for me the way he used to. That was one of the things I missed most of all.

  “Tell me you’re calling because you have my files, Matt.”

  “The archivist can’t find them. He’s still looking.”

  “That seems odd.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen the archives. It’s a big warehouse filled with thousands of boxes and one poor guy who’s supposed to keep track of everything. I’m surprised he ever finds anything. Which brings me to my next question. Do you want the other thing she asked for, the invoices? Because if you do, I have to go to a separate—”

  “Ellen asked for invoices?”

  “She wanted copies of the actual invoices to go along with the purchase price adjustment schedule. I suppose you want hard copies, too.”

  “As opposed to what?”

  “Fish.”

  I sat up so abruptly I had to wait for the blood to rush back into my head. “Did you say fish?”

  “Fish, feesh—whatever you want to call it—the microfiche is here in the building.”

  Microfiche? How was I supposed to have figured that one out?

  “But she didn’t want the fish. She said she needed the hard copies, which are over in Accounting. If you want those, too, I have to put in a separate request.”

  “Hang on, Matt.”

  Ellen’s stuff was starting to get mixed up with my own. I stood in the middle of the room in my stocking feet and tried to divine the location of that page from her calendar, the one Dan had given me at the house for safekeeping. Where exactly had I put it to keep it safe? Briefcase? No. Table stacked high with things I didn’t know where else to put? No. The box on the floor…? Yes.

  The page with the fish reference was mixed in with the mail. “1016.96A. Is that the reference on the microfiche?”

  “I don’t know. I told her to call Accounting, but that doesn’t sound like their filing system. Usually they have a date embedded in there somewhere, and besides, I just told you she wanted hard copies, not fiche.”

  “Oh, yeah. You did say that.”

  “Thank you.”

  The moment of enthusiasm passed. I sank back down on the bed and took off my pantyhose, which wasn’t easy with one hand holding the phone. “What would hard copies have that microfiche wouldn’t?”

  “Signatures. I assumed she wanted to see who approved payment of the invoices. That’s all that pre-purchase schedule is—a list of invoices.”

  “Invoices.” I said it almost to myself. “Like Crescent Security.”

  “What is that?”

  “A local vendor. It keeps turning up in Ellen’s things. I found a copy of an old invoice, and she had a check stub from Crescent stuck in her merger file. What would a local vendor in Boston have to do with the merger?”

  “If it was a Nor’easter vendor, nothing. Majestic and Nor’easter were two separate entities before the merger. Separate management, separate accounting, separate operations.”

  Without my pantyhose on, I could think better and I remembered the conversation with Kevin. “But there is something that linked Boston to the merger. It’s the IBG contract, the last one before the deal. From what I understand, the failure of that contract triggered the sale of Nor’easter.”

  “That wasn’t just Boston. That was a company-wide IBG vote, and I’m going to have to go soon or I’m going to be late for my condo association meeting.”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it? If the contract had passed, there wouldn’t have been a deal.”

  “Very true. In essence, the Nor’easter board rolled the dice and put the future of the company into the hands of the IBG.”

  “And they lost.”

  “No, they won. At the time Nor’easter’s largest shareholder was a group of venture capitalists. They’d already sucked all the cash out of the business and were looking to bail out. They figured the union would vote down the contract proposal, which meant the VC’s could cash out and blame it on them. Of course it was good for us, too. The night we found out it was dead, the entire task force went out to a bar and celebrated. Even Scanlon came.” He was talking faster and I knew he wanted to hang up.

  “So the venture capitalists would have had incentive to make sure the contract failed. But wouldn’t that have lowered the value of their investment?”

  “Nor’easter would have been worth more with a signed agreement with their largest union, but these guys bought into the company originally on the cheap, so even at a reduced price they all made out. I really do have to go, but if I find this stuff for you, you’re not going to ask for anything else, are you?”

  “I don’t know.” Matt was shifting into serious self-protection mode, and his tone had taken on an every-man-for-himself quality. I reached for the remote control and started surfing the dial. “Is someone giving you a problem?”

  “I don’t want to get on Lenny’s shit list. You’ve heard what he’s been saying about you, right?”

  My finger froze mid-surf, and my hamstring started throbbing again. “What has he been saying?”

  “That you can’t handle the union and he’s probably going to have to come up there himself. And if he does that, then he’s going to have to bring someone else in, and he’s all concerned about the management turnover in the station and what it’s doing to ‘those poor employees because they’ve been through so much already.’ You see why I don’t want him mad at me?”

  “He said he’s going to replace me?” I dropped the remote behind me. It fell off the edge of the bed and clattered to the floor. “Who’s he been talking to?”

  “The only guy who counts.”

  “He said that to Bill Scanlon?” That was one question answered. I now knew what Bill was being told. What I didn’t know was what he believed. “How do you know?”

  “He told Scanlon’s entire staff. He brought it up at the monthly planning session. If you ask me, he’s covering his ass in advance in case anything else goes wrong.”

  “Goddamn him. He is such a liar. I just got off the phone with him at the airport. He was unbelievably supportive. ‘These things happen,’ he said, ‘don’t worry about it, it’s not a reflection on you.’ He’s flying up here tomorrow.”

  “We don’t call him the Big Sleazy for nothing.”

  “The what?”

  “He’s from New Orleans. That’s what we call him.” In spite of everything, I had to smile. The Big Sleazy. I’d never heard that one before.

  “You still want all this stuff,” he asked, “if I can find it, right?”

  “Yes, and call me when you have something.”

  He hung up and so did I. My channel surfing had stopped on the Animal Planet station. The mute was still on. In the silence I watched a baby turtle on his back in the sand on a beach. He was fighting to roll over, to right himself so that his shell was on top. His tiny turtle flippers flapped desperately as he rolled from side to side. I knew how he felt. I was starting to understand how Ellen must have felt. Lenny was my boss. He was supposed to be on my side, to provide cover while I was fighting it out on the front lin
es. Everything I found out about Lenny made him more contemptible to me. But in the end, I knew I could deal with Lenny. What I couldn’t deal with was the thought that Bill Scanlon might start to question my abilities, to believe that I was failing out here. I went to my briefcase and found my address book. The phone number was right where I’d put it, unlabeled and written lightly in pencil inside the back cover. I hadn’t used it in over a year, had even made myself forget the number that I had known by heart. But I’d never erased it and I never forgot it was there.

  I sat on the bed staring at the phone until I could make myself pick up the receiver. Even after I’d dialed, the pattern on the keypad so familiar, it was an effort not to hang up. The call rolled to voice mail and I thought I was saved, but then I heard his voice. It was a recorded message, but it was his voice and my entire being responded as it always had to the timbre, the cadence, the rhythm of his voice. It was the perfect pitch to reach something inside of me, and the sound of him reminded me of the feel of him, the taste of him. All I had to do was speak, to leave a simple message, to say what I needed, but all I could do was sit on the edge of the bed, the room blurring around me, listening as the electronic operator demanded that I put up or hang up.

  I hung up.

  The baby turtle was gone when I checked the screen. I found the remote under the bed and waited a few seconds before turning off the TV, but he was nowhere in sight. I would never know if he had walked away or been carried away.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Dan turned from the window and paced the length of my office. He’d rearranged the chairs to give himself a lane in front of my desk. As he paced, he continued his report, ticking off the points one by one. “We’re using USAir’s inbound claim until we can get ours up and running again, which might take up to two weeks. They’re charging us an arm and a leg for it, but we don’t have a choice. We’re closing off all access to ours while we put it back together. No damage to any of the aircraft, but Maintenance had to check out everything that had been parked at that end of the building when the thing went off. We delayed three flights, canceled the last, and rebooked everyone on United and American.”

  “We lost the revenue?”

  “We didn’t have any choice, boss. Nothing of ours was going that way that would have gotten them to Denver last night. A few people were so spooked they didn’t go at all.”

  “I guess we ruined a few vacations. How many bags were lost?”

  “Thirty-seven items for twenty-two passengers. Everything in the cart was blown up or burned beyond recognition, mostly skis.”

  “I know about the skis. I spent several hours in baggage service last night letting people scream at me. It’s amazing how attached people can get to their skis. A couple of guys even wanted the pieces back. It was painful.”

  “We’ve got inspectors all over the place,” he said, “Port Authority security, investigators, state troopers. I’m dodging the media and trying not to trip all over the headquarters people who’ve come out to ‘help’ us.”

  “As far as the media,” I said, “I called Public Relations again this morning. Refer all inquiries to them.” I stood up and leaned back against my credenza, resting my hips against the edge of the work surface. Somehow, it didn’t feel right to be sitting down through all of this. “This is because of Little Pete, isn’t it? About not bringing him back to work?”

  “If it’s not, it’s an incredible fucking coincidence. I talked to Vic yesterday morning about delaying the decision, yesterday afternoon the bag room blows up. I’d say the two could be related.”

  I didn’t know whether to be nervous or angry. I settled for being generally uncomfortable and continuously on edge. “What do you think we ought to do, Dan?”

  “We’ve got the employee meetings set up. You had your say with the Business Council last night.”

  “Sure, that was effective. ‘We’ll do everything we can to help you through this,’” I said, mimicking Victor’s insipid tone, “‘but we need to know exactly how you’re gong to protect our men.’”

  Dan stopped pacing. The second he slipped down into one of my side chairs, I took his place. The distance from wall to window was exactly seven paces. On one of my laps, I closed the door. “There has to be something we can do that will get their attention.”

  “I think you’ve already gotten their attention, boss. As far as doing something about it, here’s what’s going to happen. We’ll do our investigation, the fire department will do theirs. No one will talk, which means nothing concrete will come out of it, which means you can’t blame the union because you can’t prove they did it, which means you can’t take formal measures against them.”

  “I don’t want to back down on this, Dan.”

  “You might not have much choice. If Terry McTavish was not talking before, he sure as hell is not going to be talking now. Besides…” He gazed out the window at an empty expanse where an aircraft should have been. The gate closest to my window was out of service while the jetbridge was being repaired. “I’m not sure it’s the best thing for you to hold out against Big Pete.”

  I turned and stared at him. “How can you say that? Should we give them what they want because they blew something up? Or set something on fire? Or slowed down the operation? That’s why we’re in this spot to begin with.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not because of something you did, or I did, or Ellen did. It’s Lenny. This station went to hell while he ran it, it got nothing but worse when Dickie was in charge, and as long as Lenny’s your boss, nothing is going to change. You can’t take on this union without the company’s support, and as far as it goes out here, Lenny is the company. Makes no difference to me. I’m not going anywhere. But you were right the other day. You’ve got something to lose.”

  The mention of Lenny reminded me of the upended turtle. I’d been so tired after yesterday, but after what Matt had told me about how my own boss had been trashing me behind my back, I’d spent most of the night stewing instead of sleeping. I’d gotten out of bed this morning exhausted, but clear on one point—if I was going, I wasn’t going out on my back. I stood in the window and stared down at the empty ramp. “Do you think Scanlon knew what was going on in Boston while Ellen was here?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “Think about it. You know Lenny’s not going to let on to his boss, and I know Ellen wouldn’t have filled him in.”

  “No?”

  “She always thought that she could handle Lenny, that he would help her if he understood what was really going on, and if she couldn’t make him understand, then it was her fault. She felt like she owed him for giving her the job. She said he was the only guy in the field operation who would have taken a chance on her.”

  I turned back to the window, thinking that Ellen was the one who had taken the chance, not Lenny. Taken a chance and lost.

  Dan came and stood next to me. “Speaking of the asshole, when’s Lenny due in?”

  “Not until two o’clock. Why? Do you want to meet his flight?”

  “After what he said about my kid, I might kill him if I see him. Besides, that’s your job. That’s why GMs get the big bucks. Do you need anything else before he shows up?”

  “Maybe some oxygen. Do we have extra coverage while he’s here?”

  “I called in a couple of supervisors from their day off, and I had a talk with some of the better crew chiefs. As soon as I can find him, I’m going to have another long chat with Victor just to let him know that I’m watching. Things are going to smooth out if I have to break balls personally.”

  “Listen—” I turned to check the door, forgetting that I had already closed it—“I talked to my Finance guy again last night, and I found out what fish means. It’s microfiche.”

  “No shit?”

  “He also told me that Ellen asked for invoices related to those pre-purchase adjustments, but she asked specifically for hard copies because she wanted to see the
signatures. We’re thinking she wanted to see who had approved payment of those invoices.”

  “Do you think those invoices are somehow related to the one you found from… what was it called?”

  “Crescent Security. I think there’s a link between the deal and the Nor’easter operation in Boston, I think it has something to do with the IBG contract that failed, and I think Crescent Security is part of it. Molly’s going to pull all the information she can find on them in the local files. If Matt ever sends me the documents, we might find the connection.”

  As we watched, a driver pulling a train of three carts came out of the outbound bag room too fast, made a sharp turn, and sent two boxes and a suit bag flying across the ramp. He never looked back.

  “Fucking moron.” Dan moved toward the door. “Tell Finance Guy to hurry up. If Lenny’s coming up here, we may be running out of time. By the way,” he said, pausing in the open doorway, “you looked good on TV last night, really in control. Even I was reassured.”

  He dashed out laughing at my expense as Molly strolled in with the morning mail. “You should have worn some lipstick if you were going to be on TV.”

  “Believe it or not, I didn’t get dressed yesterday morning with the idea that I would end the day on WBZ.”

  “You should never leave the house without a tube of lipstick.”

  “Thank you, Miss Manners.”

  I took the pile of mail and went back to my desk. Molly was in no hurry to get to work. She stood in front of my desk, perusing the office like an interior decorator. “When are you going to hang something on these walls?”

  “I don’t know. I think all that stuff is in storage right now.”

  I sifted through the mail quickly, threw half of it away, and tossed the rest into my in-box. Molly hadn’t budged.

  “Danny showed me Ellen’s frequent flier card,” she said, “and that list of trips she took.”