The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  “Did you go?”

  “No. Dickie was an asshole. Just because he was dying didn’t make him any less of an asshole. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t wish stomach cancer on the guy. God forbid anyone should have to go that way, but he always treated me like dirt, and I didn’t want to be a hypocrite.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of an agent hurrying through the concourse on her way to start an early shift. She waved as she went by, and we waved back. If she was surprised to see us there at that hour she didn’t show it.

  “When did Ellen make this visit?”

  “When we first heard he was dying, maybe six months ago. Sometime late last summer.” He laughed. “Ellen came back and she said he was an asshole, too.”

  “Last summer’s too early. When did he die?”

  “Around the holidays. Thanksgiving, I think. Molly went to the funeral. She’d know.”

  That timing worked better. I took a few steps toward the podium at the gate, unmanned and locked up at this hour. When I had it straight in my mind, I came back. “Right before he died, sometime around Thanksgiving, Dickie Flynn sent Ellen a secret tape, something he’d hidden away years before when he still worked here. She watched it and whatever she saw caused her to start an investigation. We don’t know what it was about, but the next thing she did was call Matt Levesque wanting to know where she could find her old merger files. We found her own personal merger folder hidden in her gym locker. She was on the task force and knowledgeable on details of the transaction.”

  “So she found out something hinky about the merger.”

  “I think so, and it has to be the IBG contract, the one that was voted down because that happened right here in Boston. And it was significant. That contract failing as much as guaranteed that the deal would go forward. My source tells me that Big Pete was paid to tank it.”

  “That’s a rumor. It’s always been the rumor, but no one knows for sure.”

  “I’ll bet Dickie Flynn knew for sure. Maybe he sent Ellen some kind of proof of the contract fraud or tampering or whatever you’d call it, and she was trying to put together a case. The package is evidence, and that’s why Big Pete wants it.”

  “You think this proof is on a tape?”

  “That’s part of what we don’t know. I also don’t understand why Ellen wanted your Nor’easter procedures manual. What the heck was her interest in the Beechcraft, anyway? And Crescent Security. We don’t know the significance of that.”

  I felt my shoulders sag with the weight of all we didn’t know, but Dan was looking at things from a different angle. “We know a lot more than we did this time last week,” he said brightly.

  A passenger settled in not far from us, a businessman with two newspapers and a cup of coffee. We moved a couple of windows farther down the concourse.

  “We know something else, too, Dan. Ellen was spending time with Lenny. They were seen together in the same airport ignoring each other. Molly’s going to check Lenny’s travel schedule against Ellen’s list of destinations. That will tell us for sure.”

  He had turned toward the window and was looking down on the ramp, where a three-inch blanket of snow had fallen during the night. He was either wearing down or he’d decided to stop wasting his breath, because even though he was shaking his head, he didn’t argue. All he said was, “What next?”

  “Angelo.”

  “What about him?”

  “That stakeout Ellen sent you on, the target all along was Angelo, not Little Pete. Ellen set him up. It sounds as if she wanted to fire him and trade his job back for information.”

  “I guess there’s a good reason Ellen didn’t tell me anything about what she was doing.”

  “I don’t know, Dan.”

  He rubbed the side of his face with the palm of his hand. “So Angie knows something, which is why you didn’t want me to bring him back.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t explain that, but now we have to figure out how to get him to talk and we have to hurry. Lenny’s trying to get his arbitration hearing scheduled within the next couple of weeks.”

  “If he does, we’re screwed. The arbitrators will probably bring him back, and even if they don’t, after arbitration Lenny can do whatever he wants.”

  “Yes, but until then it’s still my call. This is the station where he was fired, and I’m now the chief operating officer here. Lenny can’t do anything, not formally anyway, without an exception from the international, and he needs Scanlon’s permission to do that.”

  Things were beginning to move outside. The pristine white expanses between the gates were beginning to look like abstract paintings, clean canvases brushed with black tire tracks in wide arcs and tight loops.

  “I’m going down to check on the deicing operation,” he said. “I’ll let you know when I get in touch with Angie.”

  “Good. Thanks for coming in so early. Hey…” I had to call after him because he’d shifted into airport speed and was almost to the stairwell. “You left your coat.”

  After he was gone, it was just the passenger and me. I turned to the window for one last look at the peaceful scene before it was completely obliterated. There was an aircraft on every gate, and the snow on their long, smooth spines and broad, flat wings looked like soft down comforters. Later, when the sky was brighter and the aircraft were preparing for departure, all trace of it would have to be cleared off under the high-pressure blast of the deicing hose. But for now the dry white crystals softened the rough edges and brought grace and gentleness to a hard place. If I stared long enough, I could almost believe the illusion. Maybe that was Dan’s problem with Ellen. He was having a hard time letting go of the illusion.

  I stayed out in the concourse until the first departures had gone, greeting passengers, lifting tickets, and assisting the agents. By the time I made it to my office, Molly was in.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, eyes wide.

  “I work here.”

  “Did you forget about your meeting?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  They were staring at me. People gaping from the window of a passing city bus couldn’t have looked more vacant. Except for feet shuffling and throat clearing, a random cough here and there, I could get no reaction out of the twenty-five or thirty rampers gathered in front of me. They were slumped on benches and in chairs, clustered in the doorways, and arrayed around the walls of the ready room among raincoats hung from hooks. The rain gear showed more animation.

  I’d already done my short presentation, giving them the facts on the bag room bombing, passing around pictures of the twisted cart and ruptured skis. We—rather, I had already discussed the costs of reconstruction, interim use of USAir’s bag claim, and passengers’ belongings blown to smithereens.

  “Does anyone have any questions?”

  Silence.

  The apathy was so impenetrable, it felt like an act of aggression, and one that had been coordinated in advance. I didn’t need to be liked by these people, but I could not walk out of there without some acknowledgment, no matter how tiny, that bombing the bag room—or anything else—was not okay.

  Big Pete, coming off the end of his shift, was leaning against a wall in the opposite corner. Still in uniform, he was, as always, outwardly nondescript with several layers of shirttails out and uncombed hair.

  “Pete, as the union representative, do you have anything to say?”

  For the longest time he didn’t move or respond. Finally, he shifted slightly so that he was more angled toward the room, gave me one of those languid, crocodile-in-the-sun blinks, and began to hold forth. “First off, I want to say that the union don’t condone this sort of activity.”

  At the sound of his raspy voice, some of the congregation turned their eyes in his direction. The ones that didn’t looked out the window.

  “Second, I want you to know I don’t think none of you was any part of this. To me, it was someone from off the field who breached security, come onto our ramp
, and did this thing. Maybe some kind of a terrorist like we’re always hearing about.”

  Even some of the rampers were having a hard time keeping straight faces.

  “I want everyone to be alert. The fact is, we ain’t as safe here as we’d like to think. Anyone not wearing his badge, don’t be afraid to challenge him. And if you got something on who might have done this thing, the union wants you to come forward and give it to management.” He nodded graciously, and when he turned the floor back over to me, it was with a smug expression that seemed to ask, “Great performance, eh?”

  I went back to my flip chart and found a great big red marker, the perfect symbol for how I was feeling. “I want to say one more thing just to add to Pete’s point. No matter who perpetrated this act, this number—” I underlined the total cost of the bombing, twice—“translates into seven or eight full-time union jobs a year that could go away because someone was trying to send a message—” I looked at Pete—“no matter who that was.” I capped the felt-tipped pen and checked my hands for leaking ink. “We can’t even calculate the revenue we’ll lose because passengers generally try to avoid airlines that have been bombed. You junior employees should pay particular attention. You’re at the bottom of the seniority list, and you’re the ones who will be out on the street. Given the sliding salary scale, it’s going to take about ten to twelve of you to get to this number. Pete’s right. It’s in all of our best interests to make sure this never happens again.”

  I was encouraged by a stirring in the hallway, a murmuring that seemed to move into the room and run through the group like a lit fuse. I was getting through to them.

  “That may be,” Pete said with a polite sneer, “but we’re all in the same union, and it ain’t gonna work to try and set us against each other. Besides, management is responsible for the security of the operation. If you can’t keep the ramp safe for us to work, you might want to start worrying about your own job.”

  The room fell quiet. Blood rushed to my head. I could feel my face heating up. An appropriately clever response would deflect attention from me and put him in his place, but with thirty pairs of eyes trained on me, I couldn’t quite grasp it.

  “Friend”—the voice exploded through the doorway and into the room—“her job is none of your concern.”

  My head snapped around so I could see if my ears were deceiving me. The crowd at the door parted as if they were being unzipped, and in walked Bill Scanlon—chairman, CEO, airline legend.

  I was stunned—suddenly and completely struck dumb in front of a room full of my employees. I should have stepped forward, extended my hand in the usual professional greeting, and welcomed him into the room. Not that he ever needed any welcome, but it would have given me something to do besides stand rooted to the painted cement floor. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even summon the will to take my eyes off him.

  The dull murmur grew to an excited buzz as he strode on long legs into the center of the room, right where he was most comfortable.

  “Sorry to drop in on you like this.” His smile was crisp and, I felt, coldly impersonal.

  I was swamped by a flood of emotions, none of which I could show, and for what seemed like the longest time, my mouth was open but I was afraid to speak, afraid of what might come out and when something finally did—"That’s all right” is what I think I said—it sounded once removed, as if I were speaking in the voice of a passing stranger who had found my empty vessel of a body and moved in. But I knew it wasn’t a stranger in there because the one emotion that kept crashing forward like the biggest wave in a pounding storm was fear. I was afraid that he was angry, that he had come all the way to Boston to fix what I couldn’t fix. I was profoundly worried that I had let him down and that he was here to tell me.

  But when he turned to slip out of his long cashmere coat—midnight blue—his eyes locked on mine for just a second longer than necessary, and for that one second it was as if he’d taken all the excitement he’d brought into the room, pulled it into a bouquet, and offered it to me as a secret gift. His eyes said what he couldn’t say out loud: I am so excited to see you.

  While he handed his coat and then his suit jacket to Norm, who had sprung from his seat to take them, the storm inside me ceased, the churning stopped, and the sun came out.

  Bill smiled graciously at Norm, thanked him without the slightest trace of condescension, and turned to me. He was ready to go to work. “With your permission—”

  “The floor is yours.”

  “You might want to get someone to take notes.”

  “Of course.” As if I wouldn’t remember every word that was about to be spoken. I was noticing how warm it was in the room, at least ten degrees hotter since he’d walked in. But maybe that was just me.

  The group did not accommodate me as it had the chairman, and I had to elbow my way to a spot near the door where I could be available yet unobtrusive. The room was getting more crowded as ticket agents filtered down from upstairs. Majestic employees never missed a chance to see up close “the man who’d saved the airline,” and to see him in a surprise visit was a double bonus.

  I asked one of the agents to call Molly and have her track down Lenny, and then settled in to watch the show.

  He stood in the center of the room in his pressed cotton shirt, exquisite but understated tie, and suit pants that were perfectly tailored to his lanky build. Some men might have felt out of place in that dingy room, just as I almost always did. But he was a man with the unwavering conviction that where he was was where he belonged and that the surroundings—whether it was a maintenance hangar or a Senate chamber—would conform to him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said quietly, letting his voice draw them in, “we have picked a tough business in which to make our livings, you and I. Don’t you agree?”

  No one moved. Everyone agreed.

  “I look at some of these other hotshots who run businesses, and I think to myself every day, they’ve got it made compared to us. Think about the software business. Those guys in Silicon Valley, they’ve got a high-margin business, markets that are growing exponentially, new markets opening up every day, and they get to come to work in shorts and sandals.” His smile let us all in on the gentle teasing. “Who couldn’t make money doing that? Or take the money guys on Wall Street, investment bankers and fund managers. In a market as robust as the one we have today, they don’t even have to come to work to turn a profit.” He was gliding around the small space, making it look bigger than it was, stopping now and then to pick someone out of the crowd and focus his entire being on them. “But you and me, we don’t have it that easy. We have this massive, complicated machine”—he opened his arms wide, as if holding the entire contraption in his own two hands—“with more moving parts than any human and most computers can comprehend. We’ve got weather issues, we’ve got scheduling issues—airplanes, pilots, and flight attendants who all have to be scheduled according to their specific labor contracts. We’ve got regulatory requirements, environmental requirements, and constraints of air-traffic control. And we deal with machines, so we have the ever unpredictable maintenance variable.”

  Heads around the room bobbed in solemn agreement.

  “You’re on the front lines here,” he said. “You know better than anyone how every day we have to mesh it all together in a way that works best for the customers, the employees, and the shareholders. We go home every night, and every morning we have to get up and do it all over again from scratch, because we have no inventory. Am I right?”

  Of course he was right. He was tapping into the mother lode of truth for these people—for any people—telling them how difficult their jobs were, how hard they worked, and how no one understood them better than he did. He could communicate with anyone on any level about anything. And he could make you agree with him. He could make you want to agree with him. That was his gift. He had the ability to find a way to lead you wherever he wanted you to go. I tried to remember that there were good reaso
ns why we weren’t together anymore. Watching him work, it was hard to think of exactly what they were.

  “We don’t make money in this business unless we grind it out every day, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. We do this at Majestic with more success than our competitors. How is that?”

  “We’re better than they are,” someone yelled from the back, one of the rampers who had been unconscious for my segment.

  “Are we?” Bill picked him out with his eyes and challenged him for giving the easy answer, but obviously the one he had expected. “Our planes look just like their planes, our cabins are just as crowded, and our leg room equally deficient. We don’t fly any faster than they do. Why are we better?”

  No one dared risk another response that didn’t work. A brief pause stretched to a long one, and still no one spoke up, and still he didn’t say anything. He waited until the moment when the silence was unbearable, then answered his own question.

  “The way we make money, the only way anyone makes money running an airline, is by running it better,” he waited a beat, “…and faster,” another beat, “…and cheaper than the next guy, by demonstrating a deeper commitment to our customers, and by being nothing less than relentless when it comes to keeping our costs down. Relentless, ladies and gentlemen.”

  He had ended up next to the flip chart and stood there now, scanning the audience, seeing everyone and everything, letting no one off the hook. When he stopped, he was staring at me. “I’m not going to speculate on the identity of the person or persons who set off a bomb in my operation the other night,” he said. “That would be a waste of time—yours and mine.”

  It was as if he had set off his own bomb in the crowded room. No one was moving; they might have all stopped breathing. He swept the room again with eyes that seemed darker. “And I would never accuse anyone of doing something like that deliberately. You have a fine management staff here in Boston and capable union representation, and I’m confident they will work this situation out. When I came in, your manager was talking to you about how incidents like this can affect people’s jobs, people who had nothing to do with what happened. That doesn’t seem right, does it?”