The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  “It’s on the concourse between E and F just on the other side of the security checkpoint. Look for the sushi bar in front. You can’t miss it.”

  I went to the concourse between E and F, located the sushi bar, and there it was—a hotel inside the airport. It struck me as almost too convenient. At most airports, you had to step out to the curb to catch the shuttle to the hotel, which afforded at least a few seconds of fresh air and natural light. Not here. Here the lobby doubled as part of the concourse. I worked my way through and landed at the cocktail lounge.

  It was roaring, not exactly what you’d expect at a bar at 2:20 in the afternoon, but then this was Miami International where people flew in and out from time zones all over the world. One man’s dawn was another man’s dusk. Phil Ryczbicki was perched on a tall stool at the bar, chatting with the bartender. He looked like a puffy frog on a tree stump. A frog sipping a martini. I set my backpack on the floor next to him.

  “Are you keeping office hours here, Bic?”

  The bartender looked at me as if I were the school principal and drifted away. “Heard you were flying in. Decided I could use a few belts.” Bic turned and peeked at me over one of his soft, sloping shoulders. “What’s it been… two years?”

  “More like three. Dare I ask how you knew I was coming?”

  “You don’t want to know, and I’ve got enough problems of my own without you dropping in.”

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Bic.”

  A few years and a few pounds hadn’t made Bic any more congenial. He was still five foot four, and no doubt still bitter about it, which was one of the things that made him so darned affable. Round as an onion and balding on top, his distinguishing feature was a giant blonde mustache that made him look like a whisk broom with eyes. He was a kick-the-tires kind of guy who had never come to terms with the concept of women running airport operations, and never would come to terms with the idea that some of them did it better than he did. Dealing with him was not always pleasant, but he was consistent and I’d figured out the key to him a long time ago—give him a way to take all the credit and cover his ass, and you were welcome to whatever was left over.

  “Dan Fallacaro sends his love,” I said. “He claims you dropped a damaged aircraft on him. What’s that all about?”

  He snorted. “He thinks my boys creased a B757 with a Cochran loader, closed it up, and sent it damaged to Logan.”

  “Did they?”

  “All I know is we both made our arguments and he got charged with the ding.”

  “You’re a master, Bic.”

  “I don’t make the rules, Alex. I learned to make them work for me. It’s all in how you present it.”

  The couple to his left settled up their tab and left. Bic patted the newly vacated cushioned stool next to his. “We have to talk,” he said.

  I scanned the room. The Florida sun shone brilliantly outside, but only a sickly version of it made it through the wall of heavy Art Deco blocks, just enough to make visible the blue haze of dust and cigarette smoke that lingered over the cushy black leather seating pits and low cocktail tables.

  “I’ll catch up with you later.” I reached down for my backpack and began to hoist it onto my shoulder. “I’m going down to claim my bag.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because your bag is on its way to Honolulu.”

  “What?” My backpack hit the floor and I worried, belatedly, about my laptop.

  “One of your pals in the Boston bag room misrouted it.”

  “That can’t be. I personally handed my bag to Dan, and he personally loaded it into the belly. It never even went through the bag room.”

  “Then someone went to a lot of trouble to fish it out and retag it.”

  I sagged against the bar and started to feel that hopeless, helpless feeling I hated so much. The most deeply frustrating part of being harassed by a group, especially one as tight and organized as the International Brotherhood of Groundworkers, was that the act was always anonymous. There was never any way to find the one who had scrawled the filthy graffiti on the door to your office. Or the one who had made seventeen hang-up calls to your home in the middle of the night. The person who had slashed your tires in the employee lot was never going to be identified. It was hit and run. It was guerrilla tactics. It was none of them and it was all of them and there was never anyone to stand in and engage the fight. The only real choice was to endure it. And after a time your skin thickened until you almost couldn’t feel anything, and your resolve hardened into a clenched fist, and it changed you. And then you had that to be angry about, too.

  A hint of a smile twitched the broom on Bic’s upper Up. “Are you enjoying this, Bic?”

  “I never enjoy a misrouted bag, not even yours. It means more work for me. I just can’t believe you checked a bag out of Boston. What were you thinking?”

  “Dan asked me to check it. It was a full flight and he wanted some overhead space for his paying customers. And I was thinking sooner or later the boys in the Boston bag room were going to have to get tired of screwing me over.”

  “Now, you see, there’s your problem. They will never forget what you did. Not in Boston, not anywhere. You’re on the shit list, and once you’re on, there’s no way off. My advice—never check another bag out of Logan. Maybe never check another bag on Majestic, period.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “One of my rampers downstairs gave me a heads up. He’s got a buddy up there who called to let the southeastern local in on the joke. I’ve already put out a tracer. If you’re lucky we’ll catch it before it leaves the mainland.”

  I immediately began trying to inventory what had been in my bag. All the unique, irreplaceable things—my oldest, softest pair of jeans that weren’t ripped, my Walkman and all my best running music, that cool little toothbrush holder I’d found at Target one day when I’d been shopping for shampoo. And there were all the things that seem so mundane until they’re gone—hair conditioner that I could find only at the shop in Boston where I got my hair cut. Face scrub. Underwear.

  “In the meantime”—Bic sat back and rested his little hands on his thighs—“we have to talk.”

  “All right, let’s talk. But not here. I make it a point never to breathe air I can see.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Have you considered your office as a place to conduct business?”

  “That’s the last place I want to be seen with you. Why do you think I met you in the bar? Where are you staying?”

  “Right here.”

  “How do you afford a place like this?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Fallacaro got you a discount, didn’t he?”

  He was right, but no need to confirm that. He turned to find his buddy the bartender. “Raymond… Ray, we’re going upstairs.”

  Glass in one hand, power spigot in the other, Raymond nodded in our direction. “You want a roadie, man? How about your friend?”

  Bic shook his head. He threw back the last of his martini, set the glass on the bar, and hopped off his stool. “Put it on my tab.”

  The Top of the Port was a combination snack bar, lounge, and health club on the roof of the hotel. A turquoise swimming pool refracted the sunlight, and a green running track wound around the perimeter of the deck. It was a quarter mile at most, but it had a nice surface—easy on the knees.

  I followed the track, walking around until I found the ramp-side view of the airport. We were high enough to see the entire ground operation, and the barely choreographed convergence of people, vehicles, and aircraft that made the whole thing go. That it worked as smoothly as it did never failed to amaze and enthrall me. A vast array of ground vehicles was on display—tugs, carts, push tractors, fuel pump trucks, catering and lav trucks, Bobcats, loaders, and buses. They flowed around the airplanes like tributaries around great, winged boulders. At that moment, the lineup for takeoff included an
Aeroflot B767 probably destined for Moscow, an airbus from Turkish Airlines that had to be headed for Istanbul, and an El Al B747 that was most certainly bound for Tel Aviv. Behind them, I could see the colors of Lan Peru, Iberia, Qantas, Sabena, and Surinam Airways.

  Bic stood and watched with me. We had our differences, but we shared one thing in common. I knew he could stand there as long as I could—which was a long time—and never lose interest.

  “Have you missed it?” he asked.

  I used my hand as a visor to watch the British Airways B747 lumber down the long runway. Just when it looked as if it might run out of concrete, it lifted off with impossible grace and climbed until it faded into the late afternoon sky. You could have carved the heart out of my chest and I wouldn’t have missed it more.

  “Not really.”

  He surveyed the deck. “Let’s go sit over there. Maybe if we sit out in plain sight someone will come up and serve us a drink.”

  We settled into a couple of molded plastic chairs beside a patio table. The breeze whispered across the deck. It ruffled the leaves of the potted plants and brought with it an odor so strong I could almost taste it. “What is that smell?”

  “Smoke,” he said. “Feels like the wind is starting to shift.”

  “Smoke from where?”

  “Wildfires.”

  I sat up straight and checked out the view of downtown Miami on the opposite side of the hotel. Hanging over the city was a yellowish gray haze that dulled the outlines of the buildings.

  “We came through that stuff on the way down, but I thought it was air pollution.”

  “We had to shut down the operation yesterday for over an hour,” he said. “Diverted almost fifty flights.”

  “Because of smoke?”

  “Our visibility was about two hundred yards.”

  “Where’s the fire?”

  “All around us,” he said. “Up north fifty thousand acres of the Okefenokee Swamp is on fire. This smoke comes from a big fire in the Everglades.” He sniffed the air. “This is not bad. Wait until the wind picks up.”

  There was something eerie about the acrid smell, the way it clung to your hair and made your skin feel grainy. There was something unsettling about the way the smoke flattened and diffused the light from the sun, making everything that had been bright dull and dirty. It made my eyes burn—not much of an improvement over the bar.

  “What do you want, Bic?” I knew he would be blunt with me, so I figured I’d jump in first.

  “I want you to turn around and go back to Boston. I’ll forward your bag when it turns up.” His tone was even, his expression hidden behind that mustache and a pair of trendy narrow sunglasses he’d produced from his suit jacket. Mine were on their way to Oahu—without me.

  I settled back into my lounge chair and put my feet up. This was going to be one of those unpleasant conversations. “Do you even know why I’m here?”

  “Don’t know and don’t care.” That didn’t sound right. Bic had a reason for every ounce of energy he expended. He wouldn’t have bothered with even seeing me if he hadn’t had good reason. “People around you tend to have bad luck,” he said. “I don’t want to be one of them.”

  “Does Bobby Avidor work for you?”

  “Why?”

  “You know, that wouldn’t be hard to verify, Bic. You could save us both a lot of energy by answering the easy ones, and fighting only on the hard ones.”

  “Yes, he works for me.”

  “And is he running drugs out of your station?”

  “That would be a hard one, right?” He dropped his head back to let the sun fall on his face. “Who told you that?”

  “Unidentified sources.”

  “Ramp rats in Boston.”

  “Reliable sources who relayed to me what appears to be common knowledge on the ramp in Boston.”

  “Let’s say he was. Why would that be any business of yours?”

  “Because a friend of mine came down here to meet him and went home in a box. I’d like to find out what Bobby knows about that.”

  “John McTavish was a friend of yours?”

  “He was.”

  “I didn’t think you had any friends on the ramp up there,” he said.

  “And you know more than you’re saying.”

  “We shipped his body home last week. My station productivity has gone into the crapper ever since. No one around here can talk about anything else.”

  “Gee, what bad form for John to get himself murdered in your city. So what about Avidor?”

  “He’s not running coke out of here. Bob Avidor comes in, he does his job, and he never causes me any problems. And as far as any involvement with McTavish, the police have checked him out on that, and they’ve cleared him. So you’ve got nothing, except to say he’s an asshole. As far as I know, there’s no law against that.”

  “How can you be so sure about him?”

  “You’re not listening to me. If he was a bad guy, I would know, and I would take care of him myself. But I don’t need you here, and I sure don’t want you here.”

  The breeze came up again, stronger this time, and I thought I could feel the temperature dropping.

  “You know, Bic, all this strenuous protesting is giving me the idea that you don’t want me to look because you know there is something to be found.”

  He sat up as abruptly as his portly shape would allow and planted both feet on the cement. “Look, I’ve got nothing against you personally. From what I hear, that guy you killed up there was a piece of shit and he deserved to be dead.”

  “I didn’t kill him. He got killed all by himself.” I felt my voice flatten until it was all sharp edges. “And he was a murderer hell-bent on killing me, too.”

  “Whatever. He was a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Groundworkers. He’s dead, they blame you, and not just in Boston. They all hate you and they always will. There are assholes that aren’t even been born yet who are going to join this union and hate you for what they think you did. That’s how strongly they feel.”

  “What are you suggesting, that I crawl under a rock and hide?”

  “I don’t care what you do. I just want you to do it someplace besides Miami. I have a good relationship with my local. I’m on track for a promotion to VP, and I don’t want you screwing it up. They’ve already been in to tell me if I do anything to help you, they’re going to call a wildcat strike.”

  That was the motivation right there. Even the slightest hint of labor unrest would be enough to get Bic up off his ass and into my face. “Well”—I reached up and rubbed my temples. This was sounding all too familiar—“I hope you told them to go pound sand.”

  “What I told them was to get their butts back to work and never threaten me again. What I’m telling you is if you’ve got something on Bob besides ramp rat rumors, I’ll nail his balls to the wall. But if you don’t, keep your mouth shut because there’s no way in hell I can defend myself against gossip and innuendo. You should know that better than anyone.”

  He stood up and shook out his pant legs so they weren’t bunched up around his thighs. “You want to talk to Avidor, go ahead. Knock yourself out. He can take care of himself. But just Avidor. You want to talk to anyone else who works for me, you tell me first. And stay out of my operation. I’m not going to let you do to me what you did to yourself in Boston.”

  I watched him walk around the swimming pool and disappear into the hotel. After he’d been gone for a few minutes, I got up and watched a few more planes take off. This time they disappeared much faster after lifting off, swallowed up by the haze that had blown in, thickened the sky, and turned a beautiful sunny day to shit.

  Chapter Five

  C’mon, don’t pick up. Keep ringing, phone, and roll me into voice mail.

  Paul Gladstone’s line was ringing at the other end and I was moving as best I could around my hotel room, which was basically a bed with four walls around it. The room did not benefit from the huge print o
n the bedspread—big, tropical flowers with blooms drawn in broad, looping strokes of pink and purple, yellow and lime green. At least it was a queen-sized bed. I chose to feel good about that.

  By the third ring, I was thinking I was home free, mentally scripting the message I would leave for my future boss. “I tried to reach you,” I’d say. “I hate leaving this message in voice mail, but since we’re having so much trouble connecting—”

  “Paul Gladstone.”

  Damn. I cleared the disappointment out of my throat. “Hello, Paul. This is Alex.”

  “Alex!” He sounded truly delighted to hear from me. “How are you?”

  “You’re working late tonight.” I glanced at my watch, even though I didn’t have to. I’d purposely waited until after nine o’clock in Detroit, hoping I would miss him. Again.

  “I’m trying to keep my head above water. Where are you?”

  “I’m in Miami.”

  “One last fling before the grind? Good for you.”

  “Not exactly. Listen, Paul—”

  “Before I forget, we’ve got a couple of meetings on your calendar for next week. I should let you know… let me just find…” I heard the sound of keys clicking. “I thought…” More keys clacking. I stood up and started to pace. “I guess they’re not on my calendar since you’re going in my place.” He chuckled. “That would make sense. How about this? I’ll have my secretary give you a call when she gets in tomorrow morning.”

  “Paul, I’m not going to be able to make it in by Monday.”

  There was the tiniest pause, long enough for me to think about how long I had been without a paycheck. “That might not be a problem,” he said. “I don’t think the first meeting is until Wednesday afternoon. If you can get here by then—”

  “I won’t make it by Wednesday.”

  I could feel him going still at the other end of the line. He was listening more carefully now. The pause was longer and heavier. “How much time do you need?”

  “I think a week will do it.”

  “Is everything all right?”