by Mitch Silver
The pilot came on the intercom. “Folks, as many of you know, we’ve had a medical emergency in the second cabin. Air traffic control has cleared us for an immediate landing. Flight attendants, please prepare for landing and cross-check.”
Amy heard it, but the only thing that registered was “cross-check.” What was cross-check? Her brain had shifted from Blank into Numb. If she just thought stupid thoughts and kept looking out the window as the ground came up toward them, it might be possible to block out the fact that she was sitting next to a large, gray, drooling dead man. A man who was supposed to have been protecting her.
Hands reached in and fastened her seat belt for her. Hands shoved her carry-on things under the seat in front of her and took her still uncleared-away lunch tray along with Sheridan’s. Hands with long graceful fingers; a black woman’s hands.
Almost immediately the plane bumped down a couple of times on the tarmac and the air brakes came on. Despite another announcement from the cockpit about keeping their seats, panicked passengers were already in the aisle, grabbing their bags as Delta flight 106 taxied to the gate.
When the plane finally rolled to a halt, Amy could see the Jetway swinging out to meet them. Now it was a woman’s voice on the intercom, with a broad midwestern accent. “Deplaning passengers are requested to follow the instructions of Airport Security upon leaving the Jetway. Due to our”—she paused for just a moment—“to our medical emergency, authorities have requested that you be detained for a short period of time. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience.” This last sentence was all but drowned out by the groans from the passengers, which only grew louder as the woman went on to say, “Delta Airlines recognizes that you had a choice of air carriers today. And we appreciate your choosing Delta. Oh, and welcome to New York.”
It took an agonizingly long time for the line of passengers to shamble toward the exit. When the aisle had cleared enough for her to get out, Amy climbed over the dead man’s body without looking at him. It was too awful. His lifeless legs were splayed under the row of seats ahead and she didn’t dare step on him. Now to get her stuff. Leaning back across Sheridan’s body and keeping her eyes toward the front of the plane, she reached under the seat and gathered up her things.
Just ahead of her, Siobhan Farrell, blocked by the bottleneck of coach passengers, was waiting impatiently for the aisle to clear so she could make her way up to the galley with the two stacked lunch trays she was holding. Amy followed her up the aisle.
You’re supposed to miss a lot when your mind’s on Numb. Amy missed the detective getting on the plane. She became aware of his presence when he stopped the tall black hostess just before she reached the galley. “Sorry, ma’am, but what’s with the trays?”
She looked a little flustered to Amy. “Just clearing up.”
The look on the man’s face said a black person with an Irish brogue didn’t compute. “Sorry. Nobody clears anything until the ME gets here.”
The flight attendant tried to push past him. “I have a job to do.”
“Me too. Sorry.” Lt. Gerard Pinsky of the New York Police Department/JFK Division—according to the badge clipped to his suit jacket pocket—was the kind of short, stocky man who would have looked at home behind a deli counter. So far he was three for three on sentences with the word “Sorry.” That might have been all Amy would know about him if he hadn’t put his two hands on the food trays and wrested them away from the determined Ms. Farrell. As he did so, he loosened her grip and inadvertently tilted the trays just enough so the thing that had been wedged between them dropped onto the bulkhead seat.
It was Amy’s manuscript.
“What’s this?” Detective Pinsky was looking at Siobhan Farrell, who was already saying, “One of the passengers must have forgotten—” when Amy interrupted her.
“It’s mine.” Amy shifted a little toward the other woman. “You saw me reading it. Twice. Once in business and once back there.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Greenberg. I served a lot of people today. In the confusion…” She really was an awful liar.
Pinsky shifted his focus to Amy. His eyes were two different shades of brown. “And you—you’re a medical doctor?”
“PhD. Dr. Amy Greenberg.” Her voice sounded like a croak. There was no air in the plane.
“Show me some ID.” While Amy fished her passport out of her purse, Pinsky turned the manuscript over to the cover page. He asked Amy, “If this is yours, what’s it called?”
“Provenance. By I. Fleming.”
Satisfied, the detective seemed about to hand it over when he said, “That’s in the South of France, am I right?”
Amy stifled the urge to correct him, which was the second urge she was stifling at that moment. The other was to whack Siobhan Farrell as hard as she could and run outside where she could breathe. Instead she made herself say, “Look, Detective, I have to talk to you about this thing.”
He gave her the thick sheaf of papers. “A passenger died. I think that comes ahead of someone mistakenly taking your stuff. Don’t you?”
He had already lost interest in the manuscript. Amy put it in her computer bag. She had to get off the plane.
Chapter 35
She hadn’t taken her cell phone on the trip, so Amy had to wait in the cordoned-off departure lounge where they had been gathered until all the other technophobes had used the one pay phone to call their loved ones and describe in lurid detail the reason for their lateness. When she finally reached Scott’s cell, the group of passengers was already being herded to an employee lounge that had been cleared for them in the bowels of the terminal. She got his greeting, which was her own voice saying, “This is Scott Brown’s mother. He can’t come out and play. Please leave a message.” At the time, she’d thought it was hilarious. Now it seemed sad in a much-too-
Freudian way. Why the hell wasn’t he picking up? At the beep, she yelled, “Scott! The man sitting next to me on the plane…died! We’re being held at JFK. Are you still in New Haven? Can you come down to the city? I don’t want to make the trip alone! I’ll call again when I get a chance. Love you. Bye.”
She started to make a second call, to Susan at work, when a stubby male finger pressed the hook on the pay phone, disconnecting her. His exact words were, “One call, lady.”
The mechanics’ rest area had uncomfortable chairs, an out-of-order coffeemaker, illegal cigarettes piled up in illegal ashtrays, and a ladies’ room unfit for ladies. All of it added to Amy’s growing agitation. She didn’t want to read Fleming’s manuscript in front of the other passengers, so she contented herself with sketching their faces in her day planner.
Finally it was her turn. Pinsky and a colleague, a gray-haired cop named something unpronounceably Polish, had been taking statements from most of the passengers who’d been sitting in the coach section of the plane. Now they double-teamed her. Amy was ready for them.
“Look, Officers, someone’s trying to kill me.”
Pinsky seemed to be half listening. “And they got your fiancé instead? Is that your story?”
“My fiancé?”
Polish Cop butted in. “The deceased. Mr. Sheridan.” He read something from a leatherette flip pad. “You and your fiancé bought separate tickets. You made separate reservations. How come?”
“He’s not my fiancé. I met him on the plane.”
This statement made leatherette flip pads fly back and forth in both pairs of hands. Pinsky said, “At least a dozen witnesses heard the deceased call you his wife-to-be.”
His sidekick said, “His exact words were, ‘Two days to go. Prewedding jitters, I guess.’ ”
Amy waited for them to look up, but they kept flipping their pages of notes. She started in anyway. “My fiancé’s name is Scott Brown. I met Mr. Sheridan for the first time today sitting next to me on the plane. When I moved to the back row, he followed me. The wife thing—that was just his idea of a joke.”
Pinsky looked at her then. “Oh, unwanted advances.
I see.”
Polish Cop was still on the previous idea. “A lovers’ quarrel?”
Amy stood up. “Look, it wasn’t love. And it wasn’t a quarrel. The guy wanted to talk to me.”
Pinsky was solicitous. “Please sit down, Doctor. No need to get huffy. Okay, he was just some guy on the plane who wanted to talk to you. What about?”
Was this the time to get into the whole story? Ian Fleming and the Duke of Windsor? Rudolf Hess and von Ribbentrop? That some people she still knew only as “them” wanted her stack of now dog-eared papers enough to kill a CIA agent for it? “Look, Detective, Mr. Sheridan thought I was in danger. I am in danger. I have something somebody wants. And I guess he was killed trying to protect me.”
Amy wanted Columbo. What she got was the Keystone Kops. “Now that’s more like it.” Polish Cop actually licked his lips. He looked at Pinsky. “Mystery and intrigue at JFK!” He flipped to a new page in his pad and asked Amy, “This mystery and intrigue. Is it drug-related?”
“No, it’s not about drugs. I—”
“No? ’Cause we get a lot of drug stuff here.” Polish Something was like one of those oil tankers. Hard to turn around.
Amy would have said more, but a pimply guy came in with a report of some kind. He handed it to Pinsky. As the detective scanned it, Polish Cop tried to read over his shoulder. Pinsky saved him the trouble. “From the ME.”
Something in Detective Pinsky’s attitude had changed. “Dr. Greenberg, did you happen to notice what Mr. Sheridan had for lunch?”
Amy could see his fork pop-pop-popping as if it were still happening. “He had the beef.”
“And the vegetables?”
Were interrogations always this weird? “Potatoes. New potatoes. And green beans with some kind of nuts mixed in.”
“Peanuts?”
“Could have been. Look, I really need you to—”
Pinsky gave his wrist a little flick, closing his pad. The other detective did the same. Obviously, the interview was over.
Amy stammered, “What?”
Detective Pinsky got to his feet. “The medical examiner says Sheridan wore a MedicAlert bracelet. Allergic to peanuts. He probably died of that prophylactic shock.”
He held out his hand to Amy as he told Polish Cop, “No mystery. No bad guys. No murder.”
As far as Pinsky was concerned, Amy had ceased to exist. He turned and spoke more loudly to the other passengers in the lounge. “Thanks, folks. You’re free to go. Sorry to have held you up.”
Ten minutes later, as Amy stood in line for customs, she thought Gerard Pinsky was one sorry detective.
Chapter 36
Through a special arrangement with the U.S. Immigration Service, international passengers departing from Irish airports clear passport control before boarding their flights. So Amy and her fellow passengers were ushered directly into the customs hall at JFK. The line of people doubled back on itself, and the wait gave Amy time to dial down her anxiety and gather her wits. If Sheridan had really died from anaphylactic shock, then maybe this whole thing had been a crazy concoction of his. All she really knew about any danger was the e-mail he had sent her, and his alleged triumph in the Dublin men’s room over the German Kaltenbrunner. Maybe the champagne and the upgrade had been on the level; maybe the only plot was in Sheridan’s fevered brain.
Amy tried to talk herself into it. But the death of Mrs. O’Beirne in the paper—that had been real. And what kind of fool wears a MedicAlert bracelet and then wolfs down a meal obviously sprinkled with the very thing that can kill him?
As she inched closer to the customs lanes, Amy moved on to a more immediate problem. Should she declare the manuscript or not? In the panic on the plane, she’d forgotten to fill out the little white card declaring the value of items acquired abroad. What was Provenance worth? Seemingly quite a lot, to somebody. Should she declare it at all? Why risk anyone’s knowing what she had in her computer carrying case?
Don’t trust anyone.
She had reached the point where the line made its final serpentine turn toward the customs agents when she saw a face she recognized. It took a moment to register: it was that Englishman from the Dublin lounge, Brian Devlin. He was standing behind a Plexiglas barricade off to the left, waiting with the families of passengers and the limo drivers with their handwritten signs. And he was looking right at her.
How had he done that? He certainly hadn’t been on the plane. Don’t trust anyone. Amy hurriedly filled out her declarations card—including the scarf for Scott, which was duty-free anyway, but not the manuscript—and walked toward customs lane 21. It was only about thirty feet from the Plexiglas, but Amy never looked over there. She opened her computer bag for the inspector, who ignored the thick sheaf of papers and asked her to turn on her ThinkPad. When the man heard it buzz as it came to life, he took her form, stamped something, and was on to the next customer. So far, so good.
To get to the exit, arriving passengers have to pass through the Plexiglas partition. Amy looked up and saw on the back wall of the customs area what looked like a temporary sign that had been put up during some long-ago construction and never replaced. It had arrows pointing in opposite directions, one to the left marked “Terminal Exit” and the other for “International Transfers.” In smaller block letters underneath the arrow to the right were the words “Airline Business Lounges.” Not wanting to face anyone but Scott, Amy wondered if her business class ticket would allow her into the Delta lounge, even though her flight was over. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And she really had to pee.
Chapter 37
It was the first piece of good news for Amy in hours. An escalator took her to the Delta Crown Room, where the woman behind the desk told her that her upgraded ticket—never mind the fact that she had spent most of the flight in coach—gave her twenty-four hours of access. She was delighted to find that the ladies’ room was habitable and that next to the business center with its computers and copiers was a row of telephone cubicles, mostly empty.
Drinks at the bar were free. Amy got a Bloody Mary—for energy, she told herself—and parked herself in one of the cubicles. From where she sat, Amy watched a well-dressed businesswoman feed a little stack of papers into a copier. The machine spit them out and collated them faster than the woman had put them in. For a business traveler, the Delta Crown Room was nirvana.
This time Scott picked up on the first ring with “Sweetie, are you okay?”
Relief cascaded down her body. “Physically, yes. Mentally I’m a wreck. Where are you?”
“I’m coming down to get you.” Six wonderful words. “The Delta website showed you were delayed on the ground, so I did the terrifically gallant thing and jumped on the train. Must have been in a tunnel when you called before. This train is making every stop between New Haven and Grand Central. We’re just coming in to One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street.”
Help was on the way. The thought of it was better than Zoloft. She let Sheridan and Devlin and Pinsky recede a little into the background. She said, “No more trains. We need to buy a car. A nice car.” One, she thought, with locks on all the doors.
“We can’t afford a nice car. But maybe Mr. Bond can.”
Amy gave the little laugh that told Scott he was impossible. Wonderful but impossible.
Scott went on. “I’m sure someone will pay a packet if the story’s true…truly written by Ian Fleming. Look, grab a cab into the city and I’ll meet you at the Yale Club.”
“I’ll get there as soon as I can. Bye.”
In ten minutes, Amy was cooler, calmer, and definitely more collected as she headed for the exit, wheeling the overnight bag with her overstuffed computer case strapped to it. As plans go, hers wasn’t much. But it might be enough.
What were the odds there’d be a cab?
Chapter 38
It had been more than two hours since he’d ditched the mobile phone. Twenty minutes had been taken up with moving the car from one short-term parking place in t
he limo holding area to another, and the rest of it had been spent shifting from one foot to the other right here, watching Delta flight 106 on the Arrivals board go from On Time to Landing to Delayed to off the board entirely. And still no Amy Greenberg. The unexpected wait was killing him. He suddenly regretted not getting one of the New York people to do this, conveniently forgetting for a moment that he was doing this himself because there had already been too many loose ends. It was hot in this daft wig and mustache. You’d think an organization as well furnished with Irish-American cash as theirs could do better than a third-rate off-Broadway wardrobe mistress. The spirit gum on the mustache had been so globbed up, he’d had to scrape it off with his penknife and start again.
He checked himself for the umpteenth time in the mirrored reflection of the Altitunes music kiosk. The fool looking back at him resembled one of those pictures in the barbershop you were supposed to point to when you wanted a generic haircut. “Give me the Playboy. I want to look like a horse’s arse.”
Something else was wrong. Something about his limo driver kit was wrong. He looked again at the sign in his hand, black marker on white paperboard. It said, “Dr. Greenburg.” They’d spelled her name wrong!
Get hold of yourself, man. Just a misspelling. She must get that a lot. And since when do real limo drivers know how to spell? Still, if he’d have used a local…Or even better, one of the Dublin boys. Drive a car full of bombs without breaking a sweat, they could. Siobhan Farrell’s dad was one. One of the best, before the Constabulary had ambushed him. He could have waited for the target all day on one foot if he had to.
He knew the “compliments of the bank” ruse wasn’t going to keep working on this side of the Atlantic. But that didn’t particularly trouble him. He had always placed great faith in his improvisational ability, and the Greenberg woman’s delayed flight had given him another excuse to get her into the car. As long as she didn’t have someone meeting her, he was home and dry.