High-Altitude Praise for
the Novels of Lynne Heitman
TARMAC
“Truly excellent…the best white-knuckle ride I’ve taken in a long time!”
—Lee Child,New York Times bestselling
author ofWithout Fail
HARD LANDING
“Dead-on…expose[s] how both a major airline and major airport really work.”
—Jeremiah Healy, author of
SpiralandThe Only Good Lawyer
“An edge-of-your-seat thriller that sweeps you up and carries you along for the ride.”
—Lisa Gardner
“[Heitman] gives us an insider’s view of how airlines deal with routine (and not so routine) problems in customer relations, labor, and management…. Heitman leads Alex on a lively dance while avoiding the obvious clichés. This is a debut novel, but I like it because it is also a good novel.”
—The Boston Globe
“Hard Landinggoes down easy, and will keep you guessing—and flipping pages—till threeA.M. ”
—John J. Nance, author ofBlackout
“Fasten your seat belt—this story, written by an industry insider, is exciting from start to finish.”
—American Way
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
AnOriginal Publication of POCKET BOOKS
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2004 by Lynne Heitman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-7434-9946-8
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Prologue
HE DIDN’T LIKE TOUCHING HER, BUT SOMETIMEShe couldn’t help himself. He would start out with both hands clamped to the bottom of his seat. He would keep them there as long as he could, until both arms shook with the effort of his resistance. When he could fight it no more, one hand would slide over and entangle itself in her long, silky hair. Then the other, and, before he knew it, he was guiding her with both hands through the rough rhythm his body craved. Not that she needed much guidance. For someone so young, she was preternaturally gifted at reading a man’s desires and anticipating his needs.
After he finished, he would leave the chair and turn his back on her.
“Go wait for me out front,” he would say. “I’ll be right there.”
He would listen for the door to close before buckling his belt and zipping his fly. He would stand in front of the small mirror on the wall, smooth the hair on both sides, and wait until his breathing had slowed and his face had returned to its normal pinkish tint.
When he was ready, he would walk through the door and down the aisle, use his key to open the door, and take his place in the small, cramped booth. He would slide back the screen that separated the two of them and wait for her to begin.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”
Sometimes the sound of her voice would excite him again and distract him as he tried to listen to her recite her transgressions. She would talk about how she had cheated at school or said a mean thing about a friend behind her back. Sometimes she lied to her parents. Inevitably, there would be the pause. He would have to urge her gently to continue. She would tell him that she had been unclean. He would listen, he would assign her penance, he would say the prayers of absolution, and, with God working through him, he would bless her and forgive her her sins.
He would always leave her with the same thought. If she ever told anyone what he had made her do, she would go straight to hell.
Chapter
1
SHE LOOKED RIGHT AT ME.IWAS SURE OF IT.First her head whipped around. Her hair, blond and loose and foamy as the head on a latte, swept across her bare back. I was freezing and miserable in my rental car. Had been for almost two hours. How could she be standing on the sidewalk looking so comfortable and so damned elegant in a strapless silk cocktail dress? But then, that’s how hookers are paid to look. Her shoulders turned next. They were battleship-wide, which they had to be to support the extravagant forward weight of what she carried out front. Her hips swung around, and finally the Jimmy Choo cha-cha heels upon which the whole package balanced. Perfect.
Smile, Angel.
I hit the button and let the camera run. It clicked and whirred for four or five exposures as I studied her face through the zoom lens. It was disconcerting, the way she stared in my direction, the way she bore down with an intensity so ferocious I was sure her eyes could see through the night, through the wrong end of the lens, and into mine.
But she couldn’t see me. I had chosen my parking space carefully—across the street, half a block down, parallel parked in a line of cars away from any streetlights.
As Angel stood and glared, the limo driver loitered respectfully to the side, holding the back door open for her. Eventually, the second subject, Sally, came swiveling out the door of the hotel and down the driveway. She put a hand on Angel’s shoulder, and they exchanged words. Sally apparently did not have her friend’s wary nature. She slipped right into the back of the limo, pausing long enough to extract a cigarette from her bag, which the diffident driver lit for her.
Without ever looking completely satisfied, Angel folded herself into the backseat, and I pulled the camera back inside the car, careful not to bump the horn. I wasn’t accustomed to the heavy weight and wide turning radius of the long lens. But I had to use it because, so far, I’d never been able to get close enough to capture anything useful without it.
I waited until the limo was off the hotel drive and on the street in front of me before clicking off a few shots of the license plate. The driver accommodated me nicely by slowing almost to a crawl. When his brake lights engaged, the camera was still in position in front of my face, which was why it took me longer than it should have to realize he was moving backward.Roaring backward. Motor-gunning, rubber-burning backward up the quiet street and toward me.
Oh, shit.
I dumped the camera on the seat and fumbled for the keys in the ignition. But the second I touched them, I knew, even if the driver didn’t block me in with his limo boat, there was no way I was getting that car out of that space in time to get away.
I grabbed my gear bag from the floor and threw it over the camera. I hooked my finger into the door latch and was about to pop it open when I remembered. Dome light. It would flash on when I opened the door, lighting me up like a beacon. I prayed for the switch to be in the vicinity of the light itself. I reached up. Prayer answered, but with a nasty twist. The switch hadthree settings. One would turn the light off completely. The other would turn it on. Which one?Which position?
No time left.
I braced myself and flicked the switch all the way over. Still dark. No light, either, when I opened the door and slithered through. I went out headfirst, activating the power locks on my way by. I landed on the curb just as the limo screeched up. I leaned against my door, barely able to hear anything over the sound of my heart whomping in my ears. I waited for the driver to step out and slam his door shut. When he did, I pushed on mine until it latched and locked.
Who knew a Lincoln would be built so low to the ground? The space between the curb and the car’s under-carriage was almost too narrow for me, and I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn�
�t built like Angel. I flattened out on my back and wriggled through. Barely. The driver was rounding the back of the car when I pulled the last appendage under the chassis.
The lower half of his legs and his shoes were all I could see, but that was plenty. From across the street, he had looked like an usher at a mob funeral. He paused on each side of the car, probably to peer through the windows. I lay there, sniffing the vehicle’s greasy underbelly and inhaling the limo’s carbon monoxide. My head was swimming from the toxic mix as he loitered on the side where I’d hidden the camera.
When he finally moved on, it wasn’t to the limo. He went to the car parked in front of mine and did the same casual, half-assed inspection, and I got the distinct feeling the impromptu search had been Angel’s idea and not his. Lucky me. If the driver had been slightly more invested, or perhaps a tad more limber, I might have found myself staring into his big, fleshy face instead of his muscular calves.
I stayed in my grimy pit until I heard the limo pulling out. I waited until I was sure it was gone. Then I had to stay down another few moments, long enough to fire up my circulatory system. I crawled out on the street side, which had more clearance. Smelling like oil and smeared with a thick layer of grit, I staggered to my feet and leaned against the car.
With my hands on my knees, I enjoyed a few deep breaths of nontoxic air and thought about Angel. I kept seeing her face, and her eyes, and the way she had fixed on my position and stared for no reason I could think of, except that she had a sixth sense, the one coyotes use to survive a hard life on the high plains. Or the one a leopard uses to stalk, attack, and tear the hide from its prey before the unlucky victim ever senses mortal danger. Angel was a pro. From everything I’d heard, she’d been at this game a long time. If I wanted to catch her, I’d have to quit acting as if this were my first case.
Even though it was.
Chapter
2
IRENE SURVEYED THE SIGHT IN FRONT OF USand shook her head.
“Being a flight attendant used to be so much fun.” She sighed.
It was the kind of bittersweet lament reserved for things that were loved and lost to the past. Like the first days of a new romance or the last days of blissful childhood, the airline business as we knew it had vanished. It was never coming back.
The two of us stood at the head of the concourse, staring at the OrangeAir security checkpoint. It was morning rush hour in Pittsburgh, so the operation had the frantic quality of an earthquake response. Everyone talked at once, trying to be heard over the whine of the machinery. The X-ray belts cycled constantly. The magnetometers went off regularly, each alarm adding to the number of bored/angry/confused passengers that waited like an army of scarecrows for an individual wand search.
“Thank God we’re in uniform,” was all I could say as we cut to the front of the line and flashed our airline IDs. I waited for Irene to pick her queue and then jumped into one that was guaranteed to take longer.
As expected, she triggered the alarm as she passed through the metal detector. Airports all over the country had dialed up the sensitivity on the magnetometers, and we never failed to trip them. It was the multitude of buttons on our uniforms, which meant every OrangeAir employee all over the United States made them go off every time he or she passed through. It seemed needlessly inefficient to me, but then, I was no longer in charge of an airport operation. I was no longer in charge of much of anything.
To my relief, Irene slipped through with only a quick pass of the wand. She was cleared before I had even begun digging out my laptop and my cell phone. When it appeared she was intent on waiting for me, I dropped my phone and kicked it under the X-ray machine. Down on my hands and knees to retrieve it, I motioned to Irene across the great divide. “You should go on. I’ll be here a while.”
“Okay. I’ll see you onboard.”
When she was well out of sight, I pulled the camera equipment from my bag and sent it through on the belt. The agent monitoring the X ray called over a supervisor, who took one look at the gear in my bucket and let out a weary sigh.
“What is this for, ma’am?”
“I’m a photography buff.”
He hoisted the long lens and studied it. Then he studied me. “What do you need this for?”
“Close-ups. I’m a bird watcher.”
“Uh-huh.” He tipped his head back and looked down at me through narrowed eyes, and I knew I was one more irritation on a shift that didn’t need any more. “Step over here if you will, please.”
It would have been so much easier if I could have just checked the equipment through, but that would have been a guaranteed way to blow my cover. Real flight attendants never checked baggage when they worked. Any flight attendant would tell you a good one can circle the globe twice on the items that could fit into the space of a single carry-on bag, and still have room for souvenirs. But then, as I was demonstrating almost daily, I wasn’t a very good flight attendant.
I was through the gauntlet and headed down the concourse when I heard the sound of my name.
“Alexaaaandra.”
Tristan’s voice rang out over the communal airport mumble. I turned to find him. He was easy to spot since he was traveling, as he often did, at the center of a rolling circus. Today, as always, he was the ringmaster, the obvious instigator, and the lone male, leading a posse of women who were many sizes, shapes, and colors but had one thing in common: they liked to laugh. Riotously.
I waved and stepped outside the swiftly moving current of travelers to wait for him. There were half hugs and air kisses all around as he parted from the group. The women headed down a separate concourse. Tristan trundled my way, dragging his bag behind him. Tristan was so elegant he even trundled gracefully.
“Where were you last night?” He greeted me with my very own smooch on the lips, and we rejoined the march toward the departure gates. We were working the same trip home. “Reenie and I looked all over for you. We were worried.”
His concern was genuine. During my assignment, I’d flown with an overwhelming majority of women, but it turned out that Tristan McNabb, a gay man, was the person with whom I had bonded most quickly. That also made him the person I had to lie to most often.
“I unplugged the phone and went to bed early.”
“Then why do you look so tired?” He turned to look at me more closely, doing a quick inspection of my face as we moved. “Getting overtired is not good for your skin. I’ve told you that. You need a facial.”
“I can’t afford facials. I’ve told you that.”
“That’s like saying you can’t afford food. Where’s Reenie? Have you seen her yet this morning?”
“She’s already onboard.”
“Not likely.” Just as he did, I caught sight of the steady stream of passengers coming off our aircraft, which had obviously arrived late. Irene had to be in the departure lounge somewhere. I spotted the back of her head. “Over there.” We threaded our way through the arriving and departing passengers to join her at a far grouping of seats by the window.
“Hello, Reenie, dear.” Tristan had to lean over to give Irene her good morning kiss. She had settled into one of the seats in the lounge to work on a knitting project. Tristan reached down to get a closer look. “Please don’t tell me this is more dog attire. Knitting is so terribly banal to begin with, but knitting for a dog—”
“Do not make fun of my babies. They require a lot of attention. Even more than you.” Her tone conveyed just what an incredible concept that was.
Irene was a rescuer of basset hounds, someone who took in lost and battered pooches. She also ate brown rice, wore leather sandals as big as snowshoes, and wouldn’t buy self-adhering stamps because it was bad for the environment. When she wasn’t working, she favored baggy shorts and T-shirts with meaningful logos, an amusing contrast to her work self, where she was one of the more proper wearers of the uniform. It reminded me of how little we know of each other just from what we can see.
“Reenie, what i
s the name of that Indonesian restaurant we always go to on Saint Martin? I was trying to recommend it the other day, and I couldnot think of the name.”
“I never remember stuff like that,” she said. “I just go where you take me.”
“Yes, you do remember. I know you do.” Tristan settled into the seat next to his friend.
While they chatted, I stood back against the window and scanned the terminal, a habit I had acquired when I had managed my own operation. Back then, I had been looking for anything out of the ordinary, any problem about to emerge that could disrupt the day’s smooth exchange of aircraft in and aircraft out. I had a different purpose now. I was looking for any of the targets of my investigation, but most especially the tall blonde with the fulsome physique and the predator’s eyes. I knew she would be here somewhere. She was on a layover, just as we had been.
“Reenie, it’s the place where we sit outside on the screened-in porch. They serve the dinner in courses on those little plates that look like soap dishes.”
“I know the one you’re talking about, T. I just don’t remember the name.”
She was four gates down. I spotted her with two other women: Sally, the blonde she had been with in the limo the night before, and Sylvie Nguyet, a French-Vietnamese woman—girl, really—whose picture I also had in my hooker files at home. Taller by a head, Angel stood next to them like a great marble statue, a Venus de Milo with arms and a bombshell silhouette that made her two pals look downright wispy.
“Tristan, come here.”
“What?”
“I want to ask you something.” He was my absolute best source for what I needed to know. The prostitution ring was an open secret among flight attendants, but still a secret. Most would talk about it only in private, and none would talk about it with someone as new as I was. Tristan was the exception. He shared freely with me, partly because we were friends, partly because he liked to show off what he knew, and partly because he was an incorrigible gossip.
First Class Killing Page 1