Dead Line

Chapter Thirty

I got to Logan Airport in a new record time, which I reminded myself to call into the newspapers for my appropriate award. I parked, and bolted into Terminal B, where American Airlines is located. I checked the monitors to see what was leaving in the next thirty minutes or so — flights to Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, San Juan, and then I saw it: West Palm Beach, the nearest airport to his old retirement house.

I tried walking through security but was nearly arrested, hog-tied, and strip-searched because I didn’t have a ticket. “Looking for a friend,” I explained, and was told, in no uncertain terms, to take a flying leap, just not on one of their planes.

So I ran up to the counter, which was gloriously free of people, and told the nice middle-aged woman that I needed a one-way ticket.

“Where?”

Straight to hell. But with no time for any of my asides, I said, “West Palm Beach.”

“Everything’s full on that flight but first class.”

“I’ll take it.” Peter Martin would think this was absolutely hilarious.

She ticketed me with a jarring amount of efficiency and I was off. My good friends at security weren’t exactly thrilled to see me coming through. I had to remove my shoes and my belt, then flap my arms like a falcon. I think they were about to make me recite the first two paragraphs of the Gettysburg Address when their supervisor showed up on the scene and they abruptly let me go.

I was jogging down the concourse, past the food court with the standard Cinnabon and Sbarro shops, when I heard the announcement over the public address system: “This is the pre-boarding call for American Airlines Flight 528 for West Palm Beach, first-class passengers and Advantage Gold, Advantage Platinum and Advantage Executive Platinum are invited to board at this time.”

The good news is that I could get on the plane if I wanted. The bad news is, I wasn’t going anywhere, even though there was probably never a better time to try to escape this nightmare that had become my life. It occurred to me during my trot that less than a week ago, when Elizabeth was leaving, I probably should have been doing the same thing, running down the concourse, begging her not to leave. The problem was, I really didn’t want to stop her and she didn’t want to be stopped. So there you go.

As I approached the waiting lounge for the Palm Beach flight, I slowed down to a walk and took a hard look around. A small line had formed at the door, and the several dozen people in the seats were putting away newspapers and magazines, slipping belongings back into their duffel bags, and checking seat assignments on their boarding passes. A quick survey didn’t reveal Hank Sweeney, a tough guy to miss.

I walked through the heart of the lounge, up and down the little rows that separated the attached seats, peering, searching, hoping, praying. Still nothing.

The public address announcer said, “We’ll start by boarding from the rear of the plane. Anyone sitting in rows 25 and higher—25 and higher.”

That’s when it occurred to me that I could have this all wrong. Maybe he was flying somewhere else, to Chicago or on vacation to Puerto Rico or maybe out to see a distant cousin on the West Coast. Maybe Sweeney wasn’t leaving at all. Maybe he was picking someone up, and was standing back at security waiting. Or maybe he wasn’t going or meeting or waiting or avoiding. Maybe this was all a giant mind-fucking, for me, by me.

No time to assess the psychological morass that was allegedly my mind. I started walking briskly farther down the concourse, to check other flights, hopefully to find Sweeney lounging in a chair with his face in the sports section of the morning Record wondering how it was that the Red Sox folded up like tin foil for the upteenth season in a row.

And that’s when I saw him. He came lumbering out of a men’s room with that bearlike gait of his, one side of his body pushing forward, then the other, his head down, his barrel chest out, enormous, not fat. He was heading right for me along the wide, carpeted hallway, a small duffel bag over his shoulder and a magazine — a Sports Illustrated, I believe — in his left hand. I stopped and stood in his path, something he wouldn’t have noticed because he never looked ahead, not when he was walking, anyway.

When he was on me, he sensed me, stopped short and mumbled, “Excuse me.”

“You’re not excused.”

He looked up, his big brown eyes tired but surprised. “Jesus, son, what the hell are you doing here?”

Always calling me son, ever since I sat with him on his cheap plastic furniture on his overheated patio in Marshton, Florida, a couple of years before, and he helped me about as much as anyone has ever helped me, putting his pension on the line, his reputation, eventually his life.

It’s a cliché to say it, but I did anyway: “I was wondering the same thing about you, Hank.”

We stood face-to-face in the busy concourse, with businessmen lugging briefcases and tourists with knapsacks and rolling luggage swarming past us in each direction, places to be, people to see, while both Hank and I were inextricably stuck in a moment that neither of us wanted or probably fully understood.

He recovered some from his state of startle, and said in that softer, whiskeyed voice of his, “Ah, just heading down to Marshton to spend a little time at home and do some maintenance on the house. Make sure everything’s okay, you know?”

No, I didn’t, actually. “Home’s here, Hank. Always has been, always will be. You know that, and so do I.”

He averted his eyes, looking down, and shuffled his feet like a little boy.

“Rows 10 and higher,” the public address announcer said from behind me, the voice echoing through the hall, “10 and higher to West Palm Beach.”

“I’m row 16,” Hank said, and he let those words hang out there, meaningless and meaningful at the same time.

“Why are you leaving?”

He shuffled his feet some more, like a pitcher waiting for the manager to walk from the dugout to the mound to pull him out of the game. He kept his gaze downward and said, “Son, I’m old. I thought I could make a comeback, in my career, in my life.”

He paused, still looking at the old sneakers that he wore on his feet, or maybe at the bluish commercial carpet that adorned the floor.

“But history catches up to you. Time catches up to you. You can’t escape the past, even if you don’t think the past was really all that bad.”

Another pause. The announcement sounded, “All rows. All rows on American Airlines Flight 528 to West Palm Beach.”

“So it’s time for me to go back to where I belong, sitting in a lounge chair, listening to baseball games on a transistor radio, tending a garden. Maybe I’ll take up golf.”

He paused again. His face got tight around his jaw. His voice, already uncharacteristically narrow, grew almost reedy. He added, “Son, it’s time for me to go.”

This wasn’t much of an answer, so I asked again, “Why are you leaving?”

This time, he looked me square in the eye and said without hesitation, “To preserve my dignity. To not lose the respect of people I like. To save myself and every other thing that I worked for.”

I sighed heavily. A plane must have just pulled in from some distant place, because a fresh torrent of people were making their way past us on their way to baggage claim.

“This is the final boarding call for Flight 528 to West Palm Beach. All seats, all rows.”

He stood still, and so did I. I told him, “I need your help, Hank. I think I caused a woman to die.”

“It wasn’t your fault, son.”

“You know that?”

“I know it wasn’t your fault.” His voice grew softer, more familiar. As I’ve said, I’d only met Hank two years before, less even, but had the sense that I’d known him forever. He was dead serious in some endeavors, like solving murder cases, slightly comic in most others, one of these guys who knew that life was something of an unfolding gag, got the jokes, and wasn’t afraid to laugh at all the appropriate lines. There were times when you wanted to hug him rather than shake his hand, he was that kind of guy, times when you could just sit with him in the front seat of a car on a stakeout that would probably lead to nowhere and talk about nothing for two hours, and somehow, some way, the time would seem to fly.

People who I’ve known for just a couple of years are people who I would never describe as friends. They’re acquaintances, maybe on the waiting list for friendship, if time bears our relationship out. My friends are people who have been around for the longer part of forever. Except Hank. He was a friend from the moment I first knocked on his screen door.

“Hank, tell me why you’re leaving.”

He readjusted the shoulder strap of his bag. He shook his head, slowly and sadly. “You’ll know in due time,” he said, staring down again.

“I need to know now.”

“I’ve got to go, son. I’ve really got to go.”

“Guy walks into a bar, Hank. It’s the first line of a joke, unless it’s you walking into Toby Harkins’s old place in Southie. Why’d you do that?”

“I’ve got to go.”

And he began walking, slowly, around me. I turned and kept pace.

“Hank, don’t do this.”

He looked at me as he walked and said, “Son, I’ll tell you this. Be very, very careful about who you trust, in life, but especially on this story.”

With that, he started walking faster. I looked ahead and saw that the door to the jetway was still open, a young man in one of those inevitably unflattering polyester uniforms standing in front of it. He glanced at his watch, the young man did, took a last look around the empty lounge, and began to shut the door. Hank yelled out, “One more.”

He headed toward the door. I thought about following him right through it, right down the plank and onto the plane, but then I’d be stuck in Florida while my life in Boston was coming apart at the seams. Actually, tell me what’s wrong with that scenario again?

So I stopped. Hank called over his shoulder, “Be very careful.” He handed the attendant his boarding pass and ambled through the door without ever looking back. I stood watching in a sad state of shock, watching as the young man flicked the door shut, watching as a foot appeared and the door bounced backward a little bit, watching as the figure of Hank reemerged. He told the persnickety little airline worker that he was sorry, he needed ten seconds, and he’d be right back.

He walked over to where I was standing and handed me a manila folder. “Here,” he said. “You’ll make better use of this than I did.” Then he turned and went back through the door.

I stood watching as he walked through the door and down the ramp. Hank Sweeney, friend and confidant, was inexplicably gone.