First Class Killing

Chapter 2

IRENE SURVEYED THE SIGHT IN FRONT OF US and 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 is 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.

“Is that Sylvie over there with those other two women?”

He peered down the concourse. “Oh, Lord, it is, Reenie. And she’s standing with the Dairy Queen herself.”

“Be nice, Trissy.” Irene, on the other hand, had no use for gossip. She wanted to set an example, she always said, for her thirteen-year-old daughter.

“Dairy Queen?” I was confused. “Do you mean Angel?”

“Angela.” Tristan lounged back against the window with me. “No matter what she calls herself, her name is Angela.”

“Is Dairy Queen a mammary reference?”

He laughed. “That works, too, but no. She’s trailer trash from the side of a one-lane West Texas dirt highway, out where they have Dairy Queens at every other mile marker. She should be working at one of them serving up chocolate-dipped soft-serve ice cream in Styrofoam cones instead of trying to be one of us.”

“That is such a mean thing to say.” Irene finished a row, turned her needles, and started on the next.

“You know it’s true.”

Angel, Sally, and Sylvie gathered their gear and rolled through their boarding door and out of sight. According to the monitor, they were bound for La Guardia and then probably home to Boston, like us.

I shifted my attention to Tristan. “That’s an interesting perspective for someone who hails from the great state of Wyoming. At least Texas has Neiman-Marcus.”

“I beg your pardon.” He raised his chin in mock indignation. “Angela is trash because of what she is, not because of where she came from.”

“She should get involved in Toastmasters.” Irene looked up to find us both staring at her. “I think it would help her. It would certainly help build her self-confidence. Have you ever heard her try to give a PA? It would make her a better flight attendant.”

“Honey, Angelina might need to learn how to read, but she does not need any more confidence, and she certainly does not need to be a better flight attendant. She makes her money on her back.”

Irene sniffed. “Those are just rumors, Trissy. You shouldn’t spread them.”

He shook his head. “Go back to your knitting and purling, sweetie pie. We’ll let you know when the conversation turns to beagles or Birkenstocks.”

“Bassets,” she corrected. “Basset hounds.”

“What-ever.”

I checked the area. The only people near enough to hear were a man on a cell phone and a young woman reading a paperback. Still, I lowered my voice. “Are you saying she’s one of the hookers?”

“Angela is not one of them; she’s the queen bee. The madam. The übertramp.”

“I thought they were all just freelancers.”

“They were, until Angela came along and turned a ragtag bunch of disorganized whores into a lean, mean fucking machine. Sounds like the story line for a Broadway play, doesn’t it?Send in the Whores? Don’t Cry for Me, I’m a Hooker?”

“Tristan.” Irene did her own check around the lounge. “All you’re doing is encouraging a nasty and unfair stereotype. It’s like saying all Italians are mobsters, or all Muslims are terrorists.”

“If the Manolo Blahnik fits…”

“You have no proof.”

“That’s the nice thing about gossip, Reenie. The standard of proof is so very low.”

“For all you know, youare the source of all these rumors.”

“Tell me this. If you’re a flight attendant making forty thousand dollars a year, how do you afford a condo at the Ritz?”

“The Ritz?” He was teasing Irene and clearly delighting in it, but I was the one hanging on every word. Oh, for a microcassette, or at least a pad and pencil. “The new Ritz-Carlton?”

“Angela has a two-bedroom. Not even a one-bedroom or a studio, although I doubt they even have studios in those buildings. Do you know what she paid? Just under two million. That’s more than twelve hundred per square foot.”

“How do you-”

“Barry.”

“Oh, right.” I had forgotten his partner was a real estate agent in the city. “Is that a lot for that area?”

“No, but that’s beside the point. It’s a lot for a flight attendant, especially one who already owns a cottage on the Cape, where she keeps her second car, her Hummer.”

“Maybe,” Irene said, “she has another source of income.”

“She does, dear, and I just told you what it is.”

“Another source besides…what you’re saying.”

“No one seems to be able to locate any other source of income. Ditto for her slut posse. Sally and Sylvie and Claudia and Ava and the rest. You can often find them at the spa or working out at the LA Sports Club. Or having lunch in Paris.”

We all heard the boarding door at our gate close, which meant the aircraft was ready for us. It was time to pack up and go.

“You’re jealous.” Irene wrapped her doggie sweater around the needles and put the whole thing into her World Wildlife Fund tote bag.

Tristan stood up straight, shook out his slacks, and smoothed his jacket. “I’m quite happy with my life, at long last. Have you heard the latest rumors?”

He asked it in a way that was irresistible. I couldn’t wait to hear the answer. In spite of herself, neither could Irene. We shuffled a little closer together. “What,” she asked, “is the latest rumor?”

“Angela is trying to start up a West Coast shop. My sources tell me there are at least ten dirty girls on the transfer list to LA.”

This was news to me. “Is Angel herself on the transfer list?”

“Not that I’ve heard. She must be sending some minion of hers out there. Can you believe it? The woman has no shame.”

We were now at the point in our ongoing conversation on the subject where I was better off keeping my mouth shut. And yet…

“I still don’t understand why you don’t turn these women in.”

They both turned to blink at me. “Alexandra, you are so management. We’ll have to work on you.”

“You should talk. You were a flight services supervisor once.”

“That was temporary insanity, and it was only two years.” He squinted at me. “You spent, what…fourteen…sixteen years?”

“Fourteen.”

“I’m a union officer, Alexandra. My job is to protect union members, not help management fire them. They tried to terminate a bunch of them last year, but we got them all back.”

Irene found that amusing. “You’re full of baloney. They came back because the company couldn’t prove anything. They never can. That’s why they go on and on.”

“Would you defend these women,” I asked, “even if the company could prove their case?”

“Of course I would.” Tristan put a fatherly arm around my shoulders. “You’re union now. When you’re union, you stick together, no matter what. They might be hookers, but they’re our hookers.”

He glanced at Irene, who was already on her way. I glanced at Tristan, my friend, who had just declared himself my sworn enemy. I filed it with all the other bridges to be crossed when I got there. Right now, I had to serve cold muffins to eighty-five passengers who would want more from us than we could give them.

Tristan grabbed his bag and turned to me. “Ready for another day in the friendly skies?”

“I’m ready.”