Hard Landing

CHAPTER FIVE

Dan was already working when I arrived the next morning. I stood in the back of the ticketing lobby and watched through the crowd of passengers as he checked bags and issued boarding passes. He was doing it just right, moving them through like cattle at auction, but somehow making each cow feel special, as if they were the only one in the chute.

When I moved behind the counter, I spotted Dan's briefcase on the floor along with a pile that turned out to be his overcoat and suit jacket. He hadn't made it to his office yet.

"Anything I can do to help here?" I asked.

"I think we've got it covered," he said, poking at his keyboard with two fingers.

"I'm on my way to the office. Do you want me to take your coat and jacket?"

"They've been in worse places." He beckoned the woman who was next in line.

"Okay." All I could do was try. "When you're finished here, I'd like to talk to you about a few things. How much longer do you think you'll be?"

He stepped up into the bag well and gauged the length of his line. "Fifteen minutes."

I checked his line, too, and it looked like a good thirty minutes to me. "When you're finished, meet me down on the concourse for coffee," I said. "I'll buy."

Dan greeted his next passenger while I walked down the length of the counter, greeting the morning shift as I went, trying to tie names to faces and get to know my new employees.

Forty-five minutes later, Dan was sitting across the table from me at the Dunkin' Donuts, turning a black cup of coffee blond with five packets of sugar and two plastic tubs of cream.

"You should take up smoking," I said. "It would be better for you."

"We're all going to die sometime." As he took a sip, his eyes scanned the concourse like radar for any problem that might need his immediate attention. His plan seemed to be to give everyone and everything except me his close attention.

"I want to know what's going on around here."

"Say again?"

"I think you heard me."

"I heard you, but I have no idea what you're referring to."

"You do know, and this thing you're doing right now, this deflecting, it's annoying as hell. It'd be easier if you would just answer the question."

He chewed on the plastic stirrer and, in his own good time, turned slightly in his chair, enough that I could claim a small measure of progress.

"I spent time yesterday talking to some of my new employees," I said, leaning closer so that I wouldn't have to raise my voice. "Half of them believe that Ellen Shepard was murdered by someone who works downstairs on the ramp. Almost all of them think that you've gone off the deep end since her suicide."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you're out of touch, disappearing, not answering your beeper. They can't find you when they need you. Last night's a good example."

He started to get agitated, but then clamped down as if he didn't want me to see his reaction. As far as I could tell, he didn't want me to know anything about him. "People are going to think what they're going to think," he said coolly, "and no one needs to worry about me."

"All right. Let's not worry about you. Let's talk about the operation. This whole place is paralyzed by rumors about Ellen Shepard, and almost no one believes she killed herself."

His eyes narrowed. "And why do you think that is?"

"Because no one is talking to them. No one is giving them the facts and answering their questions. In the absence of the truth, they're going to think the worst."

"And you know what the truth is?"

"I know the police investigated, ruled the death a suicide, and closed their investigation. I know she was found hanging in her home, and I know that you're the one who found her after she'd been there all night. I also know that she was your friend."

He was angled back, still chewing on the stirrer. He was wearing an enigmatic little smile and shaking his head, the message being that I would never get it.

"If there's more to it, why don't you tell me?"

"You want to know the rest of it?" The smile faded. "Ellen died a week ago. Since then not one representative of Majestic Airlines outside of this station has done one thing to pay their respects. No flowers, no phone calls, no letters or cards. Not from Lenny or goddamned Bill Scanlon. Just a whole bunch of cover-their-ass questions." He almost knocked over his coffee and made a great save before slumping back in his chair. "The first thing we heard from outside the station was you showing up from headquarters to take her place."

"I'm not from headquarters. I've spent eighteen months there out of fourteen years. I've got as much field experience as you do."

"Whatever."

"Is that what's going on here? Do you resent me because you think you should have gotten this job?"

"I wouldn't take the job if they begged me."

"Is it because I came from staff?" That was my last guess. I wasn't going to play twenty questions trying to figure out what his problem was.

"All I know is you're on the fast track," he said, "and I'm going to be in Boston forever. So it doesn't matter to me. You understand?"

"No."

"You can take all the credit when things go well, you can blame me when they go wrong. I don't care about my career. I don't care about getting promoted. What I do care about is being left alone to do my job the way I need to. Just because I'm not out where people can see me all the time doesn't mean I'm not doing my job. And the next time you want to know something about me, ask me and not my employees."

Dan's name boomed from the loudspeakers. Before they could even finish paging him, he was on his feet gathering up all the dead sugar packets and heading for the trash.

"Dan, if you walk away from me like you did yesterday, it's going to make me angry, which might not make any difference to you, but it will ruin my entire day because I'm going to have to spend it trying to figure out how to deal with you." He stood with the trash in one hand, his cup in the other, staring down the concourse toward the gates. "I don't want to deal with you." I said, backing off a little, "I want to work with you."

He tapped his chair a few times with his free hand. He didn't sit down, but neither did he walk away.

"Losing a friend in the way that you did has got to be tough. If there is anything I can do to make it easier for you, I will do it."

"I'll deal with it."

"Fine. While you're dealing with it, think about this. Do you want to work with me? If you don't, we'll discuss alternatives."

His hand grew still on the back of the chair. "I'm not leaving here."

"That's not what I asked you to think about. Do you want to work next to me? That's the question and I want a definitive answer."

"I'm not leaving Boston," he said flatly, then stalked over to toss his garbage. He came back and said it again, just in case it wasn't clear. "There's no way I'm leaving Boston. And if you and this fucking company try to get rid of me the way you did Ellen, I'm going to blow the whistle on what's going on around here, so help me God."

He turned quickly and he was gone. He must have spotted the confused elderly woman as we were talking because he went straight for her. He read her boarding pass, offered his arm, and helped her to her gate. Then without looking back, he melted into the river of passengers, gliding smoothly through the crowd, weaving in and out until I couldn't see him anymore.

He'd disappeared on me again, leaving me to sort through a whole bunch of responses I never had a chance to give, and one big question. What exactly was going on around here?