Lynne Heitman - Hard Landing

The last one to roll off was another one-liner, this one typed. "Regular place, regular time on Tuesday" was all it said. There was no name and no signature. According to the time stamp it had been sent at 2307 hours on Saturday, January 3-two days before she died-from a Sir Speedy in someplace called Nahant. It was from the snitch. Had to be. I put it in the pile, turned off the light, and was into the hallway when I heard it. It was so sudden and unexpected in the mostly dark, empty house that it was like an electric shock to my heart. It took a moment for me to calm down and realize that it was only the sound of the phone ringing. Ellen's phone. It was a perfectly ordinary, everyday sound and it scared me stiff. That it rang only once and stopped was even more chilling. Right behind it came the sound of the fax machine powering up again in the dark office. It was a sound that was so common, so mundane, and it was one of the most frightening things I'd ever heard.

I called for Dan. No answer. He could have been anywhere in the huge old house. The fax began to print and my pulse rate began to climb. I called again and then realized that even if he came, he wasn't going to do anything for me that I couldn't do for myself, right? It was just a fax machine, for God's sake.

I turned on the light and went back into the office, creeping up to the machine as if it was a rattlesnake. The page scrolled out slowly, leaving me to read it one word at a time. "We're"… the machine seemed louder than before… "watch"… and slower… "ing"… and it took everything I had not to just rip it out before it was finished… "We're watching you" is what it said and below that the number 1018.

At first I couldn't move, then I couldn't move fast enough. I was out of there, banging off the hallway walls and down that grand staircase. I'm not sure my feet even touched the ground. I tried the front door. Locked. Trapped. Then I remembered the dead bolt…

Dan, just coming up from the basement, took one look at my face. "What happened?"

"I just got… there's this message." I started to show him, but there wasn't time. "We have to go. Right now."

"All right. Just let me reset the alarm."

I had a hard time threading the key into the lock, and then again on the other side. When we were in the car, I showed him the last fax that had rolled off. He held it up to the light of the street lamp. "What's this number, this 1018?"

I cringed to even think about it. "It's my hotel room."

"Those bastards," he said. "I swear I'm gonna kill someone before this is over."

"Who exactly? What bastards? Who would know we were here unless they followed us? They could be watching right now."

"Let them watch." He started the engine, but paused to turn on the dome light and look at the fax more closely. "It came from the airport. Fucking Big Pete. It's starting all over again."

I reached up and turned off the light.

"Calm down, Shanahan."

"Why?"

"They're just trying to scare you."

"Mission accomplished. Let's get out of here, Dan. Right now."

As he pulled away from the curb and drove down the quiet street, I peered into every parked car, checked for movement behind every swaying tree. I wasn't sure I'd ever feel safe again.

"You might want to do one thing," he said, after we'd gone a few blocks in silence.

"What?"

"Change hotel rooms."

"Hotel rooms? I might want to change cities."

When I arrived at the airport Monday morning, Molly was already bent over her desk in the quiet office, lost in deep concentration.

"You're in early," I said.

Her head snapped up as she swung around in her squealing chair. I flinched and, trying not to spill my tea, dropped my keys.

"Ohmygod… don't sneak up on me like that."

"I'm sorry. I wasn't aware I was sneaking." I reached down for the keys. "What are you doing here? It's not even seven o'clock."

Hand to her chest, she drew a couple of theatrical breaths. "It's time for invoices. I save them up and do them once a month. And I'm going to need signatures, so don't go too far. Here"-she handed me my morning mail-"this should keep you busy."

"Yes, ma'am. Come in when you're ready." As she turned back to her work, I unlocked the door and fled to the sanctity of my own office, where I could continue to unravel in private.

I was still unhinged from Friday night. I was supposed to have spent the weekend apartment hunting. Instead, I'd holed up in my hotel room eating room-service food and watching pay-per-view movies. The only times I'd gone out were to run, and every time I had, I'd looked over my shoulder at least once and resented it.

With my coat off, my tea in hand, and the mail in front of me, I tried to go through my morning routine. But the normal routine did not include standing up to adjust the blinds three times, or rearranging the chairs in front of my desk, or straightening all the pencils in my drawer. It seemed that Ellen had already done that, anyway.

After not having looked all weekend, I finally gave in and pulled the faxes out of my briefcase. Nothing about them had changed since Friday, and they were just as offensive in the light of day. I still felt that scraping in the pit of my stomach when I looked at them, but I couldn't stop looking at them. Molly arrived, giving me a good reason to put them aside. Facedown.

She pushed through the door with a heavy ledger, an accordion file, and a large-key calculator, all of which she arranged methodically on her side of my desk.

"All you need is a green eyeshade," I said.

"Never mind what I need. I've got a system, and it's worked fine for some twenty-two years. The bills get paid on time, we don't pay them twice, and the auditors are happy."

"Before we start, I have a question for you," I said. "Do you know where I can rent a VCR for my hotel room?"

"Are we boring you already?"

"I've watched every pay-per-view movie offered this month, some twice. I need something fresh."

"I'll see what I can do. One of the agents' husbands repairs TVs. I'll bet I can get you a deal."

"I'll bet you can."

She handed me a ticket envelope. "Sign this first."

I opened it and looked inside, trying to decipher her loopy handwriting. "What's this?"

"It's a pass."

"I know it's a pass," I said, signing. "But who is Our Lady of the Airwaves? Patron saint of radio broadcasts? Sister Mary Megahertz?"

"Airways," she said, snatching it back, "not waves. It's the chapel here at the airport. They have an auction every year and we always donate a pass."

"Ah." Ellen's frequent-flier travel popped into my mind. "Did you ever request any passes for Ellen on United?"

"I never requested any passes for her, period. She spent all her time here at the airport. Weekends, too."

"So you didn't know she was buying tickets on United."

"She was most certainly not doing that. I would have known."

She gave me the first invoice. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars for three hundred barrels of deicing fluid, a reminder that I was in a true cold-weather station for the first time in my career. "How many of these will I sign this winter?"

"Could be two, could be ten. Depends on the weather."

"That narrows it down." I signed and passed it back. "I found a frequent-flier card in the desk. Ellen flew at least five times on United that we know about. Dan's finding out if there were more."

She handed me the next invoice without a word. It was to reimburse a passenger whose coat had caught in the conveyor belt at the security checkpoint, and it was almost a hundred bucks.

"This is pretty expensive dry cleaning," I said.

"It was a suede coat."

"Was the belt malfunctioning?"