Lynne Heitman - Hard Landing

"He found her, you know."

"Who?"

"Ellen."

"Dan found Ellen's body?"

"When she didn't come in that morning, he's the one who drove up to her house. She was in the attic." Molly reached around to the ashtray on the desk behind her and did a quick flick. "When he found her, she'd been hanging there all night."

I reached up instinctively and put a hand on my own throat, which was tightening at the thought of what a body looks like after hanging by the neck for that long. With my thumb, I could feel my own blood pumping through a thick vein. "It must have been horrible for him. Were they friends?"

She nodded as she exhaled. "He won't talk about it, but, yeah, he hasn't been the same since. Like I said, we don't take it personally." She reached behind the desk again and opened a drawer, this time coming back with a big, heavy ring chock full of keys. "I'll let you into your office."

She went to the door, and I stood back and watched her struggle with the lock.

"How's everyone else around here taking it?" I asked. "What's the mood?"

"Mixed. People who liked her are upset. People who didn't are glad she's gone. It's that simple. More people liked her than didn't, but the ones that didn't hated her so much, it made up for all the rest."

"Mostly guys down on the ramp, I hear. Not the agents."

She nodded. "You showing up the way you did last night and doing what you did, that's given them all something else to talk about. Everyone's waiting to see what you're like, what you're going to do about Little Pete." The lock was not releasing and she was getting frustrated. "Who's Little Pete and why is he 'Little'?"

"Pete Dwyer Jr. He's the missing crew chief, the one who caused all that trouble last night. Most of it, anyway. Everyone calls him Little Pete because his pop works here, too. Big Pete runs the union."

"I thought Victor Venora was president of the local."

"Titles don't mean much here. And they have nothing to do with who's got the real power."

"And who would that-"

With a final, forceful twist, the door popped open. "Cripes!" Molly jerked her hand away as if it had been caught in a mousetrap. "I broke a nail. Damn that lock." She took the mound of keys, marched back to her desk, presumably for emergency repairs, and called back over her shoulder, "Go in. I'll be with you in a minute."

The door swung open easily at my touch. The office was slightly larger than Dan's. Instead of one floor-to-ceiling window on the ramp-side wall, it had two that came together at the corner. Unlike Dan's office, the blinds were closed, filtering out all but a few slats of daylight that fell across the floor like bright ribbons. The air smelled closed-in, faintly musty. In the middle of the space, dominating in every way, was a massive, ornate wooden desk. Its vast work surface was covered with a thick slice of glass. Underneath was a large, carved logo for… Nor'easter Airlines?

"Some desk, huh?" Molly leaned against the door-jamb with a new cigarette.

"It looks out of place," I said, walking over to open the blinds.

"It belonged to the president of our airline."

"Our airline" was how former Nor'easter employees always referred to their old company, which had teetered at the precipice of bankruptcy until Bill Scanlon, the chairman and CEO of Majestic, our airline, had sailed in and saved the day. As a result, Scanlon was revered by most Nor'easterners. It was the rest of us Majestic plebeians they resented.

I didn't tell her that no one at Majestic headquarters would have been caught dead with a desk like that. It didn't match the corporate ambiance, which was simple, spare, and, above all, featureless. When I pulled the blinds, the sun splashed in on a linoleum floor that was wax-yellow and dirty. The corner where I was standing was covered with a strange white residue, almost like chalk dust. It reminded me of rat poison. The morning light brought grandeur to the old desk, showing polish and detail I hadn't noticed. I also hadn't noticed the single palm print now clearly visible in the dust that coated the glass top.

"Has anyone been in here since Ellen died?"

"Danny and I were both in here looking through her Rolodex for someone to contact. Turns out an aunt in California was her closest living kin. If you need anything, it's probably in there"-she pointed with her cigarette at the desk-"supplies and all. Ellen was pretty organized that way." She turned to go and caught herself. "Oh, I should warn you, don't keep anything important in there. It doesn't lock anymore."

"Is it broken?"

"You could say that." She moved into the office and perched on the arm of one of the side chairs.

I walked around to the working side of the desk. The handsome wood facings of the drawers were scarred and scratched around the small locks, and the top edges were splintered and broken where someone had pried them open. I put my finger into a sad, gaping hole where one of the locks was missing altogether. "What happened here?"

"The union."

"The union broke into this desk? Why?"

"Just to prove they could."

That was a comforting thought. I stood up and looked at her. "What did Ellen do that had them so upset?"

"Well, let's see. She was a woman, she was from Majestic, and she wanted them to work for their wages instead of sitting around on their butts all day. That's three strikes."

I slipped the hangman's drawing out of my briefcase. I felt a tingling in my neck when I looked at it. I handed her the page. "Have you ever seen this before?"

"Not that version. Where did you get it?"

"Someone left it for me last night as some kind of a message."

She shook her head. "That didn't take long. I guess they figure they'll start early with you, keep you on the defensive from the start."

"It means they knew I was coming in on that flight."

"No doubt."

"And they saw where I'd put my bags, which wouldn't have been easy in all that chaos. Someone was watching me."

She shot a stream of smoke straight up, and handed the drawing back. "They're always watching."

I followed the smoke as it drifted up to the ceiling. This was apparently old hat to Molly, but I found it hard not to feel just a little shaken up by a drawing of a woman hanged by the neck with my name on it.

Molly stood to go.

"Did someone steal her pictures, too?" I asked.

She looked where I was looking, at the bare walls. "This office is exactly the way she left it," she said. "She never hung any pictures."

"How long was she here?"

"Almost thirteen months."

The walls were painted an uncertain beige, and had scars left over from previous administrations, where nails and picture hangers had been torn out. I walked over and touched a big gouge in the Sheetrock where the chalky center was pushing through.

"She didn't leave much behind, did she?"

Molly was putting the call on hold just as I walked through the door.

"How was your first debrief?"

"Long."

"You've got a call on line one,'' she said, "and it must be important because he never waits on hold and he never calls this early."

I checked my watch. It was ten o'clock in the morning. "Who is it?"

"Your boss."

"Uh-oh." The quick flash of nerves was like a caffeine rush. "Where's he calling from?"

"He's in his office in D.C."

She said something else, but I didn't hear what because I was already at my desk, bent over the notes I'd made from debrief, cramming for whatever question Lenny might think to ask about last night's operation. Someone I admired and deeply respected once told me that the best opportunities to make a good impression come from disaster-from how well you handle it. Last night certainly qualified as a disaster, and I was about to test that theory on my new boss.