Lynne Heitman - Hard Landing

"Do you know how he found out?"

"No, but I've been thinking about it, and I remember now how I found out. Victor Venora. He made a point of tracking me down to tell me."

"That could have been Big Pete making sure that you knew. The real question is, How did those guys find out?"

He looked all around the chapel and then back at me. "Why did you call me?"

"Because I calmed down. I got a little perspective, and I decided I was a jerk for believing Big Pete and not giving you a chance to explain."

"Thank you." he said, his voice hoarse, ragged.

"My pleasure… and there's more. I've spent the past five hours going through every piece of mail, every document, everything I have that belonged to Ellen, and I think I've figured some things out. I need to tell you about it."

"I'm on my way to meet Angelo. Come with me and we'll talk on the way."

"Can you believe this shit?" Dan guided the car into the bumper-to-bumper flow of Route 1A. "We're never going to make it. Angelo's gonna bolt before we get up there."

The exit to the Sumner Tunnel, the short way into town, was closed to all but taxi cabs and buses. It was a traffic-control measure that usually happened at the airport this time of night on Fridays. A trooper stood in the road with the lights of his blue-on-blue State of Massachusetts patrol car flashing and rain dripping from the bill of his cap. Using a flashlight, he'd funnel reluctant drivers onto the dreaded detour route. And there was no more reluctant driver than Dan at that moment.

"Goddammit." He banged the steering wheel, then banged it again for good measure.

"Calm down. There's nothing we can do about this. Where are we going?"

"Angie's worried about being seen with us. He's got us going way the hell out to some dive in Medford or Medfield or some goddamned place." He leaned forward and wiped the fog off the window with the sleeve of his jacket. When he had cleared a hole big enough, he craned his neck and peered up into the sky. "I don't like the way it looks out there."

I made my own porthole. All I could see were sheets of rain falling on us from out of a pitch-black sky. "This is supposed to turn to snow later."

"I know. What's the big discovery?"

This wasn't exactly the venue I had in mind for breaking the news, but it would have to do. I turned in my seat so that I could face him. "My friend Matt called earlier today."

"Finance guy Matt?"

"He found a copy of the schedule of pre-purchase adjustments, the one Ellen was looking for."

As I explained about the seven hundred thousand dollars and the three payments and Crescent and everything but the part about Ellen being involved, he was riding the brakes, inching into the traffic, and I was mainly talking to the back of his head. "You're not listening to me."

"I am listening," he insisted. "There were three big payments from Nor'easter to Crescent, which is really Lenny, and he used the money to buy the contract. That's your big news?"

"The payments to buy the contract came from Majestic, not Nor'easter. That's the big news, Dan. Lenny-or someone-figured out a way to get Majestic to pay for the whole thing. But to make it work, he needed a partner on the inside at Majestic, someone on the task force to approve his fake invoices to Crescent." I took a deep breath. "It could have been Ellen."

He hit the brakes abruptly, and we both slammed against the seat belts.

"Son of a bitch." For a split second I thought he was yelling at me, but his anger was directed at the driver of a panel truck who was maneuvering to merge from behind us. Dan deftly cut him off. "Who's saying that about her?"

"Matt." I shifted around in my seat. My jeans were starting to feel tight. "And me, Dan. I think it's possible that she was involved."

"This is a joke, right?" He glared at the driver of the truck in the rearview mirror. "I can understand that fucking pisshead finance guy thinking something that stupid. What is he, like twelve years old? But you, Shanahan, what is that? You're mad at me so Ellen's dirty, too?"

"Ellen and Lenny worked on the merger together. They were on different sides of the negotiation, but apparently they became close. That project lasted eight months."

He was stiff-necked, gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. "That doesn't prove anything, for chrissakes."

"I've been working on this all afternoon, going over and over every detail. I went through it all again-the box we brought down from her house, her letters, her files, her documents. I watched that dating video about a dozen times, and I went through a whole pile of her mail that had been forwarded to the airport-"

"What did you expect to find?"

"Some kind of a clue as to her motives. Why she was involved in all this."

"She was involved because that cocksucker Dickie Flynn got her involved when he sent her that package."

"I think she was involved before she got that package. Think about it. She could have turned that package over to the feds, or Corporate Security. She didn't tell anyone what she was doing. She was sneaking around on other airlines. And I found something in her files. She requested and received extraordinary signature authority while she was on the task force."

"So what?"

"Under her normal authority, she couldn't have signed those Crescent invoices. They were too big. She made special arrangements so that she could."

"Can't you just believe that she wouldn't have done something like that?"

"But she did. I found the request and the approval in her files."

"I'm talking about the whole scam. I'm telling you she wasn't that kind of person."

I leaned back against the passenger door. "Dan-"

"I say she was clean, that she was trying to do the right thing, and you won't take my word on that. So what it comes down to is, you don't believe me. You don't trust me." He ran a nervous hand through his hair and stared through the wet windshield into the red blur of taillights. The combativeness in his voice had gone. He sounded almost plaintive. "You don't trust me."

The only sounds in the car were the blasting heater and the sluicing of the wet windshield wipers, steady as a metronome. I turned around to face front and wished like hell that we weren't stuck in traffic, that we could put some distance between us and this place we were in.

"Listen to what I've found, then you can decide for yourself. Six days before she died, Ellen made a trip to Denver. I don't know if you remember her list of secret trips, but it was on there. It was the last destination."

He didn't respond, but I knew he remembered.

"She flew out and back the same day, and it looks as if it was a special trip to visit the archives. The archivist remembers her. She asked to see the pre-purchase adjustment schedule. When Matt went looking for the same documents a few days ago, they were gone. The original invoices with the signatures are also missing."

"That doesn't mean she took them."

"Come on, Dan-"

"Or if she took them, and I'm not saying she did, she took them to build the case against Lenny. That's what we've been saying all along. She took them to keep them safe."

"Then where are they? Where is the evidence?"

"We'll find it."

"Think about this. If she was on the inside working the scam with Lenny, then her signature would be on those invoices. Destroying them would be one way to cover up her own involvement."

"Give me one good reason why she would be involved in something like this."

"She was sleeping with Lenny."

He swung his entire upper body around to face me. If we'd been going any faster than four miles an hour, we might have swerved off the road into a ditch. "Bullshit, Shanahan, bullshit. I told you before that's crap."