Lynne Heitman - Hard Landing

"My fault?"

"You're the one who called Theresa. You can't even handle the situation man to man. You gotta go and get his wife involved." Pete took another quick hit from the bottle. "He's laying there dead because of you."

"You are the biggest dumbfuck-"

"Hey," I said, mostly to Dan, "can we just calm down, please?"

Little Pete was smug. "He's just pissed off that I'm in charge tonight, that I'm the one calling the shots. Ain't that right, Danny boy?"

"The fact that you're still breathing pisses me off."

Little Pete laughed. "How about you?" he asked me. "Do you want to see me dead, too? Everybody else does."

"I don't want any of us to be dead, including you."

He nodded, smiling faintly. "She's smarter than you, Danny boy. She's smart enough to be scared of me. You should be scared of me, too."

"Why should I-"

"We're both scared of you," I said, cutting Dan off. "And you are in charge tonight. We both see that."

Little Pete narrowed his eyes, suspicious perhaps that someone actually agreed with him. "Let me ask you a question," he said, speaking to me now as if we were old friends. "Don't you think that a man's got a right to protect his name?"

"What name?" Dan snapped. "Dickhead?"

"I'm not talking to you." He turned back to me. "See, that's how I look at this whole thing. It's like self-defense. She knew what was going to happen if she didn't mind her own business. Once she was gonna do what she was gonna do, I didn't have any choice- but she did."

My jaw was trembling and my eyes were burning as I listened to him casually mention that he had killed Ellen. It was horrifying, and more so to hear his justification and to know that he believed it. This man was capable of anything.

"She made the choice herself," he said, "so she did kill herself. The bitch was warned."

It seemed important to him that I believe him, important that someone be on his side, and I'd decided that's what I would do. What I didn't count on was Dan's reaction. When he started toward Little Pete, I grabbed him. The muscle in his forearm was hard as bone.

"What do you think is going to happen here tonight, Pete?" I was talking just to talk, not saying anything, trying to stay in front of Dan and buy us some time.

"You think he even knows? Like this murdering bastard's got some kind of a plan. His pop's not around to do his thinking-"

"Shut the fuck up, asshole."

Yes, Dan, shut the fuck up. Little Pete was drinking more and thinking less. I could hear it in his loosening voice, see it in his dulled reactions, and every time he turned, the gun was there. Dan wasn't much better. His skin was drawn so tight, I thought I could see the muscles underneath, and he was literally vibrating with the effort to stand still. "You are such a worthless piece of crap," he yelled. "Nothing is ever your fault."

"Dan, stop." I was panicked because I knew he wouldn't. I knew exactly what was going to happen and I had no way to stop it.

"It's my fault you had to kill Angie. It's Ellen's fault you had to kill her. Let me ask you something. Whose fault was it that you killed those twenty-one people in the Beechcraft?"

I was almost afraid to look at Little Pete. He was standing perfectly still next to Angelo's body, about eight feet away from us. His long arms hung awkwardly at his sides. A quick lunge would have put him at Dan's throat in an instant. For a second I thought that's exactly what he would do, as he seemed to fight back the urge, squeezing the bottle in his hand instead. He squeezed it until it shook. I noticed that it was empty. When he noticed, he turned and walked to his rum stash, pretending he'd been headed over there anyway. He slipped the empty back in, pulled out another bottle, and uncorked it. "That was Dickie's fault," he said after slamming a third of the bottle back like Gatorade.

Dan threw up his arms. "Of course, it was Dickie's fault."

Little Pete turned. "The tape's going to show that. It's going to show that I didn't do it."

"How do you figure that?" I asked him, trying to keep him engaged.

"I gave Dickie the right load." Again he was trying hard to convince me-or himself. "He had the right numbers. He fucked it up when he gave them to the captain. It's all on the tape, which is why he had to hide it." Bottle in hand, he paced in a circle around his makeshift bar. "We never get what we need around here. Never enough manpower, equipment that's for shit, and then when something goes wrong, blame… blame the union." He was ticking off the points, but in a mechanical way, groping for something he used to know, was supposed to know. "Blame the union. I had… I had to try three tugs that night before I found one that worked. That's right. It took me an hour to find wands, I never did find a goddamn radio, and the tug that I did find was out of gas."

"Yeah, that's a good excuse. The simplest goddamn job in the world and you screw it up. You have to be the stupidest fucking moron on the face of the earth."

"I gave him the right numbers, and he never radioed them to the captain."

Dan pressed him. "How did you give him the numbers? You just said you couldn't find a radio that night. And you never went into Operations."

Little Pete turned away and stood with his back to us, sucking down rum. The gun never looked more menacing. "You management fucks," he said quietly. "It was Dickie. It was Dickie, it was Dickie, it was fuckin' Dickie Flynn." He lowered his head and took a few deep breaths, and when he turned to face us, his eyes were dead. He seemed to have come to a decision. He never looked at Dan, and I had the terrifying feeling that Dan did not exist for him anymore. He touched the radio and checked his watch again. "Fuck this shit," he said as he reached around for the gun. "Let's go."

"Wait." I blurted it out, then just kept talking. "You never saw the tape, did you, Pete? You never would have. And you can't remember, right? All you know is what your father told you to say." I looked at him, at his face, and tried to understand what he was thinking. "You're waiting for Lenny. That's the plan. Lenny's supposed to find the tape and bring it to you. That's why you keep checking your watch, right?"

"It's all going to come out," he said, "after all these years."

"Listen to me. The tape will not vindicate you. And the other stuff that's with it will prove that Lenny was part of it. If he finds that package, he will destroy it."

He shook his head.

"He has to," I said. "Think this through, Pete. Lenny's not going to incriminate himself."

He rubbed his forehead with a hand that was shaking, the same hand that had reached for the gun and never made it.

"We can take you to it. The tape," I said. "We found it tonight and we hid it, and if you hurry up you can get to it before Lenny does."

He stared at me and I tried to look trustworthy, so sincere he couldn't question my motives. I felt that he wanted to believe me, that he wanted to believe that someone was telling him the truth. He began to nod, and for the moment I could breathe again. Barely. At least if we could get outside, we had a chance. We could lose him in the storm, maybe, or the troopers might show up. We had a chance.

Dan was behind me. I turned to look at him, and he looked back in a way that gave me a sliver of confidence that he would calm down, too.

"Do you drink?" Pete asked, rummaging through the box of rum.

Neither one of us responded until he turned to look at me.

"Do I drink?" I was stunned by the question, but more so by the fact that he was about to uncork his third bottle. I figured he was going to offer me some, which I took as a good sign. "Yes, I drink."

"I hate a woman who drinks. She was drunk that night," he said, bleary-eyed and talking almost to himself. "She smelled like alcohol. I hate a bitch who drinks." He took the bottle out and stuffed it into his pocket. When he looked at Dan, he was not so bleary-eyed, and when I saw the smile I knew before he said anything that it was all over. "How did she smell when you found her?"