Lynne Heitman - Hard Landing

I stopped for a breath, but my lungs wouldn't fill. He was closer now and I could see his face, could almost see the wheels turning as he listened, sifting the facts, and pulling out what he needed.

"What else?"

"I told them that the money for these payoffs and others was embezzled from Majestic Airlines, that Lenny had an accomplice working inside, and that that person was Ellen Shepard."

I paused again as I remembered talking to the troopers just hours ago, how sure I had been about Ellen, how wrong I had been.

"She threatened Lenny with exposure," I said, my voice fading, "and he had her killed. Little Pete killed her." I sat down in my chair, suddenly exhausted. "That's what I told them."

"This is why Lenny is in custody."

"Lenny is in custody because his name is all over Dickie Flynn's package of evidence, along with both Dwyers, Dickie himself, and Angelo." The late Angelo. Another pang of guilt. The thought of him lying on that bag belt came back to me, and I knew that he was dead, too, because of Bill, that Bill had tipped Lenny off with information that I had given him, just as he must have told him about John McTavish. I'd told him enough that he'd figured out that John was the source. I'd blamed Dan, but I had been the leak.

"Did they believe you?"

"Why wouldn't they? I was very convincing."

"I'm sure you were. Is that all you're going to tell them?"

I plucked his travel schedule off the desk and held it up. "Are you asking me if I am going to tell them that it was not Lenny who arranged Ellen's murder? That you were the one she was expecting the night that she died? That you sent Little Pete in your place to murder her?"

His neck stiffened. "I never even met this Little Pete character."

"Of course not. That would be stupid, and we know that you're not stupid." I dropped the page back on the desk. "That's what Lenny was there for, to do all the dirty work. You gave him your key to Ellen's house. You gave him the security code, and you made sure that Ellen would be home that night waiting for you. Then you booked yourself on a flight to Europe and waited for news that she was dead."

"It sounds rather elegant," he mused, "when you put it all together like that, clearly thought out."

"You're saying it wasn't?"

He regarded me with a wistful smile, looking disappointed that I might think ill of him. "Do you know how much the stock price has appreciated since I started running this airline? Three hundred and fifty percent. Three hundred and fifty percent, and it was the Nor'easter deal that put us over the top. That deal was the last missing piece, and do you want to know the irony?"

He slipped onto the corner of the desk and rested there, half standing, half sitting. He picked up a dish of paper clips and seemed to find it fascinating. "All this business here in Boston, none of it made any difference. Looking back, the Nor'easter deal was going to happen anyway. Lenny takes credit for the contract failing, but it's my bet the thing would have sunk under its own weight anyway. It was all for nothing." He took one of the clips out and studied it, turning it over in his hand.

He dropped the clip into the bowl, put the bowl on the desk, and went back to the window, where he stood with his arms crossed. "A strange thing happens when you operate for any length of time at this level and particularly if you achieve any measure of success, which I have. You start to feel that you can't do anything wrong, that whatever you do is right just because you want to do it." He turned slightly. "Silly, isn't it? And extravagantly arrogant. But you need to be to get where I am." He waited a beat, then came back to the desk and stood across from me. "I convinced myself that I was the only one who could save this company. And Nor'easter. At one time it wasn't clear that the contract would fail, and I thought it best not to risk it. What was a couple of hundred thousand dollars against all the jobs I saved? The tremendous wealth I created?"

"What about Ellen?"

He sniffed and with studied nonchalance glanced down and straightened the crease in his slacks. "You never plan for people to get hurt. That's one of the variables you can't predict. But things get… distorted. Once you're in, you're in. When a problem comes up, the only question that matters is, can you think your way around it? Are you smart enough?" He shrugged. "Ellen was a problem. She was going to be, anyway."

I stared at him. His tone was absolutely flat. We could have been analyzing a business deal gone bad.

"It's unfortunate," he said, "but Ellen was pulled into this whole affair by that drunken bastard Dickie Flynn, the self-serving son of a bitch." He looked at me and laughed as if he were relating a funny story that he was sure I would find amusing also. "Can you imagine saving that tape the way he did, then dumping it on poor Ellen? And Lenny, trying to cover up a damn plane crash with all those nitwits involved. The thing was flawed right from the beginning."

"You would have been smarter about it, no doubt."

"I never would have tried to cover up negligence. They told me after the fact, after it was too late, but in that situation you have to go public in a big way because there are too many people involved. And the risk if you're exposed is too great. You have to deal with it head-on, diffuse the risk, take away all the leverage. That's why this videocassette is so powerful for us. Do you see?"

"No."

"That video will be run over and over on every newscast, every news magazine, every cheap tabloid reality program. You can't buy that kind of exposure. So you ask yourself, how do you use that? You make an immediate disclosure, at which point you announce a very well-thought-out program of complete cooperation with the authorities, comprehensive safety reviews, and enhanced operating procedures. You prove to everyone that the people responsible have been dealt with, sternly, and-this is very important-you meet with the families of the victims face-to-face. In fact, you'd like to do that before you go public. And every time you open your mouth to talk about it, you tie the crash to Nor'easter and the response to Majestic. Pretty soon all people will remember is Majestic's great response." He smiled again. "Most people, Alex, are waiting to be told what to think."

"You already have a plan."

"I always have a plan."

"And where am I in this plan?"

"Don't you know?" He looked at me with those hotter-than-the-sun eyes beneath those long, lush eyelashes. Then he began to move around to my side of the desk. I stood up, backed away, and kept going until I felt the wall again against my shoulder blades.

"Don't I know what? That you are hopelessly, desperately, pa thet ically in love with me?"

He seemed to be floating toward me, moving without walking, immune to the natural forces that tethered the rest of us to this earth. I could have moved away, but there was really no place to go. He was going to keep coming until he'd had a chance to play his final hand.

"I told you what I thought you needed to hear, that's all. I should have told you the truth."

The smell of rum surrounded me like a seedy cloud, but as he moved toward me, ever so slowly, his scent was stronger.

"What is the truth?"

"We're good together. That's the only truth there is, Alex, the only one that matters." He was very close now, and I could feel his whisper as much as I could hear it. "You wanted me the other night as much as I wanted you, and nothing that's happened since has changed that. I want you right now. I want you so bad I can taste it. And you want me, too."

I needed to be angry, and I was. I needed to hate him, and I did. But I could also feel his breath in my hair. I could feel the heat through his clean cotton shirt, feel the flush beneath my own clothes. I could hear his breathing grow shallow, more ragged as he got closer.