Airport (41 page)

For the first time Keith smiled. “You’ve been listening to Natalie.”

“Natalie’s apt to talk a lot of sense.”

Whatever Keith’s other problems might be, Mel reflected, he had been outstandingly fortunate in Natalie. The thought of his sister-in-law reminded Mel of his own wife, Cindy, who presumably was still on her way to the airport. Comparing your own marriage unfavorably with someone else’s was disloyal, Mel supposed; at times, though, it was hard not to do it. He wondered if Keith really knew just how lucky–at least in that important area–he had been.

“There’s something else,” Mel said. “I haven’t brought it up before, but maybe now’s the time. I don’t think you’ve ever told me the whole of what happened at Leesburg–that day, the accident. Maybe you didn’t tell anyone, because I’ve read all the testimony.
Is
there something else; that you’ve never told?”

Keith hesitated only momentarily. “Yes.”

“I figured there might be.” Mel chose his words carefully; he sensed that what was passing between them could be of critical importance. “But I also figured if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me; and if you didn’t, well, it was none of my business. Sometimes, though, if you care about someone enough–say, like a brother–you ought to make it your business, whether they want you to butt in or not. So I’m making this mine now.” He added softly, “You hear me?”

“Yes,” Keith said, “I hear you.” He thought: He could stop this conversation, of course; perhaps he should stop it now, at once–since it was pointless–by excusing himself and going back to the radarscope. Mel would assume they could resume later, not knowing that for the two of them together, there would be no later.

“That day at Leesburg,” Mel insisted. “The part you’ve never told–it has something to do with the way you feel, the way you
are
, right now. Hasn’t it?”

Keith shook his head. “Leave it alone, Mel. Please!”

“Then I’m right. There
is
a relationship, isn’t there?”

What was the point of denying the obvious? Keith nodded. “Yes.”

“Won’t you tell me? You have to tell someone; sooner or later you have to.” Mel’s voice was pleading, urgent. “You can’t live with this thing–whatever it is–inside you forever. Who better to tell than me? I’d understand.”

You can’t live with this… Who better to tell than me?

It seemed to Keith that his brother’s voice, even the sight of Mel, was coming to him through a tunnel, from the distant end, far away. At the farther end of the tunnel, too, were all the other people–Natalie, Brian, Theo, Perry Yount, Keith’s friends–with whom he had lost communication long since. Now, of them all, Mel alone was reaching out, striving to bridge the gap between them… but the tunnel was long, their apartness–after all the length of time that Keith had been alone–too great.

And yet…

As if sorreone else were speaking, Keith asked, “You mean tell you here? Now?”

Mel urged, “Why not?”

Why not indeed? Something within Keith stirred; a sense of waating to unburden, even though in the end it could change nothing… Or could it? Wasn’t that what the Confessional was all about; a catharsis, an exorcism of sin through acknowledgment and contrition? The difference, of course, was that the Confessional gave forgiveness and expiation, and for Keith there could be no expiation–ever. At least… he hadn’t thought so. Now he wondered what Mel might say.

Somewhere in Keith’s mind a door, which had been closed, inched open.

“I suppose there’s no reason,” he said slowly, “why I shouldn’t tell you. It won’t take long.”

Mel remained silent. Instinct told him that if wrong words were spoken they could shatter Keith’s mood, could cut off the confidence which seemed about to be given, which Mel had waited so long and anxiously to hear. He reasoned: if he could finally learn what bedeviled Keith, between them they might come to grips with it. Judging by his brother’s appearance tonight, it had better be soon.

“You’ve read the testimony,” Keith said. His voice was a monotone. “You just said so. You know most of what happened that day.”

Mel nodded.

“What you don’t know, or anybody knows except me; what didn’t come out at the inquiry, what I’ve thought about over and over…” Keith hesitated; it seemed as if he might not continue.

“For God’s sake! For your own reason, for Natalie’s sake, for mine–go on!”

It was Keith’s turn to nod. “I’m going to.”

He began describing the morning at Leesburg a year and a half before; the air traffic picture when he left for the washroom; supervisor Perry Yount; the trainee controller left in immediate charge. In a moment, Keith thought, he would admit how he had loitered; how he failed the others through indifference and negligence; how he returned to duty too late; how the accident, the multiple tragedy of the Redferns’ deaths, had been solely his own doing; and how others were blamed. Now that at last he was doing what he had longed to, without knowing it, there was a sense of blessed relief. Words, like a cataract long damned, began tumbling out.

Mel listened.

Abruptly, a door farther down the corridor opened. A voice–the tower watch chief’s–called, “Oh, Mr. Bakersfeld!”

His footstcps echoing along the corridor, the tower chief walked toward them. “Lieutenant Ordway has been trying to reach you, Mr. Bakersfeld; so has the Snow Desk. They both want you to call.” He nodded. “Hi, Keith!”

Mel wanted to cry out, to shout for silence or delay, plead to be alone with Keith for a few minutes more. But he knew it was no good. At the first sound of the tower chief’s voice Keith had stopped in mid-sentence as if a switch were snapped to “off.”

Keith had not, after all, reached the point of describing his own guilt to Mel. As he responded automatically to the tower chief’s greeting, he wondered: Why had be begun at all? What could he have hoped to gain? There could never be any gain, never any forgetting. No confession–to whomever made–would exorcise memory. Momentarily he had grasped at what he mistook for a faint flicker of hope, even perhaps reprieve. As it had to be, it proved illusory. Perhaps it was as well that the interruption occurred when it did.

Once more, Keith realized, a mantle of loneliness, like an invisible thick curtain, surrounded him. Inside the curtain he was alone with his thoughts, and inside his thoughts was a private torture chamber where no one, not even a brother, could reach through.

From that torture chamber… waiting, always waiting… there could be only one relief. It was the way be had already chosen, and would carry through.

“I guess they could use you back inside, Keith,” the tower watch chief said. It was the gentlest kind of chiding. Keith had already had one work-break tonight; another inevitably threw a heavier load on other people. It was also a reminder to Mel, perhaps unintended, that as airport general manager his writ did not run here.

Keith mumbled something and gave a distant nod. With a serise of helplessness, Mel watched his brother return to the radar room. He had heard enough to know that it was desperately important he should hear more. He wondered when that would be, and how. A few minutes ago he had broken through Keith’s reserve, his secrecy. Would it happen again? With despair, Mel doubted it.

For sure, there would be no more confidences from Keith tonight.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bakersfeld.” As if belatedly guessing Mel’s thoughts, the tower chief spread his hands. “You try to do the best for everybody. It isn’t always easy.”

“I know.” Met felt like sighing, but restrained himself. When something like this happened, you could only hope for the right occasion to occur again; meanwhile you got on with other things you had to do.

“Tell me, please,” Mel said, “what were those messages again?”

The tower chief repeated them.

Instead of telephoning the Snow Control Desk, Mel walked down one floor of the control tower and went in. Danny Farrow was still presiding over the busy snow clearance command console.

There was a query about priorities in clearing the aircraft parking areas of competing airlines, which Mel settled, then checked on the situation concerning the blocked runway, three zero. There was no change, except that Joe Patroni was now on the airfield and had taken charge of attempts to move the mired Aéreo-Mexican 707, which was still preventing the runway being used. A few minutes earlier, Patroni had reported by radio that he expected to make a new attempt to move the aircraft within an hour. Knowing Joe Patroni’s reputation as a top-notch troubleshooter, Mel decided there was nothing to be gained by demanding a more detailed report.

At the Snow Desk Mel remembered the message to call Police Lieutenant Ordway. Assuming that the lieutenant was still in the terminal, Mel had him paged and, a few moments later, Ordway came on the line. Mel expected the lieutenant’s call to be about the anti-noise delegation of Meadowood residents. It wasn’t.

“The Meadowood people are starting to come in, but they haven’t been a problem and they haven’t asked for you yet,” Ned Ordway said when Mel raised the question. “I’ll let you know when they do.”

What he had called about, the policeman reported, was a woman who had been picked up by one of his men. She was crying, and apparently wandering aimlessly in the main terminal. “We couldn’t get any sense out of her, but she wasn’t doing anything wrong so I didn’t want to take her to the station house. She seemed upset enough without that.”

“What did you do?”

Ordway said apologetically, “There aren’t many quiet places around here tonight, so I put her in the anteroom outside your office. I thought I’d let you know in case you got back and wondered.”

“That’s all right. Is she alone?”

“One of my men was with her, though he may have left by now. But she’s harmless; I’m sure of that. We’ll check on her again soon.”

“I’ll be back at my office in a few minutes,” Mel said. “I’ll see if I can do any good myself.” He wondered if he would have more success talking with the unknown woman than he had had with Keith; he doubted if he could do worse. The thought of Keith, who seemed close to breaking point, still troubled Mel deeply.

As an afterthought, he asked, “Did you find out the woman’s name?”

“Yes, we got that much. It’s a Spanish-sounding name. Just a minute; I have it written down.”

There was a pause, then Lieutenant Ordway said, “Her name is Guerrero. Mrs. Inez Guerrero.”

TANYA LIVINGSTON said incredulously, “You mean Mrs. Quonsett’s aboard Flight Two?”

“I’m afraid there’s no doubt of it, Mrs. Livingston. There was a little old lady, exactly the way you’ve described her.” The gate agent who had supervised boarding of
The Golden Argosy
was in the D.T.M.‘s office with Tanya and young Peter Coakley, the latter still mortified at having been bamboozled by Mrs. Ada Quonsett while she was in his charge.

The gate agent had come to the office a few minutes ago in response to Coakley’s telephoned warning, to all Trans America gate positions, about the elusive Mrs. Quonsett.

“It just didn’t occur to me there was anything wrong,” the gate agent said. “We let other visitors aboard tonight; they came off.” He added defensively, “Anyway, I’d been under pressure all evening. We were short staffed, and apart from the time you were there helping, I was doing the work of two people. You know that.”

“Yes,” Tanya said, “I know.” She had no intention of passing out blame. If anyone was responsible for what had happened, it was Tanya herself.

“It was just after you left, Mrs. Livingston. The old lady said something about her son, I think it was, leaving his wallet. She even showed it to me. It had money in it, she said, which was why I didn’t take it.”

“She’d already figured that. It’s one of her regular gags.”

“I didn’t know it, so I let her go aboard. From then until a few minutes ago when I got the phone call, I never gave her another thought.”

“She fools you,” Peter Coakley said. He gave a sideways glance at Tanya. “She sure fooled me.”

The agent shook his head. “If I didn’t have to believe it, I wouldn’t, even now. But she’s aboard, all right.” He described the discrepancy between the tourist section head count and the ticket tally, then afterward, the ramp supervisor’s decision to let the aircraft go, rather than incur further delay.

Tanya said quickly, “I suppose there’s no doubt Flight Two’s already taken off.”

“Yes, they have. I checked on my way here. Even if they hadn’t, I doubt they’d bring the aircraft back in, especially tonight.”

“No they wouldn’t.” Nor was there the slightest chance, Tanya knew, of
The Golden Argosy
changing course and returning for a landing, merely because of Ada Quonsett. The time and cost to disembark one stowaway would run to thousands of dollars–far more than to take Mrs. Quonsett to Rome and bring her back.

“Is there a refueling stop?” Sometimes, Tanya knew, Europe-bound flights made non-scheduled stops for fuel at Montreal or Newfoundland. If so, there would be a chance to pull Mrs. Quonsett off, robbing her of the satisfaction of getting all the way to Italy.

“I asked Operations about that,” the agent answered. “The flight plan shows they’re going right through. No stops.”

Tanya exclaimed, “Damn that old woman!”

So Ada Quonsett was going to get her ride to Italy and back, with probably a night’s lodging in between, and with meals supplied–all at airline expense, Tanya thought angrily: she had underestimated the old lady’s determination not to be sent back to the West Coast; she had erred also in assuming that Mrs. Quonsett would head only for New York.

Barely fifteen minutes earlier Tanya had thought of the developing contest between herself and Ada Quonsett as a battle of wits. If it was, without doubt the little old lady from San Diego had won.

With uncharacteristic savageness, Tanya wished that the airline would make an exception and prosecute Mrs. Quonsett. But she knew they wouldn’t.

Young Peter Coakley started to say something.

Tanya snapped, “Oh, shut up!”

The District Transportation Manager returned to his office a few minutes after Coakley and the gate agent left. The D.T.M., Bert Weatherby, was a hard-working, hard-driving executive in his late forties, who had come up the hard way, beginning as a ramp baggage handler. Normally considerate, and with a sense of humor, tonight he was tired and testy from three days of continuous strain. He listened impatiently to Tanya’s report in which she accepted the main responsibility herself, mentioning Peter Coakley only incidentally.