At an adjoining table, a woman said loudly, "Geez! Lookit the time!"
Instinctively, Mel did. It was three quarters of an hour since he had left Danny Farrow at the Snow Control Desk. Getting up from the table, he told Tanya, "Don't go away. I have to make a call."
There was a telephone at the cashier's counter, and Mel dialed one of the Snow Desk unlisted numbers. Danny Farrow's voice said, "Hold it," then, a few moments later, returned on the line.
"I was going to call you," Danny said. "I just had a report on that stuck 707 of Aéreo-Mexican."
"Go ahead."
"You knew Mexican had asked TWA for help?"
"Yes."
"Well, they've got trucks, cranes, God knows what out there now. The runway and taxiway are blocked off completely, but they still haven't shifted the damn airplane. The latest word is that TWA has sent for Joe Patroni."
Mel acknowledged, "I'm glad to hear it, though I wish they'd done it sooner."
Joe Patroni was airport maintenance chief for TWA, and a born troubleshooter. He was also a down-to-earth, dynamic character and a close crony of Mel's.
"Apparently they tried to get Patroni right away," Danny said. "But he was at home and the people here had trouble reaching him. Seems there's a lot of phone lines down from the storm."
"But he knows now. You're sure of that?"
"TWA's sure. They say he's on his way."
Mel calculated. He knew that Joe Patroni lived at Glen Ellyn, some twenty-five miles from the airport, and even with ideal driving conditions the journey took forty minutes. Tonight, with snowbound roads and crawling traffic, the airline maintenance chief would be lucky to make it in twice that time.
"If anyone can get that airplane moved tonight," Mel conceded, "it'll be Joe. But meanwhile I don't want anybody sitting on his hands until he gets here. Make it clear to everyone that we need runway three zero usable, and urgently." As well as the operational need, he remembered unhappily that flights must still be taking off over Meadowood. He wondered if the community meeting, which the tower chief had told him about, was yet in session.
"I've been telling 'em," Danny confirmed. "I'll do it some more. Oh, a bit of good news---we found that United food truck."
"The driver okay?"
"He was unconscious under the snow. Motor still running, and there was carbon monoxide, the way we figured. But they got an inhalator on him, and he'll be all right."
"Good! I'm going out on the field now to do some checking for myself. I'll radio you from there."
"Wrap up well," Danny said. "I hear it's a lousy night."
Tanya was still at the table when Mel returned, though preparing to go.
"Hold on," he said, "I'm coming, too."
She motioned to his untouched sandwich. "How about dinner? If that's what it was."
"This will do for now." He bolted a mouthful, washed it down hastily with coffee, and picked up his topcoat. "Anyway, I'm having dinner downtown."
As Mel paid their check, two Trans America ticket agents entered the coffee shop. One was the supervising agent whom Mel had spoken to earlier. Observing Tanya, he came across.
"Excuse me, Mr. Bakersfeld... Mrs. Livingston, the D.T.M.'s looking for you. He has another problem."
Mel pocketed his change from the cashier. "Let me guess. Somebody else threw a timetable."
"No, sir." The agent grinned. "I reckon if there's another thrown this evening it'll be by me. This one's a stowaway---on Flight 80 from Los Angeles."
"Is that all?" Tanya appeared surprised. Aerial stowaways---though all airlines had them---were seldom a cause of great concern.
"The way I hear it," the agent said, "this one's a dilly. There's been a radio message from the captain, and a security guard has gone to the gate to meet the flight. Anyway, Mrs. Livingston, whatever the trouble is, they're calling for you." With a friendly nod, he went off to rejoin his companion.
Mel walked with Tanya from the coffee shop into the central lobby. They stopped at the elevator which would take Mel to the basement garage where his car was parked.
"Drive carefully out there," she cautioned. "Don't get in the way of any airplanes."
"If I do, I'm sure you'll hear about it." He shrugged into the heavy topcoat. "Your stowaway sounds interesting. I'll try to drop by before I leave, to find out what it's all about." He hesitated, then added, "It'll give me a reason to see you again tonight."
They were close together. As one, each reached out and their hands touched. Tanya said softly, "Who needs a reason?"
In the elevator, going down, he could still feel the warm smoothness of her flesh, and hear her voice.
04
JOE PATRONI---as Mel Bakersfeld had learned---was on his way to the airport from his home at Glen Ellyn. The cocky, stocky Italian-American, who was airport maintenance chief for TWA, had left his suburban, ranch-style bungalow by automobile some twenty minutes earlier. The going was exceedingly slow, as Mel had guessed it would be.
At the moment, Joe Patroni's Buick Wildcat was halted in a traffic tie-up. Behind and ahead, as far as visibility extended, were other vehicles, also stopped. While waiting, his actions illuminated by the taillights of the car in front, Patroni lit a fresh cigar.
Legends had grown up around Joe Patroni; some professional, others personal.
He had begun his working life as a grease monkey in a garage. Soon after, he won the garage from his employer in a dice game, so that at the end of the game they reversed roles. As a result, young Joe became heir to various bad debts, including one which made him owner of an ancient, decrepit Waco biplane. With a mixture of resourcefulness and sheer mechanical ability, he repaired the airplane, then flew it successfully---without benefit of flying lessons, which he could not afford.
The airplane and its mechanical functioning absorbed Joe Patroni completely---so much so, that he enticed his former employer into another dice game and allowed him to win the garage back. Joe thereupon quit the garage and took a job as an airline mechanic. He studied at night school, became a lead mechanic, then a foreman with a reputation as a top-notch troubleshooter. His crew could change an engine faster than an airplane manufacturer said it could be done; and with absolute reliability. After a while, whenever there was pressure, or a difficult repair job, the word went out: get Joe Patroni.
A contributing reason for his success was that he never wasted time on diplomacy. Instead, he went directly to the point, both with people and airplanes. He also had a total disregard for rank, and was equally forthright with everyone, including the airline's senior executives.
On one occasion, still talked about when airline men reminisced, Joe Patroni walked off his job and, without word to anyone, or prior consultation, rode an airplane to New York. He carried a package with him. On arrival, he went by bus and subway to the airline's Olympian headquarters in midtown Manhattan where, without announcement or preamble, he strode into the president's office. Opening the package, he deposited an oily, disassembled carburetor on the immaculate presidential desk.
The president, who had never heard of Joe Patroni, and whom no one ever got to see without prior appointment, was apoplectic until Joe told him, "If you want to lose some airplanes in flight, throw me out of here. If you don't, sit down and listen."
The president sat down---while Joe Patroni lighted a cigar---and listened. Afterward, he called in his engineering vice-president who, later still, ordered a mechanical modification affecting carburetor icing in flight, which Patroni had been urging---unsuccessfully at lower level---for months.