He had taken only a couple of puffs when the ticket lady got on the loudspeaker and announced that they were preboarding. Women with small children, people who needed assistance in boarding, and of course passengers holding first-class tickets, who could board at their leisure.
Vito had to wait until a couple of old people on canes and what looked like a real Indian-Indian lady with three kids got on, but he was the first passenger in the first-class cabin. He checked his boarding pass, and then found his seat, on the aisle, on the left, right against the bulkhead that separated the first-class compartment from the tourist-class section.
As soon as he'd dug the seat belt out from where someone had stuffed it between the seats, a stewardess appeared, squatted in the aisle, and asked if she could get him something to drink before they took off.
They don't do that in the back of the airplane, he thought.
"Scotch, rocks," Vito said.
She smiled and went forward and returned almost immediately with his drink. Two things surprised him, first that it came in a plastic cup-Jesus, for what they charge you to sit up here, you'd think they'd at least give you a real glass-and that she didn't hold her hand out for any money. First he thought that they maybe ran a tab, but then he remembered that drinks in first class were on the house.
He examined his surroundings.
Class, he decided. The seats are wide and comfortable, and real leather. This is the way to travel.
He reached up and touched the back of the seat in front of him. That was real leather too.
He watched the other passengers get on. A lot of them looked, he noticed, at the only passenger in first class. He wondered for a moment if the ticket counter had been handing him a line about being lucky to get the only remaining seat in first class, but then some other first-class passengers got on and he decided that maybe she had been telling him the truth.
A good-looking blonde came into the cabin. Nice ass, Vito thought. For some reason she looked familiar. Not a movie or TV star, he decided. She isn't good-looking enough for that. But I'm almost sure I seen her someplace.
A Main Line type came on behind her, wearing a tweed jacket and a dress shirt with no tie. He had the boarding pass stubs in his hand. He glanced at them and stopped the blonde at the second row of seats from the front on the right, asked her did she want the aisle or the window. As she was getting in to sit in the window seat, the young guy looked around the cabin and smiled and nodded at Vito.
I remember him. He was at the craps table in the Flamingo when I was really hot. She wasn't there. I would have remembered her. Neither of them is wearing a wedding ring. She doesn't look like the kind of girl who would go off to Vegas with some guy she isn't married to for a couple of days. Maybe they're brother and sister.
He watched as the stewardess took their order, and then came back with a couple of cans of beer.
Jesus, if it's free booze up here, why drink beer?
Vito Lanza woke up when his ears hurt because they were coming down to land. His mouth was dry. He remembered-what the hell, it was free-that he'd had a lot to drink before they served dinner, and wine with the dinner, and he remembered that they had started to show the movie, and decided that he had fallen asleep during the movie.
Ten minutes later, the airplane landed. Vito was a little disappointed, for they had not flown over Philadelphia. The wind was blowing the wrong way or something, and all he could see out the window was Delaware and the oil refineries around Chester.
When they finally taxied up to the terminal building, Vito looked out the window and saw something that caught his attention. There was an Airport Unit Jeep and a limousine and what looked like an unmarked detective's car sitting down there, with the baggage carts and the other airport equipment.
What the hell is that all about?
"Ladies and gentlemen," the stewardess said over the public address system, "the captain has not yet turned off the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign. Please remain in your seats until he does."
When the stewardess finally got the door open, a stocky, red-faced man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant of the Philadelphia Police Department stepped into the cabin and looked around. Vito knew who he was, Lieutenant Paul Ardell of the Airport Unit.
Ardell looked around the first-class cabin, did a double take when he saw Vito, and then looked down at the Main Line type in the second row. He said something to him-Vito couldn't hear what-and the Main Line type got up, backed up a little in the aisle to let the blonde with the nice ass out, and then they both followed Ardell out the door.
A moment later Vito saw the two of them walking toward the limousine. The door opened and a gray-haired guy got out and put his arms around the blonde and hugged her. Then she got into the limousine and the gray-haired guy shook the Main Line type's hand and then gave him a little hug.
The Main Line type then walked out of Vito's sight, under the airplane. Vito guessed, correctly, that he was going to intercept their luggage before it got from the airplane to the baggage conveyor, but he didn't get to see this. The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign went off, and the stewardess gave her little speech about how happy American Airlines was that they had chosen American, and hoped they would do so again in the future, and people started getting off.
Joe Marchessi, and the new guy, the little Spic, was working the baggage claim room when Vito got there. Until somebody who transferred into the Airport Unit got to know his way around, they paired him with somebody with experience.
The Airport Unit was different. In other areas you could move a cop from one district to another, and just about put him right to work. But things were different at the Airport; it was a whole new ballgame. You had to learn what to look for, and what you looked for at the Airport was not what you looked for in an ordinary district.
Airport Unit cops were something special. For one thing, they were sworn in as officers both in Philadelphia and Tinnicum Township, which is in Delaware County. Some parts of the runways and their approaches are in Tinnicum Township, and they need the authority to operate there too.
The mob, over the years, had found the Tinnicum Marshes a good place to dump bodies. But aside from that, there was not much violent crime at the Airport.
Most of what you had to deal with was people stealing luggage, and they were most often professional thieves, not some kid who saw something he decided he could get away with stealing and stole it. Or keeping thieves, professional and amateur, from helping themselves to the air freight in "Cargo City."
Then there was smuggling, but that was handled by the feds, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Customs Service, and sometimes the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and they usually made the arrest, and all the Airport Unit had to do was arrange for the prisoners to be transported.
All things considered, working the job in the Airport Unit was a pretty good job. Most of the time you got to stay inside the terminal, instead of either freezing your balls or getting a heat stroke outside.
Vito didn't think much of Marchessi: He had been on the job ten, twelve years, never even thought about taking the examination for corporal or detective and bettering himself, just wanted to put in his eight hours a day doing as little as possible, inside where it was warm, until he was old enough to retire and get a job as a rent-a-cop or something.
And Officer Marchessi did not, in Vito's opinion, treat him with the respect to which he was entitled as a corporal.
Vito walked up to them. "Whaddaya say, Marchessi?"
"How's it going, Lanza?"
It should have been "Corporal," but Vito let it ride.
"You're Martinez, right?"
"That's right, Corporal."