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“Now what?” Miller asked.
Sergeant Schneider took a cellular phone from her purse and pushed an autodial button.
“Jack, Betty,” she said a moment later. “I need a favor. Look in the lower drawer of my filing cabinet. There’s a folder called ‘Lease-Aire.’ I need the home address of a guy named Terry Halloran. And a phone number, if there is one.”
“Who’s he?” Castillo asked.
“President of Lease-Aire, right?” Miller asked.
Betty nodded.
“How’d you happen to have that information?” Castillo asked Sergeant Schneider.
“The FBI came to us asking what we had on them,” she said. "We’d never heard of them. But Captain O’Brien told me to have a look at them in case there was something we should know.”
“And what did you find out?” Castillo asked.
She held up her hand in a signal for him to wait and then repeated the address and telephone number that Jack Whoever on the other end of the line gave her.
“Thanks, Jack,” she concluded and turned the phone off.
“Aren’t you going to write that down?” Miller asked.
She returned her cellular to her purse and came out with a voice recorder.
“It’s a bugger,” she said. “It bugs my cellular. I turn it on whenever I make a call like that.”
She pushed buttons on the digital recorder and from its memory chip it played back her voice reciting the address and phone number.
“I’m impressed,” Castillo said.
“Me, too,” Miller said.
“Well, we’re not the Secret Service, but we’re getting fairly civilized. There’s even a rumor that we’re going to get inside plumbing in Building 110 next year.”
Castillo and Schneider smiled at each other. Miller’s smile was strained.
“Hey, no offense,” she said. “The problems I have with Feds are with the FBI.”
“He’s worried that I’m going to make a pass at you,” Castillo said.
“Jesus, Charley!” Miller said.
Betty asked Castillo, evenly, “Are you?”
“From what I’ve seen so far, I would be afraid to,” Castillo said.
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
“You were telling me what you found out when you had a look at Lease-Aire?” Castillo said.
“Shoestring operation, family owned. The president’s— Terry Halloran’s—wife is secretary-treasurer. Her brother, name of Alex MacIlhenny, is vice president and chief and only pilot. Also chief mechanic. He learned how to fly in the Air Force, got out, went to work for the airlines—several of them—kept getting placed on unpaid furlough when business wasn’t good, got sick of that and went in business with his brother-in-law buying and reselling worn-out airliners. Nothing on any of them except the pilot’s wife had him arrested one time on a domestic violence rap that didn’t hold up. They’re divorced. Until you told me about this terrorist business, I was almost willing to go along with the FBI theory that they were trying to collect the insurance. ”
“You did your homework,” Castillo said, admiringly.
“The sister and husband seem okay. They checked out; no prior record, etcetera. He’s a muckety-muck in the Knights of Columbus. I never met the pilot, but I can’t imagine the sister or her husband getting involved with terrorists no matter how much they needed money.”
“I think that ‘illness in the family’ business is not the reason they’re closed,” Castillo said, nodding at the sign. “I want to talk to them.”
