Airport by Arthur Hailey Read Free Book Online

it was kindness, or if he just forgot. Anyway, I had all that eighty dollars to myself.”
    Mel said, “You’ve never mentioned that before.”
    “Should I have?”
    “For sympathy, maybe.”
    She shook her head. “If you understood me better, you’d know the reason I’m telling you now is because I don’t need sympathy. Everything has worked out fine.” Tanya smiled. “I may even get to be an airline vice-president. You just said so.”
    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