I took a field trip this morning to the world headquarters of Shirlington Limousine & Transportation, Inc. hoping to talk to people in the building, and get a sense of what the company was like. Maybe pick up a complimentary pen.
My expedition didn’t last as long as I’d hoped.
Since the mid-1990s, the company we now believe ran hookers to and from “hospitality suites” run by Brent Wilkes has rented office space in Hangar 7 of the general aviation wing at Washington D.C.’s National Airport. The building is currently operated by British-owned Signature Flight Support, which provides services for corporate jets — baggage handling, de-icing, fueling, that kind of thing.
Did the Signatures folks want to chat about their unusual neighbors/tenants? No, it turns out. And I’m not the first to ask, either.
The downstairs of the hangar looks like a nice, miniature commerical airport — a small check-in counter, some very nice lounge furniture. A bank of fancy private phone booths. It was dark, and no one was around, so I ventured upstairs, into a warren of offices off a single narrow hallway.
Finding one Signature Services office open, I stuck my head in. From her office on the far side of a reception area, a woman noticed me and asked if she could help me. Sure, I said. I’m a reporter. I understand Shirlington Limo has offices here. I was wondering what they’re like.
“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to refer you to public affairs,” she told me. When I asked, she confirmed that other people had asked the same question, and she was under orders not to comment on the matter.
I thanked her, left her office and walked on down the hall. Wouldn’t you know it, the Department of Homeland Security has offices there too! The Air and Marine Operations branch. I heard voices talking in a back room, so I walked in and said, “hello?”
A tall man in a flight suit came out to the waiting area. I introduced myself and asked him about Shirlington Limo. He gave a small laugh. Before he had a chance to respond further, a man came up behind me. He was Adam Cope, the operations manager for Signature Aviation, he told me. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said.
I turned around to ask the guy in the flight suit if he wanted me to leave. He ducked into the back office and quickly closed the door. I took it as a yes.
Cope walked me into the hall and repeated his request. “Unless you have business here, you have to leave,” he said. I told him I did have business — I’m a reporter, this is my business, and I was looking forward to talking to the folks at Shirlington Limousine. “You can’t,” he said. “They’re not here.”
Cope shuffled me out the front door and went back inside.
Well darnit, I thought. I came all this way, and I didn’t even get a complimentary Shirlington Limo pen, much less some dirt on the company at the center of perhaps the juiciest scandal of my career.
But look! There were employees on a smoke break! There at the entrance! God bless anti-smoking campaigns, forcing sources to stand outside of buildings, within reach of the common reporter.
“Jim” — I promised him I wouldn’t use his real name — worked in the building, and was happy to tell me what he knew. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“We hardly ever see ’em,” he said of the Shirlington employees. “Once a month on Saturdays they have a training thing. The guy I normally see here, I haven’t seen for a week or so.” There was a pregnant lady who seemed to work as a secretary in the office, and keep regular hours. “She was in the office at eight or so, out around 4:30 or five.” Recently, however, he hasn’t seen her, either. “They kept quiet — I never paid much attention.”
See any Shirlington limo cars? “I’ve never seen them stage cars here,” he said.
He hadn’t seen any of the lawmakers, corporate execs or government officials use Shirlington cars to get to or from the Signature operation, he said. But until recently, the airport was closed for that sort of flight since the Sept. 11 attacks. So there hasn’t been much traffic. “They all got used to flying into Dulles, or Manassas,” Jim told me.
So it looks like Shirlington’s keeping a low profile, at least for the moment. Too bad. I wanted that pen.
