Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (12 page)

Her eyes narrowed. “And what was that, Nathan?”

“He said he wanted me to find out if you were having an affair with Paul Mantz.”

Now the eyes widened, as if I’d just proposed something ridiculous. “With Paul?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Having an affair with Paul?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Don’t change the subject. Are you having an affair with him?”

“No! He’s not my type….”

“Amy, now please don’t get mad, but considering the events of the evening, I’m having just a little difficulty ascertaining who or what your ‘type’ might be.”

She ducked the question. “Maybe I should say I’m not
Paul’s
type. You’ve seen Myrtle. She’s his type.”

“Armed and dangerous, you mean?”

She snorted a little laugh. “That’s no joke. He likes flamboyant, outgoing, drop-dead gorgeous ‘dames.’…”

“You ain’t chopped liver, kid.”

The sheet around her had fallen down below the small, perfectly conical breasts. “No, but I’m no curvy cutie-pie, no dolled-up starlet. And on a daily basis, half the little Jean Harlots in Hollywood are throwing themselves at Paul.”

“But is he catching?”

“Yes! Which is why poor old Myrtle is half-bonkers. I’m probably the only woman in California under forty he’s
not
having an affair with. He’s a ladies’ man, a tomcat from the word go, which is also why he’s not my type. He doesn’t respect women.”

“He has great respect for you. You’re his star pupil.”

Her eyes and nostrils flared. “That’s what I mean! He’s a stunt pilot, and a good one, but he doesn’t begin to have the list of records I have. What sets him above me?”

“Why do you put up with him, then? I would’ve guessed you were very fond of him.”

She shrugged, sighed. “I am. I guess I look at him and see a kindred spirit. He loves to fly, and he’s got adventure in his soul.”

“Well, tonight he had a wife with a .32 in his bedroom.”

“Maybe he’s a little too adventurous. And
I
respect
him.
He’s got connections in the aeronautics industry second to none; the guys at Lockheed love him. He knows people, and he knows his stuff.”

“But he’s also a cocky little bastard.”

“Yes. Can I ask you something, Nathan?”

“Shoot…as long you’re not packing a .32.”

“What do you think these are?” she smirked as she pulled the covers up over her breasts. “Listen. You were around the two of us, Paul and me, and even knowing me as well as you do, you thought the two of us might be having an affair, correct?”

“I was convinced of it. I was hoping it wasn’t true, because I couldn’t imagine why any sane woman would prefer that little son of a bitch to a handsome so-and-so like yours truly…but sure. I made you two for an item.”

She mulled that over. “Then G. P. really may have sent those notes himself.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Nathan, tonight…when you saw me in bed with Toni…what did you think?”

“What do you think I thought?”

“Probably that I like to be with women.”

“A reasonable assumption.”

“Yes, but…I like women, uh…You see, I went to several girls’ schools, and that’s where I had my first, oh…this is embarrassing.”

“Then don’t talk about it.”

She swallowed, steeled herself. “There have been women in my life, casually…and a few men, too…. Does that shock you?”

I gave her my best smartass smirk. “So you fly a biplane. So what?”

She tapped my chest, with a playful fist. “I’ll hit you again….”

“It doesn’t shock me, Amy. I’m from Chicago. Takes a cattle prod to shock a Chicagoan.”

“Good. Because I need you to understand my relationship with G. P., and it’s not, uh…
Saturday Evening Post
material.”

“Not something Norman Rockwell might paint?”

“Not exactly. I was sort of G. P.’s…discovery.”

“I know. He cast you as ‘Lady Lindy’ to make a bestseller. Then the bestseller was such an enormous success, he decided to latch onto you for the sequels.”

“That’s about it, but the whole truth is, I also latched onto him…. Nathan, I didn’t have money. I’m a nurse, a social worker, a teacher, and flying is an expensive…obsession.”

“I remember.”

“He was married, when we were first associated. It sounds ugly, but it’s true: I wrote my first book, about the
Friendship
flight? Under his and his wife’s roof. Dorothy was wonderful to me…I even dedicated the book to her.”

“I’m sure that made up for you taking away her husband.”

“Go ahead, be snide, I deserve it; I’m not proud of what I did. He claimed their marriage was over before I came along, and I could lie and say I rejected his advances until after the divorce, but I won’t. We slept together, when he accompanied me on lecture tours…. My goodness, Nathan, why didn’t you kiss me when we were alone in those hotel rooms? Do you know how much time we’ve wasted?”

“Please…no salt in the wound. So there was love between you, in the beginning?”

“I never felt that for him.”

“How did he feel about you?”

“I’ve never been sure whether he viewed me as a valuable property he secured or really did love me, but I do know he…lusted after me. My goodness, this sounds like a meller-drama, doesn’t it?”

“All G. P. lacks is the handlebar mustache and the whip.”

“He was aware of my…proclivities. He knew that despite my fairly modest demeanor, that I, uh…”

“That still waters ran deep.”

“Thank you. What a generous way to put it. Anyway, I had a well-known, publicly stated aversion to marriage, but, uh, at the same time, the normal biological urges of a young woman and, perhaps in the view of some, some not so normal ones, as well. But I did, if not love him in those early days, admire him. He was an impressive man to me. I thought he was fascinating…publisher, explorer, socialite….”

“So you had a normal sexual relationship.”

“Yes. We, uh…don’t have much of one, now. He…he makes me feel dirty.”

“In bed?”

“No. Everywhere else. He’s the management, Nathan, and he still does a good job, but he goes too far. You’re a case in point…. He had no right to hire you to spy on me. We had an agreement, G. P. and I, before our marriage, not a formal agreement really, but I did put it in writing…”

“A prenuptial agreement, you mean?”

“Not exactly…just a letter I gave him on the eve of our wedding. But he accepted the terms.”

“The terms.”

“Yes. I told him I wouldn’t hold him to any medieval code of faithfulness, nor would I consider myself bound that way to him.”

“And has he been with other women?”

“Almost certainly, but it’s no concern of mine, is it? Then in the early days of our marriage, when we were more romantically active, he started getting possessive, and finally I did agree…Nathan, this is embarrassing for me, please forgive my reticence…I agreed that any future dalliances would be with members of my own sex.”

“You mean, it was okay with George if you fooled around as long as it was with other females.”

“That’s it.”

“But he wanted to be the only man in your life.”

“That’s right. Otherwise, it would be an affront to his manhood.”

I winced at the weird logic. “And you finding satisfaction in the arms of another woman wasn’t?”

“No. Frankly, I…I think he found the idea exciting. Is that a common male fantasy?”

“I think most fellas figure if two girls were going at it, and a real man happened onto the scene, he could straighten ’em out.”

She began to laugh. She laughed so hard, tears were rolling.

“Was that funny?” I asked. Usually I know when I’m kidding.

“You should write for the Marx Brothers…. Nathan, I believe I’m something of an exception, feeling as I do toward both sexes. But the notion of a ‘real man’ trying to make a ‘real woman’ out of Toni Lake, for example, is about as likely as a dog turning a cat into Rin Tin Tin…. Have I disappointed you? Did you think you’d made a real woman out of me tonight?”

Now I laughed. “Anything’s possible. Didn’t I make myself into a real fool?”

“A sweet fool.” She nestled under my arm again, the long tapering fingers of one hand entwining themselves in the hair on my chest. “You know, Nathan, this begins to make sense. If observing Paul and me together led you to believe we were ‘an item,’ then G. P. might have come to the same conclusion.”

I worked my fingers gently in her tousled curls. “Which means your husband might very well be behind those threatening notes.”

“It’s highly possible…. Nathan, your suitcase…is it my imagination, or is it packed?”

“Well, everything but my camera, if I can find the pieces.”

“I’m sorry…. Was it an expensive camera?”

“That’s your husband’s problem, ’cause it’s going on the expense account. So G. P. wouldn’t care about you and Toni Lake getting friendly?”

“Well…I’d rather you didn’t mention it to him. I learned some nasty things, from Toni, about what G. P.’s been doing to my colleagues, and I’d like to try to remedy that, but from within.”

“He wouldn’t mind you sleeping with her, but talking to her is another story.”

“Something like that.” She looked up at me. The blue-gray eyes were wide and clear; she had no makeup on at all and I never saw a lovelier face. “Will you protect me?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t just mean by withholding information from my husband. I mean, will you unpack and stay, till the start of the Mexican flight?”

“Why?”

She pushed up on her hands and put her face so close to mine, the tips of our noses nearly touched. “Why not? We can spend some time together…. We’re pals, remember?”

“I remember.”

She began chewing on my earlobe. “Besides, what if G. P. didn’t write those notes? Somebody else might be lying in wait to sabotage my plane. I have enemies, you know.”

“Sure. G. P.’s made you plenty, sounds like.”

She kissed me; by the end of the kiss, she was back on top of me, a lanky woman in a man’s pajama top and no bottoms.

“Will you stay?” she asked.

“Well, your husband did hire me to be your bodyguard.”

“That’s right.”

“So, uh…I guess I have a responsibility to guard your body.”

She nodded. “Day and night.”

“You know, that isn’t the throttle…”

“Sure it is…. Don’t you want to go for the record?”

“Is three times your record?”

“Four would be.”

“Four?”

“My goodness, have you forgotten? You’re not my first tonight….”

“Oh, you are a dirty girl underneath it all…. What you need is a real man in the cockpit….”

She yelped at the funny filth of that, and laughed and laughed, even as I slipped another lambskin over my throttle and prepared for another flight.

The flight was scheduled for April 19, a Friday night, according to a strategy worked out by G. P. Putnam that would have Amy reaching Mexico City on Saturday afternoon, in time for a story in the Easter Sunday papers.

Mantz had installed in the Vega his various new and improved gizmos, several engineers from neighboring Lockheed had worked their technological magic as well, and mechanic Ernie Tisor pronounced the plane in shipshape condition, ready for the five hundred gallons of fuel that with other special equipment would send its weight up to a staggering six thousand pounds. Amy took the fully loaded and fueled-up Vega up for numerous test spins and seemed delighted at the way the plane handled. I declined to accompany her.

Meetings at the Mantz bungalow ceased, Paul having moved out at Myrtle’s request, and resumed in Mantz’s office at the United Air Services hangar. There, Amy spent many hours with Mantz and Commander Williams going over charts and maps (Rand McNally overviews of the United States and Mexico, and state maps of both countries); she would have to compute her position from compass readings and elapsed time using tables that showed distances covered at various speeds. Mantz created specific exercises for her in the blind-flying trainer based on Williams’s charts, and she dutifully carried them out.

But she and Mantz continued to have the occasional row, as when she complained about the inconvenience of a trailing antenna for her two-way radiotelephone, which she had to unwind from a reel under the pilot’s seat, after takeoff, and then reel in again before landing.

“Listen to Papa, angel,” Mantz said condescendingly, “and take it along.”

“With our weight problems,” she said, “why bother with it?”

“Since you’ve never learned how to use a telegraph radio, and you don’t know how to take celestial sightings, it’s your principal aid to navigation. Or were you planning to pack a Ouija board?”

He laughed at his own joke as she stomped off—but that was the end of it, and she agreed to take the trailing antenna along. No matter how she may have resented him, Mantz was the final authority on all technical matters.

On Tuesday night, with G. P. Putnam due to arrive the next afternoon by train (he liked to fly even less than I did), his wife and I said our goodbyes in the cabin at Lowman’s Motor Court where we’d spent every night together following the incident with Myrtle Mantz and her .32. Officially, Amy had moved from the Mantz bungalow to the Ambassador Hotel, but my cabin was her home away from home.

We were in bed. She was in the crook of my arm and we were both naked and rather melancholy. I don’t suppose either one of us had any illusions that our affair was anything but a passing if memorable moment in our lives. But several weeks of intimacy had made us a couple, and it was difficult to let go.

“Myrtle Mantz is suing for divorce,” she said.

“Stop the presses.”

“I’ve been named as corespondent.”

“I’m sorry…. You can’t be surprised.”

“No. I’m not even worried about the bad publicity. Myrtle’s own disgraceful behavior lets the world see exactly what she is…but I don’t know how G. P. will take it.”

“Why do you care?”

She gazed up at me like a worried child. “What are you going to tell him, Nathan?”

“How about, I’m convinced his wife isn’t having an affair with Paul Mantz because she’s having one with me?”

She frowned and laughed. “You’re terrible.”

“He’s terrible. If you believe he’s the kind of man who would send threatening letters to his own wife, if you find his business practices disgusting, if anything tender you might once have felt for him has gone completely cold, then you have a responsibility to yourself to dump the son of a bitch, pronto.”

“Quite a speech.”

“Thank you.”

She twirled circles in my chest hair with a forefinger. “So. Are you suggesting I dump him and move to Chicago? We could raise little Hellers. I could take in laundry, a little sewing…”

“No,” I said, not appreciating her sarcasm; like most sarcastic people, I only appreciated my own. “I’m looking for something in a wife a little less interesting than a woman who flies six thousand pounds of fuel and aircraft over the Gulf of Mexico in her spare time.”

“Really?”

“You don’t need G. P. anymore. You’re more famous than Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum. You hang around with the President and Eleanor, for Christ’s sake. You’re at a stage where you can attract all kinds of backing and sponsorship without the help of that slick operator.”

She leaned on an elbow, her expression solemn. “I don’t approve of everything G. P. does…”

“No kidding.”

“But he put me where I am, and he knows how to keep me there. He doesn’t push me around, Nathan, I can handle him; there are going to be some changes made about how he goes about things—”

“But not a change in management.”

“No. I’m going to stick with G. P.”

“Even if he sent those notes?”

“Even then.” She smiled a little. “But someday…who knows?”

I snorted a laugh. “Laundry and little Hellers?”

“Who can say? I only have a few good years in the air left in me, a few good flights…and then it is my firm intention to leave G. P. Putnam behind and find myself a tropical island. Maybe it’ll be a tropical island in Illinois.”

I slipped an arm around her, gathered her close. “Why don’t you quit now? Or at least after this Mexico City flight…”

She shook her head, no, and though her eyes looked right at me, they were distant. “I need to go out on something bigger, Nathan. Something with wings so wide it’ll carry me to the end of my days…”

Did she know how arch that sounded?

“Jeez, what the hell’s left, Amy? I mean, no offense, but don’t you think the public’s interest in record-breaking flights has pretty much subsided? When you got airlines flying people coast to coast, like some Twentieth Century Limited of the sky, the bloom’s off the rose, my sweet, the novelty’s plumb wore off.”

Her eyes tightened. “It has to be something
really
big….”

“What are you thinking? What have you got cooked up under those Shirley Temple curls?”

Her expression turned pixieish. She tapped my nose with a fingertip. “What would you say to
two
oceans, Nathan?”

“What?…An around-the-world flight, you mean?”

She withdrew from my arms and flopped onto her back and folded her arms across her bare breasts, and stared at the ceiling as if it were the sky, her eyes alive with a dream. “A female Phileas Fogg…in a plane. Wouldn’t that set ’em on their ears?”

I leaned on my elbow and studied her like a moron stumped by a trigonometry problem. “Didn’t Wiley Post do that already?”

“Wiley’s not a woman….” She frowned in thought. “Only I’ll need something better than the Vega to do it. A bigger plane, with two engines….”

“Does G. P. know about this latest scheme?”

“Of course. He’s all for it.”

It was probably his idea.

“Isn’t it a little dangerous?”

Her response was lilting: “The most dangerous yet.”

“Jesus. What if it kills you?”

“I think G. P. would grieve—after he got a ghostwritten book out of it.” She tossed a wry little smirk my way. “Then he’d find himself a new young wife and get on with his life.”

“What about you? So, do you want to die, Amy? Does dying in the drink sound like a fun adventure?”

“If I should pop off, it’d be doing the thing I always most wanted to do. Don’t you think the Man with the Little Black Book has a date marked down for all of us? And when our work here is finished, we move on?”

“No,” I said, angry to hear such romantic horseshit coming from an intelligent woman. “I don’t believe that at all. If a guy with a scythe comes around to collect me, I’ll grab it from him and slice his damn head off.”

“Nothing wrong with that. I never said I was in favor of going down without a fight.”

“Amy, tell me, please, I’m just an ignorant workaday rube—what exactly would a flight like that do for the cause of aviation?”

Her full lips pursed into a kiss of a smile, which unfolded as she admitted, “Not a darn thing…but for the cause of women, everything…not to mention set me up with a reputation bigger than Slim Lindbergh’s, allow me to retire to a life of respect, an advisor to presidents, writing, lecturing—but at my own pace, perhaps a college teaching position….”

There was no talking to her. I was at least a little in love with her, and maybe somewhere in the back of my self-deluded brain I thought she might come back to me one day, when her final flight was over and she’d divorced that machiavellian bastard. But I wasted no more breath in trying to discourage her from reaching her goal, even if it did involve her staying with G. P. Putnam.

Who, on Thursday afternoon, spoke privately with me, though we were in the mammoth echoing United Air Services hangar.

We were not alone—Ernie, Tod, and Jim, the team of mechanics assigned to the Vega, were at work on Amy’s plane. But they were on the other side of the hangar, the clanking and clinking of their tools, and their occasional chatter, providing a muffled accompaniment to our conversation, just as oil and gas smells provided a pungent bouquet. Putnam and I stood in the shadow of the wing of Mantz’s bread-and-butter ship, the red and white
Honeymoon Express.

I was wearing a lime sportshirt and dark green slacks, fitting in nicely with the casual California style; but Putnam was strictly East Coast business executive. His wide-shouldered suit was a gray double-breasted worsted that had not come off the rack; his black and white striped tie was silk and probably cost more than any suit I owned.

“Is she sleeping with that little cocksucker?” Putnam demanded, looking over toward the glassed-in office where Amy and Mantz hunkered over the desk looking at a map or chart, Commander Williams opposite them, pointing something out.

“No,” I said.

“You’re absolutely positive?”

“I was in the bushes looking in the windows, G. P.”

“Did you get pictures?”

“There was nothing to get pictures of. They had separate bedrooms. Then when Mantz’s wife filed divorce papers on him, he had to move out, and your wife went to the Ambassador.”

He gestured with open palms. “If there’s nothing between them, why has Myrtle Mantz named Amelia in this divorce action?”

“Because Paul Mantz can’t keep his dick in his pants and your wife’s been a houseguest. It’s a natural assumption.”

He began to pace, over a small area, two steps forward, two steps back. “But an incorrect one, you’re saying?”

“That’s right. Your wife and Mantz get along pretty well, I mean they work together fine as a team…but she resents his superior attitude.”

“Well, he is a patronizing little son of a bitch,” Putnam snapped.

Funny thing was, I’d overheard Mantz complain to Williams about the same thing where Putnam was concerned: “Where does that prick in a stuffed shirt get off treating me like an employee?”

Williams hadn’t replied, but it occurred to me the answer might be: Because Mantz was on G. P.’s payroll. It also occurred to me that that “stuffed shirt” dressed similarly to Mantz.

On the other hand, Mantz had a point. He probably considered himself Amy’s business partner, because she was going to consign her Vega to the United Air Services fleet, plus they’d been discussing, over lunches at the Sky Room, the possibility of a flying school that bore the Amelia Earhart imprimatur.

“Have you received any more threatening notes?” I asked Putnam.

His pacing halted and the cold eyes did something they rarely did: blinked. “What? Uh, no. We’ve been fortunate in that regard.”

“You’ll be interested to know there haven’t been any sabotage attempts. No breaking and entering, here at the airport; no suspicious characters hanging about; no lovesick fans carrying a crush too far.”

He smiled tightly, nodded. “That’s a relief to hear.”

“I mean, because you were concerned about your wife’s welfare, right?”

“Of course I was.”

“This wasn’t just about me snooping on her, to see if she was cheating around.”

“Of course not.”

“It’s not like you sent those threatening notes yourself or anything. To make it look good.”

A groove formed between his eyebrows. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing. It’s just that Paul Mantz told me an interesting story about how you promoted a book, a few years back. That Mussolini exposé?”

He sucked air in and huffed, “Are you accusing me of sending those notes myself? That’s patently absurd.”

“It is absurd, and I also don’t give a damn, as long as your checks don’t bounce…but I wouldn’t be surprised, once the dust settles, and this Mexico City flight’s behind you, if that sweet little aviatrix of yours doesn’t sit you down for a spanking.”

His chin lifted and the cold eyes peered down at me with unblinking contempt. “Mister, I don’t like your attitude.”

“You didn’t hire me for my attitude. You hired me for my low moral character. I wormed my way into your wife’s confidence and betrayed her…just like you wanted me to.”

“After Amelia takes off tomorrow,” he said, stalking off, glaring, “I won’t be needing your services any longer.”

“I don’t think you ever needed them, really…but thanks for the work. Times are hard.”

The rest of that day, Putnam said not a word to me, and final preparations went on without a hitch, with the slight exception of a guest appearance by Myrtle Mantz, who dropped by to scream at her husband.

Wearing a dark green dress with jagged streaks that might have been lightning bolts, she cornered Mantz in his office during Amy’s final stint in the Link trainer. The glass of his glassed-in office rattled as she yelled at him, and pounded his desk.

I was lounging in a folding chair, reading the boxing results in the sports section of the
Herald-Express,
when the brouhaha began. And I would have stayed out of it, but Mantz started yelling back at her and took a swing at her, which she ducked. I had a feeling these two sparring partners had been in the ring before.