Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (17 page)

“Look,” Mantz said, having to work his voice up a little, “let’s just start with Howland Island.”

“What is Howland Island, anyway?” I asked. “I never heard of the damn place before this flight.”

“Nobody had, except some military types.”

“Military?”

From the field, Dizzy Dean could be heard yelling, “I quit!” to the umpire, and he trundled toward the dugout. An uproar from the stands soon built into a thunderous chant: “
We want Dean
…
We want Dean
…
We want Dean
…”

Mantz really had to work to be heard over that. “That’s the part of this thing that’s putting that nosedive feeling in the pit of my stomach. See, the original plan was to use Midway Island for refueling—that’s a Pan Am overnight stopover for Clipper passengers. They got a hotel there and even a golf course…”

“We want Dean
…”

“Sounds ideal.”

“We want Dean
…”

“Yeah, only there’s nowhere to land, no runway. Midway’s strictly a seaplane port, by way of a sheltered lagoon.”

“We want Dean
…

“So why didn’t Amelia pick a seaplane for her flying laboratory, instead of the Electra?”

“We want Dean
…”

“Actually, the Electra could’ve been fitted with pontoons…but those are expensive, many thousands of dollars.”

“We want Dean
…”

Mantz continued with a nasty smile: “Now you know, Eleanor Roosevelt damn near has a crush on Amelia; and FDR feels about the same way. So Gippy had Amelia write the president for help and permission to refuel the Electra in-flight over Midway…which by the way I considered inadvisable unless it was completely unavoidable.”

Dizzy Dean, giving in to the crowd’s urging, strode from the dugout back onto the mound.

I had to wait for the applause to die down before I could say, “That sounds expensive, too.”

“Not if you can stick the government for it.

“And FDR okayed that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What does the government get out of it?”

Bartell singled to right; Whitehead scored, tying the game. The crowd roared in dismay.

“That’s where Howland Island comes in,” Mantz said. “And to answer your question, Howland Island is a desolate dab of nothing in the middle of nowhere, half a mile wide and one mile and a half long, covered with seagull shit.”

“Just what is Franklin Roosevelt’s interest in a bird-shit repository?”

He threw a hand in the air, rolled his eyes. “Hell, I don’t know the politics, or the military ramifications, not really. But Howland and a couple other little islands are just about the only land between Hawaii and the Marshall Islands.”

“So what?”

“The Marshall Islands belong to the Japanese. There’s talk of the Japs and military expansion in the Pacific. This is all over my head, Heller, but even for somebody who doesn’t read anything but the funny pages, it’s not hard to figure: Uncle Sam musta needed an excuse to build a runway on Howland.”

“And Amelia was it.”

Down on the field was a flurry of play, and the crowd groaned in agony. Runs on hits by Lou Chiozza and Joe Moore had the score Giants 3, Cards 1.

Mantz said, “I heard G. P. say the government shelled out over three hundred grand, sending the Coast Guard dragging five-ton tractors over reefs and shoals…just as a courtesy to this famous civilian aviatrix, to aid her on her world flight.”

I had to smile at what seemed like outrageous string-pulling and manipulation of the government on G. P.’s part. “That doesn’t sound like a sellout to me, Paul. Sounds like you scratch my back, I scratch your back.”

“It didn’t bother me, either, at the time. G. P. wasn’t even that secretive about it. Oh, he’d say, ‘Now this is confidential,’ but he got a kick out of telling how he’d conned the taxpayers into paying for Amelia’s landing strip.”

Hubbell was down there striking Cards out so quickly, it was hard to keep track.

“So,” I asked, “why does it bother you now?”

Mantz’s eyes narrowed. “This change of direction in flight plan—the first try was east to west; but now, all of a sudden, it’s west to east.”

“Yeah—Amelia told me it had to do with ‘changing weather conditions.’”

He smirked and shook his head. “That’s the story G. P.’s handing the press—‘a seasonal change in wind patterns.’ It’s baloney—hardly any ‘seasonal change’ happens in weather along the Equator, and zero change in wind direction. Prevailing wind’s always east to west, the opposite of wind in the northern and southern hemispheres…. Hell, that’s why she chose flying east to west, in the first place!”

I was barely following him. “I don’t know beans about flying, but it seems to me, bucking the prevailing wind is stupid.”

“That’s as good a word for it as any. And switching the flight plans to west to east meant everything from the previous attempt had to be scrapped—creating all kinds of problems, adding huge expense in a situation where scrimping would seem mandatory.”

“What kind of added expense and extra problems?”

“Fuel, oil, spare parts, and personnel, in place for the east-west flight, had to be moved—for example, a mechanic dispatched from London to Karachi had to be assigned to somewhere else, Rangoon maybe, or Singapore. Credentials had to be reacquired, charts replotted, creating hours of work for engineers and mechanics at Lockheed.”

“Well, what do you make of that?”

Dizzy Dean was back on the mound.

“I’m not sure. I never got a straight answer from either Gippy or Amelia on the reason for reversing the direction of the flight. The only way I can figure it is, it’s got to be a directive from the same government quarters that funded the second try.”

“Is that where the money came from? Uncle Sam?”

Dean hurled a fastball (what the papers called his fireball) at Lou Chiozza, or to be more exact, at Chiozza’s head. Narrowly missing a beanball was a disconcerting experience, and Chiozza picked himself up from the dust, chastened.

“Well,” Mantz said, “Gippy and Amelia sure as hell didn’t come up with the dough, at least not all of it, not nearly. And listen, from the start, the military’s been on this like ants at a picnic. You don’t fly across the Pacific—particularly not when part of the plan is to land on a flyspeck like Howland Island—without the cooperation of Navy tenders, seaplanes, and personnel.”

“You said it yourself—Amelia has the President and First Lady in her pocket. She could pull that off.”

Chiozza struck out.

“Heller, U.S. naval policy is that no nonmilitary flights get any assistance, whatsoever, with the exception of emergency aid. Every pilot in America knows that. Listen, Manning was a Navy captain, and Noonan is a lieutenant commander in the naval reserve, for Pete’s sake.”

“That’s not surprising, is it? The military is where pilots get trained, for the most part.”

Dean hurled his fireball at Jimmy Ripple’s head. The crowd roared in delighted approval; another Dizzy Dean beanball show was under way!

“Sure most pilots get their training in the military,” Mantz said, “but does that explain why Amelia was driven around in a naval staff car? Or why we were given carte blanche at Luke Field in Honolulu, an Army-Navy airfield? Heller, Army Air Corps personnel dismantled the Electra in Honolulu and crated it for shipping back to Lockheed in Burbank, and we used a Navy hangar at Oakland Airport.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

His face was clenched with urgency. “Come back to California with me. I’ll point you in the direction of some other people who, like me, were part of the inner circle and then got closed out, suddenly. You need to do some snooping around both Burbank and Oakland—”

“Whoa. I don’t want this job, Paul.”

Jimmy Ripple struck out.

“Why not?”

“If the government’s in on this, if this is a military matter, if Amy’s agreed to…to, what? Participate in some espionage mission of some kind? Then that’s their business, and hers.”

Mel Ott stepped up to bat, waiting for his fireball.

“But I don’t think she even knows it’s a government effort,” Mantz said. “Or at least she doesn’t realize to what extent.”

Dean hurled the ball at Ott’s head, Ott jumped out of the way, cursing. The umpire said nothing, did nothing.

“I think this is all Gippy’s doing,” Mantz went on bitterly. “I mean, Christ, Heller, you know Amelia! You’ve heard her speak, you were her bodyguard on that lecture series!”

“What’s your point?”

“She’s a goddamn pacifist, for cryin’ out loud! She’s not gonna willingly cooperate with the military.”

Ott struck out.

“People make all kinds of deals with the devil,” I said, “if they want something bad enough. And I know how bad she wanted this flight.”

“I tell ya, if you can come up with proof that Gippy sold her out, I can get word to her, early in the flight.”

Hubbell was back on the mound. No beanballs for him. He just played his game.

“And what,” I said, with a single dry laugh, “she’ll turn around and come home? Do you always fly without a parachute, Mantz? Do you always land on your head?”

His mouth twitched a grimace. “She needs to know she’s being used.”

“Let’s suppose she is. Being used. Do I want to take on the military or the feds or whoever? No. Let Dizzy Dean argue with the umpire. I don’t need that kind of grief.”

“He’s put her in harm’s way, Heller. If she doesn’t make it home, Gippy murdered her. Or the same as.”

“I don’t think much more of that bastard than you do, Paul. I’m sure he’s made all kinds of, yes, deals with the devil…but I still don’t see him working against Amelia, hoping she’ll crash in the ocean. Not with those stamps on board, anyway.”

“…Somebody’s been following me, Heller.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I had a shadow ever since I got to St. Louis.”

“Who?”

“How should I know?”

“You see the guy?”

“No. I can just feel it.”

Dizzy hurled his fireball at Johnny McCarthy, knocking him down, into the dust. The umpire said and did nothing.

“I’m not doubting you,” I said.

“Why do you think I wanted to meet you in some out-of-the-way place?”

“You mean with thirty thousand people around us?”

“It’s one way to hide.”

He was right. And down on the field, the Giants were charging out of their dugout (except Hubbell, ever a gentleman) and a full-scale brawl between the two teams was under way. Fists and spikes flying. The fans loved it.

“If you’re being followed,” I said, “then maybe the government, the military,
is
in on this.”

“Yes!”

“In which case, I don’t want to be.”

When the brawl on the field was finally quelled, Dean was allowed to stay in the game (with a fine of fifty dollars) and he promptly, brazenly hurled another beanball at Johnny McCarthy. But the brawl did not resume, and McCarthy soon scored a double to left center and the game wound up Giants 4, Cards 1.

I thanked Mantz for inviting me to the game—it was worth the trip to St. Louis—and told him to forget about the fifty bucks for two days’ work. All he owed me was for my train ticket and meals and a few other minor expenses.

And as the days passed, I read about Amelia’s progress on her flight and all seemed to be going well. I was writing Mantz’s suspicions off to his dislike of Putnam, which was something I could easily understand, and his frustration at being shut out of the inner circle.

On June 4, Mantz—back in Burbank—called me, at my office, and asked, “Weren’t you around the hangar, last year, when Amelia and me had that tiff about her radio antenna?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I was—she didn’t want to be bothered with unreeling it by hand or something.”

“It’s two hundred and fifty feet of trailing wire antenna, and yes, it is a pain in the ass to use. That’s partly why I installed a Bendix loop antenna for her. But those Coast Guard boys aren’t up on these latest gadgets, so it was vital she had that antenna along, as a backup, so the Coast Guard cutter near Howland Island can be sure to locate her.”

“From your tone, I take it she left the trailing wire behind.”

“I sent Putnam a telegram, expressing these concerns, before I left St. Louis…. His letter of reply arrived in Burbank days after I got home.”

“And?”

“She didn’t leave the wire behind.”

“Good.”

“Right before she left Miami, she had the technicians shorten it and run it along the wings.”

“And that won’t do the trick?”

“Oh, it’ll work out swell—for stringing Christmas tree lights.”

“I’m not coming out there, Mantz.”

“Don’t bother. It’s probably too late, anyway.”

And he hung up.

I thought about what he had said, weeks later, when I heard the news that Amy’s plane was missing, somewhere between Lae and Howland Island, somewhere in the Pacific where a very expensive government rescue mission was in progress.

And that, finally, was the beanball that hit me in the head and prompted me to go back out to Burbank.

The bar was a South Seas refuge, the patter and spatter of a tropical storm on its tin roof, water streaking and streaming in lazy patterns behind opaque window glass that glowed with a yellow-orange sunset as foliage outside cast curious silhouettes; no music played, no native drums pounded, but there was the not-so-distant caw of strange birds, and earthen bowls in netting hung from the bamboo-beamed ceiling where churned lazily the blades of fans fluffing the blades of palms hovering over tiny teakwood tables with wicker furniture and coconut shell candles, each table situated within this bamboo-and-thatched-hut world so as to provide an island for two.

I had almost missed the place, and not just because I was a stranger in these exotic parts. The pair of inter-locking, wooden-shuttered stucco boxes on North McCadden Place in Hollywood might have been a nondescript apartment complex but for the knee-high bamboo fence and the tropical thicket through which the bamboo-pole entrance peeked.

No sign announced this as one of the most popular joints in town; and it was too early—three-thirty-something in the afternoon—to put out the restraining velvet ropes. Of course, there would be no waiting for such regular customers as Rudy Vallee, Marlene Dietrich, and Joan Crawford (whose framed pictures, among many others, peered from a wall through hanging fronds).

Right now, however, the bar was unpopulated, except for a few stuffed parrots, fake monkeys, and a real bartender at his bamboo station. The “rain” on the false roof sprayed down the ceiling from garden hoses, and ran down the glass partitions of the “windows” to feed planters. The offstage bird calls came from a few real live caged parrots and macaws out in the open courtyard, where the palms weren’t phony like the ones whose shadows fell on me; bunches of bananas, here and there among the fake vegetation, were real and could be plucked by a bold customer and eaten, free of charge.

Don the Beachcomber’s was quite a joint, with a Chinese grocery just inside the door, a shop devoted entirely to different types and brands of rum (an idea whose time, I sincerely believed, had come), and a gift shop where fresh flower leis were available. Various meandering rooms presented themselves, with names like Paradise Cove, Cannibal Lounge and Black Hole of Calcutta, which was where I was waiting for my companion. This was the kind of joint where the lighting was so dim, just about any woman would look good, or at least mysterious.

Unfortunately, I was waiting for a man—and an airplane mechanic, at that.

Taking a cab from the train station, I had arrived at the United Airport at Burbank around two-thirty, and wandered into Mantz’s United Air Services hangar only to find no sign of him. It was Tuesday, July 6, a mild breeze doing its best to downplay a blistering heat that defeated my lightweight maize polo shirt and tan slacks, turning them into sticky swaddling cloth. I hadn’t warned Mantz I was coming; the day before, I’d gone back and forth about whether to stick my nose in this, then impulsively threw some things in a suitcase and caught a Sante Fe sleeper at Dearborn Station.

The vast hangar, nicely cool compared to the outside, was littered with small aircraft, among them several biplanes and Amy’s little red Vega, though Mantz’s
Honeymoon Express
wasn’t among them. A trio of jumpsuited mechanics was at work; one of them was washing down a sleek little racing plane, a Travel Air Mystery S, which I recalled Mantz saying belonged to Pancho Barnes, an aviatrix pal of Amy’s. Mantz allowed a number of fliers to store their planes in his hangar to make his “fleet” look bigger. The other two mechanics were working on the engine of another little red and white Travel Air, a stunt plane of Mantz’s.

I recognized two of the three mechanics—the guy washing the racing plane was Tod Something, and one of the pair working on the Travel Air was Ernie Tisor, Mantz’s chief mechanic. Pushing fifty, wide-shouldered, thick around the middle, hair a salt-and-pepper mop, the good-natured mechanic frowned over at me, at first, then grinned in recognition, then frowned again—it’s a reaction I’d had before.

Rubbing the grease off his hands with a rag, he ambled over to me; his tanned, creased, hound dog’s face was blessed with eyes as blue as the California sky under cliffs of shaggy salt-and-pepper eyebrows.

“Nate Heller,” he said. He gave me half a smile; something odd lingered in his expression. “If you’re looking for the boss, he’s on a charter, sort of.”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

The half-smile continued and seemed strained. “Well, him and Terry and Clark and Carole went off to La Gulla.”

Gable and Lombard. I was not impressed. I had met actors before. And Terry was Mantz’s new wife, or soon to be, anyway.

I asked, “What’s La Gulla?”

“A dirt strip down the Baja California peninsula.”

“What attraction does that hold?”

Now he gave me a complete smile, not at all strained. “No telephones, no pressure. Rolling hills and mountain quail.”

“Ah.”

“They’ll probably be back tomorrow morning, sometime.” He seemed to be studying me.

“Something on your mind, Ernie?”

“…You come out here ’cause of Miss Earhart?”

I shrugged. “Few weeks ago Paul asked me to get involved and, frankly, I passed.”

“Asked you before she got lost, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Asked you, ’cause he thought something wasn’t…kosher about this setup.”

“Yeah.”

His eyes narrowed in an otherwise expressionless mask. “And you turned him down, and now she’s lost…and you don’t feel so good about it.”

“I feel lousy about it.”

His mouth flinched, and at last I understood what the look in his eyes meant: they were haunted, those sky-color eyes. “Me too,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder. Then he whispered: “Look, I wanna fill you in on some things…some things I saw.”

“Okay.”

“But not here.”

“Some bar around here we could find a corner in?”

He shook his head, no. “Not
around
here, either….

I give you the address of a place, think you can find it?”

“I’m a detective, aren’t I? That’s what cab drivers are for.”

“You don’t have wheels? Wait a second….”

He went inside Mantz’s glassed-in office and soon he was handing me some car keys, and a slip of paper with Don the Beachcomber’s address.

Still almost whispering, he asked, “Remember that convertible of Miss Earhart’s?”

“The Terraplane?”

“Right. She keeps it here, leaves it with the boss; it’s kind of a spare car…. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you use it.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, if the boss thinks I overstepped, he’ll ask for the keys back and that’s that.”

“Sure.”

“You go on and find that address…. See you there around four.”

It was ten after four, and I had polished off a plate of chop suey; for California, it was early to eat, but I was still on Chicago time and my last meal on the train had been breakfast. The waitress, a sweet brunette in a lei and sarong, asked if I cared for an after-dinner drink. My choices included a Shark’s Tooth, a Vicious Virgin, and a Cobra’s Fang. I opted for the house specialty, originated here: the Zombie. One ounce each of six kinds of rum blended with “secret ingredients….”

I had braved two sips of the Zombie when Tisor wandered in, glancing around the otherwise still-empty Black Hole of Calcutta.

Forehead tight with worry and flecked with sweat, he wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and chinos; in this context, he looked like a jungle trader who left his pith helmet and hunter’s jacket at the door. He pulled out the wicker chair across from me and sat.

“Riskin’ a Zombie, huh?” he asked, apparently recognizing the tall slender glass.

“You’ll notice I’m not chugging it down.”

“There’s a house limit on two of those babies.”

“This seems like kind of an unlikely hangout for mechanics, Ernie. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

“It’s not a hangout, but sometimes for special events, goin’-away parties, celebrations. Best Chink food around.”

I was sorry to hear that; the ersatz Cantonese chow here had nothing on the Won Kow in Chinatown back home, but maybe Ernie and his airfield pals hadn’t made it to the local Chinatown. The waitress wandered over and Ernie ordered a beer and a plate of egg rolls to nibble on.

“That’s what Jimmy ordered,” he said, “a Zombie. The night of his goin’-away party, night he spilled the beans.”

“Jimmy who? What beans?”

He sighed, shook his head. “Maybe I better get a beer or two down me, first.”

I reached out and clutched his forearm. “Let’s get a head start, Ernie. Who’s Jimmy?”

“Jimmy. Jim Manhof.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “Skinny kid, mechanic, he was around when you was out here, last year. I don’t know whether you met him, exactly.”

I let go of his arm, leaned back. “I remember. You got a new man in his slot, I notice.”

“Yeah. Pete. Good boy, Pete. Jimmy, uh…his work started slippin’, and Mantz got on his ass and Jimmy finally quit. Last I heard, he had a job in Fresno, at Chandler Municipal.”

“Good for Jimmy. What about the beans Jimmy spilled?”

He swallowed. Shook his head. “I never told Paul about this. I don’t know why I’m tellin’ you….”

“I won’t tell Paul. Think of me as your priest.”

“I ain’t Catholic.”

“Neither am I, Ernie. Spill.”

The beer arrived. The waitress smiled at me; she was very pretty but her crooked teeth would keep her out of the movies. To let you know the state of my mood, I didn’t even ask for her phone number.

He gulped down half the beer, wiped the foam off his lip with a sleeve and said, “It was Jimmy put the acid on those rudder cables.”

“No kidding?”

“He told me about halfway through the second Zombie.”

“Nobody else heard him own up to that?”

“No. Tod was asleep, head on his arms like a kid snoozin’ at his school desk; he’d already finished his second Zombie.”

“Did Jimmy say
why
he put acid on Amelia’s rudder cables?”

“Somebody hired him to…but it wasn’t supposed to be sabotage, exactly….”

“What the hell was it, then?”

“It was meant to be found, and repaired, before the plane took off. The guy that hired Jimmy said it was just a sort of…prank.”

“A real knee-slapper.”

“And of course, we did find it…Jimmy himself pointed it out to me. So, in a way…no harm was done. In a way.”

“Yeah. What’s the harm in sending a pilot off on a dangerous transcontinental flight, knowing her plane’s been sabotaged? Hoping all the damage got noticed by her trusty mechanics?”

He was shaking his head. “I know. It’s real, real shitty. But that’s not even the shittiest part. The shittiest part is who hired Jimmy.”

“Her husband, you mean. G. P.”

His eyes popped. “How the hell did you—”

“I told you—I’m a detective.”

I filled Ernie in on G. P.’s motive, the phony threatening notes that the rudder cable sabotage was meant to validate.

“He’s such a raging asshole,” Tisor said, shaking his head some more. “Lord knows what he’s got her into now.” And he ran a hand over his face and up into his salt-and-pepper hair. “Aw…Christ. Such a sweet kid. What’s that bastard done to her…”

A parrot squawked in the courtyard.

“What do you mean, Ernie? What is it you’ve seen?”

He was holding his face in his hand and peering through the web of his fingers. “This is so goddamn dangerous…. We could both get our asses in one hell of a sling. What are you trying to prove, Heller?”

“You tell me,” I said. It was an honest answer.

He stared at the flame in the coconut, as if its flickering held meaning. “This has to be some kind of…military business. The government’s been on this thing like a heat rash since the first day. I mean, why else would everybody on Uncle Sam’s payroll be so eager to please?”

“For example.”

He was looking at me now, not the flame. “Before the first attempt, we did a lot of our prep over at March Army Air Base—near Riverside?”

“Military installations aren’t usually available for the activities of private citizens, are they?”

“Hell no! That’s strictly off limits! Yet, here we got the run of the place, with their mechanics pitchin’ in with us, and, get this: armed military police outside the building.”

“That’s one way to keep the press out.”

“But when we were at Oakland, we used the Naval Reserve Hangar, and got the same kind of help, and security. Don’t you find that, I don’t know…unusual? Kinda out of the ordinary, the Army and Navy throwin’ in together like that?”

It was very odd. The Army and the Navy were separate entities, divided by rivalry, each with their own turf, their own hierarchies, their own agendas. What would it take to bring them together on one project?

The answer came to me at once, and made the skin on the back of my neck crawl—or was that merely a reaction to my latest sip of Zombie?

“Their Commander-in-Chief could elicit their support and cooperation,” I said.

He swallowed thickly. “You mean, the President.”

“I mean, the husband of Amelia Earhart’s pal Eleanor.”

“We shouldn’t even be talking about this.”

The waitress brought Tisor his egg rolls and a second beer.

“Ernie,” I said, “G. P. Putnam put his wife’s fame—and her life—on the bargaining table. If the President of the United States was on the other side of that table, does that make it any more acceptable?”

“I didn’t even vote for the son of a bitch,” he said, biting the end off an egg roll.

I had. Twice. Thank God for the two-term limit, so I wouldn’t have to do it again.

“You know, this kind of thing ain’t that unusual,” Tisor said. “It’s an open secret in our business, Pan Am’s in bed with Uncle Sam. Pan Am gets the contracts for overseas mail service, and the government gets…favors now and then.”

“This is something Amelia would be aware of.”

“Sure. Everybody knew what the government was gettin’ out of the flight.”

“An airstrip at Howland Island.”

“Right. And Miss Earhart was okay with that, I’m sure. I know she appreciated gettin’ this help from ‘Franklin’—that’s how she referred to him, y’know.”