Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (5 page)

“Going after another record?” I asked her. “So soon?”

But Amelia, who had brightened at her husband’s last words, ignored me and leaned toward Putnam, her voice breathless as she asked, “Then we’re on for Mexico City?”

He smiled and patted her hand. “We’re on.”

She was almost bouncing in her chair, an eager child. “Simpkin, how on earth did you manage it?”

He sipped his coffee and then, too casually, said, “Merely persuaded the President of Mexico, our new friend Lázaro Cárdenas, to have the words ‘Amelia Earhart Good Will Flight’…in Spanish, of course…printed on a limited-edition Mexican twenty-cent airmail stamp. Of the less than eight hundred they’re printing, we get three hundred first-day covers to have you autograph and sell to collectors.”

“Well, naturally, I’m pleased….”

A mild frown creased his forehead. “What’s wrong, dear?”

Her childish glee was gone. “It just seems a little…undignified.”

“Flying around setting records is terribly expensive,” he said, and this was obviously not the first time he’d said this, or something close to it, “and we have to accept legitimate returns where we can get them.”

She nodded. Sipped her cocoa. Asked, “And…selling these stamps…this will cover our expenses?”

“It’s a start,” he said. He turned to me. “Nate, I can’t accompany A. E. on this lecture tour, nor can I join her, immediately thereafter, in California. I have preflight preparations to make, service and fuel to arrange, magazines and newspapers to contact, and several other sponsors I need to finalize before the flight…. I would like you to accompany A. E. on this lecture tour, and provide personal security for her, at the Burbank airfield, as she prepares for the Mexico City flight. Are you willing to do that?”

Amelia was staring straight ahead, sipping her cocoa.

I hadn’t anticipated a job of this scope. “Well, uh…when would we leave?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

I shrugged. “I would have to make some arrangements to cover my regular clients with other agencies…”

Now he shrugged, in a matter-of-fact, take-it-or-leave-it manner. “Twenty-five dollars a day and expenses. I’ll write you out a retainer check for five hundred dollars before the evening’s through.” He pushed away from the table and rose. “Give it some consideration…. Excuse me, for a moment. They’re holding something for me at the desk that I’d like to show you.” He was speaking to his wife and had a pixie smile going below the professorial glasses. “I think you’ll be very pleased.”

And he walked briskly from the dining room out into the lobby.

I sipped my coffee, then looked her way and asked, “Are you comfortable with this arrangement, ma’am?”

She laughed inaudibly. “Why don’t you stop calling me ‘ma’am,’ and I’ll stop calling you ‘Mr. Heller.’ If that’s all right with you…Nate?”

“It’s jake with me, Amelia. Do you really think you need a bodyguard?”

She frowned a little. “It’s difficult to say. It’s true there’s a lot of jealousy among the women in aviation.”

“Gets a little catty, does it?”

Her eyes flared at that. “Actually, there’s a great deal of camaraderie…. Have you heard of the Ninety Nines? That’s an organization of women pilots, and I’m a past president.”

“Presidents get assassinated, now and then.”

“Well…truth be told, there’s a lot of petty malarkey because of the attention I get. Or, I should say, the attention G. P. gets me.”

“You have mixed emotions about that, don’t you?”

“I do. But G. P.’s right—going for flying records is costly.”

“You did say you had an expensive obsession…. Listen, if I take this job, we won’t be…flying from one town to another, or anything, will we?”

At the corners of the blue-gray eyes, amusement crinkled. “Don’t you like flying? Or is it flying with a woman?”

“I just prefer train travel…. You know, I imagine a lecture tour’s like a whistle-stop political campaign, where you need to be able to rest up between engagements.”

“So you’re thinking of my welfare, my convenience….”

“Well, that’s part of my job, isn’t it? I’m not casting aspersions on you, ma’am…Miss Earhart…Amelia. It’s not that I’m afraid to fly with a female pilot, particularly one with your reputation. I mean, I was up with Lindbergh….”

“Knowing Slim, and his sadistic sense of humor, he probably tried to scare the heck out of you.”

“Not the ‘heck,’ exactly.”

She patted my hand; her touch was cool, and her voice was soothing, somewhat sarcastically so, but soothing.

“We’ll be traveling by car, Nate…. Not enough of these towns have suitably situated airstrips. Hope you won’t be terribly disappointed…that we won’t be traveling by train, I mean.”

“Like you said. Just thinking of you.”

Putnam was coming back into the dining room, carrying a paper sack that seemed incongruous with his tux, and wearing a tight, self-satisfied little grin. Before he sat, he grandly withdrew from the sack a flimsy reddish-brown suede hat with a silk band.

The band bore a facsimile of Amelia Earhart’s signature, and the thing was cheap-looking, like it had cost about a quarter.

“This costs twenty-five cents to manufacture,” Putnam said, sitting, as she took the hat from him and turned it in her hands, studying it with a blankly pensive expression. “And retails for three dollars.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Well,” he said absurdly, “it’s a hat.”

She passed it to me. “What do you think of it, Mr. Heller?”

I thought I wouldn’t want to get caught in the rain in a hat made out of cheap felt like this one, but all I said was, “It’s a little small.”

“It’s a girl’s hat,” Putnam said. “A little girl.”

“This is a hat for a child,” Amelia said. Her voice sounded strangely cold.

“Yes, it is. Small hats to make a small fortune.”

“No,” she said. “I won’t approve this. I won’t have my name used to cheat children.”

For the first time that I noticed, Putnam blinked. “But they’re making them now….”

“Tell them to unmake them.”

“That’s impossible! I’ve already signed the contract….”

“Well, then that puts me in a difficult position,” she said. “I obviously can’t sue the manufacturer. But I can sue you.”

He touched the front of his tux with a splayed hand; his eyes showed white all ’round. “Me? Your husband?”

“I never granted my permission for my name to be used in this manner…” She dropped the hat into the paper bag on the floor between them. “Do you want me to sue you for abusing my power of attorney?”

His voice was hushed, but loud with humiliation. “Of course not.”

“Then you will call the…the hat people, first thing in the morning, G. P., and cancel that contract.”

He just sat there, stunned, for a moment, struck dumb; then nodded.

Now she looked at me with a blandly sweet expression; the blue-gray eyes seemed as hard as they were beautiful, and as soft. “Mr. Heller? Nate?”

“Yes?”

She rose and offered me her hand; I took it, which is to say, shook it—she had a firm grip, but didn’t overdo it. Not like her husband.

“We’ll discuss the arrangements of the lecture tour tomorrow. I realize you gentlemen have some business to do…a matter of a retainer, I believe…so I’ll excuse myself and go on up to our room.”

She left the table, and the eyes of the high-society types around the dining room—a judge here, a senator there—were upon her, partly because she was an attractive woman who walked in a pleasingly, flowingly feminine manner; but also because that tousled-haired head of hers bore one of the most famous faces in America.

Putnam sighed. “That little attack of conscience is going to cost me royally.”

I didn’t say anything.

He stopped a passing waiter and ordered a Manhattan; I asked for a rum and Coke.

While we waited for our drinks, he asked, “What do
you
think of the hat?”

“Would you mind making out my retainer check first?”

“That bad, is it?”

“Hat’s a piece of shit, G. P.”

“Well, hell, yes, of course it is, but a profitable piece of shit. You mind if I smoke a cigar?”

“Not at all.”

“Care for one yourself?”

“No.”

He lighted up a big Havana number, waved out the match and took a deep draw off the cigar, the eyes behind the round rimless glasses narrowing to slits.

Then he said, “Now…would you like to know why I
really
hired you?”

The wax-mustached, bunny-nosed “Managing Director” of the Coliseum—a buff brick building between Locust Street and Grand Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa—had proudly told me, earlier that evening, that the facility in his charge played an important cultural role in Des Moines, citing as a recent example a presentation by the Russian ballet. I decided it would be less than gracious to mention that the bulletin board in the lobby heralded the upcoming poultry show as his next attraction; and anyway, I needed him to help me set up a folding table for tonight’s speaker, after her presentation, to sign copies of her most recent book,
The Fun of It.

My role as bodyguard entailed any number of activities I hadn’t expected, including hauling in from the trunk of her Franklin a slide projector, a reel of 16-millimeter film, a carton of books, and of course a small tin cash box for me to make change out of, being the guy who’d be selling
The Fun of It
(it would be undignified for the author to do so herself).

The capacity of the joint was 8,500, and that was exactly how many butts were fitted into the seats. Mine was not among them—I was standing, arms folded, my back to a side wall, fairly near the stage, where I could keep an eye on the speaker and the crowd. They were mostly ladies, dressed in their Sunday finery, though this was a Thursday evening—feathered chapeaus and pearls and lacy gloves that would have waited till Easter if such an important guest hadn’t come to town. A few men in suits and ties were sprinkled around the hall, and nobody looked like a farmer, nobody seemed to have manure on their shoes. Nobody looked like somebody who might have sent Amelia Earhart a fan letter comprised of cut-out words from magazines and newspapers, either; still, you never know.

The stage was rather large, empty but for an American flag at one side, an Iowa state flag on the other, a silver-white movie screen, a lectern, and a single armchair, near the state flag. A murmur of anticipation was rumbling across the room, like a motor warming up.

We were in the second week of our lecture tour. We had stayed in Chicago the first night, where she’d spoken at the Orchestra Hall to a group of 1,000 4-H members, and had done De Kalb last night, at Northern Illinois State Teachers College, speaking to a much smaller group, coeds mostly (“We welcome home an Illinois girl”). Then it had been on to Gary, Indiana, and Battle Creek, Michigan, and a blur of cities and towns that gradually curved back westward.

Onstage, Miss Earhart displayed an unpretentious grace and an effortless command, with a deceptively casual, off-the-cuff manner (though she gave one basic speech with little improvisation) that made the audience members feel she was speaking directly to each of them.

But I knew that right now, in the dressing room backstage, she was sitting quietly, head lowered, hand over her eyes, in a zombielike state, having already thrown up, once or twice. I’d found out the hard way that she, like Garbo, wanted to be alone. She needed at least fifteen minutes to gear herself up for the ordeal of facing a crowd.

The house lights went down as the movie projector began its whir, and black-and-white images came up on the screen, the sonorous voice of Lowell Thomas, made tinny by tiny speakers, elucidating newsreel footage that began with the lonely unattended Boston takeoff of the Fokker seaplane
Friendship,
followed by a mob in Southampton, England, where Amelia got her first taste of fame; then ticker-tape parades, Amelia with Lindbergh, cheering onlookers at airfields where she’d set various speed and altitude records, Amelia with President Hoover, Amelia flying the ungainly goose that was an autogiro, takeoffs, landings, swarming crowds, Amelia with President Roosevelt and Eleanor….

Then the footage ended and the lights came up and there she was, no longer an image flickering on a screen, but a sweetly pretty young woman seated primly on stage, in the armchair near the Iowa state flag. Hands folded in her lap, like a schoolgirl, only the faintest smile acknowledging the immediate, ringing applause that filled the hall, she did not rise. Perhaps because she was seated, and her willowy height was not yet apparent, the impression she gave was of an improbably slight figure, for a woman of such accomplishment; in a gray chiffon frock of her own design, coral beads at the curve of her long, lovely neck, she was perfection, with only the studiously tangled mop of dark blond hair to hint at the daredevil within.

In bow tie and tweeds, the bunny-nosed Coliseum director was at the lectern, smiling prissily, as if all that applause had been for him. He informed the crowd of Miss Earhart’s graciousness and friendly manner, how she put on none of the airs the famous frequently brought with them; and he spoke, rather eloquently, of her bravery, and her devotion to the cause of equality for women.

Through all this, Amelia gave no sign that she was being spoken of, or stared at; neither proud nor embarrassed, she gave no clue that experiences like these were far more frightening to her than flying across an ocean.

“Gertrude Stein has called us a lost generation,” the Coliseum director said.

I didn’t know how to break it to him, but I didn’t think Gertrude Stein had Des Moines in mind.

“But,” he continued, “no generation that could produce our speaker could ever be considered ‘lost.’ She displays better than any other young woman of her generation the pioneer spirit and courageous skill of our Midwestern forefathers…and need I remind you that she is a Des Moines girl, come home to share her story with us tonight…. Ladies and gentlemen, the Queen of the Air, Lady Lindy—Miss Amelia Earhart!”

She winced, just barely, at that “Lady Lindy” sobriquet, which followed her everywhere, and annoyed her no end. And as the most resounding applause of the night followed her introduction, she rose with easy grace, moving fluidly to the microphone, where she thanked the director and patted the air with one hand, gently, till the applause abated.

“It’s true,” she said, in that low, rich, yet very feminine voice, “that I saw my first airplane here in Iowa, at the State Fair. It was six years after the Wright Brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, and it was their celebrated plane on display, behind a fence…. My father told me it was a flying machine. To me, it was a funny-looking crate of rusty wire and wood. I was much more interested in the merry-go-round at the time.”

Laughter rippled through the hall.

“In his generous introduction, Mr. Cornelison mentioned our courageous pioneer forefathers,” she said solemnly, “and I realized suddenly what a terrible mistake I’d made…”

The grave timbre of her voice quelled the laughter.

“…being born a woman,” she said, her voice now mischievously lilting, “and not a man.”

Laughter almost exploded from the women in the hall, their menfolk smiling nervously.

“When heavier-than-air craft were first invented,” she said, “women followed just a few years behind in flying them. Today women hold various records, and I’m lucky enough to hold a few of those myself…though one recent article in the French press concluded, ‘But can she bake a cake?’”

Gentle laughter, now.

“More important in my view than record-setting is the everyday flying done by five hundred cake-baking women in this country, on missions of business and pleasure. How many of you have flown? Show of hands.”

Around the hall, perhaps twenty men raised a hand, and only four women.

“Please keep in mind that the flights I have made were simply for the fun of it…”

This reference to her book was contributed by Putnam, I would bet.

“…and have really added nothing to the progress of aviation. The time will soon come when what Colonel Lindbergh and I and a few others have done will seem quaint. Safe, regularly scheduled transoceanic flights will take place in our lifetime.”

This exciting news caused a mild wave of whispering to break out.

“Could I have the lights dimmed, please?” she asked, and they were.

Then, using a pointer but never turning her back to the crowd (a nice piece of public-speaking savvy), she guided them through a lively, personalized slide show of her Atlantic crossings and other record-setting adventures. Throughout she maintained an unaffected, friendly tone, rarely getting overly technical, and even then projecting so much enthusiasm about her subject, her audience never grew bored.

When the lights came up, she shifted subjects, with the startling statement, “Sex has been used too long as an excuse by incompetent women who like to make themselves and others believe that it is not their incompetence holding them back, but their womanhood.”

The crowd didn’t know what to make of that one, and I could spot a few frowns, though they seemed to be thought-induced. And the men were shifting in their seats, fidgeting; the word “sex” spoken in public, when a husband was seated next to his wife, was apparently unsettling. In Des Moines, anyway.

“Don’t take me wrong,” she said, and flashed that gap-toothed, just-one-of-the-girls, just-one-of-the-boys smile, “I’m no feminist. I merely indulge in modern thinking.”

And she spoke of science having cut back on household drudgery, that a woman could run a home and have a career, that husbands could and should share household and child-raising duties.

This all sounded pretty good, but when I plugged Amelia Earhart and her husband George Palmer Putnam into the equation, something didn’t add up—I couldn’t quite picture either one of them doing a dish or pushing a sweeper, and I figured both were too self-centered to ever have a kid.

But it made for a good, mildly controversial speech, which received a standing ovation, the Coliseum director returning to the microphone to let the crowd know that, shortly, Miss Earhart would be signing copies of her book in the lobby. Soon I was making change and dispensing full-price copies of a three-year-old volume that was available in a cheaper edition, but not here.

Amelia signed three hundred and some copies of her book, and spent time with every customer, shaking hands, laughing, listening, each treated as an individual, and if she felt any condescension for any of her public, her eyes did not betray it; she did the same with those who bought no book, merely came through the line with a program to sign.

With Amelia piloting her big, powerful, twelve-cylinder Franklin, we left the Coliseum shortly after ten o’clock and, following the practice that was a constant over our two weeks of appearances, set out immediately for the next stop on the schedule—Mason City, the easiest drive of the tour. We checked in at the Park Inn, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel, around midnight.

Usually we drove all night, checking into hotels at dawn, frequently granting the press an interview over a room-service breakfast prior to getting in a few hours of sleep before the next lecture. She gave the reporters more outspoken stuff than her lecture audiences.

“If women were drafted,” the dyed-in-the-wool pacifist modestly proposed to a gaggle of golfball-eyed Iowa scribes, “they would share the privilege with men of killing, suffering, maiming, wasting, paralyzing, impoverishing, and dying gloriously. There’d soon be an end to war.”

For the first several days and nights, she and I had said little, nothing beyond polite conversation; Amelia was cordial, if not quite friendly, and seemed distant, if not quite cold. I didn’t understand it, since I felt we’d hit it off pretty well at the Field’s opening and at the Palmer House dining room, after.

But driving through the night, in the Franklin, with her at the wheel more often than not (she loved that big car, loved to drive it, and I didn’t mind letting her, because it handled like a boat), we sat in silence. I didn’t take offense; hell, I just worked here.

Everywhere we went, it seemed, Amelia was claimed as a native daughter—whether at a Women’s Christian Temperance Union meeting in Lawrence, Kansas (“What a pleasure to welcome home a Kansas girl”), a Zonta International tea at St. Louis, Missouri (“This outstanding woman grew up here and really took our ‘Show me’ state motto to heart!”), even an American Association of University Women lecture in Minneapolis (“Minnesota’s own!”).

She got $250 for each appearance—I was frequently handed the payment checks, as I was mistaken for her manager—and she earned her dough. Detroit was particularly grueling.

At the Hotel Statler (where we’d arrived at 2:00
A.M
. the night before, Battle Creek being our previous stop), Amelia held a press conference in her suite over an omelet, six pieces of toast, a cantaloupe, and a pot of hot chocolate. A morning tour of the Hudson auto plant (where the Essex was made—the car she was currently endorsing, despite the Franklin she preferred, which was from a previous endorsement deal) was followed by a Women’s Advertising Club luncheon in the Detroit-Leland Hotel dining room, where she did not speak but received a warm ovation as guest of the Detroit Automobile Dealers Association. This made necessary a mid-afternoon tearoom stop with key members of the association, after a photo for their company publication was taken outside the three-story brownstone rooming house which a bronze tablet announced as the birthplace of Charles Lindbergh. Her lecture followed dinner for the auto dealers association at the Yacht Club and, finally, she made an appearance—but not a speech—at an auto show at Convention Hall, between Woodward and Cass Avenues, where an enthusiastic crowd turned ugly, pushing, shoving, trying to get a closer look at her, waving pens and pieces of paper, and hollering for autographs, pawing at her clothing, till it seemed they might tear themselves some souvenirs.

These were not the refined ladies in feathered hats and figured frocks we’d encountered at luncheons and lectures, nor the polite businessmen in suits and ties who made up the rest of her usual audience; these were real people. Blue-collar working stiffs, hard-working housewives, salt of the earth, backbone of America.

You know—goons.

“We got a problem here!” I said to the Hudson rep who was Amelia’s official escort. Arms outstretched like an umpire, I was doing my best to keep the clawing crowd away from an increasingly spooked Amelia; she was behind me, and we were backed up to a Hudson Eight on display there.