Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (9 page)

“That’s no way to fly,” he said, exasperated. “It’s a foolish goddamn dangerous method to use on life-and-death long-range flights.”

Myrtle Mantz had said little through dinner; she was watching her husband and his charge talk about flying as if she were overhearing them pitching woo at each other. But neither Paul nor Amy seemed to notice the daggers in those green eyes.

“Listen,” he said to Amy, “when this Mexico flight is over, why don’t you leave the Vega with me? I can add it to my charter service. You can make a little dough, angel.”

Every time he called Amy “angel,” a furrow like a cut appeared between Mrs. Mantz’s finely plucked eyebrows.

Amy considered Mantz’s offer, shrugged. “I don’t see why not. How’s business been?”

“You know flying—up and down.” He chortled at this prime witticism, then said, “The big money’s with the Hollywood jobs, but when the weather’s bad and production schedules are slow, I fall back on the ol’ Honeymoon Express.”

Myrtle, finally acknowledging my existence, gazed at me with hooded eyes. “This is where Paul starts dropping names. It’s one of his least attractive traits.”

Mantz sipped his martini and said to me, “Don’t listen to her, Nate. Ever since Jean Harlow kissed me at that air show in ’33, she’s been like this.” And he said to her, “Baby, that’s how Hollywood is. They kiss and they hug and it don’t mean a goddamn thing. It’s like a handshake to these people.”

“He had Cecil B. DeMille in his plane last week,” she said to me. “I doubt there was much kissing and hugging on that flight.”

Then Mantz said to me, “Ask her if she didn’t beg me to come along on the Douglas Fairbanks charter.”

Generally it’s not a good sign for a marriage when the husband and wife speak to each other through a third party.

Suddenly Mrs. Mantz, her tone suspiciously civil, asked, “Amelia, where are you staying while you’re in town?”

“I haven’t lined anything up yet,” she said. “Maybe the Ambassador…”

“Nonsense,” Myrtle said. “The Ambassador’s all the way downtown, and we have plenty of room. Stay with us.”

“Oh, I don’t want to impose again,” Amy said.

Again? Had she stayed with the Mantzes before?

“Oh you simply must,” Myrtle said. “I won’t even be underfoot, much…. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon, to visit my mother in Dallas.”

“Well…” Amy looked at Mantz, “…if it won’t put you out.”

“Not at all,” Myrtle said.

“It’ll give us a chance to put our heads together at night,” Mantz said, and he patted Amy’s hand. “You know how hectic it gets out here at the field…. I’ve been working up charts with Clarence, and he’ll consult with us, too.”

Clarence Williams, Amy later explained, was a retired Navy navigator who’d been helping prepare the charts of her long-distance flights since the solo Atlantic crossing.

Amy looked at Myrtle searchingly. “If it’s really not an imposition….”

“Don’t be silly,” Myrtle said. “I want you to come.”

And she lifted her own frost-edged martini glass in a little toast to her invited houseguest, with a smile just as frosty.

The almost-full moon was an off-white spotlight, casting an ivory spell upon the precious storybook houses of Valley Spring Lane. This was Toluca Lake, a district poised between Burbank and North Hollywood like a backlot positing an imaginary America that existed only in the movies. Small houses mostly, cottage-size—though on nearby Toluca Estates Drive I’d seen some larger ones, modest movie star mansions where perfect couples like Dick Powell and Joan Blondell had settled; but even those had a movie magic tinge, here a perfect Tudor, there a quaint gingerbread, and the occasional Spanish colonial-style, like this pale yellow stucco number with the green tile roof and matching front awnings, a dream bungalow in the bushes of which I was crouched by a side awningless window with my Speed Graphic with infrared film and the world’s most inconspicuous flash.

The role I was playing, in this ambitious production, was bedroom dick. I wasn’t proud of working the divorce racket, but there are those who would say I was typecast.

This was my third night in southern California. After dining at the Sky Room with the Mantzes that first evening, Amy had presented me with the keys to a blue ’34 Terraplane convertible she and G. P. kept in California, a perk from the Hudson company for her current endorsement deal.

“
I’m
going to do the driving?” I asked, mildly surprised that I was being chosen to pilot the stylish little streamlined coupe, which was parked outside Mantz’s United Air Services hangar.

“Not when I’m along,” she said, needling me gently. “But Paul and Myrtle’ll take me home with them tonight, and you’ll need something to get to your motel.”

She—or perhaps G. P.—had made reservations for me at Lowman’s Motor Court on North San Fernando Road.

“I thought we were staying at the Ambassador,” I said.

“No, I knew Paul would insist I stay with him. I always do.”

Every mention of Mantz from her lips gave me a twinge of jealousy. Funny attitude for a peeper trying to get the goods on a cheating wife.

“And,” I said, “G. P. wasn’t about to spring for a nice room for me if he didn’t have to.”

Her half-smile made a deep, wry dimple. “I would say that’s an insightful reading of my husband’s character.”

The next day I watched from the sidelines as Amelia followed Mantz’s lead, working all morning in the little red Link trainer. She wore a red-and-green plaid shirt with a tan bandanna and chinos and all she lacked to be a cowgirl in a Gene Autry picture was the right hat. Mantz, when he wasn’t flying, maintained an image that was part executive and the rest dashing playboy; he wore a nubby brown sportcoat with a light blue shirt and blue striped tie, his pants navy gabardines.

Amy was a dutiful pupil, for the most part, though at lunch, in the Sky Room again, she showed impatience when he told her about a gadget that next-door neighbor Lockheed was going to install in the Vega.

“It’s called a Cambridge analyzer,” he said. “You use it to know how to reset your mixture control, and get maximum miles per gallon.”

“Oh for Pete sakes, Paul,” she said, gnawing on a carrot stick like Bugs Bunny, “you take all the fun out of flying.”

“There’s nothing fun about running out of fuel over the goddamn Gulf of Mexico.”

“You’re still stewing about that?”

Mantz’s concern for her ran deep; but I still couldn’t read whether it was a lover’s caring or that of a teacher or friend.

“It’s stupid,” Mantz spouted, “cutting across a body of water that size, when you don’t have to. Jesus, angel, it’s seven hundred miles, half an Atlantic!”

“I flew a whole Atlantic, before…. Look who’s here!”

She grinned the gap-toothed grin and waved enthusiastically.

“Toni!” Amy called. “Over here!”

I turned to see, checking in with the hostess at the register, a slightly chunky but still nicely put-together woman, medium height, perhaps thirty, decked out in a goggled tan flying helmet, white blouse with a red and yellow polka-dot knotted scarf and brown jodhpurs; her features reminded me of a slightly less attractive Claudette Colbert. It struck me she didn’t need the helmet indoors, but maybe she wanted to make sure people knew she was a flier.

In which case, you’d think the woman would relish public attention from the most famous female pilot on the planet. But the response to Amy’s zealous hello was tepid; the round, makeup-less face twitched a polite smile. Then the woman took a seat alone, near one of the birdcages by the far wall.

Amy frowned. “I don’t understand…. Toni’s a friend. I haven’t seen or talked to her in some time, but—”

“Maybe she’s holding a grudge,” Mantz offered.

“Whatever for?”

“Didn’t you turn her down when she wanted you to partner up for the refueling-in-flight endurance record?”

“Well, yes, but I just couldn’t do it…G. P. had me so heavily booked with lectures…. Anyway, she got Elinor Smith to go with her, and they set the darn record.”

“Sure. And didn’t get near the publicity if Amelia Earhart had been along.”

Amy’s mouth tightened and she rose. “I better go talk to her….”

She went over to the woman’s table and began speaking very earnestly, a hand to her breast, standing before cool, seated audience. The woman had removed her helmet to reveal a boyish black-haired bob with pointed sideburns.

“A lot of jealousy between the girls who fly,” Mantz commented.

“Who is that?”

“Toni Lake. Ever hear of her?”

“No.”

“Well, she’s pulled off as many aviation feats as our girl Amelia, a real slew of altitude and endurance records in fact, and yet you’ve never heard of her. And that’s why she’s so royally pissed off, I’d guess.”

But something interesting was happening over at that side table. Toni Lake was standing and the two women were suddenly hugging, grinning, patting each other on the back. Amy had won her over.

Hand in hand, the two rival aviatrixes came over to the table and joined us. Amy made introductions (I was her “bodyguard and chief bottle washer”) and Toni Lake sat next to Mantz, across from Amy and me.

“Paul,” Amy said, “you’ve got to hear this…. Toni, tell Paul what you told me.”

“Tellin’ you’s one thing, hon,” the woman said. “Spreadin’ it around, tellin’ tales outta school, makes me look like Miss Sour Grapes of 1935.”

To tell you the truth, with her scorched-tan, leathery complexion, Toni Lake didn’t look like Miss Anything; but she did have lovely brown eyes and lashes longer than some store-bought I’d seen.

“G. P.’s done Toni an awful injustice,” Amy said; she was pretty worked up about it.

“Go ahead, Toni,” Mantz said, sitting back. He was working on one of his trademark frosted martinis; this was lunch so he’d only had two. “Let me warn ya, though—nothing you tell me about Gippy Putnam’s gonna much surprise me.”

But it was Amy who began the story, blurting, “G. P. tried to hire Toni to an exclusive contract to fly with me in the Women’s Derby.”

The Powder Puff Derby, as Will Rogers had dubbed it.

“She was to pretend to be my ‘mechanic’ but do most of the flying,” Amy said, indignantly.

“He said you weren’t ‘physically strong enough,’” Lake said with a humorless smirk. “Her loving husband offered me a two-year seventy-five-bucks-a-week contract to co-pilot Amelia, only she had to seem to be doin’
all
the flyin’. You know, I’m not some damn dilettante or socialite, I’m just a girl who likes to fly and was lucky enough to have an old man who’s a pilot and runs an airfield. Seventy-five bucks is big money to this little girl.”

Amy was shaking her head, mortified.

I asked, “How the hell did G. P. figure you could make it look like Amelia was doing all the flying?”

Lake shrugged. “When we made stops, I was supposed to either get out of the way of the photographers, or stand to the left so I came second in the captions.”

“You have to believe me, Toni,” Amy said, and she seemed close to tears, not a frequent state for her, “I knew nothing of this. I would never have stood for it. Oh my goodness, how he could even think—”

“That’s not the worst of it,” Toni said. “When I refused to sign the contract, he blew sky high, started swearin’ like a stevedore, said he’d ruin me and all. Said I’d never fly professionally again and even if he hasn’t quite managed that, he’s put all sorts of barriers in my path…officials causin’ me problems, sponsor contracts fallin’ through. And I can’t get press coverage to save my life, anymore. They used to cover me like a movie star. Now I could fly to the moon and they’d just report an eclipse.”

“Toni,” Amy said, “I couldn’t be more embarrassed. I promise you, I swear to you, I will take care of this.”

“Well, even if you can’t—”

“I can, and I will, Toni. Count on it.”

“Sweetie, I’m just glad to know you weren’t in on it. I mean, everybody knows that your husband works against the other women pilots—”

“I
didn’t
know.”

“Just ask anybody. Ask Lady Heath, ask Elinor Smith, ask ‘Chubby’ Miller….”

“I will,” Amy said, her mortification giving way to resolve. Suddenly I almost felt sorry for old G. P. “In the meantime, join us for a nice lunch. On me.”

That afternoon, to Mantz’s displeasure, Amy abandoned her flight preparations for the company of Toni Lake, who owned a pair of Indian Pony motorbikes. The aviatrixes spent hours racing up and down the runways on the bikes, flight helmets and goggles on, like a couple of schoolgirls having the time of their lives playing hooky. Chasing small planes, cutting figure eights, pursuing each other like cowboys and Indians, they attracted something of a crowd, when word got out one of the two naughty children was Amelia Earhart.

During part of this gleeful exhibition, I retreated to the office of Paul Mantz, who had requested a word with me.

The glassed-in office was in the left rear corner of the hangar, a good-size area with light tan walls that went up forever, with more signed celebrity photos than the Brown Derby—James Cagney, Joan Crawford, Pat O’Brien, Wallace Beery, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Occasionally Mantz was in the photos, and there were shots of Amy and Lindbergh and pilots I didn’t recognize, as well as a sprinkling of aerial stills from movies he’d worked on,
Wings, Hell’s Angels, Airmail.

What was most impressive, however, was how straight all those framed photos were hanging. Mantz’s office had a neatness that approached unreality, or lunacy. His big maple desk with the glass top was fastidiously arranged, blotter, ashtray, framed photo of his wife, desk lamp, several flying trophies topped with metal model planes. Papers were stacked neatly. Stapler, phone, perfectly arranged. Squared up. Symmetrical. It was a desk not in life, but in a movie.

And Mantz, in his natty sportcoat and tie and swivel chair, was like an actor playing a big shot, and a slightly miscast one. He was a pretend big shot in a pretend office.

“I expected to see your wife around today,” I said. Compared to Mantz I was underdressed in the spiffy summer clothes I’d brought for my California jaunt, rust-color rayon sportshirt and sandstone tan worsted slacks. “Isn’t she flying out to Dallas?”

“Red doesn’t like to fly. She took the train.”

“Ah. What did you want to talk about, Paul?”

“I wanted to talk about why G. P. really hired you,” he said, leaning back as he lighted up a cigarette selected from a wooden box with a carved airplane on its lid.

I thought perhaps he was on to me, but I played it out, asking, “As security on the lecture tour, why else?”

“The lecture tour’s over.”

“But the Mexican trip’s coming up.”

“So what? We’ve never taken on extra security before any of the other flights.”

“Has Amelia mentioned the threatening notes?”

He frowned, sat forward. “What threatening notes?”

I filled him in.

He thought about what I’d told him; flicked some ash into a round metal tray. “Well, I can see a celebrity like her attracting envy, all right,” he said. “And or cuckoo birds. But something about this sounds a little too familiar.”

“How so?”

“Let me ask you somethin’, Nate—what do you make of Gippy?”

“He’s a fine human being, as long as he pays me in full and on time.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Fuck him.”

That made Mantz laugh—one of the few times I heard him laugh at anything but his own jokes.

“Let me tell you something, Nate,” he said, stubbing out the cigarette. “Gippy Putnam’s one of the vilest bastards on the face of this sweet earth.”

“Who’s married to one of the sweetest angels on the face of this vile earth,” I said.

“Couldn’t agree more.” And he was rocking in his swivel chair now, looking past me, summoning memories to share. “But let me spin ya a little bedtime story about Gippy. Back when he was still in the publishing business, not long after the Crash, when he was in need of dough, he put out this book by the nephew of the Italian premier that Mussolini deposed. This character was the first guy to escape from some fascist penal colony or somethin’. Anyway, the book spoke out against Mussolini, and Gippy was in Paris, doin’ advance publicity on the thing, when he went to the Sûreté and showed them an anonymous letter he got, threatening his life if he went ahead and published this book. He had a press conference and puffed up his chest and said nobody was gonna frighten Gippy Putnam outta publishing an important book. Then he went to London, for more advance promotion, and took two more of these threatening notes to Scotland Yard—”

“What did these notes look like?”

“Pasted-up letters cut out from newspapers and magazines. ‘Pig—you will never reach New York alive.’ Stuff about blowin’ up the Putnam publishing offices in both London and New York. He had another press conference, same bullshit; but this time he gets round-the-clock police protection, till he sails home on board the S. S.
France.”

“You know, this is jogging my memory—”

He was waving out a match, having lighted up a fresh cigarette. “It should. It got lots of play in the papers, both here and abroad. The book was a big bestseller; it pulled the Putnam publishing nuts outta the fire.”