Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery (36 page)

The amount was less than I’d feared and more than I’d wished for, but I had neither the time nor appetite to bargain.

“It’s a deal,” I told him.

“I get half now, and half when we land.”

“What if we don’t land?”

Vern cracked his gum and smiled. “Then you get a full refund.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Kind of a superstition, actually, the half up front.” Vern looked over at Maestro and Barbara and waved at them. “Been doing it since I started flying. I ask for the second half the second the wheels touch the ground, that’s the way I do it.”

“What if I’m sleeping?”

“Way I fly, you won’t be sleeping.” Vern laughed. “That’s pilot’s humor.”

“Hilarious.” I leaned forward on the counter. “Realistically, how soon can we get out of here?”

“You’re in a rush, I take it.”

I decided that if I was going to trust him with my safety, I better trust him with the truth. “All of our lives are at risk, Vern. That’s the way it is. The old man was kidnapped and at least two really good people have died because of that fact, and a couple of not-so-hot people as well. I’ve been hired to bring the Maestro back.”

He stopped chewing his gum. “For real.”

“For real. I also just had a phony murder rap hung on me in Utah, that’s how rough this game is being played.”

“So you’re a private eye or something?”

“I’m a private eye
and
something, I’m that good. I also believe in leveling with decent people. You should know what you’re getting into.”

Vern nodded, ran a grimy hand through his hair.

“Flew over eighty missions in Germany, Mr. LeVine. Believe me, I know what rough is.” He pushed himself away from the counter. “Give me twenty minutes.”

Vern started walking away.

“One other thing,” I called out to him. “Exactly where do we land?”

“You mean like what terminal?”

“Yeah.”

“All private aircraft going to Idlewild have to use the General Aviation Terminal.”

“All of them?”

“Yes sir. Now let me get to work.”

Vern turned and pushed open a door that led out to the hangar. I strolled back to my fellow voyagers and informed them of the plan of action. Barbara was openly nervous, but the Maestro seemed to get younger with every eastward mile we traveled.

“Will be adventure,” he said cheerily.

“Four seats,” Barbara said. “That’s
tiny.
”

Toscanini took her hand and started to sing very softly and very badly.
“Che gelida manina,
” he croaked. “Means ‘what a cold hand.’”

“La Bohème,
” Barbara said. “I know it well. But Mimi dies in the last act, Maestro.”

“Of
tuber colosi,
not plane crash,
cara mia.
You are safe with me!”

While the old man attempted to reassure Barbara, I went over to a wall phone and rang up Toots. He answered on the fifth ring, and sounded like a man curled into a fetal position.

“Napping on the job?”

“Resting,” he told me. “I never sleep at my desk. What’s up? Any more excitement?”

“Nothing but.” I filled Toots in on the morning’s mayhem at the Starlight Motor Hotel and then told him of my impending flight.

“You’re going to land at Idlewild with the real Toscanini while Sarnoff is waiting for the ringer?” Toots sounded both incredulous and petulant.

“Exactly.”

“So what’s my exclusive, Jack? Every fucking paper in town’s gonna be there.”

“But you’re going to be the only one who’s gonna have any idea what’s really going on.”

“Jack, if Lansky and Lucky are involved, you don’t think they’re gonna have their muscle at the airport? What’s to stop them from grabbing your old man again and hustling him into a car? Saying that
he’s
the fraud.”

“Nothing, except that I’m not going to let it happen. I’ve schlepped him this far; no way I let him get nabbed in my own backyard. Don’t worry about it. By tonight, you’re gonna be waltzing your way to a Pulitzer Prize.”

“If I survive. This puts me out in the open, too.”

“I wouldn’t sweat it. One thing about Meyer and Lucky, they don’t go after newspapermen. It’s bad for business. Shooting private dicks—everybody loves that.”

“What time you say you’re getting in?”

“Around four o’clock. General Aviation at Idlewild.”

“Don’t try to be a hero.”

“I am a hero, Toots; it just comes naturally.”

I sat back down with Barbara and Toscanini and thumbed blindly through a six-month-old issue of
Collier’s,
not registering anything except a photo of Lana Turner nibbling on an ear of corn. My palms were slick and I realized that I was a lot edgier than I had admitted to Toots. Barbara produced a deck of cards from her handbag and started to deal solitaire on a small metal coffee table. Maestro beamed, happy just to be near her, and began offering muttered advice in Italian. Barbara furrowed her ivory brow and studied her cards. When she looked up, she caught me watching her and smiled demurely, then reached over and squeezed my arm. I fell ever deeper for her, like a guy spinning down a well in a fairy tale. It’s the little things that count, the small exquisite gestures—the straightening of a wayward collar, the instinctive squeeze of flesh. If she was not reading my thoughts, then she was certainly intuiting my fears—of crashing to earth in a flaming Piper, or getting my skull bashed in at Idlewild by some of the world’s most accomplished thugs.

I had been thinking while pretending to read
Collier’s,
and the more I thought, the more I agreed with Toots—the logical play for Lansky and Lucky was to snatch the Maestro again. As for Barbara, she probably knew way too much to be allowed to live; it would pain Lansky for at least a week and a half, but he would ultimately allow her to be rubbed out.

As for me, I was not only expendable, I was radioactive. If everything didn’t go perfectly, I knew I’d be dead by tonight.

Fifteen minutes later, Vern walked through the door from the hangar and waved at us to join him. Barbara gathered up her cards and put them in her bag. I went over to Toscanini and helped him get up. He was positively buoyant.

“We are like Lindbergh, Boston Blackie.”

“You like to fly?” I asked him.

He shrugged.
“Mezzo-mezzo.
But to go home, to orchestra … has been long time.” His eyes got moist. “Makes me strong.” He clutched my arm hard.
“Avanti!
”

The three of us walked behind the counter and out into the hangar. There were a half dozen people working there and they stopped whatever they were doing the instant we appeared. At first I figured it was Barbara, and God knows the men watched her with awestruck attention, but then they began to applaud, and I knew it was for Maestro. It was the goddamnedest thing—a bunch of Hoosier grease monkeys paying tribute to the great man. Toscanini turned and touched his tweed cap in acknowledgment, then headed for the abbreviated stairway to the plane.

“Piccolo
” he exclaimed, looking at the Pacer. “So small!”

“Well, maximum weight allowed is eighteen hundred pounds,” Vern said. “So I guess we’re all right with this group.”

“Have been on diet,
signore,
” Toscanini told him, and the men all laughed some more, then Vern assisted him up the three steps and into the PA-20. It was a plucky-looking little plane, about twenty feet in length, with a single engine and wings that appeared to be shorter than the others in the hangar. After Barbara boarded the plane, I turned to Vern and asked him if I was just imagining that the wings were smaller.

“No, the wingspan is about six feet less than the other Pipers.”

“Tell me that’s a good thing.”

“It’s a very good thing, Mr. LeVine. Means it climbs a little slower, about two-thirds slower than the cub, as a matter of fact, but it also allows the plane to go twenty miles an hour faster.” He clapped me on the back. “No need to worry, sir. It’s gonna be a hell of a ride.”

I took a deep breath and boarded the plane.

“Boarded” might be too grand a term to describe entering the Pacer. “Slinked” or “crouched” might fit the bill a little better. The plane looked to be ideal for transporting small dogs or circus midgets; if you were over four feet tall, standing erect was out of the question. Four cloth-covered seats were set in two rows and you got to the second row by climbing over the first, which Barbara had already done. She was seated with her hands folded, as pale as a denizen of Death Row. Maestro was already buckled into his seat in the first row.

Vern got on board carrying a large and fragrant paper bag.

“Coffee and doughnuts and sandwiches,” he announced.

“Bravo, capitano!
” Toscanini cried out.

“You want something now, before we take off?”

“
Sì
,
sì
,
capitano
. Doughnut,
caffe
.”

I realized I was starving. Vern distributed the coffee and doughnuts to us all, and then started busying himself in the tiny cockpit. “There’s water for later, and let’s save the sandwiches for when we stop in Pittsburgh,” he said. “We should have pretty smooth air by then. Just might be a little choppy till we’re near Columbus.”

“How far is that?”

“’Bout a hundred and seventy-five miles. You all belted in, folks?”

We were indeed belted in, contemplatively sipping coffee and munching our doughnuts, which were still warm and tasted like something fashioned by God’s own hands, if God were a plump housewife from Indianapolis. Toscanini looked as if he had never eaten a doughnut in his life, studying the circle of fried dough like someone who had just swum onto a deserted island and picked it from a tree.

“Delizioso,
” he said, and then Vern started up the engine and it suddenly got very noisy in the cabin.

“I advise you folks to finish your coffee,” Vern shouted back over his shoulder.

We did so. Vern started maneuvering the small plane across the tarmac. It was a quiet morning at the Indianapolis airport. A pair of American Airlines planes were being washed down by a crew; to the east an old military transport, its Air Force markings faded but still visible, was slowly rolling down the runway. Everything seemed to be happening at half speed. Barbara leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips. She smelled of coffee and warm doughnut and the promise of my lost youth.

“Good luck to us all,” she said.

SEVENTEEN

Vern was correct
. The first part of the flight was not smooth. Not even close. We bumped and ducked and rolled. The old man stared placidly out the window and admired the agrarian world below, despite the continuous whoops and swoops of the air currents. As for me, I felt like I had gotten on the Coney Island Cyclone after a spaghetti dinner. I closed my eyes and attempted to conjure up clean and unnauseating images—hansom cabs at dusk, Rizzuto throwing a runner out from deep shortstop—but it was not entirely successful. My stomach was clenched like a small damp fist. Barbara wasn’t doing much better and after an hour or so, my shoulder began to ache from the number of times she had dug her nails into me.

“This chop is going to end real soon, folks,” Vern shouted out from the front of the plane. “Just hang in there! And if you can’t, just use the bags. We discourage barfing out the window.” He chuckled as if he had said something funny. “Never know who might be walking around down there!”

My head was slick with sweat; when I turned and looked at Barbara, she was milk-white.

“Soon,” I whispered.

“Maybe crashing would be better,” she said.

“Don’t think about it, don’t talk about it.”

“You’re not sick?”

“I keep trying to think of Phil Rizzuto throwing to first base.”

She smiled very grimly. “That does nothing for me.”

Vern looked back over his shoulder. “How are you doing, Mr. Tos-canini?”

“Bene. Bella scenaria!
” The old man pointed out the window, then turned to me. “Boston Blackie, no like the ride?”