Flying Blind

Chapter 2

Searchlights stroked the evening sky, motorcycle cops kept the traffic moving, and hundreds, hell, maybe thousands of gawking pedestrians lined the sidewalks, the flashbulbs of the press popping, as limousine after limousine drew up on Washington Street near State, where a doorman in green and gold livery helped women draped in diamonds and furs step to the curb, followed by husbands in black tie and bemusement. What might have been a Hollywood premiere was only another attention-attracting attempt by a floundering department store to regain its footing in dark Depression days.

The famous showcase windows of Marshall Field’s remained tasteful tableaus of prosperity, the classic Queen Anne opulence of a few years before replaced by Art Moderne; but the faces reflected in their glass belonged to window shoppers whose dreams of lives of luxury were as abstract as the streamlined geometry on display. Retail sales were down and wholesale was a disaster aided and abetted by the Merchandise Mart, the Field Company’s $30,000,000 white elephant, the world’s biggest (mostly empty) building, that mammoth warehouse conceived on the eve of the Crash.

Marshall Field’s clearly needed help, and the heroine of the hour was finally arriving.

The man in uniform opened the door for her and Amelia Earhart seemed to float from the backseat, an angelic blur of white. Then, as she paused to wave at the cheering crowd — her shyness and self-confidence a peculiar, peculiarly charming mix — she came into focus, tall, slender, tanned, loosely draped in a white topcoat, its large mannish collar and lapels those of a trench coat.

The applause and huzzahs ringing around her seemed to both embarrass and amuse Miss Earhart, her wide set eyes crinkling; with Hollywood-style makeup, the elongated oval of her face would’ve seemed pretty, but her features were barely touched with the stuff, a little lipstick, a little powder. Her hair was a dark honey-blonde tousle, her nose small but strong, her mouth wide and sensuous.

Just inside the bank of doors, two men in tails were scrutinizing engraved invitations and checking off names from a guest list limited to 500 of the Midwest’s well fixed. Waiting with them was a handsome devil, also in tails, about thirty, six strapping feet with reddish-brown hair.

Me.

Stepping outside into the crisp March air, where breath plumed from every mouth, I crossed the red carpet to meet our honored guest, halfway. It was the least I could do.

I introduced myself: “Nathan Heller, ma’am. I’m the chaperone your husband arranged.”

Taking in my tux, she flashed me just a hint of an apple-cheeked, winsome, if gap-toothed grin. “You don’t look much like a bodyguard, Mr. Heller.”

She didn’t bother working to be heard above the noisy crowd; she seemed to know I’d be able to hone in on the low-pitched, Midwestern musicality of her voice.

“You don’t look much like a pilot,” I said, taking her arm.

Her smile froze, then melted into an ever better one. “You don’t impress easily, do you, Mr. Heller?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I selected a door and opened it for her. Inside, no one asked to check our invitation. We moved down the long wide main aisle; though this was after normal business hours, the first floor was open, brilliantly illuminated and fully staffed. Some of the wealthy guests were pausing to pick up this and that at the curving plate-glass counters, bright showcases of fine lace, jewelry, perfume, embroideries, and notions. As Amelia strolled by on my arm, eyes turned our way and oohs and aahs accompanied us.

“How lovely,” Amelia said, looking skyward.

She was taking in the fabled Tiffany dome, a million and a half or so pieces of iridescent glass, blue and gold, shimmering six floors above.

“Hell of a lampshade,” I granted.

She laughed gently, then her eyes widened and brightened. “You’re that detective Slim told G. P. about!”

Slim was Charles Lindbergh.

“I’ve heard of you, too,” I said. “I guess you know your husband’s already upstairs.”

“You’ve met G. P.?”

George Palmer Putnam, formerly of G. P. Putnam’s publishing, part-time consultant to Paramount Pictures, full-time husband and manager of Amelia Earhart.

“Oh yes,” I said. “He’s been choreographing things here all afternoon, the management, the staff, the press, me, you name it.”

“That’s G. P. Obnoxious, isn’t he?”

She had a wicked little smile going; I gave her half a smile, just this side of noncommittal, in return.

“That’s an opinion I wouldn’t care to express, ma’am, at least until my expense account had been approved.”

The smile widened and made her face crinkle in all sorts of interesting ways; wind and sun had left their signatures on the once-fair, now-freckled skin. But to me the beauty of those blue-gray eyes was only emphasized by the fine lines at their corners.

She damn near hugged my arm as I escorted her to the elevators where the middle one was being held for us. Then, except for the good-looking elevator girl (Field’s only hired the prettiest — Dorothy Lamour started in one of these cages), Miss Earhart and I were alone.

“Rent the tux for the occasion?” she asked, looking me over, finally stepping to one side, releasing my arm.

I gestured to myself with both hands. “This is mine.”

An eyebrow arched in amusement. “Really? I didn’t know private detectives owned tuxedos.”

I patted under my left arm, where the nine-millimeter was nestled in its holster. “You got to be well-heeled to guard the well-heeled.”

Childish enthusiasm turned her into the tomboy she’d most likely been, growing up. “There’s a gun under there?”

“Tailor on Maxwell Street gave me a special cut. Wouldn’t want to create an unfashionable bulge. ’Specially not when I’m guarding a big-time dress designer.”

Which she was, in her way: Marshall Field’s was the exclusive outlet for the Earhart line of clothing, outfits for sports, travel, and spectator wear, sold under franchise by one merchandiser in each of thirty metropolitan areas. Macy’s had New York.

She had a wry smirk going. “I’m not exactly Coco Chanel.”

“Coco Chanel never flew the Atlantic, not to mention the Pacific.”

The latter had been Amelia’s latest accomplishment, a Pacific crossing from Honolulu to California, a little two-day jaunt in January.

“You see, it’s a routine now, Mr. Heller.” The low, melodic voice was weary and resigned. “I set a record and then I lecture on it... even though I hate crowds. And I sell books — which I do write myself, mind you — and clothes, which I do design myself — and even, Lord help me, cigarettes.”

“Don’t tell me you roll your own.”

“No. I detest smoking. Filthy habit.”

“Then why endorse Lucky Strikes?”

Her smile was as sad as it was fetching. “Because I love to fly — and it’s an expensive obsession.”

Our cage shuddered to a stop, and the pretty elevator girl opened the gate and we stepped onto the sixth floor, and Amelia took my arm again. A handsome young man in a gold and green uniform, looking like a chorus boy in a Victor Herbert operetta, took Amelia’s topcoat and ushered us into the salon’s lavish oval foyer, with its beige oak walls and matching carpet and Regency furnishings.

“Miss Amelia Earhart,” a butler intoned. He had an English accent that was almost convincing.

She swept into the salon with her distinctive combination of self-confidence and humility. Applause — of the fingertips in the palm variety, but applause nonetheless — echoed in the main rotunda. She waved it off and began to circulate, shaking hands, saying little, listening to effusive compliments with the patience of a priest.

The spacious circular room, broken up by curtained-off alcoves, had plump, comfortable chairs for plump, comfortable customers to plop down in around the central, beige-carpeted area, where wafer-thin models in costly clothing normally would do their preening, whirling routine.

Tonight, however, the joint was standing room only. Wealthy women, from younger dolls in slinky sparkly gowns to older gals who seemed to be wearing the dining room drapes, took center stage, their tuxedoed husbands at their sides like personal butlers.

In her casual white sheath with its distinctive black-and-white sash, Amelia would have seemed out of place, had she not been the focal point of wide-eyed admiration. Waiters served champagne from silver trays, waitresses ferried hors d’oeuvres, and a pianist in tails tickled the keys with Cole Porter. I didn’t tag after my charge, but kept her in sight. With a crowd this select, this controlled, it wasn’t like my experience with the pick-pocket detail was likely to come in handy; still, the ice hanging off these dames made Jack Frost look like a piker.

The most suspicious character in the crowd was probably Mr. Amelia Earhart, that is, G. P. Putnam. There was something wrong with the guy; something that just didn’t fit, though he certainly wore his tuxedo well. He had the tall, broad-shouldered build of an adventurer; but his big square head with its close-cropped dark hair was taken over by the mild features of a college professor, particularly the cold dark beady eyes behind rimless glasses.

And yet, as I’d seen this afternoon as he manipulated everybody at Field’s from the top brass down to the salesgirls, orchestrating the evening like Florenz Ziegfeld putting on a new Follies, he was one glib son of a bitch, whose fast-talking charm was a thin layer over his general disdain for the human race.

So what if he was a con man with a scholar’s puss and the build of a linebacker? He was paying $25 for the evening, better than double my usual rate, so he was okay by me. The job had come in over the phone — he’d called me from his home in Rye, New York, a few days before — and had been a referral from (as he had pompously put it) “our mutual friend, Colonel Lindbergh.”

Right now he was working the room himself, in the company of Field’s amiable president, James Simpson, who was introducing him to Mrs. Howard Linn, one of the local arbiters of fashion.

Stocky, round-faced Bob Casey from the Daily News, looking about as at ease in his tux as a dog in a sweater, came trundling over with a glass of champagne in hand. “You’re a little out of your league, aren’t you, Nate?”

“And when did you start covering the fashion beat?”

“When Lady Lindy picked up a needle and thread. Did she give the photogs a chance to snap her, downstairs?”

“Sure. She stopped and waved at the crowd. They probably got some swell shots.”

“Great. It’ll be nice gettin’ some pics of her without the lens louse in ’em.”

“Who?”

He jerked a thumb toward Putnam, who was smiling and laughing as he spoke with Mr. and Mrs. Hughston McBain; McBain was the store manager. “Ol’ G. P. He shoves himself into every interview, every photograph he can. For every ten words you get out of the Queen of the Air, you get a hundred from the Bag of Wind.”

“Well, he’s sure had the Field’s crowd jumping through hoops all afternoon.”

“Shame on them,” Casey snorted. “He’s a cheap flimflammer.”

Putnam looked anything but cheap in his rimless glasses and tails, hobnobbing with Chicago’s elite, who seemed enthralled by his wit and wisdom; or maybe they were just impressed, looking at the guy who slept with Amelia Earhart.

Casey wasn’t through with his critique: “He took over a great publishing house and cheapened it with those fabricated books of his.”

“Fabricated books?”

He sipped, almost slurped, his champagne. “Overnight opuses wove out of headlines. By Admiral Byrd and your pal Lindy, and this big-game explorer, and that deep-sea diver. Ol’ Putnam virtually cast your date, there, in her role.”

“What do you mean, ‘her role’?”

Casey shook his head, his grin a Chicago cocktail of contempt and admiration. “He sold so many copies of Lindbergh’s book, he had a regular casting call, lookin’ around to find a woman to fly the Atlantic, so he could publish a follow-up.”

The reporter nodded toward Amelia, who was patiently, smilingly, listening to an overweight, diamond-flung patron of fashion prattle on.

“The belle of the ball, there,” Casey continued, “she was just a social worker in Boston, a weekend flier, till a pal of Putnam’s noticed her resemblance to Lucky Lindy, and the fabricated-book king made a star out of her.”

“You sure you newshounds aren’t just irritated, Bob,” I asked innocently, “that Putnam’s found a way to reuse your stuff for something besides birdcage liner?”

Putnam had spotted me talking with Casey, and he smilingly excused himself from Simpson and a small group of high hats, and made his way toward me, as Casey slipped away.

Hard-edged words emerged from a thin smile in a face as pale as his wife’s was tan. “Hope you’re not giving away trade secrets to the press.”

“I don’t know any to give away, Mr. Putnam.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “I told you, Nate — we’re on a first-name basis. Call me G. P. I’m not some damn snob.”

Nice way to tell me I was beneath him. And since when was “G. P.” a first name?

“Well,” I said, “you’ve scored at least one coup tonight.”

“I think we’ve scored more than one,” he said, pointlessly defensive. The mouth moved quickly, the eyes remained unblinkingly still. “I think we’ve done extremely well, and the night is still young.”

“I was referring to that sourpuss over there.”

He followed my nod and took in the grumpy visage of a stocky, white-templed character in dark-rimmed glasses and a tux that fit like a glove, if the hand in it were missing a finger or two from an industrial accident.

“Is he somebody?” Putnam asked, machine-gunning his words nervously. “I’ve never seen him before, he’s nobody to me.”

“That’s Robert M. Lee. That may sound like he’s a Confederate general, but he’s considerably more important. He’s the editor of the Trib’s Sunday section.”

Putnam’s thin upper lip pulled back over very small, white teeth, and his eyes widened with delight. Then the hand settled on my shoulder again and he whispered chummily in my ear: “How about that, Nate? We’re too big to ignore. Even by that fucking Colonel McCormick.”

Considering publisher McCormick’s legendary hatred for FDR, there had been considerable doubt that the Tribune would cover this event, what with Amelia’s well-known connections to the White House, particularly with the First Lady.

But now Putnam’s joy had faded; a frown clenched his high forehead. “This character won’t make us look bad, will he?”

“He looks grouchy,” I said, “and he is grouchy.” I’d known Lee a long time; he’d been in a bad mood ever since his legman Jake Lingle got plugged under his (Lee’s) city editorship. “But the photogravure section’s not exactly where the muckraking stuff gets run. You’re probably safe.”

Suddenly he shook my hand. “You’re doing a great job, Nate. You’re everything Ben said you were.”

He was still gripping my hand; he was trying too hard to show me his strength and his he-man temperament — sort of like using a word like “fucking” in a Marshall Field’s dress salon.

“Ben?” I asked. “Which Ben told you what about me?”

“Hecht,” Putnam said, and at first I thought he’d said “Heck,” which was better than “fucking.” “Aren’t you and Ben Hecht old friends?”

“...Yeah. Sort of...” Former newsman Hecht, who’d long since traded Chicago for Hollywood, had been part of the Bohemian coterie that used to hang around my father’s radical bookshop on the West Side, when I was a kid. “How do you know him, G. P.?”

“I published his first novels,” Putnam said, touching my chest lightly. “Now, when we wrap up here, I want you to accompany A. E. and me out for a late dinner... not as a bodyguard, but as a valued friend.”

And then he got back to gladhanding more important suckers than yours truly, leaving me to wonder who had really recommended me — Hecht or Lindbergh... and what made me such a big deal, anyway? Just what the hell had I accomplished here, tonight, that was so gosh darn fucking phenomenal?

Pretty soon affable Field’s president Simpson was introducing their honored guest.

“As the fashion center of mid-America,” he said, a glass of champagne in hand, Amelia standing shyly just behind him, G. P. looming behind her like a square-shouldered shadow, “we are proud to add to our distinguished list of designers... Hattie Carnegie, Adrian, Norman Norell, Oscar Kiam, and Pauline Trigère... Miss Amelia Earhart!”

More applause followed, and Amelia stepped forward, clearly embarrassed, gesturing for the applause to stop; after a while, it did.

Simpson said, “You know, Miss Earhart, you’ve set many impressive records, but tonight you’ve really pulled off a remarkable feat... This marks the first time spirits have been served on these premises.”

A mild wave of tittering moved across the room; all present knew of the Field Company’s conservative nature.

“But it was necessary so that we might honor you with a proper toast,” Simpson said, and he raised his glass of champagne. “To Amelia Earhart — Queen of High Flying... and High Fashion.”

At the end of the toast, Amelia — who had no glass of her own — stepped forward and said, “I’m afraid you’ve broken your longstanding rule just to honor a teetotaler.”

More laughter followed.

“I thank you for your gracious introduction, Mr. Simpson, but I’m not here to make a formal speech. I would like to join you for what I understand will be a lovely presentation of the rather simple fashions I’ve come up with... not high fashion, really, but I hope you’ll take a liking to our line of functional clothing for active living.”

With a bashful smile and a step backward, Amelia indicated this was all she had to say.

But a male voice from between two dowagers in tiaras chimed out: “Miss Earhart, you’re of course to be congratulated on your recent success... the first solo flight from Hawaii to California...”

The voice belonged to the Trib’s Robert Lee, who stepped forward.

“Thank you,” Amelia said, uneasily. Just behind her, Putnam frowned at this intrusion.

“But this was a very dangerous flight,” Lee said, “already accomplished by a man... and had you been forced down at sea, the search would have cost the taxpayers millions.”

Putnam stepped forward, but Amelia raised a hand gently.

“I wasn’t forced down at sea,” Amelia said, softly, “and the gentleman who preceded me flew with a navigator, not solo. But I do feel, frankly, that the appreciation of my deed is out of proportion to the deed itself... I’ll be happy if my small exploit draws attention to the fact that women, too, are flying.”

A smattering of applause, accompanied by expressions of irritation turned toward the Tribune representative, was interrupted by Lee’s next volley: “Perhaps ‘deed’ isn’t the correct word, Miss Earhart. There are those who say this was a reckless stunt, bankrolled by Hawaiian interests campaigning against the sugar tariff.”

“I assure you that I’m more interested in aviation than sugar,” she said, rather tartly, and G. P. held up a palm like a traffic cop.

“Please,” he said. “This is not a press conference. It’s a social event and you’re quite at risk of spoiling the evening, sir. With all due respect...”

Bob Casey couldn’t resist; he popped out with: “Now that you’ve pulled off a Pacific crossing, is an around-the-world flight next?”

Casey’s tone was friendly enough and Amelia answered, “Everyone has dreams. I like to be ready...”

“We all admire you very much, Miss Earhart,” Casey said. “But I for one would like to see you abandon these dangerous ocean flights.”

“Why?” she asked, as if she and Casey were having a casual conversation over coffee. “Do you think my luck might run out?”

Casey arched an eyebrow. “You have been very lucky, Miss Earhart...”

Nothing defensive in her tone, she asked seriously, “Do you think luck only lasts so long, and then lets a person down?”

Putnam took his wife’s arm and said, “If you gentlemen of the press would like to arrange an interview with my wife, please speak to me, privately. Right now, we have a fashion show to present...”

The press conference was over, the reps from the Herald-Examiner and Times not even getting in a lick, though I saw them taking Putnam up on his offer, buttonholing him on the sidelines as the guests retreated to the circumference of the room and models began showing off Amelia’s wares, with the designer herself providing a low-key play-by-play.

“The tails of the blouse are long enough,” she said as a slender girl loped through the room in a white blouse and pleated navy slacks, “not to ride up and reveal the midriff... and the silk detailing on the blouse is parachute silk.”

An aviation theme ran cleverly throughout the collection: silver buttons in the shape of tiny propellers; hexagonal nuts fastening a jersey dress; a belt with a parachute buckle. Cool pastels and washable fabrics made for a shockingly sensible fashion show.

“This coat is Harris tweed,” she said, “with an innovation we think will catch on... a zip-in, washable lining.”

The simple, somewhat mannish lines of these practical clothes — broad shoulders, ample sleeves, natural waistlines — had a classic elegance that appealed to the starstruck crowd, and by the end of the evening, Field’s salesgirls were doing a brisk business, with frocks and mix-and-match outfits going for as little as $30.

I asked her about that, at dinner, over my Hungarian goulash with spätzles. “Those upper-crust types aren’t really who you’re aiming for, with your line, are they?”

Amelia, her husband, and I were at a table in the Victorian Room at the Palmer House, the hotel where they were staying. I was a frequent diner at the Palmer House, only normally in the basement lunchroom, at the counter. The plushly elegant white and gold room with its draperies of crimson was dominated by a large oil portrait of Queen Victoria; this was at the other end of the room and did not affect our appetites.

“Not really,” she admitted, touching a napkin to her full lips, having just finished a house specialty, the fried squab Ol’ Man River with pan gravy and pimento. “I think my audience is working women, particularly professional women.”

“Well, we’re not going to last long in the marketplace,” Putnam said, “if you insist on high-quality fabrics and low prices.” He’d been the first of us to finish eating, polishing off the potted brisket of beef like it was his last meal.

“Working women need washable, non-wrinkle materials,” she said, sounding like a cross between a commercial and a political statement — not that there was much difference.

“We’re not making a profit yet,” Putnam said.

She shrugged as she pushed away her plate. “The luggage line is doing well.”

“That’s true,” Putnam granted her, obviously not wanting this to turn into an argument. “Very true, and with the lecture series coming up, we should soon be in better shape.”

She glanced at me, obviously uneasy that their personal business was being discussed in front of a stranger. Like me, she didn’t seem to understand why, exactly, I was here.

“Also,” Putnam said brightly, cold eyes glittering behind the rimless glasses, “there’s something I’d like to show you, dear... perhaps after we’ve had dessert.”

She looked at him with what might have been suspicion. “What?”

His eyebrows went up, then down, like Groucho Marx, only not so funny. “Something you’ll like. Something potentially very profitable.”

“May I ask...” She turned to me again, her smile warm and apologetic. “...and I mean no offense, Mr. Heller...” And now she turned back to her husband. “...if there’s a reason why we’re discussing business in a social setting?”

“I think you probably already know the answer to that one, A. E.”

“Simpkin,” she said to him, a nickname she’d already used several times over our sumptuous, expensive meal, “I’ve told you a dozen times I don’t take any of that seriously. It’s the sort of thing people in the public eye just have to put up with.”

“I disagree,” he said with a frown, then flicked a finger in my direction. “At least you could do me the courtesy of getting a professional opinion from Nate, here. After all, security is his field. Didn’t he do a fine job this evening?”

Amelia smiled and shook her head, then said to me, again, “I mean no offense, Mr. Heller, but—”

“I agree with you,” I told her, giving up on the goulash. “I’ll be damned if I know what your husband is so impressed with about me.”

Putnam’s thin line of a mouth flinched in a momentary scowl; then he said, “To be quite honest, A. E., I did some checking around about our guest.”

“Slim recommended him,” she said, with a tiny shrug. “You told me.”

“Actually,” Putnam said, “it was George Leisure who first mentioned Mr. Heller.”

He really had been checking up on me. “How do you know George Leisure?” I asked, almost irritated. Who the hell had recommended me to Putnam, anyway? Leisure, a top Wall Street attorney, had been second chair to Clarence Darrow in the Massie trial in Honolulu in 1932; I’d been Darrow’s investigator.

“Golfing pal,” Putnam said. “Mr. Heller, I’m told you’re discreet, and you have a certain familiarity with the special needs of the famous. Of celebrities.”

There was some truth in that, though the retail credit firms I did the bulk of my work for — not to mention the husbands and/or wives looking to get the dirt on their spouses that made up most of the rest of my accounts receivable book — weren’t exactly household names.

“I suppose so,” I said, just as the waiter arrived with dessert. We had all ordered the house specialty — Creole Juanita, a yam pudding — and Putnam and I were having coffee with it. Amelia had cocoa, explaining she drank neither coffee nor tea. A non-tea-drinking teetotaler.

“My wife has received some threatening letters,” Putnam said, spooning his pudding.

“Everybody in my position receives threatening letters,” she said, mildly impatient.

I touched her sleeve, lightly. “Now it’s my turn to ask you not to take offense... but there is no one in this country, no one in the world, who’s in your position. I’ll be glad to listen to what’s been going on, and give you my best reading... no extra charge, no obligation.”

She had a lot of nice smiles, but this one — faint but fetching — was my favorite so far. “That’s very decent of you, Mr. Heller.”

“Hey, you paid for my services this evening,” I said, dipping a spoon into my Creole Juanita, “and bought me a nice meal. How can I help?”

Putnam didn’t have the notes with him, but as he described them, this seemed fairly typical celebrity harassment — letters were assembled via cut-out words lifted from newspapers and magazines, not asking for a ransom — just hateful, threatening messages: YOU WILL FALL TO EARTH, THE CRASH IS COMING.

“How many of these notes have you received?” I asked.

“Three,” Amelia said. She was eating her pudding, not terribly worked up about this subject. The stuff was pretty much pumpkin pie without the crust, by the way.

I asked, “Where did you receive them?”

“At my hotel, in California. Before we left for Honolulu, and the Pacific flight.”

“Did you go to the cops in L.A.?”

“No. I’ve had other crank mail, before. I think G. P.’s upset primarily because these are so... nasty... with the cut-out words and all, which make it... creepy.”

“Did the notes come in the mail?”

“Yes.” She pushed her pudding cup aside, half-eaten. Maybe this was bothering her, after all.

“Then you might be able to take this to the FBI or the postal inspectors.”

“Please understand,” Putnam said, his pudding finished long ago, “there’s a history of sabotage, where female fliers are concerned. During the first Women’s Air Derby, Thea Rasche got a note with cut-out words like the ones A. E.’s been receiving and got grounded with sand in her fuel tank... the rudder cables of Claire Fahy’s plane were weakened by acid, and Bobbi Trout was forced down with sand, or maybe dirt, poured in her fuel.”

Amelia made a face. “Jiminy crickets, Simpkin, that was 1929.”

“I would prefer to be safe than sorry,” he said crisply. Then he formed a businesslike smile and those unblinking eyes fixed upon me. “Nate, Amelia’s about to embark on a brief lecture tour... ten days, twelve appearances... on her way to California, where she’ll prepare for our next long-distance flight.”

“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?”

Chapter 3

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.

The Hudson rep was a little guy with George Raft’s hair, Clark Gable’s mustache and Stan Laurel’s face. “What do you suggest, Mr. Heller?”

Arms were flailing, hands pawing the air, like the crowd was drowning in its own tidal wave of bad breath and body odor.

“Where are the keys to that buggy?” I yelled, nodding to the Hudson.

He blinked. “Under the floor mat — why?”

A housewife who only slightly outweighed me was climbing on me like she wanted to procreate. I put my hand in her face, like Jimmy Cagney feeding Mae Clarke a grapefruit, and shoved her back. Then I straight-armed a ten-year-old kid and took Amelia by the arm, yanked open the driver’s-side door and said, “Get in.”

She gave me only a moment’s look, to determine whether or not I was crazy, saw that I was, and got in; so did I. She crawled over into the rider’s seat and we both rolled up the windows and locked ourselves in. I reached down and fumbled around under the mat and finally found the car keys. Wild eyes and yellow teeth and waving arms were the view out the windshield.

I started the engine but nobody seemed to notice; the hubbub out there was a dimwitted din a mere Hudson motor couldn’t hope to be heard over. Then I leaned into the Hudson’s horn and it bleated like a cow a tree fell on, and they heard that. In fact, it scared the hell right out of them, and gave them notice to get their asses out of my way.

Putting the Hudson in gear, I guided that streamlined baby right down the center aisle, through the convention hall, startled, pissed-off auto show attendees getting out of my way, bowling pins avoiding an oncoming ball. For people at an auto show, it was like they’d never seen a moving car before; hell, I was only doing five or ten miles an hour.

When I neared the exits — a row of doors clearly designed for people, not Hudsons — I braked, put the car in park, gave her a glance that told her what to do, and we hopped out on our respective sides, leaving the motor running, and she came around the front of the Hudson and took my hand.

A couple of uniformed cops near the exits were viewing this escapade with wide eyes and open mouths; one of the cops yelled, “Say! You can’t do that!”

We were halfway out the door, still hand in hand, when I nodded toward my partner and said, “But this is Amelia Earhart,” and the cop was thinking about that when we were gone, scampering like a couple of kids out the Convention Hall’s high arched entrance where we grabbed the first of a row of waiting cabs.

In the backseat of the cab, she threw back her headful of tousled curls and laughed and laughed. I wasn’t laughing, but I was smiling to where my cheeks might burst, and my heart was hammering. The excitement was like a drug rushing through my veins.

“Oh my goodness!” Tears of delight rolled down her apple cheeks. “You’re amazing, Nate! Simply amazing!”

“I just drove a damn car from one end of a convention hall to the other, is all,” I said. “It’s not like I flew across an ocean or anything.”

“What wonderful fun. You do have a reckless streak, don’t you?”

“I’ve been accused of that.”

And that night — though she’d just endured fourteen hours of public scrutiny and abuse — we set out in the Franklin for the next stop on our itinerary, Fort Wayne. Not that she didn’t show some of the wear and tear of the long day; she looked frail, wan, the lovely blue-gray eyes surrounded by not so lovely puffiness. For a change, she allowed me — in fact, implored me — to do the driving. She curled up in her seat, like a cat, in a blouse and chino slacks, the curve of her back to me as she slept, and her rather nice backside...

“Those threatening notes are quite real,” Putnam had told me, back in the Palmer House dining room. “The bodyguard aspect of your job is every bit the way I explained it to you.”

“Then what’s the idea of asking me,” I said, “do I want to know the ‘real’ reason I was hired?”

He drew on the Havana cigar, leaning back in his chair, a man of means, about to discuss his prized possession. “My wife’s an attractive woman, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say, but now that you mention it, sure. She’s a peach. You’re a lucky guy.”

“Perhaps.” He sat forward now and those unblinking eyes revealed something new, something besides self-absorption and mild lunacy: sorrow. “I believe my wife is having an affair.”

This was not the first time I had heard a male client say this of his spouse; normally, it was news about as shocking as the sun coming up. But this I hadn’t seen coming. Perhaps it was in part the setting, the fancy dining room with its background sound of a string quartet and the clink of fine china and occasional clunk of silverware and polite conversation with laughter mingled in. The waiter was delivering our drinks and I grabbed and sipped my rum and Coke, rolling the liquid around in my mouth as I rolled Putnam’s words around in my brain.

Quietly, I spelled it out: “You mean, this is a divorce job? You want me to get the goods on your wife, so you can sue for divorce?”

Savoring a sip of his Manhattan, he shook his head, no. “Nate, I’m hoping that if I can confront my wife with proof of her... indiscretions... she will abandon this... this fling... and return to my arms.”

Those arms were folded, right now, and he seemed about as loving — and concerned — as a broker discussing stock options; still, the sadness in the glazed eyes behind the scholarly round-rimmed glasses could not be denied.

“How sure are you that she’s dallying?” I asked.

“Fairly sure. Quite sure.”

“Which is it? There’s a big difference between fairly and quite.”

“His name is Paul Mantz.” He took another sip of his Manhattan; in fact, he took two sips. “He’s a pilot, a stunt pilot in the movies. Cocky little pipsqueak, six years younger than A. E. Fast-talking, glib son of a bitch, full of himself.”

That latter could have been a description of Putnam.

“I brought him into the fold myself,” Putnam said, a twitch of disgust flicking in one corner of his mouth. “Met him when I was publicist on the picture Wings, where he put together a small team of pilots to stage the dogfights. I thought he’d be the ideal man to help A. E. prepare for the Honolulu-Oakland flight.”

“Why a stunt pilot for that job?”

Putnam shrugged. “To give the devil his due, Mantz is more than just a stunt pilot. He’s an engineer, set his own share of speed records, he’s president of the Motion Picture Pilots Association. Successful businessman, too, with a charter service, maybe you heard of it — the Honeymoon Express?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“It’s for Hollywood bigwigs and stars. You know — quickie Reno weddings and divorces. Las Vegas, too. Or just for celebrities to take weekend getaways, in Arizona and so on. After all, somebody in Hollywood is always fucking somebody else’s wife.”

I was swirling my drink in its glass, studying the dark liquid, as if looking for moral guidance; perhaps not the best place to look for it. “I don’t know about this, Mr. Putnam.”

“It’s ‘G. P.,’ and what the hell is there to feel uncomfortable about? You do divorce work, don’t you?”

“All the time... But this is kind of a shady business, leading your wife to believe I’ve been hired for one thing, getting me into her confidence, when actually I’m working against her.”

He gestured with an open hand, reasonably. “As I said, the threatening notes are very real. She may well be in danger from a deranged fan or some jealous competitor... most of these women fliers are dykes, you know, and are by nature frustrated.”

“You’re asking a lot for twenty-five bucks a day. This sounds like two jobs to me.”

Amusement turned his thin lips into a curve. “Is that what it takes to salve your conscience, Nate? Well, fine. We’ll make it twenty-five dollars a day for bodyguard duties, and another twenty-five dollars a day for... these other... investigative services. Fifty a day...”

He reached into his inside tuxedo jacket pocket and withdrew a checkbook.

“...and we’ll make that retainer not five hundred dollars, but one thousand dollars. Plus reasonable expenses, of course...”

And he uncapped a fountain pen and wrote my name and that very attractive amount on the check; it was upside-down from where I sat, but I could read it. Glistening there — my name attached to a thousand bucks. It was like an actor seeing his name in lights.

So I took the job. I didn’t like myself for doing it, but I did like the thousand bucks. The thousand bucks was swell.

And now I was at the wheel of Putnam’s wife’s Franklin, and she was snoozing next to me, curled up cutely, and for the first time, in any major way at least, I felt bad, even guilty. We’d had a nice moment together, this evening, she and I. She was warming to me. And I was a heel.

But a well-paid heel.

She woke up around 2:00 A.M., and announced she needed a rest stop. I pulled the big bus of a Franklin in at the Junction Diner at Angola, on U.S. 27, just a few miles over the state line into Indiana. While the outside of the little boxcar all-nighter had that sleek modern look — a stainless steel bullet edged with blue porcelain enamel in the neon glow of its sign — the interior was dominated by the warmth of oak and gumwood woodwork. A truck driver sat at a counter stool having pie and coffee, but the place was pretty dead, just a blowsy blonde waitress and the occasional glimpse of the bleary-eyed, blue-bearded short-order cook at the window of his hole of a kitchen. We ordered at the counter and carried our hot chocolate (hers) and black coffee (mine) to our cozy booth.

“You saved my tail today,” she said, dipping a spoon into the whipped cream atop her cocoa.

“I figure it was worth saving,” I said. That was about as flirty as I’d got with her.

She gave me half a smile as she nibbled whipped cream off her spoon; no makeup, hair even more a tangle than usual, face puffy from sleep and still cute as a paper doll. “I admire that kind of courage,” she said.

“Is that what it is?”

She was stirring the hot chocolate, now. “Call it guts, then... I’m sorry if I’ve been a little, I don’t know... hard to get to know.”

The coffee was bitter. “Don’t be silly.”

“I learned a long time ago, not to confide in just anybody.”

“I like to think I’m not just anybody.” I saluted her with the coffee cup. “There are times I fancy myself somebody.”

She laughed. “Don’t be so anxious to be somebody. Look how much fun I have.”

“Like almost getting crushed to grape jelly in that crowd? You got a point. Since we’re talkin’ like a couple of humans, you mind if I ask you something just a touch on the personal side?”

“I think that would be all right,” she said, not quite sure.

“Where the hell were you brought up? Seems like every state in the union claims you as theirs.”

She chuckled and blew on her hot chocolate; steam shimmered off it. “That’s ’cause I was raised in just about every state in the union... Well, not really. Just Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa...”

“Minnesota?”

“Minnesota, too. Not Michigan, that I can remember. My father moved us around a lot. He was an attorney working for the railroad. Rock Island Line.”

“Ah.”

“Actually, he had a lot of jobs. He drank.” She sipped her chocolate. “My mother is a fairly cultivated lady, from a well-to-do background, and it was hard on her, when her attorney husband turned out to be a...”

She didn’t say it, but the word hung in the air: Drunk.

All she did say was: “Kind of strange for us kids, too.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Just my sister Muriel and me. We would stay with my grandparents, my mother’s parents, part of the year, growing up. They were well off and I think it’s rather hard on kids, seeing how the other half lives, then going back to the other side of the tracks.”

I nodded. “I know what you mean. My uncle was wealthy, my pop was a diehard union man. An old Wobbly.”

“Ha! Old boyfriend of mine took me to a Wobbly meeting once.”

“It can be a good place to pick up girls.”

“Ah, well, Sam already had a girl, didn’t he? Though not for long. Your father wasn’t much for capitalism, huh?”

I sipped my coffee. “That’s the funny thing. He was a moderately successful small businessman. He ran a radical bookshop for years, in Douglas Park.”

“Douglas Park,” she said, nodding. “I know where that is.”

I grinned at her. “You really did live in Chicago, then?”

“For about a year, when I was seventeen. We had a furnished apartment near the University of Chicago. I did a miserable stint at Hyde Park High. Hated the teachers there like poison and I think the other girls thought I was a weird duck.”

“Were you?”

“Of course! In the yearbook they called me ‘the girl in brown who walks alone.’”

“And why did they do that?”

“I guess because I wore brown a lot and—”

“Walked alone. I get it.” I walked alone over to the counter with my coffee cup and got a refill; Amelia seemed to be doing fine with her hot chocolate.

Sitting back across from her, I asked, “Why flying? If you weren’t a rich kid, how did you manage that, anyway? It’s not a very proletariat pastime.”

She pretended to be impressed by the big word, saying, “Your father really was a Marxist, wasn’t he?... Jiminy crickets, I don’t know, I get asked that all the time, but never know what to say. How did I do it? Scrimped and saved and worked weekends at airfields, any job they’d give me. Why did I do it? I always did love air shows... Probably got the bug in Toronto.”

“Toronto? Don’t tell me you’re Canada’s native daughter, too?”

“Not really. Muriel was going to college there, and I’d lost interest in my own schooling, so when I went up to visit her, and saw all the wounded soldiers — this was, you know, during the war — I had an impulse to try to help. I took a job as a nurse’s aide at a military hospital.”

“That sounds like a lot of laughs.”

Her eyes widened. “It was an education. I only lasted a few months. Those poor men, with their poison gas burns, shrapnel, TB... I made a lot of friends among the patients, many of them British and French pilots. One afternoon, a captain in the Royal Flying Corps invited Muriel and me to an airfield and he did stunts in his little red airplane.” She drew in a breath and her eyes were lifted, as she remembered. “That plane said something to me when it swished by.”

“So that’s where it began, you and your love for little red airplanes.”

“Maybe. But then, too, I remember one air show particularly, on Christmas Day, must have been, oh... 1920?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I wasn’t there.”

“I think it was 1920, in Long Beach. They had races, wing-walking, aerobatics. I was enthralled! Then, three days later, at Rogers Field, off Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles... only in those days, it was more like the suburbs of Los Angeles... anyway, I went up for a ride with Frank Hawks, who was nationally known for setting speed records... He took me up two, three hundred feet over the Hollywood hills, and I was a goner. I knew I had to fly.”

“Love at first flight.”

She showed me the gap-toothed grin. “That’s about right. My goodness, Nathan... you mind if I call you ‘Nathan’? It’s so much more elegant than ‘Nate.’”

“I prefer to think of it as ‘suave,’ but sure. Nathan’s fine.”

She leaned forward, her hands gathered around the cup, cupping the cup, as if holding something precious; those blue-gray eyes were alive — it was like looking into a fire. “Nothing could’ve prepared me for the physical and emotional wallop of that flight. To me, it’s the perfect state, the ultimate happiness... It combines the physical and the intellectual... You soar above any earthly concerns, responsible to no one but yourself.”

“I feel the same way about draw poker.”

She laughed, once. “That’s what I like about you. You don’t take anything too seriously, yourself included... yet I feel, deep down, you’re a very serious person.”

“I am deep. So’s a drainage ditch.”

Now her expression was almost blank as she studied me. “Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“Seeing someone so... obsessive about something? So committed? Isn’t there something you love to do?”

I sipped the coffee, shrugged. “I like my work, for the most part.”

“But do you love it?”

“I love working for myself. Not answering to anybody but the bill collector.”

Amusement tickled her mouth. “Well, then... you fly solo, too, don’t you?”

“I guess so. And...”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She sat forward again, urgency in her voice. “Are you embarrassed? Were you going to share something with me? Hey, I’ve opened up to you, mister. And that’s not my style. Don’t clam up on me... Nathan.”

“Okay, Amy. I’ll level with you.”

“Amy?”

“Yeah. Amelia’s a goddamn maiden librarian. And ‘A. E.’ is a stock broker or maybe a lawyer. Amy’s a girl. A pretty girl.”

Her eyes and lips softened. “Amy... Nobody’s ever called me that.”

“It’s all I’m ever going to call you, from here on out.”

“I guess nobody ever called me that because it’s my mother’s name... But that’s okay. I like my mother, except for having to support her and the rest of my family.”

“One of the prices of fame.”

“You started to say...”

“Hmmm?”

“You were going to level with me.”

I sighed. “...Yeah, I guess there is something I love about my work. Back in Pa’s bookshop, I used to read Sherlock Holmes stories and dime novels, about Nick Carter the detective...”

“And that’s what you wanted to be. A detective.”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s what you turned out to be, too.”

“Sort of. Mostly what I do isn’t like the stories. It’s routine work, sometimes boring, sometimes shoddy, sometimes shady. Security work. Retail credit checks...”

She nodded. “Divorce cases, I suppose.”

“Yeah. But now and then something comes along, and I get to be a real detective...”

Another gap-toothed grin. “Like the magazines: Real Detective, True Detective...”

“Right. I help somebody. I solve something. A puzzle. A riddle. A crime.”

She was nodding again, eyes narrowed. “And in those instances, you feel like a detective. And you love that.”

“I guess I do. But it’s like what you do, Amy — it’s dangerous work. Sometimes you soar, and sometimes you crash.”

“You’ve done both?”

“Yeah. But the problem with what I do, I’m only flying solo where the business end is concerned... I’m really messing in people’s lives. Sometimes I get hired by the wrong people. Sometimes people I like get hurt.”

“And when that happens, you don’t love what you do.”

“No.” I was staring into my coffee; my face stared back at me from the liquid blackness. “Last year a young woman... young woman died because of me. Because I made a mistake. Because I believed a man’s lies, a man who said he was her father but was really her husband. Because I wasn’t as smart or shrewd as I thought I was.”

Suddenly her hand was on mine. “Oh, dear... You loved her, didn’t you?”

Why the hell had I opened that can of peas?

“We better get back on the road,” I said, drawing my hand away, slipping out of the booth, digging a nickel from my topcoat pocket and tossing the tip on the table-top. “We can blab just as easy in the car, you know.”

“All right. My turn to drive.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re the captain.”

She looped her arm in mine as we walked out. “You’re not such a bad co-pilot to have along for the ride, Nathan.”

We talked more that night, and many nights after that; we became friends and there were times, when I walked her to her hotel room, where I felt perhaps our friendship might be more, moments when I almost had the nerve to kiss her.

But, of course, that would have been wrong.

After all, I was working for her husband.

Chapter 4

Despite a blunt nose and wooden construction, the Vega was twenty-seven feet of streamlined design; with its fresh red paint job, the monoplane looked as if it were fashioned of metal. Though Amy indicated she was something like the fifth owner of the single-engine aircraft, the Vega awaiting us on a runway of Lambert-St. Louis Municipal Airport might have been brand spanking new; even its propeller had been polished to a silverlike sheen.

This reflected work that G. P. had commissioned. In one of the hangars of the sweeping modern airport with its radio-controlled towers, the Lockheed craft had been reupholstered and repainted, and refitted with extra fuel tanks.

“I didn’t exactly lie to you,” she had said the night before as we paused at the door of her room in the Coronado Hotel in downtown St. Louis.

Looking attractive if every one of her thirty-seven years, she wore a pale blue crepe gown of her own design; she was obviously weary after another long day on the personal appearance trail, having just spoken in a hotel dining room for the Daughters of the American Revolution (introduced as “a ray of hope in these bleak times”), where the only males in the room were the waiters and me.

“Sure you lied to me,” I said, leaning a hand against the wall, pinning her there, her back to her doorway. “You said no flying.”

“No I didn’t.” Amusement tickled her full, sensuous mouth; she had her hands tucked behind her back. “I said we wouldn’t be traveling by train.”

I waggled a finger in her face. “You said we wouldn’t be flying from town to town on this little lecture tour.”

Her chin lifted and she aimed her cool gaze down at me. “And we didn’t. The lecture tour is over, and now we’re flying to California... What did Slim do to you, up in the air, to spook you so?”

“He had the stick jimmied somehow so that his pal Breckinridge would lose control of the plane. And I just about lost control of my bodily functions.”

Her laugh was humorless and not unsympathetic. “My goodness but that Lindbergh has the sickest sense of humor I’ve ever met in a man... I once saw him pour a pitcher of ice water down a child’s pajamas.”

She was right about Slim, but I sensed a resentment for, and even jealousy of, America’s most famous flier, from his nearest rival — who happened to be saddled with the Lady Lindy moniker.

“It’s early,” she said. I could tell by her eyes that she had another of the sinus headaches that plagued her. “Want to come in for a moment?”

“You need another neck rub?”

Half a smile settled in the corner of a cheek. “Am I that transparent?”

“Not to most people.”

She had a suite, with a sitting area — this was an extravagance G. P. put up with so that she could receive the press on her own terms. Soon I was sitting on the couch and she was sitting on the floor like an Indian, her back to me, tucked between my fanned-out legs as I massaged her neck. Room service was on its way with some cocoa for her and a bottle of Coke for me.

We were great pals now, Amy and me, having shared the special intimacy of late-night gabfests as we rolled over the roadways of America in the middle of the night and the wee hours of the predawn morning; that big lumbering Franklin became a confessional, as the blanket of stars in clear Midwestern skies lulled us both into sharing confidences.

I knew the bitterness she felt for her family — her mother and sister, who she had to support, her late father, who had boozed their family into periodic poverty. I knew she had still not overcome the guilt for her “manufactured fame,” since on her first and most famous flight, the Atlantic crossing on the Friendship, she had really just been a “sack of potatoes” passenger.

And she knew that my idealistic leftist father had killed himself in disappointment over his only son joining the corrupt Chicago police department; shot himself in the head with my gun, a gun I still carried with me, the closest thing to a conscience I had.

These were not things we shared with just anyone.

Even so, I was keeping two secrets from her. One, of course, was that her husband had hired me to spy on her, to see if she were a faithful wife. The other was that I could feel my friendship for her deepening into something else. Of course, if I did something about the latter, it might clear up the former.

“That’s so good... so good, Nate...”

I could feel her neck and shoulder muscles loosening. Then I began working my fingers into the tousled curls, digging at her scalp. Her moans of painful pleasure sounded almost orgasmic. Or maybe I just wanted them to.

“Why do you work so hard?” I asked, rubbing her scalp.

“For the money.”

“Your expensive obsession.”

“Yes, but also to buy books and clothes, and send my dear mother her monthly allowance to blow on my sister and her no-good husband. And I like to live comfortably... in a nice house with my bills paid and money in the bank.”

“You’re mostly living in hotels.”

“Oh yes... more of that... more of that...”

She had given herself completely over to my touch. I could smell her perfume — Evening in Paris — and her hair whispered the scent of all-American Breck. A raging hard-on was inches from the back of her head and she didn’t even know it. A thief with a pistol in his pocket had entered her shop and she didn’t even realize her valuables were at risk.

I said, “I always figured your husband was rich.”

“That’s what I thought... But a lot of people aren’t as rich as they used to be.”

She meant the Crash.

“Anyway,” she continued, moving her head in a slow circle as I continued loosening up her muscles, “he still has access to money. He’s got the kind of tongue that attracts it.”

“Don’t you get tired of it?” I asked, referring to her grueling schedule, but she thought I meant something else.

“Of course I do,” she said. “Marriage doesn’t come naturally to me... but this is more a... business partnership. And I’m grateful for what G. P. has done for me... but, still... the endless schemes, his passion for celebrity, not to mention that ugly temper of his...”

“How ugly does it get?”

She peeked over her shoulder at me, for a moment, as I rubbed. “Does he get physical, do you mean? He knows I’d never put up with that. Ooooo, do that... do that... A man raises his hand to me, he’s out of my life.”

“You sound like maybe you’ve had some experience in that department.”

“Not really... Well, didn’t I tell you about my father and the bottle of whiskey?”

We had shared certain childhood secrets on our long rides through the Midwestern nights.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so...”

“He was supposed to not be drinking anymore... supposed to’ve taken ‘the cure.’ I guess I was seven or eight... yes, right there, right there, feel that knot there?... I was probably seven and he had to go on a trip all of a sudden. Sometimes he investigated accidents for the railroad and he’d have to drop everything and just go. So I decided to help him pack and I found a bottle of whiskey in his sock drawer. I was pouring it down the bathroom sink when he noticed me.”

“Oh, brother,” I said. I was working my thumbs at the muscles between her shoulder blades.

“He only struck me a few blows, before my mother intervened,” she said, “and spared me from a real beating... but I swore no man would ever hurt me again. Ouch!”

“Was that too hard?”

“Maybe a little. I think that’s enough, Nate.”

“I’m not tired. I can rub you some more.”

“No.” She wiggle-turned around and now was facing me, still seated Indian-style. She was working her head around on her neck again. “Do any more and it’ll just start to hurt...”

That was when I decided not to try to kiss her. And when my erection wilted.

Room service finally brought our cocoa and Coke, and she sat beside me, but not right beside me, and we talked for maybe another hour.

“I don’t know what I’d’ve done without you on this tour,” she said at one point, her cocoa down to the last sip or two. “It’s getting nasty out there.”

“Yeah, I thought maybe those D.A.R. dames were gonna start busting chairs over each other’s heads, for a while there.”

She laughed; it was almost a giggle. “No, ladies like tonight, that’s one thing, but these public appearances... the shoving, shouting... I mean, my goodness, what kind of way is that to express admiration? They even cut pieces of fabric from the wings of your plane. Someday a souvenir hound will carry off a vital part and there’ll be a crash.”

“You think that’s what this is about?”

“What what’s about?”

We had spoken little about the threatening notes; I had moved from bodyguard to trusted confidant to friend, and it had just never come up, even if my erection had.

“Could one of your admirers be behind those sick notes?”

She made a goofy face and waved that off. “Why would an admirer threaten me?”

“To stand out from the anonymous crowd. To be special in your life.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me. Of course, then, neither does G. P.’s theory.”

“You mean, that it’s a rival aviatrix.”

She nodded. “I’m sure there’s jealousy, but my peers know I’ve been their champion, that nobody’s worked harder for the betterment of female pilots than Amelia Earhart.”

I was aware, from the question and answer portions of her lectures, that as a founding leader of the Ninety Nines she had worked to make that organization of women pilots a central information exchange on job opportunities.

But I also knew that efforts like that could be dismissed as self-aggrandizement and politics.

“People can be pretty damn petty,” I pointed out. “Besides, Amelia-Earhart-who’s-done-so-much-for-the-betterment-of-female-pilots, trust me... anybody who refers to herself in the third person has enemies.”

She pretended to be annoyed. “You think I’m self-important?”

“For a celebrity, not particularly.”

“Is that what I am? A celebrity?”

“It’s what puts the gas in your airplane, Amy.”

Now it was the next morning and the gas was in the plane. The tall, slender woman I’d lusted after the night before was standing next to me on the tarmac, near her ship, buckling a tan helmet under her chin, flashing me that gap-toothed grin she hid from photographers. The weariness was gone, her eyes a piercing blue-gray, her chin firm, and she made a striking Lindberghesque figure in her brown broadcloth chinos and boots befitting a farmer, and of course a properly wrinkled, oil-stained leather flying jacket with its collar winging up, zippered a casual two or three inches, blousing open to reveal a brown-and-tan plaid shirt with a brown bandanna knotted gaily about her graceful throat.

“So is the Vega a good plane?” I asked, working my voice up above the airfield noise. It was windy enough to make my suit and tie flap; my fedora was flattened to my skull with a hand trying to prevent the hat’s takeoff, and with my small suitcase in the other hand, I looked like a door-to-door salesman who wandered off his route.

“It’s fast,” she said.

“That wasn’t the question.”

“Well, the heat buildup in that cramped cockpit can get pretty disagreeable; that’s why I don’t need a flying suit.”

“The question was, is it a good plane?”

“Yes and no.”

“Tell me the ‘no’ part.”

“It can be a little tricky near the ground. That single-chassis construction, with the no-longer-on fuselage, won’t take any plane of the year awards.”

“Why’s that?”

“Folds up like an accordion in a crackup.”

“Jesus! What do you do about that?”

She shrugged. “Don’t crack up.”

And she climbed the small ladder leaning against the plane by the wing, opened the isinglass cockpit cover, and crawled in.

With that heartening observation to cheer me, I boarded through the cabin door toward the middle of the aircraft, crawling over massive fuel tanks to take the single remaining seat, where I buckled myself in. Glancing around at the boxlike tanks that provided less than reassuring company, it occurred to me I was seated in the middle of a flying bomb.

Though she was somewhat above me, I could still get a good view of Amy in the claustrophobic cockpit, her legs resting practically up under the engine mount. No wonder it got hot up there. She started the engine, and while it idled she watched the response of the panel of round dials, checking oil and fuel temperature and engine revolutions per minute.

Curling her long, feminine, artist’s fingers about the stick, she taxied down the runway, turning into the wind, holding the brakes steady and hard, yanking the stick all the way back into her midsection. Revving the motor, she reached up and turned a switch; the sound of the engine’s thrum shifted, and apparently this was what she wanted to hear, because her smile was reflected in the windshield.

With her left hand, she advanced the throttle, slowly, easily, and the churning of the propeller grew to a hard fast roar, as the Vega built speed, racing down the runway. She eased the throttle ahead, to its limit, keeping the stick forward, bringing up the tail; the plane seemed to want to get into the air but she wasn’t quite ready to let it.

Then she yanked back on the stick and the plane rumbled off the runway, riding the wind, climbing to ten thousand feet and lending me a fine view out my little window of the rolling countryside, shades of brown alternating with emerging green and occasional patches of snow, threaded by sun-glistening rivers and tributaries, interrupted by the occasional town of toy houses.

We didn’t talk much, not with her crammed into that cockpit and the Vega’s deafening prop and engine noise. She was allowing two days to make the nearly two-thousand-mile trek, and had assured me we’d land well before sundown, in Albuquerque.

The trip was mostly uneventful. I ate a box lunch and read the latest issue of Ring magazine and even dozed off, periodically, though late in the day, flying over New Mexico, I got jostled awake by bucking bronco turbulence.

I unbuckled and, moving with the grace of a drunk on an ice floe, made my way to the opening between cabin and cockpit and stuck my head up and in; even right next to her, I had to yell: “Anything I should know back here? Like where my parachute is?”

She hollered back: “We’ve run into some rapidly shifting winds! Don’t panic!”

She was already making her descent toward the runways and hangars of Albuquerque Municipal Airport, where a wind sock on a pole was twirling like a New Year’s Eve noisemaker.

“You were kidding with that ‘folds up like an accordion’ remark, right?”

She was sitting forward and her hands clutched the yoke. “More like a Chinese lantern... Get back and buckle yourself in, Nate! I never lost a passenger yet.”

I did a clumsy native dance back to my seat, buckled in, and then she shouted at me: “I’m going to have to take the shortest runway! That’s going to mean an abrupt approach...”

The Vega was riding the wind like a motorboat on choppy waters.

“What do you mean,” I asked, “‘abrupt’?”

And she answered me by dropping the plane into a steep forward sideslip. My as-yet-undigested box lunch (tuna salad sandwich, apple, and chocolate chip cookie) damn near made a crash landing. Then the ship began a series of wide fishtails, like the Vega was waving hello to New fucking Mexico.

“Shit!” I yelled. “Are we out of control?”

“That’s on purpose! It cuts speed!”

Maybe the plane’s, but not my pulse rate.

The runway was looming before us, and yet she was flying the plane virtually onto the ground, the throttle opened up. We seemed to be running out of runway; she sideslipped so as not to overshoot it and as I waited for the sound and feel of the Vega’s fixed wheels touching tarmac, and as Amy pulled the stick back to set down, a gust of wind suddenly ballooned the Vega back up twenty feet... and then just as suddenly, that gust of wind died.

And left us there.

Before we could drop like a stone, Amy slammed the throttle forward, the wind came back and the Vega set down without a bounce, though we were still at full throttle; fortunately, the runway was built on something of an incline, dissipating the plane’s forward speed. We careened around the arc of the taxi circle at the runway’s end and finally, blessedly, drew to a halt.

In the dining room of the Hilton Hotel on Copper Avenue that evening, I asked her, “What the hell happened today?”

“When?” she asked, nonchalantly cutting a bite of a big medium rare filet of beef.

“When we almost landed,” I reminded her, “then had to land again?”

She shrugged. She was still in her plaid shirt and knotted scarf — we hadn’t taken time to wash up for dinner, Amy being too hungry to bother. “Technically,” she said, “we were in a stall.”

“Jeez, I hate it when a plane crashes on a technicality.”

She smirked, waved that off, chewed, swallowed, not wanting to be impolite and talk with her mouth full.

“We didn’t crash, silly. We were just caught in a momentary vacuum... It’s as if all the air pressure got suddenly sucked from the controls.”

“So you put the plane on the ground at full throttle.”

“That seemed to me to be the best option.”

“Isn’t that a pretty good trick?”

“It is if you can get away with it.”

I raised my rum and Coke to her; it was all I was having. “Here’s to one hell of a pilot.”

She liked that. “Thanks, Nathan.” She raised her water glass to me. “Here’s to one hell of a guy.”

That was one of the few times I ever heard her swear, and I took it as a high compliment.

At the door to her suite, I asked, “Need a neck rub tonight? Or maybe just some company?”

Halfway inside already, she smiled almost sadly and said, “No, I don’t think so, thanks. I have to call G. P., write a few letters, then I want to get to bed nice and early.”

I’d been hoping to get to bed nice and early myself; only, not alone.

Maybe she could read my mind, because just before she shut herself in her room, she touched my face, tenderly, with the tips of those long tapering fingers. “Cheerio, Nathan... We have another long day in the air, tomorrow... and I want to be alert, in case it’s eventful.”

But it wasn’t, really. Smooth flying over the brown and tan and salmon vistas of New Mexico, Arizona, and California, canyons and mesas and only the occasional stray city-boy thought that surviving a crash in this country would mean keeping company with sand and lizards and cactuses. She would dip down low enough to provide a good look at this delightful desolation, the Vega’s cool shadow racing across the godforsaken landscape, where occasional dabs of green were like parsley sprigs on a big empty plate.

The late-afternoon landing at Burbank was blessedly free of unexpected crosswinds and technical stalls. We were close to the ocean now and desert vistas had given way to a breathtaking view of green hills bordering the fertile San Fernando Valley, mountain ranges beyond, some snow-capped, with Burbank and its United Airport nestled in the flatlands between.

The runways below were the five spreading arms of a flattened octopus whose head was a sprawling terminal identified by white letters painted on the tarmac before it: UNITED AIRPORT. On the runways at left and right of the modernistic, T-shaped terminal, giving it plenty of breathing room, were buildings that from my cabin window looked like flat square matchboxes but were actually massive corrugated-metal hangars, their roofs labeled UNITED and BURBANK respectively. Amy set gently down, with none of the melodrama of yesterday’s landing, and we taxied, pulling up before a huge hangar door, over which white painted letters added up to UNITED AIR SERVICES LIMITED.

We were greeted by a trio of the airfield equivalent of grease monkeys, one of whom provided the ladder for Amy to climb down from the cockpit; she greeted them by name (“Howdy, Jim!” “Hey, Ernie!” “Tod, what do you know?”). A fourth man, who brought up the rear in the confident manner of a commanding officer who allows his troops to lead the charge, wore a gray suit and a lighter gray shirt with a gray and black tie and looked as dapper as a movie star, or anyway a movie executive. Small but with a solid, square-shouldered build, he was almost handsome, with bright dark brown eyes, a jutting nose, and a jaunty jutting chin; his slicked-back black hair and slip of a mustache were apparently on loan from Clark Gable.

He and Amy embraced and patted each other on the back like long-lost pals. Both had smiles that threatened to split their faces.

“How’s my girl?” he asked her. “Ready for another foolhardy adventure?”

“Always,” she said, unbuckling her helmet, yanking it off, shaking her mop of curls. “Paul, this is my friend Nathan Heller; he’s been my one-man security team on this lecture tour. Nathan, this is Paul Mantz — he’s the mastermind behind my record flights.”

I had already guessed as much, but extended my hand and said, “Mr. Mantz, I’ve heard big things about you.”

Amy glanced at me, wondering what those big things might be, and I wondered if I’d misspoken: she had never mentioned Mantz to me — everything I knew about the man had come from G. P.

“Call me Paul,” he said, as we shook hands, his grip showing off his strength a little, “and I’ll take the liberty of calling you Nate... and as for what you’ve heard about me, it’s just possible some of it’s true.”

“Well, for one thing, I hear you’re the best stunt pilot in Hollywood.”

He twitched a smile and I sensed some annoyance. “Actually,” he said, “I’m not really a stunt pilot... what I am is a precision pilot. I leave stunts to the fools, kids, and amateurs. By which I mean, the soon to be deceased.”

Amy allowed the three mechanics to take over the Vega, and, with her in the middle, she and Mantz and I walked slowly toward the looming hangar. He had his arm around her, casually; it was hard to tell whether it represented a brotherly familiarity or something else.

“What have you got in mind for me and my baby?” she asked him.

“Angel, the boys in St. Louis have already increased your fuel capacity. I’ve got new magnetic and aperiodic compasses to install and check, we’re upgrading the directional bank and turn indicators, adding improved fuel and temperature gauges, plus a tachometer and a supercharger pressure gauge.”

“Is that all?” she asked mockingly.

“No. I’m gonna have Ernie overhaul the Pratt and Whitney again.”

She frowned at him. “You really think that’s necessary? That engine purred like a kitten, all the way from St. Louis to here. I ran into a wind shear landing at Albuquerque and it performed like a well-tuned race car. You can ask Nathan.”

My opinion, which was that the landing in question had scared holy hell out of me, may not have shed any light on this discussion of technical matters.

But we never got to my opinion; Mantz was already shaking his head, no. “Better safe than sorry. And as for you, young lady, I’ve got a new toy for you to play with...”

We were inside the cavernous hangar now, the golden dying sun filtering in lazily through the many-paned high windows. Half a dozen monoplanes were parked within the tool-littered hangar, including a Vega like Amy’s, only this one was painted red and white with the words HONEYMOON EXPRESS painted on the side, in a heart pierced by cupid arrows. Amy had told me earlier that her Vega had no nickname (unlike her famous Friendship and Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis) because G. P. figured giving the plane a name and a personality might detract from Amelia Earhart.

“Here’s your new best friend, angel,” Mantz said, stepping away from her, gesturing like a ringmaster to his center ring attraction. “The Link blind-flying trainer.”

And here was another little red plane, only this really was a little red plane, not much bigger than the ones that kids went ’round and ’round in at Riverview Park. With its tiny white wings and a precious white-scalloped tail and the words UNITED AIR SERVICES stenciled on its side, the squat fat-nosed trainer had a cockpit lid with no windows, and was elevated from the ground like a carousel horse.

“You’re joking,” she said.

But he wasn’t.

“Angel, as long as you insist on letting that goddamn Gippy con you into these long-distance flights...”

“G. P. doesn’t con me into anything,” she said firmly.

“Well, then, if you insist on trying to prove to yourself that you really are that Amelia Earhart person they write about in the papers, you had better learn some goddamn discipline.”

“I’ve had plenty of blind-flying training,” she said dismissively. “Anyway, I don’t like that term.”

“Call it instrument flying, then. Or dead reckoning — and dead is what you’ll be, angel, if you don’t face the reality of how often your life depends on an ability to fly precise compass headings through the shittiest weather known to God or man.”

“Let’s call it zero-visibility flying.”

“Fine. Call it Mickey and Minnie Mouse in the Tunnel of Love, as far as I give a damn. But over the next several weeks, angel, your pretty behind resides in that red tin can.”

And he gave her pretty behind a couple playful pats, and she laughed and said, “All right, all right, you evil man,” and somebody cleared their throat.

Actually, somebody cleared her throat, because it was a woman doing it, a redhead with green eyes and a pert nose and full red-rouged lips and a complexion like fresh cream and a chassis better constructed than any plane on that airfield.

“Isn’t this a cozy sight?” she said, her voice high-pitched, with a hint of Southwestern twang.

It was the least attractive thing about her. She was poised just inside the hangar, and for a fairly small woman, she threw a long shadow. Her frock was a sheer white polka-dot organdy with a draped cowl neck and bare arms, which were folded under the rounded wonders that were her breasts; she had her weight on one leg, though both legs — judging by the sleekly nyloned and well-turned ankles — were worth considering.

“Myrtle,” Amy said, and her voice seemed warm, as did her smile, “how delightful to see you!”

And Amy walked toward the woman with her arms outstretched.

Mantz whispered to me, “That’s the little woman.”

“You’re a lucky man.”

“There’s all kinds of luck.”

Amelia Earhart had now reached Myrtle Mantz, whose icy demeanor seemed suddenly to melt and the redhead accepted, and reciprocated, the hug Amy offered.

I was still trying to figure out what to make of that when they walked toward us, hand in hand, Myrtle’s high heels clicking on the cement floor, echoing in the high-ceilinged space like gunfire. Myrtle was smiling, now; a dazzler it was, too, with no gaps.

“Have you seen the torture chamber your husband’s arranged for me?” Amy asked Myrtle, and the two girls — chums now — peeked in and around the little red plane. Myrtle stood on tippy-toe and, under the organdy dress, the globes of her perfect behind were like firm ripe melons; as much as I admired Amy’s tomboyish pulchritude, Mantz was definitely a guy who didn’t need to leave the house to find a pretty behind to pat.

Shortly thereafter we recommenced to the Union Terminal’s Sky Room, a quaint mix of linen tablecloths, airplane memorabilia and cumbersome dude ranch furnishings. Birds tweeting in cages spoke more of captivity than flight, while a wall of windows looked out over endless runways where the bigger birds of United, Western, and TWA came and went; as dusk turned to evening, floodlights turned the tarmac to instant noon.

Mantz sat beside his wife but across from Amy; I was next to Amy and across from Mrs. Mantz, who was so gorgeous I instantly composed a private, filthy limerick about her, utilizing the word “pants” as the punchline.

A cocky, swaggering little guy, Mantz did most of the talking at dinner, frequently laughing at his own jokes. But mostly he was coaching his star pupil.

“You know you have a tendency to push your engine to the limit,” he said to Amy. We had finished our dinner — everyone had fresh seafood of one kind or another, delicious — and he was working on his third frost-rimmed martini.

“Of course,” Amy said, over her inevitable cup of cocoa. “The extra power makes up for the headwinds.”

“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.

Chapter 5

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.”

“Why do I think you think Putnam sent those notes to himself?”

A sneer of a smile formed. “I don’t just think it — I know it. He brags about it, to his family and close friends. He uses it as an example of how clever he is.”

“You can go to the pokey for fraud like that.”

He blew a perfect smoke ring and watched it dissipate as he spoke. “Yeah, but to Gippy, it’s just another publicity stunt. And he prides himself on stirrin’ up the press.”

“And you think he’s doing the same thing now.”

“He’s capable of it. Sitting by himself some night, cutting out those words from papers and magazines, pasting them up, feeling like he’s one smart son of a bitch.”

“Then why would he hire me to protect Amelia?”

Of course, I knew the answer to that: because I was really hired for a completely other purpose.

“Probably for authenticity,” he said with a shrug. “To show his concern for his wife, when he leaks this to the papers.”

“Does Putnam know how low your opinion of him is?”

“He suspects.”

“Why do you do business with him, then?”

“He’s got a great wife. She’s only a so-so flier, but she’s got a great heart and more courage than a Marine battalion.”

“A so-so flier?”

He grunted a laugh. “You know how many crashes that sweet girl has had? At least a dozen.”

“Nobody told me that before I went flying with her.”

A Cheshire Cat grin formed under the pencil mustache. “To a pilot, a crash don’t count unless it kills you. If you can walk away from it, it’s just another successful landing... even if your plane blows up a few seconds later.”

“You’re worried about her, aren’t you?”

The grin vanished; his forehead tightened. “You’re goddamn right, I am. Each one of these feats of hers has to be bigger than the last. She’s running out of impressive baloney to pull off. She’s no spring chicken, either.”

I sat forward. “Why do you help her, then? I can see she respects you. Why don’t you just tell her to retire? Famous as she is, she ought to be able to rest on her laurels, and let G. P. market her fame for the rest of her life.”

He’d started shaking his head no about halfway through that. “She wouldn’t listen to me, Nate. As disenchanted as she may be with Gippy, she knows the bastard invented her.”

“Svengali?”

“Yeah, or Doc Frankenstein. Besides, Gippy’s a tightwad, a stingy fucking bastard... but he pays top dollar when he really wants something.”

“So he’s buying you, too.”

“Yeah. I’m not proud of it, but I’m a pilot in Hollywood...” He gestured to the gallery of famous faces. “...and Hollywood is a town of glamorous whores... Like it or not, I fit in.”

I knew what he meant. He was at home in Hollywood like I was at home in the bushes of his Toluca Lake bungalow with my Speed Graphic. I didn’t like what I was doing, particularly, but it was a living, and I was good at it.

It was ten o’clock at night, after a day that had included another half-day of training for Amy in the little red Link and an afternoon here at Mantz’s house, where I had not been in the bushes, but relaxing in the living room. Shoes off, spread out on a couch, I read movie magazines and took catnaps while Mantz, Amy, and retired Navy Commander Clarence Williams, a dark-haired sturdy guy with a beaky nose and a dimpled chin, were gathered around the kitchen table going over charts and maps. Williams was no-nonsense in a military manner that got Amy’s attention.

On the afternoon trip to Mantz’s place, Amy had done the driving, tooling the sleek Terraplane past the farms, ranches and lush orange groves beyond the airport to the shaded streets of residential Burbank, where the foot soldiers of the dream factory lived in modest cracker-boxes.

Toluca Lake was another story, from the wide flawless sidewalks to the cozy interesting homes (“Lots of art directors live in Toluca,” Amy explained) and an eclectic array of shade trees, elms, oaks, redwoods, and, for the requisite Hollywood tropical touch, palms. She pointed out several movie star homes (“Bette Davis lives there... That’s where Ruby Keeler lives”) and indicated a golf course beyond Valley Spring Lane.

“Do you play golf?” she asked.

“Only under duress.”

“I rather enjoy it. Would you consider joining me some afternoon, if I can get out of Paul’s clutches?”

“Sure. Is that a public course or a country club?”

“It’s a country club.”

“Might be a problem.”

“Why, Nate?”

“Most country clubs are restricted.”

“Oh... I’m sorry... I forgot...”

“I’m Jewish? That’s okay. I forgot it myself, a long time ago. Trouble is, other people keep bringing it up.”

Amy, Mantz, and Commander Williams had slaved over the charts till around six, at which time we all headed over to a steakhouse in Glendale where we hooked up with Toni Lake. Dinner was nice, though I was glad Amy was paying — it was a pricey seventy-five cents a steak, à la carte — and I dropped Amy back at Mantz’s bungalow, ostensibly heading back to Lowman’s Motor Court.

Only I didn’t head back. The Terraplane was parked over on Toluca Estates Drive, in front of Mary Astor’s house (always had kind of a yen for her and wouldn’t have minded a glimpse, but no luck). The night was cool and dry, a breeze riffling leaves, including those of the bushes I was snuggled behind; I was in a sportshirt and slacks and didn’t look much like a private detective, more like a peeping tom... if there’s a difference.

The blinds on the window were shut, but I could see around the edge of them, and — thanks to light from a lamp out of my range of vision, presumably on the bedstand — catch a view of the doorway and a dresser next to it; also the edge of the bottom of the bed. This angle would not give me the prize-winning in flagrante delicto shot I craved, but if this bedroom were the site of a man and woman making whoopee, sooner or later the two of them might appear together within my view, enjoying a before or after hug and kiss, in dishabille.

I’d done this kind of work plenty of times before, but tonight I had a sick feeling and a racing heartbeat. To tell you the truth, as close as I’d gotten to Amy, as much as I liked her, I might have ditched G. P.’s snoop job, if I wasn’t so goddamn jealous of Mantz. What did he have that I didn’t have? If she’d had the good sense and better taste to have an affair with me instead of Mantz, I would have never considered ratting on her to her husband.

I’m just that kind of guy.

Around ten-fifteen Mantz came in, alone. He was already in striped maroon pajama bottoms, and his chest was bare and hairy; he had a well-muscled upper torso, and a magazine was rolled up in one fist, as if he were going to swat a bug with it. For a moment I thought he might be coming after me, but he disappeared toward the bed and I could hear the box springs squeak as he climbed in, and even from my limited perspective could see that he’d gotten under the covers.

Presumably, he was reading the magazine.

No sign of Amelia. Was he waiting for her? Was she already in bed and I couldn’t see her from this angle?

It didn’t take long to figure out the latter wasn’t the case. Though the window was closed, the night being cool enough to warrant that, I’d been able to hear the box springs clearly when he climbed into bed. Presumably, the sound of conversation, and certainly the joyful noise of lovemaking on that mattress, would have found their way to my ears.

Half an hour later, he was still alone, and apparently still reading. No Amy.

Knowing where the guest room was, I worked my way around to the other side of the house and a new set of bushes. The window here was closed, as well, the blinds down, and furthermore the lights were out. But bed-springs were squeaking, so somebody was in there all right, possibly tossing and turning...

Only from the sound of it, that somebody was having one hell of a restless night. Either that, or getting their ashes well and truly hauled.

Puzzled, I returned to my previous post, wondering if Mantz had managed to perfectly time it and leave his bedroom and climb in with Amy just as I was circling the house to switch windows.

But Mantz was apparently still in bed, the bedstand lamp aglow; I would have sworn, listening closely, I could hear the pages of his magazine being slowly turned.

And so back to the guest bedroom window I went, where a bedspring symphony was still in full sway. Two voices, emitting muffled, restrained but very audible grunts, groans, sighs, and cries, accompanied the squeaking springs. Snugged between bushes and the stucco exterior of the bungalow, poised at the edge of the blinds, my Speed Graphic and I waited for things to settle down, hoping a light would eventually go on and satisfy my professional, not to mention prurient, curiosity.

Finally a light clicked on.

Amy had reached for the bedstand lamp and filled the guest room (the yellow plaster walls of which were decorated with framed Mantz aviation movie stills) with a golden luster appropriate to the afterglow of a satisfying amorous event. She wore the maroon pajama top that Mantz had apparently loaned her, but the person next to her in bed wasn’t Mantz, rather a nude woman, or at least nude to the waist because that was where the sheet fell. The woman was voluptuous bordering on plump, her torso pale next to her dark-tanned leathery face and short black boyish hair.

Nonetheless, there were less pleasant things in the world to view, particularly for a lech like me, than a nude-to-the-waist Toni Lake.

I backed away from the window, and the bushes behind me rustled like the wings of startled birds. Afraid I might have given myself away, I ducked down, hiding under and within the shrubbery like the weasel I was.

Shaking, sweating despite the night’s coolness, I didn’t know what the hell to think. I felt ashamed that I’d intruded upon such a scene, even though my intrusion wasn’t known to my victims; and I felt sickened, not by Amy’s sexual perversion — I was never one to sit in judgment of other people’s sex lives, being primarily interested in my own — but at the thought that this special woman, toward whom I’d been developing ever-deepening feelings, some carnal, some not, was in a sense a stranger to me. She was not who I thought she was, and I would never be close to her.

It just doesn’t pay for a guy to fall in love with a lesbian.

Crouched there in the bushes, thoughts racing, I knew one thing for certain, and one thing only: I would take no candid photos of Amy and her friend Miss Lake. If that was what Putnam had been after, he’d have to find another sleazy private eye to do it. This sleazy private eye had had his fill.

So I left my nest under the bushes, and was skulking away from the house toward the sidewalk, when a car came moving down Valley Spring Lane, very slowly, and with its lights off. Finding this curious, I slipped behind a palm tree and watched as the car, a snazzy red and white Dusenberg convertible, drew up in front.

I recognized the car, because I’d seen it out at United Airport the day we’d arrived: it belonged to Myrtle Mantz, who had left on the train yesterday afternoon, to visit her mother in Dallas.

Only she hadn’t.

Myrtle Mantz was in Toluca Lake, driving the Dusenberg.

With the lights out.

She parked, got quietly out of the car. She was wearing a lime blouse and hunter-green slacks, her long red hair pinned up, and looked very pale in the ivory moonlight; she seemed to have no makeup on and her pretty face was immobile, her eyes glazed. She stood on the sidewalk and gazed at her house as if she were a ghost that had returned to haunt it.

She had something in her right hand that I couldn’t make out too well, but it might have been a gun...

I scurried to the back door, ready to shoulder it open but found it blessedly unlocked; I moved through the dark kitchen where the Frigidaire was purring, left my Speed Graphic on the table where the charts and maps were still spread out, and slipped through the hall and into the guest bedroom where the bedstand lamp was still on and Amy was in bed, pillows propped behind her, while Toni Lake was off to one side of the room, where she’d been getting dressed, in fact was pretty well back into her white blouse and brown jodhpurs.

Lake scowled at me, not appreciating this invasion one little bit, and Amy’s eyes were wide with surprise and the beginnings of indignation, but I didn’t let her say a word.

Instead I whispered, “Myrtle’s coming up the front walk with a gun. Go out the back way. Now!”

Amy scurried out of bed, grabbing her bathrobe, and Lake followed us out into the hall and through the kitchen, Amy getting into and belting the bathrobe as she went; I could hear the front door opening — Myrtle had opened it quietly, but I was listening for it, whereas Mantz wouldn’t be.

“You got a car?” I whispered to Lake.

She nodded.

“Get yourselves the hell away from here,” I said to them both, opening the back door for them. “Sleep somewhere else tonight.”

Amy frowned at me, as if she didn’t know whether she loved me or hated me, although now that I knew what I did about her, what was the difference?

Then they were gone, and I went over and stood hugging the Frigidaire and peeked past it down the hall, where Myrtle was going into Mantz’s bedroom.

And I got a good look this time: it was a gun all right, a .32 revolver, a Smith and Wesson maybe, just a little bitty thing that could fit in a handbag, but you still wouldn’t want to get shot in the eye with it.

I didn’t have a gun with me. My nine-millimeter was in my suitcase at Lowman’s Motor Court; I was not licensed to carry a firearm in the state of California and, besides, this was the kind of assignment where you packed a camera, not a pistol.

So armed only with my wits — no remarks, please — I sneaked down the uncarpeted hallway, which was empty now; she was in Mantz’s bedroom — actually, it was her bedroom, too, wasn’t it?

And from the hallway as I crept along, I could hear her saying, with a Southwestern lilt, “Where’s your angel, Paul?”

“What are you doing here?” His response registered surprise, but not fear; maybe she had the gun behind her back. “She’s in the guest bedroom, where do you think she is?”

Myrtle’s voice was musical as she said, “Look what I’ve got, Paul...”

I figured that gun wasn’t behind her back, now.

“Put that down, Red. You don’t...”

That was when I came in and grabbed her from behind, bear-hugging her, pinning her arms, flattening her fine breasts with my forearms, but she managed to fire the gun anyway, shattering the bedstand lamp even as Mantz dove out of bed, just under the bullet’s trajectory. The room was dark now, though some light filtered in from the hallway.

“Let me go!” she squealed, not knowing who had hold of her.

And Mantz came scrambling forward, his face tight with rage, and he belted her in the jaw with a fist, and she went limp, the gun clattering to the hardwood floor, where we were lucky it didn’t go off again.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I spat at him, easing the unconscious woman over to the bed, laying her out gently, there. I hadn’t been holding her like that so he could fucking slug her! Blood trailed from the corner of her mouth; even in this state, she was a lovely thing. Too bad when she got jealous she went around with a gun.

“She tried to shoot me!” Mantz said, understandably worked up, hopping around like a mustached monkey in his bare chest. “She’s lucky I didn’t knock her block off!... Where’s Amelia?”

“I got her and her pal out the back door,” I said, switching on the overhead light. “Your wife never saw them, or me. So we were never here, remember? In about two seconds, I’m slipping out, myself.”

“What should I do?”

“Call the cops.”

He frowned, calming down a little. “Do I have to?”

“Your neighbors probably already have. If you don’t, it’ll look bad.”

He smirked. “Doesn’t it look bad enough?”

“I don’t think so. Take it from somebody who’s done his share of divorce work, this marriage isn’t working out... and in the settlement, Myrtle coming after you with a .32 is going to speak better for you than her.”

He was mulling that over, looking at his out-cold, incredibly beautiful, crazy-as-a-bedbug wife, when I got the hell out, before it occurred to him to ask me what I was doing there.

Chapter 6

Stained ivory in the moonlight, the foothills of the green Verdugo Mountains provided a majestic backdrop for the humble skyline of the pink adobe cabins of Lowman’s Motor Court. Exotic as this vista may have been, I had begun to long for the simple pleasures of Chicago, Illinois. In the red blush of the motel’s nearby hovering neon sign, I pulled the Terraplane into the stall at Cabin 2, put the buggy’s top up in case the forecast of rain was correct, and trudged inside, where I began to pack.

I had decided to quit. The women on this job were either sleeping with each other or waving guns around, and that was enough to send this Midwestern lad back to where girls were girls and boys were boys and guns were carried chiefly by cops and crooks, if you’ll pardon the redundancy. Furthermore, I wanted work that did not involve a client who very likely sent his wife death threats before hiring me to protect her, and/or work which also did not require me to fly with a pilot who considered crashing her plane an interesting variation on landing.

True, this job paid well, but I had been on it long enough to rack myself up a pretty little pile of money, which I was now prepared to gather up and take home with me. On the train. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the small square room, I used the nightstand phone to make a reservation; I could get a Union Pacific sleeper at two-forty-five tomorrow afternoon.

With the exception of my clothes for tomorrow, toothbrush and powder, hairbrush and oil, and the white boxers I had on for sleeping, my bag was packed. It lay open like a clamshell on the luggage stand at the foot of the bed, the Speed Graphic nestled among the clothing like a pearl; my nine-millimeter was similarly buried.

Bare-chested like Gable in It Happened One Night (and Mantz in what happened tonight), I lay atop the nubby pink bedspread, reading Film Fun magazine, which was mostly jokes and pictures of pretty girls; I never claimed to go in for Proust. The cabin was sparsely furnished in ranch style, its pink plaster walls broken up occasionally by a framed print of a cactus or burro; but one amenity, at least, was a table model radio by the bed. I had it going fairly loud, in hopes of drowning out my thoughts, the Dorsey Brothers playing their theme song, “Lost in a Fog,” live from the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Room, when the knock came at the door.

I didn’t put my robe on, because I didn’t have one. And I didn’t bother putting my pants on, either, because I figured this was probably the manager asking me to turn my radio down. The windows were open, after all, wind whispering in, fluffing the green-and-yellow cotton curtains with their geometric Indian-blanket design. Clicking the radio off as I climbed from the bed, I figured my problem was already solved.

As Proust would say, little did I know.

“What?” I asked my closed door.

“It’s me.”

Amy’s voice.

I cracked the door and looked into her lovely, weathered, somewhat puffy face, expressionless as a bisque baby’s, though the blue-gray eyes were filigreed red. Her mop of dark blonde curls looked even more tousled than usual.

I asked her, “What are you doing here?”

“Let me in,” she said.

“I’m not dressed.”

“Neither am I.”

I opened the door a little wider and saw that she wasn’t, at least not properly: she still wore Mantz’s maroon-striped pajama top and a pair of dungarees that were parachute-baggy but short, her ankles showing.

And her feet were in moccasin-type slippers.

Bewildered, I let her in, shut the door, asked, “How’d you get here?”

“Toni loaned me her car. What happened at Paul’s? Is he all right?”

I climbed into my pants as I told her.

“I hope he called the cops, like I advised him,” I concluded. “If so, I’m sure he’ll leave you out of it.”

“I can’t believe she actually shot at him.” Amy was sitting on the room’s only chair, in the corner between the windows and the dresser, shaking her head; her hands were folded in her lap and she had the aspect of a repentant naughty child.

I sat on the edge of the bed and said, “I don’t know that she shot at him... The gun just kind of went off, when I grabbed her.”

Amy gave me a sharp look. “Did she see you?”

“No. Myrtle probably thinks you grabbed her... but she didn’t see either one of us in the house... or your friend Miss Lake, either.”

She sighed deeply. “I suppose I’m lucky you were there...”

“If you came here to thank me, it’s not necessary.”

“Thank you?” She stood; her arms were straight at her sides, her hands were fists — she looked a little comical in the pajama top and short baggy jeans (on loan from Toni Lake, I’d wager) but I didn’t feel like smiling. “Thank you?”

She walked to my open suitcase and plucked the Speed Graphic from amidst my underthings. Then she strode over to where I sat on the edge of the bed, planting herself before me, holding the camera in my face as if I were on the witness stand, she were the prosecuting attorney and the camera Exhibit A.

“What’s this?” she asked, the second word hissing through the space between her teeth. “A party favor?”

“You know what it is.”

Her lip curled in a tiny sneer. “I knew what it was when I noticed it on the kitchen table, at Paul’s, too.”

She had good night vision; but then she was a pilot.

“You were spying on me, Nathan, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t take any pictures, Amy.”

She flung the camera. It smacked into the far wall, carving a notch in the plaster, springing open like a jack-in-the-box, exposing the unshot film, which unspooled, pieces of the camera flying off, broken to shit. Now I really was expecting a call from the manager.

“I thought we were friends,” she said, voice quavering with anger.

“I was hoping we might be more than that,” I said. “But I guess I’m not your type.”

She slapped me.

It rocked my head and my cheek stung like a burn, tears springing to my eyes, and I tried like hell to keep them there. The wounded like to cling to their dignity, shredded though it may be.

“And here I thought you were for equal rights,” I said.

She spit the words at me: “What are you talking about?”

And I stood and got almost nose to nose with her and, my cheek on fire, spit words back: “God help the man that raises a hand to you, but you can hit a man... That’s always a woman’s prerogative, isn’t it?”

She sucked in air and raised a fist, as if to hammer me with it, only it froze there, her eyes going to that fist, as if her hand had had a life of its own and was surprising her with its actions.

Then her hand wasn’t a fist anymore, it was an open palm that covered her mouth and then both hands were enveloping her face as she seemed to crumple, and I caught her in my arms, folded her close to me, and surprisingly, she let me. Maybe she was just too upset to stop me.

“That was cruel of me,” I whispered in her ear.

“No... no... I should never have struck you...”

She pushed away a bit and, still in my arms, looked at me; the eyes, bloodshot though they were, were lovely and clear, more blue than gray, the color of a clear winter sky, and she fixed them on me, her tear-streaked expression regretful as she touched my cheek, gently.

“I’m sorry, Nathan... sorry. Forgive me...”

“I deserved the slap. I’m a lousy goddamn bastard and I don’t deserve your apologies...”

She was shaking her head side to side, the tears welling again. “I don’t believe in hitting people. I hate being struck, and yet I struck you...”

I placed my hands on her shoulders and looked right at her. “I hit you in another way. I betrayed our friendship, and Christ, I couldn’t feel like a bigger heel. Amy, I’m sorry.”

She hugged me, her hands warm on my bare back.

“It’s not you,” she whispered. “It’s G. P. He’s a corrupting influence... No one knows that better than I.”

“Amy, I wasn’t lying,” I said into her ear, in a rush of embarrassed words. “I didn’t take any pictures. I would’ve quit this dirty job days ago if I hadn’t got jealous of Mantz...”

She pulled away a few inches, her expression quizzical and almost amused. “Jealous?”

“Guess that’s kind of silly now...”

“I never knew you felt that way about me, Nathan. I thought we were just... pals.”

“We are pals, Amy. And I won’t say a word to that son of a bitch you’re married to.”

She touched my cheek again, just with her fingertips. “I’m sorry I hit you.”

“Stop it,” I said gently.

She kissed my cheek. A tender little kiss.

I smiled at her. “Still friends, then?”

She smiled back. “I don’t think so...”

And she kissed me again, only not on the stinging cheek, but full on my mouth, not at all tenderly, but urgently, eagerly.

Those warm, full lips were everything I’d hoped they’d be, salty with her tears, and this was no friendly kiss, it was passionate, a hungry confession of feelings that she’d harbored, too, and her hands clutched at my back, desperately, and if I’d held her any closer, I’d have crushed the life from her. We kissed again, and again, and I was crying too, and it wasn’t from the slap, it was the emotional fucking roller coaster I’d been on this evening, tears of joy because a woman I desperately wanted and had abandoned hope of ever having had her tongue in my mouth.

Then we were fumbling at each other’s paltry clothing, my hands unbuttoning the man’s pajama top, exposing the creamy skin beneath, and she was unbuckling my belt, then tugging my pants down over the white boxers, both of us flailing in comical, out-of-control desire.

And then she was nude to the waist, justifiably unashamed of a shapely form that might have belonged to a teenage girl, not a woman approaching forty — small, beautifully formed tip-tilting breasts, prominent rib cage, and a waist I could put my hands around. Confronted by the tentpole at the front of my white boxers, she had a sudden burst of modesty and reached over and switched off the bedside lamp.

Then she stepped out of her baggy dungarees and the white cotton step-ins beneath, and I got out of the boxers, and we rolled as one onto the bed, embracing, kissing, caressing, saying nothing except each other’s name occasionally, and when it was time, under a framed cactus print, she rolled the lambskin onto me and mounted me.

The cabin’s darkness wore the red patina of the motel sign filtering through the cotton curtains, and with her atop me, flushed with passion and suffused neon, eyes half-lidded, lips parted as she panted, she remained in control, ever the pilot. She was like no woman before or since in my experience, tall, lean, muscular yet pliable, her skin satin-smooth except for her sweet freckled weather-punished face, her legs endless though sumptuously fleshed, her breasts perfect girlish handfuls, tipped with bullets. For being of such a modest, even prudish upbringing, she knew things; she had a contortionist’s limber frame, and an athlete’s stamina, and she took me new places.

But her co-pilot had flown before too, and when she finally arrived at our destination, back on top again after a world tour, she came with a shuddering intense glee and a final shower of tears before she collapsed into my arms.

Out of gas.

We were both still breathing hard, and she was snuggled against me and I was on my back, looking at the ceiling, which wore the reddish blush of motel neon.

“Can I ask you something personal?” I ventured. I was using a tissue from the nightstand to remove the lambskin.

“My goodness,” she said, “I think at this point you can risk it.”

“Do you like boys or girls?”

“Yes,” she said.

And I was trying to think of something to say in response to that when I realized she was asleep, gently snoring.

Perhaps an hour later, I heard something, woke and she wasn’t next to me. The red-tinged darkness was cut by a shaft of light from the bathroom where the water was running. Then she was in the bathroom doorway, in just Mantz’s pajama top, silhouetted there.

Sitting up, I said, “Hey, you.”

“Don’t look at me,” she said, though only her legs were showing, and hadn’t she been a stark-naked cowgirl riding me not so long before? She clicked off the bathroom light, ran to the bed, threw back the covers and scurried under them; we’d been sleeping atop the bedspread, so I got around under there with her and leaned on my elbow and looked at her. She was on her side, facing me, face half-hidden by the pillow.

“What brought on that sudden attack of ladylike reserve?” I asked.

“I hate my body.”

“Well, I love your body, and anyway all I could see was your legs.”

“I hate my legs.”

“I have fond memories of your legs.”

“I have fat thighs. I hate my thighs.”

“Well, let’s have a look, then...” I flipped the covers back.

She squealed and pulled the covers up and said, “I’ll hit you again.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “I like where that led last time...”

Then we were in each other’s arms, giggling, kissing, and then the giggling ceased and the kissing continued and this time around was not at all frantic, but the sort of luxurious, lingering lovemaking characteristic of a couple who know each other well.

Later, I was half-sitting up, two pillows behind me, and she was snuggled against me again, my arm gathering her near, her head resting against my chest.

“There will be no more scurrilous remarks about your thighs,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. She was leaning on her elbow, now, chin propped on her palm. Gazing right at me. “Nathan, there’s something you should know about those threatening notes—”

I cut her off: “Mantz told me about your husband’s history in that regard. Do you think G. P. sent them?”

“Not really,” she said, but not confidently. “Why would he?”

“Publicity, for one thing. To remind the world how important you are.”

“He hasn’t released anything about it to the press.”

“Yet... Or maybe it’s to provide a cover for what he really hired me to do.”

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.

Chapter 7

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.

Nonetheless, I’m the old-fashioned chivalrous type who doesn’t like to see guys belt gals even when they deserve it, and went in there and got between them with outspread hands like a referee.

“Save it for the lawyers, you two,” I said.

Myrtle curled her pretty mouth into a sneer, and snarled, “Who appointed you sheriff, big boy?”

Normally, a good-looking redhead calling me “big boy” would have perked me up; but I had little interest in even good-looking women who shot target practice in the bedroom.

“Get her the hell outta here!” Mantz was yelling. “Crazy greedy dame!”

I walked her out of his office — she was yelling back at him, but not flailing around or anything; I think she was glad to get out of there before Mantz actually struck her. On her way out, she did hurl a few epithets at Amy, who Putnam was helping down out of her little red trainer.

“Adultery’s a sin, you snooty bitch!” she shrieked. “I hope you crash! I hope you drown in the ocean!”

Though Putnam was getting an eye-and earful, Amy merely turned her back to Myrtle, as I kept walking the estranged Mrs. Mantz toward the door.

Ushering her outside the hangar to where the flashy Dusenberg was parked, I found she’d calmed down, some. “No-good lousy husband of mine canceled my charge accounts,” she explained.

“Steer clear of that guy,” I said. “You don’t want to lose any of your pretty teeth.”

Myrtle touched my cheek with a cool hand and, laying on the Southwestern accent, said, “You are a sweet one, aren’t you? Wish I’d run into you a long time ago.”

She ran into me in the bedroom at the Mantz bungalow; she just didn’t know it.

And when she’d driven off, I went back into Mantz’s office and said, “Hey, Paul, if you want to come out of that divorce with your shirt and maybe a pair of socks or two, I’d suggest not belting that broad.”

He didn’t say anything, but I had to wonder if the reason Myrtle resorted to a firearm was because he’d been smacking her around.

With the flight due to begin around ten that night, nobody came in the next day till around one in the afternoon, including the mechanics.

Shortly after I got to the United Air Services hangar, I stuck my head into Mantz’s office and asked if he had a moment, and he waved me in. He was in a tan shirt and black tie, seated behind his desk, going over the pile of charts and maps, looking a little frazzled.

I took the chair opposite him and asked, “Are you aware that Amelia’s talking seriously about makin’ her next flight a little around-the-world number?”

Mantz sighed, tossing a chart onto the stack. “Maybe she ought to survive this flight first... Yeah, I know. She and Gippy have been after me to help ’em prepare — and work my connections at Lockheed to get ’em a good price on a twin-engine plane.”

“Will you?”

“Probably. I mean, if she’s got it in her head, then she’s going to do it, and if she’s going to do it, I want to see her tackle it as close to the right way as she’s capable of.”

“How capable is she?”

Mantz waggled a finger. “Never forget that Amelia Earhart won her reputation first, then set about earning the right to havin’ it... She has zero experience in twin-engine piloting technique.”

“Can she learn it?”

“You’ve seen how impatient she can be, where training’s concerned.”

“She’s worked hard in that trainer of yours.”

“Hey, she’s a good pilot, but a woman’s pilot. These dames all jockey the throttles—”

“Paul!” Ernie Tisor, his face pale and long with worry, had stuck his head in the door. The mechanic was wiping some grease off his right palm onto his coveralls. “Something nasty... You gotta see this...”

I tagged along as Mantz followed Tisor to the Vega, where a small metal ladder up to the cockpit was in place. The other two mechanics, Jim and Tod, were standing around wearing spotless coveralls and dazed expressions.

“Take a look down by the rudder pedals,” Tisor was saying, gesturing to the ladder, which Mantz quickly scaled.

Mantz wasn’t up in the Vega cockpit long before his head popped out and his face was as white as powdered sugar, only his expression was anything but sweet.

“Who’s been around here?” he asked Tisor.

“Nobody,” Tisor said, shrugging. “I unlocked the place just a little before one... Tod and Jim were waiting outside when I got here.”

Mantz was clambering down the ladder. “Nobody’s been around the Vega?”

“Not that I saw. Boys?”

The other two mechanics shook their heads, no.

“Shit,” Mantz said.

Tisor asked, “What do you make of it, Paul?”

“Drop or two of acid, maybe.” He placed a hand on Tisor’s shoulder. “God bless you, Ernie, for catching it. Can you repair those cables?”

“That shouldn’t be any big problem.”

“Fine. Get that done, then go over every rivet and nut and bolt on this baby. I want this patient to get a complete stem-to-stern physical, boys — look down her throat, and up her ass, understood?”

The three mechanics nodded, and quickly got to work.

Mantz turned to walk back to his office and I fell in step with him. “What’s going on, Paul?”

“Here’s Amelia and G. P.,” Mantz said, nodding to where Amy and her husband had just entered at the front of the hangar. “I’ll fill everybody in at the same time.”

They were walking toward us, Amy smiling, sporty in a plaid shirt and chinos, Putnam wearing his perpetual frown and an impeccably tailored blue twill suit.

Soon we were all seated in Mantz’s office with Mantz standing behind his desk. “I’m going to recommend we postpone,” he said, leaning his hands on the maps and charts before him.

“Why in hell would we do that?” Putnam demanded, seated but almost climbing out of his chair.

Next to him, between us, was Amy, who said quietly, “What’s happened?”

Mantz grimaced. “Your rudder cables — somebody left you a present, angel... a few well-placed drops of acid. The wires are almost eaten through.”

“What in God’s name...?” Putnam exploded.

“Acid?” Amy asked, as if she wasn’t sure of the meaning of the word.

“Probably nitric or sulfuric,” Mantz said. “You’d have flown a while, maybe a few hours, then they’d have given way... snapped like twigs.”

“Sending my plane out of control,” Amy said, hollowly.

Putnam thrust an accusatory finger in my direction. “This is just the kind of sabotage you were hired to prevent!”

“I wasn’t hired to sleep overnight in Paul’s hangar,” I said. “There’s nighttime security here at the airport, right, Paul?”

It was a question I knew the answer to, that having been one of the first things I asked Mantz about.

“Certainly,” Mantz said, “a full detail of highly competent night watchmen... but of course the airport is open well into the wee hours... and if someone who had a key to my hangar...”

“Like your wife Myrtle,” I said.

“Yes!” Putnam yelled. “We all saw her yesterday, yelling and screaming, and out of control!”

Mantz sighed and nodded. “Yeah. I’m afraid this may be Myrtle’s doing. She’d love to get back at me... and you, too, angel.”

I asked, “Is this something Myrtle would know how to do? I mean, I wouldn’t know a rubber cable from a bagpipe.”

“Myrtle was a student pilot of mine,” Mantz said. “She knows how to fly. She knows planes.”

I frowned. “You told me she hated flying.”

“She doesn’t like to fly unless she or I are at the controls... at least, that’s how it used to be. Kind of doubt I’m her favorite co-pilot, these days.”

“Paul,” Putnam said, suddenly calm and reasonable, “you may not be aware of this, but one of the main reasons Mr. Heller was hired was because Amelia had received threatening notes in the mail. They were postmarked California.”

Putnam had never mentioned the California postmarks before. Of course, I’d never actually seen any of the notes.

Putnam continued, asking Mantz, “Do you think your wife might have been capable of sending them?”

Mantz, who was after all the first to peg Putnam for sending those notes himself, said only, “Well, Myrtle’s been jealous of Amelia for a long, long time... and she knew this flight was coming up...”

“We should call the cops,” I said.

“No police,” Putnam said.

“I agree,” Mantz said.

Now I exploded, half out of my chair: “You guys are nuttier than Myrtle! You got somebody trying to sabotage Amelia Earhart’s airplane, and you look the other way? Jesus, G. P., I’d think you’d want the publicity...”

“Not this kind,” Putnam said. “It’s tainted by this divorce scandal.”

Appearing not at all upset, Amy asked, “Are there any other signs of sabotage?”

“No,” Mantz said. “We’re giving the Vega a complete inspection. Still, I’d feel more comfortable if—”

“If your people don’t find anything else,” Putnam said, “we go ahead with the flight... That is, of course, if that’s my wife’s desire...”

“It is,” she said.

“You have no business,” I said to Amy, rather crossly, “getting on a plane, on a flight that’s dangerous under ideal conditions, when you’ve discovered sabotage like this.”

She didn’t answer; she wouldn’t even look at me.

Putnam said, “If you’d done your goddamn job, Mr. Heller, we wouldn’t have this problem, would we?”

“I did my job for you,” I said, “remember?”

Putnam blanched at that, knowing it was my way of reminding him of what he’d really hired me to do, but he bellowed on: “No police, and no postponement. If we postpone, we lose our coverage in the Sunday papers. We’ve got maximum press attention out of Amelia’s previous three long-distance flights, with these Friday takeoffs, and I see no reason to miss another golden opportunity... unless, of course, Paul, your people come up with some other act of sabotage.”

But they didn’t.

I despised G. P. Putnam. He was a reprehensible son of a bitch whose wife was a property for him to exploit and if her life were endangered along the way, he didn’t give a flying shit. Of course, I’d been taking fifty dollars a day from this reprehensible son of a bitch, to find out if his wife was cheating on him, and then slept with the woman myself. So maybe when it came to reprehensible sons of bitches, it took one to know one.

Around nine-thirty that night, the hangar cluttered with reporters from both the L.A. papers and the international wire services, I managed to get Amy alone for a moment, over by the Honeymoon Express.

I said to her, “You know I’m against this.”

She looked jaunty and unconcerned in the leather flying jacket with red-and-brown plaid shirt, a red scarf knotted at her neck; her tan flying helmet was held in one hand.

“The boys didn’t find anything else,” she said. “They’ve repaired the rudder cables. Everything’s fine.”

“You’re probably right. There probably won’t be any other problems. Because for one thing, I don’t think Myrtle put the acid on those cables.”

She laughed in surprise. “Well... who did, then?”

“I don’t know who did it, but I can guess who hired it done.”

“Who, Nathan?”

“The management... your ever-lovin’ husband.”

Her eyes tightened. “What? Why?”

“I accused him yesterday of sending those threatening notes himself. I think he hired somebody... maybe one of Mantz’s mechanics... to perpetrate a little act of sabotage. Something that could be discovered, and quickly remedied... and which would make G. P.’s phony notes look like the real thing, making him seem innocent, and somebody else... Myrtle Mantz... guilty.”

That made her wince. “Nathan, do you really think he’s capable of that?”

“Does Garbo wanna be alone? Listen, you want me to take hubby off in a corner and beat a confession out of him? Be glad to do it — no extra charge. I’m a former Chicago cop, remember — I know how.”

The full lips curved into a lovely smile, and she touched my face, gently, where she once had slapped it. “That’s one of the sweetest, if most violent, offers, I’ve ever had...”

God, how I wanted to kiss her right then; I like to think she was wishing the same thing.

Finally I said, “I got a sleeper out tonight, at midnight.”

The smile settled into a smirk. “Yes, G. P. mentioned he’d discontinued your security services, as of tonight... But I’ll see you again.”

“These have been special weeks to me, Amy.”

“I love you, too, Nathan.”

And, Putnam waving her over, she went off to chat with a few members of the press, before climbing into the cockpit of her nameless red Vega.

At nine fifty-five, under the blazing floodlights of the Burbank airport, I watched her rumble down the endless runway and, finally, when her speed overcame the six thousand pounds of loaded-down, fueled-up Vega, she lifted into a clear but moonless night sky, which soon swallowed her up.

I didn’t say anything to Mantz or Putnam, who I’d handed the Terraplane keys over to, earlier. I just found my way to the United Airport terminal and went out front and got a cab to the train station.

Amy’s record-setting flight to Mexico City was fairly uneventful. She threw Commander Williams’s elaborate flight plans away and flew south, following the coastline until she figured she was parallel to Mexico City and took a left. When she couldn’t find it, she landed in a dry lake bed and asked directions of a farmer.

Delayed by weather, her eventual return to Newark (which included crossing the Gulf of Mexico, despite Mantz’s warnings) found her mobbed by fifteen thousand admiring fans who pawed at her and tore her clothing. Putnam reaped substantial publicity benefits from the flight, and had arranged for several honorary degrees and awards to be presented to her in the glow of this latest accomplishment.

Within a week of her return from Mexico City, Amelia Earhart was in Chicago, Illinois, to accept a medal from the Italian government at a conference of two thousand women’s club presidents, every one of whom represented a potential lecture booking on a future tour. I was employed by the Emerson Speaker’s Bureau, at Miss Earhart’s request, to provide security.

Her husband did not accompany her on the Chicago trip.

And since Putnam had essentially fired me, it was necessary that, in doing this job for his wife, I remain undercover.

Reprehensible son of a bitch that I was.