Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (18 page)

“I know.”

“But when I heard about the change in flight plan, switchin’ from east to west to west to east? I
knew
somethin’ was up. Despite all the bull they handed the press about ‘seasonal change in wind patterns,’ any experienced pilot—any Pan Am pilot, for sure, which includes Fred Noonan—knew that switch made no sense.”

Out in the courtyard, a parrot asked,
“Who’s a fool?”

“Ernie, can you make any sense of it? Why
did
they change directions?”

Having polished off the first egg roll, he picked up the second and gestured with it. “Well, first of all, think about the Lockheed Electra herself. She’s the ideal plane for a military mission…particularly with those powerful military-issue engines.”

“There are special engines on that plane?”

“…Not the first plane.”

“What do you mean, the ‘first plane’?”

His eyes were hooded and his voice was very soft as he said, “Heller, you may not want to know this. I know I don’t.”

“You know where that woman is, Ernie? She’s either floating on the ocean, or she’s under it.” I glanced around, gestured to the “atmosphere.” “Or maybe she’s on an island somewhere in the South Pacific, only she’s not sitting under a fake palm tree at a varnished teakwood table eating a damn egg roll.”

A macaw cawed.

“Between the crackup at Oahu and the takeoff in May,” Tisor said, “the Electra was over at Lockheed’s overhaul hangar.”

“Which is also in Burbank.”

“Yeah. Next-door neighbors of ours, but we weren’t privy to the repair job. It was kept under wraps.”

“Military guard?”

“Army. But I saw the plane when it was delivered over to our hangar, in fact I was there when Amelia saw it for the first time, and was she teed off! She said, ‘Why did they have to do this? I loved my old plane. Who’s paying for this?’ Hell, all she wanted was some adjustment in front to make it easier to operate the rudder pedals.”

“What did she get, Ernie?”

Now his eyes were wide. “A different fuckin’ plane. Bright and shiny and new, from the nuts and bolts to the tires. You gotta understand about Electras, there’s two basic types, the Model 10 Electra and the Model 12 Electra Junior. The Model 12’s a little smaller, but faster, lighter…. This was a Model 12.”

I frowned, leaned forward. “Didn’t anybody notice? Didn’t any reporters comment?”

He grinned and shook his head, no. “The similarities between the two models outnumber the differences, and besides, these’re hand-built planes, no two alike. Lockheed tailors these birds to the specific needs of the customer; every ship’s a hybrid. For example, this Electra had the advanced, constant-speed props of the Model 12, but overall it had the size and outward appearance of the Model 10—and the bigger engines I started to tell ya about, they probably made the gross weight similar…these were larger engines designed for military use, Pratt and Whitney Wasp Seniors, five-hundred-and-fifty-horse-power jobs. That baby had a greater effective payload than the original bird.”

“You’re saying Lockheed didn’t repair her plane—they gave her a new one.”

“Right.” He chomped on the egg roll, chewed as he talked. “And a new one designed with a different purpose than the first one.”

“A military purpose, you mean.”

He nodded. “That change of flight plan doesn’t make any sense from an aviator’s slant—but it makes all the sense in the world if she was on a military mission.”

“What sort of mission?”

A parrot in the courtyard asked the question again:
“Who’s a fool?”

He drew a breath, a deep one, then he leaned into the flickery light of the half-coconut; it turned his face shades of orange and yellow. “I wasn’t over at Lockheed, when this ship was bein’ put together—understand? What I’m gonna tell you now is secondhand, and don’t ask me for the guy’s name. I need your word on that, or I’m through talkin’.”

“You got my word.”

He settled way back in his chair, folded his arms; now his face was in the shadow of a palm blade. “I was askin’ my friend, who’s an airframe technician at Lockheed, about how things was goin’, while the ‘repairs’ were under way? I was wonderin’ what was takin’ so long. Anyway, we were out drinkin’, and he was in his cups…”

“You feed
him
Zombies, too, Ernie?”

His smile flashed in the darkness. “No. This was boilermakers. And maybe what I’m about to tell you was the boilermakers talkin’, maybe it’s pure bullshit. But I don’t want to get my friend in trouble.”

“Understood.”

“First off, there’s the ping-pong balls.”

“Ping-pong balls.”

“That Electra had ping-pong balls stuffed in every nook and cranny—nowhere they’d get in the way, but where controls go out to wing flaps, in wing spars, and so on.”

“The point being?”

“Added buoyancy, in case they were forced to ditch in the open sea. I heard of that practice before, it’s a little unusual, Dick Merrill did it once, but I just mention that to show you the extremes they was going to.”

“That just sounds like a precaution to me.”

He moved forward a touch, into the light. “Here’s somethin’ my friend told me about that wasn’t no precaution. He said he cut two holes, sixteen to eighteen inches in diameter, to be used for installin’ cameras.”

“Cameras? What kind of cameras?”

“A pair of Fairchild, electrically operated aerial survey cameras that got mounted in the lower aft fuselage bay. Some Navy guys, technicians or engineers or something, installed ’em, and photoflash bombs in the aft.”

I blinked. “Bombs?”

A thick hand waved that off. “They’re not destructive, they just provide light for nighttime aerial photography.”

“More good reason to use a lighter plane.”

“Hey, the Lockheed Electra, either model, can fly high and fast, even without special modifications, like bigger engines. The plane I saw was a long-range reconnaissance aircraft with all the latest gadgets and goodies. With that customized bird, Amelia could climb higher and faster than the first Electra, zip off her official course and return on route without anybody the wiser; she can cruise at speeds up to, hell, two hundred and twenty miles per hour.”

“As compared to what?”

He shrugged, rocked in the wicker chair. “One hundred and forty.”

Alarmed, I said, “Then this elaborate sea search that’s under way, all the rescue projections are based on the wrong aircraft specifications!”

He shrugged again. “Maybe not. After all, the military knows the real specs. But look, this finally makes the west-east flight plan change make sense.”

“How so?”

A shaggy eyebrow rose. “By flying west to east, from Lae to Howland Island, where American military personnel are waiting, the film could be retrieved, the camera equipment removed, and she could head home, to American Hawaii, in a non-spy ship, for a grand welcome.”

I could think of another reason for the west to east change: that Coast Guard cutter, the
Itasca,
so involved right now in searching for Amelia Earhart, would have been posted (and waiting) at Howland Island, tracking Amelia’s progress. Had she taken off
from
Howland Island, flying east-west, she would have been moving away from the ship, instead of toward it, as she undertook her mission.

Then she would have landed at Lae, a foreign territory, with her plane’s belly filled with film from a spy mission; should something have gone wrong, and the local government confiscated that film, the international repercussions would have been devastating.

“The change of direction does make perfect sense,” I said, “for a clandestine military operation.”

“Polly’s not a fool!”
the parrot in the courtyard said.

“I’ve told you everything I know,” he said. “And what the hell you think you can do with it…” He threw his hands up. “…is beyond me.

“Who else can I talk to?”

His eyes and nostrils flared. “Not my friend at Lockheed!”

I patted the air reassuringly. “I know, I know…I gave you my word. Who else was close to Amelia, and knows something…
and
thinks what Putnam did to his wife stinks?”

“Maybe you ought to talk to the secretary.

“What secretary?”

“Margot DeCarrie.” He smiled, as if the mental image of her were a pleasant one. “Nice young kid, idolizes Miss Earhart, and Miss Earhart thought the world of her.”

He was getting his present and past tense mixed up, where Amy was concerned; I knew the feeling.

“How come I never met the girl?”

“She only started with the Putnams when they got the new house, in Toluca Lake, just this year. She’s live-in help. I’m friendly with her. You want me to pave the way?”

“You think she’d cooperate?”

“Living in that house, she coulda seen a lot. I know she’s broke up about Miss Earhart’s disappearance. She’s a wreck. Take it easy on her…don’t scare her…and I think she’ll open up like a flower.”

“I appreciate the help.”

“I’ll make a call…but I should warn ya—that guy Miller may still be there.”

“Who?”

He gestured with an open hand. “I don’t know his first name. It was always just ‘Mr. Miller’…he’s some kind of consultant. My guess is he’s some sort of government intelligence guy. He’s one cold fish. Him and Putnam was thick as thieves.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Tall, six foot one, maybe. Probably forty. Pale, like all the blood got drained out of him. Slim but not skinny—what they call it, lanky, like the actor, Jimmy Stewart?”

“Ever have a run-in with him?”

He shifted in the chair; these wicker things weren’t all that comfortable. “He shooed me out of the hangar, once in a while, if him and Putnam and some of these others, military people, more guys in dark suits, was havin’ a conference or somethin’. He smiles but he never shows his teeth, and his tone is always, ‘fuck you,’ no matter how polite the words…. I got a feeling he’s a serious bad apple.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Okay. I’ll call Miss DeCarrie. They got a public phone out front.” He pushed the wicker chair back, stood. “Should I set something up for tonight?”

“My dance card is free.”

He ambled off, almost bumping into the waitress, who then hip-swayed over in true Polynesian style, though my guess was she was Jewish. She collected my long tall empty glass and, her voice high-pitched, melodic, asked me, “Another Zombie, sir?”

“You’re a fool!”
the parrot said.

On Valley Spring Lane in Toluca Lake, a few blocks down from where Paul and Myrtle Mantz used to live, stood a similar Spanish-style bungalow, this one with a red tile roof rather than green, and stucco that was off-white rather than yellow, though at dusk the difference was negligible. A wing had been added to this cozy bungalow, however, giving it a one-story sprawl that overflowed onto the adjacent lot, making for a spacious lawn as immaculate as the greens of the golf course nearby. Palm trees provided shade and an oasis atmosphere, enhanced by the occasional cactus and even a century plant. Well-tended but thorny shrubs hugged the house and made me glad that this time I wasn’t heading for the bushes with my Speed Graphic.

It was a little after eight when I rang the bell; a wooden slab of a door opened about a third of the way, enough to give me a good look at an Oriental houseman in Charlie Chan’s white suit and black tie. He might have been thirty, he might have been fifty; whatever his age, he wasn’t terribly impressed by my presence.

“I’m here to see Miss DeCarrie,” I said, then told him my name. “I believe she’s expecting me.”

He nodded, closed the door, and when it opened again, just seconds later, it was like a magic trick: the deadpan Oriental replaced by a beaming young woman.

She was in her early twenties, as tall as Amy only more shapely, in the same sort of casual cowboyish clothes: a plaid shirt, tan cotton slacks, and boots. She had a similar short hairdo, though unlike Amy’s, hers was marcelled and dark brunette; she had a clear-complected, lightly made-up, heart-shaped face and wasn’t as cute as Betty Boop, but damn near.

“Oh, Mr. Heller!” she burbled, as if we were old friends finally reunited, her eyes bright and brown and wide, “how wonderful it is to see you!”

She flung the door open and allowed me to move through the shallow, terra cotta-tiled entryway into a living room, casually tasteful in its modern furnishings, dominated by a fireplace of massive gray stone over which a mirror created an illusion of spaciousness, next to which French doors looked out onto a patio where the shapes of more palm trees and a garden were ghostly through sheer curtains. The stucco walls were fairly bare, though one side wall was taken up by a lovely oil portrait of Amy, in flying jacket, hand on hip, a breeze catching her scarf.

“I guess you’ve guessed I’m Margot,” she said, her voice chirpy, her bee-stung lips forming a big smile; her eyes, however, were laced with red. “I feel like I already know you…. A. E. has told me so much about you….”

“Thank you for seeing me,” I said. “Are you sure there’s no problem with your employer?”

“My employer is A. E.,” she said, sticking her chin out proudly. “As for Mr. Putnam, he’s at the San Francisco Coast Guard Station, with Mr. Miller, and isn’t expected till tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

She hooked her arm through mine and led me across the living room’s Oriental carpet through an archway into the dining room, off of which a hallway led into the addition to the house. She had a clean fresh smell about her, soap not perfume, I’d bet.

“Ernie said you’re looking into this,” she said, walking me along. “I know it’s what A. E. will want.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but you act like she spoke of me often.”

“Not often. But when she did, it was with great affection.” She paused at a closed door. “Let’s go in here—it’s A. E.’s study. I think she’d like us to do our talking in her presence, so to speak.”

I followed her in and she ushered me to a worn, comfy-looking sofa in a corner of a rather spartan study, under a wall of photos that wasn’t as excessive as Paul Mantz’s office display, but close to it: aviation memories and signed movie star mugs. Double windows looked out onto the patio and a well-tended garden; they were open to let in the dry cool evening breeze that had replaced the sweltering day. A centrally placed card table with a typewriter was a typically informal Amelia Earhart “office,” littered with books and typing paper and yellow pads. A more formal desk, a rolltop, took up one wall, and much of another was swallowed up by a trophy cabinet. Standing bookcases, a pair of file cabinets, and an easy chair made up the rest of the room.

“This looks like it might be Mr. Putnam’s study, as well,” I said, sitting down.

“It is—they shared it, but he hasn’t been using it since…well, since.” Margot closed the door. She wrinkled her nose, chipmunk cute, and said, “We’ll opt for privacy. Joe’s nice, but he’s loyal to Mr. Putnam.”

“Joe’s the houseman?”

“Yes. A wonderful gardener, too. He also does the heavy chores; my mother does the rest.”

“Your mother?”

She settled in next to me—not right next to me, but it was a good thing for her I wasn’t Jack the Ripper, because she was assuming the best about me, not always the safest course for a cute kid like this.

“When my mother got the housekeeper position here—I’m a local girl, well, Glendale local—I just went crazy. I’ve been a fan of A. E.’s since I was twelve! I just adore her—you should see my scrapbooks. Did you know she had scrapbooks, too, when she was a girl? Full of stories about women doing work that was supposed to be a man’s domain? And I’d been writing her fan letters since forever, and do you know, she answered every one?”

“Really?”

“So when Mother got this job, I just had to come around and meet A. E., and she was so wonderful, you just wouldn’t believe, well I guess you would knowing her like you do, but I started coming around and, well, maybe I made a pest of myself, telling her how I was a graduate from the business college over in Van Nuys, dropping all kinds of hints, telling her how terrible it must be to be swamped like she was with so much fan mail and all, and anyway, finally she said, A. E. said, I guess I really could use a Girl Friday at that, and ever since then I’ve been in charge of fan letters, filing, and even the household accounts…I studied more than secretarial skills at business college, I have accountancy capability too you know…and I help out in a lot of other ways, meeting airplanes, showing guests around, and entertaining A. E.’s mother, who just went to stay with her other daughter, A. E.’s sister, Muriel, in West Medford, for a while.”

“Is that right?”

“And you know it’s funny, I don’t really think A. E. feels all that close to her real sister, I mean I think she may kind of resent sending her checks all the time, actually I’m the one sending them lately, ever since A. E. disappeared, though I think Mr. Putnam may put a stop to it, but the thing is, we really did get close, we were more like sisters, I think, sometimes, than she was with her real sister, which is why I know what I know about you.”

“What do you know about me?”

“That you love her, too. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

And then she turned away from me in sudden embarrassment and began bawling like a baby. I gathered her up like she was a hurting child, which maybe she was, and held her to me, let her hug me and bury her face in my chest and cry there. I had to wonder when Margot said she loved Amy, if it was the Toni Lake variety; but my hunch was not. This was about hero worship, not hormones.

As she began to settle down, I fished a clean handkerchief out of my pocket and gave it to her; she thanked me, dried her eyes and moved away a little, sitting with her hands in her lap, clenching the hanky. She looked very small, her face devoid of makeup now, a pale cameo.

“But you don’t love
G. P.,
Margot, do you?”

A little humorless smirk dimpled her cheek. “No. Not hardly. At first I accepted him…I mean, after all, A. E. married him, and she doesn’t make many mistakes.”

“That one was a whopper, though.”

“He’s a terrible man. Egotistical. Selfish. He’s nothing more than a publicity-seeker, with no regard for anyone but himself.”

“You’re right.”

She pressed her hands to her bosom and looked across at the trophy case. “A. E. made me feel so good about myself…. She made me feel I could conquer the world.”

Margot had lapsed into the past tense about Amy, too. It was tough not to.

She turned her gaze upon me, and it was so earnest, I wanted to laugh—or cry. She asked, “What can you do about this, Mr. Heller?”

“I figure once I’ve had my arm around a girl, she’s earned the right to use my first name.”

She liked that. “Thanks, Nathan. You’re everything A. E. said you were….”

“Let’s not jump the gun. As for what I can do—I’m not even sure why I came out to California, Margot. It was an impulse.”

I told her about Paul Mantz trying to hire me—weeks ago, while Amy was still on American soil—to look into the funny business surrounding the world flight, and how I turned him down. How I may have missed the chance to head this disaster off before it started.

“Oh dear,” she said, looking at me with tenderness and pity, “you must feel terribly guilty!”

“You really know how to lift a fella’s spirits, Margot…. If the Coast Guard and Navy can’t find her in the ocean, I’m not sure what good I can do in Burbank. But I do know I don’t want G. P. getting away with this.”

Her eyes got teary again and her lower lip quivered. “I don’t think he cares if she comes back…. I don’t think he wants her to come back….”

“I suspect you’re right. But first things first—I’m still trying to piece together what’s really going on here.”

Her expression turned firm; dabbing the new tears away with my hanky, she asked, “How can I help?”

“Tell me what you’ve seen.” I gestured around us.

“What unusual has happened here at the house?”

She drew air in and then blew it out through a Clara Bow pucker. “Ooooh, so many things…. One of the things that struck me was all the military people parading through.”

“What kind of military people?” I sat sideways on the couch, to look right at her. “You mean, like the Navy chauffeur who drove her around in a staff car, sometimes?”

“Well that, but these were very high-ranking officers, Army and Navy both. They’d come over and meet with G. P. and A. E., or sometimes with just G. P.”

“You remember any names, Margot?”

She nodded. “There was a General Arnold, and a General Westover….”

Generals were dropping by?

“This was after Mr. Miller moved in,” she elaborated.

Then she shuddered. “Such a cold man.”

“In what way? Who the hell is he?”

“He’s with the government, too—the Bureau of Air Commerce. I think A. E. put up with him only because she’s so friendly with his superior, Mr. Vidal. Mr. Miller is the ‘coordinator’ of the flight.”

“What does that mean?”

“Who knows? His first name is William, and I’ve never heard him called Bill; G. P. just calls him Miller. Most everybody seems to, although I wasn’t raised that way. I call him Mr. Miller. And other things, to myself.”

“When did he move in here?”

“In April, after the last of the meetings with Mr. Baruch. But he’s not here all the time, he has an office in Oakland—”

“Wait, wait, what meetings with who?”

“There were three meetings between G. P. and A. E. and Mr. Baruch starting in, uh, late March I believe, with the last one in early April.”

“This is Bernard Baruch we’re talking about.”

“Yes. He’s a gentleman in his sixties, early sixties, I would say; somewhat heavy-set but not fat. Beautiful white hair, glasses that sit on his nose. A nice man. Soft spoken, well spoken. Do you know him?”

“Not personally.”

Maybe they didn’t get around to current events at that business college in Van Nuys, but I knew who Bernard Baruch was, even if my newspaper of choice was
The Racing News.
Self-made Wall Street millionaire, philanthropist, so-called “park bench sage”…and advisor to FDR.

That was Bernard Baruch.

“Margot, did you take notes at these meetings?”

“No, but I was around…I overheard some things, things I probably shouldn’t have. I know A. E. was upset after the meetings, though it was all very…civilized. I don’t think she ever agreed to do what he wanted…or maybe I should say, what the President wanted.”

“What was that?”

She frowned; worry, not anger. “I think he asked her to volunteer to help the government…. What would an ‘intelligence operation’ be exactly?”

“That would be spying, Margot. He must have asked her to use her plane to spy.”

Her eyes widened, in a blend of disbelief and fear. “I can’t believe she’d do that!”

Apparently I had put into words something that she had barely dared think.

Then she released her grip, her eyes hooded now, and the fingers of one hand rose to touch her lips, lightly, and when she spoke, her usual rush of verbiage slowed, as if each word had to work its way around the fingers poised protectively there.

“And, yet,” she said, “it does make sense, with those generals coming around, later. You see, I heard Mr. Baruch say that the military would…what was his language exactly? ‘Assist’ is only part of it, I believe the words were…‘underwrite her enterprise.’ Does that mean…?”

“It means Baruch offered government financial backing to remount the world flight.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I can tell you this, I was the one who handled the accounting on the first try, so I know what kind of money was spent, and on what. This time, the second time around, it was very different—no bills came in at all. Not for aircraft expenses or repairs or hangar storage or even fuel. Nothing.”

I frowned. “Was Amelia aware of this?”

“Yes…. She was really very blue, which was a big contrast from before, when she was flying to Honolulu. She was so enthusiastic, and lighthearted and laughing.”

Amy had always said she flew for the “fun of it.”

I asked, “Did you ever ask her why the military was getting so heavily involved?”

“Yes. Sort of…. I didn’t put it that way exactly, though. I think I was more concerned about the people who’d been close to her who were being driven away, and shut out, her friends, people she trusted.”

“What did she say?”

“She said to me, ‘We can’t always do what we wish.’”

A hell of a statement from a woman who had made a lifelong habit of doing exactly what she wanted.