The Rocketeer (15 page)

With such horseplay did they quickly burn off some of the steam and enthusiasm of their remarkable achievement. But after a few moments of it they fell silent and serious, and Peevy said, “How was it, kid?”

Cliff tried to think of a way to describe it, tried to find a way to put into words all the thoughts that had been tumbling through his head when he had been airborne. Most of them had been pretty high-falutin’, he now realized. Heady craziness inspired by the adrenaline-pumping thrill of the moment. Still . . .

He shook his head and said in awe, “Closest I’ll ever get to heaven.”

Peevy grinned. “Gotta work on those landings though.”

They started back toward the truck . . . and then turned at the sounds of cars approaching.

It was a couple of black sedans and Peevy immediately said, “Must be the news boys. You really put on a show.”

Cliff’s immediate reaction was to want to go and shake their hands, pose for photographs, see his name splashed all over the papers. The thought of taking Jenny to the movies and watching himself soaring across a newsreel, propelled by the power of his rocket pack . . .

His
rocket pack?

“They can’t find out who we are,” said Cliff in alarm. “Whoever owns this’ll want it back, and I’m just getting the hang of it. Let’s get out of here.”

Peevy, who had already come to the conclusions that Cliff had just reached, hopped behind the wheel of his truck as Cliff started to shrug out of his harness. But when he turned the key, the engine refused to start.

Cliff heard the grinding noise, and both men threw panicked glances at the approaching sedans.

Cripes,
thought Cliff,
what if it’s not reporters! What if it’s the feds! I’d be in the soup for sure!

Tossing the helmet onto the passenger seat, Cliff hopped onto the truck bed and shouted, “Peevy, toss her in neutral!”

Peevy did so, puzzled, as Cliff braced himself against the back of the cab. “You steer,” continued Cliff, “and I’ll push!”

Not understanding what Cliff was talking about, Peevy leaned out and said, “You’ll whaaaaaaaa—!!” The last word was elongated and drowned out in the rocket’s roar as the truck blasted down the road at incredible speed. It was all Peevy could do to keep it on the road.

The strain on Cliff’s arms was incredible. He thought for sure the bones were going to snap, and indeed for the next several hours his muscles were unbelievably sore. But he persevered, and within seconds the fire-breathing pickup truck had hopelessly outdistanced their pursuers.

Not, however, their pursuers’ eyesight.

The sedans came to a stop, giving up the chase, but Eddie Valentine was now standing on the road, squinting at the dwindling truck. “Take this down!” he said, and Spanish Johnny began to scribble on a pad. “SJ two five seven.”

Mike, the driver, stood and watched the distant smoke trail while munching on popcorn. Eddie gave him a look, slapped the box out of his hand, and said tersely, “Let’s go.”

Bigelow was loving every minute of it. His days as a two-bit air show operator were over. The proof of that was in the crush of reporters who were jamming into his office, occupying every inch of space, falling over one another, and standing on chairs or desks. They were all shouting, one atop the other, their questions overlapping, their pencils at the ready. Bigelow merely leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, his cigar—and he would be switching to a more expensive brand
real
soon now—sticking up into the air like a triumphant flag.

“How about some background on the flying man!” shouted one reporter, and the questions continued. “Yeah, where’d you find him?” “What’s his name?”

Bigelow put up his hands. “Sorry, fellas, trade secret. Besides, it’s part of the mystery, his background. As for the name, let’s just call him . . . uh . . . Rocket Boy.”

A hush descended and Bigelow suddenly felt nervous, as if he’d just stepped in something or said what a sweet guy Hitler was.

“That’s lousy!” said one of the reporters, and they started echoing the sentiment, trying to come up with a better name themselves, keeping an eye toward the dramatic headline and what would sell papers. They were all shouting suggestions at one another and criticizing them.

“What about Human Rocket?”

“That’s worse!”

“Missile Man?”

“Stinks!”

A few more seconds of that, and then they turned back to the proprietor of the show and said, “C’mon, Mr. Bigelow, give us a better name!”

Bigelow’s mind raced. Here this godsend had dropped into his lap, and he was in danger of losing its shine because he didn’t have a zippy enough name to sell it. And then, gazing out his office window, he saw a billboard for Pioneer petroleum.

Pioneer. And Secord was kind of a pioneer of rockets. The Piorocket? Incomprehensible. Rocketneer? Better, but . . .

“Uh . . . howzabout
Rocketeer
?” he said slowly.

The reporters looked at one another and their heads started bobbing approvingly. “Rocketeer, that’s swell!” “Great handle!” “Rocketeer it is!”

Bigelow leaned back in his chair and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Easy street, here he came.

The newspapers were alive with it. You couldn’t walk down a street anywhere without seeing the blazing headline, WHO IS THE ROCKETEER?

On a soundstage, Neville Sinclair stared at the headline and saw a photo of his rocket
—his rocket pack
—strapped to the back of some glory-seeking, helmeted fool. His eyes bulged and his veins pulsed, and it was all he could do not to scream and throw the paper across the floor.

There was another newspaper with a slightly different headline: ROCKETEER SAVES PILOT. This particular copy of the newspaper was spread out across the desk of Howard Hughes, and Hughes was staring at it in quiet incredulity as federal agents Wolinski and Fitch slowly entered the office with the air of a couple of kids being called before the principal. They carried an object bundled in an old, dirty blanket and laid it on the desk before Hughes.

Hughes tossed the blanket back and stared at the charred, twisted object that had been salvaged from the fuel truck explosion.

How in hell could he have trusted them? How could he have taken their word for it? Perhaps it was just that he couldn’t stand to see the device he’d labored so long over reduced to a pile of burned junk. Perhaps he’d been an aviator for too long and the atmospheric changes had been turning his brain to mush. Perhaps he was just stupid. For whatever reason, he had not asked to examine the remains, and as a result was now as knowledgeable as whoever had been after the rocket pack in the first place, not to mention every man, woman, and child on the West Coast—and probably the rest of the country, within a few hours.

Still, he had been holding out a vague hope. That it had all been some sort of bizarre coincidence. Such things happen. Perhaps there had been some brilliant genius mechanic laboring away in obscurity in a hangar who had developed a device the same as Hughes had. Stranger things had occurred. And indeed, if the object on his desk were in fact the Cirrus X-3, then that’s what must have happened.

He nursed this hope for about three seconds. Then he shoved the object to the floor. Charred pieces went flying, and a cast metal brand name bounced across the floor and came to a stop next to Fitch’s shoe. It was, by coincidence, the last name of the FBI’s director, J. Edgar. It was also the maker of a well-known household appliance.

“Congratulations, gentlemen,” said Hughes dryly. “Due to the diligence of the FBI, this Hoover vacuum cleaner did not fall into the wrong hands.”

A
bundle of newspapers slammed to the pavement as night fell over Hollywood. A newsboy slit the twine and began selling them as fast as he could hand them out.

“Extra, extra!” shouted the newsboy. “Read all about it! Man flies without plane!”

One of the people who snatched a copy was a young pilot on a motorcycle with more than just a casual interest. He grabbed up a paper, tossing the kid a nickel, and smiled at the headlines.

“Rocketeer,” said Cliff Secord, running the name around in his mouth to see how it fit. “Not bad. Would make a great comic strip.” And with that he stuffed the paper into his saddlebag and drove off.

There was only one thing Cliff regretted in all this, and that was that Bigelow was going to be attaining all the goals that his avaricious little heart could have dreamed of. Every single article that ran, every single word on the street, was to the effect that something spectacular had happened at Bigelow’s Air Circus. And Bigelow left such a trail of ooze behind him, he sure didn’t deserve the bounty that Cliff’s sheer guts and fortitude had handed him.

Aw, what the hell. So Bigelow came along for the ride. In a way, they were all along for the ride. It was certainly nothing to get bent out of shape over.

Wooly and Fitch were beginning to feel as if they were spending their entire lives at this two-bit airfield that they had ever heard of before. It was the site of one of their most embarrassing moments, and if they never saw Chaplin Airfield again, that would’ve been jake with them. But no, here they were, back again, pulling up to Bigelow’s office as a beautiful yellow full moon hung in the skies overhead.

Wooly pointed at the light that was burning inside the window and Fitch nodded in acknowledgment. “Seems Mr. Bigelow is working late.”

“Counting up all the extra scratch takes time,” Wooly seconded.

Moments later they were knocking on the door of the office. Wooly said authoritatively, “Mr. Bigelow. FBI. We’d like to have a word with you.”

Fitch wanted to have more than just a word. He wanted a few words, along the lines of, “You’re under arrest for theft of private property.” But there was no answer from within, and immediately the hairs on the back of Fitch’s neck rose. He looked at Wooly significantly, and they both pulled their guns from their shoulder holsters.

It was timing that they had developed from long practice. Fitch gave a quick nod and then Wooly kicked the door open, dropping immediately into a crouch position with his gun leveled. Fitch stood just to his right, also aiming his gun into the dimness of the office.

There was no sign of movement whatsoever. But there had been plenty of motion earlier, that was for sure. The place had been ransacked. As Wooly and Fitch, guns still out, entered cautiously, they observed the emptied drawers, the papers scattered all over, the general disarray. A single desk lamp provided illumination.

The only thing left on the desk was a small pad of paper bathed in a pool of light from the lamp. Wooly started toward it and then tripped over something that was in the darkness. He fell against the desk, cracking his shin nastily, and then swung the desk lamp around to see what the obstruction was.

“Mother of Mercy,” he gasped.

Fitch had been on the other side of the room, and now he turned in response to Wooly’s shocked exclamation. His breath caught in his throat.

Bigelow was lying dead on the floor, his eyes glazed and bulging. Insanely, they were staring at the backs of his shoes.

“He’s been folded in half,” said Fitch, and he turned away to fight down the feeling of his gorge rising.

Wooly was thicker-stomached than Fitch—always had been—and he was already studying Bigelow’s lifeless body carefully while Fitch was busy composing himself. He spotted a pencil gripped in the dead man’s fingers and said, “He was writing something.”

Fitch was now leaning against the desk, trying to look anywhere, and at anything, rather than the grotesque
thing
that was sprawled on the floor. When Wooly spoke, however, Fitch immediately noticed the notepad on Bigelow’s desk. Quickly he picked it up and squinted at it, angling it toward the light. The sheet that had been written on was gone, of course, but Bigelow had been a big guy with big hands, and such men tend to lean heavily when they write.

Sure enough . . . numbers and letters had been indented onto the sheets under the top one, and when Fitch squinted, he was able to make out what had to be an address: 1635 Palm Terrace.

Lothar stood under a street lamp, checking the address once more that was on the sheet of paper in his huge hand. Then he glanced up once more at the house directly across from him. He saw someone move past a window in the house—an old man matching the description of the guy called Peevy that Bigelow had described . . . one of the last things that Bigelow had ever done, as it turned out.

Bigelow had squealed. Bigelow had poured his guts out. It had hardly required any effort on Lothar’s part at all. In point of fact, he hadn’t really had to kill Bigelow at all. The fat man hadn’t even gotten a good look at Lothar, couldn’t have even described him. And simply ripping the phone out would have prevented Bigelow from warning his pals that Lothar was on the way.

No, no reason at all, really. And yet he had killed him anyway.

Aw, hell. He’d needed the exercise.

Lothar crumpled up the piece of paper that read 1635 Palm Terrace, scribbled in a dead man’s hand, and then started across the street.

Peevy returned to the kitchen table, the rocket pack sitting there patiently. All the dents had been smoothed out of the helmet, and Peevy glanced at the funnel that he had inserted into the rocket’s fuel port. It had almost finished filling up with the alcohol that Peevy had tilted into it, and he smiled approvingly. Then he sat down and added the finishing strokes to a schematic drawing he’d been putting together that detailed the rocket pack’s workings.