And Abe was just thinking about that one last improbable name, when he heard it.
An engine whine pushing down against the wind. A low note, but clear, soon followed by the plane itself. The stubby little shape. The curled-up power. The perfect beautiful streamlined monster. And in its cockpit, helmeted and goggled, sat a slim boyish confident figure – the last pilot left on Abe’s list.
49
Willard replaced the phone and stood up. He felt ridiculously nervous. He ran his hands over his smoothly parted hair, checked his collar, his already straight tie. Annie Hooper spotted his anxiety and came over.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Oh no, of course not. Just Powell, you know.’ He said the last bit like he didn’t give a damn about Powell.
‘He wants you to see him?’
‘Yes. Right away, it seems.’
‘What about?’
‘No idea. It wouldn’t be very like him to bother telling me.’
‘No.’ Annie put her hands to his tie as though it needed adjustment, which it didn’t. She let the backs of her hands rest against his chest as she fiddled with the knot. ‘You’ll be fine.’
Willard let her fiddle. Willard realised with sudden pleasure that his almost automatic showing off had achieved its objective. Without particularly wanting to, he had won Annie’s tender heart. He smiled his movie-star smile and put his hand on her arm.
‘Oh, it’s all mouth with Powell. I’d tell him what I think of him, except for the damn loan.’
Annie looked away and moved her arm. ‘Good luck anyway.’
Feeling foolishly buoyed by his triumph, Willard bounded up the stairs to Powell’s office.
‘Thornton! Excellent! Come in. Listen, how long have you been with us now?’
‘Getting on for five months, sir.’
‘Hell, as long as that? I haven’t been looking after you properly. Your papa will probably want to kill me.’
A bottle of French champagne sat openly in a bucket of ice. Powell grabbed the bottle and began tearing at the foil and the wire cage. Willard stared at the bottle.
‘Is there something to celebrate, sir? My move into investments perhaps?’
‘Why d’we need a reason? I just wanted to offer a drink to the son of one of my pals. Here.’
Powell had torn the wire off the bottle and jammed a glass into Willard’s hand. He ripped the cork out of the bottle and held the bottle over Willard’s glass, not caring that the champagne splurged out everywhere, over-filling the glass, pouring down onto the expensive carpet and Willard’s hand-made shoes. Willard reflected, not for the first time, that there was something coarse in everything Powell was or did. Coarse and brutal. The wire cage from the bottle lay on the floor in the middle of the champagne spill. Powell let it lie there and just trampled it underfoot, as though unaware that the carpet was a pure wool, deep pile affair that probably came in at ten bucks the square yard.
‘How you getting on downstairs? Ronson looking after you? McVeigh? Claverty?’
‘Yes, indeed. Thank you. I’ve been made most welcome.’
‘Come on, Thornton, you don’t have to talk like you’ve got a stick up your ass. Really, how are you getting on?’
‘Fine, honestly. A lot of hard work, of course, only…’
‘Yeah? Only what?’
‘Well, sir, I don’t mind the hard work.’ Willard’s voice jerked petulantly as he spoke. As a matter of fact, though the hard work itself was OK, he did mind the fact that there seemed to be a conspiracy which passed the hardest files to him. He was sure now that his workload was the highest in the group’s, a fact he resented bitterly. But he steadied his voice as he continued. ‘What concerns me is my financial obligation to you. When you introduced me to the bank, you mentioned that if I were to repay the loan, it would be through my ability to earn exceptional returns on the bank’s money. I’d like to be given a chance, sir. I’m keen to start.’
Keen to start, keen to pay off the loan, keen to watch the whole of Powell Lambert sink into the ocean.
‘Maybe you have started, had you thought of that?’
‘Of course in a way I have, and every man has to start somewhere, naturally, only…’
Powell interrupted, refilling Willard’s glass until it brimmed over.
‘Only, horseshit, Thornton. Tell me, if you were going to invest some money, where would you invest it? Not a motion picture, I hope?’
Willard’s chin jerked upwards automatically at the jibe. ‘No sir. I believe the electrical traction industry is of interest. I believe there are opportunities on the stock market that deserve further research. I’d be very happy to compile a report and –’
‘Electrical traction? That a fancy name for streetcars?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Tell me, what do you know about the streetcar industry that nobody else in the world knows?’
‘I beg your pardon? Nothing. But the purpose of my research would be –’
‘Don’t waste your time!’ Powell spoke with such aggression that Willard was jolted. Powell had a cigar in his hand. He looked around for his silver cigar cutter, couldn’t find it, and bit the end off instead. He rolled the bitten tobacco into a ball and threw it away. ‘The stock market is a crap shoot where half the players have loaded dice. Are your dice loaded, Thornton?’
‘No, sir, I should hope not.’
‘Then don’t waste your time. Yours or mine.’
Willard paled with anger. ‘I owe you two hundred thousand dollars, sir. It was my understanding that I should get a chance to repay it.’
‘Right.’
Powell’s face, though smiling, had been hard and unpleasant. At this point, and for no obvious reason, it softened. His grin widened, extending for the first time to his eyes.
‘You know, Thornton, last year your father made more money from guns and bombs than he did in either nineteen seventeen or nineteen eighteen, during the bloodiest war in human history.’
‘I believe he did, yes.’
‘Money. He has the gift. More than anyone I know, your father has the gift.’
‘He works hard for his success. He deserves it.’
Powell rose from his seat and gave Willard’s shoulder a couple of good-natured thumps. ‘He does indeed. And if you have the gift, you’ll make money too. Plenty of it. Enough for the loan. Enough for us. Enough for you. And you have your chance, Thornton, you have it now.’
Willard would have answered, but Powell’s expression told him not to bother. Powell puffed at his cigar with one hand, drank champagne rapidly with the other, kept up a stream of conversation in between. Willard drank less than Powell, but a second bottle soon appeared and he grew light-headed all the same.
‘I’m surprised you do this,’ he commented.
‘Do what?’
‘The champagne. You’re not worried about Volstead?’
‘Yah!’ Powell made a gesture of contempt. ‘This was all in our cellar before Prohibition. No rule against drinking up. Me, I’m the driest of the dries. But you got to understand. Volstead was all about protecting the American working man. He was never against hospitality. He was never against a man giving a good time to his pals. That’s all we’re doing. You think that’s wrong?’
‘No, I guess…’
They drank more. Willard disliked Powell and wanted to get away. He put his glass down and muttered about returning to work.
‘Huh? What’s that?’ Powell had a habit of simply not hearing things when he wasn’t in the mood. ‘Oh, and that reminds me, I’ve got a gift for you.’
‘A gift?’
‘A gift.’ Powell yelled through the door to his secretary, who came in, pushing a little trolley of the sort that restaurants use to display their puddings. Just beyond the door, there was a short man in a dark suit. The man was standing, looking in through Powell’s door as it opened, staring straight at Willard. Willard couldn’t help but stare back. The man was short, maybe five-foot-six
, but with a compact and powerful upper body that gave him the look of someone larger. The man’s face was intent, a little ugly, but somehow powerful, authoritative. The man was examining Willard; seemed to have come in order to look at him. Willard turned away feeling uncomfortable, then the secretary left and closed the door. Willard turned his attention to the trolley, which was laden with beige files tied off with pale green tape.
‘A gift,’ repeated Powell. ‘You like it?’
‘Files? That’s the gift?’
‘Go on. Take a look. You’ll like it.’ Powell was almost hopping with glee. Champagne slopped over the side of the glass and fell foaming onto the carpet.
Willard looked.
There were around forty files on the trolley. The pale green ribbons that bound them indicated they were completed transactions – archive files. White cards gummed to the front of each file marked their contents. Each card identified the transaction by buyer, seller and completion date. For a second, Willard looked blankly at the stack.
Then it clicked, and his belly dropped away in sudden terror. The sellers. There were around forty transactions on the trolley, but only four different sellers: the same four companies whose documents had been concealed by Arthur Martin behind the cupboard in Willard’s apartment. Willard staggered back, his face pale. Powell’s mouth was champing with delight, but his eyes were cold.
‘You like it? Go on. Tell me. You must be pleased, right? The archivist tells me you’re very interested in these clients of ours, but haven’t yet had a chance to look at these files.’
Willard shrank away. ‘It’s OK. It’s nothing. I just wanted to follow something up. I don’t need all this. Honestly, I…’
He fell silent, choked by a rising tide of nausea. Arthur Martin had been killed for the sake of just four of these files. What in hell’s name did Powell mean by shoving forty of them at him? It felt like some coded Mafia communication. Willard didn’t understand the code, but whatever it meant, it could hardly be a healthy sign. His face was numb. He put down his glass, backed away, went almost running down the hall.
50
Pen’s plane touched down. Abe went to greet it. The thing about a coastal airfield is that it’s nearly always windy: the wind pulling off the ocean during the day, blowing out from land at night. The wind today wasn’t strong, but it made itself felt. It scuffed at the sand, dragged at the palms, tugged and snapped at clothing.
Abe – in shirtsleeves only, no coat or tie – met Pen, who discarded her heavy jacket to reveal a plain white shirt beneath.
They said hi, said nothing about the way he’d returned her plane, said nothing about the pretty pink roses which Abe had so brutally decapitated. Then Pen, in that direct way of hers, made her request. She wanted a job flying the mails. He thought about it for a second, maybe less.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I know you can fly, but this is different. There’s the ocean for one thing.’
‘I’ve flown the ocean plenty.’
‘Yeah, but twice a day, every day? It won’t be long before we have a forced landing.’
‘So? You carry a raft, right? A flare pistol? Food?’
‘Then there’s the weather. These tropical storms can kick up bad, as foul as I’ve known it. And I used to fly up near the Canadian border, with blizzards coming over the mountains and no place safe to land.’
‘You aim to fly the storms or avoid them?’
‘Avoid them.’
‘So.’
Pen let a long pause open between them. It was quiet, except for the buzz of distant traffic and the sound of the Seabreeze scraping its salt off on the coconut palms. Abe felt jerked around by his feelings.
Mostly he didn’t want her. Women on an airfield were like a vapour lock in the fuel pipe: unpredictable at best, dangerous at worst. The not wanting part had made him curt, almost rude in his answers just now.
And yet, and yet… Pen wasn’t like other women. Her flying was excellent. The landing she’d made that first time had been nerveless and impeccably accurate. Nor did she seem to carry with her that storm of emotional complexity that Abe associated with other women he’d known. And then again, there was Abe’s new sense of the darker side of his life: the shadows of loneliness that had come to seem as spacious and unlimited as the sky itself.
So he didn’t know what to say. He just literally stood there, scratching his scalp, lost for words.
She pursued him. ‘Listen, I know I’m a woman and a woman isn’t supposed to like flying airplanes. But I must have been put together wrong. I do like flying them. More than anything else. I’ve flown a few competitions, but there aren’t many left which’ll take me now. And in any case, pylon racing is just a type of stunting. I want to fly for a serious purpose. I want to because I’d like to teach the world something about women and planes. Is that wrong?’
‘No.’
‘And you’ve got a mail route. You must need help. I can provide my own plane. I’d live in town, not here on the airfield. I don’t need payment. If you want, we can try it out for a while. If the arrangement works, we’ll go ahead. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.’
She finished speaking and she looked him full in the face before dropping her eyes. Her eyes were as clear a blue as Abe’s own, and once again he got a sudden, disconcerting sense of the person lying behind them: unfussy, direct, honest, straight.
‘Pen, when I flew your plane back to your place outside of Charleston, I’d been planning to stop off and say hello. But then I saw the place you came from. And I came over all yellow. I ran home without saying hi. And the reason I’m telling you this is because I can’t believe that your folks are going to be too happy with their little girl serving as a mail pilot.’
‘So?’
‘I don’t want to cause trouble.’
‘My mother and father hate the idea of me flying. But I fly anyway. And in any case, I don’t see how that’s any of your business.’
Abe let out a long breath. Even for a Kentucky-born man like himself, there was something disconcerting in the full strength of the Florida sun. There was something bright, dazzling in the situation: the hot sun, the tugging breeze, Pen’s shirt flapping and snapping in the wind.
‘Heck,’ he said, feeling dizzy, making a decision in the worst way of all, unthought-out, unclear, in a daze. ‘Look, you’re right. Why not? Only one thing. Can you keep a secret?’
She didn’t make any direct answer, but when he turned and walked towards the hangar, she followed. And when he led her to a gloomy corner and pulled away the sheet which covered that week’s haul of booze, she gasped in amazement. For about three seconds, she stared at the whole illegal pile, then turned away, shocked.
‘I guess flying the mail doesn’t pay a lot.’
‘I fly it for free. This is what brings in the money.’
‘That’s why no passengers, no advertising.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve been very stupid. I’d never really thought about the financial aspect of things.’
‘The job’s yours, if you want it.’
Pen continued to back away. The light in the hangar was always gloomy, and against the brilliant sunshine flooding the doorway, all Abe could see was her silhouette, tall as his own, but graceful, the way only a woman can be graceful.
‘In answer to your question, yes, I can keep a secret. I won’t tell anyone about this and I guess I hope no one finds out. But there’s more of a difference between us than I’d thought. I don’t know that I think too much of Prohibition, but I do know that the constitution isn’t there to be made a fool of. Sorry, Captain. Goodbye.’
She turned on her heel and left, back to the brilliant sunshine and dizzying wind.
Abe caught sight of Arnie Hueffer. The mechanic’s olive face was split by a grin wide enough to park a plane in. Abe began to say something, but couldn’t. He realised he was grinning like an imbecile too. He felt the same way: part happy
, part imbecile. There was a starburst of sunshine expanding in his belly as though the best thing in the world was just about to happen. He went skipping out of the hangar after Pen.
‘Hey, Pen, hey there! Wait up!’
Her boot-heels, crunching across the sandy grass, hesitated, stopped and turned. She looked back at Abe, the wind still tugging at the dazzling brightness of her shirt.
‘Yes, Captain?’
51
Willard burst out of Powell’s office, down the hall, past the elevator bank to the firestairs. Taking the stairs three at a time, he completed each flight down in four bounds: leap, leap, leap, leap-and-turn. In just two and a quarter minutes, he arrived on the ground floor, and was running outside onto Wall Street, downhill, around the corner and away.
‘You like it? Go on. Tell me. You like it?’
Powell’s sarcastic question drilled in his head. Arthur Martin had stolen four files and had been killed for it. Today, over champagne and smiles, Ted Powell had thrust a further forty at Willard. What in hell’s name was going on?
Willard walked, without plan, without direction, without purpose. He just walked and let the city fold itself around him, smelling of fried food, car exhausts, sea wind, coffee, steam, rain, gasoline.
And in the midst of the city, he did something he hadn’t done before. He held up his life and looked at it, as though from a distance, as though he were an art gallery connoisseur looking at an exhibition by an unknown artist. And he saw for the first time various truths that he’d either never known, or sought to avoid knowing.
His movie, for one thing. Heaven’s Beloved hadn’t just been bad, it had been awful. And it had been awful because of him. He hadn’t been good enough as writer, director, or (especially) producer. He hadn’t even been good enough as an actor. Powell had been right: the picture had been a stinker.
For another thing, he saw that his father had been right about something. He saw that his relationship to money had been skewed, was lopsided. He could spend money like a millionaire, but only now at Powell Lambert had he come remotely close to earning it. What was it his father had said to him? ‘The Firm is a very demanding organism. It turns a profit because I compel it to turn a profit. Making money is never just a question of holding your hat out.’ Willard saw that now. He saw how hard it was to make money. If men like Tec! Powell and Willard’s own father succeeded better than their fellow men, it was because they had a rare and precious gift – a gift that was, in Willard’s case, absolutely unproven.
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