by T. E. Cruise
She snapped shut her suitcase. “Oh, and Steve, darling,” she said sarcastically, “should we by chance run into each other in the future, do me a favor? Pretend you don’t know me—” She dropped her steady facade to shout in a rage, “Because by then, I will surely have forgotten you!”
She grabbed her suitcase and stormed out of the room. Steve stayed in bed, feeling dumbstruck and helpless; like a man trapped in a nightmare. He could hear her rummaging around in the apartment, gathering up her stray things, and then the closet door opening and closing as she grabbed her coat. She left the apartment slamming the front door so hard the window glass shook.
And he was alone.
He got out of bed and padded nude and barefoot across the blue wall-to-wall carpeting into the living room. Like the bedroom, the living room had brick walls painted white and a minimum of furnishings: He hated clutter. The living room contained a floor-to-ceiling wall unit crafted of maple to house his television and hi-fi equipment. Arranged around the “sound wall” was a dark blue tweed sofa and a pair of matching armchairs flanked by glass-topped brass end tables. A rattan chest with sliding doors he’d picked up cheap in one of the antique shops on King Street was placed beneath the living room’s window, which overlooked a brick-walled garden.
Steve used the rattan chest as his liquor cabinet, and that’s where he now headed. It was just a little after twelve noon, but considering what he’d just been through he figured a drink was in order. He poured a generous shot of vodka into a tumbler, and then went into the small galley kitchen to get himself some ice and tomato juice: He had no kitchen equipment beyond a coffee maker but prided himself on keeping the refrigerator well stocked with mixers.
He mixed his Bloody Mary, and then stood in the kitchen, taking long pulls of his drink, thinking about how Linda was probably standing on the corner, hoping to flag down a cab. Good luck, he thought. It wasn’t easy finding a taxi in Alexandria on a Sunday … If he wanted to, he could pull on some clothes, run downstairs, and likely catch her before she was gone—
If he wanted to …
He thought about it; how he felt. Goddamn, what he felt was relief.
He drained his glass, rinsed it out in the sink, then went back through the apartment to the bathroom off the bedroom, to shower and shave. In the bedroom he paused to grab his smokes off the nightstand, lit one, and took it with him into the tiled bathroom.
He switched on the light. “Shit!”
Floating in the sudsy water in the stoppered sink were her pale blue lace panties. He stared at the damned things a moment, then sagged against the bathroom doorjamb. She’s really gone, he realized, closing his eyes, feeling tired and dizzy.
Has to be the drink, he told himself. Gotta be a damn fool to gulp down a drink like that on an empty stomach. No wonder you feel so unsettled; so bad…
The awful way he was feeling had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she was gone, he told himself. Dammit, absolutely nothing!
He snapped his cigarette into the toilet bowl. Then, swearing savagely, he scooped the panties out of the sink and ran with them dripping a water trail across the carpet into the kitchen, where he tossed them into the trash.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
(One)
Burbank, California
12 January 1957
It was six-fifteen on a smog gray Wednesday morning when Herman Gold nosed his Cadillac into the Desert-Vue Diner’s lot. He found a parking spot between a taxicab and a delivery truck, near the door to the aluminum and pink railroad car eatery. As he walked toward the diner’s entrance he thought that whatever desert this joint might once have “vued” had long since vanished.
The diner’s rectangular patch of asphalt was bordered by a hardware store and a dry cleaner. Across the street was a used car lot where a line of elderly De Sotos, Packards, and Ramblers sat quietly rusting under tattered, flapping pennants. Behind the diner, green trash dumpsters had replaced the dunes.
As Gold went into the diner he was hit by the smell of burned grease and cigar smoke. Behind the counter a middle-aged waitress was dishing out doughnuts and refilling coffee mugs while the short-order cook was frantic at his bank of toasters and sizzling grill. The counter stools were all occupied by sleepy-eyed, quiet men in work clothes, eating or smoking, while hunched over their coffee.
Opposite the counter was a row of red vinyl upholstered booths, their windows overlooking the parking lot. None of the booths were occupied, Gold noticed, except for the one at the far end, where Tim Campbell sat waiting for him.
“Good morning, Herman,” Campbell said, standing up to shake hands. “Long time no see, amigo.”
“Yeah, it has been a long time,” Gold said. “You’re looking well.” Campbell was in his mid-fifties, short and stocky, with a full head (damn the sonofabitch) of gray-tinged auburn hair, slicked down and parted in the middle. This morning he was looking natty in a gray and black striped three-piece suit, yellow shirt, and too much jewelry: gold I.D. bracelet, gold watch, diamond pinky ring, and diamond stickpin glittering in his purple and ivory paisley tie.
“Well, sit down, Herman,” Campbell said.
Gold hesitated, glancing down at the cracked vinyl to make sure there wasn’t smeared egg yolk, or something else on it. He happened to be wearing a new blue cashmere blazer, and it was likely going to have to go to the cleaners just from absorbing the odors in this place.
“Congratulations on your daughter’s marriage,” Campbell said as they settled in. “Don Harrison’s a great guy. I’m sure they’ll be happy together.”
“Thank you,” Gold said, feeling uncomfortable because his ex-partner hadn’t been invited. “It was just a small ceremony. You know, the family, and —” And a few close friends, he’d almost said, grateful that the waitress had chosen that moment to come take their orders.
Campbell ordered the breakfast special: scrambled eggs, ham, home-fries, English muffin. Gold just ordered toast and coffee.
“You oughta eat,” Campbell chided. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day—”
“We decided to meet here because it was convenient to both of our offices, not for the cuisine,” Gold replied. GAT was close by, and although Amalgamated-Landis had manufacturing plants scattered around the Los Angeles area as far away as Long Beach and El Segundo, its executive offices were in Burbank. “I haven’t been in a joint like this in thirty years.”
“Ah, I ate in places like this all the time when I was kid,” Campbell sighed, sounding astoundingly sentimental about it. “As a matter of fact, I met my wife in a place like this. She was working the counter at a coffee shop near the L.A. State Normal school campus. I used to stop in there for coffee when I was working my way through night school.”
Gold nodded. He knew that like himself, Campbell was a self-made man. Tim had run away from his poverty-level Providence, Rhode Island home when he was twelve, riding the rails across America until he was caught by the authorities, and committed to a midwestern youth camp, where he’d received a basic education. When he was sixteen he left the camp, going to work as a clerk for Western Union, at first in Tulsa, and later in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, he took night school courses in accounting and bookkeeping, eventually landing a bank teller’s position at the Pacific Coast Bank in downtown L.A., where he’d worked himself up to junior loan officer by the time Gold had met him. Then Campbell left the bank to come to work for GAT. The rest, as they say, is history.
“That your car?” Campbell asked, looking out the win-down at the fiery red and gleaming chrome El Dorado convertible.
“Good guess,” Gold said dryly, eyeing the battered autos and work vehicles that surrounded his shiny new toy.
“Nice,” Campbell sniffed. “That’s what I’m driving, over there—” He proudly gestured toward the dove gray, Mercedes-Benz 300 SL gull-winged coupe, parked on a diagonal, taking up two spaces in the crowded lot.
“I test-drove one of those,” Gold sa
id. “At the Mercedes place over on Wilshire.” He made a face. “It was okay. A little small for my tastes. But I ordered one for Erica.”
The waitress came with the food. Gold glanced distastefully at his toast. It was dripping with butter. At least, he hoped it was butter.
“Should’a ordered butter on the side,” Campbell observed as he dug into his ham and eggs.
“You said that you needed to talk to me about something?” Gold asked, glancing at his watch.
Campbell nodded. “First off, I wanted to offer you my congratulations, and assure you that I harbor no grudge over the way GAT beat the shit out of Amalgamated-Landis concerning the jetliner competition.”
“Thank you,” Gold said, and then added carefully, “Tim, I heard that you were canceling production of your AL-12 …?”
“Well, you got all the orders from the airlines,” Campbell said. “What was the point of building an airplane nobody wants?”
Gold, assuming that was a rhetorical question, just sipped at his coffee, which wasn’t bad.
“Of course, what really killed us was that Civil Aeronautics Board investigation …” Campbel set down his fork to study Gold. “Of course, you had nothing to do with that?”
Gold shrugged. “How could I have?”
Campbell smiled, resumed eating. “Just what I thought, Herman, old buddy. How could you have?”
“Well,” Gold said. “If there’s nothing else, Tim, I ought to get going—”
“There is something else.” Campbell set down his knife and fork, and took out of his coat pocket a silver and onyx cigarette case with matching lighter. “The reason I asked you here was to make you a proposition.”
“What kind of proposition?”
Campbell took a cigarette from the case and lit it. “How’d you like to sell me some airplanes?”
Gold burst out laughing. “I’ve heard of selling ice boxes to Eskimos, but never anything as farfetched as GAT selling airplanes to Amalgamated-Landis.”
Campbell smiled indulgently. “Actually, what I meant was, how would GAT like to sell some airplanes to Sky-world?”
Gold wondered: What the hell are you up to, Timmy? Skyworld Airlines had been the “transport” part of Gold Aviation and Transport, before Campbell had parted with the airline back in ‘33, after that major stock battle between the two partners.
“By the way,” Campbell said. “While we’re on the subject of Skyworld, Hull says hello.”
Gold nodded. Hull Stiles was Gold’s old buddy from his barnstorming days. Hull had been with GAT from the beginning, but he was an air transport man, not an aircraft builder, and so had chosen to go with Tim Campbell after the split. Campbell became the president of Skyworld, and Hull Stiles became the airline’s CEO. Thanks to the two of them, Skyworld prospered, easily weathering out the turbulence of 1934, when FDR’s administration charged that the entire air transport industry was operating as an illegal cartel. That was the year that the Feds invited new bids on domestic air route assignments, but stipulated that no airline that had previously held a route could participate. The airlines got around that by simply changing their names. Skyworld Airlines, for instance, became Skyworld, Incorporated on its new papers. A potentially more serious restriction was that no route contract would be awarded to any airline that still employed the same top-level people in its executive suite. Campbell got around that by resigning his position as president and putting Hull Stiles in full charge. Meanwhile, Tim stayed on, taking no salary, as Skyworld’s chairman emeritus. Technically, he was no longer employed by the airline; he was merely an investor, but Hull remained Campbell’s puppet, and no decision concerning Skyworld was made without Campbell’s approval.
“I had lunch with Hull a few weeks ago,” Gold said. He got together with his old friend regularly, and knew that Hull didn’t mind being Tim’s second. Hull enjoyed the nuts-and-bolts side of running the airline. Tim occupied himself with what he called “the big picture.”
“But let’s get back to your intriguing request to buy some airplanes from me,” Gold suggested, signaling the waitress for a coffee refill. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
“Easy enough,” Campbell replied. “In the beginning, naturally, I expected Skyworld to buy AL-12 jetliners from Amalgamated-Landis.”
“Naturally, since you have controlling interests in both companies,” Gold smiled.
“Skyworld was at the top of A-L’s order list,” Campbell added. “And stayed loyal right through the CAB scare.”
Gold grinned to himself as he remembered how upset Hull Stiles had been about that. Hull had complained that all the other airlines were canceling their orders for the suddenly controversial AL-12, and was worried that if Skyworld ended up being the only airline equipped with the jetliner, the traveling public would stay away.
“But when all the other airlines deserted us in favor of buying your GC-909, I saw the handwriting on the wall,” Campbell continued. “I knew we couldn’t allow A-L to go broke tooling up a production line to build airplanes exclusively for Skyworld. But when Amalgamated canceled the AL-12, Skyworld was faced with a new predicament—”
Gold nodded. “Canceling the AL-12 left Skyworld without any jetliners on order.”
“And so, as hard as it is for me to accept,” Campbell said, smiling wryly, “I now find myself sitting across from you, and asking if you’ll sell me some airplanes. So what do you say?”
“There’s no problem in my selling you 909s, Tim,” Gold began. “But I can’t promise you when you’ll get them. GAT’s commercial transport division is working at full capacity, but I’ve still got a three-year order backlog. All I can do is put Skyworld at the bottom of the list.”
“Come on, Herman,” Campbell scowled, disgusted. “All I want is a half dozen airplanes, and you’re telling me I’m not gonna see ‘em until 1960, for chrissakes.”
“I don’t see a way around that,” Gold said firmly.
“Maybe Skyworld oughta buy from Boeing or Douglas …”
“That’s not much of a threat,” Gold replied, thinking that Boeing’s 707 had made its maiden flight, but that it was going to be some time before the Seattle-based aircraft manufacturer could gear up to fill commercial orders. Douglas was even further behind concerning its DC-8 jetliner.
“The competition is definitely on my heels with some fine airplanes,” Gold acknowledged, “but at this moment, GAT is the only game in town when it comes to commercial jets. If you want some, you’re just going to have to wait your turn.”
“Now hold on, Herman,” Campbell said, looking worried. “Maybe we can negotiate a way out of this unhappy situation …”
Gold shrugged. “I’m listening.”
“You just told me that GAT is operating at full capacity?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you’re years away from filling all your orders, and meanwhile you know that Boeing and Douglas are breathing down your neck, doing all they can to gear up to start stealing away the bottom two-thirds of your waiting list …”
“It’s the price of success, I suppose,” Gold replied. “We thought about subcontracting out the airframe manufacturing process, but the economics aren’t there.”
“That’s right,” Campbell agreed. “Subcontracting is out of the question when you’re talking about an airplane like the 909, but what about outright taking over new manufacturing capacity?”
Gold shook his head. “Once again, the cost would be enormous—”
“Without a major cash outlay?”
“Get to the point, Tim.”
“The point is that I’m desperate for those airplanes,” Campbell said. “Skyworld’s lifeblood is its domestic routes, especially its New York to Florida runs. A lot of our Northeast corridor competition is due to receive their 909s. Sky-world is not going to make it if all it can fly are prop planes. What I want you to do is push Skyworld to the top of your list, and in the meantime find a way to temporarily snitch a couple of 909
s from somebody else’s order, and immediately lend them to us, so that Skyworld can be first on its block with jet aircraft.”
Gold thought: It was certainly feasible. GAT was about to deliver a large order—five 909s and ten intercontinental 909s—to Trans European Airlines, but the largely international carrier was entering into its post-holiday winter doldrums, while Skyworld was beginning its New York to Florida winter rush. TEA wouldn’t need its full order until spring, which would roughly coincide with Skyworld’s slower period, and by then, if GAT put Skyworld at the top of its list, the airline could take possession of some 909s of its own.
“Okay, I could do that for you,” Gold said. “Now tell me why I should?”
“Because Skyworld will pay you a substantial leasing fee, and I, personally, will trade you three hundred thousand shares of Amalgamated-Landis, and give you an option on another two hundred fifty thousand shares, in exchange for two hundred fifty thousand shares of GAT.”
“That would make me the major stockholder in your company,” Gold said.
“And if you exercised your option you could take outright control,” Campbell added. “Then, by selling off A-L assets you could finance the retooling of our Long Beach commercial transport plant complex, providing GAT with the extra 909 manufacturing capacity it so desperately needs to fill its orders before Boeing and Douglas can get into the act.”
“The deal you’re offering me will cost you a fortune,” Gold pointed out.
“Sometimes you’ve got to spend money to make money,” Campbell philosophically replied. “Let me be frank. When the Civil Aeronautics Board came after A-L the price of the company’s stock fell; it fell even further when we announced we were canceling our AL-12 program …”
“In other words, you’re taking a bath, and want to cut your losses by getting out,” Gold said.