The Devil Wears Wings

by Harry Whittington

  She twisted her hands. "Why must you be cruel, Buz? To yourself and to me. Greenie did want to hire you. He was looking for you. But whether he was or not, it's too good a job to pass up."

  "I don't need you to go around begging jobs for me from my old friends," I said. "If there's anything you'd do well to remember, Judy, that's it."

  "I don't want your help."

  "What do you want, Buz?" Her eyes shimmered with tears.

  I stared at her, knowing I loved her more than anyone else had ever loved. Thousands of unfortunates are born with defects; mine was that I could love only this one girl. Hell, didn't I stay with Jimmy Clark for one more reason- she was his stepdaughter, and every third day she came into Sunpark and there was a chance to see her. You see, what you do is, you bang your head against a wall and keep banging it. But I knew how hopeless it was, too. Jimmy Clark had even told me frequently about the young pilot Judy dated in New York, all for my own good, of course.

  My trouble was that you can live only so long with hopelessness and frustration. Then you start to hit back. The hell of it is you hit at the one you love. You want to flog that love to death, get it away from you, so you don't have to look at it any more. Well, I'd pretty much done that with Judy by now. Sometimes when she was in Sunpark between flights, we didn't see each other at all. She would call me and we would talk maybe thirty minutes, but about the time it seemed as if we had to see each other, the hurt would creep in, and one of us would hang up. It had been almost two weeks this time since I'd last seen Judy, except in the distance, except talking with Jimmy Clark, going out with her flight-to New York and her stalwart young pilot whom she never mentioned, but about whom I got all the late news from Jimmy Clark.

  I pulled my gaze away from her and glared around the lobby. Sid Coates was standing near the entrance of the coffee shop. When he saw me recognize him, he grinned and walked toward us.

  Angrily, I shook my head at him motioning him away. He was all I didn't need at that moment.

  Judy turned, glancing toward Coates. She frowned. "Who is that man, Buz?"

  "How do I know?"

  "He knows you."

  "So what? Everybody knows me. Buz Johnson. Big war ace. Ask Jimmy Clark."

  "Please, Buz." She was watching Coates, still frowning. She sighed. "Buz, take that job."

  "Why? You want me out of town?"

  "I want you at work, Buz. Doing something you love. Gaining back your dignity and your self-respect."

  "Sure. You'd like me to go down there and live on Greenie's charity, wouldn't you? Well. To hell with it. If I could go down there on equal terms with him, the way we were… Forget it, Judy, and from now on, quit begging jobs and charity for me."

  "Buz, I didn't. I didn't."

  I got up and walked away, leaving her sitting there.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Coates and I flew over this little back-country town the following Tuesday afternoon. For a change he kept his mouth shut most of the flight and I was glad. We couldn't spend too much time circling the town and though he swore he had cased it thoroughly, I wanted to get as clear a picture as possible in one quick run.

  Fort Dale…

  I observed carefully as we cruised over it. It was scarcely more than a village, like something somebody had hastily thrown together beside one of the cross-state highways, a place where a man could stop for a tank of gas, or a quick meal if he were desperately hungry. The main drag crossed the highway and the intersection showed four filling stations and a pigeon-pocked traffic signal that blinked day and night at nothing. To the east of the highway, this red-brick street ran past a few old houses and ended at a river where the bridge had collapsed and never been repaired. Beyond the river, cattle grazed in endless, flat, tan fields and birds grew fat in their wake.

  This end of the street didn't interest me too much, but it was nice to know in advance that the street came to a dead end at the river. It was west of the highway, west of the four-block business section, west of the bank… My heart pounded crazily when Coates nudged me and pointed out a narrow, red-brick building on a northwest comer. You'd never believe a carton like that would contain anything like two or three hundred grand. This back-country was deceptive. The people who lived out here made a lot of money from cattle and lumber and farming and orange groves and they were a hundred miles from the nearest city where they might really spend it in considerable amounts. Fort Dale offered one movie theatre that operated three times a week, a couple of beer halls, a drugstore, and probably not even one really professional whore in the whole town.

  I took it all in. I could not afford to be vague about anything down there. I made a pass over the place, took a long turn and did it again. I saw motel signs glittering in the metallic white sunlight, cars lining the hot streets, but mostly I saw the bank there, waiting for me. I lifted the Cessna and levelled out, cruising at less than a hundred.

  "How does it look?" Coates said.

  "It looks all right."

  "No. I mean does it please you? The field I picked out to stash the plane is about half a mile west of the bank. There's a small farmhouse across the side road from the field but trees shield it so they couldn't see the field unless they happened to be out looking."

  "All right."

  "Does it please you?"

  "I said okay."

  "It looks all right to me. It's a long way from the nearest city. They'd be as likely to believe a man from Mars had landed if we came in by air. It looks fine to me. Of course if you don't buy it, we can case a few more towns-but I went over this one. I know the way in, the way out. How long it takes to get from the field to town-"

  "And back?"

  "We should be riding back in that stolen car."

  "And the cops?"

  "Except for the state patrol, there's a sheriff and a constable. We have to figure how to take them out of the game, and then as far as I'm concerned we're ready to pick up the marbles."

  I didn't say anything.

  "What's eating you now?" Coates wanted to know.

  "Nothing."

  "You like the place or not?"

  I nodded. "It looks all right to me-from up here."

  "And it looks even better when you're down there. I know, Buz. I've been over it. All of it. I drew out the plan from the field to town. It looks better down there. You want to drive over and look over it?"

  "No. You've been over here already. I don't think we ought to fool around over here too much. Hicks in Hickville got an awful way of noticing every new man that walks into town."

  "That's the way I feel. But I want you to buy the deal."

  I exhaled, turning south by west. "When we've been over it a few times, maybe I'll buy it. The main thing I like about it right now is that there is no airport within fifty miles. When we take off, nobody's going to take off after us. No airport. No pursuit. That's what I like."

  He laughed. "A hundred thousand waiting for us to pick it up. That's what I like."

  I didn't say anything. We cruised back toward Sunpark and we were both thoughtful. Finally Coates laughed. "Man, I don't read you. First, you wouldn't touch this deal. Then you take over like it was born in you. And suddenly now you got nothing to say."

  "I'm trying to think."

  "What's there to think about?"

  "There's plenty to think about, all right." I stared below at a small

  town about thirty miles inland from Sunpark.

  "That's Berry Town down there. Right?"

  "Hell. How do I know?"

  "You sure as hell better know. You better know everything there is to know about this country." I circled the town and flew over the airport, and then about six miles from this small town airfield with its half-dozen sport planes and forlorn windsock, I found what I was looking for.

  I pointed it out to Coates. "Down there. An abandoned air strip. I thought I remembered landing in a spot like this once."

  "Looks full of potholes. Would you try to land on it?"
r />   "Nothing is easy, friend. I've landed in bigger potholes."

  "Sure." Coates laughed. "That was why I wanted in this thing with you."

  "Yeah," I said. "Now if we could figure why I wanted to have anything to do with you, we'd have it made."

  "Because I'm the guy that will be there when you pull it off, that's why. I'm what you needed to get you started on a deal like this." He shook his head. "Only thing that beats me, Buz, is what made you change your mind."

  I turned back toward Sunpark again and for a moment I didn't answer. Maybe because I didn't have the answer myself. The surest answer was that I could use a share of a hundred grand. But this wasn't the answer, didn't approach the answer. Why had I walked away from Judy with my mind made up to join Sid Coates in this robbery? Maybe it was because being around Judy now left me angered and frustrated, hating myself as much as anybody else, and needing violence. She was all I wanted, she was all I was never going to have. But a caper like this. No, I couldn't blame Judy because I was in it.

  It had whirled and wheeled around in my brain for those two days, but it became a cold, hard knot, like an obstruction in my thinking processes while I was talking to Greenie. I made up my mind while I talked to him that I couldn't go down to South America, because I was a drunk digging his grave here in Sunpark. I wouldn't last. I needed something that would prove I still had strength and ability. Then, if I ever did go to work for Greenie in South America, I'd have a stake. I wouldn't be accepting his charity. If there had to be a reason for knocking over that bank in Fort Dale with Coates, that would have to be it.

  Only I knew this wasn't all of it, either.

  I envied Greenie. He'd had the look and feel of success about him; it was in the clothes he wore, the scent of expensive cigars and good aftershave lotion, the masculine deodorant that protected you without ostracizing you. He had everything I wanted-even to the haggard sleepless look in his eyes. He wasn't getting enough rest because he was working too hard at the one career he loved to take sack time. I wanted that. I hurt in my guts wanting to be slaving at something I loved. Hell, what I wanted was simple enough: I wanted a job that kept me busy around the clock, let me accomplish something. You could take everything else and you could ram it.

  But the one thing Greenie had, I wanted most of all. The contempt he had for whisky. Christ, I trembled when I thought of being like that, not needing the stuff, not nursing the bottle, refusing a drink not because you were stuffy, but because you were high enough without it.

  This was in my mind all the time. I had to let Greenie know that I didn't need Old Taylor for a crutch, because nothing can sour a man on you quicker than pity.

  I glanced at the cars racing on the highway below me, a bunch of bastards down there, hurrying to nothing. Those sons of bitches who didn't care, and if they cared, they wanted to drag you down to their level just to show you how little they cared. I hated those ground-locked bastards and I wanted to show them I could make monkeys out of them. Monkeys on strings. Monkeys on leashes. Monkeys on ends of dirty sticks. And I wanted to prove something to myself. I didn't know exactly what it was, but when it was proved, I'd know it. I'd walk nine feet tall.

  I glanced at Coates. I wasn't about to say any of this to him. Even if I could have said it, if I could string the words together so he would understand even part of what I meant, he wouldn't want to hear it. He wouldn't care.

  I laughed. "I like the color of your eyes, baby," I said. "That's why."

  "Sure you do," Coates said in a complacent voice. "How could you help it?"

  ***

  I had checked into Sid Coates and what he really was as well as I could.

  It was pretty easy to do in Sunpark. He had been born here, and drank in any alcohol dispensary, played pool anywhere there was a billiard table, picked up any girl who glanced back at him on the street.

  I spent the next few days after talking with Greenie trying to find out what made Coates tick. I can't say I found this out. What I found out was why he failed to tick at all.

  He was an only child. His father was a circuit judge and his mother a clubwoman. As a child, Sid had a large store of energy and demanded a lot of attention. The world was a gay little place and he was the center of it.

  By the time he was seven he began his career in military school. His mother was too delicate to cope with him-she got so that she was actually terrified of hearing what he had done next-and his father was too busy. They found the first of many military schools, and off he went. He was home only for a few days in the summer before they shipped him off alone to a summer military camp.

  No matter what he asked his parents-those polite strangers whom he saw infrequently as he grew up-they answered him with a five dollar bill.

  His first trouble was quite serious. He stole a car at thirteen and then charmed his way out of a term in reformatory. When he flunked out of his eighth or tenth military school he hitchhiked to Mexico City, a tall, gangling sixteen-year-old. He stayed down there two years, got into some kind of trouble with the city government and returned to New Orleans on a shrimp boat.

  In Mexico City he learned to hate the refined forms of work only slightly more than he hated physical labor. He returned to Sunpark, managed to blackmail his father into paying him three thousand a year just to live away from the house. He went to the university, flunked out, returned home to find his father now refusing to aid him at all. He needed a lot of money for liquor, transient girls and new clothes. Whatever he got now he collected in niggardly amounts from his mother.

  He said now, giggling a little, "I hear all over town that you were around asking about me. They thought you were an investigator from the credit bureau."

  "I wanted to find out something about you."

  "Did you?"

  "I found out you're a first-class son of a bitch."

  "Hell, I'm just sorry you went to so much trouble."

  "Well now I know."

  "Yes, but, ole buddy, I could have told you anything you wanted to know. Been pleased to do it."

  ***

  I got an okay from the control tower at Sunpark and put the Cessna down. I taxied to the hangar and for a moment glued my gaze on that sign and Jimmy Clark's smiling face. I felt my stomach muscles constrict.

  "Wait'll I pay Clark for this flight," Coates said. "I'll buy you a drink. We got to keep this looking like flying lessons."

  I nodded and he strode into the hangar with that crazy loose-gaited walk that made him look as if his mother had been frightened in pregnancy by a rag doll. I shrugged out of my leather jacket and stood in the shadow of Clark's sign, waiting for him.

  He opened the door to Clark's office and then stepped back. Judy passed him, coming out of there.

  My heart went into a tailspin. It made me physically ill to see her now with what I had on my conscience. I turned quickly as if I were checking the Cessna, hoping she wouldn't come near me.

  My luck is all bad. I heard her heels on the cement. I could smell her, I could feel her nearness.

  "Hi."

  I turned. I didn't try to smile. I hadn't seen her for almost a week-an eternity.

  I jerked my head toward Clark's office. "You mean you and your mother haven't disinherited that character yet?"

  She smiled, reached out to touch my arm. I took one step back. This put the sun in my face. I didn't move. My eyes burned anyhow.

  "You were with that odd-looking character," Judy said. "I thought you told me you didn't know him."

  "I don't. I teach him to fly. I teach all Clark's pupils to fly. If I didn't, he'd teach them himself and they'd kill themselves even quicker."

  "I wish you didn't hate Jimmy so terribly." There was an odd look in her face.

  "I wish I didn't too," I said. "But we might as well face it. He turns it to clabber. He affects everybody but you and your mother that way."

  "Why, Buz, that isn't true. He's well-liked. Respected."

  "Has he been telling you this?"


  She giggled in spite of herself. She glanced over her shoulder. "I don't like your friend, Buz. I wish you'd stay away from him."

  "How about that? If we don't have something to fight about, we make up something."

  "I'm sorry, Buz. I'm only thinking about you."

  "I think about you-but that gets me nowhere, either."

  Her face flushed. "That's your fault, Buz. Once I'd have married you in two minutes. I wouldn't even listen to what Jimmy told me. But-no. Would you still love me when I was the only gray-haired stewardess in the business?"

  My voice matched hers. "It won't be that way. Give me a chance, Judy. Give me a chance."

  She frowned, staring into my eyes. I pulled my gaze away. Her voice was very low as if she were frightened and didn't know what made her afraid. "Be careful, Buz. You hear? Don't be a fool. Please don't be a fool."

  CHAPTER TEN

  I didn't sleep that night and got out of bed the next morning before six. Coates and I were up until three A.M. going over our plan, going over the town of Fort Dale until we knew it better than its mayor. We found out how long it would take us to stroll, casually and apparently even a little intoxicated, a half-mile. We discussed endlessly how we could nullify the effectiveness of the Fort Dale sheriff and constable. We hit on a lot of plans, and settled on the simplest; somehow we would get arrested and in a police car. We decided how long we would have to be in the bank. Surprise was going to work for us; we could count on getting in and out of there under ten minutes. I went over everything with him until he slapped his hands over his ears at the sound of my voice. The whole operation had to have a casualness about it. Part of it we would have to play by ear, but I left no more to chance than I had to.