“I haven’t figured that out yet, but I’ll know by morning.” I floated her a smile but she wasn’t buying.
“Seriously. What about all this?” she asked, gesturing between us with an open hand. “What are we going to tell him about us?”
I thought that over for a second. “I don’t think Frank’s gonna handle it well no matter what I say.”
“I wouldn’t expect him to.”
“Most guys would understand—but it’s been a long time. Things change.”
“Do they?” she replied, piqued. “Are you saying you don’t love me now?”
“Whoa, Silver, who said anything about that?” I could hear the incredulity rising in my voice as I spoke.
“Well, what’s all this about things changing then?”
The plane hit a dip then, dropped a few feet. I leveled her back out, gave Helen a what the hell? look. “You are Frank’s girlfriend, honey.”
“Now there’s something we can talk about changing.”
I cocked my head, making sure I’d heard her correctly over the props.
“Just what exactly are you saying, that you don’t want to go back to him?”
“I’m saying that you and I had something once, something wonderful, something I’ve never felt before—or since. And if you aren’t willing to fight for that, Joe Buonomo, you aren’t the man I thought you were.”
I sat there, trying to get my head around the idea that she wanted to be with a freight jockey instead of the most famous and wealthy entertainer on Earth.
“Well … ?” she intoned.
“You’ve got to give me a second here … Frank is my friend …”
“And I want to be your lover. Besides, I didn’t hear you calling Frank’s name out in the dark when you were kissing me at the Casino.”
“That was different … I was just so happy to see you.”
She laughed, then smiled at me. “Yeah. Don’t think I couldn’t feel how happy you were.”
I grinned back. She had me but I had to try. “Helen …”
“Yes, love?”
We hit another, bigger air pocket then, the plane shuddering as it bounced through the increasingly rocky sky.
“Look, darling, first we have to work this whole—”
“Let me make it easy for you,” she said, a huntress’s look gleaming in her eyes as she unbuckled her seat belt.
In a flash she’d slithered over to my seat, straddling me in the confined space, pinning my wrists to my sides. The top button of her blouse had come undone, things beneath brimming near the opening.
“Goddamn you, Joe, you want me, you know you do. Don’t deny it,” she whispered, pressing her face against mine, staring deep into my eyes.
I leaned back, struggling to resist her, turning my face away. She stayed on the attack, sliding sideways toward me, soft fingers caressing my cheek.
I started to raise a hand in protest. Then I just gave in to her. She pounced at the opening, smothering me with deep, lustful kisses, a low moan tickling my ear as the Electra rolled into a bank, curving off course and down in the angry night sky.
Palm Springs was suddenly far away. Very far away.
49
I loved every second of it—all seven of them. Then the sheer, insane danger of what we were doing shook me from my stupor. Entering mountainous terrain at night—and in rough air—was no time to re-up our membership in the Mile High Club. I just couldn’t let it go on.
Reaching around her, I rolled wings-level and pulled back on the controls with one hand, clasping the other around her back. Well above us, the moon shone bright and clear, its luminous beams bathing the cockpit in silver light, painting Helen’s face pale blue as she gazed hungrily into my eyes.
My head was spinning—and it wasn’t from the turbulence. A gorgeous woman, one I’d risked my life over repeatedly, one I loved madly, was sitting in my lap begging me to take her. And what was I doing? Taking her to somebody else.
I had no idea what I was doing any longer, whether keeping her or giving her back made me the bigger fool, but I knew if I kept forging ahead to the airport I could sort it all out on the ground.
Somehow I got myself together in the midst of the emotional tempest she had conjured within me. I sat up and slung her across my seat, wiping away beads of sweat that had broken out on my brow. “Helen, listen to me. I know what we talked about, I know what we had and I want that back—but not this way.”
She pressed her hand to my cheek again, stroking it. “Baby, turn around, fly us away. Anywhere, anywhere at all, let’s just go away together—please.”
I grabbed her hand, pulling it down to her lap. “The only place we’re going is to Palm Springs. We’re going to clear up this entire mess—and it’s going to involve the police, I’m afraid. Then we’ll see about us, but Frank is my friend, and I am not going to steal you away in the night like a Trojan bride.”
“But Joe—”
“But nothing. You want this to work, you do it my way. Okay, lady?”
Her face drooped a little, then she forced a bitter smile. “All right,” she said in resignation, “if that’s how you want it.”
“Yeah, that’s how it’s gotta go down.”
She just looked at me, flummoxed, bemused. “It’s never easy with you, Buonomo, is it?”
“Never.”
* * *
The worn tops of the San Bernardino range began creeping into view as we approached the Banning Pass, a narrow channel cut through the black-brown crags that guard the entrance to the Coachella Valley beyond. The visibility was great, but the continuous thumps and unpredictable jarring were going to demand all my attention on the way down.
“Honey, I’m sorry but playtime’s over. We’ve got to start down—better take your seat … and button up your blouse, for Christ’s sake.”
I pulled back on the throttles, initiating a slow descent, my eyes locked on the path ahead—sort of.
“Like what you see, don’t you?” she teased, bending down enticingly as she sat across from me.
“Ave Maria,” I said, shaking my head.
* * *
Passing seven thousand feet, I began picking up the lights of Palm Springs and the other smaller communities scattered across the desert floor. I located the airport a few seconds later, the dim outline of the runway glowing murkily through the wind-borne layer of dust. Just then, Helen touched my hand. When I turned toward her, she was staring at me, her face pulled tight, her lips pursed.
“Baby …” she said.
“Yes?”
“There’s something I have to tell you … about the film I took. There’s more.”
The turbulence had increased dramatically as I navigated through the pass, which was a natural wind tunnel even on the best of days. Heavy jolts were rocking the Electra repeatedly now, the airspeed fluctuating 10 to 20 mph in the gusts.
“Sorry, darling,” I said. “It’s going to be ugly from here on in. I want to hear, but it has to wait until we get on the ground. We’re only fifteen miles out.”
“Do we have to land there?” She was pleading, not kidding.
“Yes.”
The aircraft hit another pocket then, dropping a quick hundred feet. We both lurched forward as the plane dove down the invisible gulley, then jerked sideways in another brutal gust.
I heard a distinct metal pinging sound, followed by another, and caught a blur of metallic green from the corner of my eye.
“Oh shit!” Helen said. “The film fell out of my purse.”
“Don’t sweat it, baby, you can grab it after we land,” I said above the noise of the screeching wind outside.
But she was already up and moving past me unsteadily in a crouch.
“Honey, if it unravels, it’ll be a mess. It’s just out of reach here; I’ll have it in a second.”
We hit a nasty updraft at that moment, the nose of the aircraft pitching upward abruptly. I grabbed Helen’s waist to steady her and, in a what the hel
l moment, pulled her onto my lap and kissed her. I shouldn’t have done it, but for all I knew it was for the last time. We locked eyes for several seconds, sinners’ smiles on our lips.
I heard a few more pings as the film canister banged its way toward the back of the aircraft. I laughed at the sound; what did I care about that damn film anyhow?
Helen squeezed my lips with her fingers, grinning at me as she pulled herself free. “You just hold this crate steady for ten seconds and I’ll get that film. I am not going to have you looking at those frames while I roll that thing back up.”
She grabbed the handhold next to the bulkhead and stood up.
Then she didn’t move. Not one inch.
I checked the flight path through the windshield then looked up at her. Her eyes were transfixed, her features wooden. Before I could say a word, a voice boomed from the cargo bay, “This what you’re looking for, honey?”
50
Primal reaction gripped me instantly, before my brain could even process the situation. A jolt of cold adrenaline shot through my body as I turned to see a brick wall of a man lurching forward with a film canister in his left hand and a very large pistol in his right.
The moonlight blued his hard features and nickel-plated gun. He was grinning like a court jester—a cold, ugly smile. In that millisecond, I picked up a whiff of his awful cologne and recalled that lantern jaw from our previous encounter.
Carmine Ratello.
He started into some standard bad guy speech. “Flyboy, you just put this thing down easy or the broad is—”
I didn’t hesitate—just too many years of combat flying. That perfumed pagliaccio got the blackjacking and the jewelry hit, but this time I was calling the play.
I snatched Helen by the waist and pulled her down while grabbing the yoke and hauling it back hard. The plane’s attitude shot up twenty degrees in an instant, shoving the gravity load downward and aft.
Ratello careened backward, half off his feet, discharging his cannon into the aircraft ceiling several times as he went, flashes of white lightning searing the cabin as the explosion of gunfire reverberated throughout the confined metal shell of the Electra.
I released the yoke then and brought my hand to the butt of the .45, yanking it free from its holster and flicking the safety off in a move practiced ten thousand times.
Arching over my seat, I windmilled my arm over my head and down in one fluid motion, craning my neck back until I picked out the bulk of his thick, stumbling body.
I fired three times.
The first shot was high. The second blew off an ear. The third hit him in the throat.
His head jerked back and his hands flew up involuntarily with the impacts, a dark spray of blood issuing from his neck as he staggered back in shock, his finger squeezing the trigger of a gun he no longer held.
Ratello’s dying eyes met mine momentarily then rolled into his head as his legs gave way, an awful, gurgling hiss escaping from his mouth as he tumbled down. He crashed heavily to the floor and slid downhill, folding up against the aft bulkhead like a runaway barge on a bridge piling.
I twisted around, pushed forward on the yoke to get the nose down, and reached for Helen’s arm to help her to her seat. Fear distorted her face as she looked up at me, but she gathered herself quickly and sat down as I stowed the gun.
The plane had banked sharply and shed thirty knots in the sudden climb, putting the aircraft close to an accelerated stall. We were coming back down through the horizon now, but still nose high. The altimeter blurred through 4,300, then 4,200, then 4,100 feet in a steady plunge. That was not good.
I rolled wings level and gave the control wheel a shove full forward. The plane mushed down, the airspeed picking up a bit, but she still handled like she was on the ragged edge.
Ratello again.
It had to be his dead bulk, two hundred twenty plus pounds, at the most rearward part of the aircraft, pushing the center of gravity out of limits.
“Helen,” I said, “I need you to take the controls for a minute while I pull him forward. His weight is making us tail heavy. Keep the nose down and watch the airspeed—I’ll be right back.”
She just stared at me a second, then said, “Okay,” without much conviction.
I released my seat belt, swung around, and raised myself into a crouch.
A fist rocketed out of the darkness and exploded against my jaw, an eruption of stars obliterating my vision as a man yelled out, “Muthahfuckah!” in a Brooklyn accent.
I collapsed backward across my seat against the sidewall of the cockpit, banging my head hard against the window frame. I heard Helen shriek as I struggled to sit upright, still recoiling from the pain and shock.
Then Johnny Spazzo leaned down toward me, snaked his arms behind my neck in a hammerlock, and wrenched me toward the back of the seat.
“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!” he shouted, hot spittle flying out of his mouth onto my neck and face.
He pulled my arms backward until I felt they were going to snap off, at the same time shoving my head down and away with his forearm.
Helen turned to face Spazzo, looking like she was going to take a swing at him. He gave her a vicious kick across her upraised arm that sent her sprawling as she let out a banshee wail of pain.
Her leg flew up against the throttle quadrant as she fell, knocking the starboard engine control to idle. The plane yawed immediately to the right and dropped a wing, racing back toward a stall. Despite my struggle, I could feel the airframe tremble and roll over to one side as the lift decayed.
Spazzo, blind with rage, either didn’t know or didn’t care what he was doing, but he was on the verge of killing us all. He tightened his grip on my neck and laid the weight of his body against my shoulders, pushing me toward blackout as his arms mashed my arteries.
Helen grabbed at the controls, but she was a hair too late. The Electra shuddered heavily once, then snapped over into a violent spin entry, wrapping up tight as she began slicing downward in asymmetric arcs.
Spazzo and I fell sideways against the copilot’s seat, but his grip held firm. Thrashing against his crushing hold, I tried to call to Helen to push the control wheel forward but could only summon a grunt.
Down we spun, the groaning airframe and the piercing yowl of the stall warning horn unleashing a hideous sound as the aircraft corkscrewed wildly toward the granite peaks below. The noise finally distracted Spazzo from his maniacal intent, and he loosened his grip as fear began to overcome the murder in his brain.
As soon as I felt his hands slacken behind me, I flippered my left elbow up and back into his face. I hit him with everything I had left, raking him across the eye socket and schnoz, breaking his nose and maybe more. I can’t remember anything ever feeling as good.
He went down like Gene Tunney, dead to the world. If he got back up, he’d just have to take a number.
I spun around to assess the position of the aircraft, sucking wind and blinking away stars. Helen was still fighting with the controls, but she was pulling back on them, actually causing the plane to wrap up tighter in the spin.
“I’ve got it,” I shouted, seizing the yoke and neutralizing the inputs while closing the throttles. I verified the spin direction from the whirring city lights and then mashed the left rudder pedal to the wall.
After an eternity of several seconds, the nose swung left as the airplane wrenched free from the spin. A split second later I buried the yoke to the forward stop, pouring on power to break the stall.
The plane recovered rapidly and transitioned into a steep dive, the airspeed running away like War Admiral toward redline.
I glanced at the altimeter. We were below two thousand feet and still dropping like a battleship anchor.
What I saw next was worse.
As I searched for the horizon, the lights of Palm Springs abruptly disappeared from view, leaving a field of black emptiness in the windscreen. My blood froze as I realized we were now below the level of the
hilltops that surrounded us.
Helen gasped then, sucking her breath in with fear. A moment later, I saw it too: a dark form rising up in the indigo gloom. It was a ridgeline, well above us—and close in.
Instinctively, I gripped the yoke and reefed it full aft while slamming my right hand against both throttles, shoving them halfway to Bakersfield.
The engines surged with power, the propellers groaning in protest from the heavy torque load driven back on the camshafts. The aggressive pull-up tripled the g load on the plane, my vision fading for several seconds as I held fast on the controls in the blind.
As my eyesight returned, I saw that the aircraft was edging up, the nose pushing through the horizon, then soaring above the dark outline of the hill just a hundred feet away.
We almost made it.
51
The Electra cleared the hilltop by a good fifty feet, but as we shot past, a blur of Joshua tree flashed by on the starboard side, bashing into the wing.
The sound of shearing metal filled the cockpit as the aircraft whipsawed to the right, skidding upward into the sky. As the right wing dipped, I caught a flash of city lights again in the distance.
In gut reaction I stomped on the left rudder and pushed the nose down below level, struggling for control of the yawing aircraft as she staggered through the air like a drunken buzzard.
“What do you see out there?” I shouted. “How much damage?”
Helen peered out her window and yelled back, “Part of the wing is torn off, it’s bent all to hell … and I think we lost the right engine. Oh, God, it’s on fire, too!”
A quick glance at my instruments verified what Helen had said about the engine while the seat of my pants told me about the wing. Another glance outside confirmed the rest. We weren’t just on fire, we were blazing—a full-on flying bonfire, arcing down through the night like a flaming arrow.
Even worse than the fire was the windmilling propeller, which was causing crippling drag. Eliminating that would get me down to the lesser problem of flying a transport aircraft with part of a wing shorn away, a burning engine, and an angry mobster somewhere behind me.
One for Our Baby Page 15