Eagle & Crane

by Suzanne Rindell

  “I will! I will indeed,” Earl replied. “Do we have a deal?”

  Harry’s eyes twinkled with determination. “All right, then. I’ll be here tomorrow. With ten dollars.”

  “Excellent.” Earl smiled, and gave a second showy bow. “I look forward to your return, and we shall be happy to accommodate you.”

  “All right,” Harry said. He began to walk away. Then, as though an afterthought occurred to him, he hesitated, and turned back to Louis.

  “Say, what about you?” Harry asked. “You gonna wing walk, too, Thorn?”

  Louis shuffled his feet. His eyes flicked nervously from Harry to Earl Shaw, then to the pilots, and finally to Ava.

  “I would,” Louis answered, “but that’s simply too rich for my blood.” Ava suspected this was the truth, and that he’d had a hard time digging up the five dollars he’d already paid for the ride he’d just taken.

  Harry thought about this for a moment and scratched his head. He shrugged.

  “Well, I’ll pay for you to go up,” he said finally. “Hell, to be honest, I’d appreciate the company up there.”

  “I don’t need your money,” Louis said, his spine suddenly stiffening.

  “Sounds to me like you do,” Harry said.

  “I ain’t gonna try to talk sense into the likes of you,” Louis said. “I can’t afford to go wing walking and that’s the truth of it.”

  “That’s the truth of it,” Harry repeated, “unless the truth is that really you’re scared.”

  “I ain’t scared.”

  “Well, I don’t mind supplying the money if you don’t mind proving that you ain’t scared.”

  “Fine,” Louis said. He spoke the word through gritted teeth, but there was a quaver in his voice, and Ava heard it. She glanced between the two boys. There was more between them than a simple dare about an airplane stunt.

  “Well!” Harry exhaled. “I’ll see you here tomorrow?”

  Louis swallowed. “Well . . . all right, then.”

  Louis and Harry squared off, nodding stiffly to each other.

  Earl was plainly pleased. Buzz and Hutch exchanged a look, each raising an eyebrow. As Louis and Harry began to walk away, Ava jumped up from her post at the table and ran after the two of them.

  “I assume you’re both all full of talk,” Ava called after them. “And now you’ve gone and got it out of your system.”

  They stopped. Harry trailed a short distance behind Louis. He turned around first and looked Ava over.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’re not really that stupid, are you? You don’t think you’re to go up with Buzz and Hutch, and simply wing walk with zero experience. Do you?”

  “Sure,” Harry said. “Why not?”

  Ava snorted. She’d been to countless small towns. Young people developed strange ideas when there was so little to do and no city nearby. There was no way to tell whether these farm boys were crazy or stupid—or both.

  “C’mon,” she said, “you both had your fun. Now it’s time to behave sensibly. You’ll get yourselves killed trying to wing walk.”

  “What’s it to you?” Harry asked. He looked at her with an amused smile that somehow made Ava feel stung. “You care about what happens to us?”

  “Hah, hardly!” She was about to launch into a lengthier retort, then paused, realizing her tactic was all wrong. She glanced over a shoulder to make sure Earl wasn’t in earshot, took a step closer, and dropped her voice. “It’s just so sad . . . you don’t even know you’re being taken for fools . . .”

  “How so?”

  “I know plenty about how Earl thinks. He’ll use your dare to see if he can’t draw an even bigger crowd tomorrow. And if either of you breaks your necks trying this fool stunt, well, Earl doesn’t care! Just so long as he’s drawn a big crowd and sold plenty of folks rides before the two of you go up.”

  Harry nodded. To Ava’s surprise, it appeared he’d already considered this.

  “Fair enough. Earl seems like a”—Harry fished for a word—“a true businessman. But don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”

  “Oh? And exactly how many times have you gone up in an airplane?”

  “Well, now, today would be my first time,” Harry admitted, undaunted. “How many times you been up?”

  Ava froze, and her cheeks turned bright red.

  “Wait a minute,” Harry said, laughing, incredulous. He searched her face and verified the truth. “Do you mean to say you travel around with a flying circus and you ain’t never been up in an airplane?”

  Her cheeks still burning, Ava stared down at the ground, humiliated and angry.

  “Truly?” Harry exclaimed, continuing to laugh. “‘Lovely Lofty Ava, First Lady of “Avi”-ation’ has never been up in an airplane? Not once? Not for a single ride?”

  Ava’s eyes flashed in Harry’s direction, catlike and angry. All the while Ava and Harry had argued back and forth, Louis had listened and watched, remaining silent.

  “Aw, lay off her already,” Louis said, coming to her defense. But Ava didn’t want his sympathy.

  “Know what? You can go hang yourselves—both of you,” Ava said. “And I suspect you will hang yourselves,” she called over her shoulder as she stormed off. “Tomorrow!”

  13

  Newcastle, California * September 17, 1943

  Bonner wakes up and gets dressed, full of one dreaded certainty: He can’t put it off any longer. He needs to check in with the office in San Francisco. Bonner knows he’s likely to get chewed out by his boss. The thought of Sheriff Whitcomb listening as Reed hollers at him makes Bonner cringe.

  Just as he is about to head over to the sheriff’s office, Bonner asks Miss MacFarlane if she has a telephone line, almost as an afterthought. She surprises him by showing him to a tidy little closet next to the front door.

  “I’ll have the operator reverse the charges,” he promises, though she doesn’t ask. Rosalind nods and bustles off, but he thinks he can still hear her, hovering out of sight but nearby. She is a peculiar young woman. Bonner had felt her staring at him again over breakfast.

  A few minutes later, Bonner has been connected and Reed gets on the line.

  “What are you still doing there?” Reed’s ordinarily commanding voice is thin and tinny over the telephone wire. Cal Reed is a terse, square-jawed man with very little sense of humor—exactly what people thought of when they pictured a Bureau man. “The local sheriff wired me that they’re mailing us copies of the death certificates,” Reed adds.

  Bonner is surprised, in part because he didn’t know Sheriff Whitcomb had done any such thing. But of course he did. Whitcomb has made it clear he wants Bonner out of his town, the sooner the better.

  “Called me up, too,” Reed continues. “Gave me an earful about how he didn’t appreciate you sending the bodies all the way to the coroner in Sacramento.”

  “The man here didn’t seem qualified—” Bonner begins, but Reed cuts him off.

  “I’m sure at the very least he can distinguish between alive and dead. At this point, those certificates are really all that’s needed to close this case, Bonner,” Reed reminds him. “So I don’t care much where they come from, so long as they’re in the file when you turn in your report.”

  “Well, the truth is, sir, I’m still looking into the nature of the crash,” Bonner says now. “For my report.”

  There is a pause on the other end of the line.

  “I see,” Reed says finally. “Is there a lot more to it? I know the older one—Kenichi Yamada—was classified 4-C.”

  4-C. “4-C” is the code for “enemy alien.”

  “Yes, I know,” Bonner replies. “I saw his Application for Leave Clearance in his file, and the answers he gave to the questionnaire.”

  “Are you saying you’ve found evidence the Yama
da men were involved in treasonous activities after all?”

  Bonner pauses.

  “It’s not that so much as . . . well . . . the crash itself . . .”

  Bonner shifts uncomfortably in the small telephone alcove. He hears floorboards creaking and cranes his neck out the closet door to see if Miss MacFarlane has returned. He doesn’t see her, but he also doesn’t feel alone anymore. Is she eavesdropping on him?

  “The crash itself merits further investigation,” he tries to explain to Reed.

  “Oh? What makes you say that?”

  “There’s something not right about it,” Bonner says. He feels the weakness of his argument; Reed isn’t the sort of man given to operating on a hunch. Bonner presses on in a hurry, hoping that what he lacks in cold, hard logic he can make up for with enthusiasm. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to talk to a few more of the locals, get an airplane mechanic to come out and look at some of the wreckage.”

  “Let me get this straight: You’re thinking sabotage?”

  “Perhaps.”

  The line is silent for a moment. Bonner knows Reed is mulling over the situation. They both know the Department of Commerce would not take too kindly to anyone—white or Japanese—causing planes to fall out of the sky.

  “Hmm,” Reed mutters. “All right. I want you back here, but I suppose we can spare you for now. See what you can turn up. Put it all in your report.”

  “Of course,” Bonner agrees.

  “Oh, and Bonner . . .”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I don’t need to remind you about the Bureau’s budget . . . I don’t know what you plan to pay that mechanic, but I’d keep the overhead low. If this turns out to be a simple murder case of a couple of Japs and nothing more . . . political, say . . . then that’s a local matter; I’m not sure that’s within our purview.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “I know why you’ve been hiding behind your desk the past few months, Bonner. You aren’t fooling anybody.”

  “Sir?”

  “Look, I can’t understand why you feel guilty. Spending time around those camps can’t be good for anybody. But you can’t go developing Jap sympathies. We don’t have that luxury right now. Spying and Japanese nationals are a very real security concern and it’s our job to take that concern seriously.”

  “I know that, sir.”

  “All I’m saying is, don’t turn this case into something it’s not because you think somehow you need to redeem yourself.”

  “I’m not,” Bonner says, and as the words come out of his mouth, he realizes they are partly true. The case had become about something more than simple redemption for him; it’s also about Louis Thorn. For reasons he can’t explain to Reed, Bonner needs to know who Louis Thorn is, and whether or not Thorn is capable of murder.

  “Fine,” Reed says, easing off. “I’ve said my piece. Now get what you need to wrap up the case and get back here.”

  “I will,” Bonner replies.

  He hangs up the receiver and sighs. He knows one thing for certain: Reed is going to be steamed when he sees that Bonner ordered lab tests on the Yamadas’ blood. But Bonner will deal with that later, when he has to. He stands and straightens his suit. As he steps out of the telephone closet, he sees the briefest flash of Rosalind MacFarlane’s skirt as she hurries back into the kitchen.

  14

  Earl Shaw’s Flying Circus

  Newcastle, California * May 5, 1940

  Word traveled surprisingly fast—catching on faster than one of the terrible grass fires that periodically plagued that part of the California foothills—that Harry Yamada and Louis Thorn had dared each other to walk on the wings of a biplane. The sun came up that morning bright and blaring, the herald of a warm, dry day under a cloudless sky. By noon, well over a thousand people had gathered in Irving Sumpter’s field, and the air vibrated with the steady buzz of people speaking in excited, jittery tones.

  Ava watched as Earl greeted people with plenty of dapper fanfare, urging folks to buy a scenic ride and herding them into line. His scheme was working; by noon, Ava had sold more scenic airplane rides in one hour than she had during the entire previous month—she had to put sales on hold briefly when Earl sent her back into town to fetch more gasoline, as no one had anticipated the planes would need so much. Buzz and Hutch had their work cut out for them, chauffeuring what seemed like an endless stream of passengers up into the clouds and back down onto solid ground. Making and selling lemonade, Ava’s mother could barely keep up with demand. Twice she was forced to send a boy for a fresh block of ice from the icehouse and more lemons.

  It was plain to Ava that Earl was delighted with the bargain he’d struck. She found herself surprised that it had not occurred to him before: that he could simply invite a pair of crazy farm boys to wing walk (or attempt to, anyway) and instantly draw larger crowds than he’d ever managed to draw before. He’d always wanted to hire stuntmen, but this proved too difficult. All of the quality men who regularly did wing walking only wanted to work for Hollywood, which not only paid more handsomely than your average flying circus but also immortalized the stuntmen’s daredevil tricks on the silver screen. Earl’s shoddy flying circus held no appeal, and was illegal, besides.

  But now, as Ava watched her stepfather flit around the field, a greedy smile curling his pink lips under his moustache, she knew Earl had had an epiphany and that he was thinking these two crazy farm boys might as well be dipped in the legendary gold that had been mined from the Sierra Nevada foothills all around them. And yet, for all the free publicity they’d accidentally drummed up, when Harry Yamada arrived on the field that day with the sum Earl Shaw had previously named clutched in his hand, Earl did not hesitate to take that, too. He was, above all else, a businessman.

  “Very good, my son!” he exclaimed, coming over to clap Harry on the back and supervise as Ava accepted the money. Earl’s eyes were glassy with excitement as Harry handed over a twenty-dollar bill. “That’ll fetch you one extra-special premium flight! Indeed, it will!”

  “You mean two,” Harry reminded Earl. “Ten each, and that’s twenty. Twenty dollars was the price you named for both of us to walk on the wings.”

  “Of course, of course, you’re quite right,” Earl hastily added. He smiled, his white teeth flashing under his groomed moustache. “Where is your friend?” Earl asked, glancing around with an air of innocent inquiry.

  “Louis?” Harry repeated.

  Harry stiffened as he pronounced Louis’s name, yet cast a glance around as though anxious for him to arrive. The mixed reaction puzzled Ava.

  “I expect he’ll turn up . . .”

  “Wonderful!” Earl replied in a distracted manner. “Now, why don’t you take a walk around, have a lemonade—” A sudden atypically generous impulse gripped him. “On the house! Everyone will be wanting to shake your hand! Your friend hasn’t arrived yet, and I assume you’ll want to go up together . . .”

  At this, Harry gave a small nod. Again there was that air of ambivalence. Ava wondered again about the ties between the two young men. The mystery intrigued her.

  “We’ll have you boys go up for your rides once all the other customers have had their turns,” Earl continued. “Seeing as how your rides are”—Earl searched for a way to phrase it—“more deluxe.”

  Ava shot Harry a look, wishing he’d heeded her warning. She knew Earl wanted Louis and Harry to go up last for a reason: If they fell to their deaths—and it was clear that Earl believed this was a possibility—it would be the end of Earl’s sales for the day, and those who had paid for a scenic ride but hadn’t gone up yet might even demand their money back.

  Harry, however, appeared to understand Earl’s master plan and the motivations behind it. Earl seems like a true businessman, Harry had remarked the day before. He might very well be crazy, Ava thought, but at least it seemed like Harry
Yamada was not a dupe.

  * * *

  About an hour or so later, around one o’clock, Ava spotted the familiar shape of Louis Thorn making his way across the field. While Harry had approached with a confident swagger, Louis looked slightly miserable and terribly pale. Ava felt more nervous for him, just seeing the state he was in. Nerves could get a fella killed, she thought.

  “You know,” she said as Louis approached her table, “common sense is an admirable and brave quality, too. You don’t have to do this.”

  “I . . .” Louis hesitated, looking into Ava’s eyes. “I want to.”

  “You sure?”

  He laughed. “Not entirely. But, hell . . . I reckon I won’t get this chance again. And if Harry Yamada can do it, well—”

  “There you are, my boy!” Earl interrupted, hurrying over to Louis’s side, just as he had done earlier with Harry. When he clapped Louis on the back, Louis flinched.

  “Your friend, Harry—he’s already paid,” Ava piped up, before Earl could mislead Louis.

  “He’s not my friend,” Louis said, as though murmuring a memorized line.

  Noting his vehemence, Ava cocked her head. “Well, you’re about to risk your lives together,” she said, “so what would you call him?”

  Louis didn’t answer.

  “What are you two on about?” Earl asked, clearly disinterested in the reply. His head swiveled as he scanned the field, pleased by the number of spectators. “Your friend, the young Chinaman, is somewhere yonder.” He pointed.

  “Harry’s not Chinese,” Louis stated. “He’s Japanese.”

  “How fascinating!” Earl replied, though it was plain he was not fascinated in the slightest. “If you’d like to join him, that would be splendid . . . Everyone here is keen to get a look at you both.” Earl patted Louis on the shoulder, simultaneously nudging him in the direction of the table where Harry stood and Cleo sold lemonade. “I’ll fetch you both when it’s time for you to go up!”