“You’re a crook, just like your old man. Stole your brother’s inheritance and continued to do business in the same sleazy manner as your old man. Except you were smarter. You bought off Byron back then and you probably have the current DA in your pocket as well.”
The way Sol and Haskell were posturing, I expected that at any moment peckers would be whipped out and measured.
“Silverman, you piece of shit, if you breathe just one word in public of what you’re saying here, I’ll haul your ass in court and sue you for slander. I’ll own everything you got.”
He continued his tirade. We’d struck a nerve, and he couldn’t stop shouting.
“And you, O’Brien.” His fists were balled, like he was going to take a swipe at me, but silver-haired empire builders didn’t partake of such crude behavior. “Goddamn you, I didn’t murder anybody. My brother Charles died of a heart attack just as it said in the autopsy report. And suppose you tell me why are you concocting this outlandish fantasy now? Roberts will be released in a couple of days. That’s all that should concern you.”
Wait a minute. How did he know about the deal to release Roberts? Rinehart, the DA told him, of course. So much for secrets. But he was right-why bring it up now? We were through here. Sol got what he came for, the opportunity to vent at the big enchilada, a tycoon who happened to be a hypocrite and a liar.
I now knew that Haskell had been in bed with Frank Byron when he framed Roberts. He hadn’t admitted it out loud, but when he said he knew his brother had died of natural causes, he implicated himself. Only the District Attorney back in ’45 had known that Charles Haskell had died of a heart attack and that Roberts hadn’t clubbed him, that the wound on the head had happened postmortem.
It was obvious now why Joe Rinehart had pressured Governor Reagan to release Roberts. He was protecting Haskell. With Roberts out of prison and gone for good, who’d bother to check “ancient history”, as Raymond Haskell referred to the events that happened so long ago?
But as I told Sol when he first brought up tonight’s dinner, my job was finished. Roberts would finally get his freedom and that would be that. There was one thing that still troubled me, though. It annoyed me like an itch you couldn’t scratch.
Who murdered Vera?
Haskell had menace in his eyes as he continued to rant. “I’m warning you, O’Brien. You don’t know who you’re screwing with. You just made one huge mistake-!”
But before any more could be said, the restroom door swung open and one of Haskell’s goons stuck his head in. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Haskell. But the governor’s out here. Wants to take a piss.”
“Oh, for God’s sakes, you fuckin’ moron! Let him in!”
Sol and I turned to leave. We brushed by Reagan as he came through the door. Sol cranked his head toward Haskell and said to the governor: “It’s hard to believe that guy’s a war hero. The money must’ve changed him.”
Reagan gave Sol a perplexed look. “Yes, it did. Made him richer,” he said as he rushed to the urinal.
Over Bavaria, March 1944
Capt Raymond Haskell, squirming in the B-17 pilot seat, pinched his throat mike. “Watch it, Earl! Coming at you at nine o’clock,” he said to his waist gunner.
“I see the bastards!” Two black specks in the sky at the nine o’clock position relative to the gunner’s sights grew larger by the second. “They’re coming fast!” The clattering burst of the .50 caliber machine gun was Earl’s next statement.
S/Sgt Earl Lee Sims, the right waist gunner, swore wildly. He stood facing out the opening on the side of the plane, swiveling his machine gun from side to side, trying to get a bead on the enemy aircraft. He saw the popping flashes, like the rapid blinking of an incandescent eye, coming from the fighters as the Kraut pilots fired their guns, the hot lead zinging around him like angry mutant wasps. He fired another short burst, missing completely.
“God damn, three more at twelve o’clock, high!” another voice shouted urgently, his voice coming through the interphone.
“I’m on ’em,” Sgt. Al Mathis, the top ball-turret gunner responded.
“Two more at ten o’clock, low. You see ’em, Jake?”
The planes whizzed by at 350 miles per hour, firing their cannons, before vanishing beyond the horizon.
T/Sgt. Jake Shapiro, the gunner in the ball turret, which hung from the belly of the plane, hadn’t seen the two fighters coming at the B-17 from below. He was dead. His body had been shredded, cut to pieces by the exploding rounds of the 13 mm machine guns fired from the previous pair of ME-109G’s that had made a run at the bomber.
Capt. Raymond Haskell, pilot and commander of the Flying Fortress, oblivious to the chaos, steadfastly held his assigned course-82 degrees to the IP, then veer left to a heading of 312 and proceed fifteen miles directly to the target, the Messerschmitt factory at Augsburg.
“Heads up, men, we’re going toe-to-toe with those Nazi bastards. And for God and country we’re gonna send them all to hell.” “Toe-to-toe!” Haskell announced to the crew.
The other five planes in the lead squadron and the fourteen planes in the low and high squadrons behind him would follow his course. No snafus, or the mission would fail; all twenty bombers would miss the target. Each warplane carried 6,000 pounds of armor-piercing and incendiary bombs. If the mission was a success, they would level the enormous airplane plant and what was left of it would burn.
The heavy bomber shuddered and jerked violently to the right. Two more German fighters scored several direct hits, projectiles from their 200 mm cannons blowing out the B-17’s right outboard engine. The loose play in the rudder pedals and the uncontrollable gyration at the tail of the aircraft indicated the horizontal stabilizer had been severely damaged, as well. But the plane labored on incessantly. Several more ME-109 strikes hit home. Each one sent shockwaves through the plane, jolting it like a hard earthquake.
“I think the belly-gunner’s been hit. Jake’s not firing his guns,” the captain said. “Garcia,” he added, addressing the radio operator, “check it out. If he’s dead, take his position.”
“Roger, Cap.” T/Sgt. Alex Garcia left his radio table and made his way through the crawl space to where the belly turret was located. He almost puked when he opened the turret hatch and saw what remained of his crewmate.
Earl Lee Sims felt the bitter cold on his face as he peered out through the large gun opening on the side of the ship. He could see the gut-wrenching flames streaming from the blown out engine. His throat mike transmitted his voice: “Hey Cap, we’re on fire! The engine’s blazing and the wing is glowing red. We gotta turn back!”
The plane swung slowly to the left, back on course, a straight line to the initial point.
“Hook your chutes and prepare for flak. We’re at the IP,” the pilot announced, ignoring Earl’s warning. “Pilot to bombardier. You got the plane, Joe, it’s all yours,” he said, as he set the auto-pilot, linking it to the Norden bombsight. He then leaned back and removed his hands from the yoke.
They were now on the bombing run. The bombardier, 1st Lt. Joseph Capuano, squirmed in his seat located in a plastic bubble at the nose of the plane, one level below the cockpit. From now until the completion of the bomb run he would, in essence, be flying the plane.
As the heavy bomber bounced and jerked from side to side, Capuano peered through the eyepiece of the bombsight, zeroing in on the target as the city’s buildings and roadways raced across his line of sight 20,000 feet below. By manipulating several knobs attached to the device he could control the heading and altitude of the big war bird. The auto-pilot held the airspeed.