Did she know how arch that sounded?
“Jeez, what the hell’s left, Amy? I mean, no offense, but don’t you think the public’s interest in record-breaking flights has pretty much subsided? When you got airlines flying people coast to coast, like some Twentieth Century Limited of the sky, the bloom’s off the rose, my sweet, the novelty’s plumb wore off.”
Her eyes tightened. “It has to be something really big….”
“What are you thinking? What have you got cooked up under those Shirley Temple curls?”
Her expression turned pixieish. She tapped my nose with a fingertip. “What would you say to two oceans, Nathan?”
“What?…An around-the-world flight, you mean?”
She withdrew from my arms and flopped onto her back and folded her arms across her bare breasts, and stared at the ceiling as if it were the sky, her eyes alive with a dream. “A female Phileas Fogg…in a plane. Wouldn’t that set ’em on their ears?”
I leaned on my elbow and studied her like a moron stumped by a trigonometry problem. “Didn’t Wiley Post do that already?”
“Wiley’s not a woman….” She frowned in thought. “Only I’ll need something better than the Vega to do it. A bigger plane, with two engines….”
“Does G. P. know about this latest scheme?”
“Of course. He’s all for it.”
It was probably his idea.
“Isn’t it a little dangerous?”
Her response was lilting: “The most dangerous yet.”
“Jesus. What if it kills you?”
“I think G. P. would grieve—after he got a ghostwritten book out of it.” She tossed a wry little smirk my way. “Then he’d find himself a new young wife and get on with his life.”
“What about you? So, do you want to die, Amy? Does dying in the drink sound like a fun adventure?”
“If I should pop off, it’d be doing the thing I always most wanted to do. Don’t you think the Man with the Little Black Book has a date marked down for all of us? And when our work here is finished, we move on?”
“No,” I said, angry to hear such romantic horseshit coming from an intelligent woman. “I don’t believe that at all. If a guy with a scythe comes around to collect me, I’ll grab it from him and slice his damn head off.”
“Nothing wrong with that. I never said I was in favor of going down without a fight.”
“Amy, tell me, please, I’m just an ignorant workaday rube—what exactly would a flight like that do for the cause of aviation?”
Her full lips pursed into a kiss of a smile, which unfolded as she admitted, “Not a darn thing…but for the cause of women, everything…not to mention set me up with a reputation bigger than Slim Lindbergh’s, allow me to retire to a life of respect, an advisor to presidents, writing, lecturing—but at my own pace, perhaps a college teaching position….”
There was no talking to her. I was at least a little in love with her, and maybe somewhere in the back of my self-deluded brain I thought she might come back to me one day, when her final flight was over and she’d divorced that machiavellian bastard. But I wasted no more breath in trying to discourage her from reaching her goal, even if it did involve her staying with G. P. Putnam.
Who, on Thursday afternoon, spoke privately with me, though we were in the mammoth echoing United Air Services hangar.
We were not alone—Ernie, Tod, and Jim, the team of mechanics assigned to the Vega, were at work on Amy’s plane. But they were on the other side of the hangar, the clanking and clinking of their tools, and their occasional chatter, providing a muffled accompaniment to our conversation, just as oil and gas smells provided a pungent bouquet. Putnam and I stood in the shadow of the wing of Mantz’s bread-and-butter ship, the red and white Honeymoon Express.
I was wearing a lime sportshirt and dark green slacks, fitting in nicely with the casual California style; but Putnam was strictly East Coast business executive. His wide-shouldered suit was a gray double-breasted worsted that had not come off the rack; his black and white striped tie was silk and probably cost more than any suit I owned.
“Is she sleeping with that little cocksucker?” Putnam demanded, looking over toward the glassed-in office where Amy and Mantz hunkered over the desk looking at a map or chart, Commander Williams opposite them, pointing something out.
“No,” I said.
“You’re absolutely positive?”
“I was in the bushes looking in the windows, G. P.”
“Did you get pictures?”
“There was nothing to get pictures of. They had separate bedrooms. Then when Mantz’s wife filed divorce papers on him, he had to move out, and your wife went to the Ambassador.”
He gestured with open palms. “If there’s nothing between them, why has Myrtle Mantz named Amelia in this divorce action?”
“Because Paul Mantz can’t keep his dick in his pants and your wife’s been a houseguest. It’s a natural assumption.”
He began to pace, over a small area, two steps forward, two steps back. “But an incorrect one, you’re saying?”
“That’s right. Your wife and Mantz get along pretty well, I mean they work together fine as a team…but she resents his superior attitude.”
“Well, he is a patronizing little son of a bitch,” Putnam snapped.
Funny thing was, I’d overheard Mantz complain to Williams about the same thing where Putnam was concerned: “Where does that prick in a stuffed shirt get off treating me like an employee?”
Williams hadn’t replied, but it occurred to me the answer might be: Because Mantz was on G. P.’s payroll. It also occurred to me that that “stuffed shirt” dressed similarly to Mantz.
On the other hand, Mantz had a point. He probably considered himself Amy’s business partner, because she was going to consign her Vega to the United Air Services fleet, plus they’d been discussing, over lunches at the Sky Room, the possibility of a flying school that bore the Amelia Earhart imprimatur.
“Have you received any more threatening notes?” I asked Putnam.
His pacing halted and the cold eyes did something they rarely did: blinked. “What? Uh, no. We’ve been fortunate in that regard.”
“You’ll be interested to know there haven’t been any sabotage attempts. No breaking and entering, here at the airport; no suspicious characters hanging about; no lovesick fans carrying a crush too far.”
He smiled tightly, nodded. “That’s a relief to hear.”
“I mean, because you were concerned about your wife’s welfare, right?”
“Of course I was.”
“This wasn’t just about me snooping on her, to see if she was cheating around.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s not like you sent those threatening notes yourself or anything. To make it look good.”
A groove formed between his eyebrows. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing. It’s just that Paul Mantz told me an interesting story about how you promoted a book, a few years back. That Mussolini exposé?”
He sucked air in and huffed, “Are you accusing me of sending those notes myself? That’s patently absurd.”
“It is absurd, and I also don’t give a damn, as long as your checks don’t bounce…but I wouldn’t be surprised, once the dust settles, and this Mexico City flight’s behind you, if that sweet little aviatrix of yours doesn’t sit you down for a spanking.”
His chin lifted and the cold eyes peered down at me with unblinking contempt. “Mister, I don’t like your attitude.”
“You didn’t hire me for my attitude. You hired me for my low moral character. I wormed my way into your wife’s confidence and betrayed her…just like you wanted me to.”
“After Amelia takes off tomorrow,” he said, stalking off, glaring, “I won’t be needing your services any longer.”