“I don’t think you ever needed them, really…but thanks for the work. Times are hard.”
The rest of that day, Putnam said not a word to me, and final preparations went on without a hitch, with the slight exception of a guest appearance by Myrtle Mantz, who dropped by to scream at her husband.
Wearing a dark green dress with jagged streaks that might have been lightning bolts, she cornered Mantz in his office during Amy’s final stint in the Link trainer. The glass of his glassed-in office rattled as she yelled at him, and pounded his desk.
I was lounging in a folding chair, reading the boxing results in the sports section of the Herald-Express, when the brouhaha began. And I would have stayed out of it, but Mantz started yelling back at her and took a swing at her, which she ducked. I had a feeling these two sparring partners had been in the ring before.
Nonetheless, I’m the old-fashioned chivalrous type who doesn’t like to see guys belt gals even when they deserve it, and went in there and got between them with outspread hands like a referee.
“Save it for the lawyers, you two,” I said.
Myrtle curled her pretty mouth into a sneer, and snarled, “Who appointed you sheriff, big boy?”
Normally, a good-looking redhead calling me “big boy” would have perked me up; but I had little interest in even good-looking women who shot target practice in the bedroom.
“Get her the hell outta here!” Mantz was yelling. “Crazy greedy dame!”
I walked her out of his office—she was yelling back at him, but not flailing around or anything; I think she was glad to get out of there before Mantz actually struck her. On her way out, she did hurl a few epithets at Amy, who Putnam was helping down out of her little red trainer.
“Adultery’s a sin, you snooty bitch!” she shrieked. “I hope you crash! I hope you drown in the ocean!”
Though Putnam was getting an eye-and earful, Amy merely turned her back to Myrtle, as I kept walking the estranged Mrs. Mantz toward the door.
Ushering her outside the hangar to where the flashy Dusenberg was parked, I found she’d calmed down, some. “No-good lousy husband of mine canceled my charge accounts,” she explained.
“Steer clear of that guy,” I said. “You don’t want to lose any of your pretty teeth.”
Myrtle touched my cheek with a cool hand and, laying on the Southwestern accent, said, “You are a sweet one, aren’t you? Wish I’d run into you a long time ago.”
She ran into me in the bedroom at the Mantz bungalow; she just didn’t know it.
And when she’d driven off, I went back into Mantz’s office and said, “Hey, Paul, if you want to come out of that divorce with your shirt and maybe a pair of socks or two, I’d suggest not belting that broad.”
He didn’t say anything, but I had to wonder if the reason Myrtle resorted to a firearm was because he’d been smacking her around.
With the flight due to begin around ten that night, nobody came in the next day till around one in the afternoon, including the mechanics.
Shortly after I got to the United Air Services hangar, I stuck my head into Mantz’s office and asked if he had a moment, and he waved me in. He was in a tan shirt and black tie, seated behind his desk, going over the pile of charts and maps, looking a little frazzled.
I took the chair opposite him and asked, “Are you aware that Amelia’s talking seriously about makin’ her next flight a little around-the-world number?”
Mantz sighed, tossing a chart onto the stack. “Maybe she ought to survive this flight first…. Yeah, I know. She and Gippy have been after me to help ’em prepare—and work my connections at Lockheed to get ’em a good price on a twin-engine plane.”
“Will you?”
“Probably. I mean, if she’s got it in her head, then she’s going to do it, and if she’s going to do it, I want to see her tackle it as close to the right way as she’s capable of.”
“How capable is she?”
Mantz waggled a finger. “Never forget that Amelia Earhart won her reputation first, then set about earning the right to havin’ it…. She has zero experience in twin-engine piloting technique.”
“Can she learn it?”
“You’ve seen how impatient she can be, where training’s concerned.”
“She’s worked hard in that trainer of yours.”
“Hey, she’s a good pilot, but a woman’s pilot. These dames all jockey the throttles—”
“Paul!” Ernie Tisor, his face pale and long with worry, had stuck his head in the door. The mechanic was wiping some grease off his right palm onto his coveralls. “Something nasty…. You gotta see this….”
I tagged along as Mantz followed Tisor to the Vega, where a small metal ladder up to the cockpit was in place. The other two mechanics, Jim and Tod, were standing around wearing spotless coveralls and dazed expressions.
“Take a look down by the rudder pedals,” Tisor was saying, gesturing to the ladder, which Mantz quickly scaled.
Mantz wasn’t up in the Vega cockpit long before his head popped out and his face was as white as powdered sugar, only his expression was anything but sweet.
“Who’s been around here?” he asked Tisor.
“Nobody,” Tisor said, shrugging. “I unlocked the place just a little before one…. Tod and Jim were waiting outside when I got here.”
Mantz was clambering down the ladder. “Nobody’s been around the Vega?”
“Not that I saw. Boys?”
The other two mechanics shook their heads, no.
“Shit,” Mantz said.
Tisor asked, “What do you make of it, Paul?”
“Drop or two of acid, maybe.” He placed a hand on Tisor’s shoulder. “God bless you, Ernie, for catching it. Can you repair those cables?”
“That shouldn’t be any big problem.”
“Fine. Get that done, then go over every rivet and nut and bolt on this baby. I want this patient to get a complete stem-to-stern physical, boys—look down her throat, and up her ass, understood?”
The three mechanics nodded, and quickly got to work.
Mantz turned to walk back to his office and I fell in step with him. “What’s going on, Paul?”
“Here’s Amelia and G. P.,” Mantz said, nodding to where Amy and her husband had just entered at the front of the hangar. “I’ll fill everybody in at the same time.”
They were walking toward us, Amy smiling, sporty in a plaid shirt and chinos, Putnam wearing his perpetual frown and an impeccably tailored blue twill suit.
Soon we were all seated in Mantz’s office with Mantz standing behind his desk. “I’m going to recommend we postpone,” he said, leaning his hands on the maps and charts before him.
“Why in hell would we do that?” Putnam demanded, seated but almost climbing out of his chair.
Next to him, between us, was Amy, who said quietly, “What’s happened?”
Mantz grimaced. “Your rudder cables—somebody left you a present, angel…a few well-placed drops of acid. The wires are almost eaten through.”
“What in God’s name…?” Putnam exploded.
“Acid?” Amy asked, as if she wasn’t sure of the meaning of the word.
“Probably nitric or sulfuric,” Mantz said. “You’d have flown a while, maybe a few hours, then they’d have given way…snapped like twigs.”
“Sending my plane out of control,” Amy said, hollowly.
Putnam thrust an accusatory finger in my direction. “This is just the kind of sabotage you were hired to prevent!”
“I wasn’t hired to sleep overnight in Paul’s hangar,” I said. “There’s nighttime security here at the airport, right, Paul?”
It was a question I knew the answer to, that having been one of the first things I asked Mantz about.
“Certainly,” Mantz said, “a full detail of highly competent night watchmen…but of course the airport is open well into the wee hours…and if someone who had a key to my hangar…”
“Like your wife Myrtle,” I said.
“Yes!” Putnam yelled. “We all saw her yesterday, yelling and screaming, and out of control!”