“Who?”
“How should I know?”
“You see the guy?”
“No. I can just feel it.”
Dizzy hurled his fireball at Johnny McCarthy, knocking him down, into the dust. The umpire said and did nothing.
“I’m not doubting you,” I said.
“Why do you think I wanted to meet you in some out-of-the-way place?”
“You mean with thirty thousand people around us?”
“It’s one way to hide.”
He was right. And down on the field, the Giants were charging out of their dugout (except Hubbell, ever a gentleman) and a full-scale brawl between the two teams was under way. Fists and spikes flying. The fans loved it.
“If you’re being followed,” I said, “then maybe the government, the military, is in on this.”
“Yes!”
“In which case, I don’t want to be.”
When the brawl on the field was finally quelled, Dean was allowed to stay in the game (with a fine of fifty dollars) and he promptly, brazenly hurled another beanball at Johnny McCarthy. But the brawl did not resume, and McCarthy soon scored a double to left center and the game wound up Giants 4, Cards 1.
I thanked Mantz for inviting me to the game—it was worth the trip to St. Louis—and told him to forget about the fifty bucks for two days’ work. All he owed me was for my train ticket and meals and a few other minor expenses.
And as the days passed, I read about Amelia’s progress on her flight and all seemed to be going well. I was writing Mantz’s suspicions off to his dislike of Putnam, which was something I could easily understand, and his frustration at being shut out of the inner circle.
On June 4, Mantz—back in Burbank—called me, at my office, and asked, “Weren’t you around the hangar, last year, when Amelia and me had that tiff about her radio antenna?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I was—she didn’t want to be bothered with unreeling it by hand or something.”
“It’s two hundred and fifty feet of trailing wire antenna, and yes, it is a pain in the ass to use. That’s partly why I installed a Bendix loop antenna for her. But those Coast Guard boys aren’t up on these latest gadgets, so it was vital she had that antenna along, as a backup, so the Coast Guard cutter near Howland Island can be sure to locate her.”
“From your tone, I take it she left the trailing wire behind.”
“I sent Putnam a telegram, expressing these concerns, before I left St. Louis…. His letter of reply arrived in Burbank days after I got home.”
“And?”
“She didn’t leave the wire behind.”
“Good.”
“Right before she left Miami, she had the technicians shorten it and run it along the wings.”
“And that won’t do the trick?”
“Oh, it’ll work out swell—for stringing Christmas tree lights.”
“I’m not coming out there, Mantz.”
“Don’t bother. It’s probably too late, anyway.”
And he hung up.
I thought about what he had said, weeks later, when I heard the news that Amy’s plane was missing, somewhere between Lae and Howland Island, somewhere in the Pacific where a very expensive government rescue mission was in progress.
And that, finally, was the beanball that hit me in the head and prompted me to go back out to Burbank.
10
The bar was a South Seas refuge, the patter and spatter of a tropical storm on its tin roof, water streaking and streaming in lazy patterns behind opaque window glass that glowed with a yellow-orange sunset as foliage outside cast curious silhouettes; no music played, no native drums pounded, but there was the not-so-distant caw of strange birds, and earthen bowls in netting hung from the bamboo-beamed ceiling where churned lazily the blades of fans fluffing the blades of palms hovering over tiny teakwood tables with wicker furniture and coconut shell candles, each table situated within this bamboo-and-thatched-hut world so as to provide an island for two.
I had almost missed the place, and not just because I was a stranger in these exotic parts. The pair of inter-locking, wooden-shuttered stucco boxes on North McCadden Place in Hollywood might have been a nondescript apartment complex but for the knee-high bamboo fence and the tropical thicket through which the bamboo-pole entrance peeked.
No sign announced this as one of the most popular joints in town; and it was too early—three-thirty-something in the afternoon—to put out the restraining velvet ropes. Of course, there would be no waiting for such regular customers as Rudy Vallee, Marlene Dietrich, and Joan Crawford (whose framed pictures, among many others, peered from a wall through hanging fronds).
Right now, however, the bar was unpopulated, except for a few stuffed parrots, fake monkeys, and a real bartender at his bamboo station. The “rain” on the false roof sprayed down the ceiling from garden hoses, and ran down the glass partitions of the “windows” to feed planters. The offstage bird calls came from a few real live caged parrots and macaws out in the open courtyard, where the palms weren’t phony like the ones whose shadows fell on me; bunches of bananas, here and there among the fake vegetation, were real and could be plucked by a bold customer and eaten, free of charge.
Don the Beachcomber’s was quite a joint, with a Chinese grocery just inside the door, a shop devoted entirely to different types and brands of rum (an idea whose time, I sincerely believed, had come), and a gift shop where fresh flower leis were available. Various meandering rooms presented themselves, with names like Paradise Cove, Cannibal Lounge and Black Hole of Calcutta, which was where I was waiting for my companion. This was the kind of joint where the lighting was so dim, just about any woman would look good, or at least mysterious.
Unfortunately, I was waiting for a man—and an airplane mechanic, at that.
Taking a cab from the train station, I had arrived at the United Airport at Burbank around two-thirty, and wandered into Mantz’s United Air Services hangar only to find no sign of him. It was Tuesday, July 6, a mild breeze doing its best to downplay a blistering heat that defeated my lightweight maize polo shirt and tan slacks, turning them into sticky swaddling cloth. I hadn’t warned Mantz I was coming; the day before, I’d gone back and forth about whether to stick my nose in this, then impulsively threw some things in a suitcase and caught a Sante Fe sleeper at Dearborn Station.
The vast hangar, nicely cool compared to the outside, was littered with small aircraft, among them several biplanes and Amy’s little red Vega, though Mantz’s Honeymoon Express wasn’t among them. A trio of jumpsuited mechanics was at work; one of them was washing down a sleek little racing plane, a Travel Air Mystery S, which I recalled Mantz saying belonged to Pancho Barnes, an aviatrix pal of Amy’s. Mantz allowed a number of fliers to store their planes in his hangar to make his “fleet” look bigger. The other two mechanics were working on the engine of another little red and white Travel Air, a stunt plane of Mantz’s.
I recognized two of the three mechanics—the guy washing the racing plane was Tod Something, and one of the pair working on the Travel Air was Ernie Tisor, Mantz’s chief mechanic. Pushing fifty, wide-shouldered, thick around the middle, hair a salt-and-pepper mop, the good-natured mechanic frowned over at me, at first, then grinned in recognition, then frowned again—it’s a reaction I’d had before.
Rubbing the grease off his hands with a rag, he ambled over to me; his tanned, creased, hound dog’s face was blessed with eyes as blue as the California sky under cliffs of shaggy salt-and-pepper eyebrows.
“Nate Heller,” he said. He gave me half a smile; something odd lingered in his expression. “If you’re looking for the boss, he’s on a charter, sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”
The half-smile continued and seemed strained. “Well, him and Terry and Clark and Carole went off to La Gulla.”