“We have a job for you,” Dimity said. “We are probably at least a year away from mounting our expedition, hiring a ship and crew…. This is no idle effort, Nate, it’s my intention to go along, and Miss DeCarrie feels the same way. Having Amelia’s personal secretary aboard will lend our expedition credibility.”
This was starting to sound about as credible to me as launching an expedition to the Island of Lost Boys to look for Peter Pan.
“Of course,” Dimity was saying, “this assumes that all goes well with fundraising.”
“An opportunity has arisen,” Forrestal said, joining in belatedly, his whiskey sour glass empty, “that may help the fundraising effort.”
“Have you heard of Captain Irving Johnson?” Dimity asked me. “No.”
“Or perhaps, Captain Irving and Electa Johnson?”
“Them either.”
Margot said, “Captain Johnson and his lovely wife, when they’re not sailing around the world, are active on the same lecture circuit as Mr. Putnam…the sort of places Amelia used to speak.”
“And they talk about sailing around the world, I gather.”
“Yes,” Margot said. “They have a schooner.”
“Isn’t that what you serve German beer in?”
“No, Nathan, it’s a big sailing vessel…”
“That was a joke, Margot. The, uh, Johnsons is it? Sail around the world, and then they go on a lecture tour; then they sail some more, and repeat the process?”
“Yes,” she said, a little embarrassed.
“They write books together,” Dimity said, “and perhaps you’ve seen their articles in the Geographic.”
“My subscription just lapsed,” I said.
Captain and Mrs. Irving Johnson were part of the adventuring and voyaging fad that had turned Amelia Earhart into a star, the same public fascination for exploring that had made G. P. Putnam and his instant books successful, and public figures out of Lindy, Admiral Byrd, Frank Buck, and the rest of that hardy bunch.
Forrestal said, “Captain Johnson and his wife are out on a world voyage right now.”
“But they are willing to divert from their cruise,” Dimity said, “to accept a two-thousand-dollar commission from the Foundation. For four weeks, Captain Johnson will sail the Gilbert and Ellice islands. It is our hope that he will discover enough new information about the Earhart disappearance to fuel our fundraising efforts for a full expedition.”
“That might be helpful,” I admitted. “Do you want me to run a full background check on the captain, and make sure he’s not just some con man?”
“Captain Johnson is quite reputable,” Forrestal said.
Mantz said, “I’ve heard of this guy, Nate. Johnson’s on the up and up.”
“What we want,” Dimity said to me, “is for you to go along.”
“Me? Do I look like a sailor?”
Forrestal said, “Yes. But that’s not the point.”
“Nate,” Dimity said, “I need a representative on that ship. Someone who can make sure the captain does his job, thoroughly earns his two thousand dollars….”
I said to Mantz, “I thought you said he was on the up and up.”
Dimity pressed on: “I can’t, in good conscience, spend the Foundation’s meager funds on a preliminary expedition without sending along a representative of our group.”
Shaking my head, I gulped down some rum and Coke and said, “You know, I don’t speak a whole lot of South Sea Island languages.”
“You’ve survived in the Chicago jungle,” Forrestal said.
“Nate,” Dimity said, “I need a man who’s physically and mentally tough. You knew Amelia…”
There was that past tense again.
“…and you know the right questions to ask. If by chance, some delicate or dangerous situation arose, you could handle yourself…or so I’ve been told by those I’ve spoken to.”
“Why don’t you go?” I asked Dimity.
His expression mingled chagrin and regret. “I can’t leave my business for a month…. We’ll pay you twenty-five dollars a day and all expenses.”
“That would wind up costing you close to a thousand bucks,” I said. “The Foundation got that in its coffers?”
“No,” Dimity admitted. “I’m paying for this myself. I can afford it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I certainly can!”
“I don’t mean I don’t think you can afford it, Elmer. I mean, I don’t think this is a job for me.”
He frowned and said, “I will guarantee you one thousand dollars.”
“It isn’t the money,” I said, and for a change it wasn’t. I didn’t think the government would want me taking part in this, not after they bought me off and had me sign that agreement. But on the other hand, fucking Forrestal was sitting across from me….
“Why don’t you sleep on it?” Forrestal suggested.
“Yes, Nathan,” Margot said, “you have two nights paid for here at the hotel, and your train tickets don’t take you back till Wednesday. We can meet for lunch tomorrow.”
I considered that.
Then I said, “All right. I’ll sleep on it. But I’m warning you, Elmer, Jim…Margot. I don’t think I’m your man.”
“Fair enough,” Dimity said, smiling as though I’d already accepted the job.
“I need to be going,” Forrestal said, and he rose.
Everyone else at the table got to their feet too, and I shook Forrestal’s hand—oddly, his grip was damn near limp, this second time—and he flinched me his tight non-smile and left.
Dimity said, “I need to get going, as well. Margot will contact you about time and place for luncheon tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I said, shook his hand, and he strutted out.
Mantz, Margot and I sat back down.
“That guy thinks ‘no’ is a three-letter word,” I said.
“He’s devoted to Amelia’s memory,” Margot said admiringly, apparently not recognizing the death sentence of her words.
Mantz put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey, I’d invite you to the house tonight, but I’m afraid Terry and I have plans. You think you can find supper in this town, by yourself?”
“He doesn’t have to be by himself,” Margot said. “I don’t have plans.”
I looked at the cute kid with her cherry-red lips and bright blue eyes. “That’s pretty brazen. You gonna twist my arm if I spend the evening with you?”
She laughed, and it was nicely musical; brunette curls bounced under the white beret. “We’ll swear off any discussion of the subject. No Amelia Earhart Foundation. Not even any Amelia Earhart.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s a date.”
15
Margot, it seemed, lived in a Roosevelt Hotel apartment, which also served as the Foundation’s Hollywood base; the official office was in Oakland, home of Dimity’s company.
So around seven I met her in the lobby. I was still in my white linen suit but Margot had slipped into an elegant little black bengaline dress with puffy three-quarter sleeves and no cleavage but nicely form-fitting, and brother was it a nice form. Her turban and gloves were that cherry red of her lipstick, and so were the toenails peeking from the open-toed black patent leather pumps.
“Ever been to Earl Carroll’s?” she asked, looping her arm in mine.
“No. Can we get in without reservations?”
“Mr. Dimity has a membership; we’re guaranteed seats. I just hope you won’t forget about me, with all those pretty girls around.”
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” I said, drinking in the smell of her. Since we first met, she’d switched from soap to Chanel Number Five.
Hollywood Boulevard was bathed in dusk, that time of day movie people call “magic hour,” giving neons a special glow, muting colors, coolly air-brushing the handiwork of God and man much as gauze over a camera lens plays Fountain of Youth for an aging actress. We joined the parade sauntering along the celebrated Boulevard, a good-looking couple getting admiring looks from tourists and locals alike, Grauman’s Chinese across the street, then Grauman’s Egyptian on our side of the street, high-tone department stores and lowly five-and-dimes, exclusive shops and postcard parlors, and when we turned down Vine, we soon saw the Brown Derby, not the one shaped like a hat, but the rambling Spanish-style affair with a neon derby riding stilts on the red clay tile rooftop while below a gaggle of fans with autograph books in hand waited to waylay celebs at the canopied entrance.