“Yes, sir?” Floyd said.
“This is a mighty poor time to be fighting about this. We’re neither of us gonna say another word about your mother. She’ll get cleaned up and put safely back in the root cellar now that Ollie’s gone. What’s done is done.”
“That’s fine with me. So why don’t you put down the shotgun… Daddy?”
Without breaking eye contact with Floyd, Mr. Bellamy slowly reached down to placed the weapon on the dining table. As he did it, Floyd walked around to my left and sat down at the other end of the table. His face was set as hard as his father’s. The two of them stared at each other, then they both looked at me almost in the same glance. Sweating myself, I wondered where Floyd had put the carving knife. Even though he was in front of me, my neck itched.
“What do you think, Vernon?” asked Mr. Bellamy.
I was afraid to answer that question. “About what?” I asked cautiously.
His eyes narrowed. “My little story.”
I searched for a reply that wouldn’t agitate him, trying to stay away from Mrs. Bellamy, and the question of my own fate. “Are you a Communist?”
I almost bit my tongue in frustration. That might have been the stupidest question I could have asked.
Mr. Bellamy just looked at me, his eyes growing wider. For a moment, I thought he was going to laugh.
“Me?” he said. “A Communist. Boy, you are out of your mind. First you think I’m a Nazi, now you think I’m a Red. Heck, boy, I already told you. I’m a Republican.”
“But, the Cheka…”
“You’ve never been in prison, Vernon,” said Mr. Bellamy. His face fell back into sadness. “Things happen to a fellow in prison, on purpose sometimes, just part of life sometimes. Some of those things are, well, kind of permanent. They don’t all leave scars on the outside, if you know what I mean. Even now days, I got to do things for some people sometimes, when they ask. Got no choice, but that don’t signify I agree with them. It’s like back in the Prohibition when me and the boys were involved in the shine business. There was some Italians out of Chicago and Kansas City we had dealings with.”
I nodded. I had a pretty good idea who he was talking about.
“Well, we took their money, and we did some of what they said. That didn’t make us part of their thing, and didn’t mean we agreed with everything they did. That’s kind of how it is with me and the Russkies.”
So he did take Red money, and do their bidding. At least, that’s what I thought Mr. Bellamy meant. I couldn’t imagine what the Russians would want with a spy in Butler County, Kansas. As far as I knew, agricultural information like crop yields was a matter of public record. And back in 1920 when he came home, no one could have know how much Wichita was going to be a part of the modern aircraft industry.
“So you’re going to sell the thing in the barn to the Russians,” I said. “That’s why you haven’t turned it over to Floyd’s German friends.”
“Russians?” Mr. Bellamy chuckled. I seemed to be the funniest guy he’d met in a while. He glanced around, apparently looking to see if Mr. Neville was listening at the door, then leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Heck, no. They’re no better than the Nazis, worse in a lot of ways. Whole country full of angry, stupid people with nothing better to do than kill each other over what was said or done years earlier. No sir, Germany’s dead and America’s got the atom bomb. It ain’t gonna be long before them Russians are down, too.”
I was utterly baffled. Floyd was a Nazi agent, or at least a Nazi patsy. Mr. Bellamy, his father, was in the control of Communists if not an actual agent. What the heck were they going to do with Pegasus? Turn it over to the Republican Party?
“Don’t look so puzzled, Vernon,” said Mr. Bellamy gently. “It all makes sense.”
Floyd smiled, tentatively. “We worked it out so everyone gets out of this in one piece.” He frowned at me. I swear there was a tear standing in his eye. That boy sure could act. Or was he trying to tell me something? Could he save me from his dad? More to the point, from Mr. Neville?
Frustrated, I said, “What the heck is going on around here?”
Floyd’s smile came back full force, his million-dollar grin. This was the old Floyd, my Floyd, who could talk his way in and out of girl’s skirts without ruffling a feather along the way. “Them Italians are coming. Charles Binaggio from the DiGiovanni family. Kansas City mob. They’ll take delivery of that item in the barn. We’ll set things up so it looks like we got ambushed, Binaggio pays us off under the table, and good old American boys get to keep that Nazi warbird. No Germans, no Russians, and sure as heck no God damned United States Army Air Force are going to lay hands on my airplane.”
The Mafia. Organized crime. Al Capone. The Bellamys and their gang were going to sell my computational rocket to the criminal underworld.
I couldn’t believe it.
“You guys are totally off your nuts,” I said. “You can’t be serious about any of this. You’re trying to play the Germans and the Russians and the US Army CID off against each other. You’re ready to kill me like I was a rat, you’re pissing off the Sheriff and the Police Department, and the whole time you’ve got the scientific find of the century in your barn. How are you going to get away with this? All those guys aren’t going to just walk away out there. They play rougher than you do.”
“Mexico,” said Floyd. “We’re going to take our cash and live in Mexico.”
“Mexico. Do you know how far Mexico is from Kansas?”
“Not far when we’re flying in that Nazi airplane,” said Mr. Bellamy.
As if the entire Bellamy gang could fit inside Pegasus. This bunch of old men was at least as crazy as they were tough.
“I’m supposed to be dead before then,” I said bitterly. “Once I’ve taught Floyd to fly it. Besides, I thought the Italians were taking it.”
“Help us out and we can make it worth your while. Fly us to Mexico, fly the Italians back to Kansas City, and we’ll make it easy on you,” said Mr. Bellamy.
“What an incentive — a clean death in some abandoned warehouse by the Missouri River.”
“It could be worse,” said Mr. Bellamy. “Those eye-ties are a lot more inventive than even Mr. Neville. We could put in a good word for you.”
Maybe I could crash the plane. Mr. Bellamy didn’t know much about flying. I’d guess Floyd didn’t either, even after three years in the Air Corps. He was impervious to detailed knowledge — I knew that from high school. The two of them seemed to think they could strap me into the pilot’s seat, stick a gun in my ear and make me go where they wanted.
Like sticking up a taxi cab.
Mr. Bellamy grabbed his shotgun. Floyd tensed and shifted his weight. I thought about that carving knife. “Son,” said Mr. Bellamy, “take Vernon down to the barn. It’s time to quit jawboning and figure out how to get that bird off the ground. Keep a close eye on him. Do not under any circumstances let him take that airplane out to where he could try to take off.”
“What are you going to do?” Floyd asked, suspicious.
“I’m going to explain to Mr. Neville what our little ruckus was about, so he and the boys don’t get nervous. Then I’m going to clean up your mother, and wait on the porch for Roanoke Joe and Vinnie the Snake to show up. They’re on their way here from Kansas City to inspect the merchandise and set up the transaction.”
I was feeling reckless. I didn’t have much left to lose. “What if the other bad guys show up?”
“I don’t recall as how I was speaking to you, Vernon,” said Mr. Bellamy, “but we’ll take care of that in its own time. You do your job, fast, and everything else will work out.”