“Napping on the job?”
“Resting,” he told me. “I never sleep at my desk. What’s up? Any more excitement?”
“Nothing but.” I filled Toots in on the morning’s mayhem at the Starlight Motor Hotel and then told him of my impending flight.
“You’re going to land at Idlewild with the real Toscanini while Sarnoff is waiting for the ringer?” Toots sounded both incredulous and petulant.
“Exactly.”
“So what’s my exclusive, Jack? Every fucking paper in town’s gonna be there.”
“But you’re going to be the only one who’s gonna have any idea what’s really going on.”
“Jack, if Lansky and Lucky are involved, you don’t think they’re gonna have their muscle at the airport? What’s to stop them from grabbing your old man again and hustling him into a car? Saying that he’s the fraud.”
“Nothing, except that I’m not going to let it happen. I’ve schlepped him this far; no way I let him get nabbed in my own backyard. Don’t worry about it. By tonight, you’re gonna be waltzing your way to a Pulitzer Prize.”
“If I survive. This puts me out in the open, too.”
“I wouldn’t sweat it. One thing about Meyer and Lucky, they don’t go after newspapermen. It’s bad for business. Shooting private dicks—everybody loves that.”
“What time you say you’re getting in?”
“Around four o’clock. General Aviation at Idlewild.”
“Don’t try to be a hero.”
“I am a hero, Toots; it just comes naturally.”
I sat back down with Barbara and Toscanini and thumbed blindly through a six-month-old issue of Collier’s, not registering anything except a photo of Lana Turner nibbling on an ear of corn. My palms were slick and I realized that I was a lot edgier than I had admitted to Toots. Barbara produced a deck of cards from her handbag and started to deal solitaire on a small metal coffee table. Maestro beamed, happy just to be near her, and began offering muttered advice in Italian. Barbara furrowed her ivory brow and studied her cards. When she looked up, she caught me watching her and smiled demurely, then reached over and squeezed my arm. I fell ever deeper for her, like a guy spinning down a well in a fairy tale. It’s the little things that count, the small exquisite gestures—the straightening of a wayward collar, the instinctive squeeze of flesh. If she was not reading my thoughts, then she was certainly intuiting my fears—of crashing to earth in a flaming Piper, or getting my skull bashed in at Idlewild by some of the world’s most accomplished thugs.
I had been thinking while pretending to read Collier’s, and the more I thought, the more I agreed with Toots—the logical play for Lansky and Lucky was to snatch the Maestro again. As for Barbara, she probably knew way too much to be allowed to live; it would pain Lansky for at least a week and a half, but he would ultimately allow her to be rubbed out.
As for me, I was not only expendable, I was radioactive. If everything didn’t go perfectly, I knew I’d be dead by tonight.
Fifteen minutes later, Vern walked through the door from the hangar and waved at us to join him. Barbara gathered up her cards and put them in her bag. I went over to Toscanini and helped him get up. He was positively buoyant.
“We are like Lindbergh, Boston Blackie.”
“You like to fly?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Mezzo-mezzo. But to go home, to orchestra … has been long time.” His eyes got moist. “Makes me strong.” He clutched my arm hard. “Avanti!”
The three of us walked behind the counter and out into the hangar. There were a half dozen people working there and they stopped whatever they were doing the instant we appeared. At first I figured it was Barbara, and God knows the men watched her with awestruck attention, but then they began to applaud, and I knew it was for Maestro. It was the goddamnedest thing—a bunch of Hoosier grease monkeys paying tribute to the great man. Toscanini turned and touched his tweed cap in acknowledgment, then headed for the abbreviated stairway to the plane.
“Piccolo” he exclaimed, looking at the Pacer. “So small!”
“Well, maximum weight allowed is eighteen hundred pounds,” Vern said. “So I guess we’re all right with this group.”
“Have been on diet, signore,” Toscanini told him, and the men all laughed some more, then Vern assisted him up the three steps and into the PA-20. It was a plucky-looking little plane, about twenty feet in length, with a single engine and wings that appeared to be shorter than the others in the hangar. After Barbara boarded the plane, I turned to Vern and asked him if I was just imagining that the wings were smaller.
“No, the wingspan is about six feet less than the other Pipers.”
“Tell me that’s a good thing.”
“It’s a very good thing, Mr. LeVine. Means it climbs a little slower, about two-thirds slower than the cub, as a matter of fact, but it also allows the plane to go twenty miles an hour faster.” He clapped me on the back. “No need to worry, sir. It’s gonna be a hell of a ride.”
I took a deep breath and boarded the plane.
“Boarded” might be too grand a term to describe entering the Pacer. “Slinked” or “crouched” might fit the bill a little better. The plane looked to be ideal for transporting small dogs or circus midgets; if you were over four feet tall, standing erect was out of the question. Four cloth-covered seats were set in two rows and you got to the second row by climbing over the first, which Barbara had already done. She was seated with her hands folded, as pale as a denizen of Death Row. Maestro was already buckled into his seat in the first row.
Vern got on board carrying a large and fragrant paper bag.
“Coffee and doughnuts and sandwiches,” he announced.
“Bravo, capitano!” Toscanini cried out.
“You want something now, before we take off?”
“Sì, sì, capitano. Doughnut, caffe.”
I realized I was starving. Vern distributed the coffee and doughnuts to us all, and then started busying himself in the tiny cockpit. “There’s water for later, and let’s save the sandwiches for when we stop in Pittsburgh,” he said. “We should have pretty smooth air by then. Just might be a little choppy till we’re near Columbus.”
“How far is that?”
“’Bout a hundred and seventy-five miles. You all belted in, folks?”
We were indeed belted in, contemplatively sipping coffee and munching our doughnuts, which were still warm and tasted like something fashioned by God’s own hands, if God were a plump housewife from Indianapolis. Toscanini looked as if he had never eaten a doughnut in his life, studying the circle of fried dough like someone who had just swum onto a deserted island and picked it from a tree.
“Delizioso,” he said, and then Vern started up the engine and it suddenly got very noisy in the cabin.
“I advise you folks to finish your coffee,” Vern shouted back over his shoulder.
We did so. Vern started maneuvering the small plane across the tarmac. It was a quiet morning at the Indianapolis airport. A pair of American Airlines planes were being washed down by a crew; to the east an old military transport, its Air Force markings faded but still visible, was slowly rolling down the runway. Everything seemed to be happening at half speed. Barbara leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips. She smelled of coffee and warm doughnut and the promise of my lost youth.
“Good luck to us all,” she said.
SEVENTEEN
Vern was correct. The first part of the flight was not smooth. Not even close. We bumped and ducked and rolled. The old man stared placidly out the window and admired the agrarian world below, despite the continuous whoops and swoops of the air currents. As for me, I felt like I had gotten on the Coney Island Cyclone after a spaghetti dinner. I closed my eyes and attempted to conjure up clean and unnauseating images—hansom cabs at dusk, Rizzuto throwing a runner out from deep shortstop—but it was not entirely successful. My stomach was clenched like a small damp fist. Barbara wasn’t doing much better and aft
er an hour or so, my shoulder began to ache from the number of times she had dug her nails into me.
“This chop is going to end real soon, folks,” Vern shouted out from the front of the plane. “Just hang in there! And if you can’t, just use the bags. We discourage barfing out the window.” He chuckled as if he had said something funny. “Never know who might be walking around down there!”
My head was slick with sweat; when I turned and looked at Barbara, she was milk-white.
“Soon,” I whispered.
“Maybe crashing would be better,” she said.
“Don’t think about it, don’t talk about it.”
“You’re not sick?”
“I keep trying to think of Phil Rizzuto throwing to first base.”
She smiled very grimly. “That does nothing for me.”
Vern looked back over his shoulder. “How are you doing, Mr. Tos-canini?”
“Bene. Bella scenaria!” The old man pointed out the window, then turned to me. “Boston Blackie, no like the ride?”
“Don’t you have a stomach, Maestro?”
Toscanini patted his middle. “Very strong. Always.”
“You’re very fortunate.”
“Maybe am just happy because soon I have clean underwears!” He laughed hoarsely.
“Okay, guys,” Vern announced. “Gonna climb to some smoother air! We want everybody to be happy.”
The little plane rose another couple of hundred feet, fighting through some dark clouds, and suddenly—miraculously—the turbulence ceased. The currents turned smooth, then smoother. My stomach was immediately becalmed, as if I had ingested a wonder drug.
“Should be basically okay from here on,” Vern announced. “Can’t guarantee it, of course.”
Toscanini looked at me and smiled. “You were almost to vomit, Boston Blackie.”
“Me?” I said incredulously. “No way. I just like to turn colors as a party trick.”
The old man nodded happily. “You still have stomach of a young man. And you, cara mia …” He gazed at Barbara.
“I’m not a great flyer, Maestro.”
“You are great everything,” he said, and blew her a kiss. You had to hand it to him: At eighty-three, he still had all the moves.
At ten minutes of twelve, we landed at Pittsburgh to refuel. Maestro elected to remain inside the plane and enthusiastically began to wolf down a bologna sandwich, but Barbara and I were eager to disembark. It was an enormous relief to feel solid ground beneath my Florsheims, to let the westerly breeze dry my sweat-soaked suit and shirt. The skies over Pittsburgh were gray and unpromising; a procession of planes ascended regularly into that ashy sky and I watched them with a strange mixture of agitation and relief. Barbara and I walked a prudent distance from the fuel pumps and lit up our Luckies. I had no appetite whatsoever, but the cigarette tasted shockingly good.
“Nervous, honey?” Barbara asked me.
“I’m past that.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you reach a point where you think you have all the information you’re ever going to get and you hope that’s going to be enough to get you through whatever happens.”
“And what do you thinks going to happen with you and me?”
She asked the question very simply; it was just a fastball over the outside of the plate and I could take it or swing at it, but it was probably a strike either way.
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“Sure you do,” she said evenly. “You think it’s over. You think you’re too old for me, you think I’m too dangerous, you think I could never stick with one man for very long.”
“That’s what I think?”
She took a drag from her Lucky. “Mmm-hmm. That’s what you think.”
“You’re right. That’s what I think.”
She tossed her cigarette to the tarmac and ground it out.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” she said without looking up. “That’s all I’m asking. Give me a chance.”
I couldn’t think of an apt reply. Over her shoulder, I saw Vern waving at me to return to the plane.
“Pit stop’s over, sweetheart,” I told Barbara. She hooked her arm through mine and kept her head tucked into my shoulder all the way back to the plane.
* * *
The flight from Pittsburgh to New York was smooth enough to allow for generous and prolonged slumber. Toscanini partook of the opportunity, beginning his rhythmic snoring somewhere west of Harris-burg. I was dog-tired, but there was as much chance of my falling asleep as there was of my doing a Mexican hat dance out on the planes wing. With each mile approaching Idlewild, my innards tightened a little more. Barbara occasionally reached over and clutched my hand; her palm was as moist as mine.
“I see water, Jack,” she said suddenly. “What’s that?”
There was indeed a large body of water looming in the distance.
“Vern, what’s that lake?” I shouted to the pilot.
“Delaware Water Gap,” he hollered back. “We have about an hour and a half, hour forty-five to go. The tailwinds aren’t much to speak of today, otherwise I could get you there a little quicker.”
I checked my watch. It was twenty past two. This was going down to the wire.
I wasn’t asleep, but I was clearly lost in my thoughts, staring out the window and noticing that we were flying over fewer farms and more clumps of squat suburban houses, when I felt a tapping on my shoe. When I looked up, Vern was speaking to me in a sort of stage whisper.
“’Bout a half hour, Mr. LeVine. Maybe you want to start rousing the troops here.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, and rubbed my mouth.
This was it.
I was able to make them out at about three hundred feet. As we made our final descent, I could see the lights, the stalks of microphones, and the crowd of reporters and photographers standing on the tarmac beside the General Aviation Terminal. It looked to be a hell of a turnout, maybe a hundred in all.
“Jack,” Barbara said in neutral but charged tones.
“The press, baby. Out in force.”
Maestro was strangely impassive, running a comb through his hair as the plane approached the runway.
“Welcome home, folks,” Vern announced, touching the Pacer down at precisely seven minutes past four. As we taxied toward the terminal, I saw another private plane, larger and fancier than ours, spinning to its final stop like a housefly dying on a windowsill.
“That’s a Piper Clipper PA-16,” Vern announced. “Little bigger than this one, and a bunch slower.”
Two flunkies in windbreakers were industriously rolling a red carpet across the tarmac. We kept going.
“Where do we stop?” I asked Vern.
“They want me to tuck it next to the terminal, about a hundred yards from this Clipper.”
“Can we get any closer, like fifty feet?”
“We can try.” Vern radioed the tower while I looked out the window. As we taxied toward the terminal, I could see that I had underestimated the press turnout. Stuffed behind a rope barricade, their numbers looked to be closer to a hundred and fifty, including newsreel cameramen.
I heard Vern listening to some rapid-fire static from his radio and then he said, “Roger,” which I didn’t know that grown-ups actually said. He turned to me and shook his head. “We can’t be closer than a hundred yards from the Clipper,” Vern called out. “They say this is a special event of some sort, and that’s the best slot they can give me.”
We were now passing the Clipper. The plane had come to a final stop and had shut off its engine, but its door remained shut. And now I saw why—a limousine the approximate length of the Queen Mary was cruising slowly across the tarmac, headed toward the cluster of microphones. The limo bore a flag on each fender: one bearing the ever-popular Stars and Stripes, the other bearing the less-sacred colors of the Radio Corporation of America.
I had no doubt that David Sarnoff, the head of RCA, was inside that limo.
“W
hat’s our plan?” Barbara asked me.
“We get out and walk toward the microphones.”
“You’re serious.”
“Totally.”
The Pacer PA-20 kept rolling, a little bumpily, across the tarmac, until we finally reached our designated slot. Vern shut off the engine and the plane fell shockingly silent. I stood up as straight as I could, which still only allowed me the posture of Quasimodo, and handed Vern the rest of his dough. He thanked me and put the money in his shirt pocket without even glancing at it.
“Got to file some papers inside, then maybe I’ll come out and see what all the excitement’s about.”
“Hope it’s not too exciting,” I told him. “In any case, thanks for everything. You just helped save Western civilization, at least for the next couple of weeks.”
“It was my privilege.” He got out of his seat and pushed the door open, then helped get Maestro out of his seat.
“Va bene,” the Maestro told him. “You are better pilot than Smiling Jack from funny papers!”
“Thank you, sir. Was an honor to fly you, and if you wouldn’t mind …” Vern thrust a sheet of paper in front of the old man, which Maestro happily signed. Barbara crawled over the front seat and watched. Vern reverently folded the sheet of paper, put it inside a leather case he kept in the cockpit, then turned and opened the door.
“You folks just give me a second.” The pilot lifted a cover and pulled out a three-step metal staircase, which he lowered out through the doorway.
He disembarked.
“Okay, guys!” Vern called out, and then the three of us, hunched over like question marks, made our way out of the plane and down the staircase and onto the tarmac. The pilot shook each of our hands in military fashion.
“Good luck,” he said.
“Good luck to you,” I told him. Vern turned and headed toward the General Aviation Terminal.
And there we were.
I extended my arms.
“Show time, ladies and gentleman.” Barbara took me under one arm, and the Maestro grasped the other, and we began jauntily crossing the tarmac, like we were off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 26
