The Devil Wears Wings

by Harry Whittington

  I was telling them about the time I took off from a carrier in the Coral Sea. The woman had moved up the bar beside me and was listening as intently as the Sarge. It seemed fine that she would care enough to listen. Maybe she was rather chubby, but she was really very pretty.

  I got off the stool and walked back and forth before it, telling them, remembering how it had been. I was seeing it. I sweated. I didn't know how I had gotten started talking about it. But I was glad. It seemed funny as hell now, and they were laughing, seeing how funny it was.

  "I flew until I had twenty minutes' gas left and that was when I got back to rendezvous. Only there wasn't anything to rendezvous with. For God's sake, I stared down there and the stinking carrier was just going down for the third time in flames and oil fires. Poor bastards were swimming around in the oil, looking up at me as if I could help them and I was up there without any gas for Christ's sake."

  "What did you do?" the woman said.

  "Hell, I flew to Pearl Harbor and got help. What else?"

  They laughed. The Sarge said, "Errol Flynn was there, wasn't he, Major? At Pearl, I mean?"

  "Sure. Man, when I found out he was there, that was all I needed. We sent the task force home, mopped up alone."

  "You said you didn't have any gas," the woman said.

  "That was the sad part," the Sarge told her. "He didn't have any gas."

  "I didn't have Errol Flynn, either."

  "It must have been hell," the woman said.

  "Hell?" I stared at her. "It was the most wonderful time of my life."

  "But-you had to-to ditch the plane, didn't you?"

  "What the hell? There were plenty other guys down in that water. I

  didn't get any wetter than they did."

  ***

  I looked around. I didn't recognize the room. It was a frilly cubicle with white curtains and Venetian blinds drawn tightly. It looked like the transient sort of place you might rent in somebody's shabby apartment hotel. At the same time there were signs it had been lived in for a long time. Feminine undergarments were tossed around and the overwhelming scent of toilet water and mascara washed over me.

  I shook my head.

  "What's the matter, honey?" the woman said.

  I was sitting on the side of the bed. I wiped my hand across my face.

  "How'd I get here?"

  "You kidding? You came with me."

  I didn't say anything.

  "Don't you like me?" she said.

  "Sure. You're fine."

  I stared up at her. I had no memory of leaving the Old Sarge's Bar. I had no memory of her, either. I hadn't even wanted to pick her up. Yet here I was. She still had her dress on, but she was working at it. She lowered her voice telling me I could have anything I wanted. Only I didn't want anything. I looked at her, trying to want her as she pulled away the filmy print frock and began to spill out of it, white and full and scented. I kept telling myself how easy it was. Easy. When you got down to it, it was as easy as opening a door. You just had to reach over and lift the latch.

  She smiled at me. She was pretty. She wasn't in her twenties any more but she hadn't been out of them very long. There was a soft look about her eyes, and a hurt in them. That shoved me way out. I wanted nothing to do with soft, hurt eyes.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "What's the matter, love?"

  "Nothing."

  "Do you think I'm pretty?"

  "Whether I think so or not, you are pretty." I smiled, thinking you could follow her down into hell and never look around or feel the heat.

  "Just tell me you think I'm pretty," she said. "You can have anything you want."

  I wiped my hand across my mouth.

  She stepped out of her dress as if she'd been doing it for fun all her life.

  I shook my head. I stood up, walked toward the door. She touched my arm. Otherwise she didn't try to stop me. I smiled at her. I wished I had some present to leave with her. But that was the story of my life. I could hurt people, but I could never do anything the way I wanted.

  "Just any doll," she said.

  "What?"

  "Just any doll" she repeated in that lifeless tone. "That's what you've been saying ever since we left the Sarge's. You didn't want just any doll."

  I touched the doorknob. "I guess that's the way it is. It's not your fault."

  She sighed. "In a way it is. I should have left you alone. But I kept telling myself I wasn't just any doll, that I was something special."

  I looked at her. There wasn't anything else to say. I opened the door and walked out. She closed it very softly behind me.

  ***

  I woke up yelling.

  As soon as I was awake, I rolled over, wiped the sweat off my face without opening my eyes. I cursed myself for yelling, but I didn't really care. I was used to the dream by now, used to the yelling that went with it. It was a recurring dream, in Technicolor, and I don't give a damn how unlikely the psychiatrists say this is. In fact, it had been a psychiatrist who suggested I resign my commission in the Air Force. And all because of that same old dream. It had started its playing dates in my sleep like a first-run movie during the war, and kept playing the same old circuit, scratchy prints and jumbled sequences but with all the same old impact of horror. Only during the war I'd had a different name for it.

  In those days I had called it a nightmare.

  This was the change, my attitude toward it. Dreaming that I was plummeting downward in flames, unable to move or aid myself, certainly ought to qualify as a nightmare. But I did not feel this way any more. When it happened now, it was a familiar show. It was like returning to a place full of memories that no longer had any agony in them. Now the dream, and the sweats, and the sure knowledge that I'd screamed myself awake was no longer torture. It got so that a man's waking world was a torment so he had to run back, away from it, and the events that had once seemed evil weren't so bad any more. One more war? I figured that was what my dream meant. That's what it had to mean; otherwise my being shot down in flames didn't mean anything. The wars were over for me and this wasn't the way I was slated to die.

  I heard some faint movement in the room or in the corridor but I didn't open my eyes. Probably somebody had heard me yell and was running around out there, troubled but unable to find any place to stick his nose.

  "You have dreams like that very often?"

  I lunged upward in bed, my eyes wide and staring. It was late afternoon. The sunlight streamed in a dusty shaft through the west window.

  Sid Coates was sitting in a straight chair that he had pulled up beside my bed. He looked like some apparition from a horror movie, the dangling lock of bleached hair, the pale brows and that silly grin that pulled his face out of shape.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "Having a drink," Coates said. He held up one of the pint bottles I kept hidden around the place for mad liquor.

  "How'd you find that?"

  "It wasn't easy."

  I could feel the anger building. "How'd you get in here?"

  He shrugged. "You're wasting time with non-essentials. Getting in anywhere is easy if you've got charm enough."

  "You fail to charm me."

  "That's just because you don't know me."

  "That's the way I want to leave it, too."

  "I once charmed my way out of a four-year reformatory rap. Would you like to hear about that?"

  "No."

  "Some other time then. It's a fact, though, nobody can resist Sid Coates when he turns on the charm."

  "I'll fight myself."

  He shook that lock of hair off his forehead and took another pull at the bottle.

  "A lot of people do," he said, grinning at me. "But it doesn't help. You see, in college I was a psychology major. So I find out what will charm each person and I use that approach. It is very simple, really, because though people all think they're so individual, they're all pretty much alike."

  "Get out of here."

  He seem
ed not even to hear me. "Now, you take my mother. She's a dear woman. As stupid as a cat. You see, it isn't truly her fault-the stupidity, I mean. Her folks had money. They protected her from every fact of life. Hell, I doubt if she learned to wave bye-bye until she was fifteen. But to this day she believes all the axioms from the book of social usage. People are so and so. They must do so and so. There are people who come to the front door, the side door and the back door. Nothing must ever happen to upset this plan. I've been a deep and bitter disappointment to her. She tries to hate me. But just for the hell of it, I won't let her. I charm the old girl right out of her skin. And I do it just for the hell of it. I could take the money from her if I wanted to. She couldn't punch her way out of a bag."

  "Shut up, will you?"

  "Here. Have a drink." He extended my pint bottle. There were not more than two drinks left in it.

  "You've really been nursing this thing."

  "Just amusing myself while I waited. Now if you're wide awake, we can get down to business. We have a lot to talk about."

  CHAPTER SIX

  "You got holes in your head coming here like this, Coates," I told him, "and I'd have to have matching holes to listen to you."

  He grinned and it was a wild, other-side-of-the-moon grimace, that grin. I kept expecting him to tell me to take him to my leader. He would push his fingers through that pale lock of hair and then it would topple right back where it had been; only it was becoming sweated and lank now every time it brushed against his wet forehead.

  "I figure you have," Coates said. "Man, I'm a lot of things. But one of them ain't stupid."

  "Then get out of here."

  "Suppose I came in here to sell you a set of encyclopedias or a brush," Coates said. "You'd listen, wouldn't you?"

  I took the bottle, drank deeply. Once the liquor began to burn through me, I felt better. This clown was a clown, but by now, I'd decided he was harmless. A lot of times a drink will do this for you. One more drink is often just what you need.

  "You got three more minutes," I said. I swung out of bed, went to the bathroom, came back. Coates had been talking when I walked out of the room, and he was still talking when I returned.

  "-so my old man hasn't spoken to me since they kicked me out of the university. The only time I get to see my mother is when the old boy is out of the house, and it's safer when he's out of town. This makes it inconvenient, because I can't always arrange my finances to suit his trips away from home. So, I told you all this so you'd know who I am, and where I came from, and all the things you'd have to know about any man with whom you went into partnership."

  I stared at myself in a mirror and shuddered. I stuck out my tongue. It was white.

  He watched me push military brushes through my hair.

  "For a long time, Buz, I've had this plan. But I kept quiet about it. I never breathed a word of it, even when I was drunkest. Because I knew sometime I'd meet the guy who could help me pull it off, and I'd be set. Then I heard about you. Buz Johnson. Thirty-three. Ex-major in the Air Force. Ex-passenger service pilot. Every job I ever heard you had, you had just lost or just quit. Well, none of that sold me on you. It didn't prejudice me in any way, you understand. But it didn't prove either that you had the qualities I was seeking in a partner."

  My shirt was a mess. I couldn't wear it any more. It looked as though I'd been sleeping in it. I unbuttoned it.

  "No. I had to do a lot more investigating. Then I found out what I needed to know. Ex-Major Johnson liked to live high, liked to pay for the drinks, liked to have fast women and new cars or vice versa. In short, exMajor Johnson liked all the things he had been almost able to afford on his major's pay. Only-since the fighting stopped, Johnson hadn't had his major's pay any more. So that's what I was looking for. That's when I figured you and I were alike-"

  "Alike? You and me? God forbid."

  He grinned. "Oh, I know. That's what everybody says at first thought. It's nauseating, I admit. But there it is-we're two of a kind."

  I wadded up the shirt and threw it on a chair.

  "You see, Buz, we both have to have money. Oh, I don't mean a few dollars. Beer money. Money in the wallet. Money for medical expenses. That crap. We need enough dough so we don't have to think about it any more."

  "This makes us alike? You name me somebody who doesn't need money this way."

  "Plenty of people, Buz. Hell, there are millions of people who never expect to have anything. They expect to live in a rut with just enough to squeeze by on, or not quite enough. They like it that way. They'd be frightened if anything else happened."

  I went back to the bathroom. I loosened my pants to step out of them so I could get a shower, but Coates followed and leaned on the doorjamb behind me. I forgot the shower, zipped my pants, buckled the belt, washed my face and under my arms. I still felt sweaty.

  "But I want money for cars, and dames, and clothes. I tell you, man, I get a fever when I look at the new styles that come out all the time. I feel naked walking the street in last year's suit. You can dig that, can't you, Major? I want money. I want a big wad of it. I want it now. I haven't the time or the inclination to work and save and accumulate a damned fortune by saving and investing and sweating. Christ, I'm young, and now is when I need money. When I get old I'll sit around and live on a Social Security check."

  "What Social Security check?"

  "Oh, they'll have them for moral outcasts by the time I'm 65," he said. "But that's not what's on my mind. It's now. This present. My old man refuses me cigarette money. My old lady is a little better, but still a tightwad. Even if she weren't, it wouldn't help. She can let me have only so little or the old man raises hell with her. I wouldn't care about that, except that when he clamps down on her, she puts the screws to me-with lectures."

  I pushed past him and went back to the bedroom. I stood at the window, praying for fresh air, and having that prayer denied, too.

  He followed me. "And then I heard about you. You want all the things you had when you roared around hell-on-wheels on a major's flight pay. You want to buy for the boys, gift the girls, be a hell of a fellow-and you make sixty stinking bucks a week. I felt sorry for you when I heard about it."

  "You don't have to feel sorry for me, boy."

  "I don't. Not any more. Because now we're together. You and me. Man, when I saw you the first time, it was as though we'd grown up together, as if I'd known you all my life. There was something about you that was more familiar to me than anybody in my own family."

  "What do I do, thank you or take a poke at you?"

  He smiled. "That's better, Major. Coming around now? Beginning to see that maybe we are alike-"

  "Look. I can't go on listening to you if you're going to keep up that jazz about us being alike."

  He laughed. "All right. We're in the same boat. We were meant to be partners."

  "You're nuts."

  "What's that got to do with it? Buz, my friend, I may be a little eccentric, but then most men of genius are."

  "You're also a genius?"

  "What else? Wait until you hear the first instalment of my plan for

  instant wealth for two. I'll even allow you to suspend judgment on my genius until you hear it."

  I turned, leaned against the window sill and stared at him. He stood tall and lean, stoop-shouldered, his bleached hair lank and damp.

  His voice shook slightly with the excitement in it. "Buz, you don't know. The number of times I've been over this thing in my mind. The way I've known it would work. But the way I've needed somebody else I could trust to help me put it over. This is it, Buz. And what makes it genius, and perfect, is that it's so damned simple. You and I and a plane-"

  "Where do we get a plane?"

  "We steal one if we have to. What the hell? Wait until you see what we can get with just one plane. I was in this hick town and looked the bank over. It's like a sardine can. I know how many blocks to the highway, how many roads lead out of town, where they go, what condition they'r
e in. I know where a plane could be brought down attracting almost no attention, and yet would be accessible to the bank. I know how many cops there are in that town. Two. Not counting the state highway patrolman who rides through there maybe every other day. I even heard they've never even had a filling-station robbery in that hickville in over forty years. Robbery is the last thing these hicks ever think about.

  "And this is what makes it so perfect, Buz. If they did think about robbery they'd think about it in simple terms of something they could comprehend, a man on foot, a man in a car, a man on horseback, maybe. But in an airplane?" He laughed and slapped his leg. "They wouldn't believe it, even while they watched it. It would be like seeing a man from Mars to them. And that's what would make it so perfect. We could hide the plane, get in the bank, load ourselves with that gorgeous green stuff and take off. While they ran around looking for car tracks, we'd be off in the wild blue yonder. Now tell me, Major, does that sound like genius?"

  "It might work."

  "Might work? What's to fail? Are you nuts? It's perfect and it's simple. It's got to work."

  "That's where you're wrong. No matter how stupid they are, they'll remember you-"

  "We wear dark glasses on the street. Dark glasses in the bank. And that's where the plane comes in. We fix an alibi- ninety miles away. We might have a little trouble with a few minutes of it, but not enough to place us definitely in that hick town. It would sound impossible."