The Devil Wears Wings

by Harry Whittington

  "The drinks are on me, Buz."

  "Sure they are."

  We ordered and the waitress went away. I didn't say anything. He wanted this confab. I wasn't worried about making it easy for him.

  His voice was almost humanely considerate, and that was really something for this boy. He said, "First, Judy asked me to tell you something."

  "Oh?"

  "Just before she went on duty. I thought she had told you. It seems-according to her-she couldn't."

  "What's the mystery?"

  "Maybe I can tell you why Judy came by your place tonight."

  "Maybe I can tell you," I said.

  He shook his head. "No. I don't think you can. I think you would be wrong no matter what you said. She'd guess she lost her nerve. Couldn't stand to hurt you or something."

  "But you have no such compunctions?"

  "No."

  My throat constricted. The lights of the dim room flared brightly and blinded me with their brilliance.

  "Judy is going to be married, Johnson. This is her last flight. She's marrying this nice young fellow in New York. That's what she came by to tell you, whether she told you or not."

  "Ahhh," I said. It was an agonized sound.

  He glanced around, phony smile pasted on his face. He said, "I've mentioned him. They're in love. He's coming here for the marriage ceremony. I hope you'll be decent enough to keep out of the way."

  "Skeleton in the closet, eh?"

  "Judy has no past any of us are trying to conceal, of course. But you are a mistake she made."

  "She tell you that?"

  "Nobody had to tell me."

  "What a son of a bitch you are."

  "Keep your voice down."

  I pressed my hand against my mouth. He was spinning around in front of me, a phony smile on a whirling cord.

  "You ought to be happy, Jimmy. You've done everything you could to smash us up."

  "I didn't have to do anything. You did it all."

  "You helped it along." He finished off his drink, signalled for the check. His smile flattened out on his face now.

  "I just thought you ought to know," he said. He paid the check to the exact penny minus a tip and then he walked out.

  ***

  I don't know how I got home. I didn't know then, I never knew

  afterward. I was sitting at that little knee-rubbing table in the Rudder Room, staring out over the darkened field, and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the wall mirror that hung in my apartment and staring at something white and rutted and agonized, a shapeless face in that glass. It looked wild and strange and unreal.

  It took me a long time to realize it was my own face.

  I stood there, my shoulders hunched forward and studied that Hallowe'en mask in that mirror. I couldn't pull my gaze from the ugly face in the glass. My frustrated, stark, bloodless, hated face.

  I endured it as long as I could. I felt my fist knotting at my side, felt my muscles bunching all the way up my arm to my shoulder.

  I smashed my fist into the exact center of that glass. The frame rocked against the wall and the wall shook. But the important thing was what happened to that face. It was gone. It had smashed into parts and bits like lies in a puzzle, and the glass was spidery like a web and it no longer reflected my ugly face as a whole…

  I walked away stiffly, moving around the room and making animal sounds in my throat. Something snagged my attention and I stopped, staring at a picture hanging on the wall. When I moved past, it reflected my face. I could not stand that. I drove my fist into it and the wall rattled again and glass shards spilled slowly from the frame and I did not look at it again.

  Ahead I saw another picture. I smashed my fist into it, feeling the sharp bite of pain where pieces of glass drove into my knuckles and between my fingers. I moaned aloud but not because of the pain. I didn't feel the pain, and when I noticed the blood flicking from my fist I didn't care about that either. All I knew was that there was another glass-framed picture and I broke it, and that was not enough so I broke everything I could lift and hurl in the room, and my fist bled and it spilled blood but I did not look at my fist.

  I walked rigidly around the room looking for something else to smash and there was nothing more. My mouth spewed sounds and I wasn't even aware of what I was saying. There were no more pictures, no more mirrors, no more bottles, but there was a window overlooking the street and I listed toward it as fast as I could walk and drove my fist through it.

  By now people were banging at my door. I didn't even bother telling them to go away.

  She was marrying a guy named Johnny. A pilot she met in New York. Why? I knew what she would have told me, but she couldn't tell me, even when she wanted to. This guy offered her security and I yelled at her now, how long you think you're going to be able to stand that, for Christ's sake?

  I went on yelling. You can't leave me, Judy. God damn it, you can't leave me. What will I do without you? I know what it is without you when I believed I'd some day have you, and I can't stand it when I know I never will have you now. I can't take that. I got to have something. There's nobody else. There never was. What do I have to do to prove it, for Christ's sake? What do I have to do? Why didn't you tell me? But we had ridden all the way to the airport and you didn't tell me, you couldn't force yourself to tell me, and Jimmy Clark had to tell me.

  An agonized sound pressed through my throat, and I cried out as you might in a nightmare that you can no longer endure. I stood there with my hand bleeding, people banging at my door. I looked around for something else to smash, but there wasn't anything left to break.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The newspaper weather report forecast rain with clouds, overcast skies. I had waited almost a week for this, a week in which I'd existed inside a ball of hatred.

  I was in Clark's office when I read the afternoon weather chart for Friday. I balled the paper in my fist, tossed it toward the wastebasket. I had waited long enough. This was close to what I wanted, and even if it were not reliable because it reached ahead more than eleven hours, I decided to gamble on it.

  The truth was, I couldn't sit around like this any more.

  "Clark," I said. Jimmy looked up from behind his desk and gave me his meaningless smile. We hadn't said much to each other in the week since our little chat in the Rudder Room. "Sid Coates wanted me to ask you if he could charter your plane for a flight down the coast to Verona City tomorrow."

  Clark frowned. "Verona City?"

  "Yeah. That's right."

  "All day?"

  "Most of it."

  "That'll cost him a wad of dough."

  "What the hell? His mother can afford it."

  Jimmy laughed with contempt. "You two guys are a real pair."

  I grunted.

  "Why didn't he ask me himself?" Clark asked.

  "Last time he made a request of you, you turned him down. He wants to fly to Verona City to see some guy. And it'll give him a chance to log some air time."

  "All day?" Clark said again. A smile that was odd, even for Jimmy Clark, began to spread over his face. "And he wants you to go along with him, eh?"

  "I'm his instructor, remember?"

  This twisted smile broadened. Maybe it was only my own conscience, maybe it was the tamped-down hatred I felt for him, but I would have sworn Clark was suspicious. He even looked as if he knew why we wanted to use his plane.

  He got up and paced back and forth behind his desk. He seemed about to speak a couple of times, and his Billy Graham-type evangelistic scowl was worse than a smile. Once he stood there and stared at me for a few seconds. Finally he shook his head slightly and agreed.

  "Sure. You guys take it." He laughed. "Why not?"

  ***

  I stayed downtown until two A.M. the next morning waiting for the Friday papers to hit the street. I couldn't have slept anyway and even though I had permission to use Clark's Cessna, I wanted the latest possible weather bureau report on those promised overca
st skies.

  I bought a paper and walked with it folded under my arm. I didn't open it until I got inside my apartment. This was a superstition with me. The longer I delayed, the better the news was going to be.

  I poured a glass of orange juice, sat down at the table and thumbed through the paper until I found the weather report. My hand was still sore and stiff from the glass slivers.

  I laughed aloud.

  The weather news couldn't have been more perfect if they'd served it up for me personally. I read it over three times before I convinced myself that there wasn't some error.

  I picked up the telephone, dialled Sid's number. The bell jangled for a long time in his apartment. Finally he answered, his voice sleepdrugged.

  "Sid."

  "My God, Buz. Three o'clock. I just got to sleep."

  "Wake up. This is it."

  "You nuts? This time of night?"

  "I'll be by your place in a taxi in about forty minutes. It'll take us maybe twenty minutes more to ride out to the airport. I think we ought to be airborne by daylight."

  "Buz, you're having a nightmare."

  "Am I? Listen." I read the weather report to him. Even across the wires I could sense the tension start in him, winding him up. "Cold front moving south. Warm front moving north. Precipitation. Barometer falling. Rough winds. Rainfall heavy by afternoon. Overcast skies. You know what this means, Sid, for sure? It means no light craft in the air."

  He'd caught fire by now. He was wide awake. He laughed. "None except ours, baby." Then his voice dropped. "How we going to get the plane? Tomorrow isn't my day to fly. Clark won't let me rent the Cessna."

  "He's already agreed," I told him. "You're hiring me and the Cessna for a flight to Verona City. Visit that friend of yours down there. That's as much in the opposite direction from Fort Dale as I could get without ending in the Gulf."

  "Sounds fine."

  "He's really going to gouge you on plane rental."

  He laughed. "The hell with costs, son. Don't even think about such trifles."

  ***

  A sort of drugged sleeplessness possessed the Sunpark International at five A.M. We got out of the cab at the administration building. Fluorescent, neon and curb lights cast an unearthly glow against the deepening dark. The baggage boys lolled on benches against the walls, awake but too nearly asleep to get to their feet when a cab reached the curb. Inside the white, lighted corridors, flight-desk clerks stared fixedly at papers before them, never moving. Nobody was actually asleep out here, but they weren't truly awake, either.

  Sid and I stood on the curb at American's entrance. Sid paid the driver and we watched the cab move away in the darkness. The taillight winked when he stopped for the highway, and I felt so good that I winked back in the darkness.

  "What about these damned suitcases," Sid said. "Somebody will remember we had them."

  "Hell with them. Nobody at Fort Dale will ever see these suitcases. Everybody carries suitcases at an airport. You'd look half-dressed without one."

  He loped along behind me through the administration building.

  People were slouched in the leather chairs asleep or dozing, jerking up their heads every time the p.a. system came to life. We went out on the ramp, walking against the wind, toward Hangar 2.

  Sid belched. "Ulcers," he said. "I'll feel better when we're in the air."

  "You chicken?"

  "Hell no. I always belch when I'm awake this time of the day."

  I grinned at him over my shoulder. "Son, we're in luck. We haven't even seen anybody we know yet."

  "The tower is going to know we left here-and when."

  "Man. No wonder you got ulcers."

  The fact that people would know we took off from International before daybreak didn't worry me. I had been living in a void for the past week, hypnotized against thinking about Judy. If I allowed myself a thought, I kept it on the flight Sid and I were going to make, and how I could work out any rough angles. Sometimes when I had three or four whiskeys-with-beer at the Old Sarge's Bar, I would even smile to myself a little. I couldn't share my secret with anybody, but when I was halfstewed, I realized that Sid and I were like Robin Hood-only we had pawnshop guns instead of bow and arrow. We were like Jesse James, only we were going to fly in like men from Mars instead of making the take on horseback. Modern Jesse James. Ultra-modern Robin Hood.

  And these were the only thoughts I had allowed myself. I kept away from Judy when she returned to town, away from Jimmy Clark as much as possible. My room was repaired and I forgot that too, consciously. I heard that Judy's young pilot was due in town, or perhaps had arrived; I didn't listen that closely.

  But when I had a share of a hundred grand, I would be different, everything would be different. Having this one fact to cling to made it possible for me to work with Jimmy Clark and not get thrown in jail for assault.

  I hurried a little now, going ahead of Sid into the hangar. The suitcase banged against my leg, and the slight pain was pleasant. It seemed to me that the way things were going I ought to win out. Everything was flying along, smooth and easy, increasingly fast, like something caught in a wind tunnel where nothing could stop it or turn it back, but nothing could interfere with its perfect progress, either.

  I opened the door of the cabin plane, stowed my suitcase behind the seats, watched Sid put his away. Everything seemed to be on our side. There was no airport near Fort Dale, and this in itself insured success: no airport, no pursuit. I made a little song of it in my mind, humming. And even if there had been an airport, the weather today was foul enough to ground all light craft. Sid and I would have the skies to ourselves.

  I tried to decide what color Cadillac I would drive. It would be a convertible, of course. I like to ride with the top down. I laughed aloud, but Sid didn't even hear me. He was busy talking to himself.

  The engine coughed and spit and came to life. I let it warm up inside the hangar because I didn't want to attract too much attention out on the sky chutes.

  We rolled it outside. I contacted the tower, got clearance, wind direction and velocity. The radio man sounded astounded. "Buz, is that you, Buz? I never knew you were sober enough to fly this time of the day."

  I cursed to myself because this guy knew me, but it was not important. I sweated it a little, but managed to chuckle and assure him that I wouldn't fly in the same plane with myself if I were sober.

  We taxied along the runway, revved the motor and headed into the wind. I put the Cessna in the air, climbing, and the next thing I did was to kill radio contact with the control tower.

  I glanced at my watch, feeling the sweet taste of excitement in my throat and bubbling up into the back of my mouth. It was 5.45 A.M. and we were airborne.

  "This gives us plenty of time to steal a plane in the dark and set Clark's down on the strip at Berry Town." I said it aloud, but was speaking mostly to myself.

  "Man, you do worry about hiding his plane!"

  "It's not Clark I'm worrying about. But if he's mixed up in it, Judy will be. I don't want to hurt her."

  "Sir Galahad."

  "The hell with that. I'm Robin Hood."

  I glanced back at the receding airfield and grinned. I hadn't felt this good since Korea. I knew how Jesse James felt. I knew how Robin Hood felt. And better than that, I knew how I felt.

  I felt like the man from Mars.

  Then, without warning, this faint sense of wrong began nagging at me. For a moment I didn't realize what it was. Then I knew. The sun was suddenly up, all around us. Daybreak is sudden and complete in this flat country, and I had forgotten that. The sun was like a bright yellow egg yolk behind us. It already glittered in the bay below. And there was no sign of that cold front with rough winds, beaucoup rain.

  "What's wrong?" Sid said.

  "You see any signs of rain?" I glanced at him. He'd been sitting rigidly since we left the ground, hands locked in his lap and face taut with almost unbearable tensions.

  He moved his head stiffly, s
canning the horizon. "It's early yet," he said. Then: "You sure you read that paper right, Buz?"

  "I read it right. A half-dozen times. Don't worry, those thunderheads will move right down on us. When the warm front strikes the cold front, we got it made. I've had them too many times when I didn't want them for them to fail me now."

  "Well. Here we are," Sid said.

  "A couple of rich guys."

  "Fortune hunters. Take gold from the rich cattle farmers who don't know how to appreciate it and give it to the poor fliers who need so much."

  "It's a mission." Sid laughed. "A crusade."

  Sid turned and took a fifth of Echo Springs from his suit case.

  "What you want with that thing?" I said.

  "Got another one. One for you."

  "Hell."

  "Case of snake bite."

  "Sid, don't be a damned fool. Don't start drinking now."

  Coates laughed and removed the cap. He drank the first long pull thirstily, smacked his lips. "You run the plane. I'll do my part."

  I felt a sudden burst of rage. "Just be sure you can," I told him.

  Down inside me, the feeling persisted that here was something I hadn't anticipated, something I should have checked out but hadn't checked out. Sid was my partner in this thing. I had investigated his past but forgotten his present. This robbery was a gamble that called for strictly sober thinking. We'd planned a drunk act in Fort Dale, but I had intended it to be all pretense. But there was no sense in telling Coates not to drink; because…

  The truth hit me like a fist in the nose. This is what I had done to all those guys who had depended on me to fly their planes. I had drunked out, goofed off-and now I was getting it all back. Coates was a lush. That's what he had become, a real lush, and he needed this stuff for a crutch. This robbery was all his idea. But he wasn't going to be able to execute it without a bottle to nurse on.