by T. E. Cruise
“I don’t need a lesson in current events from you.”
“Then you don’t need me to remind you that there was an extremely acrimonious public debate on that bill before it was overwhelmingly passed by both houses of Congress—”
“So what?”
“Mister Gold, this is the same Congress that votes appropriations for the postal service.”
Damn, Gold thought. That nasty implication had not occurred to him.
“Anyway, I think other banks would turn you down no matter who you were,” Campbell was saying. “You’re already financially overextended. Your business assets are mortgaged to the hilt to Pacific Coast Bank. What are you going to offer as collateral to any other lender?”
“I—” Gold hesitated. “I have my house, and cars…”
“Fine,” Campbell said. “I’ve got the numbers right here. Give me a second—”
Campbell put down the telephone. Gold listened to the sound of an adding machine clacking. He realized he was sweating. This was turning out to be the worst fucking day of his life.
Campbell was back on the line. “As I see it, you could pull maybe twenty grand out of your personal assets, using them as collateral. That would be enough to keep your Mines Field facility—I don’t even want to discuss your Santa Monica money pit right now—going for about three months. But you won’t have three months, because when word leaks out that you put your house up, that’ll be the finishing blow to whatever reputation you have left. Come September fifteenth, a little over two weeks from now, the postmaster general is going to look at your bid, think about how your business is operating on a razor’s edge, and forget about you. The government can’t afford to take a chance awarding CAM routes to an organization in danger of bankruptcy. SCAT may be the new kid on the block, but at least it’s financially secure.”
“So what should I do, Campbell?” Gold asked dryly. “Hang myself?”
“You’ve got a lot of problems, Mister Gold, but you also have a lot of potential. You’re a visionary, you need to be free to dream—”
Gold was startled at the coincidence. It was as if Campbell had been listening in when he’d been lecturing Teddy and his design team, earlier today.
“What you need is someone to keep the books while you’re off doing great things in the field of aviation.”
“Someone, huh?” Gold smiled. “Just what are you trying to peddle, Campbell?”
“It’s what I wanted to talk to you about this afternoon, at the bank. I believe I have the solution to get you out of the mess you’re in now, and keep you out of financial trouble in the foreseeable future, but it’s a little too complicated to go into on the telephone. I’d like to arrange a meeting with you…”
“All right, Campbell. I’m ready to listen.”
“Great! Why don’t you drop by the bank around—”
“No,” Gold cut him off. “You don’t have an office, so you come to me. If we’re going to talk about my financial situation, we’ll do it in private. I’ll see you at my Santa Monica ‘money pit’ tomorrow morning. Say, ten o’clock?”
“Ten o’clock it is,” Campbell enthused. “You won’t regret this—”
Gold chuckled. “See you tomorrow, Campbell.” He hung up.
(Three)
Pacific Coast Bank
Campbell hung up the telephone. He leaned back in his chair and put his stockinged feet up on the desk. His jacket and tie were off, as well as his shoes; his shirt collar was unbuttoned and his sleeves were rolled up. He didn’t care about his appearance. At this hour of the night all the bigwigs had gone home. There were only three people in the huge bank: himself, the Mexican cleaning lady, and the uniformed night watchman at his post all the way over by the locked revolving doors.
Campbell took a pack of Camels from out of the breast pocket of his shirt, extracted a cigarette, and lit it with a match. He puffed blue smoke rings at the high ceiling, feeling totally relaxed now that his call to Gold had been successfully completed. He watched the Mexican cleaning lady wheeling her cart and emptying wastebaskets. She smiled at him. Campbell smiled back. They were old friends. Campbell worked late a lot.
He thought about the manila folders under his heels. The folders were filled with the neat columns of figures that summed up Herman Gold and his business. Campbell smiled. Life was good, and getting better.
Life had not started out so well. He was born in 1899, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the youngest of seven children. His father spent his days slaving away in a textile mill, and his nights getting drunk, then coming home to rage and swear and beat his wife, while the children watched, cowering.
Campbell ran away when he was twelve. He rode the rails to Boston, where he joined a gang of older boys, who found his big, dark eyes and winning smile useful in panhandling. In return, the gang took care of him, teaching him how to survive on the streets. He became a con artist, a pickpocket, but he stayed away from the rough stuff: rolling drunks, purse-snatching, things like that. He couldn’t abide violence. It reminded him of his father, and the pain he’d witnessed the man inflicting on his mother.
When he felt he’d learned all that the older boys could teach, he ran away from them. He preferred being on his own. He rode the rails, aimlessly, figuring that he could stay reasonably warm and dry, and almost always find something to eat on a freight train. He was little and fast, and the years spent in his alcoholic, rampaging bastard of a father’s house had taught him how to hide when it suited his purposes. A railroad-yard bull could shine his flashlight around a boxcar, and right at Campbell, and not see him there, crouched still as a rat between the stacked crates and burlap sacks.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a yard bull finally did catch him. He was turned over to the police. Campbell refused to tell the authorities where he was from because he didn’t want to be sent back to Providence. He spent a terrifying week in a jail cell, waiting for his hearing. God! Even now, he couldn’t imagine how men survived incarceration. To this day, he was still afraid of police… Anyway, his hearing finally came around. The judge gave him a final opportunity to disclose where he’d come from, so he could be sent home. When Campbell refused to say, the judge put him into a nearby boy’s work farm run by the Protestant Church—until he was sixteen.
Campbell expected the worst, and was determined to run away at the first opportunity, but the work farm turned out to be a pretty good deal. They gave him a clean, warm bed, good food, and decent clothes, even if the chambray work shirts were stenciled, in big white letters front and back, TULSA YOUTH FARM. The people who ran the place were stern, but fair. Mornings were spent tilling the fields. Afternoons were spent in the classroom, learning the “three Rs.” There were church services every evening until bedtime. Campbell could have done without the preaching, but all in all, the farm was a hell of a lot better than the life had been in Providence. The fact that the work farm offered him the opportunity for an education was the main thing. Back in Providence his folks had never bothered to send him to school.
It turned out he had a head for classroom work, especially when it came to arithmetic. The instructors at the work farm were gratified to have a good student and encouraged him to progress by giving him extra lessons. By fifteen he’d earned his high school diploma. His new knowledge fascinated and intrigued him. He asked if there weren’t some work he could do on the farm that would allow him to use his education, as opposed to scratching in the Oklahoma dirt with a hoe, which he detested. They let him teach reading and numbers to the youngest boys. His students called him “Mister,” and “Sir”—Campbell reveled in the status and respect his cleverness had won for him.
When he was sixteen, and had to leave the farm, the people there arranged a job for him as an office boy for the Tulsa Western Union office. The job paid enough for him to support himself and also take night school courses in bookkeeping and accounting. He worked and studied in Tulsa for a year. During that time he heard a lot about California and decided to go the
re to seek his fortune. He tried to arrange a transfer to the Western Union office in San Francisco, but there were no openings available, so he settled for the office in Los Angeles.
It was 1916. He was seventeen, but looked and acted much older in his somber suit and tie, and a boiled white shirt with a detachable celluloid collar. Within a month of his arrival he landed a job as a teller at Pacific Coast Bank.
He resumed taking night courses, intent upon receiving a college degree in accounting. He celebrated his eighteenth birthday by going to the Flower Street Cafe, which was around the corner from the Los Angeles State Normal School, where he was taking courses, and treating himself to a steak dinner before his accounting class.
He sat at the counter, where he was served by a slim, dark-haired waitress with big blue eyes and a shy smile. It was a slow night, so while he ate she chatted with him. He told her that it was his birthday. She told him her name was Agatha Wilcox.
She asked him if he wanted dessert. He said that he didn’t have enough money, so he’d skip dessert and tip her instead, because she’d been sweet enough for him. She laughed, and gave him a slice of blueberry pie on the house to go with his coffee. While he ate the pie she sang “Happy Birthday” to him.
He began stopping into the cafe every night for coffee before class. After a couple of weeks like that, she invited him to come for Sunday dinner at her parents’ house in east Los Angeles. He understood what she was getting at, and decided that was okay with him. He began spending every Sunday with her. He would stop by at her house and spend a quarter-hour with her parents, and then he and Aggie would take the trolley to Santa Monica Beach, where they’d stroll the boardwalk, holding hands; dreaming and laughing together about the future, serenaded by the crashing waves and squawking gulls. They were ready to get married, but decided to wait. Her parents’ house was too small for Campbell to move in once they were married. Between their meager salaries they weren’t earning enough to both rent a decent apartment of their own and pay for Campbell to continue his education.
When the United States entered the war, Campbell was drafted, but the army turned him down as physically unfit due to an irregular heartbeat. He was very relieved. When he was twenty, after three years at Pacific Coast Bank, he was promoted to head teller. The increase in salary made marriage possible, at long last. He formally proposed to Agatha at the beach, and she accepted. After they were married they took a small bungalow apartment near the campus so that she could be near her waitressing job and he could quickly and easily come home from night school after his day at the bank.
Money was tight, but it was a happy time. Campbell enjoyed being married. During lovemaking they were as careful as they could be, but, as it turned out, not careful enough. Before their first anniversary had come around, Aggie was pregnant.
The pregnancy was difficult for Agatha. Her ankles swelled up so that she couldn’t stand for very long at one time, and that put the kibosh on her waitressing. Their first child was a boy, whom they named Timothy, Junior.
In order to make ends meet, in addition to his job at the bank, and night school, Campbell worked weekends selling brushes door-to-door. It turned out that he was good at selling. After the war, when automobiles resumed rolling off the assembly lines, he quit the brush job in order to work weekends selling Fords. The owner of the dealership tried to convince him to come into the business full-time. Campbell discussed the opportunity with Aggie, but she was against it. She felt that he could become an important officer at the bank, but that meant he had to push on with school.
He had a talk about his future with his supervisor at the bank. His supervisor took the matter up with his own supervisors. A few days later Campbell was told that if and when he received his bachelor’s degree in accounting, he would be promoted to junior loan officer.
His son was almost two years old, and Agatha was again pregnant, when Campbell finally earned his college degree in 1923. The bank kept its word, moving him out of his teller’s cage to behind this desk, among the desks of the other junior loan officers the bank employed. A couple of months later, Aggie presented him with another son, whom they named Donald.
That had been a little less than two years ago. During that time Campbell saved his pennies until he was able to put down a thousand on a two-bedroom bungalow. Money was tight as ever. Aggie was talking about taking a stenographer’s evening course and going to work part-time as a secretary once the boys were old enough to go to school. Campbell knew that it would be another three years, at least, before he could even begin to think about the possibility of being promoted to senior loan officer at a major financial institution such as Pacific Coast Bank.
If he stayed…
Campbell stubbed out what was left of his cigarette in the ashtray on his desk, stood up, and stretched. He put on his shoes and suitcoat, packed up the files on Gold Aviation, and slipped them into his briefcase. He’d go over them at home, in bed, while Aggie slept, fine-tuning the presentation he’d make to Gold tomorrow.
The night watchman unlocked the side door for him. Campbell stepped out into the night and walked the block to where his tan Plymouth coupe was parked.
He looked at the car a moment before he got in. He’d bought it used. The backseat upholstery had a gash in it. God, he hated used stuff!
According to the files, Gold drove a Stutz and his wife had a brand-new Packard roadster—
A Packard would do just fine, Campbell thought, grinning. He worked the Plymouth’s starter. After a few tries it caught, and he pulled away.
He intended to be a wealthy man. Up until today, he’d thought that a career in banking was the way to go about it. Now that he’d taken a look at Gold Aviation, he thought he’d found a better way.
(Four)
Gold Household
After his telephone conversation with Campbell, Gold decided to go to bed. He went through the house, shutting off lights and checking the doors. Upstairs, in the hallway outside the bedroom, he hesitated, realizing that he didn’t want to face that big lonely bed all by himself…
He went back downstairs, trudging through the shadowy house into the living room, where he kicked off his loafers and stretched out on the couch. He glanced at his wristwatch’s luminous dial: it was almost eleven. After an interminable while spent tossing and turning, he drifted off into a dream: He was back at his terminal facility at Mines Field on the day of the airplane crash. Teddy Quinn wasn’t there, but Tim Campbell was, chattering away about something Gold couldn’t quite comprehend as he walked amidst the wreckage of his crashed airplane. The scene of the crash had taken on the appearance and dimensions of a World War I battlefield. Burned bodies and drifting smoke were everywhere, stretching as far as Gold could see. It seemed to him that all of this carnage was his fault, and then he realized that Erica and his children had been on the airplane, flying to Nebraska.
The air was filled with the raw smell of spilled gasoline—
He woke up abruptly, tense and sweating. He blamed the dream, but then he realized that he was sure that he had heard something that had disturbed his sleep.
He checked the time: quarter of four in the morning. Far too early for Ramona to have returned. Could he have heard a prowler? The dream vanished from his mind as he lay quietly, ears straining, eyes staring into the darkness.
He heard the noise again. Soft sounds of thin metal warping, and liquid sloshing. Was he merely hearing the plumbing in his house? No, the sound was coming in through the open windows facing the garden.
He suddenly realized that he was still smelling gasoline. Really smelling it.
Then he recognized what he’d been hearing. He’d heard it only about a thousand times during his career as a pilot. It was the sound of gasoline being poured from a fuel can.
He sat up, stepped into his shoes, and moved quietly to the windows facing out onto the garden. It was a cloudy night, with just a sliver of bone-colored moon, but there was enough light for Gold to see that somebody w
as near the side of the house, up to something.
Gold went to the fireplace, gripped the poker, and then hurried to the French doors leading out into the garden. Beside the doors was the wall switch that controlled the garden lighting. He flicked the switch, wrenched open the glass door, and rushed out, wielding his poker.
The prowler had been in the process of sloshing gasoline against the side of the house from a red and yellow five-gallon can. He was tall and fat, dressed in gray, baggy pants, and a dark brown corduroy jacket. He had blond hair curling out from beneath his tweed, visored cap. He hurled his candy-colored gas can at Gold, who sidestepped it, but gasoline splashed onto him; his shirt was soaked. The gasoline felt cold evaporating against his skin as he moved toward the prowler.
The prowler took a wooden kitchen match from out of his pocket and flicked it alight with his thumbnail. Gold stopped, staring at the sputtering little flame, aware of the gasoline from his soaked shirt dripping on his shoes.
The prowler smiled. “Come on, Jewboy—” He had a broad, bulbous nose, colored an angry red and broken out with pimples. “Come on, Kike… I’ll fry you, then do the house and the wife and kiddies.”
He lunged forward, tossing the lighted match toward Gold, who cried out, stumbling back from the lethal spark of flame darting toward him. The match winked out in midair, but while Gold was distracted the prowler escaped. He was startlingly light on his feet for such a large man. He dashed for the high stockade fence, and then hoisted himself up and over. He was gone.
Gold dropped the poker. He stripped down to his underwear, ran to where the garden hose was connected to the outside spigot, and turned it on. He washed himself down and then took his time soaking down the wall of the house, the grassy area around it, and wherever the gas had spilled, making sure that he had washed it all away. He locked the prowler’s gas can in the garage and then went back into the house, where he turned on all the lights. He took the fireplace poker with him to the upstairs bathroom and took a shower, shampooing his hair to wash away the last traces of gasoline. Still damp, he put on a terrycloth robe and slippers, took his poker, and went back downstairs, into his study. He unlocked a built-in wall cabinet, took out a bottle of the genuine scotch that he had regularly delivered by a local bootlegger, and poured himself a stiff drink. He swallowed it down, grimacing, and then poured himself another. He took it, and the poker, over to his desk. He sat down, and stared at the telephone.
