Aces

by T. E. Cruise

  “I never forget anything,” Gold said quietly, but firmly. “Maybe you’d better just make your point…”

  Campbell looked defiant for a moment, but then he lowered his eyes. “Okay, maybe I did just hit a little bit below the belt,” he admitted. “I apologize, but when I get worked up like this it’s for your own good, Herm. It would be tragic if you let unfounded money worries slow us down at the very moment we’re at the top of our game. Consider the reception the G-1a Dragonfly got.”

  Gold nodded. When he and Teddy had completed their design specs on the enclosed cockpit, six-passenger version of the Yellowjacket, he’d asked Campbell to make a few calls to test out the market for such a plane. As a result, the telephone had been ringing off the hook with interested air transport companies ready to place their orders sight unseen.

  “Bright as they are over at the Ryan Company, they’re just too small to be much of a threat to us,” Campbell was saying. “Our only real competition is Ford, and the German Fokker Company, and both of them are building tri-motors, too big, too slow, and too expensive for anything but the busiest air routes. The G-1 Yellowjacket is just what the doctor ordered for the government. When you and Teddy are ready to put the G-1a Dragonfly into production we’ll have the best midsized passenger airliner on the market. That will give us the kind of cash base we need to build an empire.”

  “I’m not telling you this expansion notion is out of the question,” Gold remarked. “All I’m saying is that it has me worried. This is my company, after all.”

  “Yes, sir, Mister Gold—”

  Gold chose to ignore Campbell’s sarcastic tone. He wanted to keep the lid on this.

  Campbell’s fingers tapped impatiently on his desk. “Herman, can I speak frankly?”

  “Of course.”

  “Gold Aviation—the whole business of designing airplanes—is your baby.”

  Gold nodded. “And it’s your job to oversee the financial health of the company, and sell our airplanes.”

  “But that’s not enough for me, Herman. I want to do more. I want to do for Gold Transport what you’ve done for Gold Aviation. I want our colors to dominate the skies.”

  “Big dream,” Gold quietly remarked.

  Campbell shrugged and smiled. “No bigger than the dream somebody had about building an airplane based on a goddamned sea gull’s wing…”

  “Point well taken.” Gold chuckled.

  “Give me this chance.” Campbell said solemnly. “I can make it happen.”

  “Okay,” Gold said. “You’ve got your chance.”

  “Thank you, Herman.”

  “Fuck that.” Gold waved him quiet. “I owe you. I wouldn’t have made it this far if you hadn’t been backing me up.”

  “You won’t regret this.” Campbell grinned.

  “Hope not.” Gold nodded, heading for the office door. “Just remember one thing, Tim. This is still my company, and I believe that GAT’s ace in the hole is its design talent. I intend to exploit that talent by increasing our manufacturing capability. As long as there’s extra money in the till, you can play. But Gold Aviation will always come first.”

  Gold stopped off at his office to change out of his suit into corduroy pants, a faded blue work shirt, and a pair of old oxford brogues. He went downstairs, and out to his car. He left Santa Monica, driving northwest on Ventura; after about ten miles he left the city of Los Angeles behind, entering into the open country of Burbank.

  The Stutz raised a cloud of dust as it traveled through the acrid, tawny landscape studded with patches of pale-green sage and shaggy desert palm. Gold saw hawks circling in the flawless azure sky. Now and again brown jackrabbits the size of dogs, their long ears folded back over their lean haunches, would dart across the macadam ahead of the Bulldog Tourer’s wire-spoked wheels. Gold turned off the main road, onto a dirt access road that led up to a barbed-wire fence. Erica’s green Packard roadster, coated with dust, was parked on the shoulder. Erica was out of the car, standing near the gate, which sported large KEEP OUT: PRIVATE PROPERTY signs. She was wearing a pink cotton sundress, leather sandals, and a floppy-brimmed, white linen sombrero. She smiled and waved to him as he pulled up.

  Gold set the brake on the Stutz and got out of the car. “You look so good, you must be a desert mirage,” he said, taking her in his arms.

  As she tilted back her head to receive his kiss the sombrero fell to the ground. She’d been spending a lot of time out-of-doors sunbathing. Her skin was tan, and her blond hair shimmered with highlights in the sunshine.

  “I still don’t know why you dragged me out here,” Erica murmured, her arms sliding around his waist.

  “I told you. it’s a surprise. Now come on, get in the car.”

  Gold opened the gate. He drove the Stutz along the bumpy, packed-dirt trail. All around them as far as they could see there was nothing but sand and rocks and chaparral, the parched monotony occasionally, inexplicably, shattered by vibrantly colorful wildflowers: poppies the rich yellow of egg yolk; fire engine red scarlet gilia; bright baby blue-eyes.

  Gold drove slowly, mindful of the Stutz’s suspension. They crawled along for a bouncing, jolting quarter mile, and then he stopped the car. In the sudden silence they heard a faraway coyote’s mournful yodel. “We’re here,” Gold said.

  Erica looked around. “How can you tell?”

  Gold pointed out several foot-high wooden stakes fluttering scraps of red cloth. “That’s where the ground-breaking ceremony for the new plant is going to take place.” He got out of the car and went around to open the trunk. “I thought we’d have a little picnic.” He took out a blanket and spread it out on the ground. “Just the two of us. To celebrate.”

  “That’s your surprise?” Erica demanded, amused.

  He went back to the trunk to fetch a wicker basket and a red metal cooler. “I brought champagne. Dom Perignon. Had to special-order it from our buddy Freddie the bootlegger.”

  Erica smiled. “Darling, you know how I get when I’m tipsy.”

  “That’s what I was hoping.” Gold plopped the basket and cooler onto the blanket and settled down. Erica followed him over and sat down beside him. She began to rummage through the basket. “I see fruit, and cheese, and crackers, but no champagne glasses.”

  “Damn, I knew I forgot something,” Gold said, opening up the cooler and removing the champagne. “Oh well, we’ll just have to pass the bottle.”

  “How swank…” Erica shook her head, laughing.

  Gold shrugged. “This is our land,” he said proudly as he stripped the foil from the neck of the emerald champagne bottle. “We can do what we like on it. Our closest neighbor is a movie studio, and they’re miles away. We’ve got one hundred and nine acres of pristine wilderness that is not long for this world. Where the bees are buzzing and the jackrabbits fuck is soon to be a mammoth airplane factory—”

  “Darling, do leave that part about the bunnies out of your speech at the actual ceremony.”

  “—with hangars. And parts and fuel-storage facilities, and paved roads, and a pair of runways, and a big sign that tells the world it all belongs to Gold Aviation and Transport.”

  “In other words, to you.”

  Gold, struggling to pop the champagne cork, looked up and smiled.

  “But right now, I think you’d better direct your attention to something else that belongs to you…” She untied the bows on her shoulder straps, letting the sundress slip down to her waist. Her breasts were startlingly white in the sun.

  The cork finally popped. The champagne, jostled from the bumpy ride, overflowed the lip of the bottle. Gold sprayed her breasts with foaming wine. Erica laughed. Gold pinned her down on the blanket. He licked her pink nipples, glistening with droplets of champagne.

  She drew his head up, to kiss him. “I love you very much, you know.”

  “And I love you, and this is only the beginning for us,” Gold swore to her. “We’re back on top, and this time we’re going to stay there.”


  BOOK IV:

  1927–1933

  * * *

  STOCK CRASH HAS MARKET IN UPROAR—

  Congress Presses for Investigation into Wall Street—

  Hoover Reassures the Nation that Business Is

  Fundamentally Sound—

  New York Business Journal

  AIR INDUSTRY FLIES HIGH DURING NATION’S

  HARD TIMES—

  Local Congressman Charges Defense Projects Bolster

  Aviation Stocks And Asks: “If Aviation’s on the Dole,

  Why Not Auto Industry?”—

  Detroit Telegraph

  WATRES ACT PASSES CONGRESS—

  New Law Aimed at Corruption and Waste in Air

  Transport Industry—

  Act Nixes All but Largest, Most Experienced Air

  Carriers—

  Washington Star Reporter

  KNUTE ROCKNE AMONG THOSE KILLED IN FIERY KANSAS PLANE CRASH—

  Investigators Point to Wood Rot in TWA Fokker

  Tri-motor—

  All Fokkers Grounded for Inspections—

  Los Angeles Gazette

  CRISIS AS BANKS CLOSE THEIR DOORS TO THE COUNTRY—

  President-Elect Roosevelt Blames Big Business for Woes

  and Vows His “New Deal” Will Bring Sweeping

  Changes—

  Boston Times

  JAPAN INVASION REACHES CHINA’S GREAT WALL—

  Japan Quits League of Nations to Protest Vote

  Condemning Invasion—

  Milwaukee Sun

  GERMANY ELECTS HITLER CHANCELLOR—

  Receives Nazi Salute From Cheering Throngs—

  Miami Daily Telegraph

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  (One)

  Gold Aviation and Transport

  Burbank, California

  1 April 1933

  Gold stared at the two envelopes on his desk. In one was Tim Campbell’s resignation: just a few, cursory, typed lines on a sheet of stationery tinged yellow, gone brittle with age. Campbell had hand-delivered the resignation seven years ago, when he’d come to work for what was then Gold’s down-on-its-luck, seat-of-the-pants operation.

  The other envelope had arrived in the morning’s mail. Inside it was an anonymous, typed note claiming that Campbell was trying to take over Gold’s company behind his back.

  Gold swiveled in his leather chair to stare out his office windows. His top-floor view overlooked the complex’s airfields, where planes were scattered like children’s toys; the yellow shack of a security-guard outpost; the high, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire; and beyond all that, the immutable, tawny, California hills. Gold couldn’t claim that he didn’t miss his old view of Santa Monica Bay, but these hills had their own serene beauty.

  As Gold gazed out the windows, the light changed. Suddenly he could make out his own ghostly reflection in the glass. He was wearing a new, double-breasted, gray sharkskin suit. His tailor had suggested the double-breasted suit style as a way to “slim” the paunch he’d seemed to have developed, and, in general, to look more “youthful and vigorous.”

  The tailor had seemed anxious when he’d made the comments, but Gold hadn’t taken offense. He could look in a mirror as well as anyone. He was only thirty-six, but he’d lost most of his hair on top. He was just one of those people who happened to look a little older than they really were…

  Gold forced his attention back to the envelopes. The thing to do was confront Campbell, hear what the man had to say. Gold buzzed his secretary. “Tell Mister Campbell I want to see him immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.” A few moments later she was back on the line to say that Campbell was on his way.

  Gold stared sadly at the envelopes, realizing that one way or the other, a precious, sustaining friendship was about to end. As he waited for Campbell to arrive he thought about how far he and Tim had come.

  Back in 1927, GAT and its competition were ready and eager to capitalize on the growing public interest in air travel spurred by Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the North Atlantic. Investors who were once reluctant and had to be coaxed to put their money behind airline ventures now flocked to make aviation stocks the toasts of Wall Street. GAT, American Airways, Eastern Air Transport, United Aircraft, Transcontinental Air Transport, and the other big aviation companies flourished in the economic boom times.

  Thanks to Campbell’s aggressive expansion policy, Gold Transport now controlled half the major CAM routes, as well as the large share of the private freight and passenger business as far east as Kansas City. The original GAT stock was split, and new issues were offered. Its value kept skyrocketing.

  Early one morning in the fall of 1928, Gold, Tim Campbell, Hull Stiles, and Teddy Quinn gathered at the Burbank construction site, where phase one of the factory/office complex was nearing completion. All four men had owned sizable holdings in GAT ever since the stock had first been issued. As they watched the sun rise on the sprawling building, they passed a bottle of scotch between them, quietly joking and congratulating each other on becoming millionaires.

  GAT’s G-1a Dragonfly six-passenger airliner hit the market in the first quarter of 1929 and was a success. Campbell, with Gold’s blessing, used the occasion to restructure GAT into two separate companies. GAT remained the airplane design and manufacturing concern, while Gold Transport changed its name to Skyworld Airline.

  Skyworld now had its own annual stockholders’ meeting and board of directors. Tim Campbell and Hull Stiles sold their GAT holdings back to Gold, giving up their seats on GAT’s board, in order to invest heavily in Skyworld. Campbell became president and C.E.O. of the new airline. Hull Stiles, who knew the air transport business better than anyone in the industry, became executive vice president and chief operating officer. Gold, who held a majority of GAT, and a twenty percent controlling interest in Skyworld, remained chairman of both companies.

  Due to Campbell’s prodding, Gold had originally been enthusiastic about the restructuring, but as soon as it was a fait accompli, he began to regret what he’d been talked into. When it had all been one company, Gold’s relationship with his partners had been straightforward: he was the king and they were his ministers. Now things were more complicated, and Gold often thought of himself as being like Shakespeare’s King Lear: his realm was passing from his control. Take Hull Stiles, for instance. These days Hull was working out of Skyworld’s new, luxurious airport terminal and office complex in Los Angeles. Hull had used to report to Gold on a daily basis, but since the restructuring, Gold rarely heard from his old flying buddy. Now Hull’s reports were going directly to Campbell, who was juggling his time between the airport facility and Burbank. Gold toyed with the notion of reestablishing his direct control of Skyworld—after all, he was still chairman of the airline—but he hesitated, not wanting to further disrupt what had become a stressed relationship with Campbell.

  From the beginning, Campbell’s expertise had allowed Gold to devote more time to his first love, aeronautical design and engineering, and so Gold had been happy to delegate his authority to Campbell on financial, managerial, and administrative matters. Since the restructuring, Campbell had changed from being Gold’s right-hand man into an advocate for his “own company.” Gold often found himself arguing with an increasingly belligerent Campbell. Days would pass during which they would do their best to avoid each other in the halls. Gold was uncomfortable with the situation, but he didn’t know how to address the problem. If he took the drastic step of acting to remove Campbell from his position, the move would deeply divide the airline’s board and create concern on Wall Street. Gold wasn’t even sure he could convince the rest of the Skyworld board to go along with him. Campbell was doing a terrific job, even if he was freezing Gold out of the day-to-day operation.

  The difficulties Gold was experiencing with his business associates seemed suddenly very petty, and were shoved onto the back burner amidst the turmoil of the market crash in October of 1929. GA
T and Skyworld, along with the nation’s other big aviation concerns, emerged relatively unscathed. GAT was sustained by its government contract for G-1 Yellowjackets, and while private industry orders for Yellowjacket cargo planes and Dragonfly airliners lessened, they did not totally dry up. Tim Campbell did his part for Skyworld by coming up with an innovative air-travel discount rate plan for business passengers. Those businessmen who were surviving the hard times still had to travel, and for them, time was still money—which made air transport a necessity. Campbell’s “Blue Skies Ahead Credit Plan” offered these corporate customers a twenty percent discount in exchange for their cash deposit committing them to a certain amount of travel with Skyworld within a six-month period.

  Campbell started small, strong-arming all of GAT/Skyworld’s suppliers into signing up on threat of losing their accounts. Once the money-saving feature of the plan proved itself, Campbell didn’t have to twist arms. Skyworld’s exclusive discount plan kept old customers loyal and attracted new ones away from the competition. Soon more than 100 companies were signed up, and Skyworld had traveling sales representatives pitching the plan all over the country.

  GAT/Skyworld’s balance sheets looked so good that Gold and Campbell were constantly arguing about further expansion. Thinking back on it, Gold realized that considering the differences in their personalities, conflict was inevitable. Campbell was a gambler. Gold was conservative in money matters. Campbell was a supremely confident financial wizard. Most of the time Gold had only the faintest of notions of what Campbell was talking about when Tim got going with his financial hocus-pocus.