Aces

by T. E. Cruise

  “I am working for Gil. That’s why I’m here. We heard a couple of truckloads of mint altimeters got lost coming out of Norton Instrument’s Brooklyn warehouse. I thought maybe you could give me a lead on them. By the way, you got a drink here, Ernie?”

  Steven smiled to himself. Ernie was known to fence hot airplane parts and supplies on occasion. He went back to working on the Beechcraft.

  It was an old D-17 biplane with an enclosed cabin. It was painted tan, except where the dings and rust spots had been touched up with gray primer. The Beechcraft may have looked like hell, but it flew okay. It wasn’t as good an airplane as the GAT Yellowjacket or Dragonfly had been, but the Beechcraft hadn’t been bad, in its day.

  Steven guessed he could say the same thing about Ernie, who reminded him of Popeye the Sailor from the funny papers. Like Popeye, Ernie was little and wiry, with gnarled forearms and a lantern jaw. He looked about a hundred years old. He had a granite-gray brushcut, and watery blue eyes. He claimed that he’d flown with Rickenbacker’s Hat in the Ring Squadron during the war. Steven was respectful, but he didn’t much believe Ernie’s war stories. Nevertheless, he knew that his father had been somewhere around that area of France during the war, and would have liked to have asked Ernie if he’d ever crossed swords with a scarlet and turquoise Fokker with a centaur painted on its side. Of course, Steven didn’t ask. He was using a phony name and struggling to grow a moustache to disguise himself; the last thing he wanted was to call attention to his real identity.

  “Steve! Quit daydreaming and get that fuckin’ plane back together!”

  “Sorry, Mister D!” Steven called, and went back to work.

  The Beechcraft was the only airplane Ernie had. Whenever Steven worked on it, Ernie would fret that somebody might come in and want to charter a flight.

  Whenever Ernie wasn’t around he would sit in the Beech-craft and fool around with the controls. A couple of times he’d even started her up and taxied her around the field. Steven sure wished he could take her up for an hour or so… He hadn’t flown anything for a long time, not since leaving home, almost seven months ago. At least back home he got the chance to fly some of the old Yellowjackets his dad kept around the GAT airfield…

  He sure missed home, and his parents, and his sister, but he didn’t see how he could go back now. He couldn’t go back until he did something… something big. If he went back now, they’d just laugh at him.

  Steven had been on the road for about five months before ending up here. Traveling around hadn’t been too bad. He’d found that truckers would almost always stop and give him a lift, and when he ran low on money, he had no trouble getting a couple of days’ work at gas stations and garages, changing tires or oil, or spark plugs. When the weather was good, he slept outside, in a sleeping bag he’d bought in Cody, Wyoming. When it was cold or rainy, he’d keep on traveling until he reached a decent-sized town, and then he’d rent a bed at the local YMCA. He had no trouble with the police. It helped that he didn’t yet have much of a beard. Being clean-shaven seemed to make a good impression on people. He was always careful to wear clean clothes, and to have some money in his pocket, so the cops were no bother at all.

  Taking care of himself might have been easy, but finding work that had to do with airplanes was another story. He knew that nobody would let him fly, but he figured that he could at least find something as a mechanic. It hadn’t worked out that way, however. He’d made the rounds at the big and small airports all across the country, but nobody would even talk to him about a job unless he was willing to fill out forms that always asked the same damned things: where was he born; who were his closest living relatives; where had he gone to school; where had he learned his trade; where had he worked last, and did he have references. Of course, he couldn’t truthfully answer any of those questions, and worried that any employer who went to the trouble of having people fill out the forms might also go to the trouble of having the information checked. Steven couldn’t take a chance on that. He was a minor, after all. If the cops ever did give him a second look, they’d call his folks and he’d get shipped home just like that.

  He’d about given up hope, when a trucker he was riding with made a delivery to Wilterboro. It was a pretty crummy excuse for an airport. Just a chain-link fence wrapped around a mangy crab-grass field that looked like it would turn into mud-soup when it rained. There were a couple of moth-eaten wind socks flapping from a pole, a handful of run-down buildings, and a graveyard of obsolete or banged-up airplanes.

  It was pretty dismal, all right, but then Steven saw the hand-scrawled MEKANIC WANTED sign that was taped in the cracked front window of a run-down barn that had DONOVAN AIR CHARTER painted over its double doors.

  Back then Steven had guessed—correctly—that this was the sort of place that wouldn’t much care if you didn’t fill out a form, as long as you could demonstrate that you knew your way around an airplane’s innards. He’d been working here for two months. Ernie asked no prying questions and in exchange paid him squat, but he let Steven sleep on the cot in the office area, and let him use one of the junk cars he kept out back. Steven hadn’t yet gotten up the nerve to tell Ernie that he knew how to fly. Ernie would surely ask questions then. One of these days, though, Steven thought, and patted the Beechcraft’s cowling.

  “So I guess if the price was right I could maybe get you those altimeters,” Ernie was saying.

  “I’d need ‘em soon,” Red cautioned.

  “What’s the rush?”

  “It’s like this. My boss got called by some other guy, who’s putting together a big deal for the Chinese government,” Red explained. “The Chinese talked the United States into selling them a bunch of P-40 Tomahawks. The fighters are sailing on a freighter leaving New York Harbor at the end of the month. This guy who’s handling the logistics of the sale for the Chinese called my boss to ask if he knew of any pilots who might be willing to go over there and fly those planes against the Japs.”

  “Guys like me?” Ernie asked.

  “Nah.” Red chuckled. “No offense, but they want young guys.”

  Steven, intrigued, set down his socket wrench and wiped his greasy hands on the backside of his overalls. He knew that things were heating up in the Pacific. China and Japan had been at war for years, and lately all the newspaper editorials were making a big thing about how America had to help China if it wanted to avoid getting involved in the actual fighting. Steven had agreed with what he’d read: that the Japs had to be stopped from getting Malaysia’s rubber, or the oil in the Dutch East Indies.

  “I don’t get why the Chinks would want them altimeters,” Ernie was saying. “They ain’t gonna fit in no Tomahawk fighters…”

  Steven wanted to hear more. He climbed down off the stepladder and wandered over to the cardboard boxes, where he pretended to be scrounging around for a part. He had a good view of the two men sitting at the folding card table that served as Ernie’s desk. They were passing a pint of rye back and forth between them as they talked.

  “The Chinese won’t know they’re getting no altimeters, until it’s too late,” Red said. “You see, when my boss got that call asking if he knew of any guys who might be willing to volunteer as mercenaries to fly them P-40s, he remembered the altimeters were floating around, and sent me across the river to see you. He figures why not put the altimeters on the freighter along with them airplanes and bill the Chinks for them? They’re so gung-ho for shit to throw at the Japs, they’ll buy anything.”

  “Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Ernie nodded, taking a long swallow off the pint.

  “Just remember, I need ‘em by the end of the month,” Red said, standing up. “And remember, if you should hear of any pilots who’re looking for work, put ‘em in touch with me…”

  “What’s in it for me?” Ernie asked as he handed him the pint.

  “Fifty bucks a head,” Red said. He took the stogie out of his mouth, took a swig from the bottle, and quickly popped the stogie back betwe
en his lips, like it was a cork.

  “What’s in it for you?”

  “Fifty bucks as well. My boss makes another fifty. I don’t know what the guy who called gets. Probably more than that put together. This operation is half-assed in some respects, but there’s a lot of money floating around. For instance, the pilot gets a three-hundred-dollar bonus for signing on, and at least six hundred a month, with a bonus for any Japs he might shoot down. And then there’s insurance, and disability pay, and so on. It’s a good deal.” He smirked. “If you don’t mind getting shot at.”

  “Jeez, I’d think they’d want military guys to fly fighters,” Ernie said.

  “They do. The Feds gave the okay for them to recruit military fliers—”

  That was good, Steven thought. It had to be jake if the government had given the okay for army fliers to get involved.

  “—but they’s so desperate they’ll take anybody who fits the minimum requirements,” Red was saying. He ticked them off on his fingers. “They’s got to have good health and good character; be at least twenty years old, and have at least three hundred hours flight time.”

  “I’ll go,” Steven said, coming around the boxes.

  Red looked at him, and then back at Ernie. “What’s this guy about?”

  Ernie shrugged. “Name’s Steve Smith. Started work here a couple months ago. Can tear down and build back an engine okay, at least the small stuff.”

  “And I’m a pilot,” Steven said. “The kind of pilot you’re looking for.”

  “Sure, kid,” Red humored him. “Look, I know you mean well. You want to have yourself an adventure, kick-ass against the Japs; all that good stuff,” He shook his head. “But they want accomplished pilots over in China. Guys capable of flying fighters to defend against Jap bombers.”

  “You said the minimum requirements were to be in good health and twenty years old.”

  Red chuckled. “You’re forgetting the little matter of a minimum of three hundred hours in the air.”

  Steven hesitated. He knew there was a risk in showing his pilot’s license. It was legitimate, all right. Too legitimate. It had his real name, and, more important, his real age on it… But what choice did he have if he wanted to convince this guy that he was a pilot?

  “I’ve got my license,” he said.

  “I guess you mean driver’s license.” Red grinned around his stogie, winking at Ernie. “Look, kid, flying an airplane ain’t like driving a car up in the sky.”

  “I meant pilot’s license.”

  Red exchanged another look with Ernie, who shrugged. “Fork it over,” he demanded, snapping his fingers impatiently.

  Steven extracted the license from his wallet and handed it over. Red slowly rolled his stogie from one side of his mouth to the other as he studied it.

  “Says here his name’s Steven Gold,” Red told Ernie.

  “He told me Smith,” Ernie stubbornly said.

  “It says here you was born in 1924, kid.” Red scowled. “That would make you only barely seventeen.”

  “Holy shit, he told me he was twenty,” Ernie complained.

  “He looks twenty, I’ll give him that,” Red mused. He handed back the license. “It takes dough to get one of those, kid. Your folks loaded?”

  Steven shrugged. “This isn’t about my folks.”

  “Why you using a phony name?” Red asked. “You on the lam from the law?”

  “I’m on the lam, period,” Steven said.

  “It’s tempting to me, kid. I could use a quick fifty bucks…” Red shook his head. “But I got to pass—”

  “But—”

  “And you should count yourself lucky that I am. You volunteer for something like this, it ain’t no day at the beach, kid. You’d be living in the jungle. Risking your life flying every damned day.”

  Fucking sounds great, Steven thought, and then pondered how his father might negotiate to turn this around the way he would want it to go.

  “Red.” Steven grinned. “You said that there’s a three-hundred-dollar bonus due any man who signs up, right? Well, you take me on, and I’ll kick back to you a hundred bucks of that…”

  Red stared at him. “What about your age?”

  “You said yourself that I look twenty,” Steven said quickly.

  Red was nodding, then he frowned. “But what about the three hundred hours?—”

  “What the hell?” Steven said jovially. “Maybe I don’t have three hundred hours, exactly…”

  “Maybe you don’t even have half of that,” Red sourly agreed.

  “But the two of us could work up a phony history for me,” Steven enthused. “We could say I’ve been flying for years! For…” He glanced at Ernie. “For Donovan Air Charter!”

  “I need a drink,” Ernie said, reaching for the pint.

  “You’ll go along with this, won’t you, Ernie?” Steven pleaded.

  “For another fifty bucks I would,” Ernie solemnly said.

  “There you go, Red!” Steven beamed. “I’ll give you a hundred, and I’ll give Ernie fifty out of my own sign-up money. That’s added to the money you both get just for recruiting me.”

  “It might work, if you could pull it off, kid,” Ed mused.

  “Sure I can pull it off! We can make up my record right here and now. Both you guys know airplanes. You’ll know in a few minutes that I’ve got the patter to back myself up.”

  “Fuck, kid, you’re seventeen years old,” Red complained. “You really want to get yourself into this?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Steven said earnestly. “You can’t imagine how much I want to get myself into this.”

  Red nodded. “And I get the one hundred from you?”

  “As soon as I get my bonus I’ll fork it over. You can’t lose.”

  “Okay, on one condition, kid. You use a phony name, and we all agree to keep our mouths shut about this. That goes for you, too, Ernie,” he warned.

  “No problem with me,” Ernie said.

  “If the shit ever hits the fan, I’m going to claim you lied to me, kid, just like you lied to everyone else. But what we got to do is keep our traps shut so that the shit never does hit. The guy in command over there in China ain’t like me. He’s got scruples.”

  “No problem.” Steven grinned. “What’s this guy’s name, anyway?”

  “An ex-army Air Corps captain. Expert flier. A guy named Chennault. Clair Lee Chennault.”

  “Never heard of him,” Steven said.

  “Hah!” Ernie shook his head, laughing. “Now I need another drink.”

  Red sighed. “Kid, I do hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  (Four)

  Santa Monica, California

  11 October 1941

  “You say he’s disappeared?” Blaize laughed.

  Suzy nodded. It was early evening. They were in the front room of Blaize’s apartment on Colorado Boulevard, near the pier. It was a warm night, and the windows were open. They could hear the merry-go-round’s jolly calliope melodies, the shouts and laughter coming off the boardwalk, and over it all, the ever-present murmur of the Pacific.

  “It turns out that my parents have had private detectives keeping an eye on Steven ever since he ran off.”

  “How typical of your father,” Blaize said. He reached for the bottle of gin next to the overflowing ashtray on the glass-topped, bamboo coffee table.

  “Blaize, don’t you think you’ve had enough of that for tonight?” Suzy asked gently, but he pretended not to have heard. She thought he looked terrible. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and looked like he was losing weight. His face was gaunt, and his eyes were dark hollows: green fires burning in deep caves. When they made love, which these days they did infrequently, Suzy could feel his bones, cold through his thin skin, as if he were a skeleton masquerading as a man.

  “Blaize, I said haven’t you had enough—”

  “Never enough…” Blaize laughed joylessly.

  “Daddy says you haven’t come
to work for three days.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” His voice was slightly slurred. As he poured the gin into his glass he slopped some of it onto the coffee table. “I am blessed with a job from which I cannot be fired. Now tell me more! Tell me everything about how your brother has fucked over your fuck of a father.”

  Suzy hated it when he talked about Daddy like that, but she’d learned not to say anything, or else Blaize would accuse her of being disloyal, and she didn’t have the strength to deal with that scene again, not tonight.

  “Well, it turns out that ever since Steven took off, my parents have had detectives regularly reporting in on his whereabouts. The detectives tracked him to some horrid place in New Jersey where he was working as an airplane mechanic. I guess it looked to them like he was settling in, so the detectives got lazy. They kept taking my dad’s retainer money, but they checked on Steven only once every couple of weeks, instead of every couple of days, like they said they were.”

  “Marvelous,” Blaize murmured. He gestured toward her with his glass, sloshing gin onto the carpet. “Do go on—”

  “Well, one day they went to check, and he was gone. Poof! Just like that he’d disappeared. The guy he was working for claimed not to know anything…”

  “A friend in need is a friend, indeed,” Blaize mumbled.

  “Well, the detectives called my folks, who panicked. They must have hired every gumshoe on the East Coast, and brought the police into it, but so far, nobody has any idea where Steven could be.”

  “Marvelous,” Blaze repeated. He downed his drink and poured himself another. “You say this all took place months ago?”

  Suzy nodded. “He disappeared from New Jersey the beginning of May, but I didn’t know about any of this detective stuff until today. You see, all along my parents have been feeding me this song and dance about how worried they were; that they were martyring themselves to allow him his freedom.”

  “Some freedom!” Blaize snarled. “With detectives watching his every move. He was merely on the world’s longest leash. What a hypocrite your father is…”