Then it was through another beaded doorway and into the low-ceilinged, undecorated dining room and its dozen or so tables. It was early for supper, so nobody was back there but a bullnecked mountain of muscle and fat in an old Seabees cap and gigantic loose-fitting, well-worn army fatigues. He was hunkered over a plate of stringy, sticky seaweed, sucking it up like a kid sucks spaghetti.
I was wearing a black T-shirt with a khaki jacket over it, and khaki pants; the weather didn’t demand the jacket but I had a .38 revolver in the righthand pocket. Just in case he recognized me.
I certainly gave him every opportunity. I stood right before the table, opposite him as he sucked seaweed, and the dark, pockmarked, knife-scarred, mustached face looked at me with cold contempt, but it was the cold contempt he reserved for everybody, not just priests who shot him in the stomach.
“You the American?” he asked, chewing.
He was probably sixty, but other than some white in his short-cropped hair (his right ear had a piece out of it), the thick Zapata mustache, and some added wrinkles that gave him a bulldog quality, he hadn’t changed much.
“Yeah, I’m the American.”
He poured himself a healthy glass of red wine from an unlabeled bottle. “Siddown. I don’t look up at nobody.”
I sat, with my hand on the revolver in the jacket pocket. “How much for your Amelia Earhart story?”
“It’s a good story. What really happen.”
“How much?”
He grinned; he had a gold tooth now, and the rest of the teeth were much closer to white than I remembered. The junk king could afford a dentist. “Two thousand,” he said.
“I can get you ten.”
The dark eyes flared. “Thousand?”
“No, ten dollars. What do you think? Come in with me, we can take these rich Texas assholes for twenty grand.”
He frowned. “Fifty-fifty split?”
“Yeah, that’s how you end up with ten.” Time had made him stupid; or maybe too much of that cheap wine.
The eyes that had once scared me a little, because of the smartness in them, narrowed and perhaps something, in the back of his skull, was trying to click.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“I never been in Saipan before in my life. You want in?”
“Let me hear it.”
I leaned toward him. “They want to find Amelia Earhart’s grave. Let’s show it to them.”
“…I don’t know where it is.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I shrugged. “I got a bag of bones in my jeep—I brought ’em with me from the States.”
“What kind of bones?”
“Female. Forty years of age. Dead thirty years.”
“What’d you do, dig up some other grave?”
“That’s right. Now if a Saipanese…somebody with a history that goes back to those days…could lead these Texans to a grave in the jungle….”
He had started smiling halfway through that; he did still have some smarts. Not enough to save him, though.
“But first we got to bury those bones,” I said. “Meet me tonight at the old Garapan Prison. We’ll bury ’em near there somewhere…. Bring a shovel.”
He was still grinning, nodding, liking it. “What time?”
“When else? Midnight.”
We didn’t shake hands. Just nodded at each other, and I left him to his plate of seaweed.
That evening, Buddy Busch, in the room we were sharing at the Sun Inn, was aglow.
“They’re gonna let us dig,” he said. “Problem is, they’ll only give us tomorrow…Sunday…when the facility is closed, ’cause otherwise we’d get in their way.”
So at nine the next morning, with the loan from the lot manager of a heavy front loader (and one of his men), the coral surface and an added two feet of topsoil were scraped away, and then the two Chamorran kids Munez had hired to dig got at it. Phil and Steve recorded the efforts, from various angles, and by three that afternoon, we were looking into a trench four feet by twelve, three feet deep. And very empty.
“How deep do you think those guards woulda buried her?” Buddy asked me.
“Well,” I said, stroking my stiff left arm, “probably pretty deep.”
“You know, if we’re off a little, the real grave could be three feet away and we’d never fuckin’ know it!”
But Steve called out, “Hey, what the hell’s that?”
“That” proved to be the find of the expedition, and the centerpiece of Buddy Busch’s documentary, Grave Evidence: The Execution of Amelia Earhart. The tattered piece of black cloth appeared to be a full-face blindfold, cut so that narrow strips on either side could be tied behind the wearer’s head—attesting to this, the tie straps had a stitched hem.
Mrs. Blas herself identified the scrap of cloth as the blindfold Amelia wore to her execution by Japanese soldiers.
Because of the lime-based coral content of the soil, human remains would likely be swallowed up, over these years, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and that blindfold might be all that was left of Amelia Earhart, if in fact she’d been buried beneath the missing breadfruit tree.
But even now, an aging Buddy Busch (a stroke and heart attack not enough to slow him down) is planning one last trip to Saipan (his sixth); meanwhile, a new generation of Earhart enthusiasts plans more expeditions to the Mariana Islands and other parts of the South Pacific.
Of course, if Amelia was buried in the brainwashed mind of Irene Bolam, the body they’re looking for was donated to medical science and is a long-since discarded, cremated cadaver.
I have finally decided to tell my story because I figure nobody will believe me anyway, and if the government doesn’t like it, they can sue me or go fuck themselves.
I believe Amy died in the waters of Tanapag Harbor that night, swimming with me, toward freedom; perhaps Chief Suzuki’s boys did drag her body out, and the Japanese military did take her, blindfolded, to an unmarked grave near Garapan. Perhaps by the time you read this, Buddy or some other latter-day explorer will have discovered more evidence to pinpoint exactly where Amelia Earhart was buried.
Anyway, I’m confident of one thing.
They’re more likely to find her body than that bastard Jesus Sablan’s.
The press called her “Lady Lindy,” but her family called her Mill. Schoolgirl pals preferred Meelie, certain friends Mary (Fred Noonan among them), she was Paul Mantz’s “angel,” and her husband used “A. E.” To the world she was Amelia Earhart, but to me, and only me, she was Amy.
Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible—and any blame for historical (and/or geographical) inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of conflicting source material.
Most of the characters in this novel are real and appear with their true names. The characterizations of Margot DeCarrie and Myrtle Mantz are fictionalized, based upon limited reference material. Ernie Tisor, Jesus Sablan, Sammy Munez, Toni Lake, and J. T. “Buddy” Busch are fictional characters with one or more real-life counterparts.
To my knowledge, the notion that Amelia Earhart may have been bisexual is new to this work. The possibility that she was a lesbian is a subject often broached but little explored, and the issue of her sexuality is clouded (as are her accomplishments and disappearance) by the tendency of those writing her biographies to view her through rose-colored glasses, sacrificing the person for a role model. She is depicted as a Victorian prude, and yet reports of her promiscuity persist; her mannish attire, and traveling with women companions, is offset by talk of youthful flings with older men and long affairs with Samuel Chapman and Eugene Vidal. Despite the claims of some biographers, her marriage to G. P. Putnam was obviously an arrangement, perhaps a sham. From these contradictions, my portrayal of her arose, organically, during the writing of this book.
The characterization of Robert Myers, although somewhat fictionalized, draws upon his book, S
tand By to Die (1985), an earnest memoir distinguished by the author’s personal relationship with Amelia Earhart. Some may view Myers’s story with skepticism, but it is my privilege as a novelist to accept it at face value.
My long-time collaborator, research associate George Hagenauer, located books and articles, and in particular lent support in figuring out how to get Nate Heller to Saipan (and under what cover story). My other chief researcher, Lynn Myers, came up with rare Saipan material as well as the elusive G. P. Putnam autobiography, Wide Margins (1942).
June Rigler of Muscatine, Iowa, generously loaned me numerous books from her extensive Amelia Earhart collection; she also allowed me to sort through an extensive, decades-spanning clipping file on Amelia, entrusted to me in a piece of vintage Amelia Earhart luggage. June’s clippings, from hundreds of newspapers and magazines, greatly helped broaden my picture of Amelia and her disappearance—in particular, a 1982 series of articles about the Irene Bolam controversy appearing in the Woodbridge, New Jersey, News Tribune.
Alice and Leonard Maltin graciously fielded several phone calls, providing instant in-depth research as the unpaid proprietors of the Toluca Lake Historical Society (phone number unlisted). Tom and Yuko Mihara Weisser also fielded impromptu phone inquiries; Yuko helped me figure out that the hotel referred to in every source as “Kobayashi Royokan” likely was the Kobayashi Ryokan, “ryokan” being Japanese for “inn.”
In 1996, Jim Ayres of Muscatine moved his family to Saipan, where he and his wife took teaching jobs. In the midst of this traumatic relocation, he undertook on-site research for me, intersecting with the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands. Jim and his family took photos and searched out books, magazine articles, and visitor’s bureau information, as well as photocopied the original testimony of Matilde Fausto Arriola, among others. He also located several video documentaries on the disappearance as well as a current travelogue on Saipan.
The key book Jim found is Nan’yo—The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945 (1988), by Mark R. Peattie. In trying to imagine the Garapan of 1940—a city that had virtually ceased to exist by July 1944—I found in the Peattie book many major puzzle pieces (most discussions of Saipan focus on the invasion, and photos of the rubble of Garapan are as common as photos of pre-bombing Garapan are not). Other puzzle pieces were culled from various magazine and newspaper articles, notably a Yank article by Corporal Tom O’Brien on Camp Susupe. Others were gathered from East Again (1934), Walter B. Harris; Lady with a Spear (1953), Eugenie Clark; Micronesia Handbook—Guide to the Caroline, Gilbert, Mariana, and Marshall Islands (1992), David Stanley; Saipan—Then and Now (1990), Glenn E. McClure; and Saipan: The Beginning of the End (1950), Major Carl W. Hoffman, USMC.
Three biographies provided much information and many insights: Letters from Amelia (1982), Jean L. Backus, a warm life story illuminated by lengthy quotes from Amelia’s letters to her mother; The Sound of Wings (1989), Mary S. Lovell, the most detailed biography, beautifully written and exhaustively researched, marred slightly by the author’s inexplicable approval of G. P. Putnam (ironically, much of my negative view of Putnam is derived from material in Lovell’s book); and Amelia Earhart—A Biography (1989), Doris L. Rich, an outstanding job with a slightly less rose-colored view of Amelia than Lovell’s. These books tend to accept the notion that Amelia crashed into the sea; Lovell in particular spends time debunking disappearance theories.
Also consulted were the lavishly illustrated Amelia, My Courageous Sister (1987), Muriel Earhart Morrissey and Carol L. Osborne; Amelia Earhart—Pioneer of Aviation (1973), Julian May; Still Missing (1993), Susan Ware; and Winged Legend (1970), John Burke. A tribute with pictures, Amelia—Pilot in Pearls (1985), Shirley Dobson Gilroy, provided useful nuggets. Other biographical material was drawn from books bylined Amelia Earhart: 20 Hrs. 40 Min. (1928), The Fun of It (1932), and The Last Flight (1937), as well as G. P. Putnam’s puffy, unconvincing Soaring Wings (1939).
While I viewed several documentaries and one of the two television movies about Amelia, the work that really impacted this book was Nancy Porter’s 1993 documentary, Amelia Earhart—The Price of Courage, which explores Amelia as a celebrity created and manipulated by the media.
The groundbreaking Daughter of the Sky—The Story of Amelia Earhart (1960), by Paul L. Briand Jr., endorses the notion of Earhart and Noonan winding up in Japanese captivity on Saipan. Still a good read despite all that has followed, The Search for Amelia Earhart (1966), by Fred Goerner, is the cornerstone of the Saipan scenario. The next major entry is the controversial (and withdrawn) Amelia Earhart Lives (1970), by Joe Klaas, covering the Joe Gervais investigation and presenting the Irene Bolam theory; entertaining but disorganized, this book is a peculiar mix of hard research and wild speculation. Also consulted was Amelia Earhart: The Final Story (1985), Vincent V. Loomis with Jeffrey Ethell. The “disappearance” book authors are often catty about each other’s work—almost everybody bad-mouths Goerner, despite his pioneering contribution. A tour guide through the theories is presented in the excellent Amelia Earhart: Lost Legend (1994), Donald Moyer Wilson.
Two of the best inquiries into the Saipan theory are Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident (1987), Thomas E. Devine with Richard M. Daley; and Witness to the Execution (1988), T. C. “Buddy” Brennan (and his video documentary of the same name). My character Buddy Busch is a composite of Devine and Brennan, with some fiction tossed in; in particular, Brennan’s research is the basis for Busch’s, including the testimony of Mrs. Blas and the discovery of the blindfold. The story of the burning of the Electra, and Forrestal’s presence on Saipan, derives from Devine.
Other books focus primarily on the flight itself: Amelia Earhart—What Really Happened at Howland (1993), G. Carrington, suspects an intelligence mission was undertaken, while Amelia Earhart—Case Closed (1996), Walter Rosessler and Leo Gomez, attempts to debunk that same thesis. The most convincing, coherent, credible inquiry into the government’s role in the “last flight” is Lost Star (1993), Randall Brink.
Material unavailable elsewhere was found in the well-illustrated The Earhart Disappearance—The British Connection (1987), J. A. Donahue. Ann Holtgren Pellegreno’s World Flight—The Earhart Trail (1971) charts her own recreation (sans disappearance, of course) of Earhart’s “last flight” in an Electra in 1967; she includes her own insightful overview and summary of the disappearance theories. During the writing of Flying Blind, another woman “recreated” the Earhart flight, but Iowan Pellegreno did it first, and far more authentically.
A number of biographies provided the basis of characterizations in this book, in particular Hollywood Pilot (1967), by Don Dwiggins, an excellent biography of Paul Mantz. The autobiography Age of Heroes (1993) by aviator Henri Keyzer-Andre with Hy Steirman includes the fascinating possibility that the Japanese “Zero” fighter plane may have benefited from engineers having access to Amelia’s “flying laboratory.” The autobiographical travel books of Irving and Electa Johnson were essential in creating not only their characters but Heller’s ocean voyage, specifically Westward Bound in the Schooner Yankee (1936) and Yankee’s Wander World (1949). The only world cruise the Johnsons seem not to have written a book about is the one including the Amelia Earhart side trip; their article “Westward Bound in the Yankee” in The National Geographic (January 1942) purports to describe that trip, their third, but is in fact a condensation of their 1936 book on the first voyage.
Other biographies that proved helpful include: Aviatrix (1981), Elinor Smith; The Body Merchant—The Story of Earl Carroll (1976), Ken Murray; Diz—Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression (1992), Robert Gregory; The Forrestal Diaries (1951), edited by Walter Millis with E. S. Duffield; James Forrestal—A Study of Personality, Politics and Policy (1963), Arnold A. Rogow; The Hunt for “Tokyo Rose” (1990), Russell Warren Howe; Jackie Cochran—An Autobiography (1987), Jacqueline Cochran and Maryann Bucknum Brinkley; Wandere
r (1963), Sterling Hayden; and the biography of a business (Marshall Field’s), Give the Lady What She Wants (1952), Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan.
Material on the Irish Republican Army was drawn from The I.R.A. (1970), Tim Pat Coogan, and The Secret Army—A History of the IRA (1970), J. Bowyer Bell. Restaurant and nightclub color were derived from Dining in Chicago (1931), John Drury, and Out with the Stars (1985), Jim Heimann; baseball reference from The Gashouse Gang (1976), Robert E. Hood. The following WPA guides were consulted: California, Illinois, Iowa, Los Angeles, Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri. Aviation references include China Clipper—The Age of Great Flying Boats (1991), Robert L. Gandt; This Was Air Travel (1962), Henry R. Palmer, Jr.; United States Women in Aviation, 1930-1939 (1985), Claudia M. Oakes; and Women Aloft (1981), Valerie Moolman.
I would again like to thank editors Michaela Hamilton and Joseph Pittman for their support and belief in Nate Heller and me—Joe was extremely patient when I called into question my reputation for meeting deadlines by requesting extension after extension, as I attempted to meet the challenges of this material; and of course my agent, Dominick Abel, for his continued professional and personal support.
My talented wife, writer Barbara Collins, helped me through this difficult, rewarding project, providing frequent impromptu trips to the Muscatine Public Library, and constant insightful criticism, keeping me aloft as much as possible, and lovingly walking me away from crash landings.
Max Allan Collins has earned fifteen Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective and Stolen Away, and receiving the PWA life achievement award, the Eye. His graphic novel, Road to Perdition, which is the basis of the Academy Award-winning film starring Tom Hanks, was followed by two novels, Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise. His suspense series include Quarry, Nolan, Mallory, and Eliot Ness, and his numerous comics credits include the syndicated Dick Tracy and his own Ms. Tree. He has written and directed four feature films and two documentaries. His other produced screenplays include “The Expert,” an HBO World Premiere. His coffee-table book The History of Mystery received nominations for every major mystery award and Men’s Adventure Magazines won the Anthony Award. Collins lives in Muscatine, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins. They have collaborated on seven novels and numerous short stories, and are currently writing the “Trash ‘n’ Treasures” mysteries.
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