Jerry sat back and stared at Eddy Castellano in disbelief. “Eddy, I worked for you at one time and nearly got myself killed. Now you want me to do it again?”
“Hey, Kid, it’s a legitimate business.”
“It’s illegal to sell alcohol.”
“Who cares about that?” Eddy said sharply. “All the swells in this town are buying the booze we sell ’em. If it’s against the law to sell it, it must be against the law to buy it. Look, I can fix you up where you won’t be involved with any of the rough stuff. We need a few smooth, good-looking guys like you. You ain’t no lawyer, but I don’t trust them anyway—except for Mario.”
“No thanks, Eddy.”
“Wait a minute!” Eddy held up his thick hand. “Let me talk to Nick. He knows lots of guys, and so do I. Not all of them are in the rackets. It don’t have to be flying, does it? Times are pretty rough.”
Jerry felt a warmth toward Castellano. Eddy was a hood and a gangster—along with his brother Nick—but their lives and the Stuarts’ were intertwined. He had heard his father tell, many times, that if it hadn’t been for Anna Castellano he might have starved to death, both he and Rose. They had come separately to the city and Anna had taken them in, fed them, and given them a place to stay until they could make their own way. He knew that both Nick and Eddy took great pride in their friendship, such as it was, with Amos and Owen. Now he said, “Sure Eddy, I’ll take anything that’s honest. I could get a job, I guess, flying in Mexico or somewhere with a revolution.”
“Don’t do that, Kid,” Eddy said. “Let me look around, okay? Hey! Here’s your steak.”
As Jerry was eating his steak, Eddy snapped his fingers, saying abruptly, “Hey! You see the paper today?”
“No, I’ve been all over town looking for work. What was in it?”
Eddy grinned knowingly. “Old friend of yours has hit town.”
“What old friend?”
“Cara Gilmore. I guess you remember her, don’t you?”
Jerry stared at Eddy’s knowing grin and nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I remember Cara.” She had been his first love, and echoes of their affair still sounded deep down in his chest from time to time. She had been a stunt flyer and wing walker with Gavin’s air circus when Jerry himself had first learned to fly. Jerry and Cara had had a torrid affair, but she had left, causing a vacancy in his life that nothing had really replaced.
“What’s she doing in Chicago?” he said, careful to keep his voice neutral.
“She’s made some kind of flight, long distance from someplace to someplace,” Eddy said carelessly. “I’ll get a paper. Just a minute.”
Eddy went to the desk and soon came back bearing the newspaper. Putting it down before Jerry, he said, “There it is. Still a looker, ain’t she?”
Jerry looked at the picture that took up a large part of the page. It detailed a long-distance flight that Cara had made in an airplane belonging to a famous industrialist. Their names had been romantically linked for several months, something that hurt Jerry every time someone mentioned it. He studied the picture. Cara was wearing jodhpurs and her trademark, a long-sleeved shirt, and she carried a soft aviator’s helmet in her hand. The wind was blowing her curly hair and her smile was the same. He read the story carefully, then looked up. “Yeah, she still looks good.”
“Hey! Maybe her boyfriend can give you a job flying one of them airplanes around. You ought to check it out. Well, I gotta go, Kid. Nick and me’ll see what we can turn up.”
“Thanks for the meal, Eddy.”
“All in the family, Kid,” Eddy grinned.
He left the restaurant and Jerry sat drinking coffee, rereading the story. Finally he folded the paper and put it in his pocket, a determination forming in him. “Wouldn’t hurt to see her one more time,” he said to himself. As he left the restaurant, he wondered what it would be like. He had wondered this many times, but the thought of actually seeing her again stirred him as nothing had for years.
He left the restaurant and recklessly spent a dollar of his remaining cash taking a taxi to the airport. The article had said that Cara would be doing a flight there, an exhibition, and then giving an interview and a speech on her adventures.
When he got to the airport he found that a crowd had already gathered and that the plane was in the air. He watched as the sleek, silver monoplane flashed over the field and pulled up sharply, the engine roaring. Cara did a full loop, pulling out only a few feet from the ground. It was so close that Jerry clenched his teeth and flinched. “Too close,” he said. “She always was a fool for taking chances.”
For the next half hour, Cara rolled the plane into snaps and dives and outside loops of all sorts. Jerry watched with admiration. Finally she brought it in for a perfect landing, taxied up the runway, and climbed out.
The crowd was held back by police, and a handsome gray-haired man holding a microphone interviewed her.
At the sound of her voice, Jerry felt memories wash over him. She had a husky voice that somehow always stirred him. Now she laughed and told of her adventures on the long-distance flight. He felt some of the excitement come back to him that he’d felt when he’d first seen her.
Finally the interview was over and two police officers moved in front of Cara, making a way for her through the crowd. Jerry did not speak, but when she was even with him, she turned her head and her eyes met his. Shock ran through her, he saw, and he grinned and said, “Hello, Cara.”
“Jerry Stuart!” Ignoring the police officers, Cara turned and grabbed him by the lapels of his overcoat. “You good-looking thing!” She reached up, pulled him down, and kissed him, and a light flashed just as she did.
Cara whispered, “Come on, Stuart. We’ve got things to talk about.”
“Is this a friend of yours?” the interviewer asked quickly.
“Oh, yes, this is Jerry Stuart. We’re old friends.” She winked at the gray-haired man and said, “He’s almost as good a flyer as I am. Come on, Jerry. Let’s get away from this.”
Jerry accompanied her to a car that was waiting, a flaming red Duesenberg.
“This thing’s not as big as a battleship,” he murmured, sliding into the leather seat beside her, looking around. “But it’s not much smaller either.”
“It belongs to a man who wants me to fly across the ocean,” she said. She started the powerful engine and roared away with squealing tires. She threaded her way through the traffic of Chicago, and forced Jerry to tell about himself. Finally, she pulled up in front of the Palmer House, the fanciest hotel in Chicago, and got out of the car. Then the doorman took it saying, “Good afternoon, Miss Gilmore.”
“Hello, Max. Come on, Jerry,” she said. She led the way, through the magnificent lobby, up to her room, which was really a suite. As soon as they were inside, she threw her arms around him and pulled his head down. Her lips were as warm and soft as he remembered them. And the firm contours of her figure pressed against him. A riotous emotion ran through Jerry Stuart. He held her tightly and when he lifted his head and looked at her, he said huskily, “I’ve missed you, Cara.”
“Welcome home, Jerry,” she smiled and pulled his head down again.
TROUBLE WITH ADAM
Bonnie Hart finished waxing the linoleum on the kitchen floor, then paused and arched her back. She replaced the cleaning materials, moved into the living room, and stopped in front of the new radio that Lylah had brought in a week earlier. It was an Atwater Kent and was different from the old Edison radio that it replaced. Leaning over, she studied the two dials that composed the controls, then glanced up at the separate round speaker covered with brown fabric. Turning one dial, she sought a station, and the speaker blared at her, “It’s Little Orphan Annie time!”
Bonnie winced and said out loud, “I refuse to drink another cup of that awful Ovaltine, even for a secret Little Orphan Annie decoder!”
As she continued turning the dial, a smile touched her lips, for she and Adam, her thirteen-year-old charge, had fough
t over this. By sending in the tops from cans of Ovaltine, it was possible to get secret decoder pins and other paraphernalia straight from the hand of Little Orphan Annie herself. Adam complained constantly that the members of the family weren’t drinking enough Ovaltine.
She picked up a radio station from San Francisco. Rudy Vallee’s nasal voice was grinding out his theme song, “My Time Is Your Time.” Restlessly she searched over the dial and finally stopped in the middle of a broadcast. She frowned as the name Lindbergh caught her ear. Sitting down, she listened with a sense of sadness as the announcer said, “The most intensive manhunt in American history has been mounted in the search for the infant son of Charles A. Lindbergh. The twenty-month-old boy, Charles Jr., was snatched from his crib in his family’s home in Hopewell, New Jersey. Police have no clues concerning the kidnapping of the son of the famous transatlantic aviator. A homemade ladder, down which the infant was carried, and a note pinned to the windowsill demanding fifty thousand dollars for the child’s safe return are all that they have to work with. Colonel Lindbergh has said that he would be willing to pay the ransom. President Hoover has ordered all federal law enforcement agencies to assist in the search, and more than one hundred thousand officers, aided by civilian volunteers, have joined the search along the entire eastern seaboard. Colonel Lindbergh . . .”
Bonnie listened as the announcer went on, and she whispered, “What kind of monster would steal a sleeping baby?” She bowed her head and prayed quickly for the child and for the family. She had formed this habit long ago of praying as things happened instead of storing them up.
Coming to her feet, she reached out and turned off the radio. Glancing out the window, she saw Adam moving slowly along the sidewalk. Something about the way he kept his head down alarmed her. He usually came running home from his ball games, shouting and demanding something to eat. She stood there waiting until the door opened, and at one glimpse of his face she cried out, “Adam! What happened to you?”
“Nothing.” Adam Stuart ducked his head and quickly covered up the left side of his face with his hand. He turned to go, but Bonnie rushed across the room to him. Pulling his hand down, she saw he had a scrape along his cheek and also that his nose had been bleeding.
“Have you been fighting?”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything,” he said sullenly.
Adam Stuart, the only child of Lylah Stuart Hart, was of average height, about five-feet six. He was trim and showed promise of a sturdy build. Usually he was a cheerful, good-natured boy, but now there was a gloomy look in his face.
“Come along. Let me clean you up,” Bonnie said firmly.
“Aw, it doesn’t matter. Let me go, Bonnie—”
But Bonnie pulled him into the bathroom and soon had cleared away the traces of the fight. “Now, come along,” she said. “I’ve got cookies and milk for you.”
“I don’t want any,” Adam protested.
Nevertheless, she took him into the kitchen and sat him down and put the plate of chocolate cookies and a glass of milk in front of him. Adam picked up one of the cookies, nibbled on it, but his mouth was tight, and he refused to meet her eyes.
Bonnie knew Adam better, perhaps, than anyone. She had been hired by Lylah to keep the boy while Lylah went to work in Hollywood. After Lylah and Jesse, Bonnie’s brother, had married, they left the small cottage and moved into a larger house. Bonnie still kept Adam, and at the same time did research for her brother’s books. She sat down now at the kitchen table and said quietly, “I wish you’d tell me about it. Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t help. Nobody can.”
“What was the fight about?” She hoped it was some sort of boyish argument. Adam had been in those kinds of fights before but had ignored them, remaining cheerful. Somehow she felt it was more serious than that.
Suddenly Adam looked up. He had a strong jaw and light blue eyes. His light brown hair was neater than that of most boys. There was some of Lylah in him in the wide-spaced eyes and the squarish face. He had her short nose. But there was a part of him that did not resemble Lylah.
“Who is my father?” Adam said suddenly.
It was not the first time Adam had asked her this question, and Bonnie shook her head saying, “I don’t know, Adam.”
“He must be pretty bad, whoever he is, if my own mother won’t tell me.”
“You don’t know that. There could be all kinds of reasons. Besides, Jesse is your dad now. Don’t you like him?”
Adam dropped his eyes and pushed the cookies around on the plate. They could hear the cries of children playing outside, and a noisy truck went rattling by. “Sure, I like him fine, but he’s not my dad—not my real dad, that is.”
Bonnie was almost frightened by the intensity of the boy’s desire to find out about his father. She was aware that there was something in Lylah’s past that had been rather wild. She was relatively certain that Lylah had not been married to Adam’s father, but for all the warmth of their relationship, Lylah had never spoken of this part of her life. It was as if she were afraid to talk about it. Bonnie had only seen Lylah frightened one time. That was when Adam asked her this same question. He had been only five years old, she remembered. Lylah had put her arms around him and said, “Someday we’ll talk about it,” but there had been fear in her eyes, Bonnie remembered.
“Come on now, it’s time to do your homework.”
“Aw, let me listen to the radio, Bonnie.”
“All right. For thirty minutes. But you have to do your homework and that’s final!”
Adam nodded reluctantly and moved off into the living room, carrying two cookies in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. Soon the sound of Jack Armstrong, or one of his other favorite programs, filtered through. Bonnie went about her own work but was troubled by the talk.
Later that afternoon she found occasion to mention to Lylah what had happened.
“I think you ought to tell him who his father is. It’s none of my business, of course.”
“Yes, it’s your business.” Lylah came over and put her arm around her sister-in-law. She was very fond of Bonnie. Lylah had fallen in love, late in life, with Jesse Hart, and after a tempestuous youth, she was thoroughly satisfied in her marriage. At the age of fifty-one she looked much younger. But as she stood with her arm around Bonnie, she said, “I’m afraid to talk to him.” She would say no more, and later on when she and Jesse were preparing to go to bed, she turned to him and said, “Adam was asking Bonnie who his father is.”
Jesse Hart was five years younger than Lylah. He was a tall man, trim and strong, with hard hands, very square. He had been a writer for years, but only in the past two years had he proved successful. He had learned to write screenplays that were better than most, and his novel was slowly gaining acceptance.
“Was he disturbed—but I know he was!” He came over and sat down on the bed and watched as Lylah ran a comb through her auburn hair. “What did Bonnie tell him?”
“What could she tell him?” There was a slight bitterness in Lylah’s voice. “She doesn’t know. Nobody knows but you and me, Amos, Gavin, and Owen.”
As she sat combing her hair, she thought about the time that her brothers had come into the hospital room in France right after Adam’s birth. They had known that the baby’s father was Baron Manfred von Richthofen—the famous Red Baron. Lylah had met von Richthofen on a visit to Germany. The two had an affair, but von Richthofen had been killed, and the baby was born after his death. She remembered very well that her brothers had gathered around, Owen holding the baby. When she had expressed her fear for the child’s future Gavin had said, “He’ll be a Stuart!”
And so now she put the brush down and turned. Her eyes were troubled. “I can’t tell him. Not yet, Jesse.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve gone over it before. Some people in this country are still bitter about the Germans. They’d hate him. Especially as the son of Manfred von Richthofen.”
“Some would,”
Jesse said, “but that’s passing away now.”
“I don’t think so. This man Hitler that’s rising to power—he frightens me, Jesse. He could lead Germany into another war.”
Running his hand through his curly hair, Jesse shook his head. “He troubles me, too. I don’t think he’s sane. He reminds me a lot of the Kaiser. He’s going to do bad things with Germany if he ever gets in complete power—but that’s no reason for not telling Adam who his father is.”
The two talked until late in the night, and finally, when they lay together in bed, he held her tightly as she began to sob. He stroked her back comfortingly. “It’ll be all right,” he whispered. “God won’t let us down.”
Some of the turbulence of Adam’s thoughts were driven away the next day, for Bonnie took him to see one of his idols, Tom Mix, the famous western actor. She had obtained a pass from Lylah, who knew Mix rather well, and had piled Adam in her Chevrolet coupe for a day’s outing.
They found the scene being shot inside a strange-looking set.
“Why don’t those buildings have any tops, Bonnie?” Adam asked.
“Well, cameras have to have lots of light,” Bonnie explained as they moved into a room the shape of a saloon. “So, the sun has to do the lighting for them.”
“Won’t people think it’s funny, seeing a room without any ceiling?”
Bonnie laughed. “Why, you’ve seen lots of them, Adam. Think of all the times we’ve gone to see Bob Steele and Ken Maynard and Buck Jones in rooms just like this.”
“You mean they didn’t have any ceilings in them?”
“Why no, they were just like this. Look!—” she broke off suddenly. “There’s Mr. Mix right there!”
“Gosh! It is, isn’t it? Look at him! Isn’t he something!” Adam breathed almost reverently. He stood transfixed; the director, carrying a megaphone, shouted directions to the actors, then moved back to sit down in a chair made out of wood frame with canvas for the seat and back.
A Season of Dreams Page 10
