Within the hour, Walter McMenamy was seated before me at a table at the back of the Burbank terminal’s Sky Room restaurant. He’d been doing some work at Patterson Radio Company for his friend Karl Pierson, chief engineer for the firm and a fellow amateur radio enthusiast.
“We’re designing an entirely new type of short-wave receiver,” McMenamy said, his voice soft yet alive with enthusiasm. Probably in his mid-thirties, and despite his businesslike dark suit and navy and red tie, McMenamy came across as a husky kid, his oblong head home to a high forehead with dark widow’s-peaked hair, and boyish features: bright eyes, snub nose, full, almost feminine lips.
“Thanks for dropping everything,” I said, “to come talk to me.”
It was midmorning, and we were drinking Coca-Cola on ice.
“It’s my pleasure, Mr. Heller,” McMenamy said. “I’ve been busting to tell somebody, and when Paul said you’re looking into this mess, you couldn’t keep me away.”
“What have you been busting to tell somebody?”
He leaned forward. “Well, did Paul fill you in on what my role was to be, on the first attempt at the world flight?”
“Yes he did.”
McMenamy had been retained by the Putnams, at Mantz’s advice, as a technical advisor, selecting and installing the latest radio equipment in the Electra. He’d also been enlisted to assemble volunteers among fellow members of the Radio Relay League, a worldwide short-wave radio club, to follow the Electra, particularly over the more isolated regions on its flight path. A base station on Beacon Hill, near Los Angeles, was selected for optimal reception.
“We had a big responsibility,” McMenamy said, obviously relishing the thought, “providing en route communications that’d help ensure Amelia’s safety, and Mr. Noonan’s—particularly weather reports and forecasts.”
“And you could relay information to G. P. Putnam,” I said, “to feed the press.”
He nodded. “Day-by-day progress reports. It would have really built public interest.”
“What happened, Mr. McMenamy?”
“Call me Walt.”
“Call me Nate.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what the heck happened, Nate. I used to see Amelia a couple of times a week, but after the Luke Field crackup, I never spoke with her again. She came back from Honolulu on the Malolo… why are you smiling?”
“Sorry. I took a trip on the Malolo once. Just thinking about what a small world it is.”
“Not so small when you’re going around it in an airplane. Anyway, we went down to meet the ship, Karl and I, wanting to be waiting there to let Amelia know that her bad luck, cracking up the Electra and all, hadn’t dimmed our faith in her. That we were game for a second try, if she was…. Boy, were we in for a surprise.”
He seemed to want me to ask: “How so?”
He leaned forward again and spoke in a near whisper: “She came down the gangplank surrounded by Navy personnel—officers and, what, Shore Patrol or MP’s? Anyway, it was a combination of brass and armed guards, and they whisked her right past us and into a Navy staff car.”
“Did she see you?”
He sat back, smirking disgustedly. “Oh, yes. She acknowledged me with this…pitiful smile…but didn’t say a darn word! And that was the start of it.”
“Of what?”
He was shaking his head, his expression gloomy. “Of the government completely taking over. Some Naval Intelligence officers, plainclothes guys, met with Karl and me at a restaurant. They said any messages from Amelia, that came in from the Beacon Hill station, would go through them, and then to the press. We weren’t to initiate contact with Amelia, either—just monitor her messages as they came in, which hardly any did. Some of what they released was false. They also swore us to secrecy.”
“Why are you telling me, then?”
A faint smile formed on the babyish lips, “Two reasons. First, Mantz says you’re okay. Second, Amelia’s missing. If we’d been allowed to maintain contact with her, if we hadn’t been shut out—who knows?”
“They didn’t shut you out entirely…”
“The only reason for that is they needed our technical expertise and equipment. We had better gear than the government. And they knew we’d be able to monitor Amelia’s signals anyway.”
“I’m sure they didn’t like that.”
“No. But we were doing it under their watchful eye.”
I glanced around the restaurant, which had only a scattering of patrons. “You think you’re under their watchful eye right now?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think I was followed here. We shut the Beacon Hill operation down a couple days ago…but I still listen at home.”
“You say that like you heard something.”
His face might have been young, but his eyes suddenly seemed old. “I still am…at night. The daytime frequency, 3105 kilocycles, I don’t pick anything up; too weak. But at night, on 6210 kilocycles, I’m still hearing her…she’s still out there.”
I leaned forward. “What are you hearing?”
“The prearranged signal—two long dashes, if they were on water, three if they were on land. She’s been sending the two long dashes. Ask Paul—he’s heard them.”
“Christ. And the Navy, the Coast Guard, they know?”
“Of course they do. I’ve heard a voice, too, weakly, through the static…SOS, SOS, KHAQQ, KHAQQ…”
“I know what SOS is…”
“KHAQQ—her call sign.”
“And she’s still there—on the water?”
He swallowed, and nodded.
Mantz popped in the restaurant, spotted us and strode over. “You boys getting along all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “You didn’t tell me you heard her signal.”
McMenamy, sipping his glass of Coke, watched Mantz reply.
“Hell, Nate, it could have been anybody. There’s a lot of sick hoaxing going on right now…. Look, this Myers kid, in Oakland, there’s no phone in his house, but I got the airport manager to send somebody over…and you’ll be glad to know I’ve got this high-level conference between you and Jackie Cooper all arranged, for three this afternoon.”
“I appreciate this, Paul,” I said, and I meant it.
“I’ll fly you over in the Honeymoon Express…. Been a while since you flew in a Vega, I bet.”
“A while,” I said.
The Duck Air Service Cafe at Oakland’s Bay Farm Airport, its walls decorated with framed flying photographs and pennants commemorating air shows and competitions, had wooden booths along windows that looked out on the airfield and its hangars. The interior of the glorified shack was a dark-stained oak, except for a small gleaming counter with wrought-iron stools and leather seats. Pies and cakes and ice cream were served up from behind the counter by Mom, while Pop made the sandwiches in a small kitchen in back.
The afternoon was warm but not sweltering, ceiling fans churning the air like big propellers; those flies that flypaper strips hadn’t shot down were dive-bombing the handful of customers in the place, which included me and Mantz, on one side of a booth, and young Robert Myers on the other.
I had bought the Myers kid a “snail,” which was his word for a cinnamon roll, and a glass of milk; he was wolfing them down, whether out of hunger or in competition with the flies, I couldn’t tell you.
He was a tall, bony kid with dark alert eyes, a strong nose and chin, and a shock of unruly blond hair in need of a barber; like a lot of kids in their early teens, his body approached manhood while his features still had a softness to them, as if not yet fully formed. He wore a crew-neck T-shirt with dark blue neck and sleeve trim, and his denim trousers were sailor-style denims—judging by how high they rode over his black speedsters, this was at least his second summer in them.
“Amelia never heard a snail called a snail before, either,” he said, chomping on the roll; his voice hadn’t changed yet. “I call her Amelia ’cause she said to. She always called me Robert, ’cause she k
new I didn’t like Bobby, since it’s what my sister calls me when she gets mad.”
Mantz and I traded grins.
“Well, then, I’ll call you Robert, too,” I said, “if that’s okay. And you call me Nate.”
“All right, Nate. I can’t tell you how glad I am that somebody’s come to talk to me about all this. I about been bouncing off the walls, worryin’.”
“Why?”
He gulped some milk. “Jeez, I don’t even know where to start.”
“In the detective business,” I said, knowing he would be impressed by that, “we like to keep it tidy, orderly.”
He dabbed off his milk mustache with a paper napkin. “Start at the beginning, you mean.”
“Yeah. How did you happen to meet Amelia?”
He shrugged, nodded out toward the airfield, where a two-engine job was taxiing. “I been hangin’ around the airport since I was a kid.”
“That long?”
“Oh yeah, I can spend hours just watching the airplanes and ground crews, and there’s all sort of famous fliers around. I talked to Jimmy Doolittle and Howard Hughes and Bobbi Trout. Something interesting’s always goin’ on out here, parachute jumps, air races, powder puff derbies…that’s when I first met Amelia. But I didn’t really get to know her till fairly recent—when she was gettin’ ready for the world flight. The first time she tried it, I mean, early this year. It was almost like she went out of her way to pay attention to me and be friendly and all—since she’s a big-time celebrity, you might think I’m spreadin’ it on thick, but I’m not: she treated me like a little brother.”
Mantz chimed in, “Robert’s not exaggerating. Amelia took a liking to the lad.”
“Like, when she’d buy me a snail, she’d have it heated up for me…. Said it was better warm, and was she right! I just wasn’t used to the finer things of life.”
Mantz and I traded smiles again.
“She had such pretty hands,” the boy said, looking through me. “Dainty and delicate, though her fingers were awful long…. She’d sit and drink her cocoa….” He swallowed. I think he was holding back tears; I knew the feeling.
Then he went on: “You know, it’s four miles from my house, to here, and when she’d come along in that fancy Cord car of hers, she’d pick me up…. Sometimes her mother was with her, and she was a nice lady, too.”
“You want another glass of milk, Robert?” I asked.
“Sure!”
I called over to Mom behind the counter for one, and got fresh Cokes for Mantz and me, too.
“Mr. Mantz may not realize it,” Robert said, “but this airport was real different, once prep for the flight got started. No more races, no more air shows, everything kind of shut down except for preppin’ the world flight. And lots of strange people around.”
“Strange, how?”
He nibbled at his snail. “Men in suits. They looked like businessmen. And sometimes military people…. A General Westover came around, everybody seemed real impressed.”
They should. Westover was the head of the U.S. Army Air Forces.
The kid was saying, “Mr. Putnam would go in the office hangar and talk to them…usually without Amelia. It was almost like the hangar office was off limits to her, and I heard her complain about it, too—‘What is he doing? Who are these people? What are they talkin’ about?’”
I turned to Mantz. “You saw this kind of thing, too?”
Mantz nodded. “But I wasn’t involved on the Oakland end, much. Noonan and the new mechanic, Bo McKneely, were handling things.”
“The security guard at night,” Robert said, waving a fly off his snail, “he was a Navy reservist.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. “Were you out here at night, much?”
“No, but my sister had a crush on that Navy guard and was always bothering me about talkin’ to him for her. He’d show up kind of late in the afternoon….”
“If security was tight, Robert, what were they doing letting you hang around?”
“On the first try, before she crashed her plane in Hawaii, things weren’t so tight. Reporters were takin’ pictures and doing stories about Amelia…. As for me, I’m kind of a mascot around here, I guess…as long as I don’t get in the way, mess with tools, or bother the mechanics or anything. Sometimes I run errands and help out a little. Like that time I helped you, Mr. Mantz, with that battery.”
“That’s right,” Mantz said, with a little smile. “You did help me haul that into the plane, didn’t you?”
“Big green heavy-duty Exide battery,” the kid said, nodding, “’bout three times the size of a car battery. That’s how she’s sendin’ her messages, I bet.”
Mantz said, “Out of fuel, she couldn’t be using the radio, otherwise; she’d need the right engine running to keep the plane’s batteries charged.”
“I got to watch the first takeoff from the hotel balcony,” Robert said, basking in the memory. “Amelia invited me—can you picture that? Me with her Hollywood friends with their fancy clothes and flashy jewelry! But you shoulda seen the dirty looks Mr. Putnam gave me. He woulda never put up with me bein’ around if Amelia hadn’t told him to…. Wasn’t any fanfare on the second takeoff.”
I sipped my Coke. “You and Mr. Putnam didn’t hit it off?”
Robert frowned, shook his head. “He’s a nasty person. Sometimes he had his son with him, called him ‘Junior’? He’s a nice kid, I don’t know, a year or two older than me. Not wild or anything…quiet.”
“Well behaved,” Mantz agreed.
“Well, I saw Mr. Putnam slap him, yell at him, really dress him down, for nothin’…. Once in the washroom over in the terminal building, Mr. Putnam hit him for ‘not washing up’ good enough.”
“You ever have a run-in with him?” I asked.
“Run-in! Run down is more like it!”
I waved a fly away from me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, this one day a man in an Army uniform…I don’t know what rank, but he sure wasn’t a private…came in the cafe here, while I was sitting at the counter with Amelia and Mr. Noonan. Havin’ snails and milk, like always. This Army man had a bunch of papers for them to sign, ‘releases,’ he called them, or ‘clearances’ or something, I don’t know…. Anyway, Mr. Noonan said maybe I better leave, and so I did, and when I came out, Mr. Putnam spotted me. He came over, shouting at me, ‘What did you see in there?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ And I started walking away, and he blocked me and started yelling! About how I’d seen and heard a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to, calling me a ‘punk,’ saying things like ‘Don’t you have a home?’ He told me to stay away and stop snooping around.”
I glanced at Mantz, who was frowning, then asked, “Did you say anything, Robert? Or just walk away?”
“Heck, no, I didn’t walk away! I yelled right back at him—said I had as much right as he did to come around the airport. He looked like he was gonna grab me…only I’m not small, like his son, and he musta thought better of it. But he started yelling again: ‘If I catch you around here again, you’ll disappear and no one will know where to find you!’ Then he kinda stormed off.”
Mantz was shaking his head in disgust.
I asked, “What did you do, Robert?”
“Started to walk home. I just thought he was a real nut, I was ticked off, and you know how it is when you’re mad, and the thoughts are sorta racing…I wasn’t gonna let him scare me away, there was no way I wasn’t comin’ around the airport anymore, it’s my home away from home. And while I was walkin’, it’s kind of a lonely stretch of road, and it was kinda late, hopin’ to hitch but figurin’ I was probably out of luck, I heard a car comin’ and thought, great! Finally a ride! Only it was this big black Hudson and Mr. Putnam was driving. He was looking at me all pop-eyed and crazy and you don’t have to believe me, but I swear he aimed that big car right at me and gunned it. I jumped out of the way, into the ditch—he was going so fast, driving so crazy, he sort of lost control and almost went in
the ditch himself; he slammed on his brakes and started backing up, and turning around! If this other car hadn’t come along just then, and picked me up, I don’t know what woulda happened.”
“Maybe,” Mantz said softly, “it was an accident and he was backing up to come see if you were all right.”
“I don’t believe in Santa Claus,” Robert said. “I haven’t for a long time.”
“That’s a good policy,” I told the boy. “Did you tell the police? Or your parents, or anyone?”
He shook his head and his blond mop bobbed. “No. Mr. Putnam’s rich and famous. I’m just a poor kid. Who’re they gonna believe? But at least he left me alone after that. Of course, it was just a few days before the flight, the second flight. Did you know she took film along, a lot of film?”
“Really?” I asked, giving Mantz a sideways glance.
“Did you help with that, Mr. Mantz?” the boy asked. “I mean, everybody knows you’re famous for aerial photography.”
“No.”
Robert gestured out the window. “Well, I saw some Navy people deliver some big boxes to the hangar. A big white seal was on all the boxes—it said ‘Naval Air Photography, USN,’ or something close to that. Mr. Putnam had those Navy guys load ’em on the plane. I think they put ’em way in the back…. That’s what they made her do, isn’t it? Take pictures of islands she flew over. Islands that belong to the Japanese, right?”
Mantz and I exchanged startled looks. How could this kid know that?
He was still talking, lost in memory: “She made me promise, you know. Before she left. She told me she was going on a very secret and dangerous mission and that if I heard anything had happened to her or Mr. Noonan, I was supposed to tell somebody…my mother…the police…or somebody…” He sighed. “Well I finally have.”
“It must feel good, Robert,” I said quietly, “to get this off your chest.”
He grinned, but it was a halfway, qualified grin. “It does, ’cause when I called the police, the man just laughed at me.”
“You called the police about what Amelia told you?”
His forehead tightened. “No…not exactly…it was about what I heard on the radio.”
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