It trundled on, accelerating slowly, leaving behind the statues waving their hats, watching to see if this airplane, like Fonck's, would fold up into a flash of flame and fire.
Rhoades yelled, "Keep it on the ground, Slim—you've got another six hundred yards!" His voice was lost in the swelling roar of the Wright engine.
As if in a negative response, Lindbergh lifted the Spirit off the grass. It lumbered along, then touched down again, but faster, at last more a creature of the air than the ground. It bounced once again and then pulled slowly away like adhesive tape from an old dressing, struggling, swimming as much as flying in the swirling mists. It seemed to falter, to sink as it approached the telephone wires at the end of the field, then cleared them as a cheer broke out.
Dusty cheered too, approving the crisper response that speed now gave to Lindbergh's touch on the controls. The Spirit disappeared, heading east by northeast.
He checked his watch—eight o'clock. He did some fast figuring, comparing the Bellanca's speed and fuel load with that of the Spirit. If Hafner showed up by eleven o'clock, they could still get off and maybe beat Lindbergh across. He couldn't average more than 100 mph. They could move up the Miss Charlottes cruise speed to 110 or 115, even if it burned more fuel. They'd get substantially the same winds as Lindbergh did. And there was always the chance that he would make a navigational error, costing himself some time. It wasn't likely, but anything was possible, if only the doctors would let Bruno out of the hospital.
At eleven, Rhoades gave up. He and the guards had long since eaten the sandwiches and drunk the coffee. They rolled the Bel-lanca back into the hangar, anger heating Rhoades like high current through a small cable. Here was one of the best goddam airplanes in the world, full of fuel, ready to go, and it was sitting on the ground because Bandfield had slugged Hafner. They'd just missed the opportunity of the century. He wished Lindbergh well, but he would have given his soul to beat him across. Maybe he wouldn't make . . . He drove the thought from his mind.
He joined the others in the operations shack to wait for reports on Lindbergh. There was no news yet, of course, but it was comforting just to be in the company of others who had been caught napping. It was midafternoon when Hafner rolled up in his Marmon, head bandaged, obviously furious, his dachshund, Nellie, hanging out the window, barking.
"Dusty, I would have been here earlier, but the bastards had me sedated. I'm not really awake yet. What's happening?"
Rhoades bit his lip. He wanted to yell at Hafner, but caught himself. "Looks like we missed it, Bruno. Too bad."
*
Passaic, New Jersey/May 20, 1927
The room looked as if it had been ordered from a Sears catalogue: heavy yellow desks, green-shaded lamps, and paintings on the wall showing Indians in various states of melancholy. The leitmotiv was drinking. Charlotte Hafner glanced at the debris: there was a miscellany of liquor bottles and empty, half-full, and full glasses everywhere, with overflowing ashtrays in between. Some of the glasses neatly combined both functions, cigars floating in warm, stale bourbon and water like fetuses in a biology lab. An assortment of tools—wrenches, pulleys, and jacks—completed the decor.
She was boiling with frustration. Two days ago she had been trembling with desire, drenched in the hot fever of anticipation of thoroughly satisfying sex. The rendezvous had gone suddenly and irrevocably sour when her lover showed up with a girlfriend. Charlotte felt that she was liberal, but she wasn't yet ready to go to bed with her boyfriend and his girlfriend. She had had no relief since then.
Bruno Hafner sat brooding, a two-inch-wide gauze-and-adhesive bandage on his forehead. Charlotte's frustration mixed with a natural sympathy for him. The flight had meant so much to him. Sighing morosely, he picked up a glass and wiped it with his handkerchief. He passed it in front a desk lamp as if to count the remaining germs, then filled it halfway with scotch.
She took the glass from him and carried it to the sink. She washed two glasses, filled them one-quarter of the way with water, and brought them back. He filled the glasses with scotch.
"Ach, Charlotte, what really bothers me is that we had the better airplane! If that little bastard Bandfield had just not shown up!" He downed half his drink in a gulp.
"Don't worry about it, Bruno. There'll be other flights. No one has flown the Pacific, and there are lots of records to set."
He acted as if he hadn't heard her.
"One thing sure I've learned. Lindbergh was smart to go alone. The press loved it. From the day he arrived, he got twice as much coverage as the rest of us put together. I'll never make a record attempt with a copilot again."
She tried to change the subject.
"Ready for some good news?"
He nodded, plainly in need of some.
"Patty writes that she's coming home." His expression didn't change.
"It gets better. She wants to fly to Europe with you."
Hafner shook his head. "This is good news?"
"And she's in love. With a French air force pilot, an ace."
Hafner put his head down on the desk. "Mein Gott, Charlotte, don't cheer me up anymore, I can't take it."
She breathed easier; he was laughing and he could have been shouting mad. Compared to missing the flight across the Atlantic, Patty's news was small potatoes. "Would you fly with her?"
"Never, not with her, not with anyone. A French ace, eh? Just like her dad. Well, she could do worse."
Relieved, Charlotte wanted to end the discussion on Patty before he thought about it. Patty's marriage would complicate their estate problems, already difficult. She rushed on. "This place looks like a Mexican whorehouse, Bruno. Why don't you let me fix it up for
"Don't change a thing." Bruno knew the fusty office looked just as it should for his customers, desperadoes from all over the world who would have tried to chisel his prices down if they thought he was living too well. It was better to have it rough and ready, with raw scotch to pour into glasses after the handshakes. Very little paperwork was involved in most of his business. "When we build our aircraft factory, we'll put in a decent office. We'll be dealing with a different sort of customer then."
As Charlotte went back to put more water in her glass, Hafner glanced out the window with pride and pleasure at the huge yard that generated the bulk of his fortune. After the motion pictures and the barnstorming, he'd come to New Jersey in 1923, without any money, but with introductions to two of the largest scrap dealers in the east, Moe Bischoff and Salvatore Maniglia.
These weren't ordinary introductions, nice little letters beginning with "To Whom It May Concern." Instead they were brief, straightforward instructions from Polack Joe Lutz, a Chicago mobster. Lutz had been visiting the Coast and had hired Hafner to fly a few special missions to Mexico for him. Hafner had handled an awkward situation with the Mexican police very well, and Lutz had taken a fancy to him.
People paid attention to Polack Joe. Neither Bischoff nor Maniglia would have bothered to speak to him without the letter; with it they had let him enter their private preserves, and had grudgingly shown him the ropes. By 1925, Bruno had had a modest share of the surplus arms and mob supply racket. Then two things had happened. He had finally agreed to use Charlotte's money to expand his business, and Moe and Salvatore had erased each other in a shootout on the docks, leaving the field clear for him.
Bruno swirled the scotch in his glass, admiring as always the symmetry of the rows of artillery shells, stacked in neat little cones like the cannonballs in a Mathew Brady photograph, each stack covered with a doily of a tarpaulin. There were shells to fit any one of the acres of guns that surrounded them. Hafner stocked everything from Minenwerfer mortars to French 75s, and had heavier ordnance, up to 155mm, available. The yard was surrounded on four sides by perfectly aligned blocks of narrow two-story rough-pine World War emergency buildings. They were filled with small arms, rifles, bayonets, ponchos, hand grenades, mess kits, flame throwers, gas dispensers, gas masks, prophylactics, Sam Brown
e belts, anything needed to start or finish a war. In a garage set off to one side he was reconditioning some tanks, Renaults for Chile, and two Christies for AMTORG, the Soviet trading company. In another building were thirty Sopwith Snipe fighters, picked up for a song from the British, and for which he had an offer from Siam. He had respect for the Snipe—one had shot him down in late October 1918.
Lots of money was to be made selling arms, and the first thing he had learned was that a little grease on the palm was more important than any on the gun barrel. Hardly a war went on anywhere, from Africa to Central America to the Far East, that hadn't helped and been helped by Hafner Enterprises.
The irony was that as his fortunes went up, so did those of Germany. The inflation that had wiped out his family's fortune seemed contained, and he had heard that industry was picking up. It had long been his dream to go back, a wealthy man, and restore his family properties. In a few years, if things continued to go well, it just might be possible.
Still he knew, as Charlotte did, that it was time to move out of the surplus-arms business, much as he had enjoyed its rough-and-tumble drama. The spillover into dealings with the gangs added spice to the venture, for they had high regard for the quality of his submachine guns and shotguns. But lately, the ordinary customers had become too demanding, and some ordinary business hazards—late deliveries, mismatched ammunition and weapons—had brought threats of bodily harm.
"Damn," Charlotte yelled.
"What's the matter?"
She walked across the room, sucking her finger.
"I stuck myself with the ice pick."
She brought some pieces of ice for his glass. He glanced at her appreciatively. She was mothering him, trying to ease his disappointment.
She dropped the ice into his glass as if she were a bombardier, splashing the scotch, and asked, "Are you feeling better? There's a party at the country club tonight. Do you want to go?"
"I'm feeling better. We'll see about the party." His arm slid a wave of heat around her as he pointed down into the yard, where Murray was working on his car, a two-tone blue Rickenbacker speedster. "Did you ever notice his hands?"
"How could I help it? He follows me around like a cocker spaniel."
Hafner said, "Murray's got hands like a surgeon. I've seen him fix a little lady's watch, no bigger than a dime. He sticks that little glass in his eye and his fingers fly."
"Well, he's getting on my nerves. Every time I look around, he's staring at me."
He turned her to him, pressed his body against her. "He's bothering you, eh? Well, you're bothering me." He took her hand, kissed the little wound from the ice pick, slid her finger into his mouth, and sucked on it.
The foreplay was as choreographed as her old dance routines, and the results were as predictable. Her attention slammed tight as a camera's shutter to concentrate on his scent, his bulky presence, and he seemed to spread around her, surrounding her with his will and his need. He slipped his right hand inside her blouse, cupping her breast, then squeezing it, gently at first, then harder.
The effect was immediate, the same as it had been those long years ago when they had first met, when she was just intrigued with finding yet another flyer, even a German one. As Hafner's hand closed tighter, she felt the wonderful mindless drift to sensual surrender; she shuddered and pressed her pelvis to him, raising her face to be kissed. The familiar hot electric current surged through her, a great molten gush that rushed like a torrent from her nipples to the glowing volcano between her legs, a hard yearning that had to be fulfilled.
They kissed and he eased her backward, ruffling her dress up, pulling her underclothes down. She fumbled with his pants, ripping the belt open and tugging at the buttons, and they stumbled eagerly to the couch, undressed only enough to come together in a blinding surge of passion.
Climaxing almost instantly, they lay together gasping, then laughing.
"Are you all right? Is your head bothering you?"
"No, it's not my head that's bothering me."
They undressed slowly and matter-of-factly; he never took his eyes off her as she carefully folded her clothes and laid them on the desk, appreciating how little her body had changed since they had met. He had taken a particular pleasure in seducing the widow of a French ace; now he realized that she had seduced him as she had so many others.
He did not mind. He was not a constant lover, and saw no reason why she should be. Life was too short to worry about such things. In other matters—business, raising her child—she was superb.
He disrobed as he watched her, carelessly tossing his clothes to the floor; the mess would ordinarily have bothered her, but she liked it as part of the loving ritual. He extended his hands to her, and they lay together on their sides on the couch. She slipped her hand down between them to caress him.
"Are you up to a little more?" she whispered.
"Not yet—but help me along."
She rolled off the couch and knelt beside him, earnestly applying herself and bringing him quickly erect. Then she said, "You take it easy, just lie on your back—I'll do the work."
She rose over him, awkwardly clinging to the top of the couch until she caught her balance, then rocking back and forth on the springs until she mounted him. She positioned herself in a crouch, her feet flat on the leather cushions of the couch, moving with a steady beat, her eyes closed, head tossing from side to side. He reached up and held her jiggling breasts in his hands, and she responded, as she always did, by reaching back to cup his scrotum in her hand.
Hafner watched her. She was good, but she needed his sex more than he needed hers. Charlotte moved steadily faster, breathing harder, chest heaving. He knew that he would not have another orgasm, but enjoyed watching her, lost in that deep absorbing pursuit of endless sex that kept them together. In many ways, he enjoyed the comparatively placid second lovemaking better than the first. Always on their first time he was in a blinding fury, wanting to crawl up inside her, wishing his penis had a mouth on it, the better to ravage her, trying to grind himself into a melting, melding union with her. The second time he could enjoy her more fully; it was afterplay that was better than the foreplay, an afterplay that could lead to yet another round.
With a wild convulsive heave, muttering little cries, she climaxed, collapsing in a heap on his chest.
"They call that 'riding to St. Ives.' Did you like it?"
He wondered who "they" were. "I like it as long as it took you where you needed to go."
She rested for a while with her head on his shoulder, as they joked back and forth. "What would Elsie say if she came in?"
Elsie was Bruno's young secretary, no more than eighteen. She was sure he was sleeping with her.
"Ach, she'd be jealous, seeing me with such a fine-figured woman. She's just a stick, that Elsie."
A stick, but a young stick. It didn't matter. There was plenty for them both. She fixed him another drink, poured a short one for herself, then pulled out the gray journals that detailed the operations for the last month.
"As long as we're here, we might as well go over the books."
Hafner smiled at her, appreciating the quick transition from heated, almost violent sex to cool and calculating business. She sat naked at the table, pencil in hand, already absorbed in the figures. They were a strange combination; no one else would understand them. He didn't understand them himself, but he knew that they were a good mix. At least for the time being. He had found that certain people were necessary at certain times—his parents, early on, then his squadron mates, Goering and Loerzer during the war, Nungesser after, now Charlotte. Each person in his or her own time.
*
Manhattan/May 21, 1927
No one would believe it. He didn't believe it himself. While Slim Lindbergh was flying across the ocean, battling weather and fatigue on his way to fame and fortune, he'd spent two days and nights in a six-dollar room at the Hotel Montclair with Millie. He knew she was protecting him, first from his reaction to
the fire, then to the depressing news of Lindbergh's departure. Millie had insisted on being with him, afraid that he'd do something rash. She had called Frances Winter to explain that she would be gone for a while, somehow disarming her objections by telling her the exact truth, that she would be with Bandy. What was unbelievable was that they had stumbled through his depression, her consolation, and their passion—and still hadn't made love.
But they had come so very close. At first Millie had been unrealistic, arranging the blankets in an S shape that let them hold each other tightly, yet be insulated from flesh-to-flesh contact. "They used to call it bundling in the colonial days. It was the only way people could court and keep warm."
"It's keeping me warm, all right, Millie. I'm hot as a pistol. I don't think I can take much of this."
"Just you wait and see. Love doesn't have to be all sex—we can be in love and just be tender."
There was no blanket between their faces, and the deep kisses soon overtook the tenderness. He hooked his finger around the blanket and edged it down. She closed her eyes and moved away, to give him room. Each time he moved the blanket an inch he would lean down and kiss the newly exposed flesh.
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