“The best thing about the Excalibur, Captain Rickenbacker—”
“Call me Eddie, for Christ’s sake.”
Sweat congealed the armpits of Cliff Morris’s Hathaway shirt as he tried to regain his poise before Eddie Rickenbacker’s hard impatient glare. Cliff’s stepfather, Buzz McCall, had the same eyes. Fighter pilot’s eyes. Killer’s eyes. Rickenbacker had been the top American ace in World War I, with twenty-six victories.
The year was 1948. Buchanan Aircraft’s Excalibur, the plane that was supposed to create an “empire in the sky” for U.S. airlines, flew in four colors on an easel Cliff had set up in Rickenbacker’s fifty-first-floor Rockefeller Center office. The whirling propellers on the four 3,500-horsepower Pratt and Whitney engines seemed ready to pull it off the page and send it roaring around the ceiling. Cliff was planning to flip through the booklet to pages displaying the luxurious interior, the sophisticated cockpit design, the huge baggage compartment.
“With a two-hundred-seat capacity, we estimate annual profits per plane of—”
“Two hundred seats!” The president of Eastern Airlines fell back in his leather cushioned swivel chair and growled with exasperation. “Buzz. The goddamn plane’s too big. We’re flying SkyRangers half empty. What the hell do we want with this whale?”
Buzz McCall was standing by the window, looking west across New Jersey toward California. His presence was an index of Buchanan’s growing desperation as they struggled to survive in the post—World War II aviation world. Buzz had resisted coming to New York to see Rickenbacker. With some justice, he claimed he had his hands full trying to deal with the chaos on Buchanan’s shrinking assembly lines.
Jim Redwood, the vice president for sales, tried to rescue the situation. He was Cliff’s height, six-foot-four, with a face full of dewlaps from too much Scotch whiskey. “Eddie—our figures show a steady upturn in the market. Come 1950 there’ll be an explosion. With twenty of these planes you could put National and Braniff out of business.”
“If you’re wrong they’ll put me out of business while I’m trying to service a five-million-dollar debt. Thanks but no thanks, guys.”
Buzz cursed steadily in their long ride down in the whooshing elevator. Out on the sidewalk, he jammed his finger into Cliff’s chest. “The next time you get an idea like this, come to me with it, not our famous fucking marketing genius Adrian Van Ness.”
Last month, Newsweek magazine had run a cover story on Adrian, hailing him as a model of the new postwar executive, a man who combined an uncanny instinct for the marketplace with a profound grasp of the latest technology. Ignoring the help he had gotten from Hitler and Tojo, the magazine told its readers how Adrian had brought Buchanan from bankruptcy to the biggest plane maker in the nation. Ironically, the journalists puffed him just as he was falling on his face. Betting on a steep rise in the flying public, Adrian had built the Excalibur, the biggest airliner in the world—and started selling it a month after the postwar recession sent passenger numbers plummeting.
Adrian was the toast of the aircraft business, while Buzz grappled with the thousand and one problems of Buchanan’s transition from war to peacetime production. From a hundred thousand workers churning out five hundred planes a month, Buchanan had shrunk to eight thousand workers making—if they were lucky—two hundred planes a year. Adrian had put Buzz in charge of the firing—which made him the most hated man in the company.
“I’m sorry, Buzz,” Jim Redwood said as they strode through the noonday crowds toward Fifth Avenue. “I thought it was worth a try. It was my idea as much as Cliff’s.”
“That makes you a pair of assholes,” Buzz said. “Dragging me across the fucking continent to kiss Captain Eddie’s ass. If my war had lasted another month I’d have passed him in the numbers game and I’d be up there running that airline and Eddie’d be a garage mechanic in Milwaukee.”
“I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do with this plane,” Redwood said. “Rick was pretty much our last hope.”
Buzz whirled on Redwood. He knew they had sold a grand total of ten Excaliburs, all to TWA because the airline’s eccentric owner, millionaire Howard Hughes, liked big planes. But Buzz could never tolerate defeatism. “Listen.
We’re gonna sell that plane somewhere. Maybe the army if the country wakes up to what the Russians are tryin’ to pull—”
He pointed to a Daily News headline: BERLIN STILL FREE. President Truman had responded to Russian attempts to drive the Americans, British, and French out of Berlin with a massive airlift.
“If they had fifty Excaliburs redesigned for cargo, they could keep Berlin supplied till doomsday. Instead they got half-asleep pilots makin’ two flights a day in C-Forty-sevens. It’s just like the last war. The goddamn government makes do with yesterday’s planes and the whole aircraft business stands still.”
Back at the Waldorf, the desk clerk handed Cliff a telegram. He ripped it open and read: SARAH HAD A GIRL AT 6:30 A.M. TAMA. “Good Christ,” he said, showing the message to Buzz. Sarah was not supposed to deliver for six weeks.
“Another girl?” Buzz said. “When you gonna stop shootin’ blanks?”
“Hey. Adrian’s got a girl. He’s nuts about her,” Jim Redwood said.
“Adrian’s a fucking—aristocrat,” Buzz said, avoiding Cliff’s eyes.
The averted eyes, the momentary hesitation in his voice, convinced Cliff again that Buzz regretted losing Tama to Adrian. It had nothing to do with affection. He had been unfaithful to Tama with a hundred other women over the past ten years. It was the loss of face, of power, that the switch implied. The rearrangement was part of the new game the war had created. Buzz was no longer the only hero around, the tough guy who made Cliff and even Adrian twitch when he looked at them. The war, a new generation of pilots, had put things in perspective. Buzz was the ace no one remembered, the guy who came in second to Rickenbacker in France flying funny-looking planes that barely went a hundred miles an hour.
He could handle Buzz now, Cliff told himself. He had told that to Tama with not a little anger when she announced her affair with Adrian and said he had promised to protect Cliff from Buzz. A man with forty-nine missions over Germany did not need protection.
Except when he fell on his face. When an idea went sour, the way things had just gone with Rickenbacker. Anxiety swelled in Cliff’s belly. Buzz would not let him forget that fiasco for months. Cliff silently cursed Adrian Van Ness and his oversized plane. He forced a smile and socked Buzz on the shoulder. “Hey listen, Grandpa. At least I can still get it up,” he said.
In the room Cliff telephoned the plant and heard the good-bad news from Tama. “Sarah’s okay. The baby only weighs four pounds. They’ve got her in an incubator. I’ve never seen anything so tiny. How did the meeting go?”
“Lousy. He practically threw us out.”
“The son of a bitch. I’ll tell Adrian.”
For a moment Cliff felt five years old. When was Tama going to stop running his life? He slammed down the phone and called the hospital. After the usual delays, a weary Sarah came on the line. “Honey, I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Cliff said. “How do you feel?”
“Tired. How did things go at the big meeting?”
“Lousy.”
“Oh, Cliff, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. How’s the kid? Tama says she’s so small you can hardly see her.”
“She’ll be all right. They do wonders with preemies these days.”
“What’ll we name her?”
Cliff had wanted a boy so badly, they had not even discussed girls’ names.
“I like Margaret.”
She had named their first girl Elizabeth. “What are you trying to do, turn us into a royal family?” Cliff said.
“I just like the names. Tell me about the meeting.”
“There’s nothing to tell. He hated the plane. It’s an oversized lemon. A grapefruit.”
Anxiety crawled in Cliff’s chest. How many cross-examinations from the goddamn women in his life did he have to swallow? “I think you should get out of sales. This plane is making you look like—what’s the word?—a loser,” Sarah said.
“Listen. You have the babies. I’ll worry about my goddamn career.”
He slammed down the phone and stood there cursing. Why the hell had he married the daughter of an aircraft executive?
Buzz charged in, suitcase in hand. “Come on. I got us on the noon balloon out of Newark. An Excalibur.”
“I thought we were going to stay until tomorrow. I’ve got a date with Dick Stone, my navigator on the Rainbow Express.”
“Call him and cancel it. Let’s go. We’ve only got an hour. I want you and Redwood there when I talk to Van Ness. We’ve got to convince him this plane is hopeless and figure out another move fast.”
Cliff called Dick Stone and blamed the cancellation on the unexpected birth. Dick was cheerful about it. “What’s the kid’s name? I want to send a present. I can get it wholesale.”
“The baby-wear business is good?”
“The money is great, the business is shitty. How’s the plane business?”
“The exact opposite,” Cliff said.
“I may call you one of these days.”
“I told you, I’ll kick the door open—if it’s still there to kick.”
Forty-five minutes later, Cliff and Buzz and Jim Redwood stood in the art-deco departure lounge of Newark Airport. Around them were about a hundred fellow businessmen in broad-brimmed felt or Panama hats, many wearing the new nylon cord summer suits, with white shirts and dark ties. Among the men were a dozen or so women wearing hats of assorted spiral shapes, blouses with large balloon sleeves and skirts that covered their knees, the “new look” of the previous year. Cliff preferred the tight skirts of the war years.
“I got a weird letter in the mail yesterday,” Buzz said, trying to pass the time. “Written in words clipped from a newspaper. It said something about a
dame named Califia who’s gonna cut my throat. There’s probably a lot of dames’d like to do that—but I can’t place this one.”
“Maybe it’s one of Tama’s movie names,” Jim Redwood said. Everyone knew about Tama’s vendetta against Buzz.
“Trans World Airlines Flight six-oh-seven to Los Angeles departing from Gate one-sixteen,” gargled the invisible announcer.
The Excalibur sat on the runway looking twice as big as Cliff remembered it. He found himself eyeing the plane, wondering if someone had ground-tested the engines, checked the fuel lines, the electrical systems. In his seat, he listened tensely as the pilot turned over the motors, waiting for the throaty roar that announced the right fuel mixture.
Nothing to worry about, he told himself. Nothing to worry about. TWA was a first-class airline with good pilots. Down the runway they thundered, the huge engines sending vibrations of power through the fuselage that surpassed anything Cliff had ever felt aboard a B-17. He found himself bracing his legs against the footrest as if he expected a crash. Nothing to worry about.
Clunk the wheels retracted. The Excalibur dipped and wobbled slightly as they hit some turbulence. Pinpoints of sweat sprang out all over Cliff’s body. It all came back every time he flew, the way they had become pariahs. The Rainbow Express’s copilot had told a friend about the double-cross they had pulled over Schweinfurt and the story spread through the 103rd Bombardment Group. Whenever the 103rd flew the Purple Heart corner, the Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts seemed to attack with special fury. The rest of the group started blaming their losses on the Rainbow Express. The thing hung over them like a gigantic hoodoo, tormenting everyone in the crew.
Inevitably, the story got to their commanding officer, Colonel Atwood, who hauled them into his office and raved about court-martials and perpetual disgrace. “We’ll volunteer for another twenty-five,” Dick Stone had said. Before Cliff could say or do anything, all the others volunteered. That had left Cliff no choice. He had to join them for another nine months of gambling with death over Germany.
Cliff took a deep breath. Now was the time to finish it. They had evened the score. They had flown another twenty-three missions. On the twenty-fourth, the Rainbow Express had taken a direct hit over Berlin. Didn’t that even the score? Getting blown out of a plane clutching your parachute, somehow strapping it on as you fell toward the burning city beneath you? Yes, Cliff told himself. It evened the score.
“Jesus Christ, you’re still jumpy in a plane, ain’t you,” Buzz said.
“I’m just jumpy for a drink,” Cliff said.
Suddenly Cliff wanted to tell Buzz what had happened over Schweinfurt. Instead of the old antagonism, the submerged quarrel for Tama’s love, they finally had something to share as men. Buzz had risked death in the air on the western front. Maybe he would tell him what happened over Schweinfurt was all right.
For a moment the words crowded into Cliff’s throat. Across the aisle Jim
Redwood, eager for his first Scotch of the day, buzzed for the stewardess. “What’ll it be, guys?” he said.
Jim would never understand what he wanted to tell Buzz. The sales chief was always introducing Cliff as his “assistant war hero,” reciting his number of missions, his miraculous survival over Berlin. Cliff let the moment pass.
The Excalibur climbed to 27,000 feet and the captain told them their route to Los Angeles. The stewardesses brought them their drinks. A tall sinewy redhead who wore her blue garrison cap at a cocky angle got their attention. “There’s a live one,” Cliff said. Her partner, a short chipper brunette, was not bad either.
On they flew into deepening dusk. The Excalibur’s fuel tanks were big enough to skip landing at Chicago, a standard requirement for other cross-country flights. The stewardesses served dinner. Cliff asked the redhead if she lived in Los Angeles.
“Mayn-hattun Beach,” she said, with an accent that had to be Tennessee or Kentucky.
“We work for Buchanan Aircraft in Santa Monica.”
“As a test pilot?” she asked.
“No. In sales.”
“If you see someone named Billy McCall tell him Cassie Trainor says hello.”
His stepbrother’s name filled Cliff’s throat with bile. But years of practice enabled him to conceal it. “Say hello to his father, Buzz,” he said.
Cassie eyed Buzz skeptically. “You don’t look like him.”
“He took after his mother,” Buzz said.
“Billy must be quite a pilot. He likes to test everythin’ to the limit of its structural capacity,” Cassie said.
“I know all about it. I’m the same way,” Cliff said.
“It runs in the family,” Buzz said.
Billy had just become a major in the newly created U.S. Air Force. Recently Buzz had brought him to California to help them test an experimental jet Frank Buchanan was developing at Muroc Air Base in the Mojave Desert.
“There’s some sort of club you belong to?”
“The Honeycomb Club. Maybe you’d like to work there. The hours and the pay are a lot better than this job,” Buzz said.
Cassie’s penciled eyebrows rose. “So I’ve heard.”
Cliff could almost feel the heat. Cassie had cut loose. She was on her own in California, playing the big-girl game. A lot of stewardesses went this route. There was no limit to what they would try if you got them early. Timing was important. It did not take long for a woman to get her heart broken and turn morose, sullen, bitchy.
Cliff considered himself a student of women. Even a collector, a connoisseur. Cassie’s down-home drawl added a touch of fire, a suggestion of sultry southern blood. She was ready to do things Cliff could never suggest to Lady Sarah, his private name for his English wife.
“You ready to go for some of that tonight?” Buzz asked Cliff, as the stewardesses began serving after-dinner drinks.
He had been planning to get Cassie Trainor’s phone number for future reference and go to the hospital to see Sarah and the baby. But Buzz’s offer was not something Cliff could afford to turn down. It implied Buzz was ready to forget about dragging him to see Captain Eddie—if Cliff forgot about how crudely his old pal rejected him. It even suggested a sort of truce between them, an admission that Cliff was a man now, ready to play games with women Buzz’s way. “Sure,” Cliff said.
By the time they landed in Los Angeles, twelve hours and ten minutes after leaving Newark, Cliff and Buzz had dates with Cassie and the chipper brunette, whose name was Barbara. Cassie offered to find a date for Jim Redwood but he did not feel in a celebrating mood and went home.
“What the hell’s the matter with Redwood?” Cliff said, as they waited in the terminal for Cassie and Barbara to change out of their uniforms. “Sometimes I think he’s queer. You can’t get him interested half the time.”
“A dame broke his heart years ago,” Buzz said. “It happened to me with Billy’s mother. I swore I’d never let it happen again.”
On that point, he and Buzz were in agreement. Exactly where that left Sarah was something Cliff did not think about very often. Sarah was part of the war, something he had brought home, along with the forty-nine missions and the memory of Schweinfurt.
With Buzz in charge of the party, they headed for the Trocadero, a place Cassie and Barbara considered as prehistoric as the Great Pyramid. They ate the terrible food and drank a lot of wine and ogled the aging screen stars. Buzz tried to impress Barbara by claiming he had dated some of them in his stunt-flying days. On the way out he squeezed Gloria Swanson’s arm and gave her a big hello. To Cliff’s surprise, she smiled and said: “Hi, Buzz.”
At ninety miles an hour they hurtled up the coast highway to Buzz’s house in Pacific Palisades. There they persuaded Cassie and Barbara to audition for the Honeycomb Club. Barbara had good breasts and a dark wild pussy but she was shy about taking off her clothes. Cassie had no inhibitions about that or anything else. She was an instant winner. Sex popped out of every pore of her long lithe body.
Barbara and Buzz went for a swim in the pool and Cassie continued her audition with Cliff in Buzz’s king-sized bed. She was just drunk enough to let him do anything and enjoy it. It was beautiful fucking, exactly the way Cliff liked it. Almost impersonal, so you could concentrate on the performance, the electricity in every touch, every thrust. Yet not completely impersonal, not like whorehouse sex. Pleasure, not money was the payoff. Cliff was proud of his ability to please a woman.
Power was almost as important. With each stroke, each moan of desire, their failure to sell the Excalibur dwindled, the world outside the walls of the bedroom was somehow less threatening, less relentless. Clifford Morris was in absolute control here, a man defying luck, eluding memory and rules, a kind of outlaw.
Finally, there was no more juice in the joystick. They lay side by side laughing, fondling. “Am I as good as Billy?” Cliff said.
“You’re better,” Cassie said. “You’re more fun. You didn’t scare me.”
“How did he scare you?”
“Never mind.”
Billy knew zilch about how to acquire a woman. That was what Cliff liked to do. Not just screw them and walk away à la Buzz. He liked to come back for seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths, to arouse flutters of love, to toy with the possibility of loving them in return.
“Billy’s still out at Muroc testing one of our planes. Why don’t you call him right now and tell him I’m better?”
“Why not?” Cassie said.
Cliff found Billy’s number in Buzz’s address book. Cassie dialed him and said: “Hey, Billy. You probably don’t remember me. I’m just some stewardess you fucked one night in Manhattan Beach. I’m here with Cliff Morris and I want to tell you—”
Strange things began happening in Cassie’s body. She shook as if she was having convulsions.
“I want to tell you—”
The tremors became more violent. Cliff grabbed her, afraid she was going to fly off the bed.
“I want to tell you—”
Cassie flung the phone against the wall and curled into a ball. She bit the back of her hand and sobbed and sobbed. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Cliff said.
Cassie rolled over on her back and smiled at him. “Nothin’,” she said. “Get me a drink and we’ll go for the record.”
“Some other night,” Cliff said, putting his hand on her damp pussy in a comforting—and acquiring—way.