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The sun slid slowly down the sky. The shadow moved. Abe finished his cigarette and stubbed it out.
Another minute passed. The shadow had almost completely shifted now. Abe got up, ready to leave, when a big black American car drew up outside the airfield gates. A dark-suited man climbed out, leaving one man at the wheel and a second one in the passenger seat behind. The man who got out was bulky, jowly, tough, but also friendly. Abe recognised him as an occasional passenger with the Marion bootleggers – and their obvious superior. The big man came over.
‘You Rockwell?’
Abe nodded.
‘Hi. Bob Mason.’ The man pointed at his chest, as though he might have meant someone else.
Abe shrugged.
‘You going back to Miami?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I need a ride.’
Abe shrugged again.
I’ll pay. How much d’you charge?’
‘Can’t. I’m full. Sorry.’
‘Full? With a packet of letters?’ Mason snorted. ‘Say fifty bucks? I never taken a plane ride before.’
‘I thought you went by boat. You’d be more comfortable.’
‘Fool sailors left the choke wide open. Engine flooded. In this heat, too.’
Abe shrugged. Since he’d swum out to the boat that lunch-time and opened the choke himself, the news wasn’t a big surprise. He’d also undone the nut holding the propeller blade, so if the Marion folk had got the engine started, it would have lost its blade within seconds.
‘Too bad.’
Just then the Cuban kid came at a slow trot with the mailbag. Abe took the bag and buckled it behind his seat in the rear cockpit. The American came closer, tilting his head up to speak.
‘Fifty bucks. We got a deal, right? Where do I get in? Here?’ He made as if to climb into the front cockpit.
‘Hey! Out of there. I’m full, I told you. I’m not some kind of railroad service.’
Mason stopped where he was, half-in, half-out of the cockpit. He held Abe’s gaze square on.
‘A hundred bucks.’
‘I’m full. That’s the last time I’m telling you.’ Abe checked his instruments, before jumping out of the plane to swing the propeller a couple of times. On a cold day, it could take a few turns to bring enough fuel into the piston heads. But in the heat, Abe could tell by the smell that the pistons were already primed. He walked back to the cockpit.
‘Bullshit, that’s bullshit.’
Abe shrugged. ‘My machine, my route.’
He reached inside his cockpit, flipped the ignition, and set the throttle low enough that it would keep the engine turning without sending Poll skittering out across the field. Then he went back to the propellers, ready to spin the blades into action.
Mason let Abe pass him, then said in the same low voice, ‘Fuck you.’ He picked a hundred dollars from his wallet and threw them into the rear cockpit. Then he grasped the edge of the front cockpit with both hands and jumped up, before swinging his legs down and into the plane. A grimy blue curtain would have blocked his view of anything lying forward from the seat. Expecting empty space, he moved too fast and barked out loud in pain as his feet struck something hard and solid. He swore loudly, then grabbed at the curtain to pull it aside.
And saw it. Six cases of booze, Gordon’s Gin still in the original boxes, strapped tight against Poll’s wood and fabric hull.
Mason stared – stared – then began to roar with laughter.
‘Full! Ha! I’ll say you are. That’s a sweet little business you got yourself there.’
‘Right. So as you see, I got no space for you. Now scram.’
Mason shook his head. His eyes smiled but there was an unruffled confidence in his manner which hinted at something a whole lot tougher. ‘I’ll squeeze up. I promise not to snitch a drink on the way.’
‘It’s not a question of squeezing, it’s a question of weight. The plane won’t take off overloaded.’
‘Then lose the booze.’
‘I’d sooner lose you.’
Mason paused. His manner was still very easy, very calm. He looked inside the curtain and counted the cases. ‘Six cases. And twenty, twenty-five bucks turn on each one. I was underpaying. One fifty.’ He counted out another fifty bucks and handed them down to Abe, who didn’t reach to take them.
‘Sorry, pal. I’m not in the passenger business.’
‘My men will get you unloaded.’
Mason glanced over at the car which had brought him and made a gesture. Two men stepped out, not exactly threatening, but not exactly meek either. Abe watched them come.
‘Where do you store it?’ said Mason.
‘If I take you this time, it’s the last time, OK? I got people who rely on me.’
‘I get it.’
‘And it’s two hundred.’
‘OK.’
Abe spun his reluctance out another second or two, before pointing at the little locked shed, where he kept the bits and pieces he needed to service Poll. ‘In there. And your guys had better break a sweat, unless you want to try a landing by moonlight.’
‘OK.’
Mason handed over a further fifty dollars, gave brief, precise instructions to his men, then chuckled to himself as the booze was unloaded. And it was true: ever since beginning the mail flight, Abe had been transporting six cases of alcohol a flight, every flight. He bought the stuff from a wholesaler in Havana. He sold the stuff to a poxy little Miami bootlegger, named De Freitas. The booze came in wooden cases, nailed shut and sealed with the manufacturer’s mark. To begin with De Freitas hadn’t believed the stuff was unadulterated, but as time had gone by, he’d changed his mind. De Freitas paid good prices. Abe’s costs, gasoline mostly, were low. Each and every trip he cleared around a hundred bucks’ profit.
Mason supervised his men, but didn’t help. He jigged up and down, enjoying himself.
‘You got Gordon’s on the box. I like that. Booze you can trust.’
Abe said nothing.
‘You ain’t worried about the good folks from customs?’
Abe jerked his thumb at Poll’s fuselage, with its stencilled mail logo. ‘Interference with the mails. It’s a federal crime. Besides, why would Uncle Sam want to stop his own airplanes?’
Mason stared at the logo an instant, transfixed by the sight. Then his face creased into a bellow of laughter. ‘Ha! You got it figured out there, pal! Good ol’ Uncle Sam, huh? Looks after his own, hey?’ He laughed some more and shared the joke with his two pals, who had got the last case unloaded. They laughed too, but were sweating too hard to laugh loudly.
‘OK, hurry it up,’ said Abe tetchily. ‘You want to go to the can, go now. Otherwise, get in. There’s a helmet and goggles behind the seat. Put ’em on. Keep ’em on. Sit still. Don’t touch anything. Miami in three hours. Got it?’
Mason nodded, still chuckling, and complied. Abe got Poll started, and bumped across the airfield until he was downwind of the sea breeze. Then he opened the throttle and let her roar into flight. Abe pushed her upwards at two hundred feet a minute, until he hit her ceiling, seven thousand feet or so. He kept her pushed up against the ceiling all the way to the Florida coast, raising the altitude as the fuel load lightened. Up at those heights, the air was icy, the cold multiplied by the hundred-mile-an-hour wind.
By the time Abe set Poll down in Miami, Mason was half blue with cold, his hands shaking, his face pinched and tight.
‘You have to fly her as high as that?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then why the hell did you?’
‘I run a business, but it’s not a passenger business. Next time take the boat.’
Mason left, heading off towards town, flexing his fingers to get them warm.
Abe watched him go. It was his first serious contact with the gangsters of Marion. But it wasn’t too late to quit. He was committed to nothing, he had promised less. Few people knew where he was, and no one knew what he was doing. Abe stood watching, ’til Mason had long passed out of sight. But the hesitation that had gripped him since the moment when a lanky storekeeper in Independence had asked him for help still gnawed inside. Should he fight or quit, stay or run?
He didn’t know. He still hadn’t made up his mind.
26 (#ulink_c9291cd8-fc44-5156-928a-873709251cee)
One Friday afternoon, Willard had had business with the bank’s archive on the twentieth floor. He’d deposited one file, collected another and was just about to leave, when he happened to see Leo McVeigh and Charlie Hughes through the glass-paned door. McVeigh had Hughes pushed up against the wall. Hughes was white, obviously terrified. McVeigh was standing too close, speaking intently, his big hands half-curled into fists.
Willard stared for a second, then banged the door open. McVeigh stepped back. Charlie Hughes put his hand to his face, checked his tie, began muttering nervous hellos. Willard already loathed McVeigh and was angry enough to welcome a confrontation.
‘Hello, McVeigh,’ he said icily, before turning to Hughes. ‘You all right, old chap? You’re looking rather blue.’
‘I’m fine, honestly, Will, please don’t worry.’
‘I do worry. You’re not looking at all well.’
‘Spot of tummy trouble. Maybe something I ate. I’ll be OK.’
‘Have you drunk some water?’
‘Water?’ Hughes repeated the word as though unfamiliar with the substance.
‘Water. You ought to drink something. Maybe go home and lie down.’
Hughes caught McVeigh with his eyes. He’s asking that bastard for permission, thought Willard angrily. McVeigh nodded slightly and stepped away.
‘Yes, good idea,’ said Hughes. ‘I’ll drink something. That should help.’
He made no move to come with Willard, as though still spellbound by McVeigh’s presence. The big one-time football player stood a pace or two back, kneading his hands and breathing silently through his mouth.
‘Good. I’ll walk you to the bathroom,’ said Willard firmly. He put a hand on Hughes’ shoulder and steered him away. In a deliberately loud voice – loud enough that McVeigh would be sure to hear it – he said, ‘You always feel free to come to me if you need help, anything at all.’
‘Yes, of course, thanks, Will-o.’
Feeling distaste for the man he’d just rescued, Willard turned and stared McVeigh straight in the face. For a second or two, their gazes locked. Hostility flickered in the air. Then Willard, pulling some of his Hollywood moves, curled his lip, turned on his heel, and stalked off.
Speaking about it later with Larry Ronson, Willard said, ‘I’d swear he was threatening Hughes. The poor chap looked white as a sheet.’
Ronson was sympathetic. ‘He’s an ugly sort, McVeigh. He’s never even attempted to join in with things. I mean, at least Hughes tries.’
‘Yes… Look, you probably think I’m being absurd, but you don’t think … Look, I don’t even know what I think, but have you ever wondered if there’s anything strange going on at times? You remember that business with the Orthodox Synagogues?’
‘Irish rabbis. That’d be something.’
‘McVeigh threatened me in the elevator. Told me not to ask questions.’
‘He did? He did that? Jesus! Have you told anyone else?’
‘No. I’m not quite sure who I would tell.’
‘There’s Grainger, I suppose. Or Barker.’
‘Yes, but what if they’re in on it too?’
‘In on what?’
‘I’ve no idea. None at all.’
‘Look, you know Powell a little, don’t you? Or at least your pa does?’
‘Father and Powell are Yacht Club buddies, that sort of thing. Trouble is, I don’t really know the man and, in any event, I wouldn’t know what to say.’
Ronson looked at his watch. It was four thirty-five. ‘I trust you’re intending to keep New York’s bootlegging community in proper employment tonight?’
‘Love to, but I’m bursting to get out of the city, to tell the truth. Take a weekend in the country.’
‘The delights of Martha’s Vineyard, eh? Lucky dog.’
Willard smiled. His father owned a thumping big estate facing south over the ocean. What was more, Willard’s four sisters were all going to be there this weekend, with girlfriends in tow. Willard had enjoyed happy hunting with his sisters’ friends in the past, and could think of nothing more welcome in the present. Willard stared at his desk and its cargo of detested manila files.
‘To hell with it,’ he said, feelingly. ‘To hell with everything. If Messrs Grainger, Barker, McVeigh or Powell want me, please tell them to go to hell too.’
Grabbing coat, hat and briefcase, Willard strode for the door.
27 (#ulink_b94c4130-8f42-5bb8-8b8b-16790ce57704)
The shop was dim compared with the street outside, but then again since the street outside was a blaze of white dust and air so hot it practically buckled, dim wasn’t a bad way to be.
