The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) Page 21

  Linda was a lot less excited. “Owned the bus company too, didn’t he? Good old Autobuses Modernos? He must be at least as pissed off as the sugar barons at being dispossessed by Castro. He really lost his ass down there.”

  “Just a chunk of one cheek, to hear Clare tell it. Among other things, he owns both of the major bus companies here, Miami Transit and Miami Beach Railway.”

  “So,” Pete said, “all this highfalutin cocktailing and boating stems directly from your schlepping your mom’s bust of her up to the Waldorf.”

  “Yep. Somehow we just seemed to hit it off right away. She was interested in my going in the Navy, and Mom just had to tell her that I was Phi Beta Kappa. Seems as though that was all the authentication I needed.”

  “Jack. It’s us. Come clean. You’re screwing that old lady, aren’t you?” Linda, grinning, asked him.

  Jack returned the grin. “She’s only 56. Amazing, isn’t it? Rick said I’d be hopping in bed with Eleanor Roosevelt next.” Looking at Pete, he said, “I told him we should just give it up and move in with the Bishop twins. God knows that joint would hold us.”

  Pete rolled his eyes. “You’d better hang around for a few days after she gets out of here, mister. We’re grilling your ass on the situation after you’ve been dosed up with truth serum.” Raising his Daiquiri, he wiggled it aggressively.

  “That was my plan, boss man. Hell, I might even scare up a lady or two less than twice my age.”

  “That’s a good start,” laughed Linda, “but 23 and 23 are only 46.” Jack didn’t miss the look in her eye when she said it.

  Jack walked into Miami International’s new 20th St terminal a few minutes ahead of Clare’s flight’s ETA. Checking Pan Am’s arrival board, he headed toward Concourse Three to meet her. His detour at a nearby newsstand took more time than he’d realized; as he stepped out the door he saw her, quicktiming up the concourse with a skycap in tow. Finessing the standard lovers’ collision/hug, she held one hand straight out to him at arm’s length. The arm was encased in the sleeve of what must have been a silk replica of the Fabioni flight suit that she wore to board the Enterprise in Naples. “Hello, darling,” she said, slowing her pace only slightly, eyes scanning ahead for an indication of the baggage claim area. “I asked this dear man to come with me to baggage claim, just in case you were held up.” Turning to the skycap, she said, “Thanks so much for your trouble, but as you can see I have an able-bodied man to handle my one little suitcase. Could you give the man something for his trouble, Jack? I’ll have to dig in my purse...”

  Jack smiled and handed the skycap two dollars, eliciting a wide grin and a tip of the cap. She made no move to touch him, and did nothing to encourage his touching her as they made their way to baggage claim. Jack realized that she feared, no, expected, to be recognized in any public place that she appeared. “How was the flight?” Jack asked her.

  “Oh, routine. Except for getting to Idlewild. Pan Am chartered a chopper for me; that’s a first. Picked me up at Danbury Airport, and half an hour later Pan Am was checking me in. That could be habit-forming; made a big difference in my reveille time this morning.”

  “Now that is first-class service,” Jack replied as they reached baggage claim.

  “You bet. Loud, though. Here’s the claim check.”

  They didn’t talk much on the drive to Coconut Grove as the air whistled through the car’s open windows, Briggs Cunningham having obviously deemed air conditioning to be a blot on the C3’s racing heritage. She seemed satisfied to enjoy being driven through the rapidly building Miami heat in Jack’s customary rapid fashion. “Nobody’s here,” Jack told her as they pulled into the driveway. “Pete and Linda are on a Bimini run. Said they’d be back around 3, 4 o’clock this afternoon.”

  “How nice,” she observed. “Gives us time to clean up a bit. I’d love a shower; wouldn’t you?”

  They made love with a hint of savagery, each having acquired from their two previous encounters some appreciation of the other’s desires. He joined her when she came with a series of short shallow breaths ending in an attenuated scream. Jack pulled her close, a comforting hand pressing lightly at the base of her spine. He kissed her, tasting the remnant of his semen, wondering for a fleeting moment what her own juices tasted like to her.

  Resting, they took mutual pleasure in, among other things, the fact that neither of them smoked. The air conditioning was sufficiently cool to chill bodies coated with perspiration, and he pulled the sheet up over them, prompting a delighted sigh from Clare. “Ooo, that’s good. Warming up in Miami’s heat.”

  He stopped teasing her nipple with his lips, looking sideways to grin at her. “You know what they say; “It ain’t the heat...”

  “Umhmm. It’s the humidity. Another cliché proves itself in the arena of truth. We have a place in Phoenix, and I’ve never felt as hot there as I did walking out to the car today.”

  “Phoenix. One of the many places that I’ve yet to see. So you like it out there.”

  “Yes, I do. You must come out; I’m there alone a great deal of the time, while Harry’s in New York running Time Inc. and fucking Jean Campbell.”

  Jack was slow in responding, he hoped this “other woman” thing wouldn’t get her out of the mood. Interested in spite of that possibility, he said, “Jean Campbell. Who’s she?”

  “ Just a little Brit doxy with some low-level job at Life. Oh, she’s also Lord Beaverbrook’s granddaughter.”

  “Jesus, Harry’s British alter ego? Between them, they could probably cancel the national debt. How’d all this come about?”

  “In about the same way as it did with me. Met her at a party; I wasn’t there, but I imagine that he played it true to form, stumbling in his preoccupied way through an introduction, sending flowers, drooling. The usual.”

  “And this is a guy with a zillion dollars. Sheesh.”

  “Not much of a correlation there, huh? He’s pretty thoroughly fucked up, thanks to being raised in China by his god-awful missionary parents, but at least he’s not a drunk like Brokaw, my first husband. I wrote a play about him.” Looking at Jack in lustful speculation, she added, “I’d trade ’em both for a day of Scorpio Dick.”

  Bill Pawley looked like a cross between Dan Dailey and Dumbo. His soft South Carolina accent belied the determination required to have achieved his several accomplishments in business and government. “I’ll pay anything, virtually anything, for Castro’s head,” he’d said last night over cocktails, and his dark brown eyes told you that he meant it. Today, holding forth in the salon of the 65-foot Flying Tiger II, their lethality was subdued but, to Jack or any other close observer, still present. “Nice day for a boat ride,” he said, lightly slapping Jack’s back. Glad we could get together before you head out for Pensacola. A lot of our AVG guys went through there; Pappy Boyington’s probably the only name that you would know offhand.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jack said, “wasn’t he in a Jap prison camp until the end of the war? He was the referee on Wrestling From Hollywood for a while, wasn’t he?

  “Yes, he was,” Pawley responded, the resignation causing his voice to drop slightly. “Pappy was always bad to drink, even in China, and it did him out of any kind of postwar flying job. I don’t know who talked him into that wrestling business; it was a real shame. Since you saw him there, you remember he was practically skin and bones, and Pappy in his prime was a big bear of a guy. I don’t know what’s become of him, but wherever he is, I wouldn’t cross him, even today.”

  “Probably a good idea. Don’t think I’ll try to add to that particular Navy, uh, Marine Corps tradition.”

  “That’s an even better idea. Ah, here’s our lady now.” Pawley extended his arm as Clare approached them, wearing a red two-piece swimsuit just a couple of steps away from a bikini. Putting it gently around her shoulders, he smiled down at her. “There’s my China doll,” he said, turning the smile on Jack. “That’s where we first met, in Kunming in 1940. She and Harry were on a fact
-finding tour, and she was back in a hurry as a correspondent for Life after she, Harry and Teddy White left China for New York. Sooner or later, she interviewed everybody who was anybody: Chiang, Chou En-lai, MacArthur, his deputy Willoughby, Stillwell, Alexander...”

  “You left out Madam Chiang,” Clare put in. “We’ve come a long way in air travel since then. I came down from New York yesterday in three hours, and that flight back from China on the Clipper took six days.” Looking at Jack, she said, “Why don’t you get your swimsuit on and join us topside for a little sun?”

  “Entirely my fault for delaying young Jack,” Pawley said. “We’ve been talking about the old days in China with the Flying Tigers.”

  “You mean you’ve been talking about them, Bill Pawley. Once a salesman, always a salesman,” she said, linking arms with Jack.

  “Guilty, guilty, guilty,” Pawley responded, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Let me go back with you while Jack changes. I haven’t had a chance to speak to Linda and Pete since we came aboard.”

  “Holy Toledo!” Linda said as the Buick rumbled out of the Pawley compound. “That was really some day. You really tied into one this time, Skeezix.”

  “You’re exactly right,” said Jack, supine in the hotrod limousine’s back seat. “She’s a six-alarm fire looking for something to burn down.”

  “Just be sure it doesn’t turn out to be you, buddy,” Pete said. Talk about having been around the block; she’s been around the world. Literally.”

  “Damned interesting to talk to,” Linda said. If I hadn’t heard the rundown on her from the two of you, I would’ve thought that I was dealing with some yo-yo with delusions of grandeur.”

  “So, no problems sticking to our cover?” Pete asked her.

  “Nope. She was much more interested in telling me about her.”

  “Pawley seemed to take it in stride too. We’ll see if it comes up again when we go flying.”

  “If who goes flying?”

  “You and I and Pawley, sweetheart. We’re taking him to Andros Monday.”

  “What the hell for? There’s nothing there. Is there?”

  “Not all that much that I know of. Anyway, he didn’t say.”

  Linda’s patience, short at the best of times, was exhausted. “Then what the hell did he say? I hope you told him it’d be a day’s charter.”

  “I did. What’s twenty-five hundred bucks to a guy like that?”

  “Are we going to put down, or just turn around and come back? And if we are putting down, land or water?”

  “Didn’t say. If I didn’t know better- hell, I don’t know better- I’d say there’s a good chance that this is an audition.”

  “Audition? For what?”

  “Remember what he said last night?” said Jack, moving up to one of the limo’s jump seats. “That he’d pay just about anything to remove Castro? This guy’s been around, and he doesn’t fool around, either. He’s probably planning some kind of mission into Cuba.”

  “That,” Pete said, “will cost him considerably more than twenty-five hundred a day. Jack.”

  “Hm.”

  “You’re seeing Clare tomorrow, aren’t you?

  “Yep. She’s got an early morning flight back on Saturday, so we thought we’d play around tomorrow and I’d get her back to Pawley’s for an early bedtime.”

  “Bringing her back to the house?”

  “No, don’t want to inconvenience you guys, particularly with the Pawley thing coming up on Monday. I booked a suite over at the Clay in South Beach. Nice, but off the beaten track; she’s not that eager to be recognized, and it’s pretty unlikely in Spanish Village.”

  “Well, how about seeing what else you can get out of her concerning old Bill. He’s a great potential ally for us down here, with respect to Cuba or otherwise. This guy knows aviation, among other things, pretty much from the ground up.”

  “And Jack,” Linda put in. “Don’t wear that old lady out, will you?”

  There it is again, he thought. The look. The switch hitter special. “No chance,” he said. “I just hope we’re all fucking like that when we’re her age.”

  Linda laughed. “Well, just you leave Eleanor be,” she said. She might as well have said, “I’ll spot you one before you leave town.”

  By the time Jack had changed and come up on the sun deck, he had his choice between two conversations. Pawley and Pete had their heads together, neither of them smiling, and Linda and Clare had found something to laugh about. He chose the women, feeling a spark of irrational pride that he was the only one of the three men that had made love to both of them.

  20 DOUBLE-CHEK

  In his Flying Tiger jacket, threadbare khakis and battered baseball cap, Bill Pawley cut quite a different figure than he had last week as master of the Flying Tiger II. He, no doubt, felt much the same about Linda and Pete, turned out as they were in their customary flying gear. “Good morning, Mr. Pawley,” Linda said as he approached them at the hangar office door.

  Smiling as they shook hands, Pawley said, “Now honey, I thought we had that all worked out last Thursday. I’m Bill, and you two’re Linda and Pete. Y’all ready to go flyin’?”

  “Raring to go,” said Linda, returning his smile, “and so’s the aircraft. But all that we know so far is that we’re headed to Andros, returning here. Would you like to give us a little fuller brief before we take off?”

  Pawley flashed her a broad grin. “Pete told me that you were president of FlxAir, and that he was chief pilot. I like that, because business and aviatin’ can get at cross purposes, and if you don’t keep the business side straight you won’t have a business for all that long. But I understand that you’re a rated pilot, too.”

  “Yes, I am,” Linda responded, not addressing the fact that she hadn’t flown her multi-engine or type rating checks, and wouldn’t until late June. “And although Jack’s about to start flight training in the Navy, he has a commercial ticket too. Pete told you how Jack came to be a partner in FlxAir, didn’t he?”

  “He sure did. That’s some story; you bought that limousine over there- which is a handsome thing, by the way- after seeing it in a magazine ad, he drove it down, y’all gee-hawed, and asked him in as a partner.”

  “And for several good reasons,” Linda told him. “I guess you might say that Providence was working overtime. Jack grew up with aviation; his uncle’s a retired World War II Naval Aviator turned crop duster after he retired. He had another aviator friend who died in an aircraft accident. This man happened to be the principal stockholder in a sizable beer distributorship up in Georgia, a onetime partner of Jack’s grandfather, and he named Jack as his sole heir. Jack had no interest in being in the beer business, so he sold out. He was looking for a startup company to invest in, preferably in aviation, and after we told him our story and took him flying, he made the decision to join us. Then, a few weeks after that, he got his draft notice, and decided to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and go to Pensacola. He offered to sell his stock back to us for what he paid for it, but we’re taking the long view because he’s a terrific person, and he’ll add a lot to the company’s operations when his Navy hitch is over.”

  “Well, having met him, I’m certain that you made the right decision. Clare told me the story about how they met, and just a wee bit about you folks, all she knew at that time. I think you’re right, Linda; Providence is smiling over our gettin’ together. Where is ol’ Jack, anyway? Is he gonna fly with us today?”

  “No, Bill, it’ll just be the three of us. We decided that until we are a lot bigger than we are right now, we shouldn’t all be in the same plane at the same time. Jack did ask us to tell you how much he enjoyed meeting you, and to thank you for your generous hospitality. He’ll be driving back to Georgia soon to make his final arrangements before going to Pensacola, and one of the things he had to do was get his car serviced, which is where he is right now.”

  “That’s very gracious; he’s a fine young gentleman, and I look forw
ard to seeing him on his next trip. I imagine that he’ll get some leave during the Christmas holidays. Well. Guess we better look to what passes for our flight plan; I know you guys have got all the right aero charts for the area, but I brought a nautical chart along.”

  “Sounds like you want to make a water landing down there,” Pete said.

  “I’d like to, weather and your judgment permitting. Ever hear of Williams Island?”

  “No. Is it part of Andros?

  “Just off the west coast, at the westernmost point. Do you have a dinghy?”

  “Four-man inflatable. You want to go ashore?”

  “No, just thinking of general safety. Whether to land or not’ll be your decision, but if we do it’ll be nice to have if any problems should come up. Is there a table in the office where we can spread the chart out?”

  23 June 1959

  Dear Lieutenant Dogface-

  Congratulations! Wish I could salute you in person. Would’ve gotten back to you sooner, but I was busy getting my hair skinned off to the scalp and being run around the Station, double-time, by a couple of bordering-on-humorless Marine DIs and a handful of my peers, AOC “officers” in their last week of preflight. They get a whole week of pretend officerhood before they become real ones, “supervising” me and the rest of class 23-59, and I hope that when my turn rolls around I’ll act more like an officer and less like an imitation DI. Guess you dealt with a little of that yourself before being elevated to your current high station.

  And now infantry school, huh? Doesn’t exactly sound like a walk in the park. And right on the heels of OCS. Well, if you weren’t a squared-away motherfucker already, you damn sure will be by the time you’re done with that. Looks like I’ll be pretty busy myself for the next four months or so, based on what I’ve seen and heard so far. After a week in the Indoctrination Battalion, better known as Indoc, we moved into 2nd Battalion, one of two two-story “splinterville” shacks around the corner that’ll be our home until we’re commissioned or washed out to spend the balance of two years as a “white hat,” your garden-variety enlisted man.