Flying Blind Read online

  “You know, I realize all of a sudden this is Valentine’s Day,” he said chagrined, “and here I drop in and you and your wife probably had plans. Didn’t mean to spoil ’em…”

  “We had a romantic little luncheon together,” I said. “We did what all Chicagoans do to honor the day.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Shot up a garage.” I munched a macaroon. “So Saipan trip number four is coming up? Aren’t you taking a childhood interest a little far?”

  “I didn’t set out to try to find Amelia,” he said. “A pal of mine and me, we went to the Marshall Islands, what was it, now? Four years ago, five? Anyway, I had it on good authority that a whole slew of Jap warbirds were just waitin’ for the pickin’, on Mili Atoll.”

  “I suppose they did abandon a lot of planes,” I allowed, sipping my black coffee, “when our boys started advancing. So you figured you could reclaim a bird or two?”

  He nodded. With his sunglasses off, he had sky-blue eyes with long, almost feminine lashes, curiously beautiful in a craggy male face. “I had a couple museums on the hook, eager to buy planes to restore and display. But it never panned out.”

  “Never found any?”

  “Oh, hell, there was a passel of ’em, all right. Zeros, mostly. Only in shit-poor condition. Planes either past restoration or too difficult to pry loose from the underbrush and overgrowth. Did some diving, too, ’cause we knew some planes went down; but what with rust and corrosion…. It was a fool’s errand, and you’re lookin’ at the head fool.”

  I studied him. “Did you think you were going to find Amelia’s Lockheed?”

  “Not hardly.” Now the blue eyes had a twinkle. “You see, I know what happened to that ‘flyin’ laboratory’ of hers. I saw it.”

  That perked me up. “When in hell?”

  “The first time I was in Saipan…July 1944.”

  “You saw the plane.”

  “We’d just captured Aslito Field. You or your wife mind if I smoke?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He dug out a pack of Lucky Strikes and fired one up, waving out the match as he said, “I was one of several Marine guards posted outside this padlocked hangar. Some of the brass were arguing with this fella in a white shirt, no sidearm, and you know sidearms were mandatory for officers in combat zones. Some kinda intelligence spook, I gathered…. Seems Major Greene discovered this American plane in Jap storage, and wanted to make sure the Marines got credit for it. But this guy in the white shirt was backing ’em off—and they were taking it.”

  “Did you see this plane?”

  “Yes and no. A buddy of mine said they rolled her out and actually flew her. I didn’t see that. That night, off duty—we were bivouacked a half-mile away—we heard an explosion, over at the airfield. Bunch of us went over there and this plane, a Lockheed Electra, civilian plane, was the hell on fire. Like somebody’d poured gas on and lit her up like a bonfire. Still, I could make out an ID number—NR16020—which meant nothin’ to me at the time.”

  That was the registration number of Amelia’s Lockheed Electra, the one she’d taken on her final, ill-fated flight around the world. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had taken off on the last leg of the landmark flight, from Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937. Their destination was tiny Howland Island, 2,556 miles away. It was the most famous unfinished trip in history.

  “Jap sabotage?” I asked, referring to the burning plane. “There would’ve been plenty of our little yellow friends left on the island, in the hills and trees and caves.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head, no. “I think somebody was destroyin’ evidence. That fella I saw? In the white shirt? He had a real familiar face. I recognized him from the papers, or anyway I knew I should have recognized him from the papers. He was somebody.”

  “Did it ever come to you, who he was?”

  He snorted a laugh. “Only the goddamn Secretary of the Navy. Remember that guy? James Vincent Forrestal!”

  Names from the past can have a funny effect on you. Sometimes a warm feeling flows through you; my stomach had just gone cold. Colder than my wife’s coffee could ever cure.

  The blue eyes tightened. “You all right, Nate?”

  We’d gone to first names, a long time ago. Sometimes I’m not all that easy to read; but I guess the blood had drained out of my poker face.

  “Yeah. Sure. Get back to your story, Buddy. Trying to reclaim those old warbirds.”

  He grinned again; dentures, I’d decided. “I guess I am gettin’ ahead of myself, jumpin’ around…. Anyway, while we were on Majuro, misguidedly mountin’ a machete expedition into the jungle to try and liberate one of the better-preserved Zeros, this fella…he was in charge of this heavy equipment yard where we were rentin’ some stuff? This fella asked me the same question you did.”

  “What question is that?”

  “He asked if we were looking for Amelia Earhart’s plane. Then he told us how in 1937 he’d worked for a company supplying coal to the Japanese Navy. How one night he was refueling a ship called the Koshu when a crew member friend of his told him the ship was about to leave to search for an American airplane that crashed.”

  “That was his whole story?”

  He gestured with a Lucky Strike in hand, making smoke streaks. “That was it, but it was enough, coming when it did. I mean, we were stuck in the Marshall Islands, about to throw in the towel on my warbird expedition. My friend who gave me the lead on the abandoned planes? Well, he’d also told me about these islanders, hundreds of miles apart, all with the same story to tell…a story of two American fliers, a man and a woman, captured by the Japs and held as spies, before the war.”

  “You were an Earhart buff already, Buddy. You’d read the books.”

  “Sure, casually. I knew the stories of her and Noonan windin’ up on Saipan, the theory that Amelia was on some sort of secret spy mission, and got shot down and captured. Never took it too seriously, though. ’Course I kinda liked the romance of it. Right out of the movies, you know?”

  “And you were in the neighborhood, so you decided to see for yourself.”

  “Yes, I did. Got an ashtray?”

  “Use your saucer.”

  He put his Lucky out, then sat forward, the coolness of his blue eyes at odds with an expression that had grown intense. “And I talked to all sorts of people…on Majuro, Mili, and Jaluit, three little atolls in the middle of the South Pacific.”

  He told me of some of the islanders he’d spoken with.

  Bilimon Amaron, a respected storeowner on Majuro, related that as a sixteen-year-old medic, at Jaluit, he was called to a military cargo ship, where he tended to two Americans, “one lady, one man.” The man had some minor injuries from a plane crash, and the woman was called, by the Japanese, “Amira.”

  Oscar De Brum, a high-ranking Marshallese official, told of hearing from his father (in 1937, when De Brum was in the first grade) of the capture of a lady pilot who was being taken to the Japanese high command office in Jaluit.

  John Heinie, a prominent Majuro attorney, recalled attending a Japanese school as a child in 1937 and witnessing, one morning, just before school, a ship towing a barge with a silver airplane on it, into the Jaluit harbor.

  Lotan Jack, a Marshallese working in 1937 as a mess steward at the Japanese naval base on Jaluit, told of hearing officers discuss Amelia’s plane being shot down between Jaluit and Mili-atolls; that she’d been routed to Kwajalein and on to Saipan.

  On Saipan, a respected local politician, Manuel Muna, told of talking to a Japanese pilot who claimed to have shot the Electra down, and also took Buddy for a tour of the ruins of Garapan Prison, where he said the American prisoners—Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan—had been held.

  “We’ve made three trips to Saipan,” Buddy said, “with limited results. At first, the Saipanese, the Chamorros, seemed less willing to talk than the other islanders.”

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Well,
for one thing, they still fear reprisals from the Japanese.”

  “Even now?”

  “There’s still a strong Japanese presence on Saipan, Nate, strong economic ties. Then there’s a general distrust, no, more a…hell, a downright fear of Americans, ’cause up till recently the CIA had a secret training center on the island, behind a security fence, not unlike the kind of fences the Japanese put up, in the old days.”

  “And the Saipan natives were afraid of the Japs, so now they’re afraid of us.”

  “Right. Just another foreign military presence to be feared. And they got worries from within, too—a good number of Saipanese collaborated with the Japs, vicious goddamn thugs, carrying clubs, beating and torturing their own people. Many of those mean old bastards, who were on the Japs’ ‘local police force,’ are still alive, and might retaliate if old secrets were revealed….”

  “You’d think after the war, these snakes would’ve been rounded up and shot.”

  “That’s not the way of the Saipanese. Yet gradually we did get natives to talk to us. Dozens of them, with similar stories of the lady pilot held in the hotel, and the man who’d come with her, kept in the prison.”

  “So why bring me into it?”

  He tapped the pocket where the photocopy was folded up; it crinkled under his prod. “You were on Saipan, Nate, well before the war…probably in 1939 or maybe ’40. Weren’t you?”

  “Do I look like a priest?”

  “You sure don’t look like a Jew. Even if your name is Heller. That’s ’cause your mama was a good Catholic girl; that’s where you get your Irish good looks.”

  “What would I have been doing on Saipan in 1930-whatever?”

  That bathroom tile grin flashed again; dentures, all right—you didn’t smoke that many cigarettes and keep them white like that unless they reside in a glass overnight.

  “Same thing I was doing there in 1967 and ’69,” he said. “Looking for Amelia.”

  “She’s been dead a long time.”

  “Probably. But where did she die? And when? And where’s the body?”

  Out the glass doors of our patio, moonlight glimmered on the waterway; but even with the moonlight, the night seemed dark.

  I said, “Buried somewhere on that island, I suppose.”

  He pounded a fist on the table. “That’s why I’m going back. To find her grave. To prove she was there, and give her a proper burial, and her rightful place in history as the first courageous casualty of the Second World War.”

  I looked at him like he was the one who’d been mustered out on a Section Eight. “Then go dig her up. You don’t need me for it.”

  The blue eyes narrowed and bore in on me like benign laser beams. “I think you’d be useful company, Nate. Might be interesting, seeing if that mug of yours stirs any memories, loosens any tongues. You’ll see some familiar faces. Remember a badass named Jesus Sablan? He was the head of the Saipan police—worst of the collaborators.”

  My stomach grew cold again; my eyes felt like stones.

  When I didn’t say anything, Buddy said, “Funny, I thought maybe you might remember him. One of the stories about the Irish priest involves Sablan…. They say Sablan’s the one that killed Fred Noonan. Some of them say that, anyway. Quietly, they say it. Secretly. Praying it never gets back to Lord Jesus.”

  “Still alive.” My voice sounded hushed, distant, like somebody else was saying it, somewhere else.

  A sly smile formed; blue eyes twinkled. “Oh, you do remember Jesus Sablan, then?”

  I gave him my own sly smile. “I never confirmed your theory, Buddy. Never said I’d been to Saipan before. This could all just be another horseshit Amelia Earhart yarn.”

  “Could be.”

  “Remember your research. Remember all those people who dismiss Nate Heller’s ramblings as bullshit self-aggrandizement.”

  “Good point. Of course, another thing I read about you, they say you like money. You don’t turn down a good retainer.”

  “I’m old and rich, Buddy. Anyway, rich enough. And old enough, to ignore you and any offer you might make me.”

  “Ten grand, Nate. For ten days. Are you so well off ten grand don’t matter?”

  Actually, I was.

  But I said, “Okay, Buddy—I’ll take your money. Just don’t ask me to go on record about that priest business.”

  “No problem.” He rose from the table. “We leave next week. I’ll mosey out so you can break it to your wife…no wives on this trip.”

  “Good policy.”

  “Please do thank her for the hospitality, and my regrets for messin’ up Valentine’s Day evenin’. Passport in order?”

  I nodded. “I’ll phone my office in Chicago and get you a contract.”

  “I’m disappointed,” he said as I walked him to the front door. “I figured you’d want cash.”

  “That was a long time ago, that Nate Heller. I’m a different man, Buddy.”

  And I was, or at least I thought I was, till I heard those names: Amelia Earhart, James Forrestal, Lord Jesus Sablan.

  Buddy Busch was giving me an opportunity I’d never dreamed I’d get: before I really retired, I would return to a place I’d never expected to see again, to a job I’d left unfinished, a very long time ago.

  And finish it.

  2

  Searchlights stroked the evening sky, motorcycle cops kept the traffic moving, and hundreds, hell, maybe thousands of gawking pedestrians lined the sidewalks, the flashbulbs of the press popping, as limousine after limousine drew up on Washington Street near State, where a doorman in green and gold livery helped women draped in diamonds and furs step to the curb, followed by husbands in black tie and bemusement. What might have been a Hollywood premiere was only another attention-attracting attempt by a floundering department store to regain its footing in dark Depression days.

  The famous showcase windows of Marshall Field’s remained tasteful tableaus of prosperity, the classic Queen Anne opulence of a few years before replaced by Art Moderne; but the faces reflected in their glass belonged to window shoppers whose dreams of lives of luxury were as abstract as the streamlined geometry on display. Retail sales were down and wholesale was a disaster aided and abetted by the Merchandise Mart, the Field Company’s $30,000,000 white elephant, the world’s biggest (mostly empty) building, that mammoth warehouse conceived on the eve of the Crash.

  Marshall Field’s clearly needed help, and the heroine of the hour was finally arriving.

  The man in uniform opened the door for her and Amelia Earhart seemed to float from the backseat, an angelic blur of white. Then, as she paused to wave at the cheering crowd—her shyness and self-confidence a peculiar, peculiarly charming mix—she came into focus, tall, slender, tanned, loosely draped in a white topcoat, its large mannish collar and lapels those of a trench coat.

  The applause and huzzahs ringing around her seemed to both embarrass and amuse Miss Earhart, her wide set eyes crinkling; with Hollywood-style makeup, the elongated oval of her face would’ve seemed pretty, but her features were barely touched with the stuff, a little lipstick, a little powder. Her hair was a dark honey-blonde tousle, her nose small but strong, her mouth wide and sensuous.

  Just inside the bank of doors, two men in tails were scrutinizing engraved invitations and checking off names from a guest list limited to 500 of the Midwest’s well fixed. Waiting with them was a handsome devil, also in tails, about thirty, six strapping feet with reddish-brown hair.

  Me.

  Stepping outside into the crisp March air, where breath plumed from every mouth, I crossed the red carpet to meet our honored guest, halfway. It was the least I could do.

  I introduced myself: “Nathan Heller, ma’am. I’m the chaperone your husband arranged.”

  Taking in my tux, she flashed me just a hint of an apple-cheeked, winsome, if gap-toothed grin. “You don’t look much like a bodyguard, Mr. Heller.”

  She didn’t bother working to be heard above the noisy crowd; she
seemed to know I’d be able to hone in on the low-pitched, Midwestern musicality of her voice.

  “You don’t look much like a pilot,” I said, taking her arm.

  Her smile froze, then melted into an ever better one. “You don’t impress easily, do you, Mr. Heller?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  I selected a door and opened it for her. Inside, no one asked to check our invitation. We moved down the long wide main aisle; though this was after normal business hours, the first floor was open, brilliantly illuminated and fully staffed. Some of the wealthy guests were pausing to pick up this and that at the curving plate-glass counters, bright showcases of fine lace, jewelry, perfume, embroideries, and notions. As Amelia strolled by on my arm, eyes turned our way and oohs and aahs accompanied us.

  “How lovely,” Amelia said, looking skyward.

  She was taking in the fabled Tiffany dome, a million and a half or so pieces of iridescent glass, blue and gold, shimmering six floors above.

  “Hell of a lampshade,” I granted.

  She laughed gently, then her eyes widened and brightened. “You’re that detective Slim told G. P. about!”

  Slim was Charles Lindbergh.

  “I’ve heard of you, too,” I said. “I guess you know your husband’s already upstairs.”

  “You’ve met G. P.?”

  George Palmer Putnam, formerly of G. P. Putnam’s publishing, part-time consultant to Paramount Pictures, full-time husband and manager of Amelia Earhart.

  “Oh yes,” I said. “He’s been choreographing things here all afternoon, the management, the staff, the press, me, you name it.”

  “That’s G. P. Obnoxious, isn’t he?”

  She had a wicked little smile going; I gave her half a smile, just this side of noncommittal, in return.

  “That’s an opinion I wouldn’t care to express, ma’am, at least until my expense account had been approved.”

  The smile widened and made her face crinkle in all sorts of interesting ways; wind and sun had left their signatures on the once-fair, now-freckled skin. But to me the beauty of those blue-gray eyes was only emphasized by the fine lines at their corners.