Flying Blind Read online

  She damn near hugged my arm as I escorted her to the elevators where the middle one was being held for us. Then, except for the good-looking elevator girl (Field’s only hired the prettiest—Dorothy Lamour started in one of these cages), Miss Earhart and I were alone.

  “Rent the tux for the occasion?” she asked, looking me over, finally stepping to one side, releasing my arm.

  I gestured to myself with both hands. “This is mine.”

  An eyebrow arched in amusement. “Really? I didn’t know private detectives owned tuxedos.”

  I patted under my left arm, where the nine-millimeter was nestled in its holster. “You got to be well-heeled to guard the well-heeled.”

  Childish enthusiasm turned her into the tomboy she’d most likely been, growing up. “There’s a gun under there?”

  “Tailor on Maxwell Street gave me a special cut. Wouldn’t want to create an unfashionable bulge. ’Specially not when I’m guarding a big-time dress designer.”

  Which she was, in her way: Marshall Field’s was the exclusive outlet for the Earhart line of clothing, outfits for sports, travel, and spectator wear, sold under franchise by one merchandiser in each of thirty metropolitan areas. Macy’s had New York.

  She had a wry smirk going. “I’m not exactly Coco Chanel.”

  “Coco Chanel never flew the Atlantic, not to mention the Pacific.”

  The latter had been Amelia’s latest accomplishment, a Pacific crossing from Honolulu to California, a little two-day jaunt in January.

  “You see, it’s a routine now, Mr. Heller.” The low, melodic voice was weary and resigned. “I set a record and then I lecture on it…even though I hate crowds. And I sell books—which I do write myself, mind you—and clothes, which I do design myself—and even, Lord help me, cigarettes.”

  “Don’t tell me you roll your own.”

  “No. I detest smoking. Filthy habit.”

  “Then why endorse Lucky Strikes?”

  Her smile was as sad as it was fetching. “Because I love to fly—and it’s an expensive obsession.”

  Our cage shuddered to a stop, and the pretty elevator girl opened the gate and we stepped onto the sixth floor, and Amelia took my arm again. A handsome young man in a gold and green uniform, looking like a chorus boy in a Victor Herbert operetta, took Amelia’s topcoat and ushered us into the salon’s lavish oval foyer, with its beige oak walls and matching carpet and Regency furnishings.

  “Miss Amelia Earhart,” a butler intoned. He had an English accent that was almost convincing.

  She swept into the salon with her distinctive combination of self-confidence and humility. Applause—of the fingertips in the palm variety, but applause nonetheless—echoed in the main rotunda. She waved it off and began to circulate, shaking hands, saying little, listening to effusive compliments with the patience of a priest.

  The spacious circular room, broken up by curtained-off alcoves, had plump, comfortable chairs for plump, comfortable customers to plop down in around the central, beige-carpeted area, where wafer-thin models in costly clothing normally would do their preening, whirling routine.

  Tonight, however, the joint was standing room only. Wealthy women, from younger dolls in slinky sparkly gowns to older gals who seemed to be wearing the dining room drapes, took center stage, their tuxedoed husbands at their sides like personal butlers.

  In her casual white sheath with its distinctive black-and-white sash, Amelia would have seemed out of place, had she not been the focal point of wide-eyed admiration. Waiters served champagne from silver trays, waitresses ferried hors d’oeuvres, and a pianist in tails tickled the keys with Cole Porter. I didn’t tag after my charge, but kept her in sight. With a crowd this select, this controlled, it wasn’t like my experience with the pick-pocket detail was likely to come in handy; still, the ice hanging off these dames made Jack Frost look like a piker.

  The most suspicious character in the crowd was probably Mr. Amelia Earhart, that is, G. P. Putnam. There was something wrong with the guy; something that just didn’t fit, though he certainly wore his tuxedo well. He had the tall, broad-shouldered build of an adventurer; but his big square head with its close-cropped dark hair was taken over by the mild features of a college professor, particularly the cold dark beady eyes behind rimless glasses.

  And yet, as I’d seen this afternoon as he manipulated everybody at Field’s from the top brass down to the salesgirls, orchestrating the evening like Florenz Ziegfeld putting on a new Follies, he was one glib son of a bitch, whose fast-talking charm was a thin layer over his general disdain for the human race.

  So what if he was a con man with a scholar’s puss and the build of a linebacker? He was paying $25 for the evening, better than double my usual rate, so he was okay by me. The job had come in over the phone—he’d called me from his home in Rye, New York, a few days before—and had been a referral from (as he had pompously put it) “our mutual friend, Colonel Lindbergh.”

  Right now he was working the room himself, in the company of Field’s amiable president, James Simpson, who was introducing him to Mrs. Howard Linn, one of the local arbiters of fashion.

  Stocky, round-faced Bob Casey from the Daily News, looking about as at ease in his tux as a dog in a sweater, came trundling over with a glass of champagne in hand. “You’re a little out of your league, aren’t you, Nate?”

  “And when did you start covering the fashion beat?”

  “When Lady Lindy picked up a needle and thread. Did she give the photogs a chance to snap her, downstairs?”

  “Sure. She stopped and waved at the crowd. They probably got some swell shots.”

  “Great. It’ll be nice gettin’ some pics of her without the lens louse in ’em.”

  “Who?”

  He jerked a thumb toward Putnam, who was smiling and laughing as he spoke with Mr. and Mrs. Hughston McBain; McBain was the store manager. “Ol’ G. P. He shoves himself into every interview, every photograph he can. For every ten words you get out of the Queen of the Air, you get a hundred from the Bag of Wind.”

  “Well, he’s sure had the Field’s crowd jumping through hoops all afternoon.”

  “Shame on them,” Casey snorted. “He’s a cheap flimflammer.”

  Putnam looked anything but cheap in his rimless glasses and tails, hobnobbing with Chicago’s elite, who seemed enthralled by his wit and wisdom; or maybe they were just impressed, looking at the guy who slept with Amelia Earhart.

  Casey wasn’t through with his critique: “He took over a great publishing house and cheapened it with those fabricated books of his.”

  “Fabricated books?”

  He sipped, almost slurped, his champagne. “Overnight opuses wove out of headlines. By Admiral Byrd and your pal Lindy, and this big-game explorer, and that deep-sea diver. Ol’ Putnam virtually cast your date, there, in her role.”

  “What do you mean, ‘her role’?”

  Casey shook his head, his grin a Chicago cocktail of contempt and admiration. “He sold so many copies of Lindbergh’s book, he had a regular casting call, lookin’ around to find a woman to fly the Atlantic, so he could publish a follow-up.”

  The reporter nodded toward Amelia, who was patiently, smilingly, listening to an overweight, diamond-flung patron of fashion prattle on.

  “The belle of the ball, there,” Casey continued, “she was just a social worker in Boston, a weekend flier, till a pal of Putnam’s noticed her resemblance to Lucky Lindy, and the fabricated-book king made a star out of her.”

  “You sure you newshounds aren’t just irritated, Bob,” I asked innocently, “that Putnam’s found a way to reuse your stuff for something besides birdcage liner?”

  Putnam had spotted me talking with Casey, and he smilingly excused himself from Simpson and a small group of high hats, and made his way toward me, as Casey slipped away.

  Hard-edged words emerged from a thin smile in a face as pale as his wife’s was tan. “Hope you’re not giving away trade secrets to the press.”
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  “I don’t know any to give away, Mr. Putnam.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. “I told you, Nate—we’re on a first-name basis. Call me G. P. I’m not some damn snob.”

  Nice way to tell me I was beneath him. And since when was “G. P.” a first name?

  “Well,” I said, “you’ve scored at least one coup tonight.”

  “I think we’ve scored more than one,” he said, pointlessly defensive. The mouth moved quickly, the eyes remained unblinkingly still. “I think we’ve done extremely well, and the night is still young.”

  “I was referring to that sourpuss over there.”

  He followed my nod and took in the grumpy visage of a stocky, white-templed character in dark-rimmed glasses and a tux that fit like a glove, if the hand in it were missing a finger or two from an industrial accident.

  “Is he somebody?” Putnam asked, machine-gunning his words nervously. “I’ve never seen him before, he’s nobody to me.”

  “That’s Robert M. Lee. That may sound like he’s a Confederate general, but he’s considerably more important. He’s the editor of the Trib’s Sunday section.”

  Putnam’s thin upper lip pulled back over very small, white teeth, and his eyes widened with delight. Then the hand settled on my shoulder again and he whispered chummily in my ear: “How about that, Nate? We’re too big to ignore. Even by that fucking Colonel McCormick.”

  Considering publisher McCormick’s legendary hatred for FDR, there had been considerable doubt that the Tribune would cover this event, what with Amelia’s well-known connections to the White House, particularly with the First Lady.

  But now Putnam’s joy had faded; a frown clenched his high forehead. “This character won’t make us look bad, will he?”

  “He looks grouchy,” I said, “and he is grouchy.” I’d known Lee a long time; he’d been in a bad mood ever since his legman Jake Lingle got plugged under his (Lee’s) city editorship. “But the photogravure section’s not exactly where the muckraking stuff gets run. You’re probably safe.”

  Suddenly he shook my hand. “You’re doing a great job, Nate. You’re everything Ben said you were.”

  He was still gripping my hand; he was trying too hard to show me his strength and his he-man temperament—sort of like using a word like “fucking” in a Marshall Field’s dress salon.

  “Ben?” I asked. “Which Ben told you what about me?”

  “Hecht,” Putnam said, and at first I thought he’d said “Heck,” which was better than “fucking.” “Aren’t you and Ben Hecht old friends?”

  “…Yeah. Sort of…” Former newsman Hecht, who’d long since traded Chicago for Hollywood, had been part of the Bohemian coterie that used to hang around my father’s radical bookshop on the West Side, when I was a kid. “How do you know him, G. P.?”

  “I published his first novels,” Putnam said, touching my chest lightly. “Now, when we wrap up here, I want you to accompany A. E. and me out for a late dinner…not as a bodyguard, but as a valued friend.”

  And then he got back to gladhanding more important suckers than yours truly, leaving me to wonder who had really recommended me—Hecht or Lindbergh…and what made me such a big deal, anyway? Just what the hell had I accomplished here, tonight, that was so gosh darn fucking phenomenal?

  Pretty soon affable Field’s president Simpson was introducing their honored guest.

  “As the fashion center of mid-America,” he said, a glass of champagne in hand, Amelia standing shyly just behind him, G. P. looming behind her like a square-shouldered shadow, “we are proud to add to our distinguished list of designers…Hattie Carnegie, Adrian, Norman Norell, Oscar Kiam, and Pauline Trigère…Miss Amelia Earhart!”

  More applause followed, and Amelia stepped forward, clearly embarrassed, gesturing for the applause to stop; after a while, it did.

  Simpson said, “You know, Miss Earhart, you’ve set many impressive records, but tonight you’ve really pulled off a remarkable feat…. This marks the first time spirits have been served on these premises.”

  A mild wave of tittering moved across the room; all present knew of the Field Company’s conservative nature.

  “But it was necessary so that we might honor you with a proper toast,” Simpson said, and he raised his glass of champagne. “To Amelia Earhart—Queen of High Flying…and High Fashion.”

  At the end of the toast, Amelia—who had no glass of her own—stepped forward and said, “I’m afraid you’ve broken your longstanding rule just to honor a teetotaler.”

  More laughter followed.

  “I thank you for your gracious introduction, Mr. Simpson, but I’m not here to make a formal speech. I would like to join you for what I understand will be a lovely presentation of the rather simple fashions I’ve come up with…not high fashion, really, but I hope you’ll take a liking to our line of functional clothing for active living.”

  With a bashful smile and a step backward, Amelia indicated this was all she had to say.

  But a male voice from between two dowagers in tiaras chimed out: “Miss Earhart, you’re of course to be congratulated on your recent success…the first solo flight from Hawaii to California….”

  The voice belonged to the Trib’s Robert Lee, who stepped forward.

  “Thank you,” Amelia said, uneasily. Just behind her, Putnam frowned at this intrusion.

  “But this was a very dangerous flight,” Lee said, “already accomplished by a man…and had you been forced down at sea, the search would have cost the taxpayers millions.”

  Putnam stepped forward, but Amelia raised a hand gently.

  “I wasn’t forced down at sea,” Amelia said, softly, “and the gentleman who preceded me flew with a navigator, not solo. But I do feel, frankly, that the appreciation of my deed is out of proportion to the deed itself…. I’ll be happy if my small exploit draws attention to the fact that women, too, are flying.”

  A smattering of applause, accompanied by expressions of irritation turned toward the Tribune representative, was interrupted by Lee’s next volley: “Perhaps ‘deed’ isn’t the correct word, Miss Earhart. There are those who say this was a reckless stunt, bankrolled by Hawaiian interests campaigning against the sugar tariff.”

  “I assure you that I’m more interested in aviation than sugar,” she said, rather tartly, and G. P. held up a palm like a traffic cop.

  “Please,” he said. “This is not a press conference. It’s a social event and you’re quite at risk of spoiling the evening, sir. With all due respect…”

  Bob Casey couldn’t resist; he popped out with: “Now that you’ve pulled off a Pacific crossing, is an around-the-world flight next?”

  Casey’s tone was friendly enough and Amelia answered, “Everyone has dreams. I like to be ready….”

  “We all admire you very much, Miss Earhart,” Casey said. “But I for one would like to see you abandon these dangerous ocean flights.”

  “Why?” she asked, as if she and Casey were having a casual conversation over coffee. “Do you think my luck might run out?”

  Casey arched an eyebrow. “You have been very lucky, Miss Earhart….”

  Nothing defensive in her tone, she asked seriously, “Do you think luck only lasts so long, and then lets a person down?”

  Putnam took his wife’s arm and said, “If you gentlemen of the press would like to arrange an interview with my wife, please speak to me, privately. Right now, we have a fashion show to present….”

  The press conference was over, the reps from the Herald-Examiner and Times not even getting in a lick, though I saw them taking Putnam up on his offer, buttonholing him on the sidelines as the guests retreated to the circumference of the room and models began showing off Amelia’s wares, with the designer herself providing a low-key play-by-play.

  “The tails of the blouse are long enough,” she said as a slender girl loped through the room in a white blouse and pleated navy slacks, “not to ride up and reveal the midriff…and the silk detailing on th
e blouse is parachute silk.”

  An aviation theme ran cleverly throughout the collection: silver buttons in the shape of tiny propellers; hexagonal nuts fastening a jersey dress; a belt with a parachute buckle. Cool pastels and washable fabrics made for a shockingly sensible fashion show.

  “This coat is Harris tweed,” she said, “with an innovation we think will catch on…a zip-in, washable lining.”

  The simple, somewhat mannish lines of these practical clothes—broad shoulders, ample sleeves, natural waistlines—had a classic elegance that appealed to the starstruck crowd, and by the end of the evening, Field’s salesgirls were doing a brisk business, with frocks and mix-and-match outfits going for as little as $30.

  I asked her about that, at dinner, over my Hungarian goulash with spätzles. “Those upper-crust types aren’t really who you’re aiming for, with your line, are they?”

  Amelia, her husband, and I were at a table in the Victorian Room at the Palmer House, the hotel where they were staying. I was a frequent diner at the Palmer House, only normally in the basement lunchroom, at the counter. The plushly elegant white and gold room with its draperies of crimson was dominated by a large oil portrait of Queen Victoria; this was at the other end of the room and did not affect our appetites.

  “Not really,” she admitted, touching a napkin to her full lips, having just finished a house specialty, the fried squab Ol’ Man River with pan gravy and pimento. “I think my audience is working women, particularly professional women.”

  “Well, we’re not going to last long in the marketplace,” Putnam said, “if you insist on high-quality fabrics and low prices.” He’d been the first of us to finish eating, polishing off the potted brisket of beef like it was his last meal.

  “Working women need washable, non-wrinkle materials,” she said, sounding like a cross between a commercial and a political statement—not that there was much difference.

  “We’re not making a profit yet,” Putnam said.

  She shrugged as she pushed away her plate. “The luggage line is doing well.”