When the Flagship Dallas touched down at Atlanta, Pick Pickering waited until all the other passengers had made their way down the steeply slanting cabin floor and debarked, and then he went forward to the cockpit.
The door was open, and the pilot and copilot were still in their seats, filling out forms before a baffling array of instruments and controls-what looked like ten times as many instruments and controls as there were on the Room Service. "Excuse me," Pickering said, and the pilot turned around, a look of mild annoyance on his face. The annoyance vanished when he saw that Pickering was in uniform. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?" "You can tell me how you knew Atlanta was going to be down here when you started down through the clouds."
The pilot chuckled and looked at his watch. The watch caught Pickering's attention. It was stainless steel and had all sorts of dials and buttons. A pilot's watch! Pickering thought.
"We just took a chance," the pilot said. "We knew it had to be down here somewhere."
"So could a mountain have been," Pickering replied.
The pilot saw that he was serious.
"We fly a radio beam," he said, pointing to one of the dials on the control panel. "There's a radio transmitter on the field. The needle on the dial points to it. When you pass it, the needle points in the other direction, and you know you've gone too far."
"Fascinating!" Pickering said. "And the altimeter tells you when you're getting close to the ground, right?"
The pilot suppressed a smile.
"Right," he said. "What the altimeter actually does is tell you how far you are above sea level. We have charts-maps- that give the altitude above sea level of the airports."
"Uh- huh," Pickering grunted his comprehension.
"There is a small problem," the pilot said. "The altimeter tells you how high you were seven seconds ago. Seven seconds is sometimes a long time when you're letting down."
"Uh- huh," Pickering grunted again.
"Let me ask you a question," the pilot said. "This isn't just idle curiosity on your part, is it."
"I'm on my way to Pensacola," Pickering said. "To become a Marine aviator."
"Are you really?" the pilot said. "Watch out for Pensacola, Lieutenant. Dangerous place."
"Why do you say that?"
"They call it the mother-in-law of Naval aviation," the pilot said. "Blink your eyes, and you'll find yourself standing before an altar with some Southern belle on your arm."
"You sound as if you speak from experience," Pickering said.
"I do," the pilot said. "I went to Pensacola in 'thirty-five, a happy bachelor. I left with wings of gold and a mother-in-law."
"I suppose I sound pretty stupid," Pickering said.
"Not at all," the pilot said. "You seem to have already learned the most important lesson."
"Excuse me?"
"If you don't know something, don't be embarrassed to ask questions."
He smiled at Pickering and offered his hand.
"Happy landings, Lieutenant," he said. "And give my regards to the bar in the San Carlos hotel."
Pickering walked down the cabin aisle and got off the plane. The stewardess was standing on the tarmac, again looking at him with concern and suspicion in her eyes.
"I noticed that the Jensen Dynamometer was leaking oil," Pickering said, very seriously, to explain his visit to the cockpit. "I thought the pilot should know before he took off again."
He saw in her eyes that she believed him. With a little bit of luck, he thought, she would ask the pilot about the Jensen Dynamometer, and the pilot would conclude his stewardess had a screw loose.
The airlines limousine, a Checker cab that had been cut in half and extended nine feet, was loaded and about to drive away without him when he got to the terminal.
Thirty minutes later, it deposited him before the Foster Peachtree Hotel in downtown Atlanta. It was one of the smaller Foster hotels, an eight-story brick building shaped like an "E" lying on its side. The Old Man had bought it from the original owners when Pickering was in prep school, retired the general manager, built a new kitchen, installed a new air-conditioning system, and replaced the carpets and mattresses. Aside from that, he'd left it virtually untouched.
"People don't like change, Pick," the Old Man had explained to him seven or eight months ago, when they had been here on one of the Old Man's unannounced visits. "The trick to get repeat customers is to make them think, subconsciously, of the inn as another home. You start throwing things they're used to away, they start feeling like intruders."
A very large, elderly black man, in the starched white jacket of Peachtree bellmen, recognized him as he got out of the Checker limousine.
"Well, nice to see you again, Mr. Pickering," he said. "We been expecting you. You just go on inside, I'll take care of your bags."
The Old Man is right, Pickering thought as he walked up to a door being opened by another white-jacketed black man, if we dressed the bellmen in red uniforms with brass buttons, people would wonder what else was changed in the hotel, and start looking for things to complain about.
The resident manager spotted him as he walked down the aisle of shops toward the lobby, and moved to greet him. He was a plump, middle-aged man, who wore what hair he had left parted in the middle and slicked down against his scalp. Pickering knew him. L. Edward Locke had been resident manager of the Foster Biscayne in Miami when Pick had worked a spring vacation waiting tables around the pool during the day and tending bar in the golf course clubhouse at night.
"Hello, Mr. Pickering," Locke said. "It's good to see you."
"When did I become 'Mr. Pickering'?" Pick said, as he shook his hand.
"Maybe when you became a Marine?" Locke said, smiling.
"I'd rather, in deference to my exalted status as a Marine officer, prefer that you stop calling me 'Hey, you!'" Pick said. "But aside from that, 'Pick' will do fine."
"You look like you were born in that uniform," Locke said. "Very spiffy."
"It's supposed to attract females like moths to a flame," Pick said. "I haven't been an officer long enough to find out for sure."
"I don't think you'll have any worries about that at all," the resident manager said. "Would you like a drink? Either here"-he gestured toward the bar off the lobby-"or in your room? I've put you in the Jefferson Davis Suite." And then Locke misinterpreted the look in Pickering's eyes. "Which we cannot fill, anyway."
"I wasn't planning to stay," Pick said. "Unless my car hasn't shown up?"
"Came in two days ago," Locke said. "I had it taken to the Cadillac dealer. They serviced it and did whatever they thought it needed."
"Thank you," Pick said. "Then all I'll need is that drink and a road map."
They started toward the bar, but Pickering stopped when he glanced casually into a jewelry store. There was a display of watches laid out on velvet. One of them, in gleaming gold, band and all, had just about as many fascinating buttons and dials and sweeping bands as had the watch on the wrist of the Eastern Airlines pilot.
"Just a second," Pick said. "I have just decided that I am such a nice fellow that I am going to buy myself a present."
The price of the watch was staggering, nearly four hundred dollars. But that judgment, he decided, was a reflection of the way he had come by money-earning it himself or doing, by and large, without-until his twenty-first birthday. On his majority, he had come into the first part of the Malcolm Pickering Trust (there would be more when he turned twenty-five, and the balance when he turned thirty) established by Captain Richard Pickering, founder of Pacific Far East Shipping, Inc., for his only grandson.
The first monthly check from the Crocker National Bank had been for four times as much money as he was getting as a supernumerary assistant manager of the Andrew Foster Hotel. He could afford the watch.