She laughed inaudibly. “Why don’t you stop calling me ‘ma’am,’ and I’ll stop calling you ‘Mr. Heller.’ If that’s all right with you…Nate?”
“It’s jake with me, Amelia. Do you really think you need a bodyguard?”
She frowned a little. “It’s difficult to say. It’s true there’s a lot of jealousy among the women in aviation.”
“Gets a little catty, does it?”
Her eyes flared at that. “Actually, there’s a great deal of camaraderie…. Have you heard of the Ninety Nines? That’s an organization of women pilots, and I’m a past president.”
“Presidents get assassinated, now and then.”
“Well…truth be told, there’s a lot of petty malarkey because of the attention I get. Or, I should say, the attention G. P. gets me.”
“You have mixed emotions about that, don’t you?”
“I do. But G. P.’s right—going for flying records is costly.”
“You did say you had an expensive obsession…. Listen, if I take this job, we won’t be…flying from one town to another, or anything, will we?”
At the corners of the blue-gray eyes, amusement crinkled. “Don’t you like flying? Or is it flying with a woman?”
“I just prefer train travel…. You know, I imagine a lecture tour’s like a whistle-stop political campaign, where you need to be able to rest up between engagements.”
“So you’re thinking of my welfare, my convenience….”
“Well, that’s part of my job, isn’t it? I’m not casting aspersions on you, ma’am…Miss Earhart…Amelia. It’s not that I’m afraid to fly with a female pilot, particularly one with your reputation. I mean, I was up with Lindbergh….”
“Knowing Slim, and his sadistic sense of humor, he probably tried to scare the heck out of you.”
“Not the ‘heck,’ exactly.”
She patted my hand; her touch was cool, and her voice was soothing, somewhat sarcastically so, but soothing.
“We’ll be traveling by car, Nate…. Not enough of these towns have suitably situated airstrips. Hope you won’t be terribly disappointed…that we won’t be traveling by train, I mean.”
“Like you said. Just thinking of you.”
Putnam was coming back into the dining room, carrying a paper sack that seemed incongruous with his tux, and wearing a tight, self-satisfied little grin. Before he sat, he grandly withdrew from the sack a flimsy reddish-brown suede hat with a silk band.
The band bore a facsimile of Amelia Earhart’s signature, and the thing was cheap-looking, like it had cost about a quarter.
“This costs twenty-five cents to manufacture,” Putnam said, sitting, as she took the hat from him and turned it in her hands, studying it with a blankly pensive expression. “And retails for three dollars.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Well,” he said absurdly, “it’s a hat.”
She passed it to me. “What do you think of it, Mr. Heller?”
I thought I wouldn’t want to get caught in the rain in a hat made out of cheap felt like this one, but all I said was, “It’s a little small.”
“It’s a girl’s hat,” Putnam said. “A little girl.”
“This is a hat for a child,” Amelia said. Her voice sounded strangely cold.
“Yes, it is. Small hats to make a small fortune.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t approve this. I won’t have my name used to cheat children.”
For the first time that I noticed, Putnam blinked. “But they’re making them now….”
“Tell them to unmake them.”
“That’s impossible! I’ve already signed the contract….”
“Well, then that puts me in a difficult position,” she said. “I obviously can’t sue the manufacturer. But I can sue you.”
He touched the front of his tux with a splayed hand; his eyes showed white all ’round. “Me? Your husband?”
“I never granted my permission for my name to be used in this manner…” She dropped the hat into the paper bag on the floor between them. “Do you want me to sue you for abusing my power of attorney?”
His voice was hushed, but loud with humiliation. “Of course not.”
“Then you will call the…the hat people, first thing in the morning, G. P., and cancel that contract.”
He just sat there, stunned, for a moment, struck dumb; then nodded.
Now she looked at me with a blandly sweet expression; the blue-gray eyes seemed as hard as they were beautiful, and as soft. “Mr. Heller? Nate?”
“Yes?”
She rose and offered me her hand; I took it, which is to say, shook it—she had a firm grip, but didn’t overdo it. Not like her husband.
“We’ll discuss the arrangements of the lecture tour tomorrow. I realize you gentlemen have some business to do…a matter of a retainer, I believe…so I’ll excuse myself and go on up to our room.”
She left the table, and the eyes of the high-society types around the dining room—a judge here, a senator there—were upon her, partly because she was an attractive woman who walked in a pleasingly, flowingly feminine manner; but also because that tousled-haired head of hers bore one of the most famous faces in America.
Putnam sighed. “That little attack of conscience is going to cost me royally.”
I didn’t say anything.
He stopped a passing waiter and ordered a Manhattan; I asked for a rum and Coke.
While we waited for our drinks, he asked, “What do you think of the hat?”
“Would you mind making out my retainer check first?”
“That bad, is it?”
“Hat’s a piece of shit, G. P.”
“Well, hell, yes, of course it is, but a profitable piece of shit. You mind if I smoke a cigar?”
“Not at all.”
“Care for one yourself?”
“No.”
He lighted up a big Havana number, waved out the match and took a deep draw off the cigar, the eyes behind the round rimless glasses narrowing to slits.
Then he said, “Now…would you like to know why I really hired you?”
3
The wax-mustached, bunny-nosed “Managing Director” of the Coliseum—a buff brick building between Locust Street and Grand Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa—had proudly told me, earlier that evening, that the facility in his charge played an important cultural role in Des Moines, citing as a recent example a presentation by the Russian ballet. I decided it would be less than gracious to mention that the bulletin board in the lobby heralded the upcoming poultry show as his next attraction; and anyway, I needed him to help me set up a folding table for tonight’s speaker, after her presentation, to sign copies of her most recent book, The Fun of It.
My role as bodyguard entailed any number of activities I hadn’t expected, including hauling in from the trunk of her Franklin a slide projector, a reel of 16-millimeter film, a carton of books, and of course a small tin cash box for me to make change out of, being the guy who’d be selling The Fun of It (it would be undignified for the author to do so herself).
The capacity of the joint was 8,500, and that was exactly how many butts were fitted into the seats. Mine was not among them—I was standing, arms folded, my back to a side wall, fairly near the stage, where I could keep an eye on the speaker and the crowd. They were mostly ladies, dressed in their Sunday finery, though this was a Thursday evening—feathered chapeaus and pearls and lacy gloves that would have waited till Easter if such an important guest hadn’t come to town. A few men in suits and ties were sprinkled around the hall, and nobody looked like a farmer, nobody seemed to have manure on their shoes. Nobody looked like somebody who might have sent Amelia Earhart a fan letter comprised of cut-out words from magazines and newspapers, either; still, you never know.
The stage was rather large, empty but for an American flag at one side, an Iowa state flag on the other, a silver-white movie screen, a lectern, and a single armchair, near the state flag. A murmur of anticipation was rumbling across the room, like a motor warming up.