Harry Bingham - Glory Boys

‘Oh, yes, of course. You can call me.’ She gave him a Manhattan phone number. ‘But don’t worry about it. Really.’

Her eyes flicked around the apartment, back to the cupboard, then to the mess on the floor.

‘And now I’ve put you out. I’m so sorry. Thank you. Goodbye.’

The shadow of Poll’s upper wing shifted slowly with the sun. At the moment, most of the shadow fell on the ground, but there was still a long bar of shade lying down the trailing edge of the lower wing. Abe lay with a cigarette in his mouth, his back warm against the fuselage. The Cuban boy who brought the mailbag for Miami was late again. Abe decided that, bag or no bag, he’d leave as soon as the shadow of the upper wing had left the lower wing completely.

The sun slid slowly down the sky. The shadow moved. Abe finished his cigarette and stubbed it out.

Another minute passed. The shadow had almost completely shifted now. Abe got up, ready to leave, when a big black American car drew up outside the airfield gates. A dark-suited man climbed out, leaving one man at the wheel and a second one in the passenger seat behind. The man who got out was bulky, jowly, tough, but also friendly. Abe recognised him as an occasional passenger with the Marion bootleggers – and their obvious superior. The big man came over.

‘You Rockwell?’

Abe nodded.

‘Hi. Bob Mason.’ The man pointed at his chest, as though he might have meant someone else.

Abe shrugged.

‘You going back to Miami?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I need a ride.’

Abe shrugged again.

I’ll pay. How much d’you charge?’

‘Can’t. I’m full. Sorry.’

‘Full? With a packet of letters?’ Mason snorted. ‘Say fifty bucks? I never taken a plane ride before.’

‘I thought you went by boat. You’d be more comfortable.’

‘Fool sailors left the choke wide open. Engine flooded. In this heat, too.’

Abe shrugged. Since he’d swum out to the boat that lunch-time and opened the choke himself, the news wasn’t a big surprise. He’d also undone the nut holding the propeller blade, so if the Marion folk had got the engine started, it would have lost its blade within seconds.

‘Too bad.’

Just then the Cuban kid came at a slow trot with the mailbag. Abe took the bag and buckled it behind his seat in the rear cockpit. The American came closer, tilting his head up to speak.

‘Fifty bucks. We got a deal, right? Where do I get in? Here?’ He made as if to climb into the front cockpit.

‘Hey! Out of there. I’m full, I told you. I’m not some kind of railroad service.’

Mason stopped where he was, half-in, half-out of the cockpit. He held Abe’s gaze square on.

‘A hundred bucks.’

‘I’m full. That’s the last time I’m telling you.’ Abe checked his instruments, before jumping out of the plane to swing the propeller a couple of times. On a cold day, it could take a few turns to bring enough fuel into the piston heads. But in the heat, Abe could tell by the smell that the pistons were already primed. He walked back to the cockpit.

‘Bullshit, that’s bullshit.’

Abe shrugged. ‘My machine, my route.’

He reached inside his cockpit, flipped the ignition, and set the throttle low enough that it would keep the engine turning without sending Poll skittering out across the field. Then he went back to the propellers, ready to spin the blades into action.

Mason let Abe pass him, then said in the same low voice, ‘Fuck you.’ He picked a hundred dollars from his wallet and threw them into the rear cockpit. Then he grasped the edge of the front cockpit with both hands and jumped up, before swinging his legs down and into the plane. A grimy blue curtain would have blocked his view of anything lying forward from the seat. Expecting empty space, he moved too fast and barked out loud in pain as his feet struck something hard and solid. He swore loudly, then grabbed at the curtain to pull it aside.

And saw it. Six cases of booze, Gordon’s Gin still in the original boxes, strapped tight against Poll’s wood and fabric hull.

Mason stared – stared – then began to roar with laughter.

‘Full! Ha! I’ll say you are. That’s a sweet little business you got yourself there.’

‘Right. So as you see, I got no space for you. Now scram.’

Mason shook his head. His eyes smiled but there was an unruffled confidence in his manner which hinted at something a whole lot tougher. ‘I’ll squeeze up. I promise not to snitch a drink on the way.’

‘It’s not a question of squeezing, it’s a question of weight. The plane won’t take off overloaded.’

‘Then lose the booze.’

‘I’d sooner lose you.’

Mason paused. His manner was still very easy, very calm. He looked inside the curtain and counted the cases. ‘Six cases. And twenty, twenty-five bucks turn on each one. I was underpaying. One fifty.’ He counted out another fifty bucks and handed them down to Abe, who didn’t reach to take them.

‘Sorry, pal. I’m not in the passenger business.’

‘My men will get you unloaded.’

Mason glanced over at the car which had brought him and made a gesture. Two men stepped out, not exactly threatening, but not exactly meek either. Abe watched them come.

‘Where do you store it?’ said Mason.

‘If I take you this time, it’s the last time, OK? I got people who rely on me.’

‘I get it.’

‘And it’s two hundred.’

‘OK.’

Abe spun his reluctance out another second or two, before pointing at the little locked shed, where he kept the bits and pieces he needed to service Poll. ‘In there. And your guys had better break a sweat, unless you want to try a landing by moonlight.’

‘OK.’

Mason handed over a further fifty dollars, gave brief, precise instructions to his men, then chuckled to himself as the booze was unloaded. And it was true: ever since beginning the mail flight, Abe had been transporting six cases of alcohol a flight, every flight. He bought the stuff from a wholesaler in Havana. He sold the stuff to a poxy little Miami bootlegger, named De Freitas. The booze came in wooden cases, nailed shut and sealed with the manufacturer’s mark. To begin with De Freitas hadn’t believed the stuff was unadulterated, but as time had gone by, he’d changed his mind. De Freitas paid good prices. Abe’s costs, gasoline mostly, were low. Each and every trip he cleared around a hundred bucks’ profit.

Mason supervised his men, but didn’t help. He jigged up and down, enjoying himself.

‘You got Gordon’s on the box. I like that. Booze you can trust.’

Abe said nothing.

‘You ain’t worried about the good folks from customs?’

Abe jerked his thumb at Poll’s fuselage, with its stencilled mail logo. ‘Interference with the mails. It’s a federal crime. Besides, why would Uncle Sam want to stop his own airplanes?’

Mason stared at the logo an instant, transfixed by the sight. Then his face creased into a bellow of laughter. ‘Ha! You got it figured out there, pal! Good ol’ Uncle Sam, huh? Looks after his own, hey?’ He laughed some more and shared the joke with his two pals, who had got the last case unloaded. They laughed too, but were sweating too hard to laugh loudly.

‘OK, hurry it up,’ said Abe tetchily. ‘You want to go to the can, go now. Otherwise, get in. There’s a helmet and goggles behind the seat. Put ’em on. Keep ’em on. Sit still. Don’t touch anything. Miami in three hours. Got it?’

Mason nodded, still chuckling, and complied. Abe got Poll started, and bumped across the airfield until he was downwind of the sea breeze. Then he opened the throttle and let her roar into flight. Abe pushed her upwards at two hundred feet a minute, until he hit her ceiling, seven thousand feet or so. He kept her pushed up against the ceiling all the way to the Florida coast, raising the altitude as the fuel load lightened. Up at those heights, the air was icy, the cold multiplied by the hundred-mile-an-hour wind.