Chapter 10 #2
The view below was magnificent. Green-and-gold fields below, red-brown mountains rising to slate-gray peaks to her left, and the sky above.
It was so blue it almost hurt to look at.
Up here, like this, she was the closest to pure happiness she had ever come.
Sometimes, she felt as if she had become part of the sky, weightless, without form, a mote of cloud floating along.
She had never found a way to adequately describe to an earthbound person how peaceful it was up here.
Her brother had described it as feeling like an afternoon nap in a field of sweet clover.
He and she used to swim in the creek behind their house and afterward stretch out on the soft green carpet, letting the warmth of the sun, the caress of a soft breeze, and the lazy sound of insects buzzing lull them to sleep . . .
The engine knocked loudly as the plane hit a thermal and bounced, jostling her back to consciousness.
She realized her hands lay loosely in her lap, not gripping the stick as they should have been.
The plane’s nose had dipped a bit, and she’d entered a gentle descent that was starting to pick up speed.
Had she just dozed off? In the middle of a race? Minutes from landing?
What the heck was wrong with her?
Agent Pullman watched the last airplane take off from beside the stage.
As the crowd streamed across the airstrip and the people on stage stood and gathered their belongings, he took one last look at the telegram he’d confiscated from the women pilots and came to a decision.
He didn’t particularly like his decision, but then he didn’t much like the alternative either.
He refolded the slip of yellow paper and slipped it into the interior pocket of his suit coat. He joined the departing crowd. As the spectators turned right to head for the exit, though, he turned left and headed for the main hangar.
A neat new row of telephone boxes had been set up just inside its cavernous space for the use of the press.
Now that the last plane was gone, the reporters were taking a break, smoking and chatting.
As he approached, several of them hastily turned their backs, clustering together furtively.
As if he didn’t know they were stashing flasks inside their jackets.
He sighed.
Freeing America from the grip of alcohol was going to be a long battle, one he didn’t honestly know if law enforcement could win.
He wasn’t a drinking man himself, and never had been, but most folks seemed pretty devoted to their liquor and not inclined to give it up just because a bunch of do-gooder women convinced a handful of high officials to outlaw it.
Arresting a few reporters over an illicit flask or two wasn’t going to put even the tiniest of dents in the local black-market liquor trade.
Men like him, with the resources of the federal government at his back, were better used going after the major smugglers, their transportation networks, and the big suppliers to the large customers—bars, casinos, hotels, nightclubs, and the like.
He’d been sent out to Los Angeles at the beginning of the year along with a dozen fellow BOI agents.
But no matter how hard they worked and no matter how many smugglers and dealers they took off the streets, two more seemed to spring up overnight to replace each one they arrested and charged.
Since he’d been on the West Coast, he felt as if the law had lost to the big liquor interests instead of gaining ground.
After sending the reporters a stern look of warning, he pointedly turned his back on them and sat down on a high stool in front of one of the telephones.
He picked up the receiver, marveling at how this new device allowed two people, separated by hundreds of miles, to converse as though they were in the same room.
“Operator,” a woman answered.
“Please connect me with the Federal Building in Sacramento.”
“Federal Building,” a male receptionist said. “How may I direct your call?”
“Agent Chet Pullman for Mr. B. Jenkins.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Pullman knew the man was scanning a list of agents from whom Jenkins, deputy director in charge of BOI operations in California, would take calls.
Pullman waited patiently. He happened to know he was on the list.
“One moment while I ring his office.”
A static-filled pause, then Jenkins’s impatient voice came over the line. “You have a report for me, Pullman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, let’s hear it. I don’t have all day,” Jenkins snapped.
Doing his best to keep it brief, Pullman told him about the telegram and the electrical short that had caused Amelia Earhart to make an emergency return to Clover Field.
He ended with, “I believe there’s something to my suspicion that Earhart’s plane was sabotaged, just like the telegram warned of.
I want to pull some men and have them keep an eye on the racers and planes when they’re not in the air. ”
“The whole bureau has its hands full enforcing the Volstead Act,” Jenkins retorted. “If Prohibition’s going to stick, it’s up to us to enforce the law.”
Pullman sighed. He not only understood Jenkins’s position but also agreed with him.
Jenkins continued, “If a handful of rebellious females want to risk their lives flying in some air race, I don’t plan to lose any sleep over it.
This bureau is doing more than enough to satisfy the demands of female voters by trying to prevent the consumption of alcohol.
I will not order any of my agents to coddle these petticoat pilots of yours. ”
“They’re not mine, sir—”
The line went dead.
Pullman stared at the phone box, shocked at how cavalierly Jenkins had taken his concerns.
He should’ve mentioned how many reporters were covering the race and the tens of thousands of people who’d turned out today to watch the women fly.
Jenkins couldn’t possibly turn down his request for a security team if he understood just how high-profile this race was turning out to be or how famous and popular the women pilots were becoming.
He started to call his boss back, but then he reconsidered. Surely Jenkins knew already just how important this was. It was the man’s job to know what was going on across the United States from day to day.
Frustrated, Pullman stood up. A long line of cars with special parking passes snaked away from the hangar and toward the rear exit of the airfield, which was closed to the public for today’s event.
Only race officials, airplane mechanics, press, and a few other people who needed to join the derby pilots in San Bernardino had permission to use the back exit.
As long as that line of cars was, the massive gridlock of cars trying to leave the airfield via the main exit was immensely worse. Funny to remember a time when a Model T put-putting down the road was such a curiosity that people stopped to stare at it.
Invention and manufacturing were surging forward fast these days, including the airplanes he’d just watched take off, creating an amazing new world for Americans and people all over the world.
Yet, as amazing as this might be, this rapid and extreme change also stirred up resentment.
Personally, he thought it would be better if the pace of change slowed down a little and gave folks a chance to get used to one newfangled invention before another came along on its heels to discombobulate things all over again.
But in his line of work, people’s opinions didn’t matter unless they decided to take drastic action.
Most criminals were easy to understand. They were motivated by greed.
Sure, he encountered violent crimes motivated by jealousy or rage.
But the vast majority of crimes the bureau dealt with these days were about money.
That meant they planned and executed their crimes just the same as any corporate businessman.
The criminals who really worried him were those who mixed their opinions with their religious beliefs.
A blend of toxic ideas and absolute belief in the rightness of one’s cause could make a person downright dangerous.
And he feared these women pilots might just stir up that kind of ire.
If these ladies got in the way of some criminal’s greed or some zealot’s righteous fury, they could find themselves in serious jeopardy.
Of course, nothing excused sabotage or threatening it.
Where the letter of the law was concerned, he saw the world in clear terms—black and white, right and wrong.
And whoever’d sent that telegram was in the wrong.
Worse, if the threat was real, the perpetrator might just get away with murder disguised by the danger of flying.
And that stuck in his craw something fierce.
Doing a crime was bad enough. Getting away with it was completely unacceptable.
Take those busted wires inside Amelia Earhart’s plane. If she’d crashed, the evidence would have burned up completely, leaving the world to blame Miss Earhart or the manufacturer of her aircraft.
His gut twisted at the notion of someone getting away with murder while he stood by with his hands in his pockets.
Pullman’s gut warned him that one or more of the fiery, courageous young women who’d accosted him about the telegram was going to die.
Or more precisely, get murdered.
He had a chance to stop it. Sure, his gut feeling was nothing more than a hunch. But over his many years as a lawman, he’d learned to trust his hunches. They rarely led him astray. And this was a strong one.
His jurisdiction was federal, which meant he could go anywhere and cross state lines in the pursuit of solving or stopping crime. He could get in his car and follow them all the way to Cleveland if he believed the threat of sabotage was real.