Abe in the living room, Thornton in the lean-to. Brad figured he’d got it just about right.
‘Heck, Rockwell, nice to see you again. Darn nice. Very dang darn nice.’
General Superintendent Carl Egge of the Air Mail Service of the United States Post Office puffed up and down, pumping Abe’s hand. The two men had known each other from two or three years before, when Egge had been in charge of the St Louis–Minneapolis sector of the transcontinental route and Abe had been his senior pilot.
‘Nice to see you too, Egge.’
‘Carl, please! Lord’s sakes! Can you think of anything sounds dumber than Egge? Lord! I once worked right alongside a fellow with quite a name too. Can you guess what he was called? Huh? Give you a hint there. We made quite a famous pair.’
Abe knew perfectly well the name of Egge’s former coworker, because Egge had told him on a dozen occasions in the past.
‘No idea, Carl.’
‘Jimmy Bacon. Bacon. Egge and Bacon. How about that?’
‘Very good.’
‘I’ll say! Boy! Egge and Bacon! Quite a pair!’
Egge puffed and hooted his way into something like quietness. They talked a little about Egge’s plans for the Air Mail Service, before Abe brought up the subject he’d come to discuss.
‘Say, Carl, you ever thought of opening up an international route?’
‘Hoo! Boy! Do you ever come up with some queer ideas! International? I should say not.’
‘It’s the next step.’
‘Yeah, but you ever been to Canada?’ Egge leaned forward and whispered confidentially. ‘It’s kinda snowy.’ He leaned back. ‘That’s difficult flying, Captain. Heck, they’re only letters.’
‘Cuba.’
‘Cuba? Coo-ba?’
‘It’s only ninety miles off the coast. In time, you could push the service on into the islands.’
‘Cooo-ba? Habana, Coooooo-ba? Could be. Neat idea. Don’t know how much mail there is.’
‘I’d fly the route. Carry passengers. Take a little cargo. I just need the mail to get me started.’
‘Heck, Rockwell, there’s other routes I might be able to find for you. Not Cuba though.’
Abe shook his head. He couldn’t say so, but it was Cuba that interested him, nowhere else. When he’d followed those two green-painted launches south from Marion, they’d headed down the Florida coast, skipping Bahama, Bimini and Andros, and made straight for the Puerto del Ingles, a little harbour a mile or two west of Havana. He’d continued to watch. In one single week he’d counted fifteen launches running south from Marion to Havana – and that meant the same number returning under cover of night. Fifteen launches, a hundred cases of booze on each, and a raw profit of thirty or forty bucks the case-load. Carry that on for fifty weeks a year, and there was a million-dollar racket running right under Gibson Hennessey’s nose.
‘Cuba would be a good start. You’d have your first international route right there.’
‘No. No authority. Looks likely Congress will put airmail routes up for tender some time soon. But domestic ones. Boston–New York. Chicago–St Louis. That kind of thing. International? Who knows?’
‘You don’t get things if you don’t push for them, Carl.’
‘No, siree, you don’t. And don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a good idea. You know me. I’d like all letters to go by plane. Stony Brook, North Dakota – whoosh!’ His hand soared off the desk, like an airplane in take-off. ‘Muddy Creek, South Dakota – whoosh!’ His hand landed again, nose first, very fast. ‘Your letter, ma’am. US Post Office at your service.’ He saluted. ‘Congress. It’s Congress is the problem. Those guys can’t think beyond costs. Look.’ He held up his hands, wrist to wrist, in the shape of a cross and waggled them. ‘My hands are tied. Sorry, pal. We got smart people in this country, only you know our problem? We got the government we got.’
‘Cost? That’s the problem?’
‘Just a wee little bitty of an itty-bitty problem.’
Abe struggled with himself again. The temptation to quit was always there, never fading. If Egge denied him a route, then Abe could maybe give up on his plans with an easy conscience… But with Abe, the black dog Conscience never lay quiet for long.
‘I’ll do it for free,’ he said, in a low voice.
‘Beg pardon? For free?’
‘It’s the validation I want, not the revenue. I figure I’ll get business more easily if people see Uncle Sam is happy to ride with me.’
Egge nodded solemnly. For all his fooling, he was a smart man, with an inflexible determination to build the US Air Mail Service. His nods grew slower and deeper.
‘For free? A daily service?’
‘Yes.’
Egge thought for a moment, then grinned. ‘Correos del Estados Unidos. Sounds good, huh?’
Willard sat down. Powell left the room. The door closed. Nothing moved.
Then one of the young men broke the stillness by standing up. He was below medium height, with dark curly hair, quick eyes and a look of amusement.
‘“When I said that, Thornton, you were not my employee”,’ he quoted. ‘Don’t mind Powell too much, old fellow. He likes to be a bit fierce.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Larry Ronson, by the way. Most of us do have first names around here, though it’s easy to forget it at times.’
The other men came over too.
Leonard McVeigh was a bull-necked red-head, with a strong grip and a look of military directness. He mangled Willard’s hand, grunting ‘Good to have you with us.’ He held Willard’s eyes for a second, as though checking to see how much competitive threat the newcomer might pose, before dropping back and letting the last two men come close.
‘Iggy Claverty,’ said one, as tall as Willard though not as broad, olive-skinned. ‘And before you dare to ask, Iggy is short for Ignacio. And before you dare to speculate, yes my mother is Spanish but no, I am not secretly a Catholic; no, I do not stink of garlic; and no, I do not have three hundred poor relations living in Spain. Finally, before you decide what to call me, you should know that any use of the name Ignacio will buy you a kick in the seat of your pants.’
‘OK, Iggy, I’ll remember.’
The last man was Charlie Hughes. Right from that moment, Hughes struck Willard as a misfit. The other men