'You game, Dick?'

  'I'm game.'

  I climbed into the plane and Blue strapped me tight. The propeller noise seemed to pluck each hair on my head out with immense pain accompanying each pluck. Then cold air started rushing at me and I felt as if I was losing interest in my head altogether. My head was a lost cause – it was chest and legs that counted. The noise changed note and I opened my eyes to find myself up in the sky; forget about head and chest, my legs danced and trembled as if they had a life of their own. I screamed but the wind whipped the sound away. I sobbed and that made hardly any sound at all.

  I think I went through all the horrors not gone through by the people who say their first flight didn't trouble them. I was their stand-in. I vomited over the side and wet myself. If I'd eaten anything in the past twenty-four hours I would've shat myself as well. I shook and pleaded with Blue to go down but he ignored me. He bellowed songs like 'John Brown's Body' and whooped as he threw the plane through some twists and loops. I almost broke fingers and wrists hanging on and my teeth chattered so hard I thought they would disintegrate.

  The ground below changed colour from green to brown and yellow as Blue swooped about the sky. He roared over a hill missing it by six inches and went up into a cloud so that all sight and sound stopped for what seemed like an hour. Despite the cold I was dripping sweat and I could feel the expression of terror on my face setting into a concrete-like permanency. I'd given up pleading; I sat with my eyes open and waited to die in a blurr of cold liquid sound.

  Then Blue cut back on the motor and we seemed to slide noiselessly through the air.

  'Great, huh?' He sounded calm and relaxed behind me.

  'Aah . . .' I said.

  'How's the head?'

  Fear had distracted me from the pain. I took a deep breath of the thin, cold air and let it out slowly. 'It's gone! My head's clear!'

  'Told you. Greatest cure in the world. Take the stick.'

  'What? Christ, no, Blue, don't!' I could feel the plane sliding away under my feet.

  'You can drive, can't you, and ride a horse?'

  'Yes! Yes! Shit, what's happening?'

  'This is sort of a combination of the two – hands and feet. Grab the stick and touch the rudder . . .'

  In the next hour Blue taught me to fly. He was a superb teacher and I forgot my fear in the thrill of mastering the skill. Blue was right, it was something like riding and driving and I was topnotch at both. Throw in first class vision and quick reflexes and you've got a pilot. The only thing I lacked was the iron nerve but, of course, with Blue there at the other controls, I didn't need it.

  'You were terrific, mate,' he said after he landed. 'Best first timer I ever saw.'

  'When can we do it again?'

  'You're hooked.'

  I was, too. I'd fly any time in any weather. I flew bi-planes and single-wingers, French, British jobs – whatever Blue was flying or whatever I could beg or borrow. I stayed sober in order to fly and dried out for days before presenting for my pilot's licence. In order to do that I needed an identity and it took a fair bit of work before I was able to construct one. I got an affidavit from Blue to the effect that I was his compatriot, Richard Kelly, a fellow pilot who had lost all his personal possessions in an air accident. I got a driver's licence and had my much depleted bank account as further documentation.

  I passed the test – I was going to say with flying colours, but even all my years in Hollywood wouldn't make me put down something as bad as that. As soon as I switched off, the examiner reached back and shook my hand.

  'Thank you, Mr Kelly. It's sure been a pleasure flying with you, and Francis J. Watts don't say that to many.'

  'Thank you, Mr Watts.'

  'Francis. Anybody flies like you do calls me Francis.'

  Over the next year and a bit I went into business with Bluey Tait. We must have crossed the continental United States a hundred times, from Montana to Texas, California to the east coast, and even to Cuba a couple of times, for booze and cigars. Chicago was our base: it was central, navigation was easy, to and from, with the lakes as markers, and it was comforting to see all that flat land around. Another plus was the administration of the city: this was fixed in almost every possible way and the officials must have got neckache looking the other way considering some of the cargoes we flew in.

  I never made it back to the Blackstone, but I lived pretty well again, although hiring and maintaining aircraft and insurance costs were high in those days. The only cheap part of the operation was the fuel which sold for about twenty cents per gallon. When the freight business was slow, Blue and I gave lessons but I never went up with novices. We also did a bit of passenger work, flying big De Havilands for people in a hurry. I enjoyed it all but in particular the young woman we hired to handle things in our little hole-in-the-wall office on Division Street near Tower Town, which was named after the big Chicago water tower and was the city's nearest thing to Greenwich Village.

  Terri Driver was twenty years old; she'd graduated magna cum laude from some secretarial college in the east and she could answer the phone, take dictation, calculate costs and make coffee all at the same time. She was the first person to answer 'Aussie Air's' advertisement in the Tribune, and we later found out that she'd camped outside the office for two hours before Blue arrived to interview applicants. I was Aussie Air's late-arriving junior partner. Times were already tough in the mid-twenties and Terri was glad of the job and the ten bucks we paid her most weeks. Despite the efficient way she kept the books, funds sometimes ran low and major repair bills or a job falling through at the last minute could practically clean us out. Terri juggled things, went without, got us credit when it seemed impossible and held the operation together. We told her to pay herself a bonus when we were flush but I doubt she ever did. I was in love with her of course, but I never got to first base.

  'You think I haven't met your type, just because you're an Aussie?' she said to me in the office one day. The office was a likely grappling place because there was hardly room for two people to stand without touching bodies at some point. Terri was of medium height; she had frizzy blond hair which frequently had a pencil tucked in it, sometimes a cigarette. She had big, round breasts that any normal man would want to touch. They were only inches from me now.

  'Don't know what you mean,' I said, inching one hand forward towards her waist. 'I'm not a type, I'm unique, I . . .'

  'Hah! Unique, you ain't. You're great fun, Dick Kelly, or whatever your name is, but you know what I see every time I look into your big brown eyes?'

  'No, what?' Another inch and I could slide my hand around her back.

  'Packed suitcases. You're always packed and ready to go. As I say, I've seen the type from Maine to Montana.' She stepped sideways and plunged into a pile of papers. I was hot for her and didn't want to give up without a struggle. I crowded close again and touched her hair.

  'Quit it!'

  What did you mean about . . . whatever my name is? That a crack?'

  Terri was a smart girl. She could see I was getting sore and she knew what do about it, like a boxer who knows how to put a combination together. Jab – she leaned towards me and gave me a light kiss on the lips. Body punch – 'Your name is Brown, or something like that.' Right cross – 'And you're afraid to fly alone. Want me to read your character some more?'

  I slumped down into the only chair in the office and lit a cigarette. 'That's enough, Terri. How did you know about the name?'

  'A guy walked in here one day . . . don't worry, he doesn't live in Chicago, he was just passing through, and he said he'd seen you come in here and he thought he knew you from Australia. An Aussie, like me, he asks. When I said that was right, he muttered Brown, Brown something like that. Said his name was MacKnight. Dick, you've gone pale!'

  I was shaking. My deserted wife, Elizabeth MacKnight, had cousins and family connections all over the place. As far as I knew I was still married to her and the last thing I wanted was for her to get wind of my whereabouts. She was quite capable of crossing the world to haul me back and if she was still of the same mind as she had been six or seven years before she would blackmail me into compliance.25 But Terri had said he was just passing through . . . I could shave off my moustache . . . maybe we could shift our base further east or west . . . my mind raced, then I recalled the other thing she'd said.

  'Are you all right, Dick. Want some water or something?'

  'No, no. Er . . . Terri, what was that about flying alone?'

  'You never do it. I've seen you wriggle and twist to get out of it. You'll fly anything with wings but not on your own.'

  'Don't tell Blue, for God's sake!'

  She laughed. 'He knows. He jokes about it.'

  'Jokes?'

  'Said he was going to enter you in a solo round America race.'

  'Jesus!'

  'Don't worry about it.' She pulled the pencil from her hair and started ticking off items on a sheet. 'You've other things to worry about. Times is bad, Dick. Aussie Air ain't doin' so good.'

  When she joked like that you knew she was serious. 'How close to the edge are we?'

  'Off the edge and fallin' fast, if you'll excuse the language.'

  I lit her a cigarette from the stub of mine and we both blew smoke and contemplated the future. At that moment Blue dashed into the office. He was wearing a greasy overall, had oil and muck on his hands and face and the only clean thing about him was the slip of paper he held in his hand.

  'Hally-bloody-loolyah!' he yelled.

  'What, what?' I said.

  'You'll never bloody believe it. The other day I got talking out at the airfield to this bloke. Long, tall streak he was, Texan. Said he was a rich millionaire, well, they all do, don't they? Anyway, he said he was making a flying picture in Hollywood and needed pilots and planes.'

  'Hollywood,' Terri said. 'Oh, yeah.'

  'No, listen. I told him Dick 'n' me could fly any fucking thing . . . excuse me, Terri, and we could get him planes. All it took was money.'

  'That's right,' Terri said.

  'So, he turns up again today and hands me a cheque – twenty-five fucking thousand dollars!'

  Terri shook her head. 'Has to be a dud.'

  'Not this guy,' Blue said. 'I reckon he's genuine.'

  I felt excitement and a surge of hope. Hollywood again, away from Chicago and some sneaking, tale-telling MacKnight. 'What's his name, Blue?'

  'I dunno. I can't read the signature. Hughie . . . Howie.'

  'Let me see that!' Terri snatched the cheque and held it to the light. 'Christ,' she said, 'Howard Hughes.'

  19

  Blue and I spent the next six months acquiring aircraft and flying them to California. We got a Spad, an SE-5, Sopwith Pups and Camels, Fokkers – relics from the war. Hughes had scouts in Europe doing the same thing and he hired war aces like Roscoe Turner and stunt flyers like Paul Mantz26 to throw them around the skies.

  Blue laid claim to a dozen 'kills' in the war so he was clearly an ace; I was never quite sure what I was. Certainly not an ace and no stunt flyer either. It didn't bother me at first; I just flew the planes, always with a co-pilot, to Mines Field in Inglewood (the site of that modern monster, the LA International Airport – Jesus, the scares and disappointments I've had there).

  Some of the planes we bought outright with Hughes' money, others we leased, and some we bought ourselves and leased to Hughes. We were paid salaries, commissions and we were to get special bonuses and allowances for flying for the cameras. It was all very complicated and it soon became obvious that Blue and I needed Terri to keep things straight. Besides, I was still hoping to get under her guard somehow and show her what a good time we could have together. I admitted as much the day we arrived in Los Angeles as a team. A cool December day it was; we had flown in, of course, in a Fokker, and Terri had telephoned ahead for rooms in a medium grade hotel in downtown LA. At the hotel I waited until Blue was out of earshot and then I herded Terri into a corner.

  'Blue's buggered,' I said. 'He'll sleep like the dead. D'you know that this place has giant bath tubs and giant beds. It'd be crazy for us to get lonely. You know how I feel about you.'

  'You want to wash my back and sleep with me?'

  'Yes.'

  'Willing to do something for me?'

  'Anything.'

  'You know I can't fly?'

  'Ummm.'

  'I want you to teach me. Take me up tomorrow for my first lesson. I've never even touched the controls. I'm a flying virgin. What d'you say, Dick?'

  'Don't drown in the bath,' I said. Nothing was going to get me up in the air without another fully qualified pilot – nothing! I was very careful about the assignments I accepted; I never flew a French Spad for example, terrific planes though they were, because they were one-seaters.

  So things stayed as they were. We rented a house in Inglewood with a cottage at the back where Terri slept in something approaching respectability. After a week or so Blue moved the first of a long series of girlfriends into the house and I found myself odd man out. I spent a lot of innocent time with Terri, playing cards and such, and some sinning time in the bars and whorehouses. Hughes kept us pretty busy working on the planes, submitting chalkboard plans of battle scenes and scouting for locations all over the western United States. He wanted fluffy clouds, or he wanted fields below, or a river or a mountain. He wanted everything and he wanted it yesterday.

  Strange as it may sound, I worked for Howard Hughes for nearly seven months before I laid eyes on him. Blue didn't see him again after their initial meetings. We got memos and phone calls and followed orders. Terri submitted invoices and cheques got cashed. A few days before filming began I started to get an eerie feeling that I was working for a ghost. I couldn't shake the feeling off and it undermined my confidence.

  'Does he exist?' I asked Terri one day.

  'Search me. His cheques are good. Isn't there someone you can ask? You seem to know your way around this town a bit.'

  I did, of course, from my sojourn five years before. The place had grown a lot, spread in all directions. There were more people and many more cars. Bare hillsides now had white stucco bungalows on them and the vacant lots that had been a feature of the streets and even some of the shopping districts had filled up. I'd kept what would now be called a low profile; I had debts and disgraces from my earlier days in Hollywood that I preferred to forget. I also had enemies – Douglas Fairbanks for one, a certain bootlegger, the IWW – quite enough to make me feel happiest with my goggles on and my silk scarf obscuring part of my handsome face.

  But this was serious. I knew Hollywood and knew how big the lies there could be, how a scheme could collapse overnight no matter how huge and solid it might seem by daylight. Blue and I owed money on the planes and needed the salaries and commissions to keep coming for quite some time if we were going to come out of Hell's Angels, which was the name of the picture, in the black. I cast around for someone to confide in, someone who wouldn't betray me if it was in his best interest not to. Someone unprincipled, conniving and ruthless. The answer was obvious – H. Eliot Silkstein, my former agent.

  I drove Aussie Air's Dodge convertible north along Western Avenue the fifteen miles or so to Sunset Boulevard where Silkstein had his office. The pink pile of the Beverly Hills Hilton still dominated the straight stretch where the deals were done and the reputations were made and destroyed. I hadn't telephoned because the explanations were too complicated: how did you tell someone you'd run out on that you were back, using a different name and either about to be rich or about to be bankrupt? It wasn't something to do on the phone, maybe it wasn't something to do at all.

  I parked in the street between a yellow De Soto and a black Hispano Suiza that looked like the twin of the one Pedro Cortez and I had escaped from Mexico in. We'd sold it for a song just over the border so maybe it was. If the owners of these cars are clients of Silkstein's, I thought, then the old crook must be doing all right. I put my hand on the plate glass door and glanced automatically at the list of Silkstein's companies – his vanity had him display them right out on the street. The list was longer than ever but there was a change in the layout. Where 'H. Eliot Silkstein' had appeared in one inch high letters over the list of companies, now 'N. Robert Silkstein' was written instead, in two inch high letters.

  I'd never heard that H. Eliot had any sons but, given that screwing women was his favourite recreation, it seemed more than likely. And Hollywood being Hollywood, the sons were often bigger rogues than the fathers – think of Selznick – so anything I could have tried with Dad, I reasoned, might work with Junior. I noticed the updated decor in the passageway and on the stairs where I'd first encountered John Gilbert and his squeaky voice. Updated but not improved; it was showier and more vulgar if anything, vaguely Viking in mood. That was a good sign. Not such a good sign was the woman at the reception desk – same tight blond curls, same tight red mouth, same Miss Dupre.

  I was wearing a modified version of my flying outfit – new leather jacket, silk scarf, well-pressed corduroys, with the raffish moustache and slightly curling hair, and she didn't recognise me. The last time she'd have seen me I'd have been in a Palm Beach suit with my hair lacquered into place.

  'Yes?' She had a way of making the word sound like 'Screw off, buddy.'

  'Commander Kelly to see Mr Silkstein.'

  She consulted the book on her desk but didn't really need to. 'Appointment?' she said, not looking up.

  'Afraid not.'

  'Afraid you can't see him then. And please, don't smoke in here. It affects my sinuses.'

  I'd taken a cigarette from my silver case. 'H. Eliot's cigars didn't bother you.'

  'I beg your pardon.'

  'The first time I saw you you were on guard out here while the boss screwed a redhead. I guess he must've been doing some work at home if he's got this son, Robert N.'

 

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