Aces (21 page)

The ferry bumped against the pilings, tying up near where the fishing boats were unloading their day’s catch of tuna. Gold
and the Stiles brothers left the boat and killed an hour wandering the twisty, adobe-lined streets of Spanish Old Town. They
hailed a taxi and headed for the Mexican community along the southern shore, where they ate tamales and barbecue. After dinner,
while they were cabbing it back to the downtown area, their driver told them about a speakeasy in the basement of an office
building near the waterfront.

Gold and his friends had no trouble getting past the guard at the speak’s peephole door. Inside it was dimly lit, crowded
and smoky. They were shown to a small corner table near the bandstand, where a half dozen Negro musicians done up in gaudy
striped serapes and floppy straw sombreros were performing serviceable jazz.

Hull ordered tequila for the table. The speak had everything —scotch, rye, even Irish whiskey and French champagne—but a double
shot of tequila, served with salt and lime wedges, was the cheapest, most potent drink you could get in San Diego. The dusky,
dark-eyed Spanish girl who served them their drinks ran her fingers through Gold’s hair as she left.

“That’s one horny
señorita.”
Lester Stiles nudged Gold. “You going to do something about it?”

Gold blushed. He had no problem resisting the waitress’s charms. Erica was the only one woman for him now. “You guys just
don’t get it,” Gold replied. “I’m already in love—”

“Herm,” Lester patiently replied. “Love is not the issue at the moment.”

“You’re wasting your time, Les.” Hull chuckled. “Herm, you’re the goddamndest monogamous sonofabitch I ever laid eyes on.
I just hope that virgin of yours is ready for it when you finally do get her into the sack.”

Gold took the ribbing good-naturedly. When he’d confided in his friends that he was engaged to a girl he’d met back in Nebraska,
the brothers had grilled him for what they’d called “the juicy details” concerning his relationship with his fiancée. Not
willing to compromise her honor, Gold had told them that his relationship with Erica had not gone beyond a chaste kiss. Hull
and Lester had found that hilarious. They never missed the opportunity to kid him about it.

“The problem with you, Herman, is you worry too much,” Lester said.

Gold shrugged. He
knew
what he wanted: to establish his own aviation business so that he could settle down and support a wife. The problem was,
he had no money and no idea what that business should be. Gold’s instincts told him that California, where the climate favored
flying throughout the year, was where he’d find his opportunity, but when it came knocking he would have to move quickly to
take advantage of it. He would need start-up capital.

“Oh, shit,” Lester groaned. “Herman’s got that faraway look of his.”

Hull rolled his eyes. “We’d better order another round.”

“I don’t see the waitress,” Lester said, standing up. “I’ll go order at the bar.”

Hull waited until they were alone. “Is it being away from your girl that’s got you so down?” he asked softly.

“I miss her very much,” Gold said. “It’s been two months, but it’s funny. In a way I feel like I saw her yesterday, and in
a way, like I haven’t seen her for a hundred years.”

“Do you write her?”

Gold frowned. “I try, but I can’t seem to put down what it is I want to say on the paper.”

He’d tried just last night, so desperately wanting to describe to Erica the magnificent blue of the Pacific, as constant and
overwhelming a presence as the blue Nebraskan sky. He wanted to promise that someday he would take her to hear jazz; to eat
tacos; to see the funny Japanese huts built on stilts over the water. He wanted to write about the smell of the sea, and the
citrus; what the desert looked like, and cactus, and palm trees, and mountains. His thoughts, like his love, were vivid inside
him, but the words just wouldn’t come.

“The few lines I manage to scribble look so puny,” he complained to Hull. “I think to myself that I can’t send such a letter
to Erica, it would be like an insult…” Gold sighed ruefully. “I get so frustrated and upset I end up tearing up the paper
and sending nothing.”

Lester was returning to the table. “Hey, see that Mexican guy over there by the bar?” he asked excitedly.

Gold looked. The Mexican was standing with his back to the bar. He was wearing a baggy linen suit, an off-white shirt, and
a dark brown tie. His slicked-back hair was as shiny as black patent leather.

“Where’s our drinks?” Hull demanded.

“Coming,” Les said irritably. “While I was ordering them that Mex came up to me. He asked if I was one of the pilots from
the air show. I said I was, and get this: he asked me if I wanted to make some money flying hooch across the border!”

“Bootlegging?” Gold asked, pausing. “What kind of money do you think the guy was talking about?”

“Don’t even think about it, Herm,” Hull said. “It’s night flying, and these bootleggers can be tough customers—and there’s
the law to worry about.”

Gold nodded. Prohibition was a federal law, and he’d been in America only fourteen months. If he got caught the authorities
would probably deport him—after his jail sentence. He’d never see Erica again.

On the other hand, what were his chances of being with Erica as things stood? If he wanted to get married he would have to
leave the troupe. Captain Bob was firm in his rule against married stunt pilots. Gold was saving all the money he could. In
the two months since he’d rejoined the troupe he’d accumulated a little over three hundred dollars, stuffed into a sock, buried
at the bottom of his valise. At that rate, building up a nest egg large enough to both capitalize a business and support a
wife was going to take a long, long time. What if his opportunity came along sooner rather then later, and he wasn’t ready?
What if Erica met someone else?

What if he went to jail? he reminded himself. Or got shot dead? He decided that he would take the chance. What it boiled down
to was big dreams required big risks.

Gold stood up. “Wish me luck.”

“You’re really going through with this?” Hull frowned.

“I’m going to go talk to that guy about it.” Gold shrugged.

He walked over to where the Mexican was standing. “I understand you’re looking for a pilot,” he murmured.

The Mexican regarded him with interest. “Please come with me,
Señor
.”

Gold glanced back to where his friends were watching him and looking very concerned.

“Come!” the Mexican said, amused. “Are you afraid,
Señor?”

Gold followed him around behind the bar, through a beaded curtain, and down a hallway lined with liquor crates to a substantial-looking
metal door painted pale green. The Mexican knocked once, a peephole opened, and the Mexican said something in Spanish. The
peephole closed. Gold heard a number of locks being clicked, and then the door swung inward.

“Go in,
Señor.”
The Mexican in the linen suit stepped back to let Gold pass.

Gold was met by another Mexican, also well dressed and wearing a tie, but this man had his suit jacket off. Gold tried not
to stare at the automatic pistol in the man’s shoulder holster. The Mexican closed and locked the metal door. As it clanged
shut the sound made Gold think of jail cell doors.

He was inside what turned out to be a brightly lit, windowless storeroom that smelled strongly of spilt liquor. The man with
the shoulder holster led Gold through a maze of stacked liquor crates and tables loaded with chairs turned upside down. At
the far end of the storage room five men, all with their suit jackets off and all wearing guns, were seated at a round table,
playing cards. Off in one corner, at a table covered over with papers and ledgers, a man in a plaid shirt, corduroy trousers,
and straw cowboy hat sat working at an adding machine. As Gold approached, the man in the cowboy hat stopped punching the
keys of his machine and looked up. He was middle-aged and heavyset, and had a pencil-thin moustache. The man with the shoulder
holster spoke rapid-fire Spanish.

The man seated at the table nodded. “You are a pilot?” he asked Gold in thickly accented English. “You are with the flying
show?”

Gold nodded. “My name is Herman Gold.” He could just hear the speakeasy’s jazz band playing. He wondered if his friends were
still out front. He hoped so; the thought of them nearby made him feel much less alone.

“I am Hector Ramos,” the man wearing the cowboy hat said, pushing back his chair and standing up to shake hands with Gold.
Ramos was wearing high-heeled cowboy boots, but even with them he was no more than five feet, seven inches tall. “I saw the
air show,
Señor;
would I have seen you perform?”

“I play the part of the Red Baron—”

“
Si!
” Ramos exclaimed. He spoke Spanish to the men playing cards, punctuating whatever it was he was saying to them by grabbing
his testicles. The card players nodded, smiling at Gold.

“You are a very brave and excellent pilot,
Señor
Gold. Please, sit down.” Gold pulled over a chair from a nearby table and sat. “Would you care for a drink?” Ramos asked,
settling back into his own chair.

Gold noticed that none of the men in the room were drinking. “Perhaps after,” he demurred. “When our business is concluded.”

“Very good,” Ramos approved. “Let us talk business, then. Quite simply, I am in need of a pilot to fly cases of liquor across
the border from Mexico.”

“You have an airplane?” Gold asked.

“A Standard E-l.” Ramos nodded. “And two well-hidden airstrips, one in the Chula Vista section, a few miles from here, and
one in the desert, on the Tijuana side. I have been running this operation for quite a while, and it works smoothly. It is
a ten-mile round-trip. At dark you take off, you fly into Mexico, and you land. My people there will load up the airplane.
The bottles are specially packed in cushioned cardboard tubes to withstand the journey and fit most efficiently into the airplane’s
cargo hold.

“You’ve obviously got all the details worked out,” Gold said. “But you mentioned that you’ve been running this operation for
a while. What happened to the last pilot?”

“A fair enough question,
Señor
. There was a group here in San Diego who wished to become partners with me in my business. I refused their offer,” Ramos
smoothly explained. “Regrettably there was some violence, and my pilot, he was shot dead.”

Gold felt sick to his stomach. “This other group still around? Would I be in that sort of danger? I mean, flying in the dark
looking for a hidden airstrip in the middle of nowhere is dangerous enough—”

“This is not a coward’s business,
Señor,”
Ramos interrupted, sounding gruff.

“How many times a night would I be expected to make the trip?”

“I expect you will want to make it as many times as you can,
Señor.”
Ramos smiled. “Because each time you do I will pay you three hundred dollars.”

Gold stared at him. “Three hundred per trip? You mean, if I could manage, say, three trips, I could earn nine hundred dollars
a night?”

“Or twelve hundred for four trips a night. And the next night, and the night after that, and so on,
Señor
,” Ramos said. “I am a supplier of alcohol all up and down the California coast. I can use all you can bring me.”

Gold thought about all the guns in this room. “The air show will be leaving San Diego in ten days,” he began. Actually, Captain
Bob was moving on to Los Angeles sooner than that, but Gold didn’t want Ramos to know the true date he’d be leaving. The bootlegger
might decide that it made more sense to kill him rather than pay him for his last night’s work. “When the show leaves town,
I’ll be going with it.”

“As you wish,
Señor
.”

“How come you haven’t recruited one of the military pilots based at North Island?”

“Soldiers must account for their whereabouts to their superiors,
Señor
. Civilians do not.”

“When would I start?” Gold asked.

“Why not tomorrow night?”

Gold took a deep breath. “You’ve got yourself a pilot.”

Erica Schuler stood quietly in the doorway of Teddy’s garage, watching him work. He didn’t know she was there. His back was
toward her, and he couldn’t have heard her arrive in her car, due to the noise he was making removing the wheels of a tan,
jacked-up Winston coupe. Parked next to the Winston was a green tractor with its partly dismantled engine spilling over the
fenders. Erica knew that one of her father’s trucks was due into the garage tomorrow…

Teddy was up to his neck in work, Erica thought. Maybe Herman should have stayed and become a partner in the garage…

Teddy must have sensed her standing there. He turned suddenly, and smiled. “Hi, Erica! What brings you here?” he asked, setting
down his lug wrench.

“I was at the library reading up on something,” she said. “I thought I’d come say hello.”

“Well, isn’t that nice! I’ll get us a couple of orange pops and we’ll chat.”

“Thanks, but I can’t stay too long, Teddy. I’ve got chores at home.”

Teddy nodded. “What were you reading up on at the library?” He winked. “Airplanes, I’ll bet…”

Erica smiled, noncommittal. What she’d been reading up on were the facts of life; how babies get started, and how a girl could
know if there was one taken root inside her. She knew a lot from growing up on the farm, but knowing how it worked with sows
and mares didn’t help much when it came to the specifics of figuring out what was going on inside herself.

She’d been feeling funny inside these last few weeks, and she’d always been as regular as clockwork when it was her time of
the month. From the reading she’d done at the library (where she’d had to make up a humdinger of a yarn to get the texts without
raising the suspicions of the librarian, who belonged to her mother’s sewing club), she’d confirmed her fears that the way
she was feeling and the fact that she’d missed her period were pretty good signs she was pregnant.