Aces (29 page)

God, he was in bad shape if he was missing the maid…

A few minutes later the telephone rang. Gold answered it and was subjected to a vicious, anti-Semitic crank call. He hung
up. It rang again. He listened to the beginning of another hissed stream of bigoted invective, and then cut the connection.

What did he expect, calls from well-wishers? He’d been denying his origins for so long that he himself had begun to believe
his own fabrications. It had been easy to forget that America was a closed society, where Jews and communists were synonymous,
just as they’d been in Germany. Henry Ford’s newspaper, the
Dearborn Independent
, had for years been publishing anti-Semitic garbage about the supposed international Jewish conspiracy. Meanwhile, respected
college professors and government scientists were issuing well-received warnings that American I.Q. scores were declining
due to the influx of immigrants diluting the Anglo-Saxon stock. Politicians were winning campaigns based on calls for racial
purity. Just last year Congress had passed an immigration bill that placed restrictive quotas on Eastern Europeans coming
to America…

The telephone began ringing again. This time Gold let it, until it stopped. Then he decided to take the phone off its hook
for a while.

He wasn’t hungry, but he ate the casserole that Ramona had prepared for him anyway, just to give himself something to do.
He ate in the green and white tiled kitchen, listening to the rumbling of the electric icebox, reading the newspaper—Collins
Tisdale’s
Los Angeles Gazette
—propped up on the kitchen table. The metropolitan section of the paper was full of stories about him, and SCAT’s accusations
that he had intentionally bought unsafe German airplanes because of some German/Jewish international conspiracy.
How absurd
, Gold thought. A boxed editorial carrying Collins Tisdale’s byline was in the center of one page. The headline read, “
WHAT ELSE HAS GOLD(Stein) LIED ABOUT?
”

That killed his appetite once and for all. So both Collins Tisdale and Lane Barker had turned against him. So much for friends
in high places, he decided as he put the newspaper and his half-eaten meal into the garbage.

It was now around eight, and beginning to get dark. He wandered around the big, still house, clicking on lamps, listening
to the floorboards settle and the ticking of clocks. He stayed out of the children’s rooms, and the bedroom he shared with
Erica. He thought about Erica and the kids on the train, wondering how far they’d gotten, feeling like he was all alone in
the world. Erica had warned him that this would happen, but he’d refused to listen. He wondered if there was any way he might
be lucky enough to get a second chance…

The house was so fucking quiet! The silence was making him nervous, but he wasn’t in the mood to listen to the phonograph,
or the radio.

He thought about calling Teddy Quinn, or Hull Stiles, to see what they were up to, but he decided against it. Teddy was likely
with his fiancée, and Hull, who’d gotten married a couple of years ago, had a fine set of twin boys, toddlers now, who deserved
some time with their father.

He tried to crack that new book Erica had brought home and had been after him to read,
The Great Gatsby
. As he settled down in the living room with the novel he realized that it had been a long time since he’d read anything that
didn’t have to do with aeronautics. It was funny, he used to read a lot.

He had a hard time concentrating and found himself reading the first few pages several times. Around nine-thirty he was ready
to give up, and maybe try to go to bed, when the telephone in his study began to ring. He’d had the separate, unlisted extension
installed a few weeks ago, after the plane crash, when his home’s existing telephone line was being tied up with calls from
reporters.

Gold happily tossed the book aside. Only a few close friends had the unlisted number; he was more than eager to talk with
any of them. He hurried from the living room into the adjoining study. It had yellow walls above dark, chest-high wainscoting,
and colorful Navajo rugs on the polished wood floor. Four brightly polished brass lamps with green glass shades hung suspended
from the ceiling by lengths of chain. They cast golden pools of light on the rectangular dining table of red oak that Gold
used as his desk.

Gold shoved aside the piles of technical journals and grabbed the candlestick telephone off the table. “Hello?”

“Mister Gold, this is Tim Campbell. From the bank?”

“Campbell? How’d you get this number?” Gold demanded.

“Sir, your personal file was supplied to me by Mister Barker…”

“Oh, yeah, right…” Gold came around the side of the desk and pulled out his beechwood armchair. The chair creaked comfortingly
as he settled into the woven leather.

“I tried to get you at your other number,” Campbell offered. “But it’s been busy for the last hour or so. I guess your wife’s
on it?”

“What’s this about, Campbell?” Gold asked gruffly. He was in no mood to chat with this guy.

“It’s about your financial situation, Mister Gold. For the past few hours I’ve been going over your statements. If you’ll
pardon me for saying so, your business is in big trouble.”

“I didn’t need you to tell me that, pal…” Gold replied. “But since you called, I will tell you that I was surprised and disappointed
by the bank’s refusing my loan request after all the business we’ve done together—”

“What did you expect, Mister Gold?” Campbell asked. “Think about it. Today’s embarrassing revelations about you aside, if
you could be objective, would you consider yourself to be a good credit risk? Like I said, I’ve got all your numbers spread
out on my desk. I have no idea what amateur has been keeping your books, but believe me, they are a mess. I mean total chaos!
Anyway, as far as I can tell, you’ve left yourself absolutely no cash reserves. Nothing at all. The money’s been flowing through
your fingers like water.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to apply for the loan at another bank—” Gold began.

“I respectfully suggest that you’re going to receive the same treatment no matter what bank you go to,” Campbell said. “Again,
try to see the situation objectively. You’re in a neck-and-neck horse race against South California Air Transport for those
CAM routes, the heart and soul of your business. Actually, I’d say that right now, SCAT is out in front, due to that airplane
crash, and today’s revelations about your past.”

“That’s just a smear campaign against me,” Gold angrily protested.

“Of course it is,” Campbell agreed. “But it’s turning out to be a very effective one. Let me be totally blunt: you’re a foreigner,
a Jew. You’re the very sort of person the United States Congress was targeting when it passed last year’s Immigration Act—”

“I don’t need a lesson in current events from you.”

“Then you don’t need me to remind you that there was an extremely acrimonious public debate on that bill before it was overwhelmingly
passed by both houses of Congress—”

“So what?”

“Mister Gold, this is the same Congress that votes appropriations for the postal service.”

Damn, Gold thought. That nasty implication had not occurred to him.

“Anyway, I think other banks would turn you down no matter who you were,” Campbell was saying. “You’re already financially
overextended. Your business assets are mortgaged to the hilt to Pacific Coast Bank. What are you going to offer as collateral
to any other lender?”

“I—” Gold hesitated. “I have my house, and cars…”

“Fine,” Campbell said. “I’ve got the numbers right here. Give me a second—”

Campbell put down the telephone. Gold listened to the sound of an adding machine clacking. He realized he was sweating. This
was turning out to be the worst fucking day of his life.

Campbell was back on the line. “As I see it, you could pull maybe twenty grand out of your personal assets, using them as
collateral. That would be enough to keep your Mines Field facility—I don’t even want to discuss your Santa Monica money pit
right now—going for about three months. But you won’t have three months, because when word leaks out that you put your house
up, that’ll be the finishing blow to whatever reputation you have left. Come September fifteenth, a little over two weeks
from now, the postmaster general is going to look at your bid, think about how your business is operating on a razor’s edge,
and forget about you. The government can’t afford to take a chance awarding CAM routes to an organization in danger of bankruptcy.
SCAT may be the new kid on the block, but at least it’s financially secure.”

“So what should I do, Campbell?” Gold asked dryly. “Hang myself?”

“You’ve got a lot of problems, Mister Gold, but you also have a lot of potential. You’re a visionary, you need to be free
to dream—”

Gold was startled at the coincidence. It was as if Campbell had been listening in when he’d been lecturing Teddy and his design
team, earlier today.

“What you need is someone to keep the books while you’re off doing great things in the field of aviation.”

“Someone, huh?” Gold smiled. “Just what are you trying to peddle, Campbell?”

“It’s what I wanted to talk to you about this afternoon, at the bank. I believe I have the solution to get you out of the
mess you’re in now, and keep you out of financial trouble in the foreseeable future, but it’s a little too complicated to
go into on the telephone. I’d like to arrange a meeting with you…”

“All right, Campbell. I’m ready to listen.”

“Great! Why don’t you drop by the bank around—”

“No,” Gold cut him off. “You don’t have an office, so you come to me. If we’re going to talk about my financial situation,
we’ll do it in private. I’ll see you at my Santa Monica ‘money pit’ tomorrow morning. Say, ten o’clock?”

“Ten o’clock it is,” Campbell enthused. “You won’t regret this—”

Gold chuckled. “See you tomorrow, Campbell.” He hung up.

Campbell hung up the telephone. He leaned back in his chair and put his stockinged feet up on the desk. His jacket and tie
were off, as well as his shoes; his shirt collar was unbuttoned and his sleeves were rolled up. He didn’t care about his appearance.
At this hour of the night all the bigwigs had gone home. There were only three people in the huge bank: himself, the Mexican
cleaning lady, and the uniformed night watchman at his post all the way over by the locked revolving doors.

Campbell took a pack of Camels from out of the breast pocket of his shirt, extracted a cigarette, and lit it with a match.
He puffed blue smoke rings at the high ceiling, feeling totally relaxed now that his call to Gold had been successfully completed.
He watched the Mexican cleaning lady wheeling her cart and emptying wastebaskets. She smiled at him. Campbell smiled back.
They were old friends. Campbell worked late a lot.

He thought about the manila folders under his heels. The folders were filled with the neat columns of figures that summed
up Herman Gold and his business. Campbell smiled. Life was good, and getting better.

Life had not started out so well. He was born in 1899, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the youngest of seven children.
His father spent his days slaving away in a textile mill, and his nights getting drunk, then coming home to rage and swear
and beat his wife, while the children watched, cowering.

Campbell ran away when he was twelve. He rode the rails to Boston, where he joined a gang of older boys, who found his big,
dark eyes and winning smile useful in panhandling. In return, the gang took care of him, teaching him how to survive on the
streets. He became a con artist, a pickpocket, but he stayed away from the rough stuff: rolling drunks, purse-snatching, things
like that. He couldn’t abide violence. It reminded him of his father, and the pain he’d witnessed the man inflicting on his
mother.

When he felt he’d learned all that the older boys could teach, he ran away from them. He preferred being on his own. He rode
the rails, aimlessly, figuring that he could stay reasonably warm and dry, and almost always find something to eat on a freight
train. He was little and fast, and the years spent in his alcoholic, rampaging bastard of a father’s house had taught him
how to hide when it suited his purposes. A railroad-yard bull could shine his flashlight around a boxcar, and right at Campbell,
and not see him there, crouched still as a rat between the stacked crates and burlap sacks.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a yard bull finally did catch him. He was turned over to the police. Campbell refused to tell the authorities
where he was from because he didn’t want to be sent back to Providence. He spent a terrifying week in a jail cell, waiting
for his hearing. God! Even now, he couldn’t imagine how men survived incarceration. To this day, he was still afraid of police…
Anyway, his hearing finally came around. The judge gave him a final opportunity to disclose where he’d come from, so he could
be sent home. When Campbell refused to say, the judge put him into a nearby boy’s work farm run by the Protestant Church—until
he was sixteen.

Campbell expected the worst, and was determined to run away at the first opportunity, but the work farm turned out to be a
pretty good deal. They gave him a clean, warm bed, good food, and decent clothes, even if the chambray work shirts were stenciled,
in big white letters front and back,
TULSA YOUTH FARM
. The people who ran the place were stern, but fair. Mornings were spent tilling the fields. Afternoons were spent in the
classroom, learning the “three Rs.” There were church services every evening until bedtime. Campbell could have done without
the preaching, but all in all, the farm was a hell of a lot better than the life had been in Providence. The fact that the
work farm offered him the opportunity for an education was the main thing. Back in Providence his folks had never bothered
to send him to school.

It turned out he had a head for classroom work, especially when it came to arithmetic. The instructors at the work farm were
gratified to have a good student and encouraged him to progress by giving him extra lessons. By fifteen he’d earned his high
school diploma. His new knowledge fascinated and intrigued him. He asked if there weren’t some work he could do on the farm
that would allow him to use his education, as opposed to scratching in the Oklahoma dirt with a hoe, which he detested. They
let him teach reading and numbers to the youngest boys. His students called him “Mister,” and “Sir”—Campbell reveled in the
status and respect his cleverness had won for him.