The Hot Pilots (7 page)

When she got there she found that the door was ajar. It squeaked somewhat on its hinges as she pushed it open.

“Susan?” she heard Don call out.

“Yes—”

“Come in …”

She entered through a short hallway, going past the coat closet, into the large living room. The walls were painted pale gold
with white trim, and dotted with tasteful landscapes in ornate, gilded frames. There was light blue wall-to-wall carpeting,
and furniture upholstered in a cabbage rose chintz, arranged around an oval coffee table with a mosaic top and curved, brass
legs. The room was tasteful and immaculate, but obviously unlived in, like a display behind the plate glass window of a furniture
store.

Susan smiled, thinking that she knew Don well enough to guess that cabbage rose chintz was beyond him. He must have sicced
an interior decorator on the place, and now poor Don probably felt like a guest in his own home; and yet the notion of having
everything “just so” because it was the proper thing to do fit Don to a tee.

“Don?” she called. “Where are you?”

“In the bedroom …”

Oh, great
, Susan thought.
No way
, she decided.

“Well, I’m
here,
” she said sweetly. “Aren’t you going to come out and see me …?”

She stifled her shock as he came staggering into the living room clutching a fifth of vodka, looking and smelling like he’d
just crawled out of a sewer.

“My God, what’s happened to you?” Susan demanded.

He didn’t answer, but just stood swaying in his rumpled clothes, his hair dangling in greasy ringlets down his forehead. She
watched him stumble over to a wall, lean his back against it, and then slide down to the carpet. He stayed there, with his
head sagging, his knees drawn up, and the bottle on his lap, like some back alley derelict.

“Just how drunk are you?” Susan demanded.

He shrugged, looking up at her with bleary eyes. “Not very. I’ve been trying, but every time I get close I get nauseous and
have to stop …”

She couldn’t help laughing. “But you did drink all that vodka?”

His grin was horrendous. “Second bottle …” he said proudly. “First was gin …”

“Well, I wouldn’t brag about it.” Susan scolded, her smile fading. “From the looks of you it’s clear you can’t hold your liquor
…”

He looked away, shaking his head. “Can’t hold my booze,” he muttered thickly. “And can’t hold my woman …”

Oh, shit, here we go
, Susan thought.
He’s going to start blubbering about Linda Forrester
.

“Okay,” Susan began briskly, thinking to head him off, wrap this up, and get the hell out of his apartment and back to work.
“I guess it’s clear you had a little tiff with Linda. These things happen. No doubt she’s just as upset as you are…”

Fat chance of that
, she thought. It would be like expecting an alley cat—and she
did
mean
alley
cat—to be remorseful while it was licking the canary’s feathers off its claws…

“Don, I’m sure that if you just telephoned Linda you two could make up, and everything would be all right and…”

“We’re through—” Don cut her off. “I caught her with—”

“Yes?” she asked. He’d paused abruptly, and now he was looking at her so strangely. “What are you trying to tell me?” She
knelt beside him on the carpet.

“I—I caught her with another man!”

“I’m sorry.”
And I’m not in the least bit surprised
—

“I went to see her last night, and I caught her with him … I—don’t know who he was …”

“Oh, Don,” she sighed, taking his hand. “I’m really so sorry for you.”

“Yes,” he murmured, eyeing her. “I think you really are … and after I treated you so shabbily…” He looked wistful. “But then
you
know
what it feels like to lose someone …”

“You mean my husband, I suppose?” Susan asked quietly. When Don nodded she said, “Well, yes. I suppose I do …”

“How did you get over it?”

“Get over it?” she echoed. “It’s been ten years since I lost Blaize, but I still …” She trailed off, shaking her head. “It
helps to know that he died doing what he wanted to do, for a good cause. He’d struggled for so long to be an RAF fighter pilot,
and God knows the war he fought was just and right … It also helps to know that he died a hero, and that my husband lives
on in my son … I think it was knowing that I had to carry on for the sake of Robbie that kept me from crumbling to pieces
… But you asked me how did I
get over
my loss, and so I have to tell you that if the loss is genuine, you never
do
gt over it—”

She could feel herself getting all unsettled inside, so she clamped the lid on her memories, shook herself, and then said
brusquely, “But drinking yourself sick isn’t going to help anything.” She reached over and took away the vodka. “I think you
should take a shower, eat something, and then just go to sleep. I know it sounds trite, but you really will feel much better
in the morning—” She began to stand up.

“Wait—” Don implored. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to get back to the office …”

“No! Stay!” He seemed to be trying to make a joke out of his desperate plea. “You’re my secretary, right?” he grinned. “Well,
today we’re working outside of the office.”

“Oh, Don,” she said, uncertain. “I’m not sure it would be appropriate.”

“Suzy, I just need somebody to be with,” he said. “You know how that can be, don’t you?”

“Yeah …” she said after a moment. “I know…”

So what if she didn’t go back to work today, she thought? The other girls could cover the telephones for the rest of the afternoon,
and she didn’t have to be home at any specific time for her son, who today was out sailing with his uncle.

Her brother Steve had always shown an interest in Robbie, but never more so than during this month’s leave from the Air Force.
For her part, Susan had encouraged her son’s relationship with his uncle. Now that Robbie was becoming a young man, she was
grateful that the boy had a strong father figure to whom he could relate. Her father spent as much time as he could with his
grandson, but his schedule was hectic, and anyway he was getting on in years. Even when he’d been younger Herman Gold hadn’t
been the type to go running on the beach, or play catch, or do any of the other things that amused a ten-year-old, although
Robbie did look forward to flying with his grandfather in his private plane.

“… You just wait here,” Don was saying. “Maybe make us some coffee, while I shower and shave. Then we can go out. We can go
for a drive along the coast. Wouldn’t that be nice? Out by the water, where everything’s cool and clean and fresh …”

He took hold of her hand and squeezed it gently. Susan thought,
How good to be held again, even that little bit
. Don was looking at her with such need in his eyes, and wasn’t that what
she
needed: to be held and cherished?

“Okay,” she said. “You get cleaned up. I’ll make us some coffee.”

Herman Gold’s huge corner office was located on the top floor of the main building. It had a commanding view of GAT’s sweeping
airfields, and the majestic, tawny California hills beyond the factory complex’s boundaries. The office had wall-to-wall,
moss green carpeting, and was furnished with sofa and armchair groupings upholstered in supple, burgundy leather. Custom-built
display cases laden with mementos highlighting Gold’s decades in the aviation business lined the oak-paneled walls, beneath
his collection of commissioned oil paintings of GAT airplanes in flight. Gold’s desk chair was a wine-hued, leather throne.
His oak, marble-topped desk was the length and width of a dining room table. Gold had been surrounded by these—and other—trappings
of wealth and power for so long that he scarcely noticed them. If pressed, he would have admitted that he took them for granted;
that he’d had so much for so long that he’d become jaded.

Today, however, was different. Today he was as excited and happy—and goddamned
grateful
—as a kid on Christmas morning over what good fortune had seen fit to present him.

When his secretary told him over the intercom that she’d located Don Harrison and had him on the line, Gold snatched up the
telephone.

“Don, it’s me. I’ve just got off the phone with my son—”

“Oh, how
is
Steve these days?” Don asked a trifle coolly, Gold thought.

“You should know as well as I do that he’s doing just fine in Washington.” Gold laughed. “You’ve been spending so much time
with Suzy and Robbie; whenever
I’m
with my grandson he never shuts up about his Uncle Steve at the Pentagon …”

“Yes, that’s true,” Don admitted. “But when Robbie gets off on that kick of his about Steve I suppose I just shut it off.”

What an odd thing to say
, Gold thought. “Well, anyway, you’ll never guess why I called! It’s just the greatest news—”

“Just spit it out, Herman,” Don replied, sounding amused. “What is it? Something about the 909?”

“No! No!” Gold impatiently cut him off. “It’s better than business—”

“Now I
am
stumped.” Don chuckled. “What’s up?”

Gold took a deep breath. For so many years he’d been
dreaming
of the day when he could say these few words: “Steve’s decided to leave the Air Force and come to work with us—”

“I see,” Don replied, sounding like he’d just been told he was the target of a lawsuit. “In that case, Herman, you’ll have
my resignation on your desk by the end of the day.”

“What?” Gold gasped, bewildered. “What did you just say?”

“I think you heard me.”

“Then I can’t
believe
what I just heard. Come upstairs and talk to me.”

There was a pause, and then Don said, “All right, I’m on my way.”

Gold hung up the phone, his mind in turmoil. What the hell could Don be thinking of? Did the kid think that Steve was meant
to replace him? If so, that was a ridiculous notion. Gold loved his son, but when it came to ability,
ten
Stevies couldn’t do what one Don Harrison accomplished around there.

Thanks to Don, the preliminary specs on the new 909–1 had been delivered to the airlines on schedule. The airlines had been
enthusiastic concerning the new, intercontinental version of the 909 jetliner, and introducing a second version of the 909
had presented an unforeseen benefit: GAT was now writing orders on
both
models. The airlines, presented with a choice, had decided to buy the smaller, more economical, original version of the 909
to use domestically, and the 909-I for international flights.

What was even sweeter to Gold than a ledger filled with black ink was the fact that GAT’s ability to offer a choice scooped
Amalgamated-Landis. Of course, it had also helped when the news broke that the Civil Aeronautics Board was taking another
look at the AL-12. The bad publicity caused Amalgamated’s stock to drop, and some of the airlines to rethink their purchasing
plans. By the time the smoke had cleared, GAT had been able to grab away a solid portion of A-L’s orders.

Gold knew that he had Don Harrison to thank for this good fortune. Sure, he had been able to use his influence to get Jack
Horton to sic the CAB on poor old Tim Campbell, but nothing of lasting worth would have come of that ploy if Don hadn’t completed
the play by coming up on time with a magnificent set of plans for the 909-I, and also creating a brilliant marketing strategy
to position the two airplanes.

Since then, Don had put his mark everywhere in the company, moving the engineering department out of the era of Teddy Quinn,
and into a new age.

Last July, when Don had so abruptly and mysteriously ended his relationship with that Forrester woman, Gold had been concerned
that the obviously emotionally distraught young man would allow his concentration to wander, and his work to suffer. That
had not proved to be the case. Perhaps it had been Suzy who was responsible for Don’s speedy emotional recuperation. She and
Don had certainly become inseparable the last couple of months, and Suzy was very happy about that, Gold knew. As for Don,
since he’d gotten back with Suzy he seemed more relaxed and at ease with himself. He’d never been brighter or more innovative.
His inspired work on the Mayfly project was a case in point.

The Mayfly reconnaissance jet that had started out life as a whimsically folded paper airplane, had since evolved into a titanium-built
aeronautical hybrid. The Mayfly prototype looked like a sailplane due to her pencil-thin fuselage, and albatrosslike, extended
wings. She was gossamer light, designed to glide at seventy thousand feet with only periodic help from her idling—to conserve
fuel—turbojet. It was this inspired concept of harnessing the wind that had allowed the GAT Candy Store to devise an airplane
capable of carrying a man and a camera virtually anywhere over the Soviet Union for up to eleven hours at a stretch. The credit
for the glider concept, and for the R & D team leadership that had turned the idea into sleek, bold, matte black reality,
belonged to Don Harrison.

The intercom buzzed.

“Yes?” Gold demanded.

“Mister Harrison is waiting.”

“Send him in—”

“It’s no joke, Herman,” Don Harrison said. “If Steve comes to work here, I go.”

“But why?” Herman asked, looked pained. “For chrissakes, Don. Why would you feel that way?”

Harrison leaned back in his armchair and regarded Herman, who looked so forlorn and distraught behind his big desk.
What would you say if I told you that the reason I hate your son is because I caught him fucking my girl?

Make that ex-girl
, Harrison reminded himself. “I’ve worked hard for GAT these past years,” he began. “I feel that in some large part I’m responsible
for this company’s continuing string of engineering successes—”

“Absolutely,” Herman replied, smiling. “Don, I think you’re jumping to conclusions. All I want to do is bring my son into
the company in some specific capacity. For instance, I could put him in public relations, or maybe sales. An ex-Air Force
officer would be a perfect representative of this company in both the commercial and military sales markets.” He paused. “Stevie
wouldn’t—or maybe I should say
couldn’t
—replace
you
.”