Trophy for Eagles (9 page)

"Come on, Bandy, I want you to meet Raymond Orteig, the man who owns this hotel, someone I hope you get to meet again soon. You too, Millie."

The obviously disgruntled waiter sat them down; he left, and there was a strained silence until the passageway to the kitchen erupted in a flurry of waving arms and flying towels.

A short bald man, his smile twice as broad as his pencil-thin mustache, rushed toward them.

"Jack, where have you been? I've thought about sending a search
party out for you."

Winter embraced Orteig, his long arms reaching down to enfold him.

"Raymond, you are as charming as always. I have a young friend
here who is trying for your prize. Raymond, please meet Frank
Bandfield."

Orteig stepped back and gravely looked Bandfield over, then extended his hand.

"Young man, I wish you the very best. I hope that you'll be very
careful."

Bandfield felt Millie squeeze his hand.

"It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Orteig. Don't worry about me; I've got a fine airplane."

Orteig's irrepressible smile broke out again as steaming bowls of cheese-encrusted onion soup were brought in, followed by a tray of
coffee cups.

"Jack, my thanks for bringing in Mr. Bandfield." He picked up a
cup and said, "Let's have a toast to a successful flight."

Bandfield picked up a cup and sniffed it—it was champagne, the
first he'd ever seen.

They toasted, his eyes meeting Millie's over the cup's rim. It was a good beginning.

*

Mineola, Long Island/May 17, 1927

WEAF had played "Blue Skies" three times that morning, the radio
waves somehow washing through the pouring rain. She stared
resentfully at the stack of magazines that Bruno gave her instead of companionship. Every advertisement was alike, and every one was
wrong.
McCall's, Woman's Home Companion,
no matter, they
were all run by men to intimidate women. If you used Hinds lotion,
brushed with Kolynos, smeared on Odo-ro-no, and swabbed out with Lysol, you might just be worthy to cook a man's supper for him. It was baloney.

Yet Charlotte Morgan Hafner complied. She washed, combed, purified, and sanctified herself to be ready for Bruno and for the lovers he tolerated but would not acknowledge. Bruno's earthy European attitude toward bathing had taken her aback initially, but
he had conditioned her, made her accept the fact that pilots were all
healthy animals, usually hot and sweaty, their nails smeared with flying's trademark, ground-in grease.

Donald Morgan's long, slender fingers came back to her, always clean, always beautifully manicured, but now just small scattered
bones somewhere in France. Her first husband had been an eighteen-year-old sophomore at Princeton and a virgin when they met. She was a dancer of seventeen and was not. She seduced him, and he insisted on marrying her, over his family's violent objections.

Life with Donald Morgan had been far from perfect, but he had
valued her, staying with her and their daughter, Patty, even when he was desperately concerned about the rift within his family the
marriage had caused. He went to fly with the French to gain enough
glory that his mother and father would have to welcome him—and his own family—back. He gained glory enough, but he didn't return, leaving her wealthy but more terribly alone than she had ever been.

There was more than irony in the fact that when she married again, it was to a German flyer, an ace who had actually fought opposite Donald on the Western Front. She had married Bruno
Hafner in large part to outrage Donald's parents. Despite the differ
ence in their backgrounds, she and Donald Morgan had seemed to be a genuine pairing, liking the same things, being sufficient for each other. Their sex life, after its tempestuous illicit beginnings, had become routine.

With Hafner, everything had changed. They had few interests in common except their joint business ventures and a driving, almost
obsessive sexual communion that seemed to flare endlessly. It was a
passion for which she was both grateful and ashamed. She and Bruno had a basic rutting appeal for each other that had dominated their early relationship, a mindless need for endless coupling that
left them thirsty and exhausted but rarely satisfied. They could go
from a bitter argument over finances to a tousled tumble on the
office floor in an instant. A simple touch was enough to set them off;
Bruno laughingly compared them to mating mooses.

The heat of their loving didn't impair their enjoyment of others, and they had soon reached an unspoken tolerance. Yet they returned to each other, time and again, their mutual sexual needs providing a basis for their continued business success.

But now she was lusting for another man, pressing her pubis
against the dresser's edge in rhythm with the fast-stroked brushing of
her shingle-bobbed hair, concentrating on the coming pleasure. In
a box on the dresser were yesterday's purchases from Bonwit Teller.
She'd bought a $24 corset for half price and picked up six pairs of
chiffon stockings for under $4. She had a dozen corsets and plenty
of stockings, but the lean days when she was a chorus girl were still
with her, and she hated to pass up a bargain.

"God, I'm hot. I wish to hell he would call." She tried to
remember whether Bruno had said whether he'd be back for supper. The tickets on the dresser were for tonight's performance of
Hit the
Deck;
he would probably want her to meet him in New York. It was
one of their few points of difference. They had already seen the show, but he enjoyed the inevitable visit to the young show girls
backstage. She'd have preferred to see Harry Langdon at the Roxy. It
didn't matter. Tonight she'd watch whatever it was in a warm, satisfied glow.

Tossing the brush aside, she examined herself critically in the mirror. A bulge around the middle reminded her of her third obsession: chocolate. Well, she couldn't stop eating chocolates, so she would just cut down on her drinking.

It was difficult being older than everyone she ran with. Bruno
never let her forget the difference in their ages. In return, she never let him forget the difference in their bank balances. He was making plenty of money, but spending it wildly; when he needed capital, he
always turned to her.

She whirled away from the mirror, vowing to lose a few pounds
this summer; until then the bulge could be suppressed by a corset. She ran her fingers over her firm, large breasts, grateful for the abundant pleasure they provided. She was damned if she would
strap them down. There was no way she could have a boyish look,
and when it got down to basics, men preferred a woman with curves, no matter what the fashion magazines said. She peered into a hand mirror, patting makeup to cover the small lines around her eyes.

I'm wasting time, she thought. Charlotte dressed quickly, trying
to forget how bored she was with practically everything but sex and flying. Six years ago, her marriage had been a lifebelt; it was turning
into a penance. Hafner's appeal was eroding into a solely sexual one, helped only by his letting her take a decisive role in the business. The problem was that she didn't like dealing in surplus
armaments, working with sleazy characters from around the world.
It was particularly bad because poor old Murray, the chauffeur, was
always slavering after her, like a hound dog in heat. Bruno trusted him completely, and insisted that he be in on everything.

Roosevelt Field, with its ever-changing mix of strange airplanes and strange men, was a godsend. She got to fly three or four times a
week, and viewed the various pilots as a Whitman's Sampler of sex. A few, like Lindbergh and Byrd, were aloof, but most of the pilots
played the game very well. Some, like Acosta, were almost too aggressive. She actually liked them to be a little stand-offish, to let her seduce them. God knew she didn't need much seducing herself.

She grabbed her helmet and a leather jacket. "An hour of flying and an hour of loving—that ought to do it."

*

Roosevelt Field, Long Island/May 17, 1927

Bandfield was amazed at how much he liked rich people when he got to know them. In California, he'd donned a defensive armor of derision about wealthy people, contending always that he didn't need money to be happy, while they, of course, did.

Jack Winter had changed all that. He was only forty, many times a millionaire, and obviously capable of a good time under any circumstances. He had inherited money from his father, who had made a fortune in timber, first in Wisconsin and then in Washington, before coming back to live the good life on Long Island.
Bandfield laughed when he realized that Jack Winter's father was
exactly the kind his own father had hated and had organized labor unions against.

Winter's father had inspired in Jack a tremendous admiration for Teddy Roosevelt, and Winter talked admiringly to Bandy of the
need to embrace, the vigorous, sporting life as every man's goal. It was implicit that he really meant every
rich
man's goal, but Bandy
didn't comment.

Winter had volunteered for the Air Service in mid-1918, lying about his age, but had been rejected when he failed to pass the eye exam. Frustrated, he returned to business, and by following his
dad's advice to always go opposite to what the mugs were doing, made a continuous fortune in the stock market, in good times or bad.

Jack and Frances were obviously genuinely fond of Millie; no one
had said anything, but Bandy guessed they couldn't have children of
their own by the way they doted on her, treating her more as a daughter than a niece. Surprisingly, they extended the same care to Bandfield as well, either because they liked him or because they liked Millie liking him.

Back in California, Bandfield had never had any personal knowledge of anyone who lived as well as Jack Winter. The morning after
they had met, Winter had taken Bandy and Millie down to his
marble-columned brokerage, complete with murals of the colonists
buying Manhattan from the Indians. He explained the operation of the market, and it didn't surprise Bandfield when Millie seemed to know all about it; she was one smart cookie. It all made sense to Bandfield, except that he couldn't understand why anyone would spend his life doing it.

He understood everything that afternoon when the Rolls carried them to Winter's house on Long Island, a long rolling gray field-
stone with a private airstrip, a dock, and a ten-car garage tucked
discreetly back behind the tennis courts and swimming pools.

Frances had dragged Millie off to gossip about the family, and
Winter brought him into the library. Bandfield was amazed to see the walls lined with a complete series of
Jane's All the World's
Aircraft,
as well as hundreds of books on flying. Winter wouldn't let
him browse, however, and instead pumped him for all the aeronautical engineering knowledge he could. He was particularly in
terested in the streamlined cowling and wheel covers on the
Rocket.

Winter wasn't an engineer, but the conversation confirmed his
first impression that Bandfield knew what he was talking about. The
two of them hit it off, and within two hours were planning to form a
company to build the
Roget
Rocket
in volume as soon as he got back
from Paris. Lindbergh had said earlier that Winter was a good amateur pilot who had made enough money in the stock market to risk it in aviation.

The fact that Winter was buying the first Lockheed Vega showed
his good judgment. It was being finished for him on the Coast. In the meantime, he wanted to buy a Loening amphibian to round out
his private fleet of aircraft, and he asked Bandfield to help him learn
to fly it.

"I'll put you on the payroll today, a hundred dollars a week, plus
twenty dollars an hour for every hour we fly together."

Bandfield could only nod in agreement; most doctors didn't make
a hundred a week. He was afraid that if he spoke he would break the
magic spell.

Two days before, Bandfield wouldn't have accepted a free cigar,
but that was before he realized that Millie was the most important thing in his life. He realized that he was going to need clothes and money to be with her, and Winter was the only source for either.
Despite Winter's wealth—or, Bandfield grudgingly conceded, per
haps because of it—he was extremely easy to talk to, and very anxious to learn.