Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery (16 page)

"What happened to Beemon after the war?" I asked.

"Got killed testing jets," said Buzz, searching the file for confirmation.

"Lot of guys bought it that way," The Hawk added.

"No," said Bessie. "It says in there he crashed the jet, but he didn't die."

"Oh, yeah, here it is...Critical condition. Yeah, I guess."

"But there's the other article." Bessie waddled over to show us. She reached around Buzz's neck to flip through the file. She removed a long clipping and skimmed it. "Remember that British doctor McIndoe?"

"Plastic surgeon." I'd read about him.

"I think he sort of invented it back when so many of the RAF boys were getting disfigured in 1940. Here it is, the end of Danny Beemon: 'The C-47 was en route from Muroc AFB to the new McIndoe Burn Center in Miami when it went missing over the Gulf of Mexico. Search planes have been recalled. The airplane has been officially declared lost. Among the dead is Maj. Danny Beemon, the famous ace who was severely injured after his jet crashed in the California desert.'" Her task complete, she returned to her desk.

"Boy," said The Hawk, "I bet D.B. hated dying as a passenger in a C-47."

"Yeah," Buzz agreed.

Rainer nodded solemnly. We sat in silence.

"I'd say one of the big reasons I'm alive today is the stuff Danny taught me," The Hawk said. "Me and Harry Pine got there together. He was our first CO."

"Harry Pine,"
I blurted out. "You knew Harry Pine?"

"I met him once in London," Buzz said.

"I wasn't in his league either," The Hawk said. "Well, hell, you're writing a book, maybe you'd like to hear a true story about Harry Pine and Danny Beemon?"

"Sure."

"Witnessed this myself. Never forget it. Me and Harry were new, only Harry was one of those natural-born stick-and-rudder guys, and Danny saw it right away. You could tell by the way they looked at each other. So on our first mission, Danny put Harry Pine on his wing to get to know him. We escorted B-17s to Emden, then we broke off and went down on the deck to shoot up this Jerry airfield on the way home. Rainer's boys were getting onto that tactic by then, and they ringed their airfields with light and medium flak guns. We lost some of our best people that way. Only hope was to come in low—I mean
low
—so the flak guns couldn't bear so well. Jerry got on to that trick, too, and started mounting their guns on towers so they could fire down on us as we came in low. Harry Pine went in on his first run. I was to follow while other guys shot up the towers. Pine took a round through the canopy. Big cannon shell passed right in front of his eyes and out the other side. If that had happened to me, I'd have crashed and burned right there. Harry just lost a little altitude, but his prop ticked the runway. Destroyed it, of course. Somehow he coaxed the P-47 up to bail-out altitude. You know, Buzz, those were great planes, but they glided like pianos. He bails out and comes down in an alfalfa field not a half-mile from the airfield we're still beating up. You could see Jerry going after him. Trucks, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, converging on him standing in the field like a scarecrow. They
want
him. We made two firing passes at Jerry, and they kind of lost interest in capturing Harry, least till his friends went away. Then Danny Beemon comes on the horn and says in this quiet voice—I mean, this voice is so calm it seems like he's bored—he says, 'Cover me. I'm gonna pick that boy up.'"

"Great!" said Buzz.

"Pick him up? I didn't even know what he meant till I see him swing upwind in a landing approach. He
lands
in that alfalfa field smooth as silk. Pine jumped up on the wing as Danny turns back for takeoff, then we see Pine climb into Danny's cockpit. They couldn't even close the canopy it's so crowded. They got to know each other, all right, flew all the way back to England like that. On the way Danny comes back on the horn, in that same bored voice says, 'Any of you guys endanger government property like that, you'll be peein' in the snow in Goose Bay, Labrador.' You should have seen the ground crews when two guys climb out of the 47, after they made a perfect landing. Harry Pine was the only man I ever met who could hold a candle to Danny Beemon for plain flying ability." The Hawk leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and thought about his youth.

"Do you think we could see Harry Pine's file?" I asked.

"Sure." Bessie went to get it.

"Funny thing," said Buzz, "there was this other writer in here asking about Harry Pine."

"There was? When?"

"Yeah, he was stone ignorant, never even heard of a P-51."

"When?"

"I don't remember any writer," said Bessie, opening and closing file cabinets.

"I don't think you were here. It was a weekend or a holiday. About a year ago maybe. He called for an appointment, that's why I came in. I can't remember his name for nothing."

"Do you remember what he looked like?" I asked.

"Sort of. Skinny guy, dark hair. Tough talking for a little writer. Mustache, big droopy one."

"I can't find it," said Bessie. "Harry Pine is gone. Have you been fooling with my files, Buzz?"

"No, sir."

"Well, then Harry Pine is gone."

When Calabash and I returned to my place, it was barely noon. There was a message waiting for me on my phone machine: "What say? Cobb here. I thought you might want to know somebody claimed her body. Her uncle. California swish name of Gordon Jainways. He's in the book, 22 Perry Street. You keep in touch now, hear?"

Was that Cobb's version of a kindness?

I sat on the floor beside the bed and tried to think about connections. Jellyroll came over and nuzzled me in the ear, as he does when he wants to be brushed. I brushed him for a while. He loves it; he throws back his head and works his jaws in ecstasy.

I looked up Gordon Jainways in the telephone book.

FIFTEEN

I
 ASSUMED HE'D turn me down, a stranger wanting to talk about his murdered niece. Instead, he invited me to his home. Twenty-two Perry Street, near Bleecker, was one of a row of perfect four-story brownstones from the years before all those wars, when civility counted for something. This was the kind of home that would brighten up one's worldview just to live there for a few years. The rain had stopped and birds trilled from sidewalk elms as I rang the bell.

Gordon Jainways was in his mid-sixties, dapper, tweedy, with a paisley tie tucked beneath his vest. He didn't smile, but his handshake felt like a welcome. He led me down a hallway paneled in oiled cherry wood that exuded its own glow like a living thing and into the living room. I stopped short.

"I'm a puppeteer, Mr. Deemer."

The room was filled with animals. They hung on the walls, stood on stands and on their own legs. Sometimes there was only a head, often the entire animal, always perfectly naturalistic. I approached. There were two hundred of them, maybe more, birds, reptiles, mammals, marsupials, animals from all zones of nature. Their diversity and their colors were dizzying. I wanted to reach out and touch a speckled fawn, but I resisted.

"I saw your name at the morgue, Mr. Deemer. You identified her body."

The animals unnerved me. As a kid I fantasized a life with animals. Before I slept, they gathered in my room, an aggregation of species just like this one, all eyes on me; and on those
nights the world seemed safe and sound. But that was then. Now I sat down in an armchair and looked into an ocelot's eyes.

"I'm going to take her back to California, unless you can tell me why she should be buried here."

"No."

"Has my work upset you in some way?"

"No. It's exquisite. It's brilliant. But it reminds me of when—never mind, pardon me."

He watched with kindly, credulous eyes while I collected myself.

"Mr. Deemer, what exactly is your interest in this?"

I told him I wasn't exactly certain, but that I had loved his niece and that I called him to learn something about Billie's past. I told him I didn't think I even knew her real name.

"It was Eleanor, after her mother."

I tried it out in my head, Eleanor, and the sound made me sad. A polar bear cub eyed me from the fireplace. I passed Jainways the envelope holding the Family Snaps.

Wordlessly, he looked at each, then up at me. I thought for an instant that he had a flash of gold in his iris, but he did not. It was only a trick of light, or a longing. "Where did you get these pictures?"

"Billie left them."

"I took these snapshots," said Gordon Jainways. "I gave her the Christmas puppy."

"Petey," I said. "Your sister told me his name. She is your sister, isn't she, the lady at Bright Bay Nursing Home?"

He nodded.

"And she was married to Danny Beemon, Billie's father?"

He nodded again, but suddenly tears clouded his eyes.

"Your photos seem to show a happy family."

"Shattered," he said.

"By Danny Beemon's death?"

"By Danny Beemon. And by airplanes. Did Eleanor—Billie—tell you about her baby brother?"

I shook my head. She'd told me nothing.

"He was called Gordon, after me. But he was dead before his second birthday. Gordon's death was Danny Beemon's fault."

Gordon Jainways looked away, into the midst of his animals, but his eyes were fixed on something only he could see.

"In 1952 Billie was three. Danny Beemon was a test pilot; the great war ace was doing the thing he was born to do, and my sister was happy, even though they lived in a shack on the high desert of California. A dreadful place called Muroc Air Force Base. My sister was happy because Danny was happy. He was happy because all the best pilots were there. For them, Muroc was an adolescent's dream come true, just fly fast airplanes with no supervision. When D.B. was happy, his charm was like a movie star's. People orbited about him. But he wasn't happy for long. During a single week, in separate accidents, the entire group of test pilots, except Danny, were killed. Burned beyond recognition. But that's not what made Danny Beemon sad. He was used to his friends' immolation. What made him sad was that the Air Force grounded him for publicity reasons. If an unknown boy gets burned up in a crash, that's too bad, a telegram to loved ones, but if a famous war ace gets fried, that's bad for their budget. The military mind blanches."

"But I heard he crashed in a jet test."

"He did. But first he was grounded. There's much in between. Do you want a drink?"

"Yes."

He poured us brandy. "D.B. couldn't live life on the ground. He began to drink heavily and mix it with amphetamines, yet they stayed on in that foul desert because Danny hoped his flight status would change. It didn't, and the Ace of Aces, became a figure of pity on the flight line. Drunk, he once told me that even his flyboy chums had started to avoid him, as if grounded were a disease you could catch. Well, tough shit, in my view," Jainways snarled. "I have little sympathy left for these military freaks. He could have flown
for any commercial airline in the world, but airliners weren't good enough. He had my sister and her son and daughter to love him, but that wasn't good enough either." He paused. "I'm still angry, thirty-five years later. Billie told me about the accident. She found Gordon at the bottom of the stairs. His neck was broken. 'Like Dolly's neck,' she said, shaking Raggedy Ann's floppy head. Danny was supposed to be watching Gordon while I took the ladies to a matinee. But Danny got drunk and passed out, and Gordon fell down the stairs. I took Billie with me back to San Francisco at her mother's request. She was ruined by Gordon's death and by her husband." He paused, looking off into the wall of animals. "One night, I took Billie to see
The Wizard of Oz."

There was her name. Glinda the Good. I felt like crying. Billie Burke.

"'Are you a good witch or a bad witch?' She came to ask it of everyone. Every event in her world was caused by one witch or the other. My shrink friend, who owns this house, says that kind of fantasy is often seen in injured children. Meanwhile, my sister pulled strings and got D.B. reassigned to flight test."

"What strings?"

"Tight strings, Pentagon strings. You see, I'm the last son in a long line of military men. A Jainways died with McClellan's men at Malvern Hill, 1862, and my father was also killed in battle. But I am a puppeteer."

"General Matthew Jainways was your father?"

"You've heard of him? Are you a student of war?"

Legend had it that General Jainways, beleaguered with his men in the jungles of Burma and out of ammunition, ordered the company to hurl its own shit at the charging Japanese, who finally overran the defenders at the loss of some face.

"If your sister had that influence all along, why did she wait until then to use it?"

"Because she didn't want him to fly. What wife would? But a grounded Danny Beemon was impossible to live with. In any
case, D.B. crashed fifteen seconds into his first flight. Something broke. When they pulled his crumpled body from the wreckage, no one thought he'd survive, but he did. After that, I don't know. I washed my hands of Danny Beemon."