Authors: Walter J. Boyne
He sprinted back to the hangar and yelled, "Murray, let's roll that
fucking airplane out and get it ready!"
Murray bristled at the orders Rhoades was flinging about, but grudgingly admitted to himself that it was probably what Hafner would want.
After doing everything that could be done, Rhoades slumped on the wheel of the
Miss Charlotte,
looping his arm around the broad
flat strut for support. That goddam Bruno. That goddam Bandfield. And that goddam Lindbergh. Dusty felt envious for a moment, then
switched gears. Slim was just smarter, with better backers. He thought about going over and wishing him good luck, but decided against it. Lindbergh would be totally preoccupied with getting
ready, and there would be enough people hanging on, shrieking for
attention.
He was dozing, sitting on the ground, when the noise of the engine of the
Spirit of St. Louis
running up broke the morning calm. Dusty stood up and wet his finger, instinctively checking the breeze. It was downwind, maybe three to five miles per hour. He wondered about the adjustment Slim had made in his prop setting. He'd altered it to permit a better cruise speed at the expense of a longer takeoff run. Now, with an adverse wind, that was a mistake.
The minutes dragged by, double-laden with Lindbergh's prepara
tions and the frustration of Bruno's absence. With a flurry of
activity, the
Spirit
began to roll forward between two columns of
well-wishers, mostly men and a few women who had been waiting for the last three days for something to happen. Like a second-rate
opera company, the men on each side of the fifty-yard-wide takeoff
path turned and took a few steps with the airplane, bringing their
hats and caps up stiffly in a stage salute. Then the
Spirit
accelerated,
the rough ground jolting it so that the wings shook in short jabbing
movements, like those of a boxer warming up during the jog into
the ring. Rhoades, fingers crossed, called on the Virgin Mary again
in a quick prayer as the silver monoplane moved sluggishly down the damp field, corkscrew shrouds of moisture pearling back from
the propeller blast. He knew precisely how Lindbergh was feeling—
tense, waiting to see if the speed built swiftly enough, keeping the
stick back in his belly and tromping on the rudder pedals to hold the
airplane straight so the enormous overload wouldn't strain the gear. He could tell that the airplane felt logy, unresponsive, a groundling
creature unable to fly.
It trundled on, accelerating slowly, leaving behind the statues waving their hats, watching to see if this airplane, like Fonck's, would fold up into a flash of flame and fire.
Rhoades yelled, "Keep it on the ground, Slim—you've got an
other six hundred yards!" His voice was lost in the swelling roar of
the Wright engine.
As if in a negative response, Lindbergh lifted the
Spirit
off the grass. It lumbered along, then touched down again, but faster, at last more a creature of the air than the ground. It bounced once
again and then pulled slowly away like adhesive tape from an old
dressing, struggling, swimming as much as flying in the swirling mists. It seemed to falter, to sink as it approached the telephone wires at the end of the field, then cleared them as a cheer broke out.
Dusty cheered too, approving the crisper response that speed now
gave to Lindbergh's touch on the controls. The
Spirit
disappeared, heading east by northeast.
He checked his watch—eight o'clock. He did some fast figuring, comparing the Bellanca's speed and fuel load with that of the
Spirit.
If Hafner showed up by eleven o'clock, they could still get off and
maybe beat Lindbergh across. He couldn't average more than 100 mph. They could move up the
Miss Charlottes
cruise speed to 110 or 115, even if it burned more fuel. They'd get substantially the
same winds as Lindbergh did. And there was always the chance that
he would make a navigational error, costing himself some time. It
wasn't likely, but anything was possible, if only the doctors would let
Bruno out of the hospital.
At eleven, Rhoades gave up. He and the guards had long since eaten the sandwiches and drunk the coffee. They rolled the Bel-
lanca back into the hangar, anger heating Rhoades like high current
through a small cable. Here was one of the best goddam airplanes in
the world, full of fuel, ready to go, and it was sitting on the ground because Bandfield had slugged Hafner. They'd just missed the
opportunity of the century. He wished Lindbergh well, but he would have given his soul to beat him across. Maybe he wouldn't make . . . He drove the thought from his mind.
He joined the others in the operations shack to wait for reports on Lindbergh. There was no news yet, of course, but it was comforting
just to be in the company of others who had been caught napping. It
was midafternoon when Hafner rolled up in his Marmon, head bandaged, obviously furious, his dachshund, Nellie, hanging out the window, barking.
"Dusty, I would have been here earlier, but the bastards had me sedated. I'm not really awake yet. What's happening?"
Rhoades bit his lip. He wanted to yell at Hafner, but caught himself. "Looks like we missed it, Bruno. Too bad."
*
Passaic, New Jersey/May 20, 1927
The room looked as if it had been ordered from a Sears catalogue:
heavy yellow desks, green-shaded lamps, and paintings on the wall showing Indians in various states of melancholy. The leitmotiv was
drinking. Charlotte Hafner glanced at the debris: there was a mis
cellany of liquor bottles and empty, half-full, and full glasses everywhere, with overflowing ashtrays in between. Some of the glasses
neatly combined both functions, cigars floating in warm, stale bourbon and water like fetuses in a biology lab. An assortment of tools—wrenches, pulleys, and jacks—completed the decor.
She was boiling with frustration. Two days ago she had been
trembling with desire, drenched in the hot fever of anticipation of
thoroughly satisfying sex. The rendezvous had gone suddenly and irrevocably sour when her lover showed up with a girlfriend. Charlotte felt that she was liberal, but she wasn't yet ready to go to bed
with her boyfriend
and
his girlfriend. She had had no relief since then.
Bruno Hafner sat brooding, a two-inch-wide gauze-and-adhesive
bandage on his forehead. Charlotte's frustration mixed with a natural sympathy for him. The flight had meant so much to him. Sighing morosely, he picked up a glass and wiped it with his handkerchief. He passed it in front a desk lamp as if to count the remaining germs, then filled it halfway with scotch.
She took the glass from him and carried it to the sink. She washed
two glasses, filled them one-quarter of the way with water, and brought them back. He filled the glasses with scotch.
"Ach, Charlotte, what really bothers me is that we had the better airplane! If that little bastard Bandfield had just not shown up!" He
downed half his drink in a gulp.
"Don't worry about it, Bruno. There'll be other flights. No one has flown the Pacific, and there are lots of records to set."
He acted as if he hadn't heard her.
"One thing sure I've learned. Lindbergh was smart to go alone.
The press loved it. From the day he arrived, he got twice as much
coverage as the rest of us put together. I'll never make a record attempt with a copilot again."
She tried to change the subject.
"Ready for some good news?"
He nodded, plainly in need of some.
"Patty writes that she's coming home." His expression didn't change.
"It gets better. She wants to fly to Europe with you."
Hafner shook his head. "This is good news?"
"And she's in love. With a French air force pilot, an ace."
Hafner put his head down on the desk.
"Mein Gott,
Charlotte, don't cheer me up anymore, I can't take it."
She breathed easier; he was laughing and he could have been shouting mad. Compared to missing the flight across the Atlantic, Patty's news was small potatoes. "Would you fly with her?"
"Never, not with her, not with anyone. A French ace, eh? Just like her dad. Well, she could do worse."
Relieved, Charlotte wanted to end the discussion on Patty before
he thought about it. Patty's marriage would complicate their estate
problems, already difficult. She rushed on. "This place looks like a
Mexican whorehouse, Bruno. Why don't you let me fix it up for
"Don't change a thing." Bruno knew the fusty office looked just as it should for his customers, desperadoes from all over the world who
would have tried to chisel his prices down if they thought he was
living too well. It was better to have it rough and ready, with raw scotch to pour into glasses after the handshakes. Very little paper
work was involved in most of his business. "When we build our
aircraft factory, we'll put in a decent office. We'll be dealing with a
different sort of customer then."
As Charlotte went back to put more water in her glass, Hafner glanced out the window with pride and pleasure at the huge yard
that generated the bulk of his fortune. After the motion pictures and
the barnstorming, he'd come to New Jersey in 1923, without any
money, but with introductions to two of the largest scrap dealers in
the east, Moe Bischoff and Salvatore Maniglia.
These weren't ordinary introductions, nice little letters beginning with "To Whom It May Concern." Instead they were brief,
straightforward instructions from Polack Joe Lutz, a Chicago mobster. Lutz had been visiting the Coast and had hired Hafner to fly a
few special missions to Mexico for him. Hafner had handled an
awkward situation with the Mexican police very well, and Lutz had
taken a fancy to him.
People paid attention to Polack Joe. Neither Bischoff nor Man
iglia would have bothered to speak to him without the letter; with it they had let him enter their private preserves, and had grudgingly
shown him the ropes. By 1925, Bruno had had a modest share of the surplus arms and mob supply racket. Then two things had
happened. He had finally agreed to use Charlotte's money to expand his business, and Moe and Salvatore had erased each other in a shootout on the docks, leaving the field clear for him.
Bruno swirled the scotch in his glass, admiring as always the symmetry of the rows of artillery shells, stacked in neat little cones
like the cannonballs in a Mathew Brady photograph, each stack
covered with a doily of a tarpaulin. There were shells to fit any one
of the acres of guns that surrounded them. Hafner stocked everything from
Minenwerfer
mortars to French 75s, and had heavier ordnance, up to 155mm, available. The yard was surrounded on
four sides by perfectly aligned blocks of narrow two-story rough-pine
World War emergency buildings. They were filled with small arms,
rifles, bayonets, ponchos, hand grenades, mess kits, flame throwers,
gas dispensers, gas masks, prophylactics, Sam Browne belts, any
thing needed to start or finish a war. In a garage set off to one side he
was reconditioning some tanks, Renaults for Chile, and two Christies for AMTORG, the Soviet trading company. In another build
ing were thirty Sopwith Snipe fighters, picked up for a song from the
British, and for which he had an offer from Siam. He had respect for the Snipe—one had shot him down in late October 1918.
Lots of money was to be made selling arms, and the first thing he had learned was that a little grease on the palm was more important
than any on the gun barrel. Hardly a war went on anywhere, from Africa to Central America to the Far East, that hadn't helped and been helped by Hafner Enterprises.
The irony was that as his fortunes went up, so did those of Germany. The inflation that had wiped out his family's fortune
seemed contained, and he had heard that industry was picking up. It had long been his dream to go back, a wealthy man, and restore his
family properties. In a few years, if things continued to go well, it just might be possible.
Still he knew, as Charlotte did, that it was time to move out of the
surplus-arms business, much as he had enjoyed its rough-and-tumble drama. The spillover into dealings with the gangs added spice to the venture, for they had high regard for the quality of his submachine guns and shotguns. But lately, the ordinary customers
had become too demanding, and some ordinary business hazards—
late deliveries, mismatched ammunition and weapons—had brought threats of bodily harm.