Authors: Walter J. Boyne
*
Farmingdale, Long Island/June 24, 1935
Bruno Hafner paused, confident that he had all the time in the world, and trying to be sure he had left nothing to chance. The
factory was deserted, except for the night watchman he'd sent off to
town on a bogus errand. Sitting outside, just refueled, was the rented Vega he'd had waiting for him in Columbus, Ohio. Between the bus ride to Columbus and the flight out in the Vega, he hadn't had time to eat, and his stomach was growling. He'd grab a bite later.
All he had to do was trundle the little parts cart, filled with
diplomatic pouches stuffed with currency, out to the Vega. A quick
trip to Canada, to the German embassy in Ottawa, and he was on his way home.
Things had gone incredibly well, except for that cretin Murray's reaction. He wondered where he was. He was too smart to go to Caldwell or the police, but they'd probably picked him up by now. They had nothing on him, and Murray couldn't talk without indicting himself. The
Dummkopf
would probably show up at Charlotte's
grave every year with a bouquet, the way the stupid women did with
Valentino.
He stowed the pouches and took the cart back to the building. With one last glance around the deserted plant, he said,
"Auf Wiedersehen."
Bandfield's eyes were heavy, but a single thought of Hafner would
send the adrenaline of hate rushing through him. The man had ruined so many lives, for such little purpose. Bandfield shuddered in revulsion when he realized that Millie could have been circling
in the Vega, knowing she was doomed, for eight or nine hours after
he had landed at Wheeler Field, and for four or five hours after Hafner had been found.
It must have been nightmarish for Winter and Gordon, too, anxiously checking the horizon for any sign of the islands. He wondered if they sensed what had happened.
And now this crazy business. Why had he killed Charlotte and Dusty? Hafner had known about them for years, and seemed to
enjoy the relationship in some perverse way. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he killed them both, and destroyed his company as
well.
Bandfield wished he were more familiar with the Curtiss he was
flying; he had just guessed at the cruise power settings, and it was
obviously using fuel faster than he had planned for. Bandfield turned the selector which gave readings on the fuel tanks—two main and two auxiliary—and they read the same as they had thirty minutes ago: zero, zero, zero, and zero.
He adjusted his parachute. If the engine quit before he got to the field, he'd jump and let the shiny new Curtiss auger in somewhere in the countryside, and face Caldwell's wrath later. Stealing a modern Army fighter shouldn't be worth more than a ten-year jail sentence, twenty if he crashed. At the moment, a term in jail sounded rather peaceful.
The fatigue that had gnawed at him as a bulldog gnaws a bone disappeared when he recognized the outline of Hafner's field at
Farmingdale. It looked exactly like the little chart they'd drawn for
him at the Wright base operations, a rectangle lit on three sides by roads. He was surprised that the boundary lights were on.
The field had popped up suddenly, and he was high; with exquisite timing, the engine coughed and quit as he started his
descent. He tapped the fuel gauges and switched tanks again, know
ing it was useless to do so. Bandfield ran a quick estimate of his
height, his airspeed, and the distance he had to go, wishing he knew
which way the wind was blowing.
The Curtiss was silently sweet, a four-thousand-pound glider reaching down through the stray cirrus clouds to reach a perfect approach path to Farmingdale. As he passed through three hundred
feet, he saw that he had the field made and put the gear down while sliding his canopy back. Twenty seconds later, he saw that he was a little high, allowing the luxury of twenty degrees of flaps. A night
dead-stick landing in a strange airplane at a strange field after almost
twenty-four hours of nervous tension—this might be interesting.
At two hundred feet he saw the blur of another airplane pass underneath him, exhaust torching.
Bandfield's Curtiss touched down, bounced, and rolled to a stop.
He looked back to see in the distance the dim red winking of a disappearing exhaust.
No one came out to meet him, and he abandoned the Curtiss in the middle of the field. As he reached the factory, the guard had returned, rolling through the gate in a Graham sedan. He was puzzled to find Bandfield there and Hafner gone.
Bandy yelled, "Have you seen Hafner?"
The other man peered suspiciously at the wild-eyed Bandfield,
nearly hysterical and staggering from fatigue. Bandfield had to produce his Air Corps identification before the guard would talk.
"Sure, Mr. Hafner was here. He had a beat-up old Lockheed Vega that I helped him fuel. Then he sent me into town."
Frustrated, Bandfield said, "I just saw someone take off."
"If you saw a plane leaving, it had to be him." It was obviously all
he knew.
The sheriff arrived, fuming about the nasty Army major who had cursed him out on the telephone, and they searched Hafher's offices
together, finding nothing. Bandfield got a call through to Caldwell in Dayton.
"I'm glad you called Bandy. I want you to drop whatever you're
doing and come back to Dayton. And bring that fighter plane you
stole back with you in one piece. If anything happens to it, it will be
your neck, and even worse, mine."
"Have you caught Hafner?"
"Forget about him. The word has come down from the State Department that we are to ignore the whole thing. I guess there are wheels within wheels. I don't understand it, but apparently the German ambassador has intervened, and State is anxious to keep him happy."
"How could they know to intervene unless he'd set it up? This proves that man is a murderer, a saboteur, a traitor."
"Can't hear you, Bandy. Must be the line. Is the Curtiss okay? Can you fly it back?"
"Yeah, it just needs fuel and oil. I'll get a few hours' sleep and then take off."
Caldwell hesitated, then said, "No, you stay there. I'll send
someone up for the airplane. I talked to Patty, and she wants you to
help with the funeral arrangements. No sense in your coming back here."
"Thanks, Henry. But keep me posted on Hafner."
"Right. And don't go off half cocked. The guy from State didn't mince any words about letting things cool down. It's serious, Bandy."
Bandfield said good-bye and tossed the phone across the room, the cord bringing it up short and crashing it to the floor.
"That louse Hafner never loses! I'll get him if I have to go to Berlin to do it!"
*
Sayville, Long Island/June 27, 1935
Bandfield was surprised at how well Patty was bearing up. She had
apparently cried herself out, and was now grimly bent on providing
Charlotte and Dusty with a first-class funeral in Charlotte Morgan Hafner style. Given all the twists of circumstance, especially Hafner's role in
the accident and his mysterious departure, Bandy had tried to talk Patty into a quiet burial with a private service.
"Absolutely not! Mother enjoyed life to the fullest, and I'm going
to give her a proper send-off."
"Most people won't think it proper to have one ceremony for both
her and Dusty. No one is going to think it proper to bury them side by side."
"That's just too damn bad. They wanted to be together in life, and couldn't; they can be together in death."
Part of Party's defense mechanism involved completely ignoring
the existence or the whereabouts of Bruno Hafner. Not only had he
ceased to exist in Patty's world, she expunged all references to him
from the past. Bandfield had returned to Charlotte's home on Long
Island just as a big moving van was leaving. When he asked Patty
what was in the van, she replied, "Nothing, nothing at all."
Once in the house, Bandfield knew immediately what she had done. There was not a photo, a single piece of furniture, or a scrap of clothing that had any particular relationship to Bruno. Even the photographic laboratory had been cleaned out. Bruno Hafner had
been erased from his own house as cleanly and completely as a wet
cloth wipes off a blackboard.
"I want you to make the funeral arrangements. We'll have the
ceremony here—I know a Unitarian clergyman who will officiate.
He was a friend of Mother's, a 'very good friend,' I think. I've already purchased the burial lots."
"Honey, I'm glad to help, but I think you're making too much of this."
"No, I'm not. I'm her daughter, and I know what she would have wanted."
Bandfield had gone to the stately Kassly Funeral Home, a three-story red brick building with a huge terrace that encompassed two sides of the structure. Inside he met Everett Kassly, a gelatin-mold
man seemingly held together only by his clothing and a skin translucent as a smear of vaseline. Thin blond ringlets topped a too-smooth
Campbell-soup-kid face that welled up into a purse of pink lips, perfect for a voice that could have oiled the rust off the
Titanic.
He
looked as if he had never lifted a finger to help himself or anyone else.
Kassly led Bandfield down into the cool chill of the funeral
home's basement to a showroom of caskets ranging from plain walnut-colored plywood boxes to satin-lined and organdy-pleated
confections that would have pleased Madame Pompadour.
"This is our finest model, the Berkshire. It—"
"Don't tell me about it. Just give me two of the most expensive."
"Two? Of the most expensive?" Kassly's unctuous voice churned
from cream to butter.
"Yes. What else do you offer?"
Kassly's face lit up. "Well, we always recommend a protective vault. My personal favorite is the Grant model. I can show you some literature—"
"Is the Grant the most expensive?"
"Why yes, but—"
"Then make it two Grants."
Later in the violet sachet-scented leather-bound comfort of Kass
ly's office, Bandfield watched without expression as the funeral
director ticked off all of the things Bandfield had agreed to, from the
open floral carriage to the eight limousines to the children's choir. Kassly's hands were trembling, but his eyes sparkled as he said, "You've done a magnificent job, Mr. Bandfield; I know your mother-in-law would be—" He hesitated and raised his eyes heavenward."—
is
pleased."
Bandfield brought out his checkbook. "The one thing my wife
was insistent on was a complete forest of white roses for her coffin,
and red roses for his. I don't want just a few floral arrangements, I
want both coffins and the background to be a sea of roses."
"Don't worry about a thing."
"Understand me now—there can't be too many, but I'll be upset if there are too few. Lots of roses!"
"Lots of roses."
Two days later, Bandfield stood listening to the Reverend Gerald
Robins's eulogy and admiring the way the red-faced prelate tiptoed
around the fact that he was praising a woman and her lover in her
husband's home. Everett Kassly had taken him seriously. The two
closed caskets were covered with white and red roses, and the room was banked with huge quantities done in every conceivable manner,
from straight bouquets to woven blankets.
The problem was that the home was far too small. Patty had had no idea of the affection in which Charlotte was held by the work force at the Hafner factory. The crowd filled up the large living
room where Patty had insisted the caskets be placed and flowed out
past the porches onto the lawn.
Praying was difficult for Bandfield, but he went through his small portfolio of remembered prayers and lifted a few others from some
books the Unitarian clergyman had scattered about. His principal
difficulty was addressing the memories. Charlotte had been beautiful, lusty, full of life, quick to laugh and quick to anger. Dusty . . .
long ago, Dusty had been handsome and strong, with a good Irish wit. Lately he had suffered, but he had been coming back. It was
hard to reconcile the two of them with the little bits of burned bone and gristle that he knew were wrapped and folded within the hand
some Berkshire caskets. It was a mistake to hold funerals for pilots,
he thought; the earth should just be heaped over where they crash,
letting them lie amalgamated with the wrecks of their airplanes. He
wondered what other profession demanded the steady toll of lives for
participation—the police probably, firemen perhaps, a few others.
Did people pursue these jobs because of the danger or in spite of it?