Aces (26 page)

Meanwhile, Gold Express kept growing, especially the passenger side of the business. Gold needed bigger, more comfortable
planes: paying customers couldn’t be expected to perch on mail sacks forever. The Stout Company of Dearborn, Michigan, manufactured
a suitable airplane, but its entire output had already been spoken for by Henry Ford, who was running a mail delivery and
passenger service out of Michigan. Gold looked to Europe, where the commercial airline business was thriving, especially the
German lines run by the huge Spatz aircraft manufacturing company. When the Versailles Treaty forbade the Germans from building
warplanes, Spatz gave up its fighter line and concentrated on designing larger aircraft suited for commercial uses. Gold had
not flown any Spatz-built fighters during the war; they were used mostly by the ground-attack squadrons; but he had total
confidence in German engineering. He had his eye on the Spatz F-5, a four-passenger transport monoplane. It was a lovely bird,
thirty-two feet long, with a fifty-eight-foot wingspan and a shiny skin of corrugated duralumin. It was powered by a silky
B.M.W. engine, and cost fifteen thousand dollars.

Gold went to Lane Barker, argued that his company’s newly expanded feeder routes to Catalina Island, and as far east as Salt
Lake City, warranted renewed and expanded financial confidence, and came away with a seventy-five-thousand-dollar loan. He
spent thirty thousand on two Spatz F-5s. He now owned twelve airplanes. He used the rest of the money to make good on an old
promise he’d made to Teddy Quinn, and to himself, by establishing a design and manufacturing facility in a warehouse in Santa
Monica and allowing his chief engineer a fat research and design budget.

Gold changed the name of his company to encompass the expanded potential symbolized by his new Santa Monica headquarters.
Gold Express became Gold Aviation.

Someday, he vowed, he’d be selling airplanes to Europe, and not the other way around.

In 1924, a second child was born. It was a boy, whom they named Steven, after Erica’s brother who was killed in the war. Soon
after, Teddy and his engineering team gave birth to a creation that brought Gold almost as much pleasure as he was receiving
from his new son: the initial design for a new monoplane, dubbed the G-1 (Gold 1) Yellowjacket.

The new plane was going to need an engine. Gold talked to a number of established firms, but was intrigued by a small but
promising San Diego company, Rodgers and Simpson. He liked their ideas, and the fact that they were young and anxious to do
great things, like himself. He gave them the job, pumping cash into their endeavor to build a suitable power plant for the
G-1.

About that time Spatz came out with a new, structurally strengthened version of the F-5— the F-5a—capable of taking a larger
engine, which meant increased cargo and passenger capabilities. The F-5a cost twenty thousand dollars. Gold bought three,
by selling off six of his older, smaller, military surplus airplanes to free up ten thousand in cash, and going back to Lane
Barker to borrow another fifty thousand. His turquoise and scarlet fleet was now shrunk to nine airplanes, but five of them
were large, modern aircraft that could more efficiently move an increased number of passengers and larger shipments of mail
and freight. Gold came up with cabin and engine modification ideas that would allow him to further increase the F-5a’s capabilities.
He put Teddy in charge of carrying out the modifications ASAP; Gold couldn’t afford to allow sixty grand worth of airplanes
to lie idle for long.

It seemed to Gold that the bigger he got, the thinner were his operating margins. The money was flowing out as fast as it
came in; faster, actually, considering the loans outstanding. Gold would periodically worry about it, but then put it all
out of his mind. He was receiving all the credit he asked for, so he had to be doing something right. Anyway, his secretary
was in charge of bookkeeping. Ledgers were boring, and pilots couldn’t abide being bored.

He told himself that he had no worries because he had no competition. Whenever a Johnny-come-lately outfit tried to muscle
in on his territory Gold would temporarily cut his rates on that particular line, letting his other routes take up the slack.
Invariably the fledgling competition would shrivel up and die.

In February of 1925, with the full cooperation of the U.S. Post Office, Congress passed the Kelly Air Mail Act, which was
intended to gradually take the government out of the air transport business by allowing private enterprise to take over the
main transcontinental mail route. The Kelly Act turned out to be both less, and more, than Gold and the other private carriers
had hoped. In July, the U.S. Post Office announced that it would temporarily keep control of the main transcontinental route,
and, to Gold’s dismay, that control of the feeder lines would now be officially assigned according to bids submitted through
the local postmaster, with the process open to any interested party. The post office would pay a standardized rate for carrying
the mail, but each contractor could charge what he wished for hauling passengers and private freight.

Gold quickly began preparing his bid to hold on to his routes. Meanwhile, he nervously waited for the other shoe to drop,
and, a couple of weeks later, it did.

A pair of ex-postal service fliers, backed by an investment group, had formed an outfit they’d dubbed Southern California
Air Transport to go after Gold’s routes. SCAT’s underwriting financiers were spreading the word in the business community—which,
in turn, would most certainly influence the local postmaster’s recommendation—that SCAT would fly cargo more cheaply than
Gold Aviation. Gold had countered by promising to match the competition’s low-ball bid to the private service sector. He had
also reminded the business community of the post office’s announcement that when the bids were opened on September 15, control
of the Contract Air Mail routes—CAMs—would be awarded on the basis of financial stability, safety, and general moral fitness.

Gold, remembering the lesson taught to him by his father-in-law, had from the very beginning of his business career found
the means to donate substantial sums to local charities and causes, establishing a solid reputation for himself as a philanthropist.
He was confident that plenty of important people would attest to his moral fitness.

He also had been able to boast that dependability and safety were the hallmarks of Gold Aviation. At least they had been until
today.

He turned right, onto the approach road to Mines Field. A couple of miles ahead an oily, black cloud was hanging like doom
over his hangar/terminal facility. Even from this distance Gold could smell the stink of gasoline and burnt rubber. The opposite
side of the road was clogged with fire-fighting vehicles leaving the scene. Several ambulances were also coming from the crash
site. They seemed in no hurry, and their sirens were not howling.

Police were at the chain-link gate to his facility, holding back the reporters and the inevitable, morbid curiosity seekers.
He beeped his horn and the cops cleared a path for him.

“Any comment, Mister Gold?” a reporter shouted as Gold drove through the gate. “What do you think caused the accident?” another
reporter chimed in.

Gold ignored the questions, annoyed that the news photographers holding their cameras high over their heads were clicking
his photograph like he was some sort of gangster. Once he was through the gate he stopped the car to summon over the uniformed
sergeant in charge of the police detail. “See that those newshounds are kept out,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir, Mister Gold.” The cop nodded.

He drove up to the simple, corrugated steel building that was his hangar/terminal, and parked. As he got out of the Stutz,
his flight operations supervisor, Bill Tolliver, came scurrying over.

“I don’t know what happened, Mister Gold,” Tolliver said quickly.

Gold noticed the other employees at the hangar watching him out of the corners of their eyes. They were giving him a wide
berth as they went about their business, tending to his airplanes.

“She was coming in fine and all at once she exploded,” Tolliver was saying.

“Before she even touched down?” Gold muttered, and then shook his head, perplexed. “Okay, Bill,” he sighed, and then added
sharply, “I don’t want you making any statements to the press—”

“No, sir!” Tolliver said, sounding affronted. “I’d never do that, Mister Gold.”

Gold smiled wearily. “I guess you wouldn’t, Bill. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take this out on you. It’s just that I…”

“Sure, Mister Gold, no problem,” Tolliver said softly. “I understand. All them people, and Les…”

“What?” Gold felt dizzy. “What about Les?”

Tolliver paled. “You didn’t know?”

Gold’s eyes began to blur with tears. “Les was crewing on that plane?”

“I’m awful sorry,” Tolliver whispered.

“But he wasn’t on flight duty—He’s been off it for years, goddammit!”

“He insisted,” Tolliver said quickly. “The scheduled pilot took sick, Les couldn’t find a replacement, so he took the flight.
I’m awful sorry, Mister Gold, but I don’t have rank over him. I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Gold felt numb. “Where’s Hull?”

“He went to tell Les’s wife.”

Gold nodded. “I’m expecting Teddy,” he managed, wiping his eyes. “When he gets here, please have—”

“He’s here already, Mister Gold,” Tolliver said. “He was out here running a routine check on another airplane when the accident
happened.”

“Where is he?”

“Out on the field.” Tolliver shrugged. “Looking at what’s left…”

Gold walked around the hangar/terminal and out onto the field. He saw Teddy Quinn, his fedora pulled low on his brow, his
suit jacket and striped necktie snapping like flags in the breeze, wandering amidst the smoldering wreckage of the Spatz.
Twisted chunks of metal were scattered all across the runway.

Gold paused to gaze at the crumpled tail assembly of the plane. His trademark was still recognizable on the vertical tail
fin, but that scorched centaur against its field of blistered yellow no longer looked so proud now that it was lying in the
oil-soaked mud.

Gold walked over to Teddy. “Enough here to tell us what happened?” he asked.

Teddy shook his head. “There isn’t even enough left intact to tell us that this was an airplane.”

Gold nodded. “Doesn’t matter. We know what happened, don’t we?” Teddy didn’t reply. “We know what caused this.” He paused,
and then added bitterly, “Or should I say
who
caused it?”

“Come on, Herm,” Teddy grumbled. “That isn’t going to help anything.”

“Bullshit!” Gold exploded. “Les was my friend! We went back a long ways together! Once he even saved my life! Did you know
that I’d shot him down during the war? I didn’t kill him then, but I sure as hell did today—”

“This is not your fault,” Teddy said calmly.

“Yes it is, and you know it!” Gold replied. “This happened because I was in such a goddamned hurry to get these planes modified
and into service! I wasn’t thinking clearly, or responsibly. I was too anxious not to have to cancel our flights.”

“With good reason. Canceling flights at a time like this, when our routes are up for grabs, would have looked very bad.”

“Yeah,” Gold sneered in disgust. “I wonder how my burning ten people to death, one of them one of my best friends, is going
to look.”

“
You
didn’t burn anyone!” Teddy quickly said. “Don’t forget, I triple-checked every modification made.” Teddy took a crumbled
pack of Luckies and a lighter out of his coat pockets. “I gave my approval.”

“I bullied you into that—” Gold said fiercely.

“You’re full of shit, Herm, if you think I would
ever
let you bully me into something like that!” Teddy replied, angry now. With shaking fingers he extracted a smoke from the
pack and cupped his hands against the wind to get it lit. “Why, you even piloted the modified prototype on its test flight,
goddamn you!” Teddy continued, exhaling smoke. “You risked
your
life, because you didn’t feel it would be appropriate to ask one of our pilots to do so. I stood down here, biting my fucking
nails, thinking about how I was going to break the news of your death to Erica, while you put that fully loaded plane through
every maneuver it was capable of, and some stunts it
wasn’t
capable of, trying to get it to misbehave, but it didn’t.”

“Not then…” Gold said faintly.

“That’s right, not then,” Teddy sourly declared. “And not the next day, or the day after that, but it did, today. Or maybe
a chance spark set off some stray gas fumes, in some sort of one-out-of-a-million freak accident.” He glanced at his cigarette,
and sighed. “Or maybe some asshole passenger set the cabin upholstery on fire while lighting a smoke…”

“Maybe this and maybe that,” Gold said contemptuously.

“Maybes are all we’ve got,” Teddy replied. “And probably all we’ll ever have, Herm.” He flicked away his cigarette. “There
have been airplane crashes before, and there’ll be crashes again. That’s a big, mean sky up there, pal. It’s just thrilled
when it can dump one of our pretty birds right back into our cocky faces!”

Gold barely heard Teddy. He couldn’t stop obsessing, worrying about the effect the accident would have on his chances of holding
on to his CAM routes. He told himself that it was wrong to be so selfish at a time like this, when ten people had perished
in one of his airplanes, but he couldn’t help it, and was ashamed of himself. What if Teddy were wrong, and he really was
to blame for pushing to get the modified F-5 as into service?

The horrid, unanswerable questions whirled in his brain. He wondered if there might ever be a time when the questions would
not haunt him…

“It was an act of God,” Teddy was insisting. “I was here. I saw it. One second she was in the air, and the next she was a
fireball. The passengers and crew couldn’t have known what hit them. It had to have been instant, painless…”