It was still dark when we reached the airstrip. We’d left Manhattan around 2:00 A.M., bound for Bridgeport, Connecticut, Lindbergh driving, Breckinridge in the front, Condon, Irey and me in back. Wilson stayed behind “coordinating,” whatever that was. I fell quickly asleep against the locked door as Jafsie, sitting between Irey and me like an oversize child, his cow eyes glazed, alternated between chortling over his triumph of depriving the kidnappers of four hundred fifty-dollar gold certificates, and spouting Shakespeare.
I awoke, briefly, when the car came to a stop, saw Lindy conferring with airport officials and some Navy men, and quickly surmised that our plane hadn’t arrived yet. I saw a middle-aged fellow in civilian clothes, apparently an airport manager, hand Lindy a small but bulging bundle and Lindy smiled at him gratefully, taking the bundle, shaking the man’s hand. I went back to sleep, Condon next to me in the car’s backseat, as alert as a watchdog, and nearly as smart.
A whirring roar, louder than Judgment Day, awoke me. I sat up sharply; Condon was gone. I got out and saw, across the airfield, the rising sun glittering on the blue-gray surface of Long Island Sound. Above, a huge silver flying boat wheeled in the sky, making its approach.
“A Sikorsky amphibian,” Irey yelled, above the din. He was standing just behind me, his topcoat flapping in the wind, as he held his hat on with one hand. Some of it was the breeze; most of it was the airplane, coming in for her landing.
Irey moved closer to me. “That’s perfect,” he shouted, almost directly into my ear. “We can spot the Boat Nelly from the air and put down right beside her.”
I nodded. I wondered what he meant by “we.” I’d never been up in a plane, and had no intention of starting now.
As the huge silver bird set down, slowed, and swung gently around, its propellers turning from a blur into blades, Lindbergh walked into, and seemed to enjoy, the wind the props manufactured. I kept my distance while he, Colonel Breckinridge and Irey gathered near the plane. Slim inspected the ship, talking casually but intently with the pilot who brought her in.
Condon was next to me, looking with some trepidation at the big silver bird.
Lindbergh opened up a cabin door and stowed inside the bundle the airport official had given him. Then he strolled over to us and smiled in his boyish way. There was something in his face today I hadn’t seen before. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
“All right, gents,” he said brightly.
Hope. That was it: there was hope in his face, the crinkles around his eyes, the tug at the corners of his smile.
“I’d like you to go along, Doctor,” Lindy said to Condon. “You’re not afraid of planes, are you?”
Jafsie raised his chin and said, “Sir, I will go anywhere you go.”
Lindy turned to me. “How about you, Nate?”
“Slim, if God had wanted me to fly, I’da been born with a parachute…and I still wouldn’t go.”
“Well, God isn’t asking you-I am.”
I sucked in some air and blew it out. “What do you want me along for? Somebody ought to stay with the car.”
“We can use another spotter. Besides, you’ve been in on this since almost the beginning. You deserve to be in on the finish.” He squeezed my arm; he squeezed it hard. “We’re going to bring Charlie back, Nate. Come along.”
I went along.
Lindbergh took the controls, of course, and Breckinridge-who was also a pilot, as were so many of Slim’s pals-took the copilot’s chair. Condon and Irey sat behind them, and I sat behind Condon and Irey. In one corner of the plane was Lindbergh’s bundle, loosened enough to reveal its contents: a blanket around some baby clothes and a bottle of milk.
Lindbergh placed his hands on the wheel and sighed, contentedly, and then he gunned the Sikorsky’s engines and I felt my stomach fall to my shoes as we lifted off. In retrospect I realize the takeoff was smooth, but it seemed to me at the time that every nut, bolt and screw holding this mechanical beast together was shaking apart. The bellow of the twin engines was deafening and as Lindbergh swung the ship around, slowly circling the field, I was thankful I hadn’t eaten lately.
Lindbergh pointed the plane toward the climbing morning sun, as we skirted the Connecticut shore. I sat, the seat beneath me rumbling, my eyes closed. We were soon heading toward Martha’s Vineyard, over the northern end of Long Island Sound. But I didn’t know that.
I told myself if I had to fly, what better pilot could I have for my first air voyage than the most famous pilot in the world? At the same time I realized that this particular pilot was one of the most reckless daredevils ever to take flight.
Finally, as the hum of the plane and even the vibration of my chair began to lull me, I looked out my window at the placid blue glimmering surface of the Sound. It, too, lulled me. From up here, the world became something abstract-colors, shapes, patterns. The day couldn’t have been a clearer, more perfect one. It was even cold enough, in the cabin, to keep that damn milk from going sour.
Just as I was getting comfortable, Condon began talking. I couldn’t quite make it out, at first, but he seemed intense, serious.
After a while I tapped Irey on the shoulder and he leaned back, and I said, “What’s the old fart babbling about, anyway?”
“Excerpts,” Irey said with a glazed expression.
“Excerpts?”
“From the Song of Solomon.”
Suddenly the rumble of the Sikorsky’s engines seemed a blessing.
I had a clear view of my two pilots, despite my rear seat, and I noticed, after a while, Lindbergh turning the controls over to Breckinridge. That was almost a relief, as of the two colonels, Breckinridge struck me as the staid one-no stunt-flying from him.
But almost immediately we began to lose altitude.
The fucking ship was sinking like a stone!
“Slim!” Breckinridge said, trying not to panic. “I’m trying to pull up, but…”
Lindbergh reached over and took the wheel momentarily, got it back on an even keel, and returned the controls to Breckinridge. Lindy was smiling, faintly. Breckinridge swallowed, his expression baffled.
I, of course, had died of a heart attack long before.
Not long after, Breckinridge shouted again. “I’m trying to turn right, and it’s turning left! What in hell is wrong….”
Lindbergh again took the controls and banked the plane to the right, without problem.
Breckinridge was looking carefully at his friend. Then he slowly began to smile. “You rascal.”
Rascal?
And Lindbergh began to laugh. I’d never heard him laugh, not like that.
Breckinridge was grinning. “You crossed the wires on this crate, when you looked it over….”
Lindbergh’s laughter filled the cabin, drowning out even the drone of the twin engines. He was like a college boy watching a frat-house friend open a door and get drenched by a bucket of water. Irey looked back at me, whiter than his shirt. Condon seemed to be praying.
Lindbergh reached beneath the control panel on Breckinridge’s side, laughing softly as he did, and made some adjustments and said, “I got you, Henry. I got you.”
“You rogue. You rascal.”
“You fucker!” I said.
Lindbergh looked back, startled, then embarrassed, “Didn’t mean to scare you, Nate. I just like to put one over on Henry now and then.”
“Keep in mind I didn’t bring a change of underwear, okay?”
“Okay,” Lindy called back to me, shyly smiling. “Sorry. Forgot this was your first time up.”
I supposed the reemergence of Slim’s notorious practical-joker side was a good thing. But I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm about it. I shut my eyes. Actually slept a little.
Irey’s voice woke me, as he called back to me: “We’re getting there.”
I looked out the window at a blemish on the blue mirror below.
“That’s Cuttyhunk Island,” Irey said, turning toward me. “First of the Elizabeth Island group.”
The plane swooped low and my stomach did a flip.
Nonetheless I kept my eyes on the window where I saw half a dozen specks turn into trim Coast Guard cutters; a Navy man-of-war steamed into view, as well. Lindbergh throttled down, dropping us near a few boats bobbing gently at anchor near the shore. Soon we were flying so low we were almost skimming the sea; then the twin engines would gather volume as Lindy would pull us up, swinging wide, turning to again swoop low.
I got used to it; I did get used to it. And I never again, as long as I lived, felt uneasy in an airplane-after all, I had survived “hedgehopping” with a daredevil stunt-pilot, as we played tag with the tips of swaying masts.
For better than six hours, we roared over and swooped down near dozens of boats, fishing boats and pleasure craft alike, never seeing Cemetery John’s “small boad.”
Around noon, Lindbergh turned away from the search area and the seaplane roared steadily ahead for a while and then swooped down again, and out the window I saw the sea, churning whitely as we settled down in Buzzard’s Bay. We taxied to Cuttyhunk Island, and I was eager to place my feet on the relatively solid, dry land that was the bouncy wooden dock.
A swarm of reporters awaited. They called questions out to all of us, trotting along beside us as Lindbergh walked stoically forward; they badgered him, trying to find out who Condon was, who Irey and I were, Lindy never acknowledging their presence with even a glance.
“Now, now, boys,” Breckinridge said, waving them off. “Please leave us alone. We’ve nothing to tell you.”
They backed off long enough for us to have a quiet lunch at the old Cuttyhunk Hotel. Condon chowed down; I was able to eat a little. Breckinridge and Irey had modest appetites. Lindbergh, his face pale and his eyes dead, ate nothing; when any of us asked him a question, he’d grunt a monosyllabic nonresponse.
After lunch we went back to the Sikorsky and the afternoon was a replay of the morning, minus the joking: in silence, Lindy swept the sea off southern Massachusetts. No boat resembled the “boad” Nelly. We looked out the windows mutely, our eyes burning from looking.
Night began to settle in on us.
“Something’s gone wrong,” Lindbergh finally admitted. “Maybe the Coast Guard activity spooked them.”
Breckinridge, in the copilot’s chair, cleared his throat and said, “There seems little point going on with the search, for the time being.”
Lindbergh answered him by making one last swing through the Sound at near sea level; then the plane picked up altitude, leveling out, and turned homeward, to the southeast.
We landed on an airstrip in Long Island. Lindbergh had arranged for a car to be waiting at the Aviation Country Club at Hicksville. We piled in and rode in silence to Manhattan. The bundle of blankets, baby clothes and milk had been left behind in the seaplane. The milk was probably sour by now, anyway.
Lindbergh spoke for the first time as the car was stopped at a light in the Thirties on Third Avenue. “I’ll take you home, Professor.”
“Please don’t, Colonel,” Condon said; he was sitting between Irey and me, again, in the backseat. “Let me out here-I can get home very nicely on the subway.”
“I’ll take you.” Slim’s voice was strangely cold.
“It isn’t necessary,” Condon said, a certain desperation in his voice.
“All right.” Lindbergh swung over by the stairway of an uptown station. He turned and looked at us. His face was gaunt and grim. “We’ve been double-crossed, you know.”
Condon said nothing. His lips were trembling under the walrus mustache.
Lindbergh got out and let Condon out; in doing so, I had to get out as well, and I heard Slim coldly say to the professor, “Well, Doctor-what’s the bill for your services?”
I thought Condon was going to cry. His face fell farther than my stomach had on takeoff. Unbelievable as it seems, I felt sorry for the old boy.
“I…I have no bill,” he said.
Lindbergh seemed a little ashamed, suddenly. “I’d feel better if you let me reimburse you for…”
“No,” Condon said, with some dignity. “I never accept money from a man who is poorer than myself.”
With a nod to Lindbergh, and another to me, he descended into the subway station.
After Lindbergh dropped Irey and Breckinridge off at their respective stops in Manhattan, I shifted to the front seat and we began the ride back to Hope well. Again, I slipped off into sleep. When I awoke we were in the wilds of New Jersey.
Lindy smiled sadly over. “Among the living again, Nate?”
“Technically,” I said. “How are you doing?”
“Been thinking. Do you think the old boy took us for a ride?”
“Condon? I don’t know. I keep thinking about those Harlem spiritualists who knew about him before we did.”
Lindbergh nodded. “I’m not writing him off, just yet, or that ransom I paid. I’m heading out again, tomorrow. For another look.”
I shrugged. “Like you said, maybe all that naval activity frightened ’em off. Maybe they disguised the Nelly, stuck her in some secluded cove somewhere.”
“It’s possible,” he agreed, a little too eagerly. “I’ll call Newark airport when I get home-arrange for a monoplane.”
“Good.”
We rode in silence; the woods were on our either side.
Then he said, “Could you join me on the search, tomorrow? It would be just the two of us.”
“Well…okay. But no practical jokes, okay?”
He managed a smile. “Okay.”
He turned off Amwell Road onto the dirt of Featherbed Lane. Soon the big house came into view; though it was nearing midnight, a scattering of lights were on. People were up.
“Oh God,” he said. “This is going to be hard. Look at that.”
“What?”
“The nursery.”
The lights were on in that second-floor corner room, glowing like a beacon. A mother was waiting to welcome her baby.