At the corners of the blue-gray eyes, amusement crinkled. “Don’t you like flying? Or is it flying with a woman?”
“I just prefer train travel…. You know, I imagine a lecture tour’s like a whistle-stop political campaign, where you need to be able to rest up between engagements.”
“So you’re thinking of my welfare, my convenience….”
“Well, that’s part of my job, isn’t it? I’m not casting aspersions on you, ma’am…Miss Earhart…Amelia. It’s not that I’m afraid to fly with a female pilot, particularly one with your reputation. I mean, I was up with Lindbergh….”
“Knowing Slim, and his sadistic sense of humor, he probably tried to scare the heck out of you.”
“Not the ‘heck,’ exactly.”
She patted my hand; her touch was cool, and her voice was soothing, somewhat sarcastically so, but soothing.
“We’ll be traveling by car, Nate…. Not enough of these towns have suitably situated airstrips. Hope you won’t be terribly disappointed…that we won’t be traveling by train, I mean.”
“Like you said. Just thinking of you.”
Putnam was coming back into the dining room, carrying a paper sack that seemed incongruous with his tux, and wearing a tight, self-satisfied little grin. Before he sat, he grandly withdrew from the sack a flimsy reddish- brown suede hat with a silk band.
The band bore a facsimile of Amelia Earhart’s signature, and the thing was cheap-looking, like it had cost about a quarter.
“This costs twenty-five cents to manufacture,” Putnam said, sitting, as she took the hat from him and turned it in her hands, studying it with a blankly pensive expression. “And retails for three dollars.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Well,” he said absurdly, “it’s a hat.”
She passed it to me. “What do you think of it, Mr. Heller?”
I thought I wouldn’t want to get caught in the rain in a hat made out of cheap felt like this one, but all I said was, “It’s a little small.”
“It’s a girl’s hat,” Putnam said. “A little girl.”
“This is a hat for a child,” Amelia said. Her voice sounded strangely cold.
“Yes, it is. Small hats to make a small fortune.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t approve this. I won’t have my name used to cheat children.”
For the first time that I noticed, Putnam blinked. “But they’re making them now….”
“Tell them to unmake them.”
“That’s impossible! I’ve already signed the contract….”
“Well, then that puts me in a difficult position,” she said. “I obviously can’t sue the manufacturer. But I can sue you.”
He touched the front of his tux with a splayed hand; his eyes showed white all ’round. “Me? Your husband?”
“I never granted my permission for my name to be used in this manner…” She dropped the hat into the paper bag on the floor between them. “Do you want me to sue you for abusing my power of attorney?”
His voice was hushed, but loud with humiliation. “Of course not.”
“Then you will call the…the hat people, first thing in the morning, G. P., and cancel that contract.”
He just sat there, stunned, for a moment, struck dumb; then nodded.
Now she looked at me with a blandly sweet expression; the blue-gray eyes seemed as hard as they were beautiful, and as soft. “Mr. Heller? Nate?”
“Yes?”
She rose and offered me her hand; I took it, which is to say, shook it—she had a firm grip, but didn’t overdo it. Not like her husband.
“We’ll discuss the arrangements of the lecture tour tomorrow. I realize you gentlemen have some business to do…a matter of a retainer, I believe…so I’ll excuse myself and go on up to our room.”
She left the table, and the eyes of the high-society types around the dining room—a judge here, a senator there—were upon her, partly because she was an attractive woman who walked in a pleasingly, flowingly feminine manner; but also because that tousled-haired head of hers bore one of the most famous faces in America.
Putnam sighed. “That little attack of conscience is going to cost me royally.”
I didn’t say anything.
He stopped a passing waiter and ordered a Manhattan; I asked for a rum and Coke.
While we waited for our drinks, he asked, “What do
“Would you mind making out my retainer check first?”
“That bad, is it?”
