“I haven’t lined anything up yet,” she said. “Maybe the Ambassador…”
“Nonsense,” Myrtle said. “The Ambassador’s all the way downtown, and we have plenty of room. Stay with us.”
“Oh, I don’t want to impose again,” Amy said.
Again? Had she stayed with the Mantzes before?
“Oh you simply must,” Myrtle said. “I won’t even be underfoot, much…. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon, to visit my mother in Dallas.”
“Well…” Amy looked at Mantz, “…if it won’t put you out.”
“Not at all,” Myrtle said.
“It’ll give us a chance to put our heads together at night,” Mantz said, and he patted Amy’s hand. “You know how hectic it gets out here at the field…. I’ve been working up charts with Clarence, and he’ll consult with us, too.”
Clarence Williams, Amy later explained, was a retired Navy navigator who’d been helping prepare the charts of her long-distance flights since the solo Atlantic crossing.
Amy looked at Myrtle searchingly. “If it’s really not an imposition….”
“Don’t be silly,” Myrtle said. “I want you to come.”
And she lifted her own frost-edged martini glass in a little toast to her invited houseguest, with a smile just as frosty.
5
The almost-full moon was an off-white spotlight, casting an ivory spell upon the precious storybook houses of Valley Spring Lane. This was Toluca Lake, a district poised between Burbank and North Hollywood like a backlot positing an imaginary America that existed only in the movies. Small houses mostly, cottage-size—though on nearby Toluca Estates Drive I’d seen some larger ones, modest movie star mansions where perfect couples like Dick Powell and Joan Blondell had settled; but even those had a movie magic tinge, here a perfect Tudor, there a quaint gingerbread, and the occasional Spanish colonial-style, like this pale yellow stucco number with the green tile roof and matching front awnings, a dream bungalow in the bushes of which I was crouched by a side awningless window with my Speed Graphic with infrared film and the world’s most inconspicuous flash.
The role I was playing, in this ambitious production, was bedroom dick. I wasn’t proud of working the divorce racket, but there are those who would say I was typecast.
This was my third night in southern California. After dining at the Sky Room with the Mantzes that first evening, Amy had presented me with the keys to a blue ’34 Terraplane convertible she and G. P. kept in California, a perk from the Hudson company for her current endorsement deal.
“
“Not when I’m along,” she said, needling me gently. “But Paul and Myrtle’ll take me home with them tonight, and you’ll need something to get to your motel.”
She—or perhaps G. P.—had made reservations for me at Lowman’s Motor Court on North San Fernando Road.
“I thought we were staying at the Ambassador,” I said.
“No, I knew Paul would insist I stay with him. I always do.”
Every mention of Mantz from her lips gave me a twinge of jealousy. Funny attitude for a peeper trying to get the goods on a cheating wife.
“And,” I said, “G. P. wasn’t about to spring for a nice room for me if he didn’t have to.”
Her half-smile made a deep, wry dimple. “I would say that’s an insightful reading of my husband’s character.”
The next day I watched from the sidelines as Amelia followed Mantz’s lead, working all morning in the little red Link trainer. She wore a red-and-green plaid shirt with a tan bandanna and chinos and all she lacked to be a cowgirl in a Gene Autry picture was the right hat. Mantz, when he wasn’t flying, maintained an image that was part executive and the rest dashing playboy; he wore a nubby brown sportcoat with a light blue shirt and blue striped tie, his pants navy gabardines.
Amy was a dutiful pupil, for the most part, though at lunch, in the Sky Room again, she showed impatience when he told her about a gadget that next-door neighbor Lockheed was going to install in the Vega.
“It’s called a Cambridge analyzer,” he said. “You use it to know how to reset your mixture control, and get maximum miles per gallon.”
“Oh for Pete sakes, Paul,” she said, gnawing on a carrot stick like Bugs Bunny, “you take all the fun out of flying.”
“There’s nothing fun about running out of fuel over the goddamn Gulf of Mexico.”
“You’re still stewing about that?”
Mantz’s concern for her ran deep; but I still couldn’t read whether it was a lover’s caring or that of a teacher or friend.
“It’s stupid,” Mantz spouted, “cutting across a body of water that size, when you don’t have to. Jesus, angel, it’s seven hundred miles, half an Atlantic!”
“I flew a whole Atlantic, before…. Look who’s here!”
She grinned the gap-toothed grin and waved enthusiastically.
“Toni!” Amy called. “Over here!”
