signature.
Legal and aboveboard.
On July 19, the Navy abandoned its efforts and declared the search for the Electra over. Though intercepted radio messages (never made public) indicated Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan had been picked up by the Japanese almost two weeks earlier, the Navy used the continuing search as an excuse for continued, expanded reconnaissance of this strategic area of the Pacific. They were not allowed into Japanese-controlled waters, however, though the Japanese professed to be helping in the search.
Ten ships, sixty-five airplanes, and four thousand men had scoured two hundred and fifty thousand square miles of Pacific Ocean in a four-million-dollar effort. Not a trace of the Electra or its crew or even a life raft turned up. No oil slick, no scrap of floating debris. Nothing.
One month to the day after the search for Amy ended, Paul Mantz married Terry Minor in Hollywood’s fabled wedding chapel, the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather. When the papers covered it, they described Mantz as “technical advisor for Amelia Earhart,” and quoted him as saying, “It’s time to get on with our lives.”
Miller apparently got to everyone I’d talked to, because no one came forward, and I certainly didn’t go to the papers.
I was a good American, after all; and anyway, I had no desire to be the government’s next disappearing act. But as the days and months passed, I would open the paper each morning, looking for the headline announcing her return. Amy’s good pal President Roosevelt wouldn’t let her rot in some Japanese jail, would he? An arrangement would be made; some exchange; something that would allow both countries to achieve their goals and the honorable Japanese tradition of saving face.
But the headline never came. Amelia Earhart had vanished from the pages of the papers as completely as she had somewhere over the Pacific. She had flown out of the news and into the pages of history, where she lay prematurely buried.
14
The mural behind the Cine-Gril bar depicted early Hollywood days, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, way back when movies couldn’t talk, a dozen years ago. The soothingly air-conditioned lounge was cozy but large enough for a bandstand and postage-stamp dance floor (Russ Columbo’s radio show was broadcast out of here) and the lighting was subdued, but not so much so that you couldn’t be seen if you wanted to. That ultramodern material, Formica, covered the front of the bar in deep red, with horizontal stripes of chrome and indirect lighting from under the lip of the mahogany countertop. The blue leather and chrome stools were shaped like champagne glasses and I was perched on one of them, sipping a rum and Coke.
I was a little early—the meeting was set for four-thirty, and I’d arrived here at the Roosevelt Hotel, by cab, having arrived by train at the impressive new Union Station on North Alameda around three. Checking in, washing up, and slipping into my Miami white suit, black-and-white-checkered tie, and black-banded straw fedora, I’d ambled through the pale chamber of the impressively decorative, Spanish Colonial-style lobby trying to inconspicuously spot movie stars among the potted palms, plush armchairs and overstuffed couches. I’d made several trips to Hollywood—including one late last year—and my pals at the Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge and the Dill Pickle deli always looked forward to my blase rundown on any Tinseltown somebodies I’d set eyes on. The joke was the few starlets, would-be matinee idols, and low-rent agents clustered here and there, chatting—not a seat taken, no one wanting to be seen “waiting”—were sneaking peeks at me, not realizing I was nobody.
The first person in Hollywood I recognized was in the movies all right, but most tourists wouldn’t have known his name any more than his Gable-mustached, nearly handsome face: Paul Mantz—in a single-breasted hunter green sport jacket with gathered waist and double-patch pockets, a yellow open-neck shirt, and light green slacks —sauntered into the Cine-Gril, put his hand on my shoulder, ordered a martini in a frosted glass from the black- jacketed bartender, and then said hello.
Other than a touch of gray at the temples and perhaps a slight further receding of his hairline, Mantz looked the same: dark alert eyes, familiar cocky set to his thin mouth, and jutting jaw.
“How’s married life?” I asked him, as he stood next to me, not taking a stool.
“Much better the second time around,” he said. “I’m a dad now, you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. I’d had my own ruminations over fatherhood since I’d seen him last. “Congratulations.”
“Well, two kids were part of the package,” he said, accepting the frosted martini from the bartender, finally sliding up onto a stool. “Terry was Roy Minor’s widow, y’know, the racing pilot? His kids, good kids, Tenita and Roy Jr., are mine, now…but Terry and me have our own boy—Paul Jr. He’ll be two in August.”
“Hope business is good, with all those mouths to feed.”
Half a smile dimpled one cheek. “Real boom in war pictures. The country may not wanna get into this scrap, but they sure like to see it at the movies. Also, test flights and aerial camera jobs for Lockheed. Charter service is doin’ great, including a branch in San Francisco—set up two amphibians at the Golden Gate Expo and flew thousands of gawking Midwest bumpkins like you over the fair. Oh, and the Vega crashed—ground accident, I was fully covered.”
“No more
“Oh, sure, but it’s a Lockheed Orion, now. You keepin’ busy?”
I shrugged. “Retail credit, divorce work, a little industrial espionage now and then.”
“Industrial spying? You doin’ it, or stoppin’ it?”
I let him have half a smile. “I’m a priest to my clients, Paul. Don’t expect me to violate a sacred trust.”
“Unless there’s a buck in it…. Don’t look so hurt.”
“That was acting,” I said. “When in Hollywood…. What can you tell me about this little business conference?”
He swirled his martini in its glass. “What have they told you?”
“Not a damn thing. Margot DeCarrie called, asked if I’d come out here and listen to a business proposition; she offered train fare, two nights’ lodging and meals, plus a C-note and a half for my trouble and other expenses.”
“And that’s all she told you?”
