Knowing, I asked, “What administration would that be?”
“The Roosevelt administration.” He took another sip of the whiskey sour, perhaps to provide time to see if his answer would be enough to satisfy me; my gaze was still on him, so he finally added, “I’m, uh…an administrative assistant to the President.”
“Sort of a troubleshooter.”
“You might say.”
“And you flew here, from Washington, D.C., to take this meeting with me?”
“I had several other meetings here, but yes, primarily. The President, and particularly Eleanor, were close friends of Amelia’s, and they are wholly supportive of the Foundation’s efforts.”
Even if they didn’t want their man’s name on the Foundation letterhead.
“I take it, then, Jim, that you were also a personal friend of Amelia’s…”
“I knew G. P. and his wife, yes. We traveled in something of the same social circles, in New York.”
Smiling innocently at Dimity, I asked, “And you, Elmer? You have a great passion for this cause, obviously. What was your connection to Amelia?”
But it was Margot who answered, leaning forward, reaching past Mantz, to touch my hand. “That’s what I started to say, before I got off the track…. I thought you knew, Nathan, that Mr. Dimity was one of Amelia’s closest friends and business associates.”
“No I didn’t,” I admitted.
Margot continued: “Mr. Dimity developed a training unit for parachute jumpers….”
“It’s a two-hundred-foot tower,” Dimity interjected, “with a safety line attached to a standard parachute harness. Designed primarily for military use. Amelia helped me out by taking the first public jump from one of my towers.”
This was ringing a bell. Amy had told me that after G. P. had left Paramount, and needed some cash flow, he’d involved her with several publicity campaigns for a parachute company; she had also fondly mentioned the well- intentioned owner of the firm, who had become a supporter and something of a hanger-on.
“Amelia helped me gain public attention for several other of my aeronautics inventions,” Dimity said, then had another taste of his Gilbert. Behind the wire frames, his eyes were distant with memory, his voice soft as he said: “I owe much of the success of my company to that kind and generous lady.”
“Well, I know you didn’t pay my way out here to ask me for a contribution,” I said, which got a chortle out of Dimity and a smile from Margot. Forrestal’s reaction was only a little less expressive than a cigar store Indian’s. “And adding my name to your membership board sure won’t gain you any prestige.”
“We have a job for you,” Dimity said. “We are probably at least a year away from mounting our expedition, hiring a ship and crew…. This is no idle effort, Nate, it’s my intention to go along, and Miss DeCarrie feels the same way. Having Amelia’s personal secretary aboard will lend our expedition credibility.”
This was starting to sound about as credible to me as launching an expedition to the Island of Lost Boys to look for Peter Pan.
“Of course,” Dimity was saying, “this assumes that all goes well with fundraising.”
“An opportunity has arisen,” Forrestal said, joining in belatedly, his whiskey sour glass empty, “that may help the fundraising effort.”
“Have you heard of Captain Irving Johnson?” Dimity asked me. “No.”
“Or perhaps, Captain Irving and Electa Johnson?”
“Them either.”
Margot said, “Captain Johnson and his lovely wife, when they’re not sailing around the world, are active on the same lecture circuit as Mr. Putnam…the sort of places Amelia used to speak.”
“And they talk about sailing around the world, I gather.”
“Yes,” Margot said. “They have a schooner.”
“Isn’t that what you serve German beer in?”
“No, Nathan, it’s a big sailing vessel…”
“That was a joke, Margot. The, uh, Johnsons is it? Sail around the world, and then they go on a lecture tour; then they sail some more, and repeat the process?”
“Yes,” she said, a little embarrassed.
“They write books together,” Dimity said, “and perhaps you’ve seen their articles in the
“My subscription just lapsed,” I said.
Captain and Mrs. Irving Johnson were part of the adventuring and voyaging fad that had turned Amelia Earhart into a star, the same public fascination for exploring that had made G. P. Putnam and his instant books successful, and public figures out of Lindy, Admiral Byrd, Frank Buck, and the rest of that hardy bunch.
Forrestal said, “Captain Johnson and his wife are out on a world voyage right now.”
“But they are willing to divert from their cruise,” Dimity said, “to accept a two-thousand-dollar commission from the Foundation. For four weeks, Captain Johnson will sail the Gilbert and Ellice islands. It is our hope that he will discover enough new information about the Earhart disappearance to fuel our fundraising efforts for a full expedition.”
“That might be helpful,” I admitted. “Do you want me to run a full background check on the captain, and make
