Chapter 8 - Where the Truth Lies

A DRIVING AUGUST RAIN in Los Angeles. Like February 29, it does actually occur every now and then, and when it does, what a lark! The drains in the street go mad and start frothing at the mouth, and the culverts run over worse than the budget of Cleopatra. Half the native Los Angeles drivers, never having seen a heavy rain before, continue to drive at seventy-five miles an hour, unaware of the undertow. The other half instantly drive home at a crawl and are not seen again for days. This mass sequestering is the Southern California version of snowbound and has been known to cause the citizens to “read for pleasure”—but as I say, it doesn’t rain in Los Angeles very often.

My cabdriver stared in awe as the view framed by his windshield turned into an impressionist painting in the furious downpour. So stunned was he as the daylight colors bled together on the glass that, momentarily disoriented, he spoke in English.

“Fucking rain,” he grunted and glared at me in his mirror as if there were something I could do about it, such as walk. But my bags were already in the trunk, lying upon the puddle of spilled motor oil that was compulsory in all Southern California taxicabs.

We arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, with its Theme Building designed by Frank Lloyd Jetson, and reached the segment of the white zone designated for the loading and unloading of American Airlines passengers only. My editors at Neuman and Newberry had summoned me to New York to explain the terms of the advance I’d offered Vince (if not my advances). A phone call like the one I’d already made to their business-affairs department would have sufficed, but for the money they were going to be shelling out, my editors wanted to have me summarize the terms of the agreement yet again in person. Pointless but unavoidable.

My garment bag swept the terminal floor clean as I dragged it over to the long lines at the American Airlines ticket counter. I saw with elation that there was a separate check-in for first-class passengers, and thanks to the good graces of Neuman and Newberry (and my agent, who’d negotiated my deal with them), that meant me.

Although there were only two classes of travel at that time, economy was definitely third class. First class meant a wider seat with a much better view, that view on most flights consisting of the economy passengers trudging by on their way to the rear of the plane, looking at us with a searing envy, wondering who we might be, wishing they were us, noticing the glasses of champagne in our hands. All alcoholic beverages would be premium brands poured from full-size bottles into full-fisted glassware. The caviar cart would be ushered down the aisle by the stewardesses (all blond) named Kim or the lone steward (blond, all gay) named Karl. With the caviar (“Would you like diced hard-boiled egg? Capers? Chopped raw onion? A squeeze of lemon? Toast?”) would be served tall ampules of Stolichnaya nested in crushed ice. With the fish entrée (possibly seafood Newburg or Irish smoked salmon) we’d be asked to indulge a premier cru Chablis. While we were yielding to the tiresome filet mignon au poivre vert (I know, I know!), a serviceable Gevrey-Chambertin would be tolerated. At the end of the meal would come the sweet trolley (as the English called it) or le chariot (as the affected English called it). Swing low, sweet chariot. On American Airlines, this usually resulted in a made-to-order ice-cream sundae oozing hot caramel and bittersweet chocolate. Next would materialize the liqueur cart, a score of bottles clanking away against one another like a steel-drum band, and then coffee would be served, but even so, a spike of Irish whiskey or a snifter of cognac or Armagnac was always advised. Frankly, it’s a wonder the planes didn’t simply fly on booze. There was enough fuel in the first-class cabin to keep a Boeing (and oneself) in a holding pattern over the Great Lakes for a fortnight.

For this level of extraordinary (although, I felt, totally appropriate) service, my publishers were being charged an additional seven hundred dollars. Against that, however, you must remember that my headphones were free.

I stepped up to the woman behind the ticket counter. “Kerry O’Connor?” I beamed. “Flight 570 to JFK.”

“First class?” she asked, looking up at the sign that said FIRST CLASS CHECK-IN. Insulted, I murmured, “Of course,” and wanting to show her that I had not just wandered in by accident, I asked, “The plane is a jumbo jet, correct? I only fly jumbos.” She told me it certainly was and printed out a boarding pass for me.

I wasn’t kidding about preferring jumbo jets to all others. What I loved most about flying a 747 first-class to and from New York was its upstairs lounge. Ascending a spiral staircase from your seat, you found yourself in a parlor car lined on three sides with orange-and-red banquettes. There was a slim, well-stocked bar and, in its earliest rendition, a Fender Rhodes electric piano. Once dinner or lunch was out of the way, I tended to antigravitate to the lounge, skipping the in-flight movie (which by FAA regulations was required to star Michael Caine), opting instead for a glance at some book, with a longer glance out the lounge windows at the continent of clouds directly below us.

As it happens, I’m not a great flier. Beejay, my roommate in college, had told me before my first flight that I was in more danger of having a fatal accident in our bathroom than on an airplane… from which I reasoned that one should never, ever use the bathroom on a plane, as this is clearly the most dangerous place in the world. One of the reasons I most liked the upstairs lounge was that I’d convinced myself that, were the plane to crash, I’d have all the passengers below me to break my fall.

Perhaps Kim and Karl would let me sit up there for takeoff. I stepped down the telescoping gangway that all the airlines were now employing, and crossing the threshold into the jumbo jet, I decided to head up the spiral staircase straightaway for a glass or two of predeparture champagne—

But there was no spiral staircase. It had clearly been stolen. I asked a stewardess, named Kim, about this with some urgency. Her answers were unsatisfactory. Yes, the plane was a wide-body. Yes, it was a jumbo jet. No, it had no spiral staircase. Yes, like a 747, its first-class compartment was to the left of the boarding door. No, it was not a 747. Not all jumbo jets are 747s.

Ohmigod. It was a DC-10.

Kim handed me a glass of champagne to steady my shaken nerves and I almost forgot to thank her, so disoriented was I trying to find my seat. The seating configuration up front on a DC-10 was unusual: two-two-two. I was in the middle pair in the last row of first class. Miles away from a window. I did have a well-centered view of the movie screen where Michael Caine would shortly appear. But gone for the journey would be any view of that cumulusian continent of which I was so fond.

“How booked up are you?” I asked Kim. “Any chance of switching to a window seat?”

Kim turned to an older stewardess who was helping a gentleman off with his sports jacket. “Helen, do we have a window seat available?”

Helen shook her head unhappily. “No, doggone it, I’m afraid first is all full—I was just checking that for Marge at the gate.” She looked down at me apologetically. “They’re almost as jammed up in economy as we are, so I can’t even offer you a window back there.” She stepped away.

“Would you like a little more champagne?” asked Kim. I sat down and accepted her offer as she tried to sell me on the virtues of the DC-10.

“These center seats are really wonderful. See, if you push here—can I show you…?” She used her foot to depress a button at the base of my seat. “The seat swivels to the left and right, something the side seats can’t do.” She moved me forty-five degrees one way and forty-five the other. Whee. This was even better than the mechanical pony outside of Woolworth’s, and only seven hundred dollars a ride.

Kim then indicated a low circular table to my right. “And this converts into a full-sized circular dining table during our American Admiral service, with damask linen and silverware by Fornari, so you don’t have to eat off a tray. Again, that’s only for these center seats. And today we’ll be serving you prime rib carved as you like it at tableside from our American Admiral serving trolley.” She was on autopilot now. I shrugged and leaned back, resigned to my fate.

By now first class had pretty much filled up. In the seat to my left was a youngish British executive in a pinch-waisted Cardin blazer and dove-gray trousers that were narrower than the knot in his tie. He was accompanied by a skeletal Nordic model in a white sleeveless top whose pinstripes coordinated nicely with the track marks on her left arm. In the seats in front of them were two men who appeared to be from the Indian sub-continent and who spoke in the nasal, reedy timbre I associated with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They both wore double-knits, one a pale blue LEEsure suit from Lee Jeans, the other a Haggar made from rich, brown Trevira polyester with a jaunty yellow acetate scarf at his throat. The two seats in front of me had not yet been filled. The single seat directly to my right was also vacant (maybe I wouldn’t have a neighbor on this flight, which would almost compensate for the lack of an upstairs lounge). In the pair of seats on my far right was a couple whose matching convex bellies probably removed the missionary position from any list of their erotic options. In the seats in front of them were two businessmen who did not seem to know each other, one absorbed in The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, the other absorbed in paperwork.

Although the plane was still moored to the gate, a sleepy stupor had settled over first class, as if the staff had done everything it was supposed to do and now we were all waiting for… what?

Helen was speaking on the aircraft’s wall phone in a suppressed tone. As she was situated by the still-open boarding door, just behind where I was seated in the last row of first class, I could hear bits of what she was saying. “Well, we’ve been set for ten minutes, Marge, the captain’s waiting on you now… Definitely just the three, right? Because I have nothing else other than my own seat… Okay.” She spotted me looking at her and flashed me a professional smile, hung up the phone, and called to Kim: “Kim, we’re doing an LMA, if you could help.” Suddenly all the stewardesses seemed to gracefully converge on the doorway. Entering the plane was a sharp-faced employee in short sleeves. “Fine, we’re boarding now,” he told someone on a walkie-talkie. “This way, gentlemen,” he added to three men who followed him into the plane.

Soft murmurs of greeting went up from Helen and all of the Kims. The three men entered wearing the sober expressions people adopt when they’re being allowed to bypass a queue. Two of them moved toward the two empty seats directly in front of mine. The third appeared on my immediate right, taking the seat next to mine with an apologetic smile. He had dark golden skin like an autumnal wax pear, with a gentle face and eyes the color of his skin. Eurasian, perhaps a little Spanish, in his late fifties or robust sixties. He wore a spotless but dated black suit. There were droplets of rain beaded on his hair, which would have gleamed with or without the condensation. He folded his hands, looked straight forward, and smiled at the air.

Fidgeting in front of him was a short man, his little shoulders lost somewhere in a navy blazer. He must have been married to a woman he feared, for he was wearing a flowered shirt that he would never have purchased for himself. He summoned Helen with a crook of his finger. “A Smirnoff vodka on the rocks? And a pillow?”

Helen only half-smiled. “I’ll bring that to you shortly but we’re running a bit late, as you may well understand, and we have certain procedures required by federal law.”

The older man nodded his understanding but added, “The Smirnoff is for him,” indicating the man on his left, who looked far too sober to ever want a vodka on the rocks. This other man was tall, trim, and dressed in colors that might have been too bright were they not muted by the fine quality of their fabric and design. He gave me a quick glance of such focus and strength that my eyes were caught completely off guard, allowing him to penetrate the first veil of defense I normally wear in public. The smile he tossed me brought a silly, reflexive smirk to my lips, which I quickly tried to convert into a demure expression. But by then he’d slid smoothly into his seat.

I was to learn shortly that the Eurasian man on my right was named Reuben and that the older man in front of him was a powerful Hollywood agent named Irv Fleischmann.

I did not have to wait a moment more than the very first instant I saw him to know that the man seated directly in front of me was Lanny Morris.