CHAPTER ONE
Casey waved his thanks to the driver as the truck rattled away down Riverside Drive, leaving a cloud of dust to mark its passage. He'd been lucky in catching a ride; if he'd waited until the Red Car started running, he'd still be on his way here right now. The duffel bag thumped softly against his hip as he crossed the dirt road to the Glendale Airport's grass field. The bag held his every possession; he'd had to abandon his room in Santa Monica. Once he got paid he'd make sure Mrs. Decker got the three weeks' rent he still owed her. Of course he would.
At the far end of the field, a group of hangars and haphazard buildings clustered together as though seeking mutual support against their own shoddy construction. Somewhere in there was the production office for the location shoot of High Risk, the film he'd been hired to fly for.
Or that he'd been invited to audition for; the phone call hadn't made things exactly clear, though Casey had actually received a contract in the mail late last week. It had been six long, painful months since his last flying job. That one day's work had been the only time he'd even been near an airplane, much less flown one, in the year since his last, disastrous encounter with Howard Hughes. What little work he'd been able to find lately had involved repairing cars in a garage that he was convinced was being used as a bootlegger's roost. That, or as a workshop for disguising stolen vehicles.
As if to mock his ground-bound status, somewhere overhead an airplane announced its presence with an angry-wasp snarl. The sound muted for a few seconds, then announced itself again, close and coming closer. Almost unaware of doing so, Casey smiled.
He was pretty sure that the only reason he'd been called for this job was that most of the good stunt pilots were busy. Casey had been given the strong impression that the producers of High Risk weren't interested in paying for good pilots.
The good ones still worked for Hughes because, incredibly, Hell's Angels was still in production. Most movies had production times measured in weeks; Hell's Angels was literally taking years to make.
Thinking about Hughes made Casey miserable; he wished he could stop. It wasn't that he was by nature pessimistic; not even the months of sudden death in the skies over northern France had disrupted what he liked to think of as a cheerful disposition. Lately, though, he'd come to wonder if, having introduced him to flying, the world was now actively conspiring to prevent him from doing so, simply because flying gave him such pleasure.
The engine sound intruded on his thoughts, and now its familiarity—the staccato snap of a rotary engine being blipped—made him understand that earlier unconscious smile. Casey looked around, trying to locate the source of the sound.
A second later it passed over his head with a brief gust of wind. Casey successfully fought the instinct to duck, and saw the biplane bounce once, then settle roughly onto the grass and roll toward the hangars. The pilot blipped the engine once, twice, then shut off and coasted the rest of the way.
Casey blinked as he watched the receding biplane. This was the strangest-looking kite he'd ever seen. Its boxy fuselage identified it as a Curtis Jenny. But the wings had been clipped. And Jennies didn't have rotary engines, and he had surely heard a Gnome—there was no mistaking that sound. Jennies didn't have comma-shaped rudders, either, and this machine had a giant, almost parodic comma rudder. Casey picked up the pace of his walking.
* * * *
By the time he reached the hangars the Jenny was nowhere to be seen. What he saw instead was a group of smartly dressed people decanting themselves from a procession of automobiles and trucks parked between a hangar and a particularly tumbledown shack that bore a sign declaring it to be the location office for High Risk.
By their dress they were obviously movie people, though why they'd been brought out here was beyond him. So far as Casey knew, actors usually worked on sets inside studio stages in or near Hollywood. Only stunt pilots and doubles came out into the grit and dust of a place like this.
And yet here they were, a half-dozen of them, all dressed in a fashion that made him very self-conscious of his oil-stained slacks and thin, ragged sweater.
It occurred to him to wonder not only why they were here, but why they were here at six-thirty in the morning. Unless they were just stopping by on their way home from a party or orgy somewhere.
"Excuse me," he said to the group in general. "I'm looking for Mr. Hogan." When they just stared at him, as though he were some exotic and unfamiliar creature from Borneo, he added, "I'm Casey. The new pilot." That might be an exaggeration, but it never hurt to sound sure of yourself.
"Hail and well-met, good fellow," said a plump, pink-cheeked man whose suit was an affront to the early hour. The man's eyes lit on Casey, widened for a moment and then darted away. "I'm Jerry Straebo, and these are some of the cast of High Risk. As you can see, we're busy"—to Casey, they looked anything but—"so you'll forgive us if we're unable to help you. I'm sure Mr. Hogan's around somewhere."
"Casey, was it?" The voice came from around the side of the hangar; a moment later, so did the speaker.
Casey saw a bullet-headed man of about forty, wearing a white shirt, cream-colored slacks, and knee-high boots. On most men such boots would have been an affectation. Casey was pretty sure that wasn't the case here.
"Mr. Hogan?" he asked.
"Yeah. Ed Hogan," the man said. "And you're being a bit presumptuous, aren't you? You're not the new pilot until I say so."
"I like a confident man, myself," a woman's voice said, and Casey turned back to the group.
There were two women; his eyes naturally went to them first. They had probably been chosen because they were opposites: one, who looked to be no more than sixteen, was thin and blond with a soft, pale pink complexion and large blue eyes. The other was much less childlike: more generously curved, and with the pale skin and black hair he associated with vamps. Casey was sure he'd seen her on screen, but couldn't think of either her name or any movie he'd seen her in. Her eyes were as large as the blond's, but a deep green into which Casey suddenly found himself staring. The woman smiled wickedly when he blinked; he forced himself to look away.
The men—there were a half-dozen of them, and more walking from where the cars were parked—were uniformly tanned and casually dressed. Other than Straebo, they were all young, and fit, and most likely the actors who were going to pretend to fly the planes in the movie. One stared around eagerly, looking for something Casey couldn't guess at. The others looked supremely bored.
"We all know the kind of man you like, Desiree," one of the young men said. "Breathing." The young man looked very self-possessed, and if he'd spoken in that tone of voice to anyone Casey cared about, the young man would have earned himself a fat lip at the least.
"And we all know the kind of man you like. Don't we, Dickie?" It was the raven-haired woman who'd spoken, and Casey was startled to realize that she was Desiree Farrell. He'd seen her in the pictures. Well, of course you have, idiot, he told himself. She's an actress.
"Don't be vulgar, Desiree," said another young man, a more serious-looking chap whose brown hair was carefully Brilliantined and whose profile was magnificently chiseled.
"Don't you have work for this man to be doing?" Straebo asked Hogan. "He shouldn't be bothering these people."
"But Jerry, dear," Desiree said. "You ignore the possibility that some of us might want to bother him." She smiled at Casey, who was uncomfortably reminded of large jungle cats. A toothy smile was a very frightening thing, if you thought about it. "I'm Desiree Farrell," she said to Casey. "I'd like to talk to you about going up sometime."
"That's as inelegant a euphemism as I've ever heard," the man she'd called Dickie said.
Casey started forward, intending to impress on Dickie his displeasure at being so insulted. Desiree landed her own punch first. "Your wit, Dickie," she said in a voice that was deep, dark, and dangerous, "is exceeded only by your acting ability. Which explains why your next picture will probably be made for Tiffany."
"You watch your mouth, you green-eyed—"
"Jerry, please," the blond began.
"Quiet!"
Everyone, Casey included, turned to look at Straebo.
"I have had enough," the director said. "For four weeks now I have been listening to your whining complaints, Mr. Armstrong, and your snide cynicism, Miss Farrell. They have made a difficult shoot almost impossible to tolerate. They have also caused no end of distress to Miss Adams." Is that the blond? Casey wondered. She certainly looked distressed now—close to tears, actually.
Straebo turned to Dickie—that would be Richard Armstrong, Casey concluded—his thin lips pulled even tighter. "I might even go so far as to blame you for the delays we are experiencing with this picture."
"Now, wait a minute," Armstrong said. "That's not fair."
"I say what is fair," Straebo snapped. "And what is not fair is a juvenile little snip and a superior, snotty know-it-all making a mockery of my production! This behavior will cease immediately!"
Casey heard Armstrong mutter, "Or what?" but apparently the director did not, for he turned away and wrapped a comforting arm around the blubbering Miss Adams. Casey noted with interest that Desiree Farrell stepped to Straebo's side and whispered something to him; the director nodded, patted Desiree with his free hand, and returned his attention to Miss Adams.
When Desiree turned to see Casey watching her, she smiled, then gave him a conspiratorial wink. He suddenly felt uncomfortably warm.
"Mr. Hogan," he asked, "can I please go and do some flying now?"
"Had enough of the movie life already?" Hogan snorted condescendingly. "Let's go, then."
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