High Risk 2.3

Previous     First

[Concluding chapter two]


“What do you suppose she’s up to?” Tennant asked Kerry.

“Haven’t the slightest. I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with Jerry Straebo, though. She told him that she was going out with me tonight.”

“Brett Kerry, boy decoy,” Tennant said. “Hope she’s worth it.”

“How the hell should I know?” Kerry laughed. “Straebo obviously assumes I’m no more threat to her than Desiree is.”

“You mean you haven’t made her?”

“Are you saying you have?” Kerry dropped down into a chair, throwing a leg over one of the upholstered arms. “Time to tell all, dear boy.”



All eyes in the room were on Tennant. For a moment he glared at them. Then, squirming a bit, he laughed. “Oh, all right. I tried, but she gave me the icy mitt. You know how Lily feels about actors.”

“No, we don’t,” Tillman said. “How does Lily feel about actors? And how does she feel about pilots?”

“Lily doesn’t date actors,” Kerry said. “For some reason she seems to have got it into her pretty little head that we’re all self-absorbed cake-eaters.”

“She’d probably like you three, though,” Hart said. “If even half of what I’ve heard about her is true.”

“From what you just said,” Casey said, “I assume she doesn’t mind directors.”

“Hell no,” Tennant said. “Not if they can help her out. Our Lily has a plan for her future.”

“I thought Mr. Straebo seemed awfully interested in Miss Adams,” Casey said. “How does he find the time to actually make movies?”

“Aye, there’s the rub,” Kerry said, and the other actors laughed.

“You’ll probably have a better chance of staying employed,” Hart said with a grin, “if you don’t pay too much attention to Jerry Straebo’s social life.”

“Forget Straebo,” Hamilton said. “Let’s get back to talking about Lily and the pilots.”

“Let’s get back to talking about pilots,” Hart said. “We’ve wasted too much time on frivolity as it is.” He turned to Casey. “Kerry said something about you being an ace in the War, Casey. That true?”

“Not exactly.” Casey took a sip of his drink. “I flew on the Western Front. But I wasn’t an ace by the usual standard.” At a blank look from Kerry he said, “If you had five victories in aerial combat the French and the papers called you an ace.”

“How many victories did you have?” Tennant asked. “Did you kill any Huns?”

“Does it matter?” Tillman asked. “The man had a job to do and he did it.” Casey was grateful; talking about victories as if they were all that mattered had always made him uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” Tennant said. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

“Officially I had two,” Casey said. “I didn’t see either one crash, though. So as far as I’m concerned I didn’t kill anyone. I can’t really say that I wanted to kill anyone, either. As Tillman says, I just did my job.”

“That’s good,” Hart said. “I can do something with that.”

Casey was bewildered for a moment. Do what with what? When he realized that Hart was talking about somehow cannibalizing his experiences and feelings in order to portray a character in a movie, Casey wasn’t sure whether to feel flattered or disgusted. Are all actors like this? There was something ghoulish about the enthusiasm on Hart’s face.

After a moment—Casey could almost see Hart committing Casey’s words to memory—Hart asked, “Is there anything we should know about the airplanes? About how we should handle them, look at them, treat them?”

“Given that we’re not going to be doing anything more than stand beside or sit in them,” Tennant said with a small grin.

“Try not to look as if you think it’s going to bite you,” Tillman said. Hamilton laughed.

“I don’t understand,” Tennant said.

“Most of the flying pictures I’ve seen,” Hamilton said, “the actors look as if it’s the first time they’ve ever seen an airplane and they don’t know which end is which. You’re supposed to be experienced pilots, right? So you’ve got hundreds of hours in different kinds of kites. Look at ‘em the way you look at a car.”

“Airplanes may be exotic to you and the audience,” Tillman said. “They shouldn’t be to the characters you’re playing.”

“Now I get it,” Tennant said. “Should have thought of it myself.”

So should I, Casey said to himself. Tillman and Hamilton could probably teach me a thing or two about flying pictures.

“Anything else?” Hart asked. “Casey?”

“Well,” Casey began, “I don’t know if it’ll be useful. But since you’re using Tommies in this picture, and since the Tommy is a rotary-powered machine, you should at least be aware of the diarrhea situation.”

“The what?”

For a moment Casey grinned at the unanimity with which everyone had spoken—shouted, really—the question. Then he remembered the ghoulish glee on Hart’s face, and wondered. “Maybe it doesn’t really matter,” he said. “I can’t see how it could fit into a picture that families would want to see.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Hamilton said. “I don’t give a damn about whether it makes it into a movie or not. You can’t say something like the diarrhea situation and then expect us to forget about it.”

“Yeah,” Tennant said. He giggled. “I’d love to see the look on Straebo’s face, Hart, when you tell him your character’s got the trots. So spill it, flyboy. What’s the story?”

Casey shrugged his shoulders and took a big sip of his drink. “Why not?” he said.

“Here’s what happened. For complicated reasons you probably don’t care about, rotary engines have to be lubricated with an oil that won’t break down when mixed with petrol at high temperatures. That’s one thing. The next thing is that rotaries spin. That’s why they’re called rotaries, because the whole engine turns along with the propeller. Now, when a rotary spins it throws out a spray of partly burnt oil along with the exhaust.

“The only oil that doesn’t break down under those conditions is… castor oil.”

“Castor oil?” Hart stared, incredulous. “The junk my mother used to force down my throat to—”

“Keep you regular,” Casey said. “That’s right. Now imagine you spend from two to six hours every day breathing in a mist of castor oil sprayed from your engine.

“My God,” said Tillman. “You’d be getting dosed every day whether you needed it or not.”

They were all staring at him, Casey realized, as though expecting his bowels to suddenly explode. “Relax, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m not going to embarrass the company.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Hart said. “What was it like?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Casey said. “It never happened to me.”

“What, you’re the man with the cast-iron buttocks?” Kerry said.

“Not the last time I looked,” Casey said. “I think it was one of those conditions that developed over time. And I didn’t fly rotaries long enough. During my training I was never up for more than a half-hour at a time. When I went to the front I was injured in a crash; I never flew a rotary-engine plane over the lines. All of my combat patrols were in an SE-5a, a plane with a stationary engine like the ones in your cars.”

“Well,” said Hart. “I have to say, Casey, that you win this week’s prize for the most fascinating story. And it’s probably just as well that we didn’t find out about this until after we’d finished most of the shooting. I don’t want to think about what Straebo would have done to us if he’d heard your little tale.”


Next     Prologue    Chapter One