A Shared Confidence by William Topek

my secretary and walked downstairs to the taxi she’d called. My wristwatch read a quarter past twelve when we climbed onto the auto deck of the Hannibal Bridge. We’d reach Kansas City Municipal Airport in under fifteen minutes or less.

Chapter Five: Seeing a Man About a Loan

    T he cabbie fetched my suitcase out of the trunk and I paid him for the ride. He touched his cap, wished me a safe journey, and started looking around for a fare back into town. I picked up my suitcase and walked inside to the T&WA counter. No, I reminded myself, it’s just TWA now. Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express merged five years ago, the new company making its headquarters in Kansas City. The merger had been busted up last year in the wake of the Air Mail Scandal, but Transcontinental got to keep the new name.
    The man at the counter found the ticket Nathan had reserved for me and took my suitcase. I strolled over to the newsstand and grabbed some newspapers and magazines to read on the flight, then found a bench and looked over the crowd. Mostly businessmen and a few of the idle rich. I’d been to this airport a handful of times, to meet arriving passengers or to tail someone, but I’d never flown out of it. It had been dedicated in ’Twenty-Seven by Charles Lindbergh, along with about every other new airport dedicated that year. Being the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic brought publicity in pretty hefty bags. Not that I begrudged the man for making the most of an impressive and daring accomplishment, but it was a damned shame for him that it’s all too easy to draw the wrong kind of attention when you’re riding that wave. I was thinking of the kidnapping, of course. They’d made a conviction just last month, but that wouldn’t bring Lucky Lindy’s boy back.
    I killed twenty minutes skimming my papers and watching the foot traffic entering and exiting until the announcement came for my flight. Papers and magazines stuffed under one arm, I made my way with the other passengers out onto the tarmac. Sitting on the ramp, gleaming in the afternoon sun, was the Douglas DC-2 that would take me to Baltimore. It was an impressive-looking ship, all anodized metal from the rounded fuselage to the large wings supporting the twin propellers. I knew from articles I’d read that the cabin was largely soundproofed and otherwise secured against the elements. I climbed up the stairs with the other passengers, smiled back at the uniformed pilot standing inside the hatch to greet us, then found a seat. My elbows fell on padded armrests. Not what I remembered; air travel had gone commercial in a big way in the last five years.
    I thought back to my first ride in an airplane almost twenty years ago. My Signal Corps unit was setting up a communications tower somewhere in the south of France. We were due to perform maintenance on another such setup about forty miles away, and my commanding officer got the bright idea that I should travel on ahead with the mail pilot, get a jump on things. The pilot, grinning cruelly at me from under raised goggles, said he’d be happy to give me a lift. I was nineteen years old – nowhere near brave enough to chicken out in front of the others. I grabbed my gear and climbed into the passenger seat of the open-air biplane. The pilot got in behind me, the ground mechanic got the propeller started, and off we went. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life up to that point, in the sense that I was pretty sure I was going to die. Between the engine rattling the fuselage and the wind whipping at the wings – and never forgetting that we were a thousand times heavier than any bird – I spent the better part of an hour grabbing whatever I could hold onto and waiting for my stomach, which always seemed to be a climb or a dive behind. I was tempted to kiss the ground when we landed, but had to settle for a different kind of offering: my