Free Trophy for Eagles by Walter J. Boyne Page A

basics, men preferred a woman with curves, no matter what the fashion magazines said. She peered into a hand mirror, patting makeup to cover the small lines around her eyes.
    I'm wasting time, she thought. Charlotte dressed quickly, trying to forget how bored she was with practically everything but sex and flying. Six years ago, her marriage had been a lifebelt; it was turning into a penance. Hafner's appeal was eroding into a solely sexual one, helped only by his letting her take a decisive role in the business. The problem was that she didn't like dealing in surplus armaments, working with sleazy characters from around the world. It was particularly bad because poor old Murray, the chauffeur, was always slavering after her, like a hound dog in heat. Bruno trusted him completely, and insisted that he be in on everything.
    Roosevelt Field, with its ever-changing mix of strange airplanes and strange men, was a godsend. She got to fly three or four times a week, and viewed the various pilots as a Whitman's Sampler of sex. A few, like Lindbergh and Byrd, were aloof, but most of the pilots played the game very well. Some, like Acosta, were almost too aggressive. She actually liked them to be a little stand-offish, to let her seduce them. God knew she didn't need much seducing herself.
    She grabbed her helmet and a leather jacket. "An hour of flying and an hour of loving—that ought to do it."
    *
    Roosevelt Field, Long Island/May 17, 1927
    Bandfield was amazed at how much he liked rich people when he got to know them. In California, he'd donned a defensive armor of derision about wealthy people, contending always that he didn't need money to be happy, while they, of course, did.
    Jack Winter had changed all that. He was only forty, many times a millionaire, and obviously capable of a good time under any circumstances. He had inherited money from his father, who had made a fortune in timber, first in Wisconsin and then in Washington, before coming back to live the good life on Long Island. Bandfield laughed when he realized that Jack Winter's father was exactly the kind his own father had hated and had organized labor unions against.
    Winter's father had inspired in Jack a tremendous admiration for Teddy Roosevelt, and Winter talked admiringly to Bandy of the need to embrace, the vigorous, sporting life as every man's goal. It was implicit that he really meant every rich man's goal, but Bandy didn't comment.
    Winter had volunteered for the Air Service in mid-1918, lying about his age, but had been rejected when he failed to pass the eye exam. Frustrated, he returned to business, and by following his dad's advice to always go opposite to what the mugs were doing, made a continuous fortune in the stock market, in good times or bad.
    Jack and Frances were obviously genuinely fond of Millie; no one had said anything, but Bandy guessed they couldn't have children of their own by the way they doted on her, treating her more as a daughter than a niece. Surprisingly, they extended the same care to Bandfield as well, either because they liked him or because they liked Millie liking him.
    Back in California, Bandfield had never had any personal knowledge of anyone who lived as well as Jack Winter. The morning after they had met, Winter had taken Bandy and Millie down to his marble-columned brokerage, complete with murals of the colonists buying Manhattan from the Indians. He explained the operation of the market, and it didn't surprise Bandfield when Millie seemed to know all about it; she was one smart cookie. It all made sense to Bandfield, except that he couldn't understand why anyone would spend his life doing it.
    He understood everything that afternoon when the Rolls carried them to Winter's house on Long Island, a long rolling gray field- stone with a private airstrip, a dock, and a ten-car garage tucked discreetly back behind the tennis courts and swimming pools.
    Frances had dragged Millie off to gossip about the family, and Winter