Skyjack Page 2
I race over to Sherlock headquarters. The office doubles as Porteous’s one-bedroom co-op apartment on the Upper West Side. He opens the door and the classical piano music noodling away on the stereo oozes out. The place is like a zen palace for gumshoes.
I sit down at the dining room table. Porteous slides me the file. I pull out a few papers. One is a photo. The image is of a gravesite, for Lyle’s brother. I read the name.
KENNETH P. CHRISTIANSEN
TEC 5 US ARMY
WORLD WAR II
OCT 17 1926—JUL 30 1994
So Lyle’s brother’s name was Kenny. I wonder what he died from.
Cancer, Porteous says. The pancreas. That’s what Lyle told him.
I read Kenny’s military record.
PARACHUTIST’S BADGE, ASIATIC PACIFIC THEATER.
So it was true. Kenny knew about parachutes. He could have jumped out of that plane just like D.B. Cooper had.
I pull another photo. In this one, Kenny is in uniform. He wears a skinny tie with a clasp. He is standing in the aisle of an airplane.
Kenny worked for Northwest, the airline Cooper hijacked, Porteous says. He wasn’t a flight attendant. He was a purser. A purser is a senior flight attendant who handles the money and immigration issues on international flights.
In the photo, I can see Kenny is grinning. Or is it a smirk? It looks as if Kenny knows something—a secret he is keeping. Kenny, what is it? Why the smirk? What is your secret?
Porteous hands me a sketch of the hijacker.
I place the image next to Kenny’s face. Time to compare.
Whoa. Porteous is right. The resemblance is spooky.
“Oh, I think it’s him,” Sherry Hart says. Porteous’s ace is typing away at a computer terminal next to the kitchen.
If Hart’s femme instincts are so good, what is she sensing?
“Oh, coincidences lining up,” she says.
I’m not convinced. But I’m getting there.
I flip back to Kenny’s military records. In the far corner of one form I see his thumbprint, taken May 25, 1944, when he enlisted. I place my own thumb on it. I close my eyes. I imagine what Kenny’s hands must have felt like. I imagine my own thumbprint on his—to summon a feeling, an out-of-body clue that would tell me if Lyle’s brother was indeed D. B. Cooper.
I feel something. Really. I swear. Kenny?
Or do I feel anything? Am I trying too hard and making it all up?
I look at another paper in Porteous’s file. 18406 OLD SUMNER BUCKLEY HIGHWAY, BONNEY LAKE, WASHINGTON. That’s Kenny’s address.
Where’s Bonney Lake?
“About forty miles from Seattle,” Porteous says. He’s seen the town on Google maps. He’s also noticed that Bonney Lake is strategically located. It’s only twenty miles away from SEA-TAC, the airport where the Cooper hijacking took place. The authorities suspected Cooper was familiar with airlines and the area.
Coincidences, as Hart said, are lining up.
Do I have a choice? I have to fly West. I have to go to Kenny’s old house, feel around for more spirits, knock on the doors of his neighbors, find old friends, colleagues from Northwest. I write to Lyle for more information about his brother. I want to know him as Lyle did. I want to understand the way his mind worked. I drop all assignments. I do more research on the case. I read several books, newspaper clips. Soon I am leaving for the airport and now I am on the plane and I can’t get the ballad out of my head. I can hear guitar strings. I hum along to the chords.
With your pleasant smile
And your dropout style,
D.B. Cooper, where did you go?
I know exactly where: 18406 Old Sumner Buckley Highway.
November 24, 1971
Portland International Airport, Oregon
She is a specimen of red. Red lipstick. Red nail polish. Red uniform. It is not a candy apple red or a fire truck red, but the coral red you find on a necklace. Red is a central component of the “new look” campaign Northwest Orient Airlines launched the previous year. The makeover means new menus, mottos, ticket jackets, logos, and lots of red. Blue is out. Blue is conservatism and depression. And red? Red is passion, strength, arrogance.
Flo Schaffner hates Northwest’s new-look uniforms, designed by Christian Dior. She has to wear the Carnaby Street cap with a duck bill and ear flaps. The dress and jacket ensemble are too mod. All the straight lines make her look fat. She feels like Elmer Fudd.
Now she stands on the top of the aftstairs, and cold wind off the tarmac blows through the silk of her stockings and into the maw of the cabin. She looks out and sees the last passengers for the 305 flight. Huddled in their coats, they had been waiting at Gate 52, Concourse L. Now they are on the tarmac in Portland, lining up to board under the giant red fin of the Northwest Orient jet. Above them are clouds that are dark and heavy with rain. Heavy storms are predicted for the next few days.
The first passenger in line walks up the stairs.
Flo meets him. Two years working for Northwest, her lines are automatic.
“Hi. Welcome aboard. Can I check your ticket?”
She reads the name on the boarding pass. Finegold, Larry.
He has frizzy hair, chunky eyeglasses. He does not look like a federal prosecutor. He spent the day in Vancouver, Washington, on the border of Oregon, to watch his colleagues prosecute the mayor of San Francisco on corruption charges. Finegold needs to get home. He and his wife, Sharon, have an event at their synagogue later in the night.
Finegold is nervous about the flight. Only two months before, the same type of plane, a Boeing 727, disappeared. Preparing for a descent into Juneau, the navigational system on the Alaska Airlines jet malfunctioned. The pilots and passengers were never heard from again.
“It apparently crashed into a sheer wall of mountain,” an airline official said.
The Alaska Airlines crash was the worst airline accident to date in the country’s history: 111 fatalities. Officials still haven’t figured out what mechanical failures caused the crash of such a big plane. Flight computers can’t be trusted. Or pilots. Or passengers.
The fear of flying is pervasive. To ease nerves, passengers on morning flights drink breakfast martinis with their cornflakes. Others use hypnotists or take tranquilizers before boarding. A group of psychologists recently started the Fly Without Fear Club, whose members are so petrified of airplanes they can’t look at them on the ground. The underlying causes of the fear, psychologists say, are feelings of claustrophobia, a lack of control, a fear of achievement. “There you are, up there, strapped in, trussed up, unable to affect your own destiny in any way,” one passenger told the New York Times. “If the plane goes down, so do you. What a perfect place for God to get you.”
To quell the nerves of passengers, airlines invest in advertising campaigns. “Hey there! You with the sweaty palms,” read the copy for a Pacific Air Lines ad. “Deep down inside, every time that big plane lifts off the runway, you wonder if this is it, right? You want to know something, fella? So does the pilot, deep down inside.” At Northwest Orient, one early idea was to stage a photo with a group of Crow Indians. In front of a Northwest plane, the Indians wore headdresses and moccasins and posed for the camera stone-faced and bare-chested. “If the Indians aren’t afraid of the white man’s bird, nobody else should be,” a Northwest pilot said.
The ads weren’t enough to put passengers at ease. Stewardesses are the new panacea; they’ve become sex objects, redirecting passengers’ fears. At Southwest, the stews wear white leather boots with porn-star laces and tangerine hot pants.
For Braniff, Italian printmaker Emilio Pucci designed the Air Strip, uniforms that come off during the flight. “Introducing the Air Strip,” the Braniff ads read.
When she boards our airplane, she
Zip
sheds these outer garments to greet you in a raspberry suit and color-coordinated shoes. This ensemble is too expensive to risk soiling during dinner, so at the appropriate moment, she
Snap
Zip
changes into a lovely serving dress which we call a Puccino (named for its creator, Emilio Pucci, who believes that even an airline hostess should look like a girl).
Braniff stews were then nicknamed “Pucci Galores” after the Bond girl in Goldfinger. At United, the ads are generous: “Every passenger gets warmth, friendliness and extra care. And someone may get a wife.” At American, ads boast that the airline’s stews are marriage material. “A girl who can smile for five hours is hard to find,” the brochure says, “not to mention a wife who can remember what 124 people want for dinner.” At National, the pleasing spirit has been taken to the next level. Last month, the airline spent nearly $10 million on this Madison Avenue campaign: “I’m Cheryl. Fly me.”
National’s stews also appear in their airline’s television commercials. They stare lustily into the camera as they deliver their punch line: “I’m going to fly you like you’ve never been flown before.”
To boycott National, protesters have formed picket lines in Washington, D.C., and New York. Women’s libbers are filing papers in court and demanding judges ban the Fly Me ad campaign. On the streets they march behind barricades.
“Go Fly Yourself, National,” their pickets read.
At Northwest, petitions are going around for the stews to sign. The flight attendants want to unionize. Flo hasn’t signed them. She’s happy to have her job, after what she’s been through.
“Hi. Welcome aboard. Can I check your ticket?”
Kurata, George. A steel importer from Japan.
Next in line. Zrim Spreckel, Cord. He runs a printing company in Seattle.
Flo checks more boarding passes. Her head itches. It’s her wig. The bob is brunette and shaped like a space helmet.
Next passenger. Pollart, Les. Big feller. Could have been a tackle. He owns a trucking company. Next: Labissoniere, George. Pollart’s lawyer.
“Hi. Welcome aboard.…”
The wig. Flo needs it. She never has time to do her hair before flights. She keeps it long and black, like Cher. Cher is number one on the charts. Flo knows the lyrics to her songs.
I was born in the wagon of a travelin’ show …
Flo knows a bit about fame herself. She won several beauty prizes as a child. She was voted Miss Pink Tomato, Miss Swimming Pool, Miss Fordyce. Freshman year she made Redbug varsity cheerleading. She barked out the letters so loud—Gimme an R! Gimme an E!—she could barely speak the next day. It was cadet-style cheering: lots of straight arms and snaps of the black and red pom-poms.
Fordyce is the name of the town where she grew up. It is a speck on the Arkansas map, located on the way to New Orleans. It was too small for her. After high school, she wanted to go to the most exotic place she could think of. Tahiti. She wanted to stick her feet in the black-sand beaches and learn the hula dance.
She applied for work at eleven airlines. Her pa drove her to Little Rock and to Nashville for interviews and told her not to worry, Flo, this was the one, he could feel it. She got the same letter back eleven times: “Dear Miss Schaffner, We are sorry to inform you that …”
Flipping through Glamour magazine, Flo saw an ad for a flight training school in St. Paul. She enrolled. It felt like the military. There was a giant pool and she had to dive in the water and save dummy passengers. She was given instructions on beauty. How to apply foundation, how to sit, how to talk. Guidelines for stews had been printed in manuals.
Be a good, sincere listener. Ask leading questions and show interest in conversation. This allows the passenger the feeling of importance.
Avoid talking about yourself and encourage passengers to talk about themselves. This procedure will make their trip pleasant.
Avoid argumentation. The aim of Stewardess work is to please passengers. Argument creates opposition and disgust and will not please, therefore defeating the aim of Stewardess work.
The airlines were not the Great Escape she imagined. It was a cruel and lonely journey without a destination. To pass time, she ate. Doughnuts disappeared by the glazed dozen. Empty buckets of chicken and pizza boxes stacked up by the garbage. Flo tried to disguise the weight by wearing her serving apron, but her bulging hips bumped passengers in the aisles. On the way to Fargo, she was caught.
Spotters. Flo was called into the Northwest management office and told to step on their scale. This time she shocked herself: 185 pounds! Northwest placed her on unpaid probation. She went to a doctor who prescribed diet pills. The pills made the pangs of hunger disappear. She starved herself and got her job back.
Next passenger. Mitchell, Bill. University of Oregon sophomore. He wears a paisley shirt, shows his ticket, and sits in 18B. It is the last row of the jet, port side, middle seat. Mitchell is looking forward to Thanksgiving weekend. His old friends will be back home in Seattle, and they will all party by the lake like they did in high school. He looks over the rows of seats in the cabin. The flight is half-full. He notices her immediately.
Tina Mucklow is the youngest stewardess on the crew. She has simple looks. Her blond hair is not shaped or sprayed or styled. It is long and clumped together into a ponytail. The ribbon holding it together is as basic as the string on a bakery box.
Mitchell wonders about her. Maybe she is as lonely as she looks or as lonely as he wants her to be. She is standing in the galley now, preparing the drink cart. What will he say to her when she passes? The flight to Seattle is only twenty-eight minutes long.
“Hi. Welcome aboard.”
Flo looks at the name on the ticket.
Cooper, Dan. His suit is dark and his raincoat is black. He is holding a dark attaché case. He shuffles into the cabin and sits in the last row, 18, starboard side. The row is empty. He places the attaché case on the seat next to the window. He keeps his raincoat on.
“Hi. Welcome aboard.”
Gregory, Robert. The passenger is out of breath. He ran to catch the flight, almost missed it. He sits across from Cooper in 18C, aisle seat, port side. Gregory is the last passenger to board. He is part owner of a paint company in Seattle.
The engines turn. The captain is speaking over the intercom.
“Uh, ladies and gentlemen …”
Flo pulls the lever, and the aftstairs bend and creak and tuck themselves into the fuselage. Located in the rear of the plane, these stairs are a signature feature on the Stubby, as the Northwest stews call the Boeing 727. Pilots do not require a boarding gate or airway to load passengers. They don’t even need an airport. Passengers can board or deplane directly onto the tarmac. The aftstairs run on a simple hydraulic system. Pull the lever inside the jet, the stairs descend. A pull in the other direction, the aftstairs retract. The engines on the Stubby are so powerful and the design so nimble, stewardesses joke they’ll land behind every tree to pick up passengers.
The model is popular with airlines. The aftstairs allow the 727 to land in small and mid-size cities that have not yet upgraded their airports. Or in jungle fields. In the mid-1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on Stubbies to conduct secret missions over Laos. Through CIA front groups like Air America Inc., the aftstairs were used by operatives to drop cargo. “Soft rice” was food. “Hard rice” was arms. It wasn’t only gear. The CIA also used the Stubby to deploy American operatives who parachuted off the aftstairs and down into the jungles of Indochina.
He looks at Flo. She is ready to take Dan Cooper’s drink order. What will it be?
“Bourbon and Seven-Up,” he says.
The price is a dollar. He hands her a twenty.
“Anything smaller?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I can’t give you change until I finish,” she says.
She moves up the aisle. In row 12, Pollart, the trucking company owner, is talking with his lawyer, Labissoniere. The trucking business is suffering in the recession. Pollart is now using his refrigerated trucks to ship blood. The samples come from the junkies at the Seattle missions, who sell the
ir blood for drug money.
Pollart feels a lurch. The wheels of Northwest 305 are moving. He hears a stewardess’s voice. It’s Alice Hancock, the flight attendant in first class.
“All carry-on baggage must be stowed under the seat or in the overhead compartments,” she says. “Please check your seatbelts in preparation for takeoff.”
At five two, Alice Hancock barely passed Northwest’s height requirement. Her hair is chestnut and bobbed. You look like Mrs. Spock, her friends tell her. She has soft eyes and speaks in a voice that is playful and light and trails into a honey-dipped giggle.
She recently got engaged. Jim, her husband-to-be, is a Northwest pilot. He is also flying to Seattle, on another flight. Thanksgiving dinner will be at Jim’s uncle’s house in Seattle. The uncle has a hothouse. He raises orchids. Alice is eager to see them.
She goes through the preflight announcements. Flo is done serving drinks. She stands next to Alice and inhales and exhales into a dummy oxygen mask. The captain is on the intercom again.
“Uh, we’ve been cleared to taxi, so if the cabin attendants will take their seats, we’ll be on our way.”
A front is moving in. The reports are calling for sleet, fog, snow, and rain. Some Thanksgiving, the pilots think. At least for now, the weather is clear. The sun has come out from the clouds and casts a beam of light against the aluminum belly of the jet and N467US, its registration number.
Inside the cockpit, Capt. William Scott and copilot Bill Rataczak go over the takeoff checklist once again.
“Window heat?”
“High.”
“Pitot heat?”
“On, checked.”
Flight 305 is a milk run. The route made Northwest Orient. When the airlines were controlled by the post office, the route across the empty northern lands of the country was barren and dangerous. Planes just disappeared. Flying through mountain crevices, with gusts of freezing wind sweeping down off the plains of Canada, Northwest pilots proved (with the navigational help of a sheep herder and Amelia Earhart) that a direct route from Minneapolis to the Pacific Northwest was safe. Now, decades later, the airline flies to Seattle across the northern Midwest each day.