Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [112]
My solution was to wallow and brood and resent and drink. Yet out of all the self-pity came a strange new resolve. I had achieved many goals, and now only one remained: to make as much money as I possibly could and use some of it to return to Japan and find the Bird and give him the deadly payback he deserved.
13
A SECOND CHANCE
My bank account was still pretty flush, a good starting point to prove the old adage that it takes money to make money. In fact, visions of glory filled me, and I became downright optimistic. Because of the postwar boom, everyone talked about making money, of “working the angles” in “fast deals.” I wanted in on the lucre. I had to make up for lost time, avoid the mundane, find the action. Why should I have to crawl through the years on a regular paycheck like my father? I was restless. I wanted to make it big, and quickly.
War surplus was an obvious choice. I bid on thirty Quonset huts and immediately sold them to the movie studios, who wanted as many as they could get for storage. When supplies ran out I switched to wartime iceboxes in need of small repairs and made a profit. With a friend, I went into a business called the Ready Phone, a crystal-based ancestor to today’s mobile. Again, I made money.
“See how easy it is when you have the cash and know the right people?” I bragged to Cynthia. “Pretty soon you’ll have a bigger house than the one you grew up in.” I wanted to prove to her parents that their daughter had made the right decision.
“I don’t need a big house, Louie,” she said. “But we should buy a small one and get out of this apartment.”
“Wait a while,” I said. “This is working capital. Soon we’ll be living off the interest.”
Cynthia was skeptical but indulgent. I knew she liked the flexible working hours my entrepreneurial career afforded. My “office” was at home, and there’s nothing a young couple in love likes to do better than spend time together.
As my cash flow increased so did my appetite for more. I got excited when two USC buddies, both business majors, said they had a corner on some D8 Caterpillars in the Philippines. Seven thousand dollars would hold them for shipment; if I invested, I’d double my money in six weeks. They showed me signed affidavits to verify the deal. Cynthia came to a business meeting and afterward had reservations, but I overrode her objections. “You heard them,” I said. “You saw the proof. We can’t miss. I want in on this.”
Our representative was a Japanese gentleman from Hawaii. “No problem,” he said, a few hours before leaving to close the deal, my cashier’s check for $7,000 in his pocket. “Everything’s under control.”
CONFIDENT OF A rosy financial future, I threw myself into plans for an adventure cruise to Acapulco with Harry Read on his new diesel-powered, two-masted schooner, the Flyaway. We advertised for a crew and, after a shakedown run, took off in early February.
We made our destination and on the return got as far as Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of Baja, heading for the Tres Marias Islands, about eighty miles off the coast—one island was a big prison for Mexico’s worst criminals—before we got caught in a Tabasco, or a white squall, so violent that it sheared the three-quarter-inch rudder pin and shredded our sails. To regain control we had to open up the lazaret to get to the rudder and try to shove an eye bolt into the hole while the Flyaway took on water. Our crew was too green to do much, so I took charge of hauling down the sail while Harry handled the pin. We rode out the storm but flooded the boat inches above the floor, shorting every onboard electric device: the icebox, the radio, the pump, even the engine.
Worse, we’d been blown nearly