Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (29 page)

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.

M
y 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 a hundred miles off course into
the doldrums. Familiar territory to me. The sea was like glass. Hot. No wind, nothing. Fortunately we had food. Before the storm we’d anchored at an island and two natives had rowed out to meet us. We gave them apples and oranges for their kids, and before we left they returned with buckets of lobsters and coconuts. For a few days, while I busied myself sewing the sails and we tried to figure out what to do next, everyone feasted on langoustines by the potload, and drank vodka and coconut-milk concoctions with a squeeze of lime. When one of the crew asked me if, after drifting on a raft for forty-seven days, being lost at sea again scared me, I said, “Nope. Between the lobster and the liquor, I could do this for forty-seven years.”

After a week we got a little wind and made for land. I could smell the dirt and trees even before we sailed into the lagoon at a little village called Puerto Vallarta. I’d never heard of it. The only access then was by air or sea. The inhabitants gathered on the shore and told us, “We haven’t seen a boat from America for twelve years.” The mayor received us with a gracious welcome.

I got a message to Cynthia that I was all right, and she told me my disappearance had made the front page of the
Los Angeles Times.
ZAMPERINI, L.A. WAR HERO, MISSING ON BOAT AT SEA.
When I finally got home, Cynthia had more news: some bad, some good.

The bad news: our Hawaii representative on the Caterpillar deal had spent my money on himself and his family. I’d lost every cent of my investment. I hired an attorney and sued and eventually the man had to pay me back a little every month, which was fine, but that left me without a lump sum to reinvest elsewhere.

The good news: Cynthia was pregnant.

I WAS OVERJOYED
and dismayed. How could I bring a baby into the world—especially now? I’d lost money. We lived in a dingy apartment. Every few days our neighbors down the hall would argue loudly, and every Sunday night a radio upstairs blared until all hours. Fuses blew out regularly and more often in the winter from the electric heaters that supplemented the gas radiators.

I didn’t hide my fears or concerns from Cynthia, though I probably
should have. She’d toss and turn at night, worrying about my worries in addition to her own. At times she’d let her mind drift back to the easy life she’d given up with servants and loving, protective parents. Then suddenly she’d shrug off her regrets and melancholy and hug me. Yet I could still feel fear in her embrace, all of which left me guilty and bitterly ashamed. I did my best to reassure her and told her often that I wanted to give her comforts and a life she’d never dreamed of, but somehow we both knew that deeds rarely followed my words.

Desperate, I turned again to prayer, though secretly, because how could I pray openly when I had for some time done my best to convince Cynthia she shouldn’t go to church and live by someone else’s philosophies and rules? I’d managed to keep her away from worship for two years, and I knew she wasn’t happy about it. Now there I was, pacing night after night, always asking God why he had again forsaken me. “After all I’ve been through, surely I’m entitled to
some
compensation. You performed miracles for me before, so help me now.” What kind of help did I require? “Return my money and help me double it so I can support my family decently.”

I usually felt better in the morning.

RATHER THAN HELP
myself and look for a job, I waited for God to take care of me. After all, I’d always been Lucky Louie. I grew certain that my mistake had been in not praying sooner. Meanwhile, I continued to put my faith in fast-turnover, get-rich-quick schemes. I had high hopes when a friend asked me to help organize a motion-picture company in Egypt, but that fell through. A member of the opposition party in a shaky Caribbean government wanted my help with a revolution. He already had several B-24s and needed only pilots, navigators, and bombardiers. The pay was one thousand dollars in advance and another thousand on completion. While I thought it over, the revolution failed. Next, I got involved in a scheme to launch the first passenger-boat service to Tahiti, but while waiting to make my fortune, the yacht got repossessed.

Then a surefire deal came along. The uncertain manner in which
licenses to hunt and fish in Mexico were obtained had always inconvenienced American sportsmen. Through a series of introductions I met a wealthy and influential businessman from Mexico City who had connections to Enrico Romay, Mexico’s secretary of the navy. Together, they agreed to grant me the exclusive right to sell the licenses in America. Even Cynthia believed our prospects were good and that we’d make lots of money, but when my partner drove to Mexico to get the necessary signatures to seal the deal, he died in a head-on collision with a Mack truck. Poof. No more deal.

Broke and angry, I left town for a couple of days. While I was away, a friend who worked at a little record company called Capitol phoned to tell me to immediately buy all the Capitol stock I could. The next day it went sky-high. The day after that I found out about his call—and his good fortune. He’d bought at noon and sold at six times the original price only hours later.

The truth, so obvious to others, finally began to dawn on me. No matter how hard I prayed, I could no longer avoid failure. Lucky Louie had disappeared, and God wasn’t listening. I’d have to struggle on my own to stay alive.

ON JANUARY 7,
1949, our daughter Cynthia Battle Zamperini, immediately nicknamed Cissy, was born. We were very happy, but my mother-in-law, who had come for a visit, marred the occasion by saying, “Louie, this is no place to raise a baby. There’s no yard, the sun only shines in the window for ten minutes a day. Promise me you’ll move.” Mrs. Applewhite, who had rented a dreary little room across the street, cried often at our pathetic surroundings.

She meant well, but I wanted to explode.

“I’m doing the best I can,” I said stonily. “I’ve just had hard luck.” I tried to explain, but the more I did the more upset she became. Any minute I expected her to pack up Cynthia and the baby and steal them back to Miami. As it turned out she was the only one to leave, but afterward Cynthia grew morose. I couldn’t blame her. Forced to stay home with the baby, she complained of feeling like a mole living underground. One day I walked in from a business meeting to find
bottles of cologne, hand cream, and powder smashed on the floor. Pictures hung sideways, some broken.

“What happened?”

Cynthia burst into tears. “I just got fed up. That’s all. I’ve had it!”

Again, I couldn’t blame her. Or myself. “I’m trying.”

“Louie, you just have to find a job. We can’t go on worrying like this week after week.”

“I go to one place and they ask if I’m qualified to be an oil engineer,” I said. “What can I say but the truth: no. Another place asks for a degree in a subject I don’t have.”

She almost spat at me: “You don’t need a degree…to dig ditches. I know you don’t want to work for someone else, but you may just have to. Temporarily.”

I ignored her pleading and good sense, mumbled evasively, and changed the subject. But inside I seethed. Couldn’t anyone understand
my
turmoil?
My
problems?
My
disappointments? How could I give her all she deserved on a weekly paycheck?

THE GROWING STRESS
at home made my nightmares worse, and with that my drinking. I lost my temper often and fought even more than usual. The anger that later filled me with the greatest remorse was the rage I felt when Cissy cried. I loved her so very much and got up every night to feed and change her, but with my nerves so on edge, every whimper cut into me like a knife, and made me feel like I was failing not only myself but her. One afternoon, with Cynthia out shopping, I stayed home to watch the baby, hoping she’d sleep and I could get my work done. The apartment was peaceful for a few moments, but then she opened her eyes and cried, louder and louder.

“Stop it! Stop it!” I yelled from across the room. Cissy only cried harder. Not thinking and out of my mind with frustration, I picked her up and shook her when I should have hugged her. “Stop! Stop!”

Then dimly, as if from far away, I heard a voice say, “Louie!”

Cynthia was home. I turned around to see her in the doorway, her
face drained of all color, terror in her eyes. She dropped her packages and snatched the baby. “You might have killed her!” she screamed.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, as I slowly returned to sanity.

It never happened again, but sometimes I’d wake up in the dark, soaked from another nightmare, to find Cynthia weeping in bed. “I don’t know, Louie,” she’d say when I’d ask what was wrong—as if I didn’t know. “I love you and you love me and we have a beautiful baby, but even if we had all the money in the world to go with this I think something would still be missing. I don’t know what it is, but I know something’s missing.”

What could I say to that? Then her mood would vanish and we’d spend part of each day arguing about finances—and worse. One day, out of the blue, she said, “If this keeps up, Louie, I may have to leave you. You
have
to come to your senses. I can’t do anything to please you. You act as if you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” I barked. “I just don’t like you reminding me that you think I’m a failure.” I also wanted to say that I loved her and was more frightened of her following through with her threat than I’d ever been of daily beatings by the Bird, but I couldn’t find the courage.

ONE AFTERNOON, WHILE
leafing through our desk calendar, I discovered a mysterious notation penciled in by Cynthia: “Take inventory.” I didn’t know what it meant, and that worried me. Inventory of what? Clothes? Possessions? Our marriage? I reviewed our fights—there were so many—looking for the one incident that might have caused her to take such a step. Then I got it. Last Christmas Eve, before Cissy had been born…

As we’d dressed for a party Cynthia said she wanted to stop at a church on the way, and she wouldn’t let up no matter how much I argued against it. When we got into the car, she insisted again.

“Be quiet,” I said. “We’ll be late for the party.”

“I will not,” she snapped. “There’s a church on the next block. I haven’t been for two years because you didn’t want me to go. Now I don’t care. I’m going in for a few minutes, like it or not.”
I glared at her, then slammed on the brakes in front of the church and said, “Okay. Fine. But if you’re not back in five minutes, I’m going to the party without you.”

I watched Cynthia, pregnant, struggle up the steps, then looked at my watch. My head pounded as each second passed. I couldn’t explain my hatred of religion, of God, to her. She wouldn’t understand. She’d say I was foolish. I just wanted to get to the party, have a few drinks, forget her whims and my misery. Why was she suddenly all fired up about church in the first place? What was the big deal?