Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11

by Majic Man (v5. 0)

  Another barely perceptible nod.

  “Well, I used the best men in the city; they didn’t find a damn thing. On the other hand, I have learned that Pearson was bribing one of your household staff—Della Brown—for any tidbits of personal gossip; I told Jo yesterday, and, obviously, recommended firing the girl.”

  He said nothing; but at least he did seem to be listening.

  “Now, I’ve learned that the Secret Service has been keeping your home under surveillance. That’s not because they wish you ill, quite the opposite. They learned of your fears that someone was trying to ‘get’ you, and—much as I have—they investigated.”

  His eyes left my face, dropping to the silver bowl, where he could stare at his reflection, and it could stare back at him.

  “So, you were right, Jim—you were being watched; and your suspicions about Pearson were, to some degree, well placed. But I’ve found no indication at all that your life is in any danger.”

  The single line of his mouth twitched in something that was almost a smile. “Really?” He rose, as fluidly and slowly as Bela Lugosi waking up in his coffin. He crooked his finger. “Come with me.”

  I followed him to the window across the room; he parted a blind and said, softly, “On the corner.”

  On that same bench I’d inhabited not so long ago, in front of the weathered gray-brick colonial house with the tours and the coffee shop, sat a couple of pasty-faced kids in their early twenties wearing colorful but soiled T-shirts and dingy jeans and tennis shoes. They were either out of work or avoiding it, and when the next cop came along, they’d no doubt be told to shove off.

  “Russians,” Forrestal said ominously, and let the blinds snap shut.

  “I kind of doubt that, Jim,” I said.

  His head swiveled and he fixed narrowed eyes upon me. “They were waiting for me when I got home.”

  The doorbell rang and he jumped; but hell, so did I.

  The houseboy, moving quickly, went to answer it. Couldn’t be Eberstadt already, could it?

  “I know you mean well, Nate,” Forrestal said quietly, taking me by the arm, “but you haven’t found the truth. They’re after me, they’re still after me.”

  “Who?”

  “All of them. All of those I’ve opposed.”

  “A conspiracy, you mean?”

  He squeezed my arm. “Exactly. Commies, Russians, Jews, as well as certain … parties in the White House. That’s why they’ve fooled you: you’re looking for one villain. But it’s all of them—in concert.”

  Maybe I could start my new investigation at the Water Gate band shell.

  “They’ve united against me,” he said, “their common enemy.”

  I could hear the muffled sound of the houseboy dealing with somebody at the front door.

  Still latching onto my arm, Forrestal whispered into my ear: “They’re probably in the house right now, some of them.”

  “They’re not in this house, Jim.”

  “Keep your voice down. Don’t you know this house is wired?”

  “It’s not wired. My men went over it, I told you, stem to stern.”

  His eyes tightened and so did his grip on my arm. “If you don’t lower your voice, I’ll be forced to ask you to leave.”

  Remy stood nervously at the archway. “There is a man want to see him.”

  The houseboy was addressing me, pointing to his boss.

  Forrestal clutched my arm, desperately. “I won’t see anyone.”

  I extricated myself, gently, saying, “I’ll talk to him, Jim. Just take it easy.”

  The man on the front stoop was short, plump, with a receding hairline, wire-frame glasses, and though it was a cool afternoon, sweat beaded his round face. He wore a crumpled-looking brown off-the-rack business suit and a blue-and-red tie and carried a battered briefcase.

  “I need to see Mr. Forrestal,” the man said in a thick Southern accent.

  “That’s impossible right now.”

  “I’m Phil Dingel—from North Carolina?”

  Oh, well, hell—that changed everything.

  “Look, sir,” I said. “Mr. Forrestal is not available.”

  “But he knows me—I was an alternate delegate from North Carolina … at the convention in ’48? And Mr. Forrestal promised he’d throw his support my way for my appointment to postmaster, back home.”

  “You want to be postmaster, huh?”

  “Why, yes!”

  “Then write him a letter,” I said, and shut the door in his face. Fucking political worm.

  In the living room, Forrestal was watching at the window, blinds again parted; his face was clenched. “See! You see, Nate?”

  I took a look. The plump would-be Podunk postmaster, who had worse timing than a pregnant teenager waiting for her period, had stopped to talk to the two unshaven vagrant kids on the bench.

  “You see, he’s one of them,” Forrestal said excitedly. “They’re everywhere!”

  “Let me check into it,” I said easily.

  Soon I was cutting across the street, approaching the boys on the bench. They were both skinny with greasy hair, bad complexions, and worse attitudes.

  “What did the fat guy want?” I asked.

  The skinnier of the two sneered. “What’s it to ya, pops?”

  Knocking their heads together might have agitated Forrestal, so I got out my wallet and flashed my Illinois private investigator’s badge; that usually works.

  They both sat up straight, like kids reprimanded in school, and the other one said, “Guy just wanted to know if this was a bus stop. I said no, but he could catch a trolley over that way.”

  I still had my wallet out. “How would you fellas like to earn a five-spot each?”

  The skinnier one sneered. “Who do we have to kill?”

  His pal laughed at that; they didn’t know how funny it really was.

  I said, “Just find another bench to park your butts on.”

  They looked at each other and shrugged; the skinnier one said, “Okay, pops.”

  So I peeled off a couple of fives, and the kids got lost. Strange how cheap Russian agents could be bought off, these days.

  When I went inside, Forrestal was not in sight, but I could hear a racket upstairs. The houseboy was at the foot of the stairs, wringing his hands.

  “What’s going on, Remy?”

  “Mr. Forrestal, he looking.” And he gestured to an open closet door near the entrance, where coats and hats, among other things, had been scattered about.

  “Looking for what?”

  “Somebody hiding.”

  I found him in his own bedroom, a warmly masculine chamber of walnut furnishings, wood-tone floral Axminster carpet, dark woodwork and cream-painted plaster. He was searching in the dark. This was obviously a room that had been fastidiously shipshape, even down to the neatly stacked half a dozen formidable volumes on the nightstand—light reading like Nietzsche, Proust and Kafka—or anyway it had been until its occupant had scoured the walk-in closet, leaving the door open, clothes and other belongings strewn as if by a careless burglar. Right now he was on his hands and knees, looking under his double bed.

  It had come to this: Forrestal literally looking for Reds under his bed. Not to mention Jews and traitorous White House types.

  “There’s no one under there, Jim,” I said, and helped him to his feet. His body was like a bag of loose bones.

  “We have to search the whole house. I have more closets to search!”

  There was no stopping him, so I didn’t try to. He emptied every closet in the house; he ransacked the basement and the garage, and I accompanied him. Finally the effort began to wear at him, and the frail former Secretary of Defense stumbled back into his living room and into that same chair, with the silver bowl before him, gleaming, empty.

  “They were here,” he said. “They must have heard me come in. Got out the back way.”

  I sat down again. “Jim, I think you ought to get out of here. Your wife’s down in Flor
ida. You said you have friends down there waiting for you. Relax … unwind.”

  “You don’t understand how insidious they are. I’ve been chosen; I’ve been marked.”

  “Chosen? Marked, how?”

  “I’m not the number one target—just the first to be liquidated. Because I tried to alert America to the menace.”

  “What menace, Jim?”

  He was trembling all over. “The Kremlin plans to liquidate all our top leadership in Washington; the Reds are planning an invasion as we speak. The first wave, the secret wave, is already here!”

  I had to ask; at this point, what would it hurt to ask?

  “Jim … what about Roswell, Jim?”

  His eyes widened and flickered, as if I’d lighted a flame in them. “How do you know about Roswell?”

  “You mentioned it,” I lied.

  “… I’ve done a bad thing.” He shook his head. “I’ve done a bad thing. Sometimes you do bad things, to try to do right, don’t you?”

  “Sure, sure …”

  The flames in his eyes flickered out. He sighed and his body seemed to deflate. His face had a flatness, like a frying pan, his wide eyes like fried eggs clinging to it. “Do you know what it’s like?”

  “What what is like?”

  “Being a complete failure? Failing your family, your country, yourself?”

  “Stop it, now.”

  “My life’s a wreck. A shambles. I know terrible things; I did terrible things, allowed terrible things to be done…. Have you ever considered suicide, Nate? If there was a button I could push, and end my life, I’d push it. Why should I give them the satisfaction of ending my life, when I can do it myself?”

  “You’ve been through the mill, Jim. Things look this way because of your overwork. You’re exhausted …”

  He shrugged, just a little. “That’s probably because I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in months. My teeth ache … my intestines are all out of whack … all my normal bodily functions are breaking down. I’m not even a man, anymore. Do you have your gun?”

  His wife had asked me the same thing, only she’d been joking, and wanted Pearson’s hide; I knew, with cold certainty, that if I handed this man a gun, he’d shoot himself, right in front of me.

  The doorbell rang.

  Remy ran for it, and thank God, it was Eberstadt. Relief flooded through me, as I went to meet him.

  “You’re Heller?” he asked, stepping inside, a tall, well-tailored, square-jawed handsome man of around sixty with the look of a former athlete and hair the color of burnished steel.

  I said I was Heller, and we shook hands, and I took him aside and whispered, “He’s talking suicide. I’m out of my depth here, Mr. Eberstadt. He’s your friend—help him.”

  He nodded gravely, said, “Thanks for standing watch.”

  From where we stood, we could see into the living room where Forrestal sat, having again lapsed into a sort of trance, now holding the empty bowl in his hands, staring into it.

  “Where’s his valet?” Eberstadt asked.

  “Has the week off, ’cause of the Florida trip. The houseboy’s around somewhere.”

  “Would you find Remy and have him pack a bag for James, some sports clothes and the like, maybe round up his golf clubs. I’m going to get him to Hobe Sound, where he can rest in the sunshine, in the company of close friends.”

  I shook my head. “Anything you say, but I think he’s a little past the vacation stage. He needs medication, and he needs supervision—away from sharp objects.”

  “I appreciate your advice, but please do as I ask.”

  “Sure,” I said, and I found Remy in his quarters and sent him on his mission. Then I slipped into Forrestal’s study, got out my wallet, found the slip of paper I’d been given by Frank J. Wilson and used the phone.

  “Chief Baughman,” I said to the head of the Secret Service, “you wanted me to call if something interesting developed?”

  10

  My call to Chief Baughman set several things in motion. Within half an hour, at Morris House, Eberstadt heard by phone from Louis Johnson, Forrestal’s successor, expressing grave concern about Forrestal’s condition.

  The President was providing an Air Force Constellation, Eberstadt was told, to facilitate the former secretary’s much-needed vacation; and by early evening Forrestal had arrived in Florida, where a formidable circle of friends—including banker (and former Under Secretary of State) Robert Lovett, Douglas Dillon of Dillon, Read & Company and playwright Philip Barry—took him under their wing.

  Jo Forrestal was staying at the Jupiter Island Club, but Forrestal was soon in a private home where he was attended day and night by Eberstadt and others, including Dr. William Menninger of Topeka’s Menninger Clinic. The presence of Menninger, the country’s preeminent psychiatrist, was Eberstadt’s doing.

  Ironically, Menninger had been invited to the Pentagon just months before, to aid in a Forrestal-directed study of combat fatigue; Forrestal and Menninger had spent a morning together, discussing the subject, at which time Menninger apparently noticed nothing of a similar (or any) malady in the behavior of the Secretary of Defense.

  Nonetheless (Eberstadt told me on the phone), this brief contact and casual acquaintanceship had made Forrestal willing to at least talk with Menninger.

  But, at the same time, the government sent down their own man, Captain George N. Raines, chief psychiatrist at the Bethesda naval hospital. This may have reflected President Truman’s natural humanistic concern for a great public servant in a time of dire need; or it may have indicated the administration’s desire to contain the incident and handle the manner in which the press and public learned that a crazy man, until a day or so ago, had been their Secretary of Defense, holding his fingers to the nation’s atomic pulse.

  I had intended to return to Chicago that same evening Forrestal made his Florida trip; but the Secret Service “requested” that I stay in Washington for “debriefing,” and at both Treasury and Justice I was questioned by Baughman himself, and Frank Wilson, and several other agents whose names I did not know (and which were not offered to me). This exercise in repetitiousness took three days, and the government was kind enough to pick up my hotel check for my extended stay—one of the rare times my tax dollars came back to me.

  I was frank about what I’d witnessed regarding former Secretary of Defense Forrestal’s mental breakdown, and filled them in on my own meager investigation, from the maid leaking to Anderson to the unproductive sweep of Forrestal’s home for bugs; but none of my dealings with Pearson came up, specifically no mention of Roswell or Majestic Twelve. Had they asked me, I would have been forthcoming (because if they asked, that would indicate knowledge on their part, possibly stemming from surveillance of myself and/or Pearson); but they didn’t ask. And I didn’t tell.

  Friday afternoon marked the final stop of my debriefing tour, which took me tooling through the suburban slumber of white cottages and brick bungalows that was Bethesda, and beyond into the flat, green countryside of Maryland. Just when I thought I’d misunderstood the directions, easing the rental Ford up over a little rise in U.S. Route 240, a nineteen-story white tower rose out of nowhere like an art moderne apparition; it was as if the Empire State Building had sprouted in a pasture.

  The National Naval Medical Center sprawled over some 265 acres, the central tower flanked by L-shaped four-floor wings, a complex at once utilitarian and starkly beautiful, modern and timeless, its structural steel faced with white-quartz-aggregate concrete panels, dark spandrels between windows creating an effect of massive square columns.

  On the periphery of the endless parking lot were many squat temporary buildings, so this facility—which had seemed so vast during the war—was already experiencing growing pains. The bustling lobby was lined with three colors of marble, and the corridors were a soothingly cool terra-cotta; the naval nature of the place was evident by not only the gob and jarhead patients, but the sailor-style attire of nurses and atte
ndants, and the uniformed doctors.

  While Bethesda—a site supposedly chosen by Roosevelt himself, because biblically Bethesda had been “the pool of healing”—was primarily a naval hospital, medical and dental schools were also a part of the complex. So was the Naval Medical Research Institute, a separate building I was directed to, where I was to meet with Dr. Joseph Bernstein, Chief of Psychiatric Research.

  Not a military man himself (not all the doctors at Bethesda were, particularly in the research area), Bernstein had a compact, linebacker’s frame wrapped in a white smock jacket; his blue tie bore a Star of David tie tack. Perhaps fifty, he had short-cropped blond hair going white, though the difference was negligible, and he had eyes so light blue they were almost gray, and eyebrows so light they disappeared. This gave him an eerily albino cast, that his handsome features—Roman nose, dazzling smile, and square jaw—did not quite dispel.

  Standing behind his desk in a small, spartan third-floor office, he offered a hand for me to shake, which I did. Firm but not showy.

  “I appreciate your willingness to speak with me,” he said, in friendly but clipped manner, with an understated middle-European accent. “I take it you’re Jewish, Mr. Heller?”

  “Sort of.”

  Dr. Bernstein settled into his chair as I took the one opposite him. “And what does that mean, ‘sort of’?”

  I explained, and he said, “I have never been religious, either, but I hope one day to go to Palestine, myself.”

  “Oh?”

  He folded his hands on his desk, prayerfully, on a manila file folder; they were large, thick-fingered hands and I was glad he wasn’t a surgeon. “Most of my relatives died in concentration camps, Mr. Heller. I was fortunate to leave Germany in the late twenties, and establish a practice in Zurich.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s sure shrink country, isn’t it?”

  That stopped him for a moment, but then he laughed, once—politely, I thought.

  He raised an invisible eyebrow. “You have a rough-hewn wit, Mr. Heller.”

  “That’s one way to describe it, I guess. All right if I ask you something?”