Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11

by Majic Man (v5. 0)

  “Certainly.”

  “Why the nickel tour through your background, Doc? No offense, but I don’t give a flying, rough-hewn fuck. Uncle Sam has bounced me from here to there, for three days, asking me questions, and now I have to spend the afternoon at a head clinic. Not my favorite tourist spot.”

  His smile was small and casual, but his eyes were studying me; he unfolded his hands and picked up the manila folder. “Would that be because you were once a patient at such a facility yourself?”

  “Not here. I was across town at St. Elizabeth’s, or do you know that? Is that my file?”

  Everybody had a fucking file on me.

  He tossed the folder to one side of his tidy desk. “You had amnesia induced by combat fatigue. You recovered your identity, through hypnosis therapy, but your condition was deemed serious enough not to return you to combat. You were discharged on a Section Eight.”

  “Now we know both our life stories. Is there anything else, Doc?”

  His expression turned somber. “I shared my background with you because I understand that you are Mr. Forrestal’s friend.”

  “He’s my client. We’re friendly enough, but it’s a business relationship.”

  He gestured with an open hand. “I wanted to be frank about my background, and my … support for the new state of Israel … because if you were to learn that background from someone else, you might assume I’d been less than forthcoming in an area sensitive to this patient’s case. You are the first representative of the Forrestal family that I’ve spoken to—”

  “I don’t represent the Forrestal family. I work for them, or I did. I’ve completed the assignment, and plan to submit my bill. Please tell me insanity isn’t grounds for nonpayment.”

  That made him smile, a little. “Perhaps my concerns were misplaced. I thought you should know that my politics will not be a conflict of interest in my involvement with Mr. Forrestal’s case.”

  “Oh. Okay, I get it: you’re not one of the Zionists out to get Forrestal, ’cause of his anti-Israeli tendencies. Well, I’d worry more about convincing Forrestal of that.”

  “Captain Raines will be the primary physician on this case,” he said. That faint accent combined with his impeccable English somehow added weight to his words. “I will be a consultant, an adviser; in fact, if Captain Raines were not still in Florida, with his patient, you would be speaking to him and not me.”

  “You’re more in research, is that it?”

  “Yes. Like Dr. Menninger, who is also involved in this case, I’m delving into operational fatigue, that is, combat fatigue and related battle neuroses … and certainly Mr. Forrestal’s case—like yours—touches upon that area. He shows that the casualties of our recent world war are not confined to combat.”

  “Fine. Swell. I’m here to cooperate; what do you want to know?”

  He asked different questions than the feds, but got the same answers: everyone wanted to know what Forrestal had been saying, how he’d been behaving. It didn’t take as long to fill Dr. Bernstein in, however, because—unlike the Secret Service and the FBI—he had no interest in my own investigative efforts.

  When we’d come to the end of his questions, I asked Bernstein one of my own: “Do I gather you’re bringing Forrestal back to Bethesda?”

  A tiny shrug. “It’s no secret: he’ll be flown here tomorrow.”

  I had called Eberstadt in Florida, the day after Forrestal had been flown down there, and he’d indicated Dr. Menninger was the doctor in charge, that Captain Raines was only consulting.

  So I asked, “Why isn’t Forrestal going to the Menninger Clinic, in Topeka? That’s the best psychiatric facility in the country, I understand.”

  His response was faintly defensive: “The treatment here at Bethesda is among the best available, anywhere. Also, treatment this close to home will make Mr. Forrestal feel at ease, and his family and friends will have convenient access to him, providing support he’ll need to recover.”

  “Does Dr. Menninger agree with this?”

  “Frankly, no … but the general consensus is that Mr. Forrestal will be better served here, in a general hospital, than in a psychiatric clinic.”

  “Why?”

  Dr. Bernstein twitched a non-smile. “Committal to a mental hospital would be an embarrassment to a public person like James Forrestal—”

  “An embarrassment to the government, you mean.”

  “The stigma of mental illness in so public and powerful a man might engender a feeling of hopelessness, even despair … in the patient.”

  I leaned back in my chair, gestured expansively. “Hey, I don’t blame the White House for wanting to control this. How would the country respond to knowing that, till last Monday, its national security was in the hands of a fruitcake?”

  “Your flip manner does not fool me, Mr. Heller. I know you are deeply concerned about Mr. Forrestal.”

  “‘Deeply’ overdoes it, Doc, but the question is, are you? Keeping him here will make it easier to isolate him, screen visitors, keep out the press, maintain strict security. All of that’s great for the government. What’s it do for the patient?”

  Both invisible eyebrows lifted this time. “He’s suffering from a form of combat fatigue; where better to receive treatment than a naval hospital?”

  “He doesn’t have combat fatigue, Doc; he worked long hours and suffered stress, but he didn’t have bullets flying around his head and Japs with bayonets in his lap, and as a bona fide star-spangled combat-fatigue graduate, with a Section Eight for a diploma, I resent the term being bandied about.”

  Bells were quietly ringing outside; time in this naval hospital was told by ship’s bell system.

  The handsome near-albino combined a patronizing smile with a regal nod. “Mr. Heller, you’re quite right. Mr. Forrestal is most likely suffering from a depressive condition common to middle-aged men: involutional melancholia. In such cases, the mental faculties become less acute, there’s a tendency to bemoan past mistakes, a feeling takes hold that the future holds no promise. Doubt, indecision, fear, anxiety manifest themselves. And there are physical effects, also: the internal secretion glands begin malfunctioning, resulting in a general overall lowering of bodily health.”

  “Maybe you do know your stuff.”

  “Maybe I do.” His eyes narrowed, his brow tensed, which caused his eyebrows to show up better. “I do know your friend … your client … will not survive long without hospitalization and around-the-clock care. The reports from Florida are disturbing, to say the least.”

  “I know.”

  I’d spoken to Eberstadt again, yesterday, and heard a harrowing tale of suicide attempts and constant supervision. In the early-morning hours, not long after Forrestal arrived, a fire engine had gone by, its siren wailing, sending the former Secretary of Defense bolting from his bed, running in his night-shirt into the street, screaming, “The Russians are attacking! The Russians are attacking!”

  Dr. Bernstein stood, a cue for me to do the same, which I did.

  He said, “I can assure you, Mr. Heller, that both Captain Raines and I will do everything in our power to see that Mr. Forrestal’s stay at Bethesda is as short as possible.”

  “Didn’t mean to give you a hard time, Doc,” I said, and handed him my business card. “I’ll be back in my Chicago office tomorrow morning, if there’s anything you need.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Heller.” He ushered me to the door, and smiled almost shyly. “And if I’m not being too personal, as one rather nonreligious Jew to another, I hope one day you will come to embrace your Jewish side, as I have.”

  “Yeah, well I plan to start with a pastrami and Swiss cheese sandwich in about half an hour.”

  From my room at the Ambassador, I made one more call to Florida, again talking to Eberstadt.

  Eberstadt said that he and Dr. Menninger were against the Bethesda decision, but had been overruled.

  “Who by?” I asked.

  “Jo Forrestal and President Tr
uman.”

  “What? How the hell—?”

  “Jo is adamant about protecting James’ reputation from the ‘stigma of mental illness,’ which she felt would be inevitable if he was admitted to such a famous psychiatric clinic as Dr. Menninger’s. She talked it over with Truman, on the phone, and he agreed with her and put the Bethesda plan in motion.”

  “And you think it’s a mistake.”

  “Hundreds of cases of operational fatigue have been successfully treated at Topeka. But what can you do? She’s his wife.”

  “And he’s our president.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Eberstadt said, “I voted for Dewey.”

  That night I returned to Chicago, and the next day Forrestal was admitted to Bethesda. (When his plane landed, he had refused to disembark until the airport had been cleared of “all Air Force men and Jews,” a request that was not fulfilled.) On April 11, the newspapers finally reported the former Secretary of Defense was under treatment at the naval hospital for “nervous and physical exhaustion.” In covering the explosive story, the press showed restraint, for the most part.

  With the exception of Drew Pearson, who made a feast of the news, distorting Forrestal’s behavior in Hobe Sound into hourly suicide attempts and constant raving about the Reds. Forrestal was a “madman” who’d had access to atomic bombs, and Pearson wondered in his column and on his radio broadcast just how gravely the secretary’s insanity had jeopardized national security.

  It was typical Pearson: bombastic, overstated, cruel …

  … and a damn good question.

  11

  Southeastern New Mexico, this part of it anyway, was not what I had expected. I was beginning my trip to Roswell with a detour, heading up Highway 70 in yet another rental Ford (a green one), but cutting over at Alamogordo, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes out of El Paso, to take Highway 82 with a village called Cloudcroft as my destination. I was in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains, and on the winding eighteen-mile drive, past roadside produce stands peddling apples and cider, I climbed five thousand ear-popping feet, scenic overlooks frequently presenting themselves, views of sprawling desert dotted with sagebrush, yucca and cacti from a forest thick with pine, blue spruce and aspen; it was like seeing Mexico from Canada. From certain overlooks, the glittering white sands that gave White Sands its name were in amazing evidence, as if snow had fallen in the desert.

  The more typical drive to Alamogordo—at one point crossing through a plateau-bounded basin—had been hot and dry, my cotton knit yellow-and-brown T-shirt and brown tropical worsted slacks sticking to me like flypaper (the T-shirt a Navajo pattern purchased at Sears in Chicago, to help me fit in out here in the wide open spaces). The brim of my straw fedora was snugged down, but the sun hadn’t bothered me—I wasn’t even wearing the sunglasses I’d brought along, enjoying the endless skies, which were a clear, rich, unthreatening blue, the occasional clouds looking unreal, like an artist’s bold brush-strokes. The lack of glare, however, didn’t keep that dry heat from turning the Ford into an oven, even with the windows down.

  Now, up in these mountains, I found myself rolling the windows up; it was getting chilly, the shadows of evening creeping in like friendly marauders. I had to slip my tan notch-lapel sportjacket on when I pulled over by the road to watch the setting sun paint the desert more colors than an Indian blanket—a gaudy one, at that.

  It had taken Drew Pearson almost a month to decide to send me to Roswell looking for flying saucers. I’d been back in Chicago, running the A-1, with both Washington and Outer Space filed under Bullshit in the back of my mind. My agency was doing fine; after a postwar lull, divorces were on the upswing again and personnel investigation was holding steady, while our retail credit work for suburban financial institutions remained the backbone of the business.

  “I figured when I didn’t hear from you,” I told Pearson, “you were taking a pass on the little-green-men mission.”

  “I received a document relating to that matter.”

  “Could you be a little more vague, Drew? I almost understood you.”

  “I can’t be specific on the telephone, you know that!”

  “I thought you were calling from a pay phone.”

  Which was Pearson’s usual habit.

  “I am. But I suspect every pay phone in Washington is tapped.”

  “Say, I understand there’s a nice room open next to Forrestal in Bethesda, if you want that paranoia of yours looked at.”

  “I’m fortunate you don’t charge per witticism, Nathan.”

  “What you pay is already pretty funny. So what got you off the dime?”

  “… I’ve received a document that appears to be a briefing to the President on the formation of that … magic group.”

  “You mean, Majestic Twelve.”

  “… Yes. Nathan, please … a little discretion.”

  “See, Drew, once you mention receiving a briefing document for the President, this whole discretion thing kinda goes out the window.”

  Pearson sighed, but when he continued, he dropped the coyness if not his imperious manner: “I have all twelve names, now, and they’re all credible—people like Admiral Hillenkoetter and General Twining, commanding general at Wright Field.”

  Hillenkoetter was head of the CIA, and Wright Field was significant because that was where Marcel had said the wreckage of the saucer had been taken.

  “If this is a hoax,” Pearson said, “we have a very knowledgeable practical joker at work.”

  “So you want me to investigate Major Marcel’s story,” I said.

  “Yes. In particular, I’d like you to talk to the witnesses who claim they saw the crashed craft and the bodies of the crew.”

  “Isn’t that the part of the country where they smoke locoweed?”

  “Well, there’s smoke, all right, Nathan, but not necessarily from locoweed. And where there’s smoke, there’s—”

  “Mirrors…. What’s the latest word on Forrestal?”

  “Making good progress, they say.”

  “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

  Defensiveness edged his tone. “I don’t wish the man any ill, personally. Just politically.”

  “Then why don’t you let up on him?”

  “What I write and say isn’t having any effect on Jim Forrestal’s state of mind. My sources inside Bethesda tell me he isn’t allowed to read newspapers or listen to the radio and all communication from the outside is strictly controlled. He may be insane, but I’m confident the nation is strong enough, stable enough, to hear the truth, to have the answers.”

  Pearson had been asking the questions in his column and on the air: Why had Forrestal’s malady not been detected or acted upon sooner? Who in our government was responsible for concealing this danger to our national security? And to what extent was Forrestal’s medical treatment being compromised by public relations considerations?

  Now dry sarcasm colored his voice. “Do you know where your former client’s room is?”

  “No.”

  “The sixteenth floor of the Bethesda tower. Doesn’t that sound like just the ideal place to keep a potential suicide?”

  “More like the ideal place to help keep him away from the press,” I admitted.

  “Or maybe they’re isolating him for yet another reason.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Who knows what drugs they’re pumping into him, or what sort of mind-control magic they’re up to? That hospital is a hotbed of CIA shenanigans, you know.”

  “Bethesda.”

  “Yes. And if my sources are to be believed, the CIA—Forrestal’s own ‘baby,’ which is a nice irony—is doing research with drugs, electric shock, hypnosis…. Nathan, I just want you to understand—I’m not the villain here.”

  “Neither is Forrestal.”

  An operator’s voice came in to let Pearson know that he needed to feed in some more coins to keep this conversation going.

  After the music of the droppin
g coins had ceased, Pearson said acidly, “You’re already costing me money. Will you go to Roswell and do this job?”

  “Sure, but I want a five-hundred-dollar retainer, in advance, nonrefundable.”

  “What if you only work three days?”

  “It’s a minimum fee, Drew. I never chase flying saucers for under five cees.”

  “… All right. I’m going to send you a list of names that Marcel has given me, with some rudimentary background information. It’ll come Special Delivery, with your retainer check, and your plane tickets. Can you go out there next week?”

  I could, and I did. Of course that miserly son of a bitch sent me the cheapest way he could: on a charter flight of retired schoolteachers going to Carlsbad Caverns. At El Paso, the charter group boarded a bus and I rented the Ford. It was a wonder Pearson didn’t expect me to tag along with the teachers and then hitchhike to my first stop.

  Sleepy little mountain-nestled Cloudcroft (pop. 265) had the near ghost-town look of off-season, its downtown storefronts no different than in an Illinois or Iowa hamlet; but from a perch overlooking this slumbering resort community loomed a wide-awake ghost of another sort.

  The hotel known as the Lodge seemed to have been transported from another time—say, Queen Victoria’s—and another place—the Swiss Alps, maybe. The grand old railway inn was an architectural aberration, a rambling three-story gingerbread chalet—wooden, not adobe, painted gray, trimmed burgundy, with gabled windows, glassed-in verandas and a central copper lookout tower. The shape of the structure was distinct against the New Mexico sky, which at night was a deeper blue but no less clear, with stars like tiny glittering jewels set here and there in its smooth surface, purely for decorative effect, the full moon casting a ghostly ivory luster upon the mansionlike building, whose windows burned with amber light.

  Lugging my Gladstone bag, I moved through the covered entryway, pushing open double doors decorated with stained-glass windows, and entered into a two-story lobby that was at once cavernous and cozy, its dark woodwork highly polished, its hardwood floor worn, plants and flowers everywhere, from potted to freshly cut, a world of elegant antiques and hand-beveled glass and sepia lighting; it was as if I had walked into a daguerreotype.