“Little sugar,” I sighed, walking over to her. “What’s your better idea?”
Stirring in a spoonful, she said, “Let me change into civilian clothes, and I’ll walk over and get your car…. Where is it?”
“In that lot on Third Street, but—”
She put the cup of coffee in my hands, walked me over and forced me to sit; weak as my legs were, she didn’t have much trouble accomplishing that.
“I’ll drive it back here,” she said. “I’ve got a little garage just across the alley, where I usually park the Studebaker. I’ll tuck it away in there till you’re ready to leave.”
I was shaking my head. “Even so, I still need clothes, and going after my things in that hotel room is out of the question …”
“You’re right, that would be too dangerous, for either of us.” She looked side to side, as if an answer might be hiding somewhere in the kitchen; then her expression firmed, as if she’d found one. “I have … some things here you can wear.”
“Your husband’s?”
She nodded. “They’re in a trunk in my bedroom. May smell a little of mothballs, but they should do you fine—you must wear the same size Steve did, or darn close.”
“I can’t let you do this,” I said. “Too risky. What if you’re followed back here, and they find out you were helping me …”
“It’s no risk, not if we get you out of that MP uniform, and I dump it in a garbage can on my way over to your car. Then, if it comes to that, I simply plead ignorance: how was I to know the Air Force was after you?”
No question about it: she was making sense. Even if they had my notebook, and knew she’d spoken to me on the forbidden “saucer” subject, that didn’t mean she knew about my fugitive status.
So I got out of the MP uniform, and bundled it up in brown paper for her, while she changed into a maize-color T-shirt and blue denim slacks and open-toed leather sandals.
“You look like a college coed,” I said, handing her the bundle.
Those full cherry-lipsticked lips twisted sideways and she arched an eyebrow knowingly. “You look like a big lug in his boxer shorts.”
“That’s when I like you best,” I said.
“When?”
“When you get out of character. Who’d have guessed the sensitive waif I met last night could take charge like this?”
Her eyes lowered and her mouth quivered; I wasn’t sure whether she was taking offense or letting some nervousness show through. Quietly, she said, “Well, I am in the military, you know.”
Then, bundle under her arm, she slipped out the back way, and I sat thinking fond thoughts of her as I drank my coffee.
The trunk in her bedroom provided plenty of choices; I picked out a blue-knit T-shirt, some gray tropical slacks, and some socks with clocks on them. They did smell of mothballs at that, and I laid the clothes out on the dresser, to air out a little, and flopped onto the bed in my shorts, just to rest a wee bit before she got back. I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep, particularly after the caffeine in that coffee. But the alertness of my mind fooled me: my weary body had been right all the time.
I was asleep in maybe ten seconds.
Another dream, pleasant dream, of the small pale child/man with the big head and big eyes and silver suit, speaking soothing words, friendly, unthreatening….
I opened my eyes; it was dark and I was under cool sheets again, and someone was hovering over me—not a space creature, an exquisite creature: Maria, tousled black hair, blue eyes, red lips, creamy naked curves, bending down to kiss me on the mouth.
This was not a dream, but it was much, much better, as she buried that lustrous black hair in my lap, fingers fishing expertly in the flap of my boxers and if I really was only the second man she’d ever been with, that first guy had taught her plenty. I made her stop before I came, and she stroked me gently and mounted me and rode me, tenderly, like a child guiding its pet burro up an arroyo, and very soon she came and I came, in a mutual shuddering loss of control. She withdrew me from her, then slipped away, went off to do whatever women do, and, in bra and panties, came trundling back with a Kleenex for me and fell into my arms, whispering, “You must be very tired, very tired, very tired,” and I was, I was, I was….
16
The room was still dark, but sunlight was finding its way in and around the closed window blinds; birdies were tweeting and paperboys were missing porches and milkmen were clattering bottles and traffic was just starting to flow.
I sat up. I felt incredibly rested; never slept better in my life, and if I’d been dreaming, whether about spacemen or pretty girls or an imaginary day at the racetrack, I had no memory of it.
Hair pinned up under the cocked overseas hat, Maria was sitting in the kitchen, in her khaki nurse’s uniform, having toast and coffee, looking cuter than Shirley Temple. And these days Shirley Temple was looking pretty cute.
“Must be morning,” I said.
“Yes,” she purred, and her smile was gently wry, even if her toast was white. “Question is, what morning?”
I pulled up an eyebrow and a chair and sat. “What do you mean?”
Her lush lips formed a mocking kiss. “Are you hungry, by any chance?”
“Actually … now that you mention it, yeah! Ravenous.”
“That may be because you’ve been sleeping since the night before last.”
“What? Straight through?”
My private nurse rose and began making me breakfast; she was prepared: a skillet waited on the stove, and—on the counter nearby—two eggs in a bowl, a bottle of milk, several strips of crisp bacon already shedding their grease on a paper towel, toast in a toaster poised for pushing down.
“How do you like ’em?” she asked, an egg in hand.
“Like my brains, scrambled. Maria, tell me I didn’t sleep straight through.”
She cracked two eggs and started scrambling. “You roused once and wanted to know where the bathroom was. And I showed you. And you used it. And went right back to bed, to sleep.”
“God, I don’t remember that, at all. They must’ve pumped a lot of drugs into me, for me to need to sleep it off like that…. What about the car?”
“I got it. Notebook, too.”
“Any sign of trouble out at the base?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I called in sick yesterday to baby-sit you. Today I start back on morning shift.”
I rubbed my face; heavy beard but not outrageous. “Jesus—we’re lucky they didn’t put your absence together with my ‘jailbreak.’”
She stirred the eggs, adding some milk. “If they haven’t connected us by now, they’re not going to. But I did have a call from the commanding officer, himself.”
“Blanchard! What the hell did he want?”
“I’m being transferred. Remember, I had that hanging over me? The colonel wanted to thank me personally for my ‘fine service.’”
“Transferred to where?”
“I haven’t received my orders yet.”
“Could it have anything to do with …”
“I don’t think so—this has been a long time coming. Anyway, Nathan, if they knew about us, they’d be here, wouldn’t they?”
“You would think. You would think. Maria, I have to go.”
“Go sit down. I’ll serve you.”
I sat, and soon she placed the plate of scrambled eggs and bacon before me, and a glass of orange juice, buttered toast and a cup of coffee. “Where do you have to go, Nathan?”
I began eating; God I was starved. “Not home. I’m going underground for a few weeks, maybe longer—my friends in Chicago will tell me if the heat is on or off.”
Her brow furrowed. “What if the heat is on? And what if it stays on?”
“I don’t know.” I took a bite of toast, chewed as I talked; we knew each other well enough for that. “I do have a few friends in high places, and low ones, and I’ll call on them, if need be. But I won’t make an issue out of this unless I have to. I just wa
nt my life back. Maria, I have learned one thing from my investigation, and one thing only: that I do not give a flying shit whether men from outer space crashed near your fair city.”
Her expression was blank. “Then maybe your stay at the guesthouse served its purpose. Maybe that’s all they were after.”
“Then they succeeded. Flying colors.”
When I’d finished my breakfast—which was soon—she took the dishes to the sink and ran water over them.
I stood and found a small notepad and pencil by the fridge. “Maria, this is my business number. Call that when you know where your new duty assignment is.”
She took the slip of paper, folded it, and snugged it in her breast pocket. Then she slipped her arms around my waist; the blue eyes looked up at me, as if daring me to dive in. “Does this mean you want to see me again, Nathan?”
“Yeah—anywhere but Roswell.”
“Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”
“Sure …”
I kissed her, and she kissed back, and it was passionate and sweet and I asked, “When do you have to be at work?”
“Not for a while yet …”
“How would you feel about hiking up that skirt and taking off your panties and really saying goodbye. …”
“I think that could arranged,” she said with a wicked little smile.
“And please,” I said, “leave the little hat on….”
“Where shall we …?”
“How about one of these chairs….”
“Oh my,” she said, a little while later, breathing hard, still straddling my lap; me, I was ready for another long nap. “Nathan, that … that was out of this world….”
“I bet you say that to all the Martians.”
My car was, as promised, in the garage across the alley. My nurse—her skirt only slightly wrinkled—waved goodbye from the kitchen doorway and, wearing her late husband’s clothes, I waved back at her, like she was the little woman and, like a good breadwinner—even if I was unshaven and lacked a lunch pail—I might have been heading for work.
Not preparing to hide my sorry ass.
17
One fine Saturday morning in late May, the District of Columbia alive with dogwoods and cherry trees in full blossom, I found myself being chauffeured all about the capital city by a certain skinflint millionaire journalist. During the ride, I was reminded that—despite this city’s bewilderingly laid-out street system—the white obelisk of the Washington Monument’s position against the washed-out blue of the horizon always served as a massive reference point. Which came in handy, because my chauffeur wasn’t taking me anywhere in particular.
We were in the black Buick convertible, which served as Drew Pearson’s second office; it was pretty spiffy, right down to its red-leather seats, and the license plate number was a simple 13—the columnist’s lucky number.
“I was getting worried,” Pearson said, his smile slitting his eyes and sending the well-waxed tips of his mustache skyward, “when your man in Chicago … Sapperstein, is it? … said you’d be ‘incommunicado for an unspecified interval.’”
“That sounded better than ‘holed-up someplace,’” I said. “Hey, can’t we just park somewhere and talk?”
Pearson was pretty spiffy himself, wearing a gray homburg, dapperly angled and a shade darker than his striped tropical worsted suit, which was enlivened by a blue tie with a brown-and-yellow bird motif. How he kept his hat on, in the wind his rapid driving stirred up, was a mystery this Sherlock Holmes couldn’t solve—glue? Chewing gum? Masking tape?
“Pull over and talk, and be the prey of some lip-reader?” Pearson asked archly, bulleting through a yellow light. “I don’t think so, Nathan…. Besides, driving relaxes me. Helps me think.”
Though I was on the clock, it was Saturday and I was casually dressed, a brown-and-white checked sportjacket over a ribbed sky-blue T-shirt. My hat, a light brown Southwest Flight, was at my feet, or it would’ve taken flight, southwest or otherwise.
“Yeah, it helps me think, too,” I said. “Like, I think you’re gonna kill us both if you don’t slow down.”
I had stayed underground—in Vegas, with an old girlfriend of mine, who worked in the chorus line at the Flamingo—for three weeks. Checking in on a daily basis with my office, I learned that no inquiries about my whereabouts had come from government sources, or any suspicious sources, for that matter; the office was swept for electronic bugs and phone taps every second day—clean as a freshly bathed baby’s butt. Lou Sapperstein—my former boss on the pickpocket detail, and current employee, a turnabout I never ceased to relish—had determined to his satisfaction that neither the office nor my apartment was under any kind of surveillance.
And, every day when I phoned in, I asked if we’d heard from Maria Selff about where she’d been transferred—and every day, no word from her. I had Lou, pretending to be doing a credit check, call the Walker Air Base hospital, where he learned the nurse had indeed been transferred but requests for her whereabouts would have to go “through channels.”
I wasn’t too concerned about this; Maria was probably distancing herself from me, in case she and her movements (and even calls) were being monitored. When the time was right, I figured, I would hear from her. Our relationship had been brief, yes, but also intense; and something genuine had passed between us, besides bodily fluids.
With Sapperstein’s reassurances that the coast was clear—or anyway, the lakeshore—I’d returned to the A-1 offices in Chicago’s Loop. There, somewhat unnervingly, the first phone call for me on my first day back was from a government source, out of Washington, D.C., no less: it was one of Forrestal’s Bethesda shrinks, Dr. Bernstein, who had added a second reason for me making the trip, beyond reporting in to Pearson.
“You will be pleased to know,” the shrink said, the middle-European accent giving his voice a lilt, “that your former client is doing very well.”
“That is good news.”
“Is there a possibility you’ll be coming to D.C., soon? Mr. Forrestal would be comforted by a visit from you.”
“Well, I do have pending business. In fact, I should be there next week.”
“Good. Excellent. Call me when you get to town, and I’ll see to it that your name is on the visitors list.”
And now, five days later, I was back in our nation’s capital, with our nation’s most feared commentator, aimlessly driving the beautifully paved web of streets in the midst of which the White House sat like a lovely spider. An appointment had been arranged by Dr. Bernstein and I would see Jim Forrestal in his tower room at Bethesda this afternoon, at two.
Pearson had similarly upbeat news about Forrestal to report. “You’ll be pleased to hear that your other client is on the road to recovery. Gaining his weight back. Truman visited him and pronounced Jim Forrestal ‘his old self,’ if that’s a good thing.”
“Would you prefer he stay sick in the head?”
A sneer lifted one waxed mustache tip. “I believe James Forrestal’s been sick in his soul a lot longer. I want him to stay out of politics, but rumor is Truman’s planning to give him some important government post.”
I snorted a laugh, leaning an arm where the window was rolled down. “I doubt that, not straight outa the loony bin. Why don’t you lay off the guy, anyway? Jesus, it’s fuckin’ overkill.”
This only amused my dapper chauffeur, who was guiding the Buick around Dupont Circle, as if rounding a curve at the Indy 500. “Still singing that sad song, Nathan? Overkill’s a necessity in my business; the public has a notoriously short memory—repetition’s the only cure. Anyway, I’m the one you should feel sorry for—I’m the one getting the hate mail.”
“Gee, I wonder why. You really know how to please a crowd, Drew—beating on a guy when he’s down.”
Soon we were on Connecticut Avenue, with traffic heavy enough to keep Pearson’s speedometer within reason, in the thick of older buildings and homes converted to charming and probably expensive speci
alty shops—art dealers, antique stores, boutiques, high-class markets and bookstores.
Just north of M Street, we were paused in backed-up traffic next to a bronze statue in the middle of a grassy dividing triangle, a majestic male figure in academic robes seated in a chair with a book in one hand and a pigeon on his head (the latter not a part of the statue proper).
“Longfellow,” Pearson said, noticing me eyeballing the striking statue. “The poet.”
“Didn’t figure him for a soldier or a politician, not that the pigeons care, either way. Reminds me! Pull over there, would you?”
“Why?”
I was pointing to an open parking space in front of Jefferson Place Books. “I need to pick something up.”
“All right, but make it quick—I have a luncheon date, at the Cosmos Club, with Averell Harriman, and you have less than an hour to make your report.”
Before long I was back in the convertible, my purchase in a plain brown paper bag.
“Forever Amber?” Pearson asked with a smirk and one raised eyebrow. “Or I, the Jury”?
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
As he pulled back into traffic, Pearson took one hand off the wheel to reach over and rustle at the brown paper bag, and peek in. “Poetry? Nathan Heller?”
“It’s a gift—for Jim Forrestal.”
“Touching. You must feel terribly guilty, taking money from the villain who put that patriot in the mental ward.”
Taking money from Pearson never bothered me other than the small amounts involved—but the son of a bitch was closer than he knew. I’d spoken to Dr. Bernstein again, yesterday afternoon, after checking in at the Ambassador, and he had once more stressed how well Jim Forrestal was doing, though he clearly had reservations.
“Both Dr. Raines and I are in general very pleased,” Bernstein had told me over the phone. “There’s been a marked improvement in Mr. Forrestal’s condition; he’s responding well to treatment.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“His moods of depression are still with him, however—he’s fine through the week, but by Saturday and Sunday, he’s descended into a state of nervous agitation and anxiety.”
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