by Jim Lehrer
Mathews shook his head. “Everybody’d think it was about an apartment house.”
“Then, maybe just the one word, Super. Can you see it in lights—Super, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason?”
“Mason would get second billing to Gable and Saint. But Super’s no good. Everybody’d think it was about that guy who flies from building to building in a single bound.”
“Grant—not Gable,” murmured Darwin Rinehart.
Then, glancing down at the platform in front of the Dodge City train station, he said, “Look, quick, Gene! See him? That’s the guy! I know who he is.”
Mathews’s eyes also went to the disheveled man leaving the train in the company of that Santa Fe detective Pryor.
“He was the Atomic Energy Commission guy who came around before we started shooting there at Snow Canyon,” Rinehart said excitedly. “I’m sure of it.”
“Right, right,” said Mathews. “He had a Geiger counter or something in his hands.”
“Didn’t he try to convince us that the ground was radioactive?”
“Yeah, but the local people said that was from uranium deposits that were going to make everybody around there rich someday,” Mathews said.
“Wonder what happened?” Rinehart asked rhetorically as the Super Chief pulled away from the Dodge City station toward the beautiful scenery.
In less than five minutes, they came out the door of the hotel. The darkly dressed man was at least six feet tall, which made him appear gigantic next to Pollack, who couldn’t have been more than five feet six.
Charlie Sanders, from around the corner of the hotel building, carefully watched them look up and down Main and start walking. He followed at a safe distance as they went south on Main back toward the Santa Fe station.
At the corner they crossed Main and stopped in front of the Farmers and Drovers Bank. Sanders stayed back on the other side, pretending to look into a store window.
Pollack went across the street and into the train station while the large man waited in front of the bank.
Within moments, Pollack reappeared and gave a wave to the man to come into the station—and hurry. Sanders read it as a signal that the coast was clear.
Sanders waited until both were well inside the waiting room and out of sight before continuing on. He heard the sound of a departing train. There was that familiar Whaah! of a diesel locomotive’s horn, and the roar of the big engine.
Right, right. That was the local to LA, Train #4, the companion to the #3 that went nearly an hour later.
Sanders raced through the long waiting room and on out the doors to the platform just in time to see the last car of Train #3 disappear into the west.
Could it be that the man would ride #3 only to a town close by and then board the eastbound #4? Then when he arrived here in Bethel he would simply stay aboard, out of sight of any law enforcement personnel who had returned to the platform to watch the eleven o’clock departure …
“Detective.”
Charlie Sanders heard the word, spoken by a male voice. But it was not a word he was used to responding to on reflex.
“It’s me, Pollack,” said the voice.
Sanders turned around.
“I must talk to you, detective,” said Pollack.
“Mr. President, excuse me for asking, but have you given any additional thought to what that former AEC man Lawrence said about the risks from the Nevada testing?”
Harry Truman looked away from A. C. Browne and out the window at the Southwest countryside.
“You may be about to end a new friendship,” he said after a full minute.
“Sorry, sir, but I ask questions for a living. I can’t help myself.”
“I used to answer questions because I had to. I don’t have to anymore.”
A. C. Browne knew he was pushing this—possibly too far. But he couldn’t help himself. “I just know, sir, from my own experience that memories can play tricks on people sometimes. And concentration on an event can, in fact, bring back sounds and sights that the person didn’t realize were still there.” Browne put his right hand to his head to make the point of where “there” was.
He could feel warmth in his face and he assumed it was a bright scarlet, more than bright enough for Harry Truman to see it.
“I think we’ve talked enough about this, Browne. Just for the record I do not recall a thing the man said. I’m going back to my compartment.”
Browne stood. “Thank you. Maybe we could talk again later?”
Truman shrugged but said nothing.
“Clark Gable’s on the train,” said Browne quickly, trying to reestablish the relationship. “Maybe I’ll look him up for an interview. I’m writing something about how television is scaring the movie business.”
“Gable’s a Republican who came out big for Ike in fifty-two,” Truman said. “But, as far as I know, he never said anything bad about me like so many of those other Hollywood types.”
“I think he’s been so busy bedding down his leading ladies and all the other ladies he could, he didn’t have much time for politics. Too, too bad about his wife, Carole Lombard.”
“A heartbreaking story, that’s right.”
“He’s also known as a drinker. Would you be interested in having a private whiskey with him early this evening, maybe before Albuquerque—if I could set it up?” asked the editor-publisher of the Strong Pantagraph.
“Why not?” replied, the thirty-third president of the United States.
They moved to part.
“We can do it in my drawing room,” said Truman. “Gable will probably want it all to be private.”
A. C. Browne had to hold back a laugh at the thought of a former president being concerned for the privacy of the King of Hollywood.
“It’s not what it looks like, detective,” said Pollack to Charlie Sanders.
Sanders just stared ferociously. He would thus attempt to become the first detective to make an arrest armed only with a scowl. He did have the additional weapon of physical size because he had five inches and at least forty pounds on Pollack.
“Follow me!” he said, also ferociously.
To Sanders’s satisfaction and surprise, Pollack began to walk right behind as he marched toward what he knew was a small office next to the baggage room. Conductors and other crew members used it to do paperwork while their train was in the station. Sanders hoped it would be vacant at the moment.
It was. Still in his apprehender mode, Sanders pointed—authoritatively—for Pollack to sit down at a desk that was empty except for a few white Santa Fe memo pads, a couple of pencils and a black telephone.
“Were you involved in the death of your employer?” Sanders asked once they were settled across from each other.
Pollack started to say something but before he did, Sanders added, “Was it murder?”
The former assistant looked away and then turned back and said, “Frankly, sir, I don’t know what you’d call it.”
Sanders kept his interrogator eyes on Pollack, who continued to talk.
“Mr. Wheeler was told by the doctors in Chicago that he had only a few more weeks to live. He told me that he wanted to die on the Super—the Super Chief. That did not surprise me. I knew why he would want to do that. He asked if I would arrange his death.”
Sanders knew he should stop Pollack right now—and not let him say another word. He should confess he was not a legitimate law enforcement officer, not a detective of the Santa Fe or any other company or organization. But Jack Pryor had told him to take care of the railroad’s interest. What could be more in the Santa Fe’s interest than listening to the confession of a killer—if that’s what this, in fact, was going to turn out to be?
So he not only did not interrupt Pollack, he encouraged him to continue, please.
Pollack said, “I thought he wanted me to get some pills or something that he could take after we got on the train. But he didn’t want it to be seen as suicide. He wanted a real funer
al service and burial and he knew Pastor Funk would not permit that if it was suicide. There may have been other considerations as well—involving the Church.”
Pollack’s eyes filled with tears. He lowered his head.
“So, what did you do?” asked Sanders.
“I found a man in Chicago who would do the job in such a way that it would look like murder, not suicide.”
“And that was the man you just put on Train #3?”
“That’s right. He’s only going to Sedgwick, the first stop fifteen minutes away, and then he’s coming back on the next train and—”
“Keep going through here at eleven o’clock back to Chicago,” Sanders interrupted to finish the sentence.
“Yes. I saw that you and the sheriff weren’t watching people boarding the westbound trains, only the eastbound.”
Sanders took a deep breath, let it out and said, “He’s a hired killer, right?”
“I guess you’d call him that … yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“I never asked him.”
“How did you find him?”
The water was gone from Pollack’s eyes. He looked right at Sanders. “Do I have to tell you?”
“Yes,” Sanders lied. There was nobody in the world who had to tell Charlie Sanders anything.
“You’re not going to like the answer because it involves somebody who works for the Santa Fe. The only other people Mr. Wheeler and I got to know in Chicago were doctors and people at the hospital. I decided I’d have a better chance with a railroad employee—no offense, of course, detective.”
Charlie Sanders, the passenger traffic agent, suddenly wished he hadn’t been told anything like this. His job was to know only those things that might help the reputation of his beloved railroad.
So Charlie Sanders, faux railroad detective, simply skipped the most important question and asked instead, “How much did you pay the hit man?” It was a matter of simple curiosity—and, possibly, a delaying move.
“One thousand five hundred dollars—plus expenses,” said Pollack.
“Cash?”
“Every dollar of it.”
“Expenses for what exactly?”
“Just cab fare to and from Dearborn Station, a train ticket to and from Bethel, twenty dollars for meals. That was it. His gun and ammunition was part of the deal, what he supplied for the fifteen hundred.”
Time to do his duty—finally. “Who was the Santa Fe employee who arranged for the paid killer, Mr. Pollack?”
Pollack looked down, up and away before saying, “He was just helping Mr. Wheeler do what needed to be done. I beg of you, Detective Sanders. Don’t make me give you his name.”
Charlie Sanders looked at the telephone on the desk right in front of him. All he had to do now was pick up the receiver, dial 0 for an operator. He would—should—first report the entire matter to the sheriff, including the fact that the killer of Otto Wheeler, hired by a Santa Fe employee, was arriving back here at eleven o’clock on Train #4.
Then Charlie Sanders would—should—call the Santa Fe station in La Junta, Colorado, which he knew was the Super Chief’s next scheduled stop. A message would be left beforehand for Santa Fe Special Agent Jack Pryor to call him, which Pryor would do. And Charlie would announce the solution to the death of Mr. Otto Wheeler and that the killer was about to be apprehended.
And then he would report that a Santa Fe employee was involved in hiring the killer …
Charlie Sanders’s considerations were interrupted by Pollack. “I plead with you, detective, to let this be, to let Mr. Wheeler rest in peace.”
“There’s been a murder on the Super Chief,” Sanders said.
“Yes, but the victim arranged it,” Pollack said.
“So it’s suicide?”
“No, it was murder.”
“Because if it’s suicide then Mr. Wheeler doesn’t get his big funeral and burial that he wants.”
“Yes, and there are other things at stake, too,” Pollack said. “Sensitive financial ones that I cannot talk about—yet.”
Charlie Sanders’s mind was working but doing so silently.
Pollack filled the void. “Do you think it might be helpful for you to know why Mr. Wheeler so much wanted to die on the Super Chief?”
Sanders nodded. Anything to delay his having to make what clearly was the most important decision of his life—so far.
Pollack told him the story.
“Many years ago, way before Mr. Wheeler took sick, he met a woman in the observation car on the Super Chief. It was late, she was traveling alone from Los Angeles to Chicago and on to New York on the Broadway Limited. They had a drink, a conversation and there was what they call chemistry between them. They arranged to meet again on their return trip and over the years they continued to do that many, many times. Their mutual affection turned to love. Then quite unexpectedly and with no explanation, she failed to be on a particular eastbound Super Chief. He never heard from her again but he continued to ride the Super Chief as often as possible, always in hope that she might be on it, too. After he became ill, he did little else but ride the Super Chief back and forth between Bethel and Chicago. We told everyone it was to see doctors but that was not completely true.”
“Why didn’t he … well, make a move to marry her or something before she quit riding?”
“She was already married.”
Sanders had no response to that. “So they never saw each other except on the Super Chief?” Pollack nodded.
Sanders, hanging on to every word, said, “Did he or you ever find out what happened to the woman—why she didn’t show up again?”
Pollack shook his head.
“What was her name?”
Pollack smiled. “I don’t think you’d really want to know her name.”
“Don’t tell me she’s the wife of the president of the Santa Fe railroad?”
Pollack laughed out loud, something Sanders hadn’t been sure until now the man was capable of doing. “No, no, nothing like that.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“She was—is—a very famous woman.”
“What kind of famous?”
“Movie star famous.”
Pollack put his hands before him on the desk and folded them. Sanders had no trouble reading the meaning. This movie story had ended.
“What are you going to do, detective?” Pollack asked.
Charlie Sanders glanced again at the phone, then at a small clock on the wall to his right. It was already 10:40. Train #3, assuming it was on time The Chief Way, would be arriving in Bethel from points west in twenty minutes.
And that meant, first and foremost, he should call now so the sheriff would have enough time to muster his forces for meeting that train and apprehending the nameless hired killer of Otto Wheeler.
But he sat there with his own hands folded tightly on the desk before him.
“Who was the big shot who got on in Kansas City last night?” Darwin Rinehart asked the dome car waiter who brought him a Bloody Mary and Mathews a Coke.
“They’re not saying, sir,” said Howard, the waiter.
“I’m not asking what they’re saying, I’m asking who it is.”
Howard, a light-skinned black man in his forties, only smiled. He had won the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in the army in World War Two. Even though few, if any, passengers knew that, his fellow Super workers did. They had just recently elected him vice president of their union.
Rinehart said, “Can’t be one of ours—a movie type. Clark Gable was already aboard. He doesn’t rate that anyhow. Maybe it was Greta Garbo. No, no. She’d never be getting on in Kansas City. Nobody gets on a train in Kansas City except that Gene Nelson character in Oklahoma! Forget that.”
He pushed a ten-dollar bill toward Howard.
“No thanks, sir,” said the waiter, who smiled again and moved on.
“I’ll bet it’s either Babe Ruth or Al Capone—or maybe Count Basie,” said Rinehar
t.
“Both Ruth and Capone are dead,” said Mathews.
“When did the Babe die?”
“August sixteenth, 1948.”
“Capone?”
“A year earlier—1947. On June twenty-fifth.”
“I’m so glad I have you to know everything for me,” said Rinehart. “I know Count Basie’s still living—right?”
“Yep.”
Howard came back down the aisle. Rinehart stopped him. “Can you tell me if it’s a bandleader?”
“I can tell you that, yes, sir. It isn’t.”
“A big-league ballplayer?”
“No, thank the good lord in Heaven,” Howard said. “They get all drunked up, start cussing, tear things up, get in fights with each other and everybody else, go after unattended ladies. I dread it every time I see a ballplayer coming. They’re also the cheapest tippers, sir, if I may add.”
“Are all of them that way?” Rinehart asked.
“All except Mr. Joe DiMaggio. He’s a real gentleman, always quiet and polite, always leaves us something big to remember him by. He’s as big a man as his batting average. You can’t say that about many of ’em.”
“That figures about Joltin’ Joe,” said Mathews, rousing himself to full attention away from his reading. “He’s the best there is. You a Yankees fan?”
“No, sir,” said the waiter, “the Cubs are my team.”
Gene Mathews frowned and returned to his book.
Rinehart took a long sip of his drink and then said to Howard, “You know, there’s a Super regular who’s worse in another way than ballplayers. Gene and I saw him more than once here on the train. He’s an artist who gets on someplace in New Mexico. Paints Indian pueblos, vases and stuff. Art-teest, I guess I should call him. Wears a beret. He goes into the dining car at five, precisely when it opens, demands that nobody ever be seated at the table with him, orders the same things every time, including toast that is toasted only on one side and insists that it all be served exactly thirty minutes after he’s had a vodka martini on the rocks with a twist. Nobody’s allowed to call him by name, talk to him or watch him eat. What’s his name, Gene?”
