I said, “Yes, I know Frank Olson is involved in research for the CIA. No need to dance around it.”
He shifted just a little in the leather chair. “But I’m afraid there is. I am limited as to what I can say. As a licensed investigator, you surely understand that.”
“I do. But I can’t let you hide behind it, Doctor.”
He nodded slightly, then leaned back and folded his hands over the moderate paunch under his buttoned suit coat. “Mr. Heller, I assume you know that Dr. Olson works in biochemical research. He comes into contact with various dangerous chemicals in the course of that research, and we believe he became exposed to one such chemical that caused in him a psychotropic reaction.”
I was supposed to picture a spilled test tube, not triple sec laced with a hallucinogenic mickey.
I said, “And you have an expertise where such reactions are concerned.”
“That’s right. As an allergist. Further, I am doing research into the reactions of patients in a clinical setting to a certain drug which Dr. Olson may have accidentally ingested.”
That was closer to the truth, but still no cigar. On the other hand, I now had a clearer picture of the good doctor—so he was doing CIA-funded research into LSD-25. At Mount Sinai yet.
Staying deadpan, I said, “That’s reassuring. I was afraid that he’d been brought to you because no in-house psychiatrists or psychologists had proper CIA clearance to handle a high-security patient like Frank Olson … and he’d have to settle for you. His old friend the allergist.”
Some anger flared in the light blue eyes, though the face around them remained impassive. “That’s an unwarranted assumption, and frankly insulting, sir.”
“But you and Frank Olson do have a prior relationship.”
This smile was more of a twitch. “I have known Frank for many years, yes. We worked on projects together during the war. He’s a friend and I do think I have a certain ease with him. A certain ease with each other.”
“And that level of comfort is obviously a positive thing.” I needed to back off on needling him. “What kind of shape is Frank in, Doctor?”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I’m still evaluating that. I would say he alternates between seeming normal, very much himself, and … are you familiar with the term ‘paranoia,’ Mr. Heller?”
“Yeah. I’d say I have a pretty good handle on the paranoia concept.”
“Well, on Tuesday we had a good long session right here in this office. Frank sat where you’re sitting. And … You understand my remarks must be limited, due to patient confidentiality, and that I can only share with you what I would feel comfortable telling Mrs. Olson were she here in person.”
“Sure,” I said.
I had no doubt that there were confidentiality concerns in this, but I doubted Olson’s rights as a patient was one of them.
“The serious nature of Frank’s top-secret research and development,” the allergist said, “has built an anxiety in him that is troubling. He feels guilty about some of the work he’s done, and suffers from feelings of depression and inadequacy. These are feelings that appear to have been troubling him for some months, but this … chemical with which he came into contact has apparently brought it to the surface. That first session I felt … I feel … was a good one. Because we are old friends, we have a genuine rapport. Because I am in the same field that Frank is, he feels he need not be guarded with me.”
“You mentioned paranoia.”
He unlaced his hands and sat forward, then replaced them on the desktop. “I … Mr. Heller, I’m going over the line here, but I think Mrs. Olson has the right to know that there’s a serious element in all this.”
Who had said otherwise?
“All right,” I said.
“Frank has been having trouble sleeping. With the kind of anxiety he’s suffering, that’s natural. But he believes that the CIA is putting stimulants in his coffee to prevent him from getting a good night’s rest.”
“Not caffeine, either.”
“No. Specifically, Benzedrine. I don’t believe I need to explain that that’s the last thing the Agency would do to one of its top scientists. But talking to me, at length as we did, seemed to calm him. A logical, low-key examination of his concerns seemed to help. To get through.”
“This was Tuesday afternoon?”
“Yes. That evening, I went to his hotel room, at the Statler, to check up on him. He was sharing a room with Lieutenant Colonel Ruwet, and Dr. Robert Lashbrook, another scientist, was next door, adjoining. Making sure Frank had proper support in this difficult hour.”
“Keeping an eye on him.”
Lashbrook was Dr. Sidney Gottlieb’s right-hand man, but Abramson didn’t need to know that I was aware of that.
“Call it that if you like, Mr. Heller. Lieutenant Colonel Ruwet called me and said Frank was getting agitated again. So, as I say, I went over there. Gave him something to settle him down, help him get to sleep.”
“A house call, Doctor?”
“It was as much social as medical, Mr. Heller. We had several highballs, there in his room, and then I left him with a bottle of Nembutal capsules, and told him to take one … and that if he had any trouble sleeping, he should take another.”
“Yellow Jackets and bourbon,” I said numbly. “That was your prescription?”
I couldn’t hide my disgust, but at least I didn’t smack him—that kind of cocktail could give the nervous system a fatal one-two.
His chin came up. Funny how when people look down their nose at you, they present such a tempting target.
He said, “I’m told it worked, that he slept well. Then the next morning, Wednesday, I understand that Colonel Ruwet and Dr. Lashbrook took Frank to see a magician friend of his, just to cheer him up.”
John Mulholland, the well-known stage magician, was the other name Norman Cournoyer had shared with me.
“You weren’t along for that,” I said.
“That’s right. But Frank and I had a long session Wednesday afternoon—I canceled all my consultations to make room for him—and he seemed well on the road to recovery to me.” He sighed. “You see, Mr. Heller, the question is whether we can get Frank back on his feet or if it will be necessary to admit him to a hospital for longer-term care.”
“You mean commit him. Institutionalize him.”
He raised a “stop” palm. “I would rather you not convey that to Mrs. Olson. That’s what we’re all hoping to avoid. No reason to alarm her.”
“You don’t think it’s alarming, not hearing from her husband in three days?”
“Mr. Heller—”
“The possibility of committing him—is that why Frank hasn’t been allowed to call Alice?”
Abramson was shaking his head. “No one has forbidden Frank to call his wife. That’s his decision. He had the notion that he’d become dangerous to her and his children—no foundation for that, I assure you—and then in his better moments, he’s embarrassed by all of this. He’ll call her when he feels he’s ready. Mrs. Olson has been kept apprised of her husband’s situation. My understanding is that Lieutenant Colonel Ruwet spoke to her last evening.”
“He did. After she’d had one hell of a miserable day.”
“These things sometimes can’t be helped. The reality is, yesterday, Thanksgiving, we had a setback. Frank was on his way home with Ruwet when he demanded he be turned around and taken back here, to work further through this with me. Of course, I wasn’t in my office, but they brought him to me at my home on Long Island. I was only too glad to help.”
“They?”
“Dr. Lashbrook and, uh, a colleague.”
Gottlieb? I didn’t press it. Anything I revealed would be assumed to be known by Alice Olson as well, and I didn’t want to put her in harm’s way.
Abramson was saying, “We worked for several productive hours, in the late afternoon and early evening. Dr. Lashbrook and Frank stayed in a hotel in Cold Spring Harbor, near me. I believe they had a
pleasant Thanksgiving dinner at a local restaurant.”
“That’s nice,” I said through my teeth. “Because Alice Olson’s Thanksgiving wasn’t so goddamn pleasant. Not when her husband failed to show and never called.”
He opened a hand and shrugged. “It’s a delicate, touchy situation. But we’re making progress. This morning, first thing, I worked with Frank at the hotel in Cold Spring Harbor. Then we all drove into the city and I had a two-hour session here with Frank late this morning and afternoon.”
I sat forward. “Are you saying I just missed him?”
Abramson said, “By about half an hour.”
“And where is he now?”
“With Dr. Lashbrook, who’s finding them a hotel to check into, I believe. I haven’t heard from them, but should shortly. Where could I get in touch with you, Mr. Heller? The office number on your card?”
“You can leave word there, but I’m at the Waldorf. I would appreciate it if you’d let me know.”
He gave me a patronizing smile. “I’ll do that. But my feeling is that the situation, while in flux, is very hopeful. In a day or two, we should be able to return Frank Olson to his happy home.… Now, Mr. Heller, unless there’s something else…?”
“There is something else.”
“Yes?”
I stood and put on my hat. “I appreciate everything you’ve shared with me, Doctor, but there are things about how this is being handled—shuttling a mental patient back and forth from D.C. to New York, with an allergist playing therapist, holding him at this hotel and that one, and all the while the patient is out of touch with his wife and family … it kind of smells, Doctor. Or maybe I’m just allergic to bullshit.”
“This is unnecessary … uncalled for.…”
I leaned a hand on his desk and got damn near nose to nose with him. “So if Alice Olson doesn’t hear from her husband sometime today—let’s make it by midnight—I’m making good on my promise. I’m taking this to the cops or maybe to the FBI, and my understanding is the FBI and the CIA are not friendly rivals. Do you follow me, Doctor?”
He had turned a lovely shade of red with purple highlights. He pointed to the door as if I were his wayward daughter.
“You need to leave, Mr. Heller. Right now. I don’t have to listen to such irresponsible, disrespectful, nauseating nonsense.”
“Oh, you’ll get over it. Take a couple of Nembutal, wash it down with bourbon, and call me in the morning.”
When I went out, the receptionist was still reading Look, and the waiting room remained empty—not surprising, since the only patient the doctor was seeing today was somewhere else.
CHAPTER
19
The Bush Tower, just off Times Square at 130 West Forty-second Street, was the perfect setting for the office of a professional magician. With its thirty floors and fifty-foot width, the neo-Gothic razor blade of a building seemed impossibly tall despite much higher neighbors; back when it opened in 1917, it must have been a wonder.
John Mulholland had been a wonder in his day, too—a stage magician of some renown, author of best-selling magic books, editor of the professional magician’s magazine, The Sphinx. We’d never met, but we’d been featured in issues of the same “true detective” rags, though I was nabbing murderers where he’d been exposing phony mediums.
Around 1940, I’d seen him perform at the Empire Room at the Palmer House back in Chicago. He was adept with cards, silk scarves, coins, and other small props—a live canary and its bird cage disappeared in midair—but could also set up large illusions like his famous “floating coffin.” Mulholland’s brand of tuxedo-clad conjurer was a bit of a wheeze these days, though there was always room for a magician on the bill, particularly with a beautiful female assistant in mesh stockings.
But what was he doing in the middle of Frank Olson’s disappearing act?
The office door said—
JOHN MULHOLLAND
MAGICIAN LECTURER
—and underneath it was a circular bronze plaque of a bas-relief rabbit under which curved the words: “The Art of Creating Illusions.”
The door was unlocked, and I entered an apparent reception area whose side walls bulged with a series of four-shelf Art Nouveau dark-wood bookcases crammed with volumes on magic behind wood-and-glass triple doors, the top of each arrayed with statues, lamps, and artifacts of his craft. The only visitor chairs were to the left and right as you came in, where each wall had a massive framed colorful poster, Thurston contemplating a skull, Houdini helplessly handcuffed.
A large dark handsome work-stacked desk against the facing wall, with typewriter and banker’s lamp, said this space was for more than reception. On the wall overlooking the desk was a row of smaller framed magician posters and above that signed 8-by-10s—Hollywood stars (Jean Harlow, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Orson Welles) and famous magicians (Blackstone, Carter, Kellar, Karlini). Not a single Mulholland poster, though—could his love for the magical arts be bigger than his ego?
A slim male figure stepped through a doorway to the right of the desk, as if he had gone into a sarcophagus stage right only to emerge from another stage left. Despite the sudden theatricality of this entrance, I still had trouble making the lanky, jug-eared, thick-lipped, weak-chinned character be the famed John Mulholland.
No tux and top hat, gray hair combed neatly back, he wore wire-frame glasses and a gray suit with darker gray bow tie. Taller than me, he was slump-shouldered enough to seem shorter. He gave me a friendly if not effusive smile.
“May I be of service, sir? I’m afraid my secretary is away on Thanksgiving vacation.”
“Mr. Mulholland,” I said, taking off my hat as if about to pull a rabbit out of it, “I saw you at the Empire Room some years ago. I never saw a better magician.”
The half smile was toothy and sincere, but he hadn’t approached me yet. “That’s kind of you. If you’re here for a booking, I’m afraid I’m taking some time off from stage work.”
I cut the distance between us by half but didn’t press. “No, sir, I’m here to ask you a few questions about Dr. Frank Olson.”
That froze him momentarily, then he said, “And you are…?”
Now I went to him, holding out a business card. “Nathan Heller. President of the A-1 Detective Agency.”
He studied the card. Before he’d come to any conclusion about it, I performed my own sleight-of-hand trick, handing him a second business card—Dr. Harold Abramson’s.
“Dr. Abramson said you could be trusted to be discreet,” I said. “I understand Dr. Olson was up here to see you earlier this week, and I wanted to get your impression.”
A smile remained, but no teeth now, the sharp eyes in the near-goofy face very guarded. “What could I tell you that Dr. Abramson couldn’t?”
I smiled. “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out. If you’re willing. I’m operating as an outside, impartial party, since everyone else involved in evaluating Dr. Olson so far has been a friend or a coworker or both.”
“I’m afraid I fall into that latter category, Mr. Heller.” Now he seemed more at ease—he’d bought into my little trick. “Grab a chair, why don’t you? I’ll just sit here at Dorothy’s desk.”
But before he settled in, he went over, opened the door onto the hall and looked down right, and left, then locked it with a key. I pulled a straight-back chair over from under the Houdini poster and sat opposite him, where he was leaning back, lighting up a Philip Morris. The smell of cigarette smoke was strong in the office, unless that was the residue of some trick he was working up in the room behind him.
“You have a very impressive collection,” I said, indicating the posters and crammed bookcases.
“Thanks, but those are just the tip of the iceberg.” The resonant baritone of a veteran stage performer came through even in conversation. “I estimate I have thirty-thousand–some volumes on magic, and the largest collection of priceless magician posters in the world. Not to mention the props I’ve gathered from
the biggest names in the profession. I started out as a lad, you know, with Houdini.”
“That’s very impressive,” I said, meaning it. The “lad” was currently in his mid-fifties at least. “I hope you’ll be able to get back to performing soon.”
He exhaled smoke. “I will, when I’ve completed this current project. You’re aware of that project, I assume?”
“Yes,” I said. “Not in any detail, of course.”
And now I had to run a bluff—based on who this man was and what the CIA might want with him. If I was wrong, I’d be out on my ass. If he called his handler, I might star in my own vanishing act.
“Just that it’s obvious,” I said, with a shrug, “that someone with your close-up magic skills would be ideal to help train agents to spike drinks and food and so on, without detection.”
He nodded as casually as if I’d just complimented his handling of Chinese linking rings. “I admit it’s proving a more difficult task than I anticipated, getting this all down into a sort of ‘how to’ book, making sure my techniques can be learned by an average person without exceptional manual dexterity.”
I half-smiled. “Not just anybody has hands that are quicker than the eye.”
“Yes, and there’s so much more to it than that.” He exhaled more smoke as if summoning a curtain to hide behind. “There’s the psychological background of deception—setting the stage you might say, understanding who your ‘audience’ is. Distracting the subject’s attention. And naturally we’re dealing with small objects—paper matches, coins, stamps, a woman’s compact—all used to deliver powders and liquids.”
Nodding matter-of-factly, I said, “And those powders and liquids are drugs or chemical or biological agents?”
“Correct.” He gestured with a fluid hand. “All this requires tiny pills, squirting gadgets, and concealed needles … and of course, the day before yesterday, when Frank Olson was here, I went over all of that with him.”
Doing my best to stay a step ahead, I said, “Well, of course, because so many of the things Dr. Olson and his staff are developing require the kind of … delivery system … that you can contrive for him.”
Better Dead Page 25
