The smoke came out his nose this time, dragon-style. “Exactly. But I wasn’t prepared for the shape Frank was in … and I have to say I object to not having been alerted to his condition, because I would have treated the situation with rather more care.”
“What situation? What condition?”
His eyes tightened. “Well … you notice I refer to Dr. Olson as ‘Frank.’ That’s because we’ve become friends over these last four or five months. We’ve met a number of times, both here in this office and at Camp Detrick. Of course, in those earlier meetings Frank took the lead.”
I made a leap: “Because he was coming to you with the chemical and biological agents that required your expertise in delivery.”
He sighed smoke, shook his head gently. “Yes, and perhaps it was all abstract to Frank, when we were talking biology and chemistry. But when I showed him various devices I’d come up with, things as simple as a pencil, it must have suddenly seemed terribly concrete to him.”
“A pencil?”
He nodded, picking up a pencil from the desk and gesturing with it, as if it were an under-size wand. “You just remove the rubber eraser, hollow out the shaft a little, shave down the eraser, reinsert it, and voilà, you have a hiding place for loose solids.”
“Loose solids?”
Another nod. “Chemicals in granular form, like salt … although we’re obviously not talking about salt here. To disseminate the substance, you simply remove the eraser as if you’re uncorking a vial.”
“To slip it in a drink, for example.”
“Yes, or food.” He tossed the pencil back onto the desk. “For disseminating liquids, there’s polyethylene tubing that can go up a sleeve, and, well … so many devices, so many methods. Simple but effective.”
I leaned forward. “So when Dr. Lashbrook and Colonel Ruwet brought Frank around, you showed him what you’ve worked up for him lately.”
“Correct. You see, right from the start, Frank and I really hit it off—he’s a dyed-in-the-wool practical joker, you know, and usually when we get together, I give him some nice gags that he can play on his coworkers. Such a great smile, such a great laugh, that man. But this time … very different.”
“How so?”
He gestured with the cigarette in hand and drew a smoky figure eight. “Well, when I told Frank I wanted to show him some of the new delivery systems, I asked Lashbrook and Ruwet to wait out here in the outer office. Frank and I went into my private area, which is as much a workshop as an office, and I showed him the gimmicks I’d devised.”
“And Frank didn’t react with his usual enthusiasm?”
The magician’s eyebrows rose above his glasses, then descended. “Probably poor judgment on my part. There’s a hell of a difference between some practical jokes to pull on your pals at work, and administering a dangerous drug to some unsuspecting party.”
“How exactly did Frank react to these new toys?”
His eyes flared. “He got agitated. Worked up. He said to me, whispering, ‘What’s behind this? Give me the lowdown.’ I didn’t understand what he meant and said so. He grabbed my sleeve. ‘Are they checking me for security? Do they want you to see if I’m a security risk?’”
“And what did you say?”
He held his left hand up in “stop” fashion. “That I knew nothing about it. That I was just a contract employee doing specific tasks, like writing my manual for them, and contriving the devices I was showing him. He grabbed my arm harder and said, ‘They’re all in a plot to get me. Are you part of it, too?’ I said I knew nothing of any such plot! He seemed on the verge of tears. He asked, ‘Why don’t they just let me disappear?’ I said nobody could disappear. When people disappear on stage, I reminded him, it’s just an illusion. A trick. And he said I was wrong. That the people he works for could make anybody vanish.”
He put out his cigarette. Fingered a new one out of the Philip Morris deck, thumbnailed a kitchen match to flame, and lit up.
I asked, “Did Frank stay agitated?”
“No. I was able to calm him down, rather quickly, and I took him back out here where the other two were waiting. Frank was sitting where you are, with the other two in chairs just behind him on either side. Lashbrook noted that Frank seemed awfully tense, and suggested I hypnotize him, to relax him.”
“I don’t remember you using hypnosis in your act.”
He shook his head emphatically. “I don’t. Too dangerous. Too unpredictable. Still, while I’m no expert, I’m generally able to hypnotize most subjects. But Frank said adamantly ‘No,’ refusing to let me try, and rushed out. Ruwet followed on his heels.”
“Not Lashbrook?”
“He followed shortly, but first he paused to give me a check he’d brought for me—for travel expenses to a hypnosis seminar next month, ironically enough. In Chicago.”
Ironically enough.
I said, just a throwaway, “I’m surprised Dr. Gottlieb didn’t attend this meeting.”
He shrugged, released another cloud of smoke. “Well, of course, that wasn’t necessary, since Lashbrook is Sidney’s deputy. His eyes and ears, you know. Anyway, I don’t believe Sidney was in the city on Wednesday.”
“Sidney, huh? Sounds like you and Dr. Gottlieb are friends, too.”
His eyes lighted up. “Well, friendly certainly. I find him a fascinating character—the way he’s overcome his stutter, largely, and of course his enormous intellect. He’s a kind of spymaster, isn’t he? And yet such a kind, humane individual.”
Offhandedly, I said, “I’ve never met him. As I say, I’ve been brought in from the outside for a fresh read on Dr. Olson’s status. But I admit I haven’t heard anybody accuse Sidney Gottlieb of being ‘humane.’”
Mulholland’s smile was almost dreamy behind the wall of smoke. “Well, he’s a Buddhist, for one thing. Lives with his wife in a log cabin on a fifteen-acre farm outside D.C., where they raise goats and grow Christmas trees—they sell them right there, on a roadside stand … busy time of year for him and his wife. They drink only goat’s milk and make their own cheese.”
Wait a minute—was he trying to hypnotize me?
I asked, fairly numbly, “Are we talking about the same Dr. Sidney Gottlieb?”
“Oh, yes. He’s a scientist and a humanist, but he’s also a patriot who is willing to do the tough things for his country.”
Like spike the drinks of colleagues with LSD-25. “I’d like to talk to him about Frank Olson. You wouldn’t happen to know where exactly that log cabin of his is?”
The horsey face lit up, smoke drifting out of his smile. “I do, but as it happens, he is in town right now. I spoke to him earlier today. I didn’t ask him where he was staying, but I can almost guarantee you that you can find him this evening at the Village Barn.”
I frowned. “In Greenwich Village? That cornball country joint?”
Mulholland nodded. “Yes. Sidney is a great enthusiast of square dancing, and any weekend night he’s in town, he can be found there.”
“For the square dancing?”
“That’s right. That’s the kind of man he is. Born with a club foot, but he dances the night away.”
* * *
Convincing Bettie Page to go out dancing was not a difficult chore. What had to be negotiated was what kind.
“The country swing,” I said, “I’m fine with. We can go out and cut a helluva rug. But for me, square dancing is strictly a spectator sport.”
We were in my room at the Waldorf. She was getting dressed to go out, and the stage she was at—black bra, sheer black panties, garter belt with sheer black nylons—made negotiations touch and go.
“Oh, sugah, it’s fun as a hayride,” she said, all that black hair fluffy around her pink shoulders. “Ah can give you all the basics and you’ll be just fine. Why, ah been square dancin’ since ah was—”
“Please don’t say ‘knee-high to a grasshopper,’” I said. “I don’t think I could stand it.”
“Ah was gonna say
‘frog,’ if that helps.”
She shimmied herself into a sheathlike pale yellow dress. I’m sure I’ve seen more remarkable sights, but I can’t think of one.
I unpopped my eyes and asked, “You really think you can square dance in that?”
“No. We’re gonna stop by mah apartment and ah’ll put on somethin’ more appropriate to the occasion. Are you gonna wear that suit, honey? Ah mean, it’s nice but maybe a sports jacket—”
“Have to,” I said. “It’s the only one I have along that’s cut to conceal this.” I opened the suit coat to show her the nine-millimeter in the shoulder harness.
She came over and put her hand somewhere interesting. “Never show a Southern gal your gun, honey, unless you mean it.”
“Stop it,” I said, grinning. “I have serious business to do tonight, and you can help out by being my date. If I go single, I’ll have women all over me.”
“That’s some big ego you got there, honey,” she said, grinning back, working her hand.
“No, it’s that the Barn is famous as a pickup joint. Stop that.”
She stepped back and raised the yellow dress over the black nylons and I was done for.
We had just finished—she was still leaning over the foot of the bed with that glorious bottom in the air—when the phone rang. I checked my watch—ten-fifteen. Sitting on the edge of the bed with my pants still around my ankles, I answered it on the fifth ring.
“Mr. Heller,” Alice Olson said, “Nate. I have good news.”
I’d spoken to her earlier this evening, giving her a somewhat laundered report on my visits with Abramson and Mulholland, including that I’d delivered a kind of ultimatum—that if she didn’t hear from Frank before midnight, I would go to the authorities.
Well, she’d heard from him, just fifteen minutes ago.
“Frank sounded good,” she said, upbeat for the first time. “He said he felt much better. He said everything is going to be fine.”
“That’s wonderful to hear, Alice. Did he say when you’d see him next?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “He wasn’t sure exactly when, but … tomorrow.”
“Anything else?”
She laughed a little. Actually laughed. “Just that he had to wash his socks out in the sink.”
“That sounds pretty normal to me. What hotel is he at, did he say?”
“Yes. He’s back at the Statler. He’s in Room 1018a.”
I jotted that down. “Should I go over there now…?”
“No. He was getting ready for bed. Maybe first thing tomorrow?”
“Sure. Did you mention me to him?”
“No, but you were working for him, so he shouldn’t be surprised seeing you.”
“Okay, Alice. But stay in touch. If anything happens at all, I want to know about it. No matter the hour. You have the number here at the hotel. Let me give you Bettie’s—that’s where I may be later.”
I did that.
“Nate,” she said warmly, “I think you really helped.”
“I tried to apply just the right amount of pressure,” I said. “But it’s tricky.”
We said our goodbyes, and I hung up, but this seemed too easy. Too pat. This wouldn’t be over until I’d been face-to-face with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, even if it took a fucking hoedown to do it.
* * *
The Village Barn was next door to El Chico (small world), at 52 West Eighth Street. Going strong since 1930, the place held no appeal for most Village dwellers and took aim at tourists, right down to a bus prowling Times Square to haul them back for “Three Shows Nightly” and supper for a buck. The music was mostly country and folk, usually with one mainstream act on the bill, but hillbilly comedy acts were the staple—Judy Canova, whose hayseed shtick made her a movie star, got discovered here by that well-known rustic, Rudy Vallee.
Bettie and I descended a steep set of stairs into a huge, high-ceilinged club that consumed the basement and first floor of the building, turning the space into the barn that its name threatened. The rough-wood walls bore homespun sayings (“Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise!”) as well as wagon wheels, saddles, rakes, scythes, and harnesses, with horse collars and milk cans hanging off the rafters.
A sea of tables for four with linen tablecloths to dress the place up surrounded the good-size dance floor, with a bandstand designed to suggest a hayloft. Bettie and I were guided by a cowgirl to a ringside table. A bar was off to the right, the bartenders looking like extras in a Roy Rogers picture.
Bettie had changed into a red dress trimmed white, the upper half hugging her, the lower a full skirt, though without petticoats. The boots she had on were black leather with heels that I had a hunch were not designed for square dancing. I remained in my nine-millimeter-friendly Richard Bennett charcoal number, also not designed for square dancing.
Right now Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were playing “Deep Water,” a nice slow number that we danced to while my eyes searched the packed house for Sidney Gottlieb.
I had no photo to go on, but the description given me by Norman Cournoyer was distinctive enough: tall, wiry, mid-thirties, prematurely white-haired, handsome (“kind of a Jewish Gregory Peck,” Cournoyer had said). A major tell would be his slight but noticeable limp of the right foot, where he wore a built-up shoe due to his club foot.
We danced some more to Wills, and then got back to our table for some shoofly pie and coffee, and I was about to throw in the towel when Wills announced his band would now have “the pleasure of playing for any of you true-blue square dancers out there.” He turned the microphone over to one “Piute Pete,” self-proclaimed “Greatest Hog-Caller East of the Rockies.” Despite his straw hat and overalls, Pete looked more like somebody working the west side of a deli counter.
Couples and some singles, too, rushed the dance floor. Bettie tried to tug me along, but I said no, and she ran out there with little chance of not finding someone eager to partner up with her. Half a dozen groups of the dancers did the hog-caller’s bidding (“Choose your partners!”) as I sat suffering through hokey fiddle playing and wild cries from the bandstand (“Forward and back!”) while I sorted through hooked elbows and do-si-doing and partner swinging (“Make a basket and kick the bottom out!”) in search of a mad scientist who would probably just love to see what effect LSD-25 would have on an allemande left.
Was that him?
He fit all the particulars—tall, slender, white-haired, handsome, dark-eyed—though would the evil genius of Deep Creek Lake really be wearing a plaid shirt, blue jeans with rolled-up cuffs, and tooled-leather cowboy boots?
The calls and fiddling and dancing went on for a good half hour before a break sent Bettie rushing over flushed and smiling to settle in next to me.
“That Piute Pete knows how to call a Girl from Arkansas,” the Girl from Tennessee said, apparently referring to a specific dance.
“You sure had a good time,” I said pointlessly, my brain elsewhere. I was figuring out how to approach this guy. First, I would go over to the bar and ask a bartender if he knew Sidney Gottlieb, who was supposedly something of a regular here, and if so, point out my suspect.…
But then I glanced up and the white-haired handsome man in blue jeans was knifing straight toward us, wearing a big grin that struck me as slightly demented. And now that he wasn’t dancing, his gait betrayed a slight limp of the right leg, and a built-up boot heel.
I unbuttoned my suit coat.
He stopped abruptly at our table, and tucked his hands behind his back so he could half-bow.
“Excuse me,” he said in a rather musical baritone, “but aren’t you Bettie Page?”
His speech was measured, with space between each word, as if English were his second language; but that wasn’t it: This was how he battled back his stammer.
She went all Scarlett O’Hara on him. “Why, yes ah am. But ah hardly evah get recognized.”
He half-bowed again, this time bringing a hand around to touch his plaid-clad chest.
“I’m such an admirer of your artistry, Miss Page. My name is Sid Gottlieb. Could I join you for a moment? Perhaps buy you and your friend a drink?”
Bettie glanced at me. I’d not shared the name of the subject of my search with her—in fact, I hadn’t even told her I was searching—and she probably just thought a fan was crashing the party.
“Please,” I said.
All his attention was on her. “You really know how to square dance, Miss Page. I had no idea you were a country gal.”
“That’s ’cause you can’t hear me talk in my photos, honey.”
He beamed as he took the chair opposite us. “You know, I think we have a mutual friend—John Coutts?”
She frowned just a little, shook her head, and all that hair came along for the ride. “Ah don’t believe so.”
He twitched another smile, shrugged. “Well, his sobriquet is John Willie. I had assumed you knew him, because he has so frequently used you as a model.”
“Oh, that character. Ah’ve never actually met him. He just puts me in his silly magazines and does those comic strips about me. He doesn’t pay me a dime.” She turned to me to explain. “This Willie’s a customer of Irving’s.”
Gottlieb folded his hands on the table and leaned in confidentially. “I hope you don’t mind talking to an enthusiast of your bondage photos. Mr. Klaw does such a fine job as a photographer. I mean, they’re all in good fun, right?”
“It’s just actin’, sugah. And actually, it’s Irving’s sister Paula who’s the shutterbug. But ah think it’s dirty pool that your friend Willie uses me in his funny books without mah permission. Meanin’ no offense.”
“None taken. Really, Coutts is only an acquaintance. A friend of a friend who exposed me to your work. I would love to have an autograph.”
“You bet, sugah.… What was your name again?”
“Sid. Gottlieb.”
She signed a Village Barn napkin to him with, “See you at the next barn dance!” Then she gestured to me and said, “Mr. Gottlieb, this is my gentleman friend—”
“Oh, I know who he is,” Gottlieb said with a snake-oil salesman’s smile. “He’s Nathan Heller. The famous private investigator.” Now his attention was on me. And mine had never left him. “But isn’t that rather counterproductive, Mr. Heller?”
Better Dead Page 26
