Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (25 page)

The latter surprised me. Why would the government sanction an excursion into its most embarrassing, top-secret impropriety?

I played a hunch. “Uh, Mr. Forrestal…Jim. What does that mean, exactly—‘late of Wall Street’?”

He lowered his whiskey sour and his mouth tightened into a slash of a non-smile. “I recently resigned as president of an investment banking firm, Dillon, Read, and Company.”

“And what are you doing now?”

Forrestal’s smile froze and he waited several long seconds before replying, “I’m with the administration.”

Knowing, I asked, “What administration would that be?”

“The Roosevelt administration.” He took another sip of the whiskey sour, perhaps to provide time to see if his answer would be enough to satisfy me; my gaze was still on him, so he finally added, “I’m, uh…an administrative assistant to the President.”

“Sort of a troubleshooter.”

“You might say.”

“And you flew here, from Washington, D.C., to take this meeting with me?”

“I had several other meetings here, but yes, primarily. The President, and particularly Eleanor, were close friends of Amelia’s, and they are wholly supportive of the Foundation’s efforts.”

Even if they didn’t want their man’s name on the Foundation letterhead.

“I take it, then, Jim, that you were also a personal friend of Amelia’s…”

“I knew G. P. and his wife, yes. We traveled in something of the same social circles, in New York.”

Smiling innocently at Dimity, I asked, “And you, Elmer? You have a great passion for this cause, obviously. What was your connection to Amelia?”

But it was Margot who answered, leaning forward, reaching past Mantz, to touch my hand. “That’s what I started to say, before I got off the track…. I thought you knew, Nathan, that Mr. Dimity was one of Amelia’s closest friends and business associates.”

“No I didn’t,” I admitted.

Margot continued: “Mr. Dimity developed a training unit for parachute jumpers….”

“It’s a two-hundred-foot tower,” Dimity interjected, “with a safety line attached to a standard parachute harness. Designed primarily for military use. Amelia helped me out by taking the first public jump from one of my towers.”

This was ringing a bell. Amy had told me that after G. P. had left Paramount, and needed some cash flow, he’d involved her with several publicity campaigns for a parachute company; she had also fondly mentioned the well-intentioned owner of the firm, who had become a supporter and something of a hanger-on.

“Amelia helped me gain public attention for several other of my aeronautics inventions,” Dimity said, then had another taste of his Gilbert. Behind the wire frames, his eyes were distant with memory, his voice soft as he said: “I owe much of the success of my company to that kind and generous lady.”

“Well, I know you didn’t pay my way out here to ask me for a contribution,” I said, which got a chortle out of Dimity and a smile from Margot. Forrestal’s reaction was only a little less expressive than a cigar store Indian’s. “And adding my name to your membership board sure won’t gain you any prestige.”

“We have a job for you,” Dimity said. “We are probably at least a year away from mounting our expedition, hiring a ship and crew…. This is no idle effort, Nate, it’s my intention to go along, and Miss DeCarrie feels the same way. Having Amelia’s personal secretary aboard will lend our expedition credibility.”

This was starting to sound about as credible to me as launching an expedition to the Island of Lost Boys to look for Peter Pan.

“Of course,” Dimity was saying, “this assumes that all goes well with fundraising.”

“An opportunity has arisen,” Forrestal said, joining in belatedly, his whiskey sour glass empty, “that may help the fundraising effort.”

“Have you heard of Captain Irving Johnson?” Dimity asked me. “No.”

“Or perhaps, Captain Irving and Electa Johnson?”

“Them either.”

Margot said, “Captain Johnson and his lovely wife, when they’re not sailing around the world, are active on the same lecture circuit as Mr. Putnam…the sort of places Amelia used to speak.”

“And they talk about sailing around the world, I gather.”

“Yes,” Margot said. “They have a schooner.”

“Isn’t that what you serve German beer in?”

“No, Nathan, it’s a big sailing vessel…”

“That was a joke, Margot. The, uh, Johnsons is it? Sail around the world, and then they go on a lecture tour; then they sail some more, and repeat the process?”

“Yes,” she said, a little embarrassed.

“They write books together,” Dimity said, “and perhaps you’ve seen their articles in the
Geographic.
”

“My subscription just lapsed,” I said.

Captain and Mrs. Irving Johnson were part of the adventuring and voyaging fad that had turned Amelia Earhart into a star, the same public fascination for exploring that had made G. P. Putnam and his instant books successful, and public figures out of Lindy, Admiral Byrd, Frank Buck, and the rest of that hardy bunch.

Forrestal said, “Captain Johnson and his wife are out on a world voyage right now.”

“But they are willing to divert from their cruise,” Dimity said, “to accept a two-thousand-dollar commission from the Foundation. For four weeks, Captain Johnson will sail the Gilbert and Ellice islands. It is our hope that he will discover enough new information about the Earhart disappearance to fuel our fundraising efforts for a full expedition.”

“That might be helpful,” I admitted. “Do you want me to run a full background check on the captain, and make sure he’s not just some con man?”

“Captain Johnson is quite reputable,” Forrestal said.

Mantz said, “I’ve heard of this guy, Nate. Johnson’s on the up and up.”

“What we want,” Dimity said to me, “is for you to go along.”

“Me? Do I look like a sailor?”

Forrestal said, “Yes. But that’s not the point.”

“Nate,” Dimity said, “I need a representative on that ship. Someone who can make sure the captain does his job, thoroughly earns his two thousand dollars….”

I said to Mantz, “I thought you said he was on the up and up.”

Dimity pressed on: “I can’t, in good conscience, spend the Foundation’s meager funds on a preliminary expedition without sending along a representative of our group.”

Shaking my head, I gulped down some rum and Coke and said, “You know, I don’t speak a whole lot of South Sea Island languages.”

“You’ve survived in the Chicago jungle,” Forrestal said.

“Nate,” Dimity said, “I need a man who’s physically and mentally tough. You
knew
Amelia…”

There was that past tense again.

“…and you know the right questions to ask. If by chance, some delicate or dangerous situation arose, you could handle yourself…or so I’ve been told by those I’ve spoken to.”

“Why don’t
you
go?” I asked Dimity.

His expression mingled chagrin and regret. “I can’t leave my business for a month…. We’ll pay you twenty-five dollars a day and all expenses.”

“That would wind up costing you close to a thousand bucks,” I said. “The Foundation got that in its coffers?”

“No,” Dimity admitted. “I’m paying for this myself. I can afford it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I certainly can!”

“I don’t mean I don’t think you can afford it, Elmer. I mean, I don’t think this is a job for me.”

He frowned and said, “I will guarantee you one thousand dollars.”

“It isn’t the money,” I said, and for a change it wasn’t. I didn’t think the government would want me taking part in this, not after they bought me off and had me sign that agreement. But on the other hand, fucking Forrestal was sitting across from me….

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” Forrestal suggested.

“Yes, Nathan,” Margot said, “you have two nights paid for here at the hotel, and your train tickets don’t take you back till Wednesday. We can meet for lunch tomorrow.”

I considered that.

Then I said, “All right. I’ll sleep on it. But I’m warning you, Elmer, Jim…Margot. I don’t think I’m your man.”

“Fair enough,” Dimity said, smiling as though I’d already accepted the job.

“I need to be going,” Forrestal said, and he rose.

Everyone else at the table got to their feet too, and I shook Forrestal’s hand—oddly, his grip was damn near limp, this second time—and he flinched me his tight non-smile and left.

Dimity said, “I need to get going, as well. Margot will contact you about time and place for luncheon tomorrow.”

“Fine,” I said, shook his hand, and he strutted out.

Mantz, Margot and I sat back down.

“That guy thinks ‘no’ is a three-letter word,” I said.

“He’s devoted to Amelia’s memory,” Margot said admiringly, apparently not recognizing the death sentence of her words.

Mantz put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey, I’d invite you to the house tonight, but I’m afraid Terry and I have plans. You think you can find supper in this town, by yourself?”

“He doesn’t have to be by himself,” Margot said. “I don’t have plans.”

I looked at the cute kid with her cherry-red lips and bright blue eyes. “That’s pretty brazen. You gonna twist my arm if I spend the evening with you?”

She laughed, and it was nicely musical; brunette curls bounced under the white beret. “We’ll swear off any discussion of the subject. No Amelia Earhart Foundation. Not even any Amelia Earhart.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s a date.”

Margot, it seemed, lived in a Roosevelt Hotel apartment, which also served as the Foundation’s Hollywood base; the official office was in Oakland, home of Dimity’s company.

So around seven I met her in the lobby. I was still in my white linen suit but Margot had slipped into an elegant little black bengaline dress with puffy three-quarter sleeves and no cleavage but nicely form-fitting, and brother was it a nice form. Her turban and gloves were that cherry red of her lipstick, and so were the toenails peeking from the open-toed black patent leather pumps.

“Ever been to Earl Carroll’s?” she asked, looping her arm in mine.

“No. Can we get in without reservations?”

“Mr. Dimity has a membership; we’re guaranteed seats. I just hope you won’t forget about me, with all those pretty girls around.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” I said, drinking in the smell of her. Since we first met, she’d switched from soap to Chanel Number Five.

Hollywood Boulevard was bathed in dusk, that time of day movie people call “magic hour,” giving neons a special glow, muting colors, coolly air-brushing the handiwork of God and man much as gauze over a camera lens plays Fountain of Youth for an aging actress. We joined the parade sauntering along the celebrated Boulevard, a good-looking couple getting admiring looks from tourists and locals alike, Grauman’s Chinese across the street, then Grauman’s Egyptian on our side of the street, high-tone department stores and lowly five-and-dimes, exclusive shops and postcard parlors, and when we turned down Vine, we soon saw the Brown Derby, not the one shaped like a hat, but the rambling Spanish-style affair with a neon derby riding stilts on the red clay tile rooftop while below a gaggle of fans with autograph books in hand waited to waylay celebs at the canopied entrance.

Earl Carroll’s topped them all, starkly modern in its geometric grace, no pillars for this pastel green palace, rather vertical shafts of white neon. Like Grauman’s Chinese, movie star autographs in cement were on display, not at your feet, but right in front of you, on the outer wall,
CARY GRANT, GINGER ROGERS, BOB HOPE, JIMMY STEWART, ROSALIND RUSSELL
, dozens more, stretching to the sky, where to their right a haunting electric visage loomed, the face of a beautiful woman, a graceful Art Moderne rendition, ivory neon brushstrokes against the building’s jade, her head tilted enigmatically above the impresario’s neon name, the arc of her chapeau outlined with the blue-electric words
THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN THE WORLD
. I ushered my beautiful woman under the blush of pink and blue and yellow lighting and through the chrome entryway, into a foyer that wasn’t much—just a black patent-leather ceiling, columns of pastel light, a gilded streamlined statue of a nude goddess, and a staircase so wide and grand it might have risen to heaven, not the men’s and ladies’ rooms.

The rose plush-carpeted dining room/auditorium, its walls green satin-draped, wasn’t any larger than a couple airplane hangars, seating for a thousand on half a dozen terraced areas with pink table settings and matching chairs under a ceiling that appeared at first to undulate with gracefully curving fringed curtains but on closer look consisted of thin tubular stripes of blue and gold neon fluorescence, which seemed to lead into a similar curving curtain of fringed light above the stage, feeding into thirty-foot light columns on either side.

Margot and I sat alone at a table for four, with only a row of banquet-size tables between us and the footlights. The apparel for men ranged from my own fairly casual white linens to tuxedos, though most of the women wore fancy evening wear, wanting to compete as best they could in a theater whose stage show,
Broadway to Hollywood
, starred nary a Cantor nor a Jolson, but “60 of the Most Beautiful Women in the World.” The joint was packed, though our terrace nearest the stage was perhaps only two-thirds full.

“Members of the Lifetime Cover Charge Club are always guaranteed a seat in the inner circle,” Margot explained, sipping another stinger.

We’d finished dinner, which—despite a menu courtesy of Chef Felix Ganio “of the Waldorf-Astoria”—was just adequate. But how could a mere filet mignon measure up to thousands of feet of neon and the promise of sixty showgirls?

“What do they pay for that privilege?” I asked.

“A thousand dollars…. Mr. Dimity’s status here has been very handy, wining and dining potential Foundation members.”

We had both already broken our promise, several times, not to discuss the Amelia Earhart Foundation. We had also established that Margot was between boyfriends and that she was having the time of her life, hobnobbing with famous people and helping Amelia’s “cause.”

Actually, quite a few famous people were seated around us: Mantz’s charter customers Gable and Lombard, Tyrone Power and Sonja Henie, Jack Benny and his wife, Mary Livingston, Edgar Bergen without Charlie McCarthy (but with a lovely blonde), all seated at various tables of larger parties otherwise consisting of people I didn’t recognize.

Okay, I was a little impressed. But famous folk occasionally wandered through the cowtown I called home, and I’d done a job for Robert Montgomery out here last year, an impressive, classy guy; but most movie actors were, like George Raft, smaller than you’d think, with off-screen dialogue that didn’t exactly sparkle.

What even a thick-headed former cop like yours truly was starting to figure out was that I, too, was being wined and dined for the Foundation’s cause; and I was starting to wonder if cute, curvy Margot was part of the package. And if you think any of that would stir indignation in my breast, you haven’t been paying attention.

A nattily attired, almost skeletally thin, delicately handsome gent who might have been Fred Astaire but wasn’t was winding through the inner-circle crowd, smiling, joking, shaking hands with the celebrities who seemed delighted, even honored, by his attention.

“Who is that?” I asked Margot.

“That’s Earl Carroll himself,” she said.

Carroll and his
Vanities
, of course, had been the chief rival to Florenz Ziegfeld’s
Follies
in its Broadway heyday. The
Vanities
had gone nuder than the
Follies
, and showman Carroll was frequently in trouble with the law; he was notorious and flamboyant in a fashion that explained the admiration flowing from the Hollywood royalty at his tables.

“He’s coming this way,” Margot whispered.

“You’re Nate Heller!” he said, as if I were a celebrity too, his smile as dazzling as it was insincere.

“Mr. Carroll,” I said, and we shook hands, “nice little hole in the wall you got here.”

His strong-jawed face had a surprising sensitivity, his cheekbones high, gray-blue eyes piercing, his dark, slightly graying hair combed way back; he smelled of lilac water, smelled better than a lot of showgirls I’d dated.

He sat next to me, leaned in chummily. “We make Broadway look provincial, don’t you think? Got anything in Chicago that compares?”

“Not sober. How long you been open?”

He looked up at his glittering neon ceiling. “Year and a half. You know, I was on the verge of bankruptcy when I called every last one of my markers in, to make this place a reality. Now I’m back on top.”

“Well, congratulations. How is it you happen to know who the hell I am?”

A tiny smile drifted across his lips. “You’re sitting in my inner circle, aren’t you? Listen, I just wanted to make sure you and your lady friend have a good time this evening. I wanted you to know you’re welcome…”

And he slipped his arm around me.

“…and if this little morsel you’re with doesn’t work out,” he whispered into my dainty ear, “just let me know if you see something in the show that appeals to you…and it’s always good to have a second choice if an item is sold out.”

He rose with a sly wink, handing me his card; I slipped it in my pocket, as he continued along his glad-handing way. What was this son of a bitch, my guardian angel?

Margot, smiling like a pixie, leaned across the table and touched my hand with a gloved one. “What did that devil whisper to you?”

“He was hoping I could talk you into trying out for the chorus,” I said.

She blushed; it was legendary that Carroll’s showgirls had to audition in the nude. “No, really….”

I ducked the question with my own: “Carroll wouldn’t happen to be a member of the Foundation, would he?”

Her eyelashes fluttered. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, he’s a flier, isn’t he? A pilot.”

“How do you know that?”

“Remember when he landed a plane in the middle of New York? It was in all the papers.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, as if having to recall, “he landed in Central Park, in the middle of winter.”

“That publicity hound makes G. P. look subtle.”

“Mr. Carroll
is
a great admirer of Amelia’s,” she admitted, somewhat embarrassed.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, and patted her hand. “I used to be a Chicago cop. I thrive on bribes.”

The show was an eye-popper. The sixty showgirls, who sang well and handled patter nicely, flitted about floating platforms and revolving stages, near nudists in feathers and sequins, sometimes to classy numbers like “The Blue Danube,” courtesy of Ray Noble’s Orchestra, and other times in more traditional burlesque fashion.

One running gag had shapely brunette headliner Beryl Wallace (Carroll’s girlfriend, Margot told me; no doubt one of the “sold out” items) fleeing from a comic, first in a negligee with the funnyman flashing scissors, later in a hula skirt with him pushing a lawnmower, finally in tin pants with her pursuer wielding a blowtorch.

But spectacle and yards of near nudity were the hallmark, as when the sixty babes displayed themselves on one hundred feet of stairs. I was terribly distracted, watching this buffet of blondes and redheads and brunettes, knowing I could call their boss and select one or two or three; it ruined the damn show for me. I like to think if I pick up a showgirl for a cheap one-night fling that my boyish charm had something to do with it. Call me old-fashioned.

Maybe that was why I turned a little morose on the walk back. Margot looped her arm in mine as we strolled through the Boulevard’s valley of bright lights, a streetcar clanging its unsophisticated way down the center, occasionally.

“What’s wrong, Nathan?”

“Aw, nothin’.”

“I think I know.”

“Yeah?”

“You think I’m trying to use you.”

That made me smile. I came to a stop and she took my cue and I faced her. The night was alive with headlights of passing cars, brand names outlined in neon, searchlights announcing the premiere of a major motion picture, or maybe the opening of a drive-in barbecue stand. I gathered the small, shapely creature in my arms, the slick material of her dress slippery under my touch, and I kissed her.

It was sweet and it was real.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” I said.

“I’ve been wanting you to,” she admitted, her eyes dancing with reflected light.

“I just had to make sure.”

“About what?”

“That you were as sweet a kid as you seem to be.”

“Am I?”

“I’m not sure I care now,” I said. “Let’s go back to our hotel.”

She snuggled against me as we walked, and I was deciding whether to take her to my room or try for hers, when she said, “Do you ever wonder?”

“Wonder what?”

“If…if she had it.”

“Had what?”

“The baby. Your baby.”

I stopped again. We were in front of the Egyptian Theater with its white columns and looming color caricatures of Egyptian deities. “You sure know how to kill a mood, kid.”

“I’m sorry.” Her lower lip was quivering.

I put an arm around her shoulder and walked her along. “No, I don’t wonder about that at all,” I lied, and led her to the hotel and inside, and soon we were stepping into an elevator, which we had to ourselves. It was one of those automatic jobs, no operator. I pushed my floor button, 7, and she pushed hers, 11. Lucky numbers.

“You want to come up?” she asked, perkily hopeful. “We can order coffee, maybe some cake or something, from room service….”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No. And I’m gonna hate myself in the morning. But I’m tired. And you’re just too sweet a kid.”

She slipped her arms around me and kissed me softly, tenderly. “You’re so romantic…. You still love her, don’t you?”

“The problem is,” I said, “you still do.”

A little bell announced my floor. I touched her face and said, “See you tomorrow, kid.”

“Maybe breakfast?”

“Sure,” I said, stepping into the hallway. “Breakfast.”

And the doors began to close over that cute mug, the cherry-red lipstick a little mussed, and before she was gone, she waved like a child. I sighed and dug my handkerchief out and rubbed the gunk off my mouth. Just me in the hallway. No Margot. No Earl Carroll girl. Of course, I did still have that card….

I worked the key in the door and had it open only halfway when I saw him, sitting in a wooden armchair next to an open window in the small, modernly appointed hotel room, a book in his lap. Thoughtful of him, letting in that gentle breeze whispering the sheer curtains, because otherwise my room would have reeked of the smoke from the pipe clenched in his teeth.

“Took the liberty of making myself at home,” Forrestal said, mouth flinching that non-smile around the stem of the pipe. He hefted the book; the jacket said:
To Have and Have Not.
“Took the opportunity to catch up on my reading—it’s this fellow Hemingway’s latest. Little raw for my tastes.”

“I’m afraid I’m a
Police Gazette
sort of guy myself,” I said, closing the door behind me.

“I have to ask you to forgive my rudeness,” he said, taking the pipe out of his mouth, rising, tossing the book on my nearby dresser with a clunk. He still wore the same suit and tie as this afternoon, but it looked as crisp as if he’d just put it on. “There are matters we need to discuss…privately.”