Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11 (22 page)

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 specialty 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.”

“Why is that?”

“Consider it yourself, Mr. Heller—what happens on Sunday night?”

I winced. “Drew Pearson’s radio show,” I said. “Don’t tell me you guys let him listen to it!”

“We don’t allow him to listen to the radio at all, Mr. Heller—but on Monday morning, if I do not give Mr. Forrestal an oral summary of the broadcast, he becomes extremely agitated.”

“I wish I could convince Pearson to back off.”

“Mr. Heller, you touch on the very reason why I want you to see Mr. Forrestal.”

“What’s that?”

“You just let slip, yourself, that you and Pearson are in contact.”

“Well, I, uh …”

“One of the perquisites of practicing psychiatry in a military hospital, Mr. Heller, is an ability to do in-depth background research on your patients … in this case, I was aided by both the FBI and Secret Service. So I’m well aware that you have a business relationship with Drew Pearson, predating that of my patient becoming your client.”

“Okay, Doc, you caught me—but I’ve never sold either one of them out for the other.”

“Still, you’re not denying the conflict of interests.”

“I always looked after both their interests, to the best of my ability, and judgment.”

“I believe you. The problem is this: for whatever reason, Mr. Forrestal thinks very highly of you. You are one of the few associates in his life, business or otherwise, who remain untainted by any of his paranoid delusions.”

“That’s nice, I guess.”

“Mr. Forrestal is progressing very well. However—I believe he is at a stage in his recovery where news of what would seem to him a betrayal, by someone he trusted implicitly—
you
, Mr. Heller—could be very damaging. Could set him back weeks. Months.”

“Well,
I’m
not going to tell him.”

“Oh, but that’s exactly what you must do.”

“What? Are you crazy, too, Doc?”

His voice took on a somber cast. “If Mr. Forrestal hears this news from anyone but you, the effect could be devastating. If you tell him yourself—not so much confess, but explain your dual loyalties, and assure him of your friendship, and that you have never betrayed him to Pearson, nor would you … that is the only chance he has of accepting, and coming to terms with, that deception on your part.”

“Christ, I don’t know, Doc—”

“Think of it as an apology. Make a gesture. Bring him a gift. You know that he loves to read. Why don’t you bring him a book of poetry? A book of poetry would be comforting.”

“I wouldn’t know what to buy.”

“A book of poetry would be comforting.”

“I heard ya the first time, doc.”

“Might I suggest Mark Van Doren’s
Anthology of World Poetry.”

Which was why, the next afternoon, I’d asked Pearson to pull up in front of Jefferson Place Books to fill the doctor’s prescription. Now, that very volume in a paper bag on my lap, I resumed my meeting on wheels with the chief cause of Forrestal’s lingering illness, and perhaps the only obstacle to his return to mental health.

“D’you mind telling me why you went underground for nearly a month, Nathan?” Pearson asked pleasantly from behind the wheel. We were playing tag with streetcars on Pennsylvania Avenue at the moment, on our way for our third or fourth look at the Executive Mansion. “Little green men from outer space chasing you?”

“Worse. Big khaki men from the planet earth.”

“I don’t normally think of you as a coward, Nathan.”

“Do you normally think of me as stupid? I don’t buck the odds unless I have to.”

“This sounds like quite a story.”

“Well, I wouldn’t stop the presses just yet. I’m not sure you’re going to be able to use anything I’ve come up with.”

I started at the end, telling him how my investigation had made me so popular with the Air Force that I’d been invited for a special stay in the Walker base “guesthouse.”

“You’re going to have to go public about this,” Pearson said, his expression grave. Even his mustache seemed to have wilted.

“Why? They kidnapped me, and I got away. It’s not like I’m fleeing arrest, and nobody seems to be looking for me.”

“If I put this in my column, Nathan, it’ll be a life insurance policy: the Air Force will of course deny having done this to you, which will keep them, or any other government agency, from applying the strong-arm to you, in future.”

“No fucking way do I go public, Drew. They sent me a message, by grabbing me; I’ve sent them a message, by not reporting it. We’ll leave it at that.”

“All right …” He shook his head, in wonder. “… but you must’ve gotten close to something very big …”

“Yeah, about twenty-five feet by fifteen feet.”

I told him the rest of the story, referring to my spiral pad, which I’d brought along, not having written any of this up as a formal report. I went over every witness, from the mortician and the nurse to the insurance agent and the fireman, from the sheriff and his deputy to the radio broadcaster and the rancher, and of course Colonel Blanchard of the frat-house grin and ice-cold eyes. But it was base security chief Kaufmann’s tale of a crashed saucer, complete with outer space crew and military retrieval operation, that really got the columnist’s attention.

Or was it my matter-of-fact telling of the wild tale that really jarred him?

“Good God, man—you
believe
this stuff, don’t you?”

I hadn’t actually admitted that to myself, but now I heard my voice saying, out loud, to Drew Pearson yet, “Yes. I think a flying saucer crashed near Roswell—and the government has it in storage somewhere, along with the bodies of the crew.”

“And one of these … creatures might still be alive? Kept in some secret installation?”

“Yes. These are credible witnesses, Drew, although there are inconsistencies—Glenn Dennis talks about bodies being exposed in the desert sun, torn by predators, while Frank Kaufmann swears the retrieval mission took place relatively shortly after the crash, and before sunup.”

“Perhaps other bodies were found later, thrown from the craft, and …” We were stopped at a red light; hands on the wheel, he glanced over at me, wide-eyed. “My Lord, will you listen to me, taking this seriously? Do you hear yourself talking, Nathan?”