Better Dead (28 page)

We did, finding a fresh pair of cedars to stand between.

“Why don't you tell me,” I said, “just how far over the line they've gone.”

He nodded. He'd lost his cigar in the vomiting episode and got another out and started it up. I let him puff a while.

Finally he said, “They have me developing delivery systems for biological agents like anthrax and botulism.”

“By ‘delivery systems,' you mean…?”

“Assassination devices. Terrible. Then … then I got pulled in on a program dealing with … advanced interrogation techniques.”

“Torture.”

He nodded again. Puffed some more. “We're talking mind control—hypnosis, electroshock, drugs, the usual suspects … but also marijuana, morphine, Benzedrine, lysergic acid diethylamide. You might not have heard of that one—it's a hallucinogenic. Sensory depravation, brainwashing, lobotomies … everything was on the menu. Test subjects were ‘volunteered' who couldn't object—prisoners, mental patients, coloreds.”

“This happened
here
?”

“Well, no. Most of it was conducted overseas. If you saw my passport, you'd think I've been having a whirlwind world tour—England, France, Scandinavia, Germany. Nate, I've … I'm a
scientist,
I'm used to seeing lethal experiments done on animals. It's sad but necessary. But on
human
guinea pigs? And crap like what they did in San Francisco? That has to stop. These people I've worked for, they have to be
stopped
.”

“Who exactly were these human guinea pigs?”

He shrugged. “German SS prisoners, Norwegian collaborators, all sorts of forgotten souls from jails and detention centers.”

His cigar had gone out again but he kept puffing.

I asked, “Are you willing to come forward, Frank?”

“Nate, that's just it. I don't think I can. Not unless the senator can get me a presidential pardon for breaching security. But I
could
be a source. I can point McCarthy in the right direction. Or, if once I go public, maybe that would mean I'd be safe—a hero, and maybe nobody would dare touch me…?”

I couldn't lie to him. “How many toxins was it you said the CIA had on hand?”

He closed his eyes. Opened them. “Right. Right. Accidents can happen.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “But if McCarthy puts the top CIA brass in the hot seat at one of his hearings, he can ask all sorts of embarrassing questions that could put an end to this kind of medieval bullshit forever.”

“That's my hope,” he admitted. “That really is my hope. I mean, are we America or the Spanish fucking Inquisition?”

I would have to get back to him on that.

“Listen, Frank, there's one potential problem—the CIA's rumored to have a file on McCarthy. I don't know what's in it.… I'm not even sure it exists. But if it does, it's certain to be embarrassing. Do you have any friends in the Agency who might be able to leak it to you?”

His eyebrows rose almost to the pulled-down hat. “Oh, Nate … I don't know. That's a tough one. That's dangerous.”

“More dangerous than filling a stranger like me in on all these juicy CIA horrors?”

He smiled and grunted a laugh. “Not really. I'll do some careful poking.”

“Don't get yourself in a jam over it. Find some innocent way to get a look. Maybe you can tell some spook buddy of yours that you can't stand McCarthy and you're just sure as hell that he's a hypocrite. What does the file say, anyway? Something like that.”

“Might work.” He was nodding. Puffing, at the cigar. “Might.”

“Good. I'll fill the senator in. When can we talk next?”

He mulled it momentarily. “I start a work retreat tomorrow. Goes through the weekend. Might be able to put some feelers out for that file then. How about I call you when I get back?”

“Perfect.” I gave him one of my cards with the New York office info on it.

Then we came in from the cold and had coffee in the Olson family's bright shiny new kitchen.

The three kids were watching
Beat the Clock.

 

CHAPTER

16

El Chico in the Village was in a triangular cellar at 80 Grove Street where Sheridan Square and Seventh Avenue met. The restaurant served up food and music right out of Spain, Cuba, and Mexico, in a Moorish setting replete with stucco walls, Spanish artwork, hand-wrought grillwork, heavy dark carved furniture, ornate carriage lamps, and an occasional wall-displayed bullfighter's cape, all overseen by a mounted bull's head and an aging parrot named Señor.

Bettie Page had insisted on paying my $150 fee for handling the Kefauver matter, and I had insisted on reciprocating by taking her out for dinner.

As we studied our menus, she said, “Ah so
appreciate
what you did for me, Nate. Havin' a congressional committee goin' after me—thought by itself scares me silly. He's a
horrible
man, that Kefauver.”

I shrugged. “He's just another politician.”

“Ol' Estes wants to be president so bad he can taste it. He doesn't care if it takes tramplin' over innocent folks. Like a sweet man like Irving Klaw.”

“Or a sweet girl like Bettie Page.”

She shuddered behind the menu. “Ah wouldn't cotton to havin' my face and however else much of me the newspapers might see fit to print splashed around the country where my mama and sisters and brother and everybody ah was raised near could think the worst of me. Ah
owe
you, Nate.”

The azure eyes peered at me seriously over the top edge of the menu.

I said, “I'm not looking for any kind of payoff except your company this evening,” wanting to get her in bed as bad as Kefauver wanted to be president.

“Well, that's good, because when ah say ah ‘
owe
' you, ah don't mean a tit-for-tat kind of thing—”

“I know you don't.” When she said “tit,” something twitched in my trousers. “But you're kind of famous, and I'm kind of famous, and kind-of-famous people ought to stick together.”

She lowered the menu and gave me that wide, naughty-girl grin. “Because they have so much in
common,
you mean?”

“Something like that. We understand that people are always after something from us, and all we're after is a little pleasant company.”

“Gracious yes.”

“Unless you wanted to get next to me for my Hollywood connections,” I teased. “Another screen test maybe?”

“Heavens no!” She cocked her head, narrowed her eyes. She whispered, the flicker of our table candle's flame licking her pretty face, “Or did you do me a favor, Nate Hellah, just to try 'n' get into my lacy little panties?”

“Naw, they'd just rip at the seams.”

That made her laugh. It was a nice, rolling, musical laugh.

Scant conversation followed, just a lot of exchanged smiles and eye contact as we ate dinner (arroz con pollo for her, paella Valenciana for me). The lack of talk wasn't due to running out of things to say, rather the noise level of flamenco foot stomping and guitar strumming.

With her well-brushed black hair bouncing on her shoulders, Bettie would have made a pretty gypsy herself, although her blue eyes and creamy complexion gave her away as an all-American girl. Her dress was the color of her eyes with a wide black patent-leather belt that hugged her tiny waist and a blue-and-yellow scarf knotted at her neck.

By the time we were having flan and espresso, the entertainers were on a break.

“You know we're barely putting a dent in that hundred-and-fifty,” I said.

“Afraid ah'm a pretty cheap date, sugah,” she said almost apologetically. “Ah'm not a drinkin' gal, so that keeps the tab way down.”

“So then we'll just have to do this again. Maybe tomorrow night.”

A half smile dimpled a cheek. “You don't waste any time, do you, Nathan Hellah?”

“Well, I'll only be in the city into mid-next-week. We should have all our hiring done by then. Of course, we still haven't found a secretary.”

She shrugged. “Ah have excellent secretarial skills myself, Nate. But ah don't suppose you and Mistuh Hasty could afford me.”

“Oh?”

She nodded, spooning some flan between red lips. She tasted, swallowed, said, “Ah was a secretary for a real-estate man and then a lawyer when ah first came to town. But now ah get more for one modelin' session than ah did for a week of secretarial work.”

I sipped espresso. “How'd you get started modeling? Of course, I imagine many a man over the years has told you you'd make a good model.…”

“Oh, yes, that ol' wheeze of a come-on … but ah used to take these long walks, when ah first came to town. Sort of in a reflective mood. About this time of year, three years ago, ah'm strollin' down the beach at Coney Island and it's all deserted, but ah see this beautiful colored man stripped down to his trunks and doin' exercises. Body right outa Michelangelo. Ah just watched for, oh, maybe half an hour. Then he comes up to me and says, ‘You know you'd make a good pinup model.' And before you know it, ah'm up at his studio makin' my first portfolio.”

“Why did you trust him over anybody else?”

“Oh, ah forgot to mention. He was a policeman. A Brooklyn cop. Showed me his badge and everything. He was the one who advised me to cut my hair in bangs, you know, and that's mah trademark now. My first pics were published in Harlem magazines. Then the phone just started to ring.”

She was a chatterbox, but with the words flowing out in such a musical way, honeyed by that Southern-belle drawl of hers, the result was pure charm. Didn't hurt that she radiated beauty like the steam off our espresso.

We went to the Village Vanguard next, where we caught Professor Irwin Corey, that wild-haired zany expert on everything (“Wherever you go, there you are!”), but Bettie didn't care for the cloud of cigarette smoke, so when the shabby-tux-wearing madman finished his set, we departed.

It was going on eleven as, we walked arm-in-arm toward her apartment. The Village is about as blasé a place as I've ever been, but still she turned heads. Whether they recognized her (and in this part of the city they might) or were simply stunned by her natural beauty, I couldn't say; but short-haired females and long-haired males alike took a gawking gander.

“Sorry to be a party pooper,” she said. “Ah just can't abide cigarette smoke. And almost everywhere you go in this town, to have a little fun? There's just a
fog
of the nasty stuff!… You don't smoke, do you, Nate?”

“I did in the service,” I said. “They kind of pushed it on you—free packs handed out on bases and at USOs. Stateside, I seldom have the urge.”

“Sometimes you still do, though?”

I nodded. “If things get tense. Something that feels like combat.”

“What feels like combat in civilian life?”

People shooting at you.

“Oh, various things,” I said. “So what do you like to do for fun, Bettie? Where can you go in Manhattan for a good time that's not a smoke-filled room?”

A big smile blossomed. “Oh, ah
love
to dance. Ah just love it to death, and a nice big ballroom, so open and airy and well ventilated … that's mah idea of a good time in the big city.… Here we are. This is my brownstone.”

We stopped at the steps. “Well,” I said, “how about dancing with me tomorrow night? At the Starlight Roof?”

“The Waldorf! Oh, that would be wonderful! But that's so
expensive
.”

“I'm determined to give you that hundred-and-fifty back, and we're barely started.”

“You are a doll, Nathan Heller.” She got on tiptoes—low heels again—and gave me a kiss on the mouth. A brief one, but nice, and kind of lipstick-sticky, somewhere between a peck and the real thing.

“I'll send a cab,” I said. “Around seven.”

She nodded, touched my cheek, kissed the air, then went quickly up the stairs, her bottom working under the blue dress as if powered by pistons.

*   *   *

I was staying at the Waldorf again, in a regular room this time, not a suite (my own dime not Pearson's). I was in my underwear and socks on the bed, pillows propped up behind me, reading
The Caine Mutiny
in paperback. Good as that story was, my mind kept wandering.

Initially it was the lovely girl I'd spent the evening with. Somehow it was a shock that the queen of the bondage photos was such a sweet, smart kid—no drinking, no smoking, just dancing.

There were other thoughts cutting into the Herman Wouk novel, interrupting even my rhapsodizing about Miss Page. The nightmare stuff that Frank Olson had shared with me Tuesday evening lingered like a foul taste. Olson seemed like a good guy, like all of us who'd gone to war, figuring we were fighting a battle that needed fighting. That deserved to be fought. That required winning. Now, in peacetime, the idealistic roots of it were rotting and twisting into something grotesque.

I hadn't shared any of Olson's revelations with McCarthy. All I'd done, before flying back to Manhattan on Wednesday morning, was call him at his Senate office and tell him that I'd spoken to “the individual in question,” that the scientist indeed seemed to have dirt, and that he was willing to try to get access to “that certain file.” On an unsecured phone line, vagueness was the better part of valor.

“He's going off on some kind of work retreat,” I'd told McCarthy. “He'll be back in touch with me when he gets home.”

Paperback folded open on the nightstand, bedside lamp switched off, I climbed under the cool covers and closed my eyes, hoping these tumbling thoughts wouldn't keep sleep from coming. It came, and then the phone rang.