Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11 (6 page)

No Hawaiian shirt for Wilson: he wore a dark blue suit with a blue-and-red striped tie that, against his white shirt, invoked Old Glory. He was not a big man—perhaps five eight, possibly 180 pounds—but he had considerable presence; his dark hair was almost entirely gray now, and his forehead had receded to Baltimore.

We shook hands—a firm quick clasp from this one-third of the triumvirate of Ness, Irey and himself who had brought down the notorious Scarface Al (Snorkey, to insiders)—and he gestured for Baughman and me to be seated. We sat, at our respective ends of the table, the wind still ruffling the blinds while Wilson, unbuttoning his suitcoat, sat next to me.

“Well,” Wilson said pleasantly, in his businesslike baritone, placing his palms flat on the smoothly varnished table, “where are we?”

It was like somebody who’d come into a movie late, asking what he’d missed.

“Mr. Heller says he’s a tourist,” Baughman said dryly. “He claims that yesterday he was golfing with his old friend Jim Forrestal, strictly social, and today he was taking in the sights of Georgetown.”

“I see,” Wilson said.

“I don’t,” I said. “Frank, I thought you left the Secret Service over a year ago.”

His face had a little less expression than Buster Keaton’s. “I did.”

I leaned forward. “Or were you asked to leave? I know Elmer saw the handwriting on the wall.”

Wilson’s longtime associate Elmer Irey had retired in ’46 after putting political boss Tom Pendergast away—Pendergast of course having been Harry Truman’s political godfather.

“Everyone thinks Elmer stepped down for political reasons,” Wilson said. “But really there were health concerns—obviously.”

“A lot of vital men die when their work gets taken away from them.”

He leaned back in his hard chair. “I’ve never had a conflict with the Truman administration. In fact, I’m still working for them.”

“Not with the Secret Service.”

“No,” Wilson admitted. “I’m a security consultant, attached to the Atomic Energy Commission, at the moment.”

I tried to digest that.

Baughman said, “Frank was nice enough to stop by and take a hand in this, because of your past relationship.”

“A hand in what?” I asked, worry spreading in me like a rash. “Frank, don’t tell me I’ve wandered into A-bomb country here….”

“What are you involved in, Nate?” Wilson asked, eyes narrowing behind the round lenses. “Secretary Forrestal hired you to do something. What?”

“Frank, if your assumptions are right, then Forrestal’s my client. I’m protected by the same client privacy privileges as an attorney.”

“No you aren’t,” Wilson said, “not unless you’re working
through
an attorney. There are national security issues involved here, Heller. Or would you prefer talking to Hoover’s people?”

Baughman picked up the file folder. “I neglected to mention, Mr. Heller, the two FBI agents who were hospitalized in 1937—in Burbank, California? Broken nose, severe concussion …”

“Surely they’re out by now,” I said, but I sounded cockier than I felt.

“Nate,” Wilson said, leaning forward and, in a gesture oddly personal for him, placing a hand on my right arm, “we’ve learned that Secretary Forrestal believes he’s being followed. That he thinks his phones have been tapped.”

I removed Wilson’s hand like a scab I was picking. “How did you learn that, fellas? By following him, and having his phones tapped?”

Wilson dropped his gaze. “Secretary Forrestal is under a … protective watch.”

“Then he’s not paranoid—he
is
being followed.”

“Paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy, Nate. Forrestal had these feelings before he actually was under surveillance.”

Baughman said, “The president himself asked us to investigate—that’s why this inquiry is in the hands of the Secret Service. I began with the assumption that if a man of Secretary Forrestal’s acumen feels he’s being followed, then in all likelihood he
is
being followed, and we wanted to know who by, for obvious national security reasons.”

“But he wasn’t,” I said.

“That’s not entirely true,” Baughman admitted. “As you discovered yourself, today, Drew Pearson’s people are actively, continually investigating, even hounding, Secretary Forrestal.”

“Nate, we’d like your cooperation,” Wilson said.

“Why?”

“Let’s begin with you telling us what you’re doing for Secretary Forrestal. After all, we’ve been forthcoming with you.”

And they had been.

So I told them, since—what the hell—they’d figured it out anyway and just needed my confirmation. Then I complimented them on the Secret Service’s expertise, because I sure hadn’t seen any signs of their surveillance.

“We thought perhaps you had,” Baughman said with a wry little smile.

“Why?”

Baughman laughed, once. “Because at one point you fell in right behind Daniels and Burnside, and seemed to be monitoring their conversation.”

I frowned. “Who the hell are Daniels and Burnside?”

“Male and female team of agents. They were posing as honeymooners.”

“Yeah … yeah, I thought they seemed a little wrong.”

“No you didn’t,” Wilson said.

“No I didn’t,” I admitted. “Listen, could Forrestal really be in danger from, say, the Zionists?”

“Unlikely,” Wilson said. “His anti-Israel stance becomes more or less irrelevant when he steps down from office.”

“More or less?”

“Well, he
is
a potential presidential candidate … but try to kill him? The Israelis are lobbying for American support, raising money, building an image. Would they risk an assassination of a respected, admired American like Jim Forrestal?”

Baughman snorted. “It’s absurd.”

I asked, “What about foreign agents?”

“Reds, you mean.”

“Yeah, or maybe American members of the Communist party, in bed with the Russians.”

Baughman shook his head. “The secretary’s suspicions are unfounded. There’s very little evidence of espionage activity by the Russians in this country, and what there is certainly doesn’t include assassination. Again, Forrestal’s a moot point now—unless his political future should blossom.”

I looked from Baughman to Wilson. “Is that Truman’s interest in Forrestal? As a potential political opponent in the next presidential election?”

“No,” Baughman said firmly. “Truman doesn’t always agree with Forrestal, but he admires the man, and appreciates what he’s done for this country.”

“Nate,” Wilson said, almost gently, “Secretary Forrestal has occupied … at this moment, still does occupy … an extremely rarefied position of power in our government. He is privy to information, secrets, knowledge that only a handful of living Americans share.”

“And if he’s cracking up,” I said, finally starting to get it, “that makes him dangerous.”

Baughman, speaking slowly, as if to a child, said, “This is a man who controls … or at least has controlled … weapons of enormous destructive capacity.”

“You mean planes loaded with atomic bombs. Is this where you and the Atomic Energy Commission come in, Frank?”

Wilson ignored that. “Secretary Forrestal is a great man. A public servant with few peers, a patriot of historic distinction. His government wants to help him, if in fact this is his hour of need.”

Wilson seemed sincere, but I knew horse hockey when I heard it.

“Mr. Heller,” Baughman said, “what we tell you stays in this room.”

“Understood.”

“Secretary Forrestal has become exceedingly nervous and emotional … afflicted with insomnia and loss of appetite.”

“You’ve learned this from surveillance?”

Baughman hesitated, glancing at Wilson, who shrugged and nodded; then Baughman said, “That maid … that same maid Jack Anderson was speaking to tonight, in Georgetown … also spoke to my people. She told us that Mr. Forrestal has become so overly suspicious that whenever the doorbell rings, he goes to a window and peers out secretly, to see who’s there.”

“So does everybody in Chicago.”

Baughman’s brow furrowed. “Does everybody in Chicago wander around the house with their hat on, apparently forgetting they have it on? Does everyone in Chicago look directly at their uniformed maid and ask, ‘Where’s my maid?’”

I shrugged. “He’s under great stress, gentlemen. He worked fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, from before the war till today … and now he’s losing a position that was his whole life.”

“We know,” Baughman said gravely. “We also know that, last week, he went to an attorney and made out his last will and testament.”

“And,” Wilson interjected, “he got a prescription for sleeping pills, and filled it to its entirety … enough pills to put an army to sleep—forever.”

“Now you’re saying he’s a potential suicide.”

“I’m convinced,” Baughman said, “that he’s had a total psychotic breakdown, characterized by suicidal features, yes.”

“Are you a psychiatrist?”

“No. But our field data was interpreted by our top staff psychiatrist, and these are his findings.”

“Without this shrink actually talking to Forrestal.”

Baughman shrugged an admission, then said, “Please understand that this is … treachrous, and embarrassing, turf. We can’t ask the Secretary of Defense to submit to such an examination.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It … it just isn’t done.”

“Oh, so you fire him to hell and gone, instead. Hey, that’ll clear up any of his suicidal tendencies in a hurry.”

Wilson sat forward, saying, “Nate, if the press gets wind of this—”

“Gets wind of this! What do you think Pearson will be talking about on his broadcast tomorrow night?”

“Pearson isn’t the news. He’s a phenomenon unto himself. People listen to him, but they don’t take him as seriously as the front page, or even the editorial section.”

“You trying to convince me, or yourself? What do you guys want from me, anyway?”

Wilson glanced at Baughman, who nodded.

“Have you had dinner?” Wilson asked.

I frowned. “Dinner? No.”

“Grab your hat. Uncle Sam is buying.”

Following Wilson out reluctantly, I informed him, “Don’t get the idea if you feed me, you can fuck me. I’m just not that kind of girl.”

“Really,” Wilson said. “I heard you were easy.”

Frank Wilson and I rode in back of another black sedan with another young agent for a driver. Chief Baughman did not come along, having to get back to his barbecue; besides, he wasn’t “dressed for it.” He didn’t say dressed for what, and on the way to wherever we were going—skirting Lafayette Square, to head up Connecticut Avenue, D.C.’s version of Fifth Avenue—Wilson spoke not at all of Jim Forrestal, making small talk instead.

“Sorry to hear your marriage didn’t work out,” he said.

“Funny, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“With my randy reputation? And she was the one running around.”

“Hell of a thing.”

“Piece of advice for you, Frank—never screw around on a divorce dick.”

“Yeah?”

“Got pictures of her and that married jerk…. Gave ’em to his wife.”

We were passing the shade trees of Farragut Square.

Wilson sat caught in the awkward moment for a while, then asked, “How’s your boy doing?”

“Fine. His mom treats
him
right, anyway. For the child support and alimony she’s getting, she should.”

“What’s his name?”

“Nate, Jr. Want to see a picture?”

Wilson said sure and I got my wallet out and showed him.

“Mine are grown,” he said. “But I got grandkid pictures.”

He got his wallet out and showed me.

Then the limo slowed and pulled up in front of the huge Mayflower Hotel, on the southeast corner of De Sales Street and Connecticut; only it turned out we were going to the nearby Harvey’s, one of the city’s best-known, most popular restaurants, seafood a specialty. Wilson led me through the nondescript but packed dining room—where it didn’t seem likely we’d be seated until maybe next Wednesday—toward a teensy elevator behind a velvet rope guarded by a massive colored samurai of a headwaiter.

“Evening, Mr. Wilson,” the burly headwaiter said with a wide, white smile that made him no less menacing. “Been some time, sir.”

“Yes it has, Pooch. We’re expected on the third floor.”

“So I understand, sir,” Pooch said, and unclipped the velvet rope for us. We stepped aboard and there was just room enough for the two of us and the ancient colored elevator operator, who said, “Evening, Mr. Wilson.”

“Evening, James.”

As the elevator groaned and wheezed its way up, Wilson said, “You’re lucky, Nate—J. Edgar’s out of town this weekend.”

“Why, is this a favorite spot of his?”

“The third floor is; he and Tolson have a regular table.”

When the elevator door slid open, even an uninformed oaf like me was able to recognize a good share of the faces seated in the spare, simple dining room with its old tables and chairs and black-and-white tile floor: my late client Huey Long’s son, Russell; Estes Kefauver, who’d got his picture in the national press by campaigning in a coonskin cap (he was bareheaded tonight); the radio and TV commentator Edward R. Murrow.

While there were wives sprinkled here and there, it was mostly men, eating in groups, and the air was laughter-filled and as smoky as those legendary political smoke-filled rooms, though the aroma was only partly cigarette and cigar smoke, the scent of sizzling meat and barbecue sauce mixed pleasantly in. Wilson led me past an open charcoal grill, where a Negro chef prepared steak, fish and ribs (Baughman in his Hawaiian shirt might have fit in at that). Diners were selecting their own lobsters from a tank, or steaks from a butcher-shop-style counter, and helping themselves to gumbo and oyster crackers at a huge cast-iron cauldron in the middle of the room.

We were headed toward the back, past some tables that had been left empty, to a table near the wall where a small compact man in his sixties sat with three younger men, another man standing behind the older man, in the same manner that bodyguards used to watch Frank Nitti eat.

No one at this table seemed to be dining except the older man, who was dunking into the butter the last bits of what must have been a two-pound lobster, the shell and various other remnants of which were on a platter; also on the table was a basket of sliced white bread with butter pads, a pitcher of water and a bottle of Old Fitzgerald and a glass.

The older man’s hair and double-breasted suit were neat and gray, though a snappy red bow tie enlivened his ensemble, set off by a perfectly folded five-pointed handkerchief in his breast pocket; his gray-framed glasses magnified his gray-hazel eyes, slightly. Thin-lipped but with a ready smile, pleasant features dominated by a prominent, almost hooking nose in an egg-shaped face, he sat as erect as if a steel rod had been implanted in his spine. His jaunty manner had a birdlike, almost roosterish quality, and the younger men around him said little, hanging on his every word and movement, possibly because they were Secret Service and he was President Harry S. Truman.

This man had been (in this order) a farmer, an artillery battalion commander, a bankrupt haberdasher, an obscure county judge, the chief patronage man in the U.S. Senate for the corrupt Kansas City Pendergast machine, and Franklin Roosevelt’s final—and largely ignored—vice president. Dismissed as an inept, stodgy mediocrity by not just his enemies, Harry Truman was fooling everybody as a strong-willed, decisive president.

I felt butterflies gathering in my stomach as Wilson led me to the leader of the free world, who jumped to his feet and thrust a hand toward me to shake, like a javelin.

“You must be this Heller fella I been hearing about,” he said in that familiar dry Missouri twang, as he pump-handled my hand.

“I’m Nathan Heller, Mr. President,” someone’s voice said. Mine, presumably.

“Sit, sit,” he said, gesturing to the open chair beside him, and I did, and so did he. “I meant to wait for you, but the hunger got the best of me. I have never gotten accustomed to eating at such an ungodly goddamn hour—six o’clock still seems late to me, but then I’m a Midwestern boy like you. Do you eat lobster? I know some Jewish fellas abstain from shellfish, but my partner back in Kansas City, he’s a Jewish fella, and he’d eat the asshole out of a pig, so you never know, do you?”

He said all this in about three seconds. The machine guns at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre had nothing on Harry.

“I like lobster,” I allowed.

“Boy!” Truman called out, and a colored waiter—a “boy” of probably fifty-plus years—hustled over. Truman said to him, “Cut up a two-pound lobster for my friend Mr. Heller, here.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Truman turned his magnified gaze on me; the bug eyes made a cartoon of him. “May I call you ‘Nathan’ or possibly ‘Nate’?”

“‘Nate’ is fine, sir.”

“Nate, I’d ask you to call me ‘Harry,’ but the one ceremony I stand on is respect for the presidency. So you’ll have to refer to me in a proper manner, and that may seem like horseshit to a Chicago boy like you, but so be it.”

“Not a problem, Mr. President.”

Suddenly Truman noticed that Wilson had assumed a position against the wall, and said, “Frank, what the hell are you standing there for? Join us. You want a lobster?”

Wilson sat next to me. “I’ve eaten, sir, thank you.”

Truman grinned at me; it was infectious. “I ran the fanny off Frank and his boys, you know. FDR spoiled ’em; how the hell hard is it to keep up with a fella in a wheelchair? I put ’em back to work, didn’t I, Frank?”

“You certainly did, sir,” Wilson said with a small smile.

“I understand you’re a combat veteran,” Truman said to me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Guadalcanal—rough damn action you saw. I’m a veteran myself.” He flicked a finger toward the World War One service pin in his lapel. “How’s your friend Barney Ross?”

Barney had been wounded on Guadalcanal and his treatment had led to an addiction to morphine.

“Completely clean, sir. He went through the government program at Lexington, Kentucky.”

“I’m pleased to hear that.” His concern seemed genuine; if this was political bull, it was a variety I’d never encountered. “What a great boxer that boy was. Do you know who the Secretary of Defense is?”

Was the sudden shift of subjects meant to blindside and throw me off guard? Or did this amazing man’s mind just move that fast?

“Certainly, sir. It’s James Forrestal.”

“You’re wrong.” He speared some lobster, dipped it in butter, nibbled it from his fork and said,
“I’m
the Secretary of Defense. For weeks on end, Jim was calling me ten times a day to ask me to make decisions that were completely within his competence. It got burdensome, Nate. I don’t have time to be Secretary of Defense. And that’s why I asked Jim to resign.”

“I see.”

“No offense, Nate, but I doubt you do. Everybody thinks I’m one tough old crusty son of a bitch, but I’m a softy, really I am, hate like hell to fire anybody; talented people giving their lives over to government service, goddamnit, they deserve better. And with that cocksucker Winchell, and that S.O.B. Pearson, blackening Jim’s name, shit! I really hate this, Nate, I really do. To dismiss Jim while he’s under fire …”

He dropped his fork, shook his head. His jaw tightened; his face reddened.

“No fucking columnist tells me who to hire or fire as members of my cabinet or my staff. I name them myself, goddamnit, and when it’s time for them to move on, I do the moving—nobody else.”

My lobster arrived, the meat removed from the shell. Timidly I began to eat it.

“Good?” Truman asked. He poured me a glass of water.

“Delicious.”

He took another buttery bite of his own lobster, then said, “Nate, you may hear things about me wanting to shove Jim out to make room for Louis Johnson, who worked so hard on my whistle-stop campaign; but it’s horseshit. Jim’s gone toe to toe with me more times than any other member of my cabinet—over Palestine, over civilian control of the A-bomb, and lately he didn’t think a measly fifteen billion dollars, a fucking third of the federal budget, mind you, would be enough to keep the military in bullets and khaki. I would have every right to fire him over any one of those issues, Nate, but a man who won’t listen to intelligent, informed opinions contrary to his own has no business being president.” He sighed. “This is strictly a health matter.”

“I understand, sir—really I do.”

“I believe you do, Nate, I believe you do. Jim’s weary, he’s troubled. He’s worked himself into a frazzled state of mind where he’s imagining things, like some poor son of a bitch in the desert crawling toward a water hole that isn’t there, or some pitiful bastard with the d.t.’s trying to round up a buncha pink elephants. Will you help me, Nate?”

I blinked. “Help you how, sir?”

“You’re working for him. He trusts you. He’s hired you to find out who’s …” Truman laughed humorlessly. “… trying to, Jesus H. Christ, kill him. I want you to stay close to him. If he worsens, if leaving office does not remedy his wearied state, if full collapse ensues … I need to know immediately.”

“What will you do in that case, sir?”

“We will help him. I don’t give a damn if Pearson and Winchell make a scandal out of it—Truman’s Secretary of Defense goes bughouse! Well fuck them and the newspapers and radio stations they’re in bed with. We need to help Jim, and protect the interests of this great country.”

He was staring at me now, with those intense gray-hazel eyes, large behind the thick lenses; he was waiting for my response.

So I gave it to him: “Whatever you need, sir.”

“Now I won’t insult you by offering you money.”

I risked a smile. “I don’t insult all that easily.”

He chuckled. “Well, there’s no money in it for you, just the same. Just the satisfaction of helping your country, and knowing you have a friend in the White House … for a few more years, anyway.”

“That could come in handy.”

“Eat your lobster, Nate, ’fore it gets cold. What are you drinking?”

“I wouldn’t mind a rum and Coke …”

“Boy! Rum and Coke for my friend, here! … You know, Nate, they’re always yelling to me from crowds, ‘Give ’em hell, Harry! Give ’em hell.’”

“Yes, sir, I’ve heard of that.”

“Well this time, we’ll give ’em Heller.”

And he winked at me, and poured himself some Old Fitzgerald.