Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11 (24 page)

“Wait a minute—are you saying that there are Japs working at White Sands, along with the German scientists?”

Forrestal frowned. “I’ve said too much. You must promise me you won’t share any of this with your reporter friend.”

I had a last sip of coffee. “He, uh … he’s not exactly my friend.”

“Well, who is he? Arthur Krock? Marquis Childs? Lyle Wilson, maybe?”

I leaned forward. “Listen … Jim … there’s something difficult I have to get into with you. But first, I want to assure you that nothing we’ve talked about this afternoon will leave this room.”

“I appreciate that. It’s been nice to have someone to talk to, someone I can trust, who doesn’t have the taint of government.”

“… I’m afraid I have a worse taint.”

His eyes tightened. “How is that possible?”

“Oh, it’s possible. You just have to understand that I have never betrayed your confidence, and I never will. I’ve never worked a job for this man that had to do with you. No cross-purposes were involved whatsoever.”

And by now the eyes had widened. “You can’t be serious …
Pearson?”
He popped to his feet, thrust a finger across the table, in my face.
“You’re
the goddamn traitor!”

“No! No … sit down before someone in the hall hears us. I deserve a fair hearing. Just let me explain.”

Forrestal was trembling, his hands turned to fists.

“Please,” I said. “Hear me out.”

He looked at me for the longest time; then, finally, he sat.

I told him that I’d done a number of jobs for Pearson in the thirties, and that I had stopped working for him, at that time. I had done a few minor jobs since, mostly having to do with the columnist’s rackets expose in Chicago.

“But when we spoke at Chevy Chase,” I told Forrestal, “and you wanted me to see if you were being watched, I knew if I told you about my past relationship with Pearson, you wouldn’t hire me for the job.”

“And you wanted the money?” he asked, bitterly.

“Sure I did. But I knew that if I even mentioned knowing Pearson, you’d read more conspiracy into it, and get even more bent out of shape.”

His expression softened. “That’s probably true.”

“I also knew that I could ascertain the extent of Pearson’s surveillance because I’d go right to his office and ask him about it. And, if you’ll recall, I uncovered his spy in your house, that maid, who your wife fired accordingly.”

Shaking his head, he studied me with dumb-founded disappointment; then he asked, “Why are you admitting this, at this late date?”

“Because I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else. One of your shrinks, Bernstein, said it might undo what they’ve been trying to accomplish here, if your paranoia got fed by finding out I’d … betrayed you.”

His voice seemed steady again as he asked, “And you’re saying you haven’t betrayed me?”

“I haven’t, and I won’t. Listen, maybe I better, uh … leave right now. Let you mull this over. You can decide whether you want to talk to me about this again, ever.”

“Nonsense.” Forrestal sighed, shook his head, even—amazingly enough—smiled. “It took courage for you to admit this … although frankly how you can work for that monster is beyond me.”

“I don’t judge my clients that way. I’m afraid I mostly judge them by whether or not they can afford me.”

He managed to chuckle at that. “I’m afraid that son of a bitch found my Achilles’ heel. I’ve never been able to overcome an acute sensitivity to criticism of a personal sort. Rational attacks—even irrational ones—on my policy decisions, my public positions, have never bothered me. But challenge my integrity, or call me a coward, and I’m afraid it shakes me to the core.”

“Like that lousy lie about the jewel robbery.”

“Exactly. I simply cannot understand this man’s fanatical viciousness. What possesses Pearson to pursue me into my sickroom, when I’m no longer even holding public office?”

“You said it yourself, at the golf course—he’s a crusader. To Pearson, it’s no different than the difficult decisions you’ve had to make.”

“The age-old question,” Forrestal said. “Do the ends justify the means?”

“I’ve always figured it depends on the ends,” I said, “and it depends on the means.”

“You’re a case-by-case sort of individual.”

“Yeah, and it’s been one damn case after another. Look, Jim … you’ve been very understanding about this. And I’ve taken up too much of your time.”

Forrestal stood. “It was a pleasure seeing you again, Nate, despite this rather bizarre revelation of yours … and, while I won’t pretend I’m overjoyed by what you revealed about that bastard Pearson … I am impressed by your courage in owning up to it.”

“Still friends, then?”

“Yes—but no longer a client.”

“Fair enough,” I laughed. “Oh! I have a gift for you.”

“Well, that’s very thoughtful.”

We walked across the hall to his room and I handed him the brown paper bag.

“I really went all out for the gift-wrapping,” I said.

Forrestal smiled, removing the handsome red-leather, gold-decorated volume from the bag, then said, “Why, this is too extravagant!”

“I thought maybe you’d find a book of poetry comforting,” I said.

He held it in both hands, then flipped through some pages, contemplating the volume with a thin smile. “Very thoughtful of you, Nate. Very thoughtful indeed.”

We shook hands and, in an uncharacteristic gesture, he touched my shoulder.

“Thank you for this visit,” Forrestal said, surprising warmth in his voice.

“Good seeing you, Jim. See you back on the golf course.”

“I’ll take you up on that, Nate.”

I left Bethesda in a cloud of confusion. If what Forrestal had told me was true, then the flying saucer at Roswell was an experimental aircraft out of White Sands. To some extent that would even account for the government’s clampdown, if not quite justify death threats and trips to the Walker “guesthouse.”

But how did that explain the detailed, convincing eyewitness accounts I’d encountered in Roswell? And my own, deep sense of conviction that what had happened there did involve a craft from another world, with a crew from the same place? A conviction fueled by recurring dreams of that friendly spaceman …

… who I was for a change not dreaming about, that night in my bed in my room at the Ambassador Hotel, when the phone rang me awake. I’d been sleeping deep and soundly, after seeking escape from my whirling thoughts with a night out that had included the company of the Yugoslavian lass, Anya, the bebop of Louis Jordan and the comic antics of Tim Moore at the Howard Theater, and a late dinner at the Water Gate Inn.

After clicking on the nightstand lamp and blinding me, Anya, blonde hair pleasantly tousled, handed me the receiver. I glanced grumpily at my watch, and said thickly into the mouthpiece, “It’s two-thirty a.m. This better be good.”

“Actually, it’s bad, Mr. Heller,” a businesslike second tenor intoned. “This is Baughman, and I’m over at Bethesda. How quickly can you get here?”

Anya batting her blue eyes at me, I sat up and said to the chief of the Secret Service, “Give me a reason and I’m on my way.”

“James V. Forrestal committed suicide here, forty minutes ago. You were his last outside visitor. Is that sufficient reason?”

I felt it was.

No red lights flashed, no scurry of activity indicated that an event with international repercussions had taken place within the looming white tower; no ambulance out front to cart a dead body away—after all, this facility had its own morgue. One-stop shopping here at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland, which—not being in the District of Columbia proper—fell within the jurisdiction of the Montgomery County Sheriffs Department, a few bemused uniformed officers of which could be seen loitering in the parking lot and in the lobby.

But on the sixteenth floor of the hospital tower, the only uniforms on view were those of the naval medical ensigns and a few naval nurses. The investigation into the death of James V. Forrestal was strictly a plainclothes affair, an apparent mingling of Secret Service, FBI and possibly even CIA.

The plainclothes agent in the lobby (he didn’t identify his branch) who had allowed me onto the elevator must have walkie-talkied ahead, because Chief Baughman himself was waiting for me as the elevators opened onto the sixteenth floor.

Though he had surely once again been called in from home, Baughman was a considerable distance from the Hawaiian shirt of our first meeting. The lanky, fortyish, poker-faced Secret Service chief with the piercing gaze wore a double-breasted blue tropical worsted with a red-and-blue striped tie against a white shirt—appropriately patriotic. He showed no signs of middle-of-the-night awakening, in contrast to my casual clothes of earlier today (actually yesterday—this was Sunday morning, now) which I’d tossed back on, the brown-and-white sportjacket over a blue T-shirt. The Southwest Flight fedora was pushed back on my head.

Baughman offered me a hand to shake, which I took and shook, even as we started walking slowly down the relatively short hallway toward room 1618. Even without a mysterious death, the world of a hospital at night is an eerie one, the corridors dimly lighted, the cleaning staff leaving their mark by way of slick floors and antiseptic smells, as the rubber-soled shoes of nurses and orderlies take careful footsteps, so as not to disturb patients sedated and asleep in their rooms, their deep breathing providing a wall of ambient sound.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Heller,” Baughman said, in that hushed manner reserved for churches and after-hours hospitals. “I want you to understand that we’re not going to ask you for an official statement. That may come later.”

“Am I a suspect?”

“Of what?”

“You tell me. Forrestal’s murder, maybe.”

Down a hallway at the left was the nurses’ station, where a number of plainclothes officers gathered in a small lounge area.

Baughman was matter-of-fact. “I told you on the phone, Mr. Heller. The former Secretary of Defense jumped from the pantry window. This is a suicide.”

“Did anybody see him jump?”

We were nearing the short hallway between 1618 and the diet kitchen; next to the diet kitchen was the single room that adjoined Forrestal’s double one via a bathroom—the single room where supposedly either a medical corpsman or a doctor had been on watch, twenty-four hours. Baughman stopped, so we could speak without being heard by the handful of plainclothesmen bustling about from room to room.

“No one saw him jump,” Baughman said, almost whispering. “But we’ve completed questioning of Lieutenant Dorothy Turner, a duty nurse on the seventh floor, who heard a loud crash around one-fifty a.m. She called the alarm and within minutes the body was found, on the roof of a third-floor passageway connecting this tower to one of the wings.”

“A thirteen-story fall.”

“Yes. The body was, uh … rather badly mangled, I’m afraid. Landed facedown, sprawled amongst some drying mops and buckets … apparently they’d been cleaning off the roof.”

“Lucky for them they hadn’t finished.”

“Forrestal was found in his dressing gown, with the sash of the gown knotted and wrapped tightly around his neck.”

“Well, that sounds to me like somebody strangled him with it, which isn’t suicide in Chicago unless you pay off the right cops.”

Baughman frowned at that, just a little, then said, “Apparently Mr. Forrestal tied the other end of the sash to the radiator and when he jumped, the sash slipped undone. The fact that he meant to hang himself and fell accidentally to his death, instead, makes it no less suicide.”

“Yeah, well it does sound like the Dutch act, at that.”

Baughman sighed. “At least death came instantaneously. That’s what Dr. Brochart says, anyway.”

“Who?”

“The Montgomery County coroner. He agrees with our verdict.”

“I thought verdicts were a jury’s job.”

Baughman ignored that; a hint of emotion broke through the professional mask. “Funny—poor bastard’s wristwatch was still ticking, hadn’t been broken in the fall; but his face was so badly crushed, he wasn’t identified until a bed check turned him up missing.”

“What about the ’round-the-clock observation he was supposedly under?”

“We’re about to interview the two medical corpsmen who were on duty, one who went off at midnight, and his replacement, who was on duty when this happened. The other member of that ’round-the-clock watch we’re also going to interview; he’s a staff psychiatrist named Deen who slept through the whole thing.”

I frowned. “Raines and Bernstein were Forrestal’s doctors, was my understanding.”

Baughman nodded. “Raines is the primary physician and Bernstein is consulting. This fellow Deen is just one of a number of staff shrinks who take turns standing watch; he’s not actively involved in the case.”

“I assume Raines and Bernstein have been notified.”

Another nod. “Bernstein lives just fifteen minutes away—should be here at any moment. Raines is in Montreal for a week. Attending a psychiatrists’ convention.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Wish I were, Mr. Heller. He left Wednesday; seems he felt Forrestal was making such nice progress, both doctor and patient could use a little break from all this rigorous therapy.”

“Well, they do say psychiatry is an inexact science.”

Pretty much on cue, Dr. Bernstein stepped off the elevator back down the hall from us, looking casual in a studied way: dark brown button-front sweater over a yellow shirt with the top button buttoned, no tie and brown slacks, the dark colors emphasizing his nearly albino coloration, that blond hair going white, the invisible eyebrows over light blue-gray eyes, and handsome features right out of an Arrow shirt ad.

“That’s Bernstein right there,” I told Baughman.

The psychiatrist approached us and we met him halfway, as he introduced himself to the chief of the Secret Service. Hands were shaken, Bernstein nodding his acknowledgment of my presence.

“Chief Baughman,” Bernstein said, “this is a tragedy not just for Mr. Forrestal’s family, but for America.”

The body wasn’t even cold yet, and this guy was writing press releases already.

Baughman and Bernstein had already spoken on the phone, and what followed was the second half of what was obviously an already in-progress conversation that I sometimes had a little trouble following.

“If all the signs pointed toward your patient’s imminent recovery,” Baughman said, “what do you think happened here?”

“It’s my opinion,” the psychiatrist said, with somber authority, his arms folded, “that Mr. Forrestal was seized with a sudden fit of despondence, probably very late this evening—perhaps he awoke from a troubling dream, and found himself in a state of melancholia … such a seizure is extremely common in severe depression cases.”

Baughman said, “If that’s the case, Doctor, why was your patient allowed these privileges? Including that pantry with the unguarded window?”

“This facility doesn’t subscribe to the view that psychiatric patients ought to be thrown in a dungeon.” Bernstein sighed, shrugged. “We had reached a point where certain privileges had to be extended to the patient, to make him feel our confidence in him … to give him confidence that a full recovery was possible. We did this, frankly, even though certain suicidal preoccupations might still be present.”

Baughman twitched a non-smile. “I don’t mean to tell you your job, Doctor, but that sounds a little risky to me.”

“Chief Baughman, calculated risks of therapy are an accepted part of the practice of modern psychiatry.”

What a pompous ass this guy was; everything he said that wasn’t a press release was a goddamn lecture.

Baughman was asking, “What I read to you over the phone, Doctor, do you consider that a substitute for a suicide note?”

“Most definitely—there are many examples of indirect suicide notes on file, Chief Baughman, as I’m sure you know. Now, of course, I must remind you that Dr. Raines is the primary physician on this case.”

“Of course.”

Bernstein smiled, and it was a dazzler; he really would have been a handsome devil, if he’d some color in his face and hair. “I just wanted to offer my services, as a sort of substitute, until he returns. By the way, I’ve already spoken to him, by long distance, and he’s made arrangements to return by air.”

“Glad to hear that.” The Secret Service chief gestured toward me with a thumb, like he was hitchhiking. “I’d like to speak further with you, Doctor, but first I need a few minutes with Mr. Heller.”

“Certainly.” He half-bowed. “I’m at your service. I’ll wait at the nurses’ station.”

“If you would.”

Bernstein nodded curtly and turned down the hallway at left, moving toward the agents clustered at the waiting area across from the duty nurse’s desk.

“Covering his ass already,” I said.

“There’ll be a lot of that in this case,” Baughman said, with a humorless laugh. “Listen, before you and I talk, I need to interview those corpsmen and the sleeping shrink. Care to sit in?”

“Love to.”

We began walking again, Baughman saying, “We’ll talk to this boy who worked the early shift, first. He was close to Mr. Forrestal—of the three corpsmen assigned to him, this kid was his favorite—and the boy’s been quite upset. I’m hoping he’s composed enough to speak to us, now.”

Self-composure was exactly what Navy Medical Corpsman Edward Prise seemed to be trying to maintain; looking like the sailor he technically was, in his white uniform with its dark neckerchief, the corpsman sat erect in Forrestal’s padded wooden chair, which had been yanked out into the middle of the dimly lighted double room. Towheaded, ruddy-cheeked Prise, in his early twenties and looking impossibly young, had a glazed expression, the whites of his blue eyes red with crying; he was turning his bucket cap in his hand like a wheel.

Baughman, his tall thin frame looming over the boy, stood with hands on hips; though his voice was almost kind, the Secret Service chief’s presence was surely intimidating as he asked, “What can you tell us about tonight, Edward?”

Another plainclothesman, presumably Secret Service, took notes while Baughman conducted the low-key interrogation. There were three plainclothes agents in the room with us, and, again, FBI and/or CIA may have been among them; no one clued me in.

“Bad luck, sir,” the boy said. “Terrible bad luck. Normally we watch … watched … Mr. Forrestal on eight-hour ’round the-clock shifts. The shift change is usually at nine p.m., but we had to double up tonight, sir.”

“Why is that, son?”

“My usual replacement picked Friday night to go absent without leave, sir, and get drunk on his butt; he’s in the brig, and now we’re shorthanded. So this new fella, Bob Harrison, just a hospital apprentice, is not attuned to the …” The boy looked for the right word. “… subtleties and hazards of this particular situation, sir. He didn’t know Mr. Forrestal, and Mr. Forrestal didn’t know him. So I was concerned, when I went off duty, sir.”

“Strictly because of your replacement’s inexperience?”

“That wasn’t the only thing. Mr. Forrestal had seemed in good spirits today, and real energetic, but also, this evening, he seemed restless. He refused his usual sleeping pill and sedative, saying he wanted to stay up late and read, tonight.”

“The patient had leeway to do that?”

“We don’t force-feed medication, sir. That’s hospital policy. I did notify, or tried to notify, Dr. Deen of my concerns. He was sleeping in that adjacent room, you know? Dr. Deen wasn’t happy I woke him up, which was typical.”

“Of Deen?”

“No, sir, he’s not better or worse than any of them, frankly, sir. None of these doctors like to get advice on their patients from enlisted corpsmen. I stuck around, after midnight, for maybe half an hour—I just had a bad feeling. But, finally, I left—you know how it is, sir. Against regulations to just hang about.”

Baughman nodded. “Your watch was over and custom, and discipline, dictated you go about your business elsewhere. You did nothing wrong, son.”

Now Prise began to cry; quietly sobbing. “I … I went back to my room at the barracks, but I couldn’t sleep. Musta tossed and turned for a good hour. Finally I just got dressed and was walkin’ across the hospital grounds, to the canteen, for a cup of coffee, you know? And all of a sudden there was this big commotion, yelling, running, alarm bells … and I just felt sick to my stomach. I knew what happened. Somehow I just knew.”

Baughman put a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s all right, son. It’s all right.”

“Mr. Forrestal, he … he was the most interesting man I ever met, a great and famous man. I was going to go to work for him, after he got out. He said I’d be his ‘man Friday,’ you know, chauffeur, valet and all.” The corpsman shook his head. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, out the window … my one big chance.”

Baughman looked at me, said, “Let’s go next door,” and nodded toward the bathroom that connected the rooms. But he paused in the john, with both doors closed, to ask me what I made of Prise’s story.

“Nothing sounds fishy there to me,” I said. “Kid is sincere enough. Of course, I think his tears are more for his future than his pal Forrestal.”

Baughman nodded. “Let’s see what this other boy has to say.”

Corpsman Robert Harrison, another impossibly young kid, dark-haired, skinny, said, “Tell you the truth, I was supposed to check on him every five minutes, but he got irritated with that. So I cut it to fifteen.”