“I need to see Mr. Forrestal,” the man said in a thick Southern accent.
“That’s impossible right now.”
“I’m Phil Dingel-from North Carolina?”
Oh, well, hell-that changed everything.
“Look, sir,” I said. “Mr. Forrestal is not available.”
“But he knows me-I was an alternate delegate from North Carolina … at the convention in ’48? And Mr. Forrestal promised he’d throw his support my way for my appointment to postmaster, back home.”
“You want to be postmaster, huh?”
“Why, yes!”
“Then write him a letter,” I said, and shut the door in his face. Fucking political worm.
In the living room, Forrestal was watching at the window, blinds again parted; his face was clenched. “See! You see, Nate?”
I took a look. The plump would-be Podunk postmaster, who had worse timing than a pregnant teenager waiting for her period, had stopped to talk to the two unshaven vagrant kids on the bench.
“You see, he’s one of them,” Forrestal said excitedly. “They’re everywhere!”
“Let me check into it,” I said easily.
Soon I was cutting across the street, approaching the boys on the bench. They were both skinny with greasy hair, bad complexions, and worse attitudes.
“What did the fat guy want?” I asked.
The skinnier of the two sneered. “What’s it to ya, pops?”
Knocking their heads together might have agitated Forrestal, so I got out my wallet and flashed my Illinois private investigator’s badge; that usually works.
They both sat up straight, like kids reprimanded in school, and the other one said, “Guy just wanted to know if this was a bus stop. I said no, but he could catch a trolley over that way.”
I still had my wallet out. “How would you fellas like to earn a five-spot each?”
The skinnier one sneered. “Who do we have to kill?”
His pal laughed at that; they didn’t know how funny it really was.
I said, “Just find another bench to park your butts on.”
They looked at each other and shrugged; the skinnier one said, “Okay, pops.”
So I peeled off a couple of fives, and the kids got lost. Strange how cheap Russian agents could be bought off, these days.
When I went inside, Forrestal was not in sight, but I could hear a racket upstairs. The houseboy was at the foot of the stairs, wringing his hands.
“What’s going on, Remy?”
“Mr. Forrestal, he looking.” And he gestured to an open closet door near the entrance, where coats and hats, among other things, had been scattered about.
“Looking for what?”
“Somebody hiding.”
I found him in his own bedroom, a warmly masculine chamber of walnut furnishings, wood-tone floral Axminster carpet, dark woodwork and cream-painted plaster. He was searching in the dark. This was obviously a room that had been fastidiously shipshape, even down to the neatly stacked half a dozen formidable volumes on the nightstand-light reading like Nietzsche, Proust and Kafka-or anyway it had been until its occupant had scoured the walk-in closet, leaving the door open, clothes and other belongings strewn as if by a careless burglar. Right now he was on his hands and knees, looking under his double bed.
It had come to this: Forrestal literally looking for Reds under his bed. Not to mention Jews and traitorous White House types.
“There’s no one under there, Jim,” I said, and helped him to his feet. His body was like a bag of loose bones.
“We have to search the whole house. I have more closets to search!”
There was no stopping him, so I didn’t try to. He emptied every closet in the house; he ransacked the basement and the garage, and I accompanied him. Finally the effort began to wear at him, and the frail former Secretary of Defense stumbled back into his living room and into that same chair, with the silver bowl before him, gleaming, empty.
“They were here,” he said. “They must have heard me come in. Got out the back way.”
I sat down again. “Jim, I think you ought to get out of here. Your wife’s down in Florida. You said you have friends down there waiting for you. Relax … unwind.”
“You don’t understand how insidious they are. I’ve been chosen; I’ve been marked.”
“Chosen? Marked, how?”
“I’m not the number one target-just the first to be liquidated. Because I tried to alert America to the menace.”
“What menace, Jim?”
He was trembling all over. “The Kremlin plans to liquidate all our top leadership in Washington; the Reds are planning an invasion as we speak. The first wave, the secret wave, is already here!”
I had to ask; at this point, what would it hurt to ask?
“Jim … what about Roswell, Jim?”
His eyes widened and flickered, as if I’d lighted a flame in them. “How do you know about Roswell?”
“You mentioned it,” I lied.
“… I’ve done a bad thing.” He shook his head. “I’ve done a bad thing. Sometimes you do bad things, to try to do right, don’t you?”
“Sure, sure …”
The flames in his eyes flickered out. He sighed and his body seemed to deflate. His face had a flatness, like a frying pan, his wide eyes like fried eggs clinging to it. “Do you know what it’s like?”
“What what is like?”
“Being a complete failure? Failing your family, your country, yourself?”
“Stop it, now.”
“My life’s a wreck. A shambles. I know terrible things; I did terrible things, allowed terrible things to be done…. Have you ever considered suicide, Nate? If there was a button I could push, and end my life, I’d push it. Why should I give them the satisfaction of ending my life, when I can do it myself?”
“You’ve been through the mill, Jim. Things look this way because of your overwork. You’re exhausted …”
He shrugged, just a little. “That’s probably because I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in months. My teeth ache … my intestines are all out of whack … all my normal bodily functions are breaking down. I’m not even a man, anymore. Do you have your gun?”
His wife had asked me the same thing, only she’d been joking, and wanted Pearson’s hide; I knew, with cold certainty, that if I handed this man a gun, he’d shoot himself, right in front of me.
The doorbell rang.
Remy ran for it, and thank God, it was Eberstadt. Relief flooded through me, as I went to meet him.
“You’re Heller?” he asked, stepping inside, a tall, well-tailored, square-jawed handsome man of around sixty with the look of a former athlete and hair the color of burnished steel.
I said I was Heller, and we shook hands, and I took him aside and whispered, “He’s talking suicide. I’m out of my depth here, Mr. Eberstadt. He’s your friend-help him.”
He nodded gravely, said, “Thanks for standing watch.”
From where we stood, we could see into the living room where Forrestal sat, having again lapsed into a sort of trance, now holding the empty bowl in his hands, staring into it.
“Where’s his valet?” Eberstadt asked.
“Has the week off, ’cause of the Florida trip. The houseboy’s around somewhere.”
“Would you find Remy and have him pack a bag for James, some sports clothes and the like, maybe round up his golf clubs. I’m going to get him to Hobe Sound, where he can rest in the sunshine, in the company of close friends.”
I shook my head. “Anything you say, but I think he’s a little past the vacation stage. He needs medication, and he needs supervision-away from sharp objects.”
“I appreciate your advice, but please do as I ask.”
“Sure,” I said, and I found Remy in his quarters and sent him on his mission. Then I slipped into Forrestal’s study, got out my wallet, found the slip of paper I’d been given by Frank J. Wilson and used the phone.
“Chief Baughman,” I said to the head of the Secret Service, “you wanted me to call if something interesting developed?”