“Yeah, I guess. Fish and chips or real sit-down food? Want me to take you out on a date?” I didn’t get my hopes up, but she had pulled her weight and more today.
She looked down at herself, slacks and a man’s shirt, well worse for wear after all the cleaning and moving. “I think fish and chips, a couple bottles of beer and an early night will suit me well enough.”
I agreed, we found a place, I even bought an apple pie they had on the counter, and we found a bar; in Canada, you have to buy your booze from a bar, “Off Premises,” so we did. I never did like beer, and the hard shit was too hard for me in my dotage, so I got a bottle of white wine of some kind and home we went. It was pleasant enough, sipping on a bottle each, we forgot glasses too, and listening to the radio, CKYZ, of course. There seemed to be no emergencies tonight, so we carefully talked around topics A-Z and just chatted about anything except what we were really interested in. People are cowards, ever notice? A normal night, for wartime. Treasure the boredom.
>>>>>>
We hit the ground running in the morning, we had to get up early to open the doors for the staff. I set everybody to work setting up their desks and work areas, while I tried to figure out what the hell to write. The obvious answer was the destruction and rebirth of the Express. Dougherty and Violet Summers showed up, they got promoted to full-time staff. I set Violet to running down as many of our volunteer columnists as she could, all our records were burned up and gone, of course.
Then it was just a matter of getting words on paper. I put Dougherty on the destruction of the Kelly Street Office, he had been close enough to hear the blast. Violet got the dirty job of trying to make the Janis and Barbara romance into a coherent narrative, while I hammered out my story of the raid on Everett, the heroics of General Earhart, and a vastly simplified version of my stay in the brig. I had most of a story about the Deseret Rebellion, even though there were no actual facts yet, so I gave that to Charles and O’Brian to see if they could make viable copy out of it. I set Greek and Pat to radio monitoring, and Buster went out to buy all the papers in town, looking for more copy to borrow. Or steal. No difference.
Chan and Eng showed up a little later, Chan had bought out a Chinese grocery store, it looked like, I just pointed to the kitchen, and had Eng join the radio staff. We needed a few more radios, too. Easily done. I sent Eng off with the Dodge truck and some money to get a couple more.
George Olsen got to run over and take exciting pictures of the hole in the ground at Kelly Street. The press is a thrill a minute. Sometimes two. With no real hopes, I set a deadline of tomorrow at dark for the first new edition, then I got a half-ass decent idea. When we got over here, almost everybody wanted to know about Gracie Burns, the star of Radio Home in Dalny. We had had a teletype at the Kelly Street office, that connected us to Crazy Radio. All that was burned up, but… Call and find out. I got Frankie on the line.
“Hey, Frances, do you have a teletype connection to Dalny? To Radio Home?”
“Sure. Sometimes it works. When it does, it’s a world-beater. Why?”
“I was thinking of doing interviews with Gracie Burns, maybe that Woody guy. A little human interest. Get me?”
“Sure. Good idea. I’ll send a wire, but why don’t you just do some of our people up here. Be a lot easier.”
“I would have thought of that, after a while. Sure. Who do you suggest?”
“Well, all sorts. Not Lizzie Douglas, she would turn the paper blue, burn holes in it, the way she…”
I could hear the gears meshing. “What?”
“Why don’t we kill two birds with one stone, you come up here, interview people on air, and we will find a steno, and cut you copies you can print?”
“You, Frances, are a fucking genius. Set it up and let me know. I never been on the radio.”
“It rarely hurts for long. I’ll call tomorrow.”
“The day after, I have to get an edition to bed.”
“And Hilda?”
“Harrumph. That remains to be seen.”
“Ya big lug. She should come upside your head with a brick-bat, maybe that would get your attention.”
“Negotiations are in progress, that’s all I want to say about that.”
“Make that two brick-bats.”
“Frankie…” I was going to plead for mercy, for all the good that would do.
“You never had a big sister?” She had no mercy.
“What? I’m an only child. Why?”
“Well, you got one now, Miles. You didn’t want me one way, now you got me the other way.”
“Frankie, you are such a motherfucker.”
“Everybody is good at something. Call you tomorrow.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Think nothing of it. The least I can do. If I could have done any less, I woulda.”
>>>>>>>>>
Which got the afternoon off to a good start. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or kick the dog. And we didn’t even have a dog. At least it made me realize that I was being a drag on the parade. It had been a couple of strange weeks, and no sign it was going to get saner, anytime soon. Fuck it, get to work. If you don’t know shit, fake it.
I needed another story, a couple thousand words on something. The Hydrodomes were still supposed to be secret, but... We had managed to sink a genuine USN Aircraft Carrier, and we officially didn’t even have an Air Force. I called around, found a contact who could get me to somebody on Earhart’s Staff, which was in an “undisclosed location” someplace.
A Captain Black called back, he was aware of my history with the General, and said he had been ordered to be as helpful as security would allow. “In fact, the VAC, Vancouver Air Corps, was mostly used as a diversion to distract attention away from the Hydrodomes. They are still not supposed to exist, but the Gunships and the Dive Bombers are public knowledge. I can have one of my men winnow through the photographs we took from the Gunships, and get the ones that don’t show the Hydrodomes sent to you by courier. A few hours, at most. General Earhart is not unaware of the uses of publicity.”
“Yeah, we noticed. Nothing wrong with that. She is one of a kind.”
“Indeed she is. And she mentioned that she still has your watch. If you want it back, I can have that sent to you in that same pouch.”
“My…”
“She said she had been robbed by the IB when she was exiled, they even took her watch, a very nice one, and you took yours off your wrist and handed to her without a word. We have all heard that story.”
“I had forgotten. It was not a very good watch. I have another. Don’t worry about it. An honor and a privilege to help her in any way possible. And she saved my life too. That was a hell of a ride.”
“She would never mention that part of it. All in a day’s work to her.” He was not quite laughing at me.
“Jesus. What a woman.”
“We say that quite often. Let me go, and I will get those photos to you as soon as possible.”
So, I had a start. “Reports from informed sources say…
>>>>>>>>
The pictures showed up before I finished spreading manure about the Lexington battle. That gave us another page, the front page at that, so I rewrote what I had to follow the pictures, and called that a day’s work. Chan had been making delicious smells waft out of the kitchen, and it was dinner time, so that was evil sufficient for one day. Chan had not lied; he could deliver the goods. Fish chowder, salmon steaks, steamed vegetables, and rice with butter. Good enough. We had a whip-around after dinner, dummied up a couple of pages, and it looked like we had a chance of meeting the deadline without busting a gut. "Okay, troops, close enough for government work. Tomorrow at seven?”
Nods of agreement and hat-grabbing. Enough is a lot. They left, I looked at Hilda, asked, “What kind of trouble do you want to get into tonight?”
“I could just listen to the radio and read. This was a decent day’s work.”
“Indeed. Okay, motion carried
by acclimation. Any wine left?” She shook the bottle, looked sad. “You want to walk, settle dinner, or you want to drive?”
“I’m fine. Let’s go have one beer, and call it a day.”
“Plan.” I was halfway expecting her to make a move, or else I was just feeling good enough to get a little bit horny again, but she did nothing except be pleasant. She did wonder if there was any chance of a movie, but a quick look at a Chronicle showed all the houses were shuttered, except one dingy theater near the docks that was showing ancient movies, most silent, and some looked quite blue, French housemaids featuring highly in the ads. Another great scheme done to naught. We walked into the shop, the phone was ringing. I picked it up, not expecting anything. Wrong again.
“Miles, this is Libby Holtzman. I’ve been calling for an hour. You need to get up here, right now!”
“What’s the problem?”
“No problem, at least not our problem. I have a scoop for you. It’s too hot for the radio, but I don’t want to say more over the phone. Move!”
“Moving.”
Hilda got my mood instantly, asked no questions, we ran for the Buick, headed east, ignoring speed limits and the rules of the road, with vigor, if not glee. As soon as we got out of town, she tapped my shoulder, said, “You ought to let me drive.”
“Really?”
“I drove in LA.”
“Oh.” That was all I said, and pulled over. When somebody is right, they are right. I was a city boy, I can drive, but buses are more my speed. She climbed behind the wheel and nailed it. The Buick was old, but it was still a Buick. The seven-passenger sedan with the big six, and she used all of it. We didn’t do the twenty miles in twenty minutes, but we didn’t miss by much. Libby was waiting for us at the gate, she had a slender guy in aviator garb standing next to her, and there was a sleek amphibian single-motor airplane parked on the golf course behind them. As we parked and walked over, a dark figure with a bottle in each hand joined them from inside the compound. With no surprise at all, I saw it was that Lizzie Douglas woman. She handed one bottle, champagne, to Libby, and sort of waved the other at us, in mild invitation. I shook my head, no, and it didn’t seem to hurt her feelings any.
“Okay, Libby, what’s the scoop? You want us outside?”
“Yeah. This is hot. Deadly hot. This is my friend, Smith. That’s enough. Smith?”
“It’s like this…” He had a soft educated voice, with a trace of the south in it. “I pretty much get to go where I want, war or no war. After our last… discussion… with Libby here, I decided to catch a little sun, forget about the war. So, I flew my plane, she’s a S.56C amphibian biplane, by Savoia-Marchetti. The C Model was special built for me, has a hundred and twenty-five horsepower Kinner B-5, with an enclosed cockpit, additional fuel tanks. I was going to fly solo around the world, but…”
“Smitty, would you get to the point? I swear to God, you get talking about your damn airplanes, you lose all self-control.”
“Sorry. You can see why we always wind up fighting,” he said, in a “just us guys” tone, ignoring the fact that we were outnumbered three to two. “So, I flew far out in the Pacific, to keep out of trouble, prevent people asking uncomfortable questions, and put her down just north of San Diego, at a little hotel, run by a friend of mine. The Del Charro Hotel. It’s fairly exclusive and very private. La Jolla, you know.” I didn’t, but don’t get him off the track.
“I got there, and almost turned around and left. George Patton was there, recuperating from his last tumble off a pony. His family estate is in San Gabriel, up in Los Angeles County, about ninety miles away. Silly sport, polo. But, anyway, George had been hurt worse than they let on, he had gotten a shrewd swipe with a mallet in the confusion. He was not convalescing well, was keeping the staff in a constant uproar, being even more arbitrary and petty than usual. I made it a point to request a suite as far from his as possible, but lo and behold, the next door down was an even bigger aggravation, can you guess who?”
“I give. Who?”
“John E. Hoover, the Head of the Federal Investigation Bureau.”
“What a coincidence.” I said, with some heat.
He took me seriously. “There are no coincidences in politics. It was not difficult to discover that the two of them were meeting sub-rosa, to decide how to get out of the horrible mess they had gotten the country into.”
“Good luck with that shit.”
“Indeed. No matter, whatever they planned will never come to fruition. I was having a late breakfast, thinking I might go down to the beach with my camera, and snap a few shots.”
“Of girls, no doubt.” Libby hissed.
“There is nothing wrong with the appreciation of female beauty, my dear. I appreciate yours, don’t I?” She made some noise, but did not distract his story. “Anyway, I was savoring a last cup of coffee, and loading my camera, when I heard a shot from next door, followed by three more, and then one of those silences that can only be described as deathly. I ran next door, still with camera in hand, the door was wide open, and the room inside was literally awash with blood. George was just inside, in his silly cavalry uniform, with his ridiculous silver pistol in hand.”
“Dead?”
“As canned mackerel. But, that was not the worst part. John Hoover was also dead, but he was wearing, his body was dressed, in a garter belt and a brassiere.”
We were struck dumb, all except Hilda who laughed out loud. I might have fallen in love with her right then. “That fucking pansy ass! It actually figures. Asshole.”
“What you talking about, white girl?” Lizzie Douglas was so shocked she nearly dropped her bottle. “You crazy.”
“Not at all, Lizzie. You might have lived rough, done it all, but the upper crust has their own little quirks. I’ve seen it before in Hollywood. Some of the roughest, toughest he-men swing both ways. And the more they swing, the more holy they preach. Take my word for it.”
“Girl-l-l. It’s a hell of a world, ain’t it?”
I tried to get back on track. “So who shot Patton? Hoover have a fucking gun tucked into his garter belt?”
Smith looked ill. “Worse than that. It was Clyde Tolson. Hoover’s second in command. And he was in a Nazi uniform, with whip and gun, all black, lots of leather, the whole Schutzstaffel outfit. He had dropped the gun, a Luger, of course, and was weeping his little eyes out over Hoover’s body. A touching scene. He didn’t even see me. I knew I was in the most trouble of my whole misspent life, so for insurance, I shot that roll of film, and then ran for my life. That was this morning. Before noon. It looked like George had had one of his brainstorms, rushed into share his genius with Hoover, and walked into a little tryst. He shot Hoover, Tolson shot Patton, then collapsed over his lover’s body. And pardon the vulgarity, but all hell is about to break loose.” He reached in the thigh pocket of his flight suit, handed me a metal film canister. “I’m headed back home. I just stopped up here to ask Libby to accompany me, we will be safe in North Carolina. As safe as anywhere. Goodbye.”
“Wait! Dammit. You can spare ten or fifteen minutes. Come on in my car, there is a light, I need to take a few notes. Then you can be on your merry little way. Deal?”
“I suppose so. It can’t hurt. They are keeping the lid tightly down on this mess.”
He followed me into the Buick, the women staring holes in the back of my head. I felt the need to talk man to man, for obvious reasons. I found my pad, indelible pencil, said, “First thing. What the fuck is a Nazi?”
“You should know this. Goering has a so-called political party, it is actually controlled by Military Intelligence, but let’s not get into all that. This party is called the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The German initials are NSDAP. They call it the Nazi Party. It is run by this brilliant orator, Adolf Hitler. He is a stooge, but a deadly dangerous one. They use a swastika as a symbol. The Schutzstaffel, literally that means Protection Squadron, are their bully boys, very well disciplined, they dress in al
l black, they are a major paramilitary organization swearing personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Not to the German state or the Reich, to Hitler personally. They are very stylish, and very deadly. They pride themselves on inhumanity and brutality.”
“So, you are telling me that Patton’s SSS assholes, the Special Strike Service, are copied from this Schutzstaffel.”
“Exactly. George was not an original thinker, but could be counted upon to run any bad idea right into the ground. You can find all this in German newspapers. They revel in this bestiality. Our censorship tends to gloss over these aspects of the Reich.”
“I was in China, we missed a lot of the domestic politics. But I get it, Patton wanted to do the same thing here. Okay, thanks. I need the exact name of the hotel, address, anything else that you can give me.”
“As long as my name is never mentioned, even in whispers.”
“I can promise you that, but if a maid or somebody saw you, your ass is grass.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. As soon as those pictures are published, they will be able to figure out who took them. I probably should not have run, but what’s done is done. And I do have a duty. This is my country, and it has given me far more than my share. This is the least I can do, and I have done what I felt I needed to do.”
“And we thank you.” He gave me the details, I shook his hand and wished him well, and tried to think of what to do with this smoldering pile of nitroglycerine. Smith had his duty, I had mine. Plus, this was the scoop of the century. Prurient interest up the wazoo. Now, the big question was how to handle this. A little birdie told me that this was too hot for straitlaced James Arbuthnot, and for my honest printer, Billy Chung. I followed Smith back to his plane, he took Libby’s hand, but not before she gave Lizzie a smoking hot kiss that left no doubt of their relationship, even before she said, “I love you Lizzie, but Smith has finally offered to marry me, and a girl has to look out for herself, doesn’t she?”
Brown Bear Blues Page 3