by Peter Straub
Had Ransom succeeded in bringing Bachelor back to mainland America eight months before, he would have been rewarded with a promotion and a more significant post. Having failed, the Shadow Masters had relegated Ransom to a secondary post in I Corps, where his role would have been to ensure that his “Bru” were instructed in matters of personal hygiene and rudimentary agriculture.
Now enter Franklin Bachelor.
Some time after the Green Berets and their savages had fortified Lang Vei, the camp was bombed and strafed by a U.S. aircraft. The camp was destroyed, and many women and children killed. The explanation given was that the aircraft had become lost in the foggy mountains. This tale is patently false, though believed to this day. The true story is much worse than this invention of a confused pilot. This time, Bachelor had made a crucial error. The rogue major had long harbored an insane hatred for the Captain who had forced him to leave his own best camp, and provided false information that would lead to the destruction of the Special Forces camp. But the wrong false camp was selected—Bachelor had sent deadly destruction down upon Lang Vei, not Lang Vo, twenty kilometers distant. Ransom still lived, and when he discovered his error, Bachelor’s wrath led him into deeper treachery.
By 1968, both Khe Sanh and the lesser-known Lang Vei were under perpetual siege. Then came the assault the world knows well—the North Vietnamese descended on tiny Lang Vei with tanks, troops, and mortars.
What is not known, because this information has been suppressed, is that Lang Vo, an otherwise insignificant Montagnard village under command of a single Green Beret, was likewise attacked, by North Vietnamese tanks and troops, at the same time. Why did this occur? There can be but one answer. Franklin Bachelor had duped his North Vietnamese contacts into believing that Lang Vo would be the next thorn in their side, after the destruction of Khe Sanh. And he sold out his country for one purpose only: the killing of Jack Ransom.
Lang Vo was flattened, and Ransom and most of the hapless “Bru” were trapped in an underground command post. There they were discovered, machine-gunned, and their bodies sealed up.
10
IN 1982, FIVE YEARS after my retirement here to an idyllic backwater such as had always been my fondest dream, a much-travelled letter was delivered to my door. I might have committed the ghastly error of pitching it immediately into the trash, had I not noticed the strange assortment of stamps arrayed across its back. By following the travels of this heroic missive, as revealed by the stamps of successive postmasters, I learned that it had passed through army bases in Oregon, Texas, New Jersey, and Illinois before travelling finally to the house of my sister Elizabeth Belle in Baltimore, my first residence upon leaving the security of the United States Army, and where I lived until I relocated to PG County, as we residents know it. It had reached each destination just after my departure from it—a hurried, unhappy, unfortunate departure, in the final case.
My correspondent, a Fletcher Namon of Ridenhour, Florida, had heard many a time during his three hitches in the service of both the elusive Franklin Bachelor and that odd duck, Colonel Runnel of the Quartermaster Corps, who had tirelessly sought out stories of the former. Being so intensely interested in the adventures and lore of “the Last Irregular,” he wanted me to be apprised of a story that had come his way. Mr. Namon could vouch for the integrity of the man who told it to him, a top-notch Ridenhour bartender who was like himself a combat veteran, but could not speak for the man who had told it to Namon’s own informant.
That man had claimed to be a visitor at Lang Vo on the day before its invasion by the North Vietnamese: a certain Francis Pinkel on the staff of the much-loved Senatorial hawk, Clay Burrman, conducting his yearly tour of his favorite projects in Vietnam. These being so many, he had dispatched Pinkel, his aide, alone, to a CIDG camp assumed to be in no great danger. Pinkel arrived, quickly saw that nothing in Lang Vo would interest the Senator, and penned the usual pack of lies lauding the work of the Special Forces. Pinkel had come to praise Caesar, not to bury him. The helicopter returned to bring Pinkel back to his boss at Camp Crandall, and lifted off before sundown.
Once they were up in the air, Pinkel saw—imagined he saw, as he was later advised—something he did not understand. Beneath the helicopter, less than a kilometer from Lang Vo, was another tribe of “Yards” under the command of a Caucasian male. What were they doing there? Who were they? There was no second officer detailed to Lang Vo, and the tribesmen in the little encampment could not have been so numerous. The tribe and their leader scattered across the ridge where the helicopter had come upon them, fleeing for cover.
Pinkel made an addendum to his puff of a report.
The next day the North Vietnamese struck. Pinkel mentioned his odd sighting, and was ignored. The Senator mentioned it, to loud protestations of ignorance and impossibility.
Fletcher Namon of Ridenhour, FL, wondered if the white man seen by Francis Pinkel—seen lurking on the outskirts of the camp under the command of Captain Ransom—was none other than Franklin Bachelor. Francis Pinkel and Senator Clay Burrman had suggested this possibility, once returned to Washington. They were suggesting that Bachelor had come down from his mountain redoubt to assist a fellow Green Beret in time of trouble. But how could Bachelor have known what the rest of the command did not? Or if he knew, why not issue a warning, as he had done at other times?
The upshot, Pinkel had told the bartender, was that the Shadow Masters had come to unwelcome conclusions and expunged the disaster at Lang Vo from military records. Everybody who had been there was dead, their survivors informed that they had died as a result of enemy action at Lang Vei. Pinkel and Burrman were put under order of silence, in the name of national security.
The letter ended with the wish that I would find this information interesting. It may have been no more than “a tale told over a bar,” but if the man Pinkel saw was not Bachelor—who was he?
I did find this “interesting,” mild word, interesting indeed. It is the final bit of evidence that locks all else into place. To conceal the treachery of one of its favorite sons, the army instituted a massive cover-up which has been in place to this day.
I replied to my correspondent in Ridenhour, but soon my grateful screed returned to me stamped with the information that no town of that name exists in the state of Florida. And I have since observed that “Namon” is No man spelled backwards. This in no way shakes my belief in the veracity of the much-travelled letter. Mister “Namon” is a man who takes sensible precautions, and I salute him for it!
11
FRANKLIN BACHELOR DISAPPEARED once again, it was said into North Vietnam. This rumor was false.
In 1971 a marine patrol near the DMZ came upon an old camp, long since destroyed, littered with the remains of dead tribesmen. Amongst these bodies lay the severely decomposed corpse of a white male of indeterminate age. Franklin Bachelor had met, too late it is true, his proper fate. His entrails had been picked apart by birds, and wild foxes had torn his flesh. After a fruitless search for his relatives, Bachelor was buried by the army in an unmarked grave—sprung from nowhere, he was returned to the selfsame place.
For of all the oddities we have observed in the case of Major Franklin Bachelor, this is perhaps the oddest of all, that the man never existed at all. It was one of those cases where a lad enlists in the service under a false name, hiding his origins or his identity, and so enters from the dream world, the shadow world, the night world. Though he was responsible for untold tragedy, this figment was tolerated, nay embraced by the army’s great sheltering arms, and encouraged toward an unwise independence that led to a dishonorable death. Call me foolish, hidebound, what you will, but in this progression from the dark dream world to success, thence to corruption and a return to nothingness and the dark, I see an epitome. Franklin Bachelor—“Franklin Bachelor,” a true unknown soldier, he is the ghost that haunts us when our principles are laid aside.
Here I closed the book to resume my own work.
PART
IN THE REALM OF THE GODS
1
THE THREE RANSOMS came in through the front door on a wave of talk a few minutes after eleven. They had seen a double feature of Double Indemnity and Kiss Me Deadly and then stopped in for a drink at Jimmy’s. It was the first time I had seen them relaxed and comfortable with each other. “So you finally came home,” John said. “What have you been doing all day, shopping?”
“You spent the day shopping, big guy?” Ralph fell into the couch beside me, and Marjorie sat beside him.
“I talked to a few people,” I said, looking at John to let him know that I wanted him to stay up after his parents left for bed.
“Just let the cops handle everything, that’s what they’re paid for,” Ralph said. “You should have come to the show with us.”
“Honestly, I don’t know why we stayed for the whole thing,” Marjorie said. She leaned forward to give me the full effect of her eyes. “Gloomy? Oh, Lord.”
“Hey!” Ralph said. “Weren’t you going to see if old Glenroy is still at the hotel?”
“Were you?” John said. “I had a long talk with him, that’s right.”
“How is old Glenroy?”
“Busy—he’s getting ready to go to France.”
“What for?” He really could not figure it out.
“He’s playing in a jazz festival and making a record.”
“The poor bastard.” He shook his head, evidently at the notion of an ancient wreck like Glenroy Breakstone trying to play jazz in front of a crowd of French people. Then his eyes lighted up, and he pointed his index finger at me. “Did Glenroy tell you about the time he introduced me to Louis Armstrong? Satchmo? What a thrill. Just a little guy, did you know that? No bigger than Glenroy.”
I shook my head, and he dropped his hand, disappointed.
“Ralph,” Marjorie said. “It’s late, and we’re traveling tomorrow.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Yeah,” John said.
“We figure we’ve done everything we could, here,” Ralph said. “There isn’t much point in sticking around.”
So that was why they had been able to relax.
Marjorie said, “Ralph,” and tugged at his arm. Both of them got up. “Okay, guys,” Ralph said. Then he looked at me again. “It’s probably a waste of time, anyhow, you know. I don’t think I ever fired more than one person, myself, and that didn’t last long. Bob Bandolier pretty much took care of that kind of thing.”
“Who was the person you did fire?”
He smiled. “I remembered it when we were sitting in the movie—it seems kind of funny now, to think of it.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“I bet you could tell me. There were only two people in the hotel that I would fire, me personally, I mean.”
I blinked at him, and then understood. “Bob Bandolier and Dicky Lambert. Because they were directly subordinate to you.”
“Why is this important?” Marjorie asked.
“John’s friend is interested, that’s why it’s important,” Ralph said. “It’s research, you heard him.”
Marjorie waved a dismissive hand, turned, and walked away from us. “I give up. Come up soon, Ralph, and I mean it.”
He watched her walk away and then turned back to me. “It just came to me, watching Double Indemnity. I remembered how Bob Bandolier started shaving hours off his time, coming in late, leaving early, making all kinds of excuses. Finally the guy came out and said his wife was sick and he had to take care of her. Sure surprised me. I didn’t even think he was married. That was some thought, Bob Bandolier with a wife, I tell you.”
“He came in late because his wife was sick?”
“He damn near missed a couple of days. I told Bob he couldn’t do that, and he gave me a lot of guff about how he was a better manager in two hours than anybody else would be in eight, or some crap like that, and finally I fired him. Had no choice.” He held his hands out, palms up. “He wasn’t doing the job. The guy was a fixture, but he put me over a barrel. So I gave him the axe.” The hands went into his pockets and his shoulders went up, in that gesture common to father and son. “Anyhow, I hired him back in a couple of weeks. When Bob was gone, things didn’t go right. The meat orders went completely haywire, for one thing.”
“What happened to his wife?” John asked.
“She died—during that time before he came back. Dicky Lambert told me, he got it out of him somehow. Bob wouldn’t have ever said anything about it to me.”
“When was this?” I asked.
Ralph shook his head, amused by my persistence. “Hey, I can’t remember everything. In the early fifties sometime.”
“When James Treadwell was found dead in his room, did Bandolier handle the details?”
Ralph opened his mouth and blinked at me. “Well. I guess not. I remember wishing that he could handle the details, because I moved Dicky to days, and he was no good at all.”
“So you fired Bob Bandolier around the time of the murders.”
“Well, yeah, but …” He gave me a sharp, disbelieving look, and then started shaking his head. “No, no, that’s way off base. We’re talking about Bob Bandolier—this upright character who organized prayer meetings.”
I remembered something Tom Pasmore had said to me. “Did he have any children? A son, maybe?”
“God, I hope not.” Ralph smiled at the notion of Bob Bandolier raising a child. “See you guys in the morning.” He gave us an awkward half-wave and started up the stairs.
John said good night to his father and then turned to me. He looked tense and irritated. “Okay, what have you been doing all day?”
2
MOSTLY, I WAS LOOKING for traces of Bob Bandolier,” I said. John uttered a disgusted sound and waved me toward his couch. Without bothering to look at me, he went into his kitchen and returned with a lowball glass filled to the brim with ice and vodka. He came to the chair and sipped, glowering at me all the while. “And what were you up to last night?”
“What’s the matter with you, John? I don’t deserve this.”
“And I don’t deserve this.” He sipped again, unwilling to sit down until he had come out with whatever it was that troubled him. “You told my mother you were a college professor! What are you these days, some kind of imposter?”
“Oh, John, Joyce Brophy called me Professor Underhill, that’s all.”
He glared at me, but finally sat down. “I had to tell my parents all about your illustrious academic career. I didn’t want them to know you’re a liar, did I? So you’re a full professor at Columbia, and you’ve published four books. My parents are proud that I know a guy like you.”
“You didn’t have to lay it on so thick.”
John waved this away. “You know what she said to me? My mother?”
I shook my head.
“She said that some day I’d meet a wonderful young woman, and that she was still hoping to be a grandmother some day. I’m supposed to remember that I’m still a healthy young man with a wonderful house and a wonderful job.”
“Well, they’re leaving tomorrow, anyway. You’re not sorry they came, are you?”
“Hey, I got to hear my father talk about Indian theology with Alan Brookner.” He raised his eyebrows and laughed. Then he groaned, and flattened his hands against his temples, as if trying to press his thoughts into order. “You know what it is? I don’t have time to catch up with myself. Is Alan okay, by the way? You got him a nurse?”
“Eliza Morgan,” I said.
“Swell. We all know what a fine job—” He flapped a hand in the air. “No, I take it back, I take it back. I’m grateful. I really am, Tim.”
“I don’t really expect you to act as if the worst thing that ever happened to you was a parking ticket,” I said.
“The problem is, I’m angry. I hardly even know it most of the time. I only figure it out when I look back and realize that all day I went around slamming doors.”
He shook his head and drank again. “I guess actually, the person I’m angry with is April. How can I be angry with April?”
“She wasn’t supposed to die.”
“Yeah, you went to shrink school at the same time you were becoming this English professor at Columbia.” He leaned back and gazed at his ceiling. “Which is not to say that I don’t think you’re right. I just don’t want to accept it. Anyhow, I’m grateful that you can overlook my acting like an asshole.” He slouched further down in the chair and cocked his feet on the coffee table. “Now will you tell me what happened to you today?”
I took him through my day: Alan, the Belknaps, Glenroy Breakstone, the trip to Elm Hill, the irate old man on Fond du Lac Drive.
“I must have missed something. What made you go to this man’s house in the first place?”
Without mentioning Tom Pasmore, I told him about Elvee Holdings and William Writzmann. “The only Writzmann in the book was Oscar, on Fond du Lac. So I stopped in to see him, and as soon as I said that I was looking for William Writzmann, he called me a tricky bastard and tried to clobber me.”
“He tried to hit you?”
“I think he was sick of people coming around his place to talk about William Writzmann.”
“Isn’t William in the phone book?”
“He’s listed at Expresspost, on South Fourth. And so are the other two directors of Elvee.”