Majic Man nh-10

by Max Allan Collins

  So why was she looking around like a kid sneaking down a rainspout?

  A dish like this, going out on Saturday night, surely had a date; but nobody was picking her up. Maybe that was frowned on in this white neighborhood, a colored boy picking up a colored gal after work. Whatever the reason, she was on foot, crossing Prospect Street at the moment, and walking directly toward where I was parked.

  I remained motionless as the Lincoln Monument, in my feigned nap, and she walked on by, pretty legs flashing under the pink-and-black dress. In my rearview mirror, I could see her rear view and it was like watching kittens wrestle in a burlap bag. If she was trying not to attract attention, she needed to find a whole new way of walking.

  At the end of the block, she cut right, onto N Street, and when she’d disappeared around that corner, I followed; the night was cool and I’d thrown on a tan sportcoat. With so little traffic on the street and no other pedestrians, I could have been spotted by Helen Keller, so I had to play tiptoe anarchist and keep to the bushes and duck behind trees, staying a good half block behind her, on the opposite side of N Street as she made her way down, her high heels clicking like castanets. Fortunately, there were plenty of trees on this well-shaded street with its handsome Federal-style townhouses, but it was an endless block and made for nerve-racking work, particularly since she was glancing behind her now and then.

  Finally she turned onto Wisconsin Avenue, leaving the residential neighborhood for the heart of Georgetown’s commercial district, where cafes, restaurants and bars were courting the remaining tourist trade. Now I had pedestrians to blend in with, storefront windows to catch her reflection in and otherwise conduct a normal tail; and before long she had headed into Martin’s Bar, which surprised me some.

  I knew, from previous jobs I’d worked in this town, that Martin’s was Georgetown’s favorite political watering hole-more New Deal policy had been made over beers in this unpretentious joint than at cabinet meetings. What was Forrestal’s maid doing, dropping by the place where Tommy the Cork and Harry Hopkins changed the world while Georgetown students got boisterously blotto around them?

  In Chicago, New York and Hollywood, barroom walls are festooned with photos of movie stars, stage actors and recording artists. The dark-paneled walls of Martin’s, like those of any respectable D.C. gin mill, were adorned with framed presidents, generals and cabinet officers.

  The place was not hopping-this wasn’t a Saturday-night kind of bar, even lacking a jukebox-and for a moment I thought Miss Brown had made me, and ducked in here to slip a quick exit through the alley door. But then I spotted her, sitting in the farthest back booth, opposite a young guy in a brown suit, yellow tie and white skin.

  Georgetown was looser than the rest of Washington about coloreds and whites mixing; but this was fairly bold. The emptiness of the bar was in their favor-in other booths, a few couples were having a drink after dinner or before a show, the bar stools empty, except for the one I perched myself on.

  Was this the reason for Miss Brown’s furtive manner? A date with a white guy, a well-dressed, respectable-looking white guy at that….

  I watched them in the mirror behind the bar. The red-vested bartender, a pudgy thirtyish guy with thinning brown hair and a name tag that said Tom, came over to take my order.

  “Coke,” I said.

  “Living dangerously, huh?”

  “Not as dangerously as some.”

  Tom caught on that I was watching the mixed-race couple in the back booth.

  “Hey, we mind our own business around here.” But he had a gentle tinge of Southern accent that called his comment into question.

  Tom went away to get my Coke and I watched the couple in the mirror. There was nothing lovey-dovey about it; the man-his face was an intelligent, not unpleasant oval dominated by a strong nose-seemed to be asking questions and Miss Brown seemed to be answering them. Their expressions were equally blank, though occasionally Miss Brown shrugged and her companion leaned forward and tightened his eyes and tried again.

  The bartender brought my Coke and said, “Anyway, it’s not what you think.”

  “It isn’t?”

  He was whispering; and I was whispering back. That was how it was done in D.C.

  “Naw. That guy’s a straight arrow. Hell, he’s a damn Mormon. Notice he’s not smokin’, plus he’s drinkin’ what you’re drinkin’.”

  “Mormon, like in multiple wives?”

  The bartender smirked. “He’s engaged to a nice white gal….”

  “Just one?”

  “You know who that is, sittin’ over there?”

  “Lena Horne?”

  “I mean the guy.”

  “No. Who?”

  “That’s Jack Anderson.”

  “Who’s Jack Anderson?”

  Tom shook his head and half-smiled. “You are from outa town. He’s Drew Pearson’s legman.”

  “Oh, the columnist, you mean.”

  “Yeah. The colored babe’s probably just a source. Anderson talks to all sorts of people, in here-generals, congressmen, you name it.”

  “And usually on Saturday night, I’ll bet.”

  Tom frowned a little. “How did you know that?”

  “It’s the only night this joint isn’t crawling with politicos-also, Pearson’s weekly broadcast is Sunday night.”

  Now he gave me the other half of the smile. “Maybe you’re not from outa town.”

  Anderson was handing Miss Brown an envelope. She tucked it in her purse and exited the booth without a goodbye; he watched her go with the thin, world-weary smile of a priest exiting a confessional. Through the front colonial bay windows I watched her pink-and-black dress hike pleasantly up as she raised an arm to hail a taxi; soon she headed off to her real date, with some lucky colored fella, no doubt.

  Drew Pearson’s man was still in that back booth, with his notebook out and pencil in hand, doing what many a good investigator does after a sensitive interview: taking down his notes afterward.

  I took my Coke with me and wandered over.

  Flipping his spiral notepad shut, he glanced up with a guarded blankness and, in a rich baritone that had some edge to it, asked, “Do I know you?”

  I was leaning against the side of the booth. “No, but we have a mutual friend … or anyway a mutual boss.”

  His eyes were a deceptively placid light blue, the cool blue of a mountain stream; they fixed themselves on me, unblinking. “Do we.” It wasn’t exactly a question.

  “I did a job for Pearson in Chicago a while back,” I said. “When he did that rackets expose. My name’s Heller.”

  The thin skeptical line of his mouth curved into something friendlier. “Nate Heller…. Drew’s mentioned you.”

  “And you’d be Jack Anderson.”

  He was nodding as I extended my hand, which he took and shook, firmly but not obnoxiously.

  “Mind if I sit with you for a few seconds?” I asked. “I know you’re probably up against deadline, getting ready for the Sunday broadcast …”

  His smile was almost boyish as he nodded and gestured for me to take the seat across from him in the booth. “Yeah, I’ll really be burnin’ the midnight oil. I’m tied up with church all day Sunday-like every Sunday-and have to get my work done tonight, to make sure my contribution to the show’s up to date.”

  Settling in across from him, I saluted him with my Coke glass. “You must be good, if you don’t work Sundays and Pearson hired you anyway. Either that or you work cheap.”

  He grinned. “Little of both. What brings you to Washington, Mr. Heller?”

  “We’ll make it ‘Nate’ and ‘Jack,’ if that’s okay with you.”

  “Sure,” he said, still somewhat guarded; he was young, but he was a newsman.

  I said, “I’m doing a job for Jim Forrestal.”

  His grin froze, then melted a little; something around his eyes tightened. “Really. What sort of job?”

  “I don’t know if I should be giving Drew Pearson�
��s man that information. I mean, for months now, your boss has been dragging poor ol’ Forrestal by the short hairs behind your ‘Washington Merry-Go-Round.’”

  Which was the name of Pearson’s syndicated column.

  Anderson thought that over; for a young guy, he had a lot of poise. Finally he asked quietly, with just a hint of menace, “Does Jim Forrestal realize he’s hired an investigator who once worked for Drew Pearson?”

  “Probably not. And I didn’t think it was … ‘politic’ is the word, isn’t it? Politic for me to mention it.”

  Those light-blue eyes were examining me like X-rays. “Why did he hire you? Guy from Chicago like you. Why not somebody local, with Burns or Pinkerton?”

  “Why not just use the FBI, if you’re Jim Forrestal? No, Jack, this job requires an outsider.”

  A tiny nod. “Sometimes an outsider’s the only kind of man you can trust.” There was a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

  I sipped my Coke. “Do you think Forrestal can trust me, Jack?”

  He sipped his Coke. “According to the boss, you’re a man who likes money.”

  “That Scrooge you work for thinks anybody who wants more than a cup of gruel is a greedy bastard.”

  That made Anderson chuckle. “Sometimes I do feel like Bob Cratchit, at that.”

  “You think Forrestal’s getting a fair shake from Pearson?”

  For the first time Anderson’s gaze dropped, his eyes avoiding mine; his voice sounded troubled as he said, “The boss says Forrestal’s the most dangerous man in America.”

  “What do you say? Ever interview him yourself?”

  Anderson nodded. “I’d call Jim Forrestal a genuine public servant, dedicated, with an enormous expertise; we were lucky as hell to have him, during the war. And the inside word is he has a capacity for firm, clear judgment, that he can appreciate the complexity of any situation. They say he’s never fallen prey to the ruthlessness that this town almost always engenders in the powerful.”

  Like the sort of ruthlessness Drew Pearson indulged in.

  I said, “Sounds like you admire the guy.”

  Anderson shrugged. “I don’t admire some of what he stands for.”

  “Like what?”

  “The boss calls him ‘the archrepresentative of Wall Street Imperialism.’”

  “I thought we were talking about your opinion.”

  He flinched a frown. “Hey, I’m like you-I’m just a paid investigator.”

  “Yeah, but you spend Sunday in church. I’m more likely to sleep in with a chorus girl. What’s so dangerous about Forrestal?”

  Anderson ticked the topics off on his fingers. “His anti-Israel stance, his ties to Big Oil, his anti-Russian sentiments … hell, his investment firm practically bankrolled Hitler!”

  “Yeah, if you believe what you read in your boss’s column.”

  Anderson laughed once, harshly. “What, are you my conscience, Nate? From what I hear about you, you make an unlikely Jiminy Cricket.”

  “I’m not your conscience, Jack. I’m just the guy who tailed that cute colored maid of Forrestal’s to this bar and saw an information/money exchange transpire.”

  The blood drained from his face.

  “What, did you think I just happened into this place, at this moment? Shit, you’re not young-you’re a fuckin’ fetus.”

  Suddenly Anderson seemed to be tasting something foul. He said, “You know I can’t work out anything financial with you without the boss’s approval.”

  “I don’t remember asking for money.”

  His fingers drummed on the spiral notepad. “You gonna tell Forrestal about his maid?”

  “Maybe not. Why would I want a good-looking kid like that to get in trouble, lose her job or something?”

  Anderson smiled again but it was nasty, this time. “Well, then, why don’t you negotiate with her, directly?”

  I laughed. “Don’t believe everything Pearson tells you about me. He’s still pissed off that I squeezed a fair wage out of him.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell your boss I’m in town-at the Ambassador. Have Drew call me there, so I can set up a meet with him.”

  His eyebrows were up. “So you can sell out Forrestal?”

  “Now you’re my conscience. Look, kid-I know you must be pretty good or Pearson wouldn’t take you on. But listen to the voice of experience-don’t meet with a colored girl in a white joint, unless you think attracting attention is a good thing for investigative work. Don’t be interviewing your sources in Georgetown’s favorite political gathering place, either, even if it is Saturday night-that bartender gave me your life story and all I did was buy a damn Coke from him. Listen to your Uncle Nate and maybe you’ll last in this town … but I doubt it.”

  From the look on his face, you’d think I’d passed gas. Hell, maybe I had. Anyway, he didn’t say anything as I got up, deposited my empty Coke glass on the bar, tossed Tom the bartender a half dollar, and trundled out of the place.

  Out on the street, I pondered whether to take a cab to my car in that M Street parking garage, or just hoof it; I was fairly well beat, though feeling pretty good about myself. I had discovered the leak on Forrestal’s staff and found where it led-no murder plot, just good old-fashioned betrayal of your employer mixed in with sleazy yellow journalism, All-American stuff.

  And I had determined, to my satisfaction, that neither Uncle Sam nor the Zionists, not even the Commies, were staking out Forrestal’s place, for purposes of assassination or anything else, for that matter.

  I was just raising my arm to hail a cab when the finger tapped my shoulder.

  Thinking it was probably Anderson, I turned and started to say something wise, but nothing wise or otherwise got said: I was staring into the coldly businesslike mug of a guy perhaps thirty in a nicely tailored dark gray suit with a dark blue tie; his hair was black and trimmed military short, and he had a blandly handsome face with hard dark eyes.

  “Secret Service, Mr. Heller,” he said, holding up his wallet with five-pointed silver star and photo-credentials for my perusal. “If you’ll just come with me, please.”

  He was whispering, but there was nothing soft about the grip on my arm as he shoved me past the yawning door into the backseat of the black sedan that waited at the curb to take me away.

  Because, after all, that’s how it’s done in D.C.

  3

  As we rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue at night, the White House loomed to our right, bathed in spotlights like a theater hosting a premiere, only the star here was the structure. Was the Executive Mansion where these Secret Service boys were taking me? Perhaps the President of the United States wanted to consult the President of the A-1 Detective Agency; you know, maybe Harry wanted me to see if Bess was shacked up at the Rockville Shady Rest with Ike or MacArthur or somebody.

  My escorts hadn’t bothered sharing any information with me. They sat in the front and I sat in the back, like an obnoxious kid getting his questions ignored by the grown-ups-Am I being charged with anything? Do I need a lawyer? Don’t you guys have any counterfeiters you can go bother? How many more miles, Daddy?

  But our destination proved to be just past the White House, flanking it on the east, at Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street: a gray granite Greek Revival-style structure that rose five stories and consumed two blocks. I’d been here before-the Treasury Building-on various visits to Elmer Irey and Frank J. Wilson, the Capone case IRS agents I’d seen Glenn Ford playing a composite of, this afternoon. Both Irey and Wilson had risen in the government, Irey eventually overseeing the Treasury Department’s various law-enforcement agencies, including the Secret Service, of which Wilson had become chief in 1936.

  Despite a few adversarial situations, the two men were friendly acquaintances of mine, but I couldn’t hope to lean on them tonight: Irey had passed away last year, and Wilson recently retired.

  My Secret Service escorts left the black sedan in an outdoor, “United States Governme
nt Employees Only” lot and ushered me up a broad flight of stone steps to a colonnaded portico, then through the high-ceilinged, imposing West Lobby; my shoes had surveillance-suitable rubber soles, but the shiny Secret Service shoes created footsteps that echoed off the marble floor like small-arms fire. We moved past an exhibit called “Know Your Money,” featuring methods of detecting counterfeit bills and forged checks, and onto an elevator that stopped at the fourth floor.

  They deposited me in a small, rectangular conference room that seemed designed around a small, rectangular dark-varnished oak conference table where I was directed to take the nearest of half a dozen wooden chairs. The walls were a smooth, cream-color plaster occasionally broken up by framed exhibits of damaged money that Treasury experts had managed to identify despite (their prominent labels said) charring by fire, nibbling by mice or shredding by streetcar wheels. The dark-haired, dark-eyed agent who’d showed me his badge stood along a wall without leaning, arms folded, with the expression of a state trooper waiting for you to get your driver’s license out.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is about?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said.

  Well, that was more than he’d said on the way over.

  Down at the far end of the table, a single window, tall and narrow, was hidden by barely slitted-open venetian blinds, but behind them the window was open and a cool breeze rattled through, flapping the metal shutters like a stiff flag.

  Ten or twelve minutes later, when the door opened and a lanky, thin-lipped, poker-faced guy about my age ambled in, the agent unfolded his arms and stood even more erect. Oddly, this new arrival-however much immediate respect he commanded from my chaperon-was not in suit and tie, but a blue-and-green Hawaiian-print sportshirt, brown slacks and brown sandals with socks; he looked more like Bing Crosby than a Secret Service man-all he lacked was Der Bingel’s pipe.

  The only official-looking thing about him was the thick manila file folder in one hand. He turned a penetrating gaze on the younger agent. “Have you spoken with our guest?”

  His voice was a pleasant second tenor.