by Jim Lehrer
“Which Kansas certainly is, Mr. Truman,” said Browne. “The driest of the driest.”
Charlie Sanders held up a tiny key. “Coming right up, Mr. President. The steward awarded me the key to the liquor cabinet.”
“You want to join me in a drink, Mr. Browne?” Truman said.
“Simple gin in a simple glass would be great, yes, sir.”
Browne then followed Truman to two seats farther into the lounge. Jack Pryor, on his way with Charlie Sanders to the liquor, switched on a light for them.
Once seated, Browne said to Truman, “This is quite an honor, sir. Thank you.”
Truman nodded.
“Actually, you and I have met before, Mr. President.”
“Is that right? Refresh me on that, please.”
“I interviewed you in the White House in 1949 for Look magazine.”
Charlie Sanders returned with the drinks and handed one each to Truman and to Browne. Then he disappeared into the out-of-hearing darkness with Pryor. They would watch but not listen to Harry Truman of Independence and A. C. Browne of Strong have a drink together.
Truman gave Browne a hard look. “Oh, yes, yes. I remember you. You’re the one who also wrote a book about adopting a war orphan.”
“Yes, sir, My Son Greg,” said Browne, nodding. “It was based on the adoption of my real son—his name is Bart, as in Hobart.”
“I didn’t realize it was a true story, Browne. Good for you. Mrs. Truman and I saw the movie. Robert Taylor was in it. And that child actress?”
“Betsy Randolph.”
“That’s her. Is she still in the movies?”
“I don’t know, sir. The porter told me there are, as always, movie stars and movie moguls on this train. We could ask one of them.”
“‘The Train of the Stars’ is what they’ve always called the Super Chief. Who are the stars this time?”
“Clark Gable’s the only one I know for sure. Some travel under phony names—and the Santa Fe people keep their secret.”
“We had one of those stars come to the White House who’d played a bit part as Ulysses S. Grant in some damned movie. He went into his Grant personality—I think he was drunk, too, just like Grant—and started lecturing me on how I could have won the war without dropping the bomb. I reminded him that playing smart people in the movies doesn’t make you smart. He didn’t like it. He did finally shut up but not before accidentally calling me ‘Mr. Lincoln’ a time or two.”
Browne chuckled as he tried, in vain, to think of who that actor might have been. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Grant portrayed by anyone in a movie. But Browne had been around enough actors and actresses to know that some of them never got over being the parts they played.
Truman took a sip of his whiskey and added, “But I must say, Browne, that the way things are going in this country it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them ends up in the Senate or the House—maybe even the White House—someday.”
“That’ll never happen, sir.”
“That’s what they said about cars and diesel locomotives and airplanes. Never happen, never happen. Let’s not forget our current president—my beloved successor.”
“Ike?”
“He was just a general before he was a president. MacArthur got where he did only because he was more of an actor than a soldier.”
“But is that fair, to lump Eisenhower with MacArthur?”
“Who gives a damn what’s fair at four thirty in the morning in the lounge car on the Super Chief?”
“I’ll drink to that,” Browne said.
They clinked their glasses.
“What are you doing up this late, anyhow, Browne?” Truman asked.
“I just got on the train, sir. I dropped my baggage and my suit coat in my compartment and came on down here. It was empty until you got here. What about you, Mr. President?”
“I had been asleep in my compartment, but the banging of my car in Kansas City a while ago woke me up. So I decided to get up and find me a drink. Where did you get on?”
“Strong.”
“I wondered about that stop. I thought the Super Chief didn’t stop in Strong—or anywhere else much between Kansas City and Albuquerque.”
“It did tonight, sir.”
“For you?”
Browne lifted his glass and took a long sip of gin.
“You must be a Republican,” Truman said.
“All I did was make a call to an old Santa Fe friend of the family who had the Super Chief stop for me. I jumped on, the train wasn’t still more than a minute or two. Why are you going to Los Angeles, sir—I assume that’s your destination?”
“To make a political speech for an old friend. You?”
“To interview some folks for a magazine story I’m writing.”
“You’re a real chip off the father’s block, aren’t you?”
“Not really, sir. He didn’t drink, I do. He didn’t smoke, I do. He didn’t cuss, I do.”
“You must be a Democrat.”
“I did support you and Roosevelt.”
Truman smiled and grumbled something under his breath about 1948 when it was Truman and Barkley. Then he said, “Your Kansas fella Landon lost even bigger to FDR than the experts said I was going to lose to Dewey. I got to know Landon. He’s a good man …” He stopped in midsentence. “Did you hear that?” he asked Browne.
“What, sir?”
“That pow! sound.”
“All I heard was this train beginning to slow down.”
Truman looked out the window. Some early signs of light were coming up from the bottom of the darkness over central Kansas.
“Bethel’s coming up in a few minutes,” said Browne. “Just a short stop here for a crew change and to put on some galley supplies. The Fred Harvey people run a farm outside town where they raise their produce and other staples for the trains and Harvey House restaurants along the Santa Fe. They’ve got a big laundry here, too. We did a story about it in the Pantagraph a while ago—”
“Detective Pryor! Detective Pryor!” Ralph, the sleeping car porter, came running into the lounge.
“Conductor Hammond says come quick, sir! Come now!”
Jack Pryor ordered Charlie Sanders to stay with President Truman and then raced after Ralph back down the passageway.
There in the doorway of a drawing room stood Conductor Hammond. If this squat fiftyish man of bulldog authority had a real first name beyond “Conductor,” Pryor had never heard it.
Hammond stepped aside for Pryor to see what there was to see.
Mr. Otto Wheeler lay in his bunk, the sheet and dark blue Super Chief blanket pulled carefully up around his chest, his hands and arms lying comfortably to either side. His face wore a smile, his eyes wide open.
“He’s dead,” said the conductor. “When Ralph couldn’t wake him to get ready to get off in Bethel I took a look, felt for some pulse, there wasn’t any.” Then, as if to anticipate what the detective might say, he added, “No, I didn’t touch anything else, although as sick as he was, he probably put himself out of his own misery. Look at that smile on his face.”
Jack Pryor said nothing. He turned back toward the narrow doorway and saw Harry Truman and A. C. Browne sharing it, both gazing at the dead man. Charlie Sanders stood behind them.
“Sorry, gentlemen, but I must ask that you return to the lounge,” said Pryor to Truman and Browne. “Mr. President, it appears we have had a death on this train.”
“What kind of death?” asked A. C. Browne.
“A suicide is what it looks like,” said the detective. “But I’ll keep you informed, gentlemen.”
The editor-publisher of the Strong Pantagraph and the former president of the United States did as they were told and walked away.
And the Super Chief rolled to a smooth stop.
“We’re in Bethel,” said the conductor to Pryor. “Five minutes is all we’re supposed to have here. We’re already running two minutes late …”
Jack Pry
or reached over to close the window blind. But he stopped. “There’s an ambulance … no, it’s a hearse, it looks like … out there and it’s moving right up here to the train—to this car. How could that be?”
“Detective, I’d say somebody was expecting a dead body to come off the Super this morning, that’s what,” said Conductor Hammond.
Back in the lounge, Truman and Browne took seats where they could keep a watch on what was happening out on the Bethel station platform.
“A hearse is already there,” said Truman. “Now that’s called efficiency. I can’t believe the Santa Fe had a hearse standing by just in case somebody died on the Super Chief. I hope to holy hell it wasn’t me they were thinking about.”
Browne laughed. “I hardly think that, sir. Your good health and heartiness are well known—even to the Santa Fe.”
“You Brownes really must be close to the Santa Fe if they’ll stop a train in Strong for you.”
“Yes, sir. The railroad’s always been a part of our lives. Dad used to have a Santa Fe pass and a Fred Harvey pass that meant he and the rest of us in the family could ride and eat free of charge on any Santa Fe train anytime we wanted.”
“‘Used to have’?”
“No more. It was a form of bribery—bribery of the press, pure and simple. The railroads had Kansas newspaper editors in their political pockets. Some were Missouri Pacific papers, others Frisco or Union Pacific, Santa Fe and whatever. Dad was a Santa Fe man but he jumped off the train, so to speak, editorialized against it and raised so much hell everyone else stopped it. Reader’s Digest paid for my ticket on this train, if that’s what you’re asking. How about you, sir? I would think you former presidents could ride for free on just about anything you wanted.”
“My ticket was paid for by the political people sponsoring my speech,” said Truman. “I don’t take bribes either, Browne!”
Even in the weak light Browne could see red in Truman’s cheeks, anger in his blue eyes.
“Sometimes you talk like you’re writing a goddamn editorial, Browne.”
“Sometimes you talk like you are an editorial, Mr. President.”
“Your dad really didn’t cuss?”
“That’s right. He believed a man who cusses is a man who—”
“Don’t finish the sentence. If I wanted to hear a sermon with my bourbon I’d go to a church, not to the lounge car on the Super Chief.”
They fell silent, both watching while the hearse was backed closer to the train and a group of men, including the Santa Fe’s Pryor and Sanders, held a conference.
“Our detective friend Pryor appears to have a problem out there,” said Browne.
“I think you’re right,” said Truman. “You’d think a suicide would make it a simple situation.”
“I have never, even for a split second, thought about taking my own life. Have you, sir?”
Truman looked truly appalled—stunned at being asked such an idiotic question. “My god, no! It’s not even an option for people like me.”
“Former presidents?”
“Nope. People who came from absolutely nothing to being absolutely something. Besides, the Bible says it’s a sin.”
“What if Dewey had beaten you in forty-eight?” Browne accompanied the question with a smile.
“I might have considered putting a gun to his head but never to mine,” said Truman. “If a man’s failures were reasons for suicide we’d have nothing but women and children left in our country.”
“I guess that means you didn’t appreciate Death of a Salesman?”
Truman growled, “I’d never go to a play about a salesman killing himself. I was a salesman. We’re optimists. Optimists don’t kill themselves.”
“Tell me again, who you are, sir?” Jack Pryor asked.
“Paul Pollack. I am Mr. Wheeler’s assistant.”
“How did you know to meet this train with a hearse?”
“Mr. Wheeler told me to do so. I do what Mr. Wheeler says.”
“Did he tell you he was going to be the deceased?”
Pollack, clearly not used to being talked to in such a direct and confrontational manner, looked away. He had to think about this for a second.
“No, he did not,” he said finally.
“But you knew he would be the dead man?”
Pollack glanced down at the ground this time before speaking. “I knew he was very sick and that he was in a lot of pain.”
“You knew that he was going to die on the Super Chief sometime between seven o’clock last night when it left Chicago and this morning when it arrived at Bethel?”
“I didn’t say that, sir.”
“Did Mr. Wheeler have medicine with him—pills of some kind—that would kill him?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Would you have known if he had?”
“Who knows what anyone would know?”
Jack Pryor was losing patience. Sternly, he asked, “Let me ask you directly, Mr. Pollack. Did Mr. Wheeler kill himself on the Super Chief?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Do you know if he planned to do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you know or not?”
Pryor motioned to another man, obviously with the hearse crew, to step into the circle. The thin, smiling man in his early forties, named Helfer, did not necessarily resemble the standard appearance for an undertaker. He seemed lively enough to have been a banker—even a Santa Fe assistant general passenger agent, thought Pryor, seeing him next to Charlie Sanders, who had been silently following the detective. They matched.
“Who asked you to show up here and meet this train with this hearse?” Pryor asked him.
“Mr. Pollack did that. He called us.”
“What did he say you were to do?”
“Pick up a deceased and prepare him for a funeral and burial—details to follow.”
“What name did he give?” Pryor asked.
“Otto Wheeler. I know him. Everybody knows Otto Wheeler. As Mr. Pollack can tell you, Mr. Wheeler was a Super Chief lover—the word was that he won and then lost his true love on a Super Chief ride to Chicago. Probably not so, but everybody believed it and everybody was afraid to ask. Better for the story not to know, what do you think?”
Pollack frowned. Jack Pryor read it as an unambiguous signal for the undertaker to shut up about Mr. Otto Wheeler.
“Is there a next of kin for Mr. Wheeler?” Pryor asked both of the Bethel men.
“No, not really,” said Pollack.
“Most of the Wheelers left Bethel years ago and left Otto here pretty much by himself,” said Helfer. “Can we take possession of the remains now? Is he in there on the last car—the observation car? Quite a train, this Super Chief. Too rich for my blood.”
Jack Pryor was now joined by Conductor Hammond, who was making a big point of looking at his pocket watch. Jack knew he had a really big decision to make—and he knew it was liable to turn out to be the wrong one no matter what he did. The Santa Fe was a great place to work, but it was full of people who made careers out of making others pay for not following rules.
Pryor knew the railroad’s procedures called for removing dead bodies from Santa Fe trains as soon as was “practical and in accordance with the laws of the state in which the death occurred.”
“We gotta go, detective,” said Conductor Hammond, interrupting Pryor’s concentration. “The Super Chief waits for nobody—not even dead suicides.”
Yes, a suicide, Pryor thought. That’s what it appeared to be. And, by all signs, it most likely occurred near Bethel, but there was no way to know that for sure. Not yet. That brought to mind the Santa Fe’s additional backup rule stating the FBI had jurisdiction if the death “appeared to be the result of an action that occurred while the train was involved in interstate commerce.” Since the Super Chief was by its very Chicago–Los Angeles operation always involved in interstate commerce it came down to a judgment call—by Jack Pryor
.
Pryor simply raised his right hand toward Conductor Hammond. Hold it! was the message. Pryor had the authority to override Hammond or anyone else in such an emergency. He could keep The Train of the Stars right here in Bethel as long as he thought necessary.
Pryor’s mind continued to race. Should he at least go back on the train, take a closer look at the compartment where Wheeler lay dead before allowing the Super to leave? But, as all the signs clearly indicated, it was most likely a simple suicide …
Pryor told the undertaker to follow the conductor onto the train and do his work of removing the body.
The sheriff here in Bethel—his name was Ratzlaff and Jack Pryor knew him—could sort out exactly how Otto Wheeler took his life.
That was Pryor’s decision, which he quietly reported to Charlie Sanders, standing close by.
“Mr. Wheeler obviously made a personal decision to die on the Super Chief,” replied Sanders. He successfully fought off an urge to add something smart about how that could be turned into an advertisement for the Super Chief as “the train of choice on which to die.”
He and Pryor watched as Helfer and his men came down on the step stool from the observation car carrying a stretcher with the blanket-covered remains of Otto Wheeler.
The engineer sounded the howl of the Super Chief. Pryor looked at his wristwatch. It was still only six ten. Good morning, citizens of Bethel, Kansas!
“All aboard!” yelled Conductor Hammond.
“It could be that Otto didn’t use pills to take his own life,” said Helfer as he and the others placed the stretcher into the rear of the black Packard hearse.
“What do you mean?” said Pryor.
“There seemed to be a little spot of something liquid soaking through that thick Santa Fe blanket of his, that’s what I mean.”
“Come on, Pryor!” Conductor Hammond yelled.
The Super Chief was starting to move. Pryor intercepted Charlie Sanders, who had already turned toward reboarding the train. “Stay here,” Pryor said forcefully. “Talk to Sheriff Ratzlaff. Make sure the railroad’s interests are covered.”