Better Dead

by Max Allan Collins

  “Any sign that this meeting, this retreat, was in any way out of the ordinary?”

  “Nothing at all. Vin Ruwet, Frank’s division chief, swung by for him Wednesday morning, honked his horn. Frank gave me a nice big kiss and said he’d see me in a couple of days. I helped him on with his coat and he said, ‘Tell the kids be good and I love them.’”

  “You didn’t hear from Frank while he was gone?”

  She shook her head. “No. But that’s not unusual. Things didn’t get unusual until we were having dinner the night he got back. He seemed so … mechanical, so cold. He hardly ate a thing, hardly said a word. The kids were all over him with questions and news about school but he’d just give a faint smile and nod, and finally they stopped trying, just talked among themselves. After they ran off chattering to watch TV, I said to Frank, ‘Well, at least the children in this family can still communicate.’ Then he looked up at me and smiled.…” She swallowed, and her eyes were moist. “… Just his normal self, you know? And he said, ‘We’ll talk later, after they go to bed.’”

  “Did you talk?”

  She sighed. “Not really. When I’d tucked all the kids in, and the house was quiet, I came in the living room and he’d turned the TV off, and was just sitting on the couch, staring out the window. At nothing. I asked him what was wrong and he said, ‘You don’t need to know.’ Not nasty or anything. Just … I didn’t need to know. This was his problem. But I knew it was our problem, and I pressed.”

  “Were you able to get anything out of him?”

  “Just one thing. He said, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake.’”

  Was I the mistake he’d made? Breaching security by talking to McCarthy’s man? Had someone discovered that?

  She said, “I asked him, ‘What could possibly be that terrible? You’re here with us, you’re fine, what is it?’ But all he would say, and he said it several times, was, ‘I’ve made an awful mistake.’”

  “What was his manner?”

  “Withdrawn. But not so cold now. Not cold at all. I made a fire in the fireplace and sat next to him and … and he reached his hand out for mine, held it tight. We just sat there holding hands and not saying a word for what had to be an hour, and then, suddenly, he said, ‘I have to resign Monday morning.’”

  I shifted in the kitchen chair. “Did he say why?”

  She shook her head. “No, and I asked him several times, begged him to tell me, but he just wouldn’t say. Sunday he moped around, not mean or angry … sort of sullen. Finally I figured I just needed to get him out of here, so I said, ‘Let’s go to the movies.’ He didn’t object. So I piled the kids into the car and we all went downtown to the theater. But I think that was a bad idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the movie playing was really gloomy and downbeat—Martin Luther.”

  Not exactly Kiss Me, Kate.

  “The kids fidgeted and misbehaved,” she said, “and Frank just ignored it. After it was over, Frank didn’t say a word. And when Monday morning came, he said again he was going to resign and I said he should do whatever he thought was right.”

  “Did Frank resign, Alice?”

  “Apparently he tried. He called about two hours later and said he’d talked to Vin and that Vin had talked him out of it and everything was fine. That he hadn’t made a mistake, after all. And that evening? A little withdrawn, but pretty much his old self.”

  “Back to normal.”

  “Yes,” she said, her eyebrows going up, “but not for long. Tuesday, he came home from work just before noon with his boss Vin along. Frank walked me right here into this kitchen and sat me down at this table where I am now and said, ‘Vin wants me to see a psychiatrist.’ I knew he’d been upset and acting a little odd, but that had never crossed my mind! I didn’t know what to say, particularly in front of Vin, and Frank sensed as much, and said, ‘Vin came along because he was afraid I might try to hurt you.’”

  “Hurt you?”

  “That was my reaction! Frank hurt me? That made no sense! And I said something to that effect, and Frank said, ‘I’m sorry, but they’re afraid I might do you and the kids bodily harm.’”

  Bodily harm. Oddly formal phrase.

  “This Ruwet,” I said, “where was he during all this?”

  “Sitting where you are. Frank was here.” She pointed to the empty chair between us. “Vin’s a family friend, and I said to him, ‘What’s this all about, anyway?’ And Vin said, ‘It’s going to be all right.’ And I said something like, ‘All right! It’s not all right! I don’t understand any of this!’”

  Alice was shaking. I reached across and touched her hand. She swallowed, forced another thin smile, then slipped her hand out from under mine, got up wordlessly, and refilled our coffee cups.

  She sat, sipped, resumed. “Frank and Vin went into the den and talked for maybe half an hour. I just stayed out here, trying to make sense of things, feeling like a truck hit me. Then Frank came in quickly and said, ‘We’re going back to Fort Detrick. They’re making arrangements for me to see a shrink.’”

  “Did Frank seem all right with that?”

  “He did, in a shell-shocked kind of way. I said, ‘Who besides Vin says you need a psychiatrist?’ And he said, ‘They think it’s best.’ And I said, ‘Who the hell are they?’ But all he said was, ‘It’s going to be fine.’ I’ve always stayed out of Frank’s business. You have to understand that we never talked about his work—I’ve never even been inside the building where he works. So I don’t know where I got the gumption to say it, but I did—I said, ‘I’m coming with you.’”

  “Good for you. How did his boss react?”

  “Vin stayed low-key. He said we could all ride to Washington together. A car from the base came to pick us up. Vin was in uniform—he’s a lieutenant colonel—and we stopped by his house so he could change into civilian clothes. There was a military driver but he was in civvies, too.”

  Interesting.

  I said, “How was Frank doing?”

  “At that point, when we were just setting out, Frank got anxious, and wanted to know where we were going. Vin said, ‘Washington, D.C., and on by air to New York.’ I asked why New York, and Vin said, ‘To get Frank the medical attention he needs.’”

  “He couldn’t get that in D.C.?”

  She shrugged. “That’s all the answer Vin gave me, and I was kind of reeling at that point. Anyway, I ask, ‘How long are you going to be there?’ And Frank says, ‘Not long,’ and I say, ‘But how long? Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow!’ And Frank says, ‘I’ll be home for Thanksgiving, honey. Don’t worry. I promise.’”

  She began to cry.

  I’d been anticipating this and came around with a handkerchief. Then I settled into the nearer chair, her husband’s. From the living room, Bettie—on the floor with the little girl, playing dolls near the premature Christmas tree—glanced toward us with a sympathetic frown.

  When she was able, Alice said, “We stopped for lunch on the way, at the Hot Shoppe, a little restaurant we know. But Frank seemed even more anxious, looking around the restaurant like it was … strange and threatening. When his food came, he pushed it away. I said, ‘Dear, you have to eat,’ and he said, ‘You don’t understand, Alice—they can put anything they want in your food.’”

  “‘They,’” I said.

  “They. And I asked him again who ‘they’ was, and he said, ‘Forget it,’ and waved it off. In Washington we went to a military-looking building near the Reflecting Pool.”

  CIA headquarters.

  “Vin left us in the car with the driver and went in. In the backseat, I held Frank’s hand and asked him to promise to be home for Thanksgiving. He said he would. Then Vin was back, and Frank squeezed my hand and slid out of the car. ‘See you in a couple of days,’ he said. And that’s the last I’ve heard from him, Nate.”

  They were keeping him under wraps for some reason. Likely they knew he had become a security risk.

  They.

>   I sipped my coffee. “So he’s likely in New York, or possibly in D.C. Do you have names I can follow up on? People Frank works with who are situated in Manhattan? I don’t suppose your friend Vin gave you the name of the shrink he was taken to.”

  Her expression was woefully apologetic. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything like that at all for you. And with Frank working for the government, in such sensitive areas, this may be impossible for you to look into. Now that I see it in front of me … and hear myself go through the story … I’m afraid I’ve wasted your time.”

  I leaned forward, patted her hand. “Is there anyone at Fort Detrick who might talk to me? Someone who works with Frank, who Frank trusts, who might have seen things or heard things about this episode, over these past few days?”

  Her eyes came alive. “Yes. Yes, there is! Norman Cournoyer—I should’ve thought of him right away! He’s a biochemist at the lab who’s very close to Frank. We socialize. I could call him—maybe he’d be willing to be bothered, even though it is a holiday.”

  “Let’s try,” I said.

  In the living room, the children laughed.

  “I’ll go give Norm a call,” she said, getting up. “Have another piece of pie while you’re waiting, please. Just … not the apple.”

  * * *

  The cocktail lounge of the Francis Scott Key Hotel in downtown Frederick was not hopping. Right now, it was a bartender fighting boredom, a couple at the bar getting chummy in a way that said they were either old friends or had just met, and two two-fisted drinkers who were acquainted and conversing but keeping a respectful stool between them.

  “Place was packed this afternoon,” the only waitress reported, delivering beers to me and my guest. She was short and blond and cute in a white blouse and black skirt.

  “Oh?” I said, summoning interest.

  She nodded. “The Packers-Lions game. DuMont Network had it … and we had the only TV.”

  It was on right now, over the bar, a 17-inch screen playing You Bet Your Life.

  “Green Bay led at the half,” Norman Cournoyer said, “but the Lions took it.” His voice was a second tenor with some rasp.

  “I’ll run a tab,” she said, leaving two pilsners.

  “That’s why DuMont is the also-ran network,” I said. “Who wants to watch football on the head of a pin?”

  “Well,” Cournoyer said with a shrug, “you may be right, Mr. Heller—but every male in-law of mine was crowded around my TV like it was a damn campfire.”

  Tall, slender but solidly built, with close-cropped black hair and heavy black eyebrows, Frank Olson’s best friend at Camp Detrick somehow conveyed both an intellectual air and a man’s man’s bearing. He was Superman in Clark Kent mode: sharp dark eyes behind plastic-rimmed glasses, strong nose, cleft chin, olive complexion smudged with McCarthy-esque five o’clock shadow. He wore a long-sleeve yellow sportshirt with brown trim on the pockets and collar and cuffs, top button buttoned.

  “Funny to be in a bar with so little smoke,” he said, glancing at the minuscule crowd. “Are you a smoker, Mr. Heller?”

  “No. Left that behind in the Pacific.”

  “I stopped when I started working in an area where you learned what you took into your lungs can kill you.”

  That was already a little more frank than I’d expected him to be.

  His face maintained a deceptively bland expression. “Alice says she hasn’t heard from Frank since Vin Ruwet dragged him off to D.C. to get his head shrunk.”

  “That’s right.”

  A sip of beer. “She also says you’re an old friend of Frank’s who happens to be a private investigator, and you’ve offered to try to find him.”

  “Yeah. I’m starting with you. Have you heard from him, Mr. Cournoyer?”

  He shook his head. “But if Frank told Alice he’d be home for Thanksgiving, and he didn’t show? Then he’s in it very damn deep, Mr. Heller. Very damn deep.”

  Now I had a sip. “Sounds like you know what you’re talking about, Mr. Cournoyer.”

  He gave me the kind of smile you give a pal who just told a corny joke. “Well, let’s start with this—you’re a private investigator all right, but you’re no old friend of Frank’s. I’ve known him since the war and I think he’d have mentioned knowing someone as famous as you.”

  “I’m not so famous.”

  Thick black eyebrows lifted above the clear-rimmed glasses. “Famous enough. But let’s skip the dance. You can’t play the jukebox while the TV’s on anyway, right? You’re who McCarthy sent to talk to Frank.”

  I looked at him over the pilsner. “He told you that?”

  “He tells me damn near everything. I’m his sounding board, and he’s mine. Frank could tell you, for instance, that I’m about to put my resignation in as an army officer, and that I’ve arranged to stick around as head of food service at Transylvania. Which is what we call Camp Detrick.”

  I squinted at him, as if it might bring him into focus.

  “You’re resigning,” I said, “because…?”

  A hand flip. “Same reasons why Frank tried to resign. He just didn’t handle it very well. He’s got a lot of good qualities, Frank, but subtlety ain’t one of ’em. See, I knew enough to stay on at Detrick, in a harmless capacity … although considering the kind of biowarfare research I’ve done, you wouldn’t think they’d want me handling their food, would you, Mr. Heller. Or do you like the tangy taste of anthrax?”

  “When you’re a man who knows too much,” I said, “it makes sense to stay on the team. Even as water boy.”

  “Bingo.”

  “What have they done with Frank, Mr. Cournoyer?”

  He made a toasting gesture with his glass. “We’ll make it ‘Norm’ and ‘Nate,’ what say?”

  “I say, Norm, isn’t a guy who swapped germ warfare for serving up Salisbury steak taking a big risk talking to me?”

  “I’m off their radar,” he said, with a shrug, his expression blank. “I’m a team player, like you said. Frank never has been. He’s always bucking authority, never shy about speaking his mind. That’s why he resigned from the Army and signed back on as a civilian employee, in the SOD.”

  I grunted a laugh. “The fun-and-games biochemical lab. Not as safe as the kitchen, huh, Norm?”

  His face had a softness, but the eyes behind the lenses were hard. “Not as safe as the kitchen. Of course you know what they say about if you can’t stand the heat.… You already talked to Frank, right?”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  He shook his head. “Just that he was going to talk to somebody McCarthy sent. I’m assuming that’s you.”

  “Sometimes it’s safe to assume.”

  “Why don’t I fill in some background, Nate, and if it’s one you already heard, stop me.” A frown fought through his defenses. “Less I have to talk about this shit, the better I like it.”

  “Please.”

  A sip of beer. Another. “Did Frank tell you about his European trips?”

  “He touched on them.”

  Black eyebrows climbed. “Including that he witnessed radical information retrieval?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  His voice was casually informative, as if he were sharing a barbecue recipe. “Well, Nate, it’s an interrogation method that involves drugs, torture, and electroshock, among other goodies. Guinea pigs were Soviet prisoners, former Nazis, security leaks. These methods frequently lead to death.”

  “Frank mentioned something like that.”

  “… Did he mention Korea?”

  “No.”

  The dark eyes flared a millisecond, and his voice, already not loud, became a near whisper. “Hell, man, that’s the key. Frank knows that biological weapons have been used over there. By our side. And he’s not happy about that. He says some of these radical interrogation techniques, utilizing his work, have been used on Americans.”

  Had Alice Olson sent me to a kook?

  I asked, “Why in hell
would Americans be subjected to that?”

  His voice, no longer a whisper but still on the soft side, turned as bland as his expression. “For one, debriefings of military and civilian personnel, who witnessed or participated in biological warfare in Korea. This involves brainwashing, memory wipes, all kinds of extreme experimental techniques. Frank has been worked up about all of this for months. It’s been building.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, he asked me if I knew the name of a good journalist, for one.”

  Maybe I should have pulled Pearson in on this. Maybe I still should.

  He smiled faintly. “I didn’t have a reporter for him, but I did suggest McCarthy. Ol’ Joe’s a ham-handed son of a bitch, but he’d get the story out. So that’s what Frank did.” What there was of a smile faded. “And look what it got him.”

  “What did it get him, Norm?”

  “I don’t know what it’s getting him right at this moment, Nate. I have an idea, and I don’t mind sharing it with you. But first you have to hear about what went on at Deep Creek Lodge.”

  I frowned. “The work retreat he went on?”

  Cournoyer held up two hands, palms out, as if in surrender. “Now, I wasn’t there, Nate. I was at other retreats at Deep Creek, mind you—beautiful place, isolated, all wooded, water on three sides, Appalachians looming. Scattering of cabins and a central stone lodge, fireplace, moose heads, the works.”

  “Got it.”

  Another hand flip. “So, anyway, this is secondhand, but it’s secondhand from Frank. All right?”

  “All right.”

  The waitress brought us fresh beers. When she’d trotted off, Cournoyer pushed his pilsner to one side and folded his hands. He might have been Daddy saying grace.

  “Frank didn’t say much about what went on the first few days,” he said. “There were ten scientists present, some from SOD and others from a CIA team. Both groups were working, separately, on different aspects of the same germ weaponry project, and this was a chance to compare notes, brainstorm—a regular skull session. They’d done the same thing the year before. Just a friendly, productive get-together.”

  If you consider germ warfare productive, I thought.