Better Dead

by Max Allan Collins

  * * *

  At Bettie’s, with dawn at her windows, I took a card from my wallet and dialed a number. Early or late, I would get an answer, though not necessarily a direct line to the man I was calling.

  And that proved to be the case—I had to leave my name and number. It took six whole minutes to hear back from him.

  “Is Gottlieb yours, Shep?” I asked.

  Edward Shepherd took a long pause and then said, “And if he is?”

  “Is this a secure line?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, he’s tied to a chair in that honeypot safe house on Bedford Street. With two dead men, who when they were still breathing kidnapped a friend of mine. One used to be your inside man at the Statler, the other is one of Costello’s muscle boys.”

  “Thank you for the tip. Can we meet?”

  “Well, you need time to put a little cleanup crew together, I suppose. How about in an hour at the Waldorf?”

  “The hotel?”

  “The cafeteria.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  At six in the morning, the Waldorf Cafeteria—like any other respectable twenty-four-hour restaurant (not to suggest any respectability here)—was serving breakfast. At my side was Bettie, in a man’s gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and moccasins, wearing just a dab of lipstick but no other makeup, her hair back in a ponytail and jumpiness in the azure eyes. She’d said she didn’t think she could sleep and didn’t want to be alone, and frankly I didn’t want to leave her alone.

  Bettie understood that when my guest arrived, she would have to move to a table across the restaurant from us, while remaining in my sight. Surprisingly, we both felt like eating—not that it hadn’t been an energetic evening, but after the Village Barn, nothing much about it had been what you’d call appetizing.

  We’d got here a little early and had gone through the cafeteria line to gather orange juice, coffee, scrambled eggs, link sausage, silver-dollar pancakes, and other breakfast edibles about on a par with what I used to get at the mess hall at Marine boot camp in San Diego.

  She ate slowly but spoke quickly. “Ah feel like ah imagined it all. Did ah imagine it all, sugah?”

  “I’ll let you know after I talk to my friend.”

  “Is he with the police, your friend?”

  “The federal government.”

  Her big eyes grew bigger, and they could get very, very big. “Those were government men back there?”

  “Bettie, don’t think about it. I’m going to straighten this out for both of us.”

  “Are you bein’ honest with me, honey?”

  “I’m going to try to straighten it out. That’s the truth-and-nothing-but version. But whatever I can put together will almost certainly include you getting amnesia about the last ten or twelve hours.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding, fine with that—such a pretty woman, ponytail bobbing. Nothing else bad today was going to happen to her, if I could help it. Big “if,” maybe.…

  When Shep Shepherd entered the cafeteria, pausing to hang up his fur-collared topcoat, he was uncharacteristically late—a good fifteen minutes. Bettie and I had been fifteen minutes early, so it felt longer.

  But I wasn’t surprised. First of all, I didn’t know how far he’d had to come—I assumed somewhere in Manhattan, because if it had been Washington, D.C., he’d have asked for a later meeting. No, he’d had things to do. To organize. Like get that cleanup crew going. Even for an organization man, that takes time.

  Yet there was nothing bedraggled about him, nothing to indicate he’d got a disturbing phone call that had drawn him from his comfortable bed just an hour and fifteen minutes ago. He looked clean-shaven and bright-eyed, if not quite bushy-tailed.

  His hat (a Dobbs, I’d guess) was light blue with a dark blue band that matched his suit, which was a Botany 500, both right out of my wardrobe. His button-down-collar shirt was white, his tie a muted red with white stripes. My suit—the tailored charcoal number that concealed the nine-millimeter—wasn’t as crisp and fresh-looking as his.

  I’d been up longer.

  Tucked under his arm was a fat, fastened manila envelope, which he flipped onto the table near where I’d set my hat. He nodded to Bettie, who quickly rose, smiling back nervously, taking her tray of eggs and such with her and heading across to another small table, the CIA security chief flashing her a friendly gap-toothed grin, but not overdoing it.

  He tossed his hat on the chair next to him. I did not rise and we skipped the hand-shaking ritual as he bent a bit to ask if I minded if he went through the line and got himself some breakfast before we got started. He hadn’t had a chance to catch a bite. I told him to go ahead.

  Around us, the place was fairly empty. The clientele lacked the Bohemian spirit of the predawn-a.m. Village, those who’d endured long nights of booze and art talk having by now stumbled into a bed or a cot or a corner. A few shabby-looking drunks were hunkered over coffee and sometimes a roll, with bleary pissholes-in-the-snow eyes, men not looking much like they were contemplating the bright possibilities of the new day that lay ahead.

  With a plate of biscuits and gravy, Shep returned and said in a Southern drawl much more understated than Bettie’s, “That’s a lovely gal you got there, Nate. You know, that’s a rarity, that kind of figure, the old-fashioned hourglass variety. But she’s got a pretty face, too.”

  “I’m glad you approve. She’s from Tennessee. You two can get together sometime and talk about how downhill things have gone since the slaves were freed.”

  His quick laugh was about what that remark deserved. “Nate, would you mind if we start with you givin’ me an account, in some detail, of your evening? As you see it, from when you arrived at the Statler—around two-thirty a.m., wasn’t it?”

  He ate his biscuits and gravy and I gave him all of it, leaving nothing out though identifying my client as Mrs. Frank Olson, with no mention of McCarthy. Biscuits and gravy are a sloppy dish, but he ate his with a certain grace, keeping some eye contact with me as I recounted the events. He’d nod now and then, to underscore that he was following.

  When I was done, he was done, and he touched his mouth with a paper napkin, rose, and went over to dump his dishes in a plastic tub abandoned by a bored busboy, then got himself some more coffee. Just as he came back, a waitress was freshening mine. About a third of my breakfast was left, but cold as a stone by now. Across the room, Bettie had finished hers, and sat turned away from us, looking out the window at a street coming alive as dawn turned into day.

  Shep and I had plenty of privacy—I’d taken the same rear table as our previous meeting—but the covering din of loud boasting musicians and writers and actors was absent. The handful of nondrunk patrons seemed to be shopkeepers who were having a quick breakfast before opening up. So our conversation was low-key, in volume if not content.

  “For this exchange to carry any weight,” he said with a lazy smile, getting out a pack of Chesterfields from a suit coat pocket, “we have to be honest with each other. So frankly, Nate, I don’t appreciate you failin’ to mention that your involvement with Frank Olson began with Senator McCarthy.”

  How much did he know?

  Probably everything. So I said fine, and told him that McCarthy had wanted me to check Olson out as a possible source for dirt on the Agency, for an upcoming Senate investigation he hoped to mount; but that the incident at Deep Creek Lake had sent me in another direction, which was to help Alice Olson.

  “What about Alice Olson, Shep? What am I to tell her?”

  He had long since lighted up the Chesterfield, and had offered me one, too, which I declined, any combat mood having passed. An hour ago, I’d have grabbed for it.

  He said, cool but with an edge, “You’re not to tell Alice Olson anything. You’re to stay away from the woman. Don’t go to the funeral, either.”

  “Christ, man, she hired me to—”

  “Oh, you’ll call her, later today … but no mention of the Statler and th
e events that ensued. She’s not to find out anything more about Deep Creek Lake than she already knows, especially the LSD-25 in her husband’s after-dinner drink. Nate, that is strictly classified. Just give her your condolences and tell her you’re sorry to have disappointed her.” One eyebrow rose and the gap-toothed grin flashed. “Surely, you’ve disappointed women before, Nate.”

  “Amused by all this, are you?”

  His expression turned somber. “Sorry. No offense meant, my friend. If you view all of this as a tragedy, I can certainly understand and commiserate.”

  He glanced at his Rolex.

  His chin went up and he said, “In just a few minutes, Colonel Ruwet—Dr. Olson’s immediate superior at Camp Detrick, with the family doctor along for support—will arrive at the Olson home and give Alice Olson the terrible news.”

  “What terrible news is that, Shep? You’re going to need a better story than saying her husband ran through a closed hotel room window at about thirty miles an hour—a speed he’d worked up to in the space of maybe twelve feet.”

  “There is,” Shep admitted, smoke seeping through the gap between front teeth, “some fine-tunin’ that needs doing. For now, all that Mrs. Olson will learn—and this is what the press will get—is that her husband jumped or fell from a tenth-floor window at his Manhattan hotel.”

  “The press will want more.”

  He gestured with an open hand. “Of course, and they’ll get the standard obituary material … and be told that Dr. Olson was in town to get medical treatment for his depression.”

  “You’ll just leave out the part where he gets slipped an LSD-25 mickey, and that the ‘shrink’ he went to was an allergist.”

  Shep twitched a smile, tapped some cigarette ash on the floor. “Leave the details to us,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “In fact, you need to leave it all to us. You’ll be leavin’ town as soon as possible.”

  I frowned. “You want me back in Chicago?”

  “No, and not in L.A., either, not where you have offices and are well known. Take a break, Nate. Go someplace sunny and warm, and vacation for a week or two on the government’s tab. Take the little doll along. Florida, maybe. She’ll look swell in a bikini. By the way … do we need to worry about her, Nate?”

  I shook my head, kept my voice calm. “No. She’s confused about what happened anyway—I think they slipped her some of your LSD shit. I’ll handle her.”

  His voice had a sudden hardness. “Good. You’ll need to, because if she doesn’t behave, we’ll have to step in.”

  Emphatic now, I said, “There’ll be no need. What about the, uh, men I … left back there at your safe house? They have friends, families—they can’t just disappear, can they?”

  He gave me a facial shrug. “You might be surprised. Anyway, it’s our problem now, son. You’re out of it. In the clear.”

  I shifted in the hard chair. “So then I just skip, and stay ahead of the cops? But what’s my story when they catch up to me?”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “They won’t. Stay out of sight for a week, at least, and we’ll have everything tidied up. You’ll be the Little Man Who Wasn’t There—you’ve been him before, right?”

  I had.

  “Of course,” he said offhandedly, stubbing out his cigarette on the floor under his toe, “you may prefer to go to the police and tell them what really happened … includin’ the two men you killed last night, or should I say this morning?… And then maybe you’ll want to discuss with the authorities the woman and the three men you killed last April.… Or would you prefer that I continue to keep all of that mum?”

  I said nothing as I watched him light up a second cigarette.

  Then I said, “You can’t put me on the spot, Shep, without incriminating the Agency.”

  Now he grinned big and smoke flowed out of his mouth like steam. “And who do you suppose is in a better position to deal with that kind of contingency—a private investigator or the Central Intelligence Agency?”

  The pack of Chesterfields and his Zippo lighter were on the table between us. I helped myself to a smoke.

  I lighted up, drew deep, held it, then sighed it out. “What’s the score on the Statler guy? And what the hell was one of Costello’s boys doing there?”

  He shrugged. “Ex-Costello. My understandin’ is that he and another like him got fired by the esteemed Prime Minister of the Underworld earlier this year … after they fucked up a simple visit to a hotel room to fetch somebody or other into their boss’s presence. Vince—whose last name you don’t need, ’less you keep track of your kills in a little book or somethin’—is … was … a Lucchese soldier for some while. We have dealings with these people here and abroad, you see. They can be handy people to know.”

  Somebody dropped a dish and it shattered.

  I leaned closer. “You’re saying the Agency’s in bed with the mob?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘in bed.’” Another shrug, another smile. “Surely you’ve heard how Luciano helped us with the dockworker unions during the war, and how his people helped out with intelligence in Sicily. In our line of work, Nate, it pays to have friends in all sorts of places. As for the young man at the Statler, he’s ours. Was ours. We placed him there because we’ve used the hotel for meetings and such, and havin’ an inside man on staff’s desirable. He served us well at several other hotels the last few years, too, usually as a bellman. But Mr. Martin was obviously in over his head in this particular exercise.”

  If my eyes got any wider, they might fall out and roll around on the table. “I’ll keep that in mind, Shep—that in future, if I rub up against a hood or a bellboy, it might be one of your agents.”

  He leaned in, half-smiling. “Nate, you’re rather overstatin’ affairs. You see, the Agency has agents, certainly, and employees—Dr. Olson was one, as is Dr. Gottlieb. But we also have what we term ‘Special Employees,’ which is to say individuals who do undercover work for us in the course and context of their own separate employment … a security man at a hotel, say, or a federal narcotics agent, a doctor like Abramson, even a magician like Mulholland.”

  I grunted a laugh. “Handy people to know, like you said. Well, Shep, not to disappoint you, but I have no desire to join those ranks.”

  His eyebrows went up a little. “But Nate … you already have. Not a ‘Special Employee,’ no. What you are, Nate, is an asset. An asset is someone the Agency can call upon now and then for help. An asset is someone who can be relied upon for his discretion.”

  The back of my neck was prickling. “And if I don’t care to be an asset, then I’m … a liability?”

  He flicked ash on the floor again. “No one’s forcing you to work for us. You can walk out of here right now. You can go to the police or Mr. Hoover’s FBI and take your chances about those six people you killed in this city this year. All here in the Village. Pretty impressive box score, actually.”

  The thing on my face was only technically a smile. “Or I could always just tell you and your people to go fuck yourselves.”

  He nodded. “An option. A definite option. You can just keep it all to yourself and go about your business and we can go about ours, and possibly never the twain shall meet.” Coldness came back into his voice. “Or maybe two years from today, somebody will hand you a drink with something lethal in it that Doc Gottlieb whipped up … or four years from Sunday, someone may brush by you on the street and that little pinprick you barely feel is a delayed gift of something fatal that Frank Olson cooked up in his lab, between practical jokes.”

  I took more smoke in. Let it out.

  “You’ve made your point,” I admitted. “But if I’m on the team—even if I prefer to warm the bench—what about Frank Olson? Are you really going to try to pass him off as a suicide?”

  A big shrug this time, and more ashes on the floor. “Well, isn’t he? Wasn’t it suicidal of him—a scientist researching how security risks can be controlled or ‘brainwashed’ or disposed of—to approach Senator McCarthy?
And then to talk to you, with your association with Drew Pearson, one of the few journalists who wouldn’t be afraid to print anything he had on us.… Didn’t Frank Olson spend every day after that retreat tellin’ his superiors he wanted to walk away from his top-secret job? Sayin’ that he just wanted to disappear? Well, now he has. Into history. As a suicidal scientist who cracked up.”

  I sipped my coffee but it had grown as cold as Shep’s eyes and voice.

  I said, “Was that Chestnut Lodge chestnut something you and Gottlieb came up with? Saying that Olson first said he’d go willingly, but fought back when your minions came for him in the middle of the night? Or were Martin and Vince really sent there in the wee hours to simply fling Frank Olson out a high window?”

  “Does it matter?” His laugh had little humor in it. “Oh, there’s a Chestnut Lodge all right, but Frank Olson knew it wasn’t as benign as it sounded, because he knew of security risks who’d been sent there—for shock treatment, chemical therapy, even lobotomies.”

  My hands were fists. “What really happened, Shep?”

  “Well, him bein’ waked up by men who arrive unannounced to haul him off to Chestnut Lodge? And him fightin’ them, not wantin’ to make that trip? Why, that makes all the sense in the world. But then so does just throwin’ him out a window—Agency’s better off with him dead, after all.”

  “Shep—what … really … happened?”

  “You choose, Nate. First way’s manslaughter, second’s murder. Either way, you killed the two men responsible, so whatever makes you warm at night, you just go with that.”

  “You’re saying you don’t know.”

  “I’m sayin’ that’s all you get.”

  “What about Gottlieb’s man Lashbrook?”

  “What about him?”

  “He just sat back and watched this happen?”

  A one-shoulder shrug. “Probably didn’t watch. Probably tucked himself away in that bathroom and waited it out—whichever way it happened. You want more, Nate? I’m not givin’ it to you. We’re finished on this subject.”