The day after he reluctantly stepped aside as Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal was honored by a rare special meeting of the House Armed Services Committee, at which he was lavishly praised by committee chairman Carl Vinson and ranking minority member Representative Dewey Short. Forrestal was presented with a silver bowl, “engraved with our names in testimony of our regards-a regard also indelibly inscribed in our hearts.”
The flustered Forrestal of the day before, struck dumb by surprise and emotion, was replaced by a prepared, dignified statesman who delivered several brief, gracious speeches.
Also attending-and celebrating Forrestal’s accomplishments in public life-were his successor, Louis Johnson; Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall; Secretary of the Navy John Sullivan; and Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington. The press made much of the kind words the latter said about Forrestal, and vice versa, as the onetime friends had become bitter adversaries over matters of budget, among other things, with the Air Force Secretary’s disloyal, harsh criticism of Forrestal in a notorious New York Times interview almost getting Symington fired.
The warmly positive press coverage of Jim Forrestal and the honors bestowed him on that Tuesday morning held no hint of the bizarre, even tragic turn the rest of that day would take.
My appointment with Forrestal, to report on my investigation, was in the afternoon, three o’clock, and shortly before that time I rang the bell of Morris House on Prospect Street. A light, pleasant breeze ruffled my lightweight tropical suit and my hat was in my hand when the Filipino houseboy, Remy, again wild-eyed, answered; but this time Remy was not annoyed, but visibly upset.
“Mr. Heller,” Remy said. “So glad to see you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Please come in.”
I did. The house was dark-every light was off, all the blinds drawn.
“’Cept for cook, I am alone of staff,” Remy said. “Mrs. Forrestal give Miss Brown, Mr. Campbell week off. Because of Florida trip.”
Stanley Campbell was Forrestal’s butler/valet, a trusted right-hand man.
Turning my hat in my hands, I asked, “Where’s your boss?”
Remy pointed a tremulous finger, toward the living room. There, seated in the same easy chair Jo Forrestal had curled up in yesterday, sat Forrestal, but on the edge of it, rigidly erect. He was wearing his hat, and looked small in his well-tailored gray suit, which was only a slightly darker gray than his complexion; he seemed even thinner and more haggard than he had in his golfing attire, collar hanging loosely from a creped neck. His hands were on his knees, his eyes staring straight ahead, unblinking. He might have been a statue; he might have been dead.
Before him on the coffee table was the engraved silver bowl.
Then I realized he was saying something-muttering-though the thin line of his mouth barely moved.
“Hello, Jim,” I said, taking off my hat, moving into the room.
Now I could hear him. “You’re a loyal fellow,” he was saying, with no inflection whatsoever. “You’re a loyal fellow.”
I pulled over a fan-back chair and sat opposite him, with the coffee table between us; his eyes showed no sign of registering my presence.
“We had an appointment, Jim,” I said. “I need to make my report. I think you’re going to be pleased.”
He blinked, once, and now his eyes seemed to land on me, instead of look right through me.
But he still said only, “You’re a loyal fellow.”
Was he talking about me, or himself? Had he discovered my affiliation with Pearson, and was this a sort of shell-shocked sarcasm?
Remy was standing in the archway between the living room and the entry hall; he called out, “Mr. Forrestal! It’s Mr. Eberstadt again! He says you must come to phone.”
Forrestal’s head turned slowly on his neck, like a well-oiled moving part.
“No,” he said.
Then just as slowly, his head returned to its forward staring position.
“Just a second, Remy,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
The phone was on a stand in the hallway, but out of Forrestal’s earshot, so I was free to talk.
“This is Nate Heller, Mr. Eberstadt,” I said. Investment banker Eberstadt was one of my client’s oldest, dearest friends; I’d seen them playing golf together at Burning Tree, Saturday.
“You seem to know who I am,” he said, in a commanding baritone. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m an investigator Jim hired to see who was trying to kill him.”
“Oh, my God,” he groaned. “I hope by now you know the real nature of his problem.”
“I’d say I do. Right now he’s sitting in the living room with his hat on muttering about what a ‘loyal fellow’ he, or somebody, is.”
“What’s your appraisal of the immediate situation?”
“I’d say he’s about two inches away from falling off Catatonic Cliff.”
“Damnit.” A weary concern colored Eberstadt’s tone. “I got a similar report from Marx Leva, his assistant at the Pentagon. Seems James was fine at the ceremonies honoring him this morning, but when he returned to his office, he just sat and stared at the wall … with his hat on. I think it may have been that goddamn Symington’s fault.”
“Symington?”
“James was supposed to go back to the Pentagon, not to his old office, but another one that’s been set aside for him, so he can deal with the nice letters that’ve been coming in from all over. Symington apparently went out of his way to give Jim a ride back over there.”
“That sounds like a friendly gesture to me.”
“I don’t think it was. Leva said Symington told Jim, emphatically, ‘There’s something we must talk about.’”
“So what did they talk about?”
“Leva doesn’t know; Symington insisted on privacy. But James was a different man after that ride-Symington must have said something that shattered whatever remained of James’ defenses, that double-dealing son of a bitch.”
A crazy thought flitted through my mind: Symington, as the Secretary of the Air Force, would surely know about the Roswell incident. Could that “something important” he had to discuss with Forrestal have had to do with a recovered flying saucer and the bodies of little green men?
And, having had that thought, who the hell was I to question Jim Forrestal’s sanity?
Eberstadt was saying, “I’m really worried about James. Can you stay there with him?”
“Sure.”
“You know, this assistant of his, Leva, called me over at the Capitol, had me paged, really concerned. After sitting there for an hour or so, like you’re witnessing-just staring and muttering, ‘You’re a loyal fellow’-James finally asked Leva to call for his car; he wanted to go home. And that was a problem.”
“Why?”
“James doesn’t have an official car, anymore. It’s Louis Johnson’s now; and Leva was afraid if he called a cab, it might upset his boss. So I got Vannevar Bush to send over his chauffeured limo.”
“Who?”
“Bush, Vannevar Bush.”
Christ-Bush was one of the Majestic Twelve! That atom bomb scientist Pearson mentioned who, with Forrestal, was part of the top-secret research and development group supposedly investigating the “flying saucer problem.”
Maybe Jo Forrestal was right: maybe paranoia was catching.
“I can’t get away for half an hour, at the least,” Eberstadt was saying. “Will you stay with James, till I can get there?”
“Won’t let him out of my sight.”
“Good man.”
I hung up, went back into the living room, where Forrestal’s posture hadn’t changed.
“Take off your hat and stay awhile,” I said, gently.
He gazed at me, gray-blue eyes in a gray face; there was something lizardlike about it.
Gently, I removed his hat, tossed it next to mine on the coffee table. Then I sat opposite him and said, “I need to make my report. Jim, are you listening?”
He blinked, several times. “Nate Heller,” he said, obviously noticing my presence for the first time.
“Hi, Jim. All right with you if I let you know what I came up with?”
His nod was barely perceptible.
“You’re aware that we did a full sweep of the house for electronic surveillance, yesterday? You got the note I left to that effect?”
Another barely perceptible nod.
“Well, I used the best men in the city; they didn’t find a damn thing. On the other hand, I have learned that Pearson was bribing one of your household staff-Della Brown-for any tidbits of personal gossip; I told Jo yesterday, and, obviously, recommended firing the girl.”
He said nothing; but at least he did seem to be listening.
“Now, I’ve learned that the Secret Service has been keeping your home under surveillance. That’s not because they wish you ill, quite the opposite. They learned of your fears that someone was trying to ‘get’ you, and-much as I have-they investigated.”
His eyes left my face, dropping to the silver bowl, where he could stare at his reflection, and it could stare back at him.
“So, you were right, Jim-you were being watched; and your suspicions about Pearson were, to some degree, well placed. But I’ve found no indication at all that your life is in any danger.”
The single line of his mouth twitched in something that was almost a smile. “Really?” He rose, as fluidly and slowly as Bela Lugosi waking up in his coffin. He crooked his finger. “Come with me.”
I followed him to the window across the room; he parted a blind and said, softly, “On the corner.”
On that same bench I’d inhabited not so long ago, in front of the weathered gray-brick colonial house with the tours and the coffee shop, sat a couple of pasty-faced kids in their early twenties wearing colorful but soiled T-shirts and dingy jeans and tennis shoes. They were either out of work or avoiding it, and when the next cop came along, they’d no doubt be told to shove off.
“Russians,” Forrestal said ominously, and let the blinds snap shut.
“I kind of doubt that, Jim,” I said.
His head swiveled and he fixed narrowed eyes upon me. “They were waiting for me when I got home.”
The doorbell rang and he jumped; but hell, so did I.
The houseboy, moving quickly, went to answer it. Couldn’t be Eberstadt already, could it?
“I know you mean well, Nate,” Forrestal said quietly, taking me by the arm, “but you haven’t found the truth. They’re after me, they’re still after me.”
“Who?”
“All of them. All of those I’ve opposed.”
“A conspiracy, you mean?”
He squeezed my arm. “Exactly. Commies, Russians, Jews, as well as certain … parties in the White House. That’s why they’ve fooled you: you’re looking for one villain. But it’s all of them-in concert.”
Maybe I could start my new investigation at the Water Gate band shell.
“They’ve united against me,” he said, “their common enemy.”
I could hear the muffled sound of the houseboy dealing with somebody at the front door.
Still latching onto my arm, Forrestal whispered into my ear: “They’re probably in the house right now, some of them.”
“They’re not in this house, Jim.”
“Keep your voice down. Don’t you know this house is wired?”
“It’s not wired. My men went over it, I told you, stem to stern.”
His eyes tightened and so did his grip on my arm. “If you don’t lower your voice, I’ll be forced to ask you to leave.”
Remy stood nervously at the archway. “There is a man want to see him.”
The houseboy was addressing me, pointing to his boss.
Forrestal clutched my arm, desperately. “I won’t see anyone.”
I extricated myself, gently, saying, “I’ll talk to him, Jim. Just take it easy.”
The man on the front stoop was short, plump, with a receding hairline, wire-frame glasses, and though it was a cool afternoon, sweat beaded his round face. He wore a crumpled-looking brown off-the-rack business suit and a blue-and-red tie and carried a battered briefcase.
“I need to see Mr. Forrestal,” the man said in a thick Southern accent.
“That’s impossible right now.”
“I’m Phil Dingel-from North Carolina?”
Oh, well, hell-that changed everything.
“Look, sir,” I said. “Mr. Forrestal is not available.”
“But he knows me-I was an alternate delegate from North Carolina … at the convention in ’48? And Mr. Forrestal promised he’d throw his support my way for my appointment to postmaster, back home.”
“You want to be postmaster, huh?”
“Why, yes!”
“Then write him a letter,” I said, and shut the door in his face. Fucking political worm.
In the living room, Forrestal was watching at the window, blinds again parted; his face was clenched. “See! You see, Nate?”
I took a look. The plump would-be Podunk postmaster, who had worse timing than a pregnant teenager waiting for her period, had stopped to talk to the two unshaven vagrant kids on the bench.
“You see, he’s one of them,” Forrestal said excitedly. “They’re everywhere!”
“Let me check into it,” I said easily.
Soon I was cutting across the street, approaching the boys on the bench. They were both skinny with greasy hair, bad complexions, and worse attitudes.
“What did the fat guy want?” I asked.
The skinnier of the two sneered. “What’s it to ya, pops?”
Knocking their heads together might have agitated Forrestal, so I got out my wallet and flashed my Illinois private investigator’s badge; that usually works.
They both sat up straight, like kids reprimanded in school, and the other one said, “Guy just wanted to know if this was a bus stop. I said no, but he could catch a trolley over that way.”
I still had my wallet out. “How would you fellas like to earn a five-spot each?”
The skinnier one sneered. “Who do we have to kill?”
His pal laughed at that; they didn’t know how funny it really was.
I said, “Just find another bench to park your butts on.”
They looked at each other and shrugged; the skinnier one said, “Okay, pops.”
So I peeled off a couple of fives, and the kids got lost. Strange how cheap Russian agents could be bought off, these days.
When I went inside, Forrestal was not in sight, but I could hear a racket upstairs. The houseboy was at the foot of the stairs, wringing his hands.
“What’s going on, Remy?”
“Mr. Forrestal, he looking.” And he gestured to an open closet door near the entrance, where coats and hats, among other things, had been scattered about.
“Looking for what?”
“Somebody hiding.”
I found him in his own bedroom, a warmly masculine chamber of walnut furnishings, wood-tone floral Axminster carpet, dark woodwork and cream-painted plaster. He was searching in the dark. This was obviously a room that had been fastidiously shipshape, even down to the neatly stacked half a dozen formidable volumes on the nightstand-light reading like Nietzsche, Proust and Kafka-or anyway it had been until its occupant had scoured the walk-in closet, leaving the door open, clothes and other belongings strewn as if by a careless burglar. Right now he was on his hands and knees, looking under his double bed.
It had come to this: Forrestal literally looking for Reds under his bed. Not to mention Jews and traitorous White House types.
“There’s no one under there, Jim,” I said, and helped him to his feet. His body was like a bag of loose bones.
“We have to search the whole house. I have more closets to search!”
There was no stopping him, so I didn’t try to. He emptied every closet in the house; he ransacked the basement and the garage, and I accompanied him. Finally the effort began to wear at him, and the frail former Secretary of Defense stumbled back into his living room and into that same chair, with the silver bowl before him, gleaming, empty.
“They were here,” he said. “They must have heard me come in. Got out the back way.”
I sat down again. “Jim, I think you ought to get out of here. Your wife’s down in Florida. You said you have friends down there waiting for you. Relax … unwind.”
“You don’t understand how insidious they are. I’ve been chosen; I’ve been marked.”
“Chosen? Marked, how?”
“I’m not the number one target-just the first to be liquidated. Because I tried to alert America to the menace.”
“What menace, Jim?”
He was trembling all over. “The Kremlin plans to liquidate all our top leadership in Washington; the Reds are planning an invasion as we speak. The first wave, the secret wave, is already here!”
I had to ask; at this point, what would it hurt to ask?
“Jim … what about Roswell, Jim?”
His eyes widened and flickered, as if I’d lighted a flame in them. “How do you know about Roswell?”
“You mentioned it,” I lied.
“… I’ve done a bad thing.” He shook his head. “I’ve done a bad thing. Sometimes you do bad things, to try to do right, don’t you?”
“Sure, sure …”
The flames in his eyes flickered out. He sighed and his body seemed to deflate. His face had a flatness, like a frying pan, his wide eyes like fried eggs clinging to it. “Do you know what it’s like?”
“What what is like?”
“Being a complete failure? Failing your family, your country, yourself?”
“Stop it, now.”
“My life’s a wreck. A shambles. I know terrible things; I did terrible things, allowed terrible things to be done…. Have you ever considered suicide, Nate? If there was a button I could push, and end my life, I’d push it. Why should I give them the satisfaction of ending my life, when I can do it myself?”
“You’ve been through the mill, Jim. Things look this way because of your overwork. You’re exhausted …”
He shrugged, just a little. “That’s probably because I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in months. My teeth ache … my intestines are all out of whack … all my normal bodily functions are breaking down. I’m not even a man, anymore. Do you have your gun?”
His wife had asked me the same thing, only she’d been joking, and wanted Pearson’s hide; I knew, with cold certainty, that if I handed this man a gun, he’d shoot himself, right in front of me.
The doorbell rang.
Remy ran for it, and thank God, it was Eberstadt. Relief flooded through me, as I went to meet him.
“You’re Heller?” he asked, stepping inside, a tall, well-tailored, square-jawed handsome man of around sixty with the look of a former athlete and hair the color of burnished steel.
I said I was Heller, and we shook hands, and I took him aside and whispered, “He’s talking suicide. I’m out of my depth here, Mr. Eberstadt. He’s your friend-help him.”
He nodded gravely, said, “Thanks for standing watch.”
From where we stood, we could see into the living room where Forrestal sat, having again lapsed into a sort of trance, now holding the empty bowl in his hands, staring into it.
“Where’s his valet?” Eberstadt asked.
“Has the week off, ’cause of the Florida trip. The houseboy’s around somewhere.”
“Would you find Remy and have him pack a bag for James, some sports clothes and the like, maybe round up his golf clubs. I’m going to get him to Hobe Sound, where he can rest in the sunshine, in the company of close friends.”
I shook my head. “Anything you say, but I think he’s a little past the vacation stage. He needs medication, and he needs supervision-away from sharp objects.”
“I appreciate your advice, but please do as I ask.”
“Sure,” I said, and I found Remy in his quarters and sent him on his mission. Then I slipped into Forrestal’s study, got out my wallet, found the slip of paper I’d been given by Frank J. Wilson and used the phone.
“Chief Baughman,” I said to the head of the Secret Service, “you wanted me to call if something interesting developed?”