ask me to make decisions that were completely within his competence. It got burdensome, Nate. I don’t have time to be Secretary of Defense. And that’s why I asked Jim to resign.”
“I see.”
“No offense, Nate, but I doubt you do. Everybody thinks I’m one tough old crusty son of a bitch, but I’m a softy, really I am, hate like hell to fire anybody; talented people giving their lives over to government service, goddamnit, they deserve better. And with that cocksucker Winchell, and that S.O.B. Pearson, blackening Jim’s name, shit! I really hate this, Nate, I really do. To dismiss Jim while he’s under fire …”
He dropped his fork, shook his head. His jaw tightened; his face reddened.
“No fucking columnist tells me who to hire or fire as members of my cabinet or my staff. I name them myself, goddamnit, and when it’s time for them to move on, I do the moving-nobody else.”
My lobster arrived, the meat removed from the shell. Timidly I began to eat it.
“Good?” Truman asked. He poured me a glass of water.
“Delicious.”
He took another buttery bite of his own lobster, then said, “Nate, you may hear things about me wanting to shove Jim out to make room for Louis Johnson, who worked so hard on my whistle-stop campaign; but it’s horseshit. Jim’s gone toe to toe with me more times than any other member of my cabinet-over Palestine, over civilian control of the A-bomb, and lately he didn’t think a measly fifteen billion dollars, a fucking third of the federal budget, mind you, would be enough to keep the military in bullets and khaki. I would have every right to fire him over any one of those issues, Nate, but a man who won’t listen to intelligent, informed opinions contrary to his own has no business being president.” He sighed. “This is strictly a health matter.”
“I understand, sir-really I do.”
“I believe you do, Nate, I believe you do. Jim’s weary, he’s troubled. He’s worked himself into a frazzled state of mind where he’s imagining things, like some poor son of a bitch in the desert crawling toward a water hole that isn’t there, or some pitiful bastard with the d.t.’s trying to round up a buncha pink elephants. Will you help me, Nate?”
I blinked. “Help you how, sir?”
“You’re working for him. He trusts you. He’s hired you to find out who’s …” Truman laughed humorlessly. “… trying to, Jesus H. Christ, kill him. I want you to stay close to him. If he worsens, if leaving office does not remedy his wearied state, if full collapse ensues … I need to know immediately.”
“What will you do in that case, sir?”
“We will help him. I don’t give a damn if Pearson and Winchell make a scandal out of it-Truman’s Secretary of Defense goes bughouse! Well fuck them and the newspapers and radio stations they’re in bed with. We need to help Jim, and protect the interests of this great country.”
He was staring at me now, with those intense gray-hazel eyes, large behind the thick lenses; he was waiting for my response.
So I gave it to him: “Whatever you need, sir.”
“Now I won’t insult you by offering you money.”
I risked a smile. “I don’t insult all that easily.”
He chuckled. “Well, there’s no money in it for you, just the same. Just the satisfaction of helping your country, and knowing you have a friend in the White House … for a few more years, anyway.”
“That could come in handy.”
“Eat your lobster, Nate, ’fore it gets cold. What are you drinking?”
“I wouldn’t mind a rum and Coke …”
“Boy! Rum and Coke for my friend, here! … You know, Nate, they’re always yelling to me from crowds, ‘Give ’em hell, Harry! Give ’em hell.’”
“Yes, sir, I’ve heard of that.”
“Well this time, we’ll give ’em Heller.”
And he winked at me, and poured himself some Old Fitzgerald.
5
A stairway from 14th and H streets led up to the Casino Royal, which was not, strictly speaking, a casino at all: there were illegal gambling joints within the D.C. environs, but this wasn’t one of them. It was instead one of Washington’s two principal nightclubs (the Lotus being the other) and-with its prom-night glitter, popular prices and endless dance floor-a poor excuse for a Chicagoan’s Chez Paree or a New Yorker’s El Morocco.
Still reeling from the surrealistic experience of eating lobster with Harry Truman, I had been dropped off at the Ambassador Hotel by Frank Wilson, who’d handed me a slip of paper with both his and Chief Baughman’s numbers, “should anything interesting develop.” It was barely after ten p.m., but exhilaration and exhaustion were fighting within me, and exhaustion was winning. Cool sheets and a soft pillow awaited….
But so did another slip of paper, at the front desk, a handwritten note left in my mailbox, reading: “I’ll be at the Casino Royal until midnight. Please come if you want the real lowdown. We have mutual friends-F.S. and the late Ben S., among others. Teddy K.”
I had no idea who “Teddy K.” was, but F.S. was a certain boy singer I’d done a few jobs for, at the request of friends of his in Chicago, and “the late Ben S.” was Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who I’d worked for in the early days of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Sinatra was indeed a friend, as had been Siegel, though in both instances I’d sometimes wished otherwise.
Having no idea how I was supposed to identify Teddy K., I swam the Casino Royal’s sea of tourists, navigating through a fog of cigarette smoke, searching for an empty table along the periphery of the packed dance floor, where couples were swaying to “On a Slow Boat to China.”
“Maybe that’s the boat that brought Dick Lamm over,” a thick, middle-European-accented baritone voice beside me said.
I glanced at the stocky, bucket-headed figure at my shoulder. In his late thirties, spiffy in a three-button light blue glen plaid sportcoat and a maroon tie with big blue amoebas swimming on it, the guy had a blond thatch of Brylcreemed hair, quizzical eyebrows high above small sharp dark eyes, a sweet-potato nose and narrow lips in a fleshy, friendly face.
“Who’s Dick Lamm?” I asked.
“Chinaman that runs the joint. Used to run the China Doll in New York. He’s got uptown manners, but, brother, he sure knows what the hicks want.”
“Really.”
He extended a blunt-fingered, almost pudgy right hand. “I’m Theodor Kollek, but everybody calls me Teddy. You prefer Nate or Nathan?”
I shook hands with him, warily; he looked like a very successful bookie. “Nate’s just fine, Teddy. Who the hell are you?”
Kollek grinned and his eyes disappeared into pouchy slits. “Nate, you ain’t had time to absorb who Dick Lamm is, much less Teddy Kollek.” He gestured rather grandly. “They’re savin’ a back booth for us.”
I followed him. An announcer was shooing the crowd off the dance floor; just as we were settling in our booth, a thin spotlight cut through the cigarette smoke to fix upon a small stage with a six-piece band. A drumroll and an announcer introduced Jack “Jive” Shaffer, the plump, bald, tomato-faced comedian/bandleader, who buck- and-winged his way to the microphone in a blur of pink and green apparel, rhinestone cuff links catching the light, both they and Jack winking at the applauding crowd.
That got a pretty good laugh, considering how lame it was, and Kollek said, “Kind of sad, what passes for entertainment in this town, ain’t it?”
His speech had an educated, even cultured tone that told me the scattering of ain’ts were an affectation.
“Of course, I’m spoiled,” Kollek said, lighting up a cigar with a hand laden with gold and diamond rings. “Till a
