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
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
“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.
