“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,
