“And please,” I said, “leave the little hat on….”
“Where shall we …?”
“How about one of these chairs….”
“Oh my,” she said, a little while later, breathing hard, still straddling my lap; me, I was ready for another long nap. “Nathan, that … that was out of this world….”
“I bet you say that to all the Martians.”
My car was, as promised, in the garage across the alley. My nurse-her skirt only slightly wrinkled-waved goodbye from the kitchen doorway and, wearing her late husband’s clothes, I waved back at her, like she was the little woman and, like a good breadwinner-even if I was unshaven and lacked a lunch pail-I might have been heading for work.
Not preparing to hide my sorry ass.
17
One fine Saturday morning in late May, the District of Columbia alive with dogwoods and cherry trees in full blossom, I found myself being chauffeured all about the capital city by a certain skinflint millionaire journalist. During the ride, I was reminded that-despite this city’s bewilderingly laid-out street system-the white obelisk of the Washington Monument’s position against the washed-out blue of the horizon always served as a massive reference point. Which came in handy, because my chauffeur wasn’t taking me anywhere in particular.
We were in the black Buick convertible, which served as Drew Pearson’s second office; it was pretty spiffy, right down to its red-leather seats, and the license plate number was a simple 13-the columnist’s lucky number.
“I was getting worried,” Pearson said, his smile slitting his eyes and sending the well-waxed tips of his mustache skyward, “when your man in Chicago … Sapperstein, is it? … said you’d be ‘incommunicado for an unspecified interval.’”
“That sounded better than ‘holed-up someplace,’” I said. “Hey, can’t we just park somewhere and talk?”
Pearson was pretty spiffy himself, wearing a gray homburg, dapperly angled and a shade darker than his striped tropical worsted suit, which was enlivened by a blue tie with a brown-and-yellow bird motif. How he kept his hat on, in the wind his rapid driving stirred up, was a mystery this Sherlock Holmes couldn’t solve-glue? Chewing gum? Masking tape?
“Pull over and talk, and be the prey of some lip-reader?” Pearson asked archly, bulleting through a yellow light. “I don’t think so, Nathan…. Besides, driving relaxes me. Helps me think.”
Though I was on the clock, it was Saturday and I was casually dressed, a brown-and-white checked sportjacket over a ribbed sky-blue T-shirt. My hat, a light brown Southwest Flight, was at my feet, or it would’ve taken flight, southwest or otherwise.
“Yeah, it helps me think, too,” I said. “Like, I think you’re gonna kill us both if you don’t slow down.”
I had stayed underground-in Vegas, with an old girlfriend of mine, who worked in the chorus line at the Flamingo-for three weeks. Checking in on a daily basis with my office, I learned that no inquiries about my whereabouts had come from government sources, or any suspicious sources, for that matter; the office was swept for electronic bugs and phone taps every second day-clean as a freshly bathed baby’s butt. Lou Sapperstein-my former boss on the pickpocket detail, and current employee, a turnabout I never ceased to relish-had determined to his satisfaction that neither the office nor my apartment was under any kind of surveillance.
And, every day when I phoned in, I asked if we’d heard from Maria Selff about where she’d been transferred-and every day, no word from her. I had Lou, pretending to be doing a credit check, call the Walker Air Base hospital, where he learned the nurse had indeed been transferred but requests for her whereabouts would have to go “through channels.”
I wasn’t too concerned about this; Maria was probably distancing herself from me, in case she and her movements (and even calls) were being monitored. When the time was right, I figured, I would hear from her. Our relationship had been brief, yes, but also intense; and something genuine had passed between us, besides bodily fluids.
With Sapperstein’s reassurances that the coast was clear-or anyway, the lakeshore-I’d returned to the A-1 offices in Chicago’s Loop. There, somewhat unnervingly, the first phone call for me on my first day back was from a government source, out of Washington, D.C., no less: it was one of Forrestal’s Bethesda shrinks, Dr. Bernstein, who had added a second reason for me making the trip, beyond reporting in to Pearson.
“You will be pleased to know,” the shrink said, the middle-European accent giving his voice a lilt, “that your former client is doing very well.”
“That is good news.”
“Is there a possibility you’ll be coming to D.C., soon? Mr. Forrestal would be comforted by a visit from you.”
“Well, I do have pending business. In fact, I should be there next week.”
“Good. Excellent. Call me when you get to town, and I’ll see to it that your name is on the visitors list.”
And now, five days later, I was back in our nation’s capital, with our nation’s most feared commentator, aimlessly driving the beautifully paved web of streets in the midst of which the White House sat like a lovely spider. An appointment had been arranged by Dr. Bernstein and I would see Jim Forrestal in his tower room at Bethesda this afternoon, at two.
Pearson had similarly upbeat news about Forrestal to report. “You’ll be pleased to hear that your
“Would you prefer he stay sick in the head?”
A sneer lifted one waxed mustache tip. “I believe James Forrestal’s been sick in his soul a lot longer. I want him to stay out of politics, but rumor is Truman’s planning to give him some important government post.”
I snorted a laugh, leaning an arm where the window was rolled down. “I doubt that, not straight outa the loony bin. Why don’t you lay off the guy, anyway? Jesus, it’s fuckin’ overkill.”
This only amused my dapper chauffeur, who was guiding the Buick around Dupont Circle, as if rounding a curve at the Indy 500. “Still singing that sad song, Nathan? Overkill’s a necessity in my business; the public has a notoriously short memory-repetition’s the only cure. Anyway, I’m the one you should feel sorry for-I’m the one getting the hate mail.”
“Gee, I wonder why. You really know how to please a crowd, Drew-beating on a guy when he’s down.”
Soon we were on Connecticut Avenue, with traffic heavy enough to keep Pearson’s speedometer within reason, in the thick of older buildings and homes converted to charming and probably expensive specialty shops-art dealers, antique stores, boutiques, high-class markets and bookstores.
Just north of M Street, we were paused in backed-up traffic next to a bronze statue in the middle of a grassy dividing triangle, a majestic male figure in academic robes seated in a chair with a book in one hand and a pigeon on his head (the latter not a part of the statue proper).
“Longfellow,” Pearson said, noticing me eyeballing the striking statue. “The poet.”
“Didn’t figure him for a soldier or a politician, not that the pigeons care, either way. Reminds me! Pull over there, would you?”
“Why?”
I was pointing to an open parking space in front of Jefferson Place Books. “I need to pick something up.”
“All right, but make it quick-I have a luncheon date, at the Cosmos Club, with Averell Harriman, and you have less than an hour to make your report.”
Before long I was back in the convertible, my purchase in a plain brown paper bag.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
