Anderson shrugged. “I don’t admire some of what he stands for.”
“Like what?”
“The boss calls him ‘the archrepresentative of Wall Street Imperialism.’”
“I thought we were talking about your opinion.”
He flinched a frown. “Hey, I’m like you-I’m just a paid investigator.”
“Yeah, but you spend Sunday in church. I’m more likely to sleep in with a chorus girl. What’s so dangerous about Forrestal?”
Anderson ticked the topics off on his fingers. “His anti-Israel stance, his ties to Big Oil, his anti-Russian sentiments … hell, his investment firm practically bankrolled Hitler!”
“Yeah, if you believe what you read in your boss’s column.”
Anderson laughed once, harshly. “What, are you my conscience, Nate? From what I hear about you, you make an unlikely Jiminy Cricket.”
“I’m not your conscience, Jack. I’m just the guy who tailed that cute colored maid of Forrestal’s to this bar and saw an information/money exchange transpire.”
The blood drained from his face.
“What, did you think I just happened into this place, at this moment? Shit, you’re not young-you’re a fuckin’ fetus.”
Suddenly Anderson seemed to be tasting something foul. He said, “You know I can’t work out anything financial with you without the boss’s approval.”
“I don’t remember asking for money.”
His fingers drummed on the spiral notepad. “You gonna tell Forrestal about his maid?”
“Maybe not. Why would I want a good-looking kid like that to get in trouble, lose her job or something?”
Anderson smiled again but it was nasty, this time. “Well, then, why don’t you negotiate with her, directly?”
I laughed. “Don’t believe everything Pearson tells you about me. He’s still pissed off that I squeezed a fair wage out of him.”
“What
“I want you to tell your boss I’m in town-at the Ambassador. Have Drew call me there, so I can set up a meet with him.”
His eyebrows were up. “So you can sell out Forrestal?”
“Now you’re
From the look on his face, you’d think I’d passed gas. Hell, maybe I had. Anyway, he didn’t say anything as I got up, deposited my empty Coke glass on the bar, tossed Tom the bartender a half dollar, and trundled out of the place.
Out on the street, I pondered whether to take a cab to my car in that M Street parking garage, or just hoof it; I was fairly well beat, though feeling pretty good about myself. I had discovered the leak on Forrestal’s staff and found where it led-no murder plot, just good old-fashioned betrayal of your employer mixed in with sleazy yellow journalism, All-American stuff.
And I had determined, to my satisfaction, that neither Uncle Sam nor the Zionists, not even the Commies, were staking out Forrestal’s place, for purposes of assassination or anything else, for that matter.
I was just raising my arm to hail a cab when the finger tapped my shoulder.
Thinking it was probably Anderson, I turned and started to say something wise, but nothing wise or otherwise got said: I was staring into the coldly businesslike mug of a guy perhaps thirty in a nicely tailored dark gray suit with a dark blue tie; his hair was black and trimmed military short, and he had a blandly handsome face with hard dark eyes.
“Secret Service, Mr. Heller,” he said, holding up his wallet with five-pointed silver star and photo-credentials for my perusal. “If you’ll just come with me, please.”
He was whispering, but there was nothing soft about the grip on my arm as he shoved me past the yawning door into the backseat of the black sedan that waited at the curb to take me away.
Because, after all, that’s how it’s done in D.C.
3
As we rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue at night, the White House loomed to our right, bathed in spotlights like a theater hosting a premiere, only the star here was the structure. Was the Executive Mansion where these Secret Service boys were taking me? Perhaps the President of the United States wanted to consult the President of the A-1 Detective Agency; you know, maybe Harry wanted me to see if Bess was shacked up at the Rockville Shady Rest with Ike or MacArthur or somebody.
My escorts hadn’t bothered sharing any information with me. They sat in the front and I sat in the back, like an obnoxious kid getting his questions ignored by the grown-ups-
But our destination proved to be just past the White House, flanking it on the east, at Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street: a gray granite Greek Revival-style structure that rose five stories and consumed two blocks. I’d been here before-the Treasury Building-on various visits to Elmer Irey and Frank J. Wilson, the Capone case IRS agents I’d seen Glenn Ford playing a composite of, this afternoon. Both Irey and Wilson had risen in the government, Irey eventually overseeing the Treasury Department’s various law-enforcement agencies, including the Secret Service, of which Wilson had become chief in 1936.
Despite a few adversarial situations, the two men were friendly acquaintances of mine, but I couldn’t hope to lean on them tonight: Irey had passed away last year, and Wilson recently retired.
My Secret Service escorts left the black sedan in an outdoor, “United States Government Employees Only” lot and ushered me up a broad flight of stone steps to a colonnaded portico, then through the high-ceilinged, imposing West Lobby; my shoes had surveillance-suitable rubber soles, but the shiny Secret Service shoes created footsteps that echoed off the marble floor like small-arms fire. We moved past an exhibit called “Know Your Money,” featuring methods of detecting counterfeit bills and forged checks, and onto an elevator that stopped at the fourth floor.
They deposited me in a small, rectangular conference room that seemed designed around a small, rectangular dark-varnished oak conference table where I was directed to take the nearest of half a dozen wooden chairs. The walls were a smooth, cream-color plaster occasionally broken up by framed exhibits of damaged money that Treasury experts had managed to identify despite (their prominent labels said) charring by fire, nibbling by mice or shredding by streetcar wheels. The dark-haired, dark-eyed agent who’d showed me his badge stood along a wall without leaning, arms folded, with the expression of a state trooper waiting for you to get your driver’s license out.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” I asked him.
“No,” he said.
Well, that was more than he’d said on the way over.
Down at the far end of the table, a single window, tall and narrow, was hidden by barely slitted-open venetian blinds, but behind them the window was open and a cool breeze rattled through, flapping the metal shutters like a stiff flag.
Ten or twelve minutes later, when the door opened and a lanky, thin-lipped, poker-faced guy about my age ambled in, the agent unfolded his arms and stood even more erect. Oddly, this new arrival-however much immediate respect he commanded from my chaperon-was not in suit and tie, but a blue-and-green Hawaiian-print sportshirt, brown slacks and brown sandals with socks; he looked more like Bing Crosby than a Secret Service
