Tom Lowe - The Black Bullet

“Hello, Mr. Ford. My name is Sean O’Brien.”

The door cracked open, a tarnished brass chain visible against the dark room. “What do you want?” The old man’s voice was gruff and strained at the same time.

“I want to ask you a couple of questions about an investigation.”

“What investigation?”

“May I come inside?”

“Show me your badge.”

“I don’t have a badge … PI. I do have a young man who’s being held hostage by some people who have nothing to lose by killing him. Please, can we talk?”

The door opened. “Come in.”

O’Brien walked into a home that smelled like fried eggs and dog food mingling with the odor of a carpet that hadn’t been cleaned in years. Brad Ford was tall, almost O’Brien’s height. Rail thin. Round shoulders. Uncombed white hair. Guarded eyes that squinted in the light entering the room. He looked like a man who’d slept through the last century and was abruptly awakened by a stranger who wanted to know the time.

“C’mon in the living room,” Ford said.

O’Brien followed as the old man led him to a small living room. He walked by a bar in the kitchen where an old, black lab slept on a cushion below. The bar had opened cans of sardines, beans and crackers. A tomato was sliced on a paper plate, a fly crawling across it. Oil paintings hung on every wall. O’Brien could see most of the paintings were signed by the same person. “Who did the paintings?” O’Brien asked.

“My wife, Nancy. She began painting when she turned sixty. She always took exception to any birthday with a zero in the second digit. She said when that happened, it was time for self-reflection, see where you were and where you wanted to be.”

“I heard that an artist mixes a little of his or her soul on the palette with the paint.”

Ford stared at a painting of an old windmill under the moonlight. “Yeah, she did … lot of her is in them.” He turned to O’Brien. “How can I help you?”

“I’m investigating a murder. It was a murder you investigated in 1945.”

Ford’s bushy left eyebrow cocked. His mouth turned down. “What murder?”

“Billy Lawson.” O’Brien watched every detail of the old man’s reaction.

Ford looked at the floor, memories firing and misfiring in his aged brain. He crossed his arms and grunted. He looked over O’Brien’s shoulder, his eyes clinging to one of his wife’s paintings, his thoughts like a stiff deck of cards that hadn’t been shuffled in sixty-seven years. He said slowly, “What about the killing?”

“You remember it?”

Ford nodded.

“What can you tell me about the night you found Billy Lawson?”

He sighed, the sound a release of tension more than air. “We got the call from his wife … can’t remember the lady’s name ….”

“Glenda.”

“Yes, that was it, Glenda. She called dispatch, said her husband had been shot. It was in a phone booth off A1A by a bait and tackle shop that’s been long gone. He was dead when I got there. I found his truck parked about three-quarters a mile north. Keys still in the ignition. Motor was off, but the engine was warm. Weren’t any signs of anybody either. We had no witnesses. No weapon was recovered, and as far as we could tell, that boy, Billy Lawson, didn’t have any enemies.”

“Glenda said she told you that Billy said he saw men, German sailors, burying something on the beach. Near or on Rattlesnake Island.”

“Yes, I remember. There was a nor’easter that blew through that night. We combed the place in the morning. Couldn’t find one print in the sand. Dug up lots of turtle nests looking for whatever Billy saw, but we found nothing.”

“How about the Navy base in Jacksonville, weren’t they alerted that there was a German sub off the coast?”

“It was called in. They sent out a couple of planes and scoured the coast from near the St. Augustine lighthouse to Ponce Inlet in the south. We heard that one of them thought he spotted a U-boat, dropped some depth charges. Next day the Navy said they couldn’t find a thing.”

“Was an autopsy done on Billy Lawson?”

“You’re talking 1945. They didn’t do autopsies unless they had no damn idea how somebody died. In this case, it was obvious. He died from a gunshot wound.”

“Why did your report indicate he was shot once when a post-mortem done after the body was exhumed today revealed Billy had been shot three times?”

Ford was silent; his nostrils flared slightly, the carotid artery jumping beneath the sagging turkey neck skin. “I didn’t have much of a choice in those days.”

“What do you mean?”

“The investigation wasn’t compromised … at least I don’t believe it was.”

“How could that be true when you lied on the report?”

“War was still going on. The FBI came in and took over the investigation. They found evidence that Billy was shot with a bullet, or bullets, from a nine millimeter. Probably a German Luger.” Ford paused, his mind drifting off somewhere. Then he came back. “Because the country was at war, and because Billy had told his wife he saw the Germans and Japs diggin’ on U.S. soil, and the Japs escaping, the FBI thought it would be smart to hold their cards close to their chest. They were investigating all kinds of espionage at that time. Japs, communist groups, Russians stealing secrets … you name it.”

O’Brien said nothing, only nodding.

“I remember them telling me and the sheriff that if we let the public know that the Germans pulled a U-boat up to our shores, dropped off Japs, possible saboteurs, it could cause widespread panic. They were especially concerned because this country was in the eleventh hour of a top-secret mission to end the war. Today, I know that was the Manhattan Project, the dropping of the atomic bomb over Japan.”

“What happened to the Japanese that Billy Lawson saw that night?”

“I heard they were eventually caught and put to death in the electric chair, just like the Germans caught landing a U-boat in East Hampton, summer of forty-two.”

“So, Billy Lawson’s widow, a woman who delivered his baby six months after his death, never had closure. Never knew that her husband was killed by Germans.”

“Many a day went by that I thought about that. And I don’t feel too damn good about it. But, we were told things had to be that way because of national security. When everything had played out, we could have gone back and said we believe he was killed by Germans, but we really couldn’t prove that either. So the investigation remained open. You’ve come along to close it. I’m glad.” His voice trailed off.

“Mr. Ford, who in the FBI worked the case?”

“Can’t remember all their names. I do know it went as far up as J. Edgar Hoover. I think, by and large, he might have been calling the shots. The man who was the field agent … he was a real smart feller. Talked fast. He had his own way of doing things. I know he didn’t spend a whole hellava lot of time on the German connection.”

“Does the name Miller ring a bell?”

The old man’s eyes ignited. Even through the cloud of cataracts, a spark burned. “Yep, Robert Miller. Never particularly cared for his style. He was the one who said it was a federal case. Told us to back off and for our report to say Billy Lawson was killed from a.38 caliber bullet. Shot by a mugger.”

“Did you ever see Miller again after the war ended?”

“No, but I followed his career, best I could. Miller was on a fast track with the FBI and what was then the OSS, before they were called CIA. He was one of the agents that busted communist sympathizers. He brought down a Russian spy exchanging money for atomic secrets. They executed the Russian in a federal electric chair. I remember it because my oldest daughter was born in ‘51. And I remember the Russian’s name … on account it rhymed with Sputnik … you know, the first Russian satellite. Man’s name was Borshnik … Ivan Borshnik.”