Max Collins - Majic Man

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- Am I being charged with anything? Do I need a lawyer? Don’t you guys have any counterfeiters you can go bother? How many more miles, Daddy?

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 man-all he lacked was Der Bingel’s pipe.

The only official-looking thing about him was the thick manila file folder in one hand. He turned a penetrating gaze on the younger agent. “Have you spoken with our guest?”

His voice was a pleasant second tenor.

“No, sir.”

“Leave me alone with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

The young agent went out, yanking the door shut: the sound was like the pistol shot at the start of a race.

The superior officer in the Hawaiian shirt turned his clear-eyed gaze on me. “Baughman,” he said by way of introduction, sticking out his hand.

Shaking it, I asked, “Chief Baughman?”

“That’s right.”

This character in an explosion-at-the-paint-factory shirt was Chief of the Secret Service. I was being interrogated by the top guy.

“Mr. Heller,” he said, chuckling with what seemed to be mild embarrassment, “you’ll have to excuse my informality … I got the call while my wife and I were at a barbecue.”

He was standing looking down at me; he was tall enough that I had to crane my neck back to look at him.

“What call would that be, Chief Baughman? The call to drop your ‘Don’t Mess with the Chef’ apron and grill me personally? Instead of another cheeseburger?”

His thin lips formed a smile; it was like a cut in his pasty face, a wound that opened with the words, “They were shishkabobs, actually-lamb…. You live up to your reputation, Mr. Heller, for having a smart mouth.”

“Is that in my file?”

“Actually, yes … in so many words.”

The breeze-fluttered blinds were making un-melodic metallic music.

I asked, “Why would the Secret Service keep a file on me?”

His non-answer was: “I had a chance to read up on you, on the way over.”

So a chauffeured government limo had been sent to pick him up; and somebody had seen fit to send along a file on me for U. E. Baughman, Chief of the Secret Service himself, to read.

Fanning the air absently with the file, Baughman wandered toward the end of the table, where he sat with his back to the fluttering tone-deaf wind chime of the Venetian blinds, putting some distance between us. Possibly this was to allow him to peruse my file away from my prying eyes.

“Am I being held for anything, Chief Baughman?”

“Certainly not. I hope no one indicated that you were. I don’t condone violation of rules or regulations by any agent.”

“False arrest and kidnapping fall within acceptable guidelines, I take it.”

The piercing gaze in the deceptively bland face bore through me. “You weren’t arrested. And I believe you were asked to accompany the agents.”

“I was shoved bodily in the back of a Buick.”

“Would you like to lodge a complaint about undue force?”

“No. I’m from Chicago, where the cops throw you in the back of cars just to express their affection.”

The thin lips pursed; it was like a crinkle in paper. Then he said, “You’re welcome to leave, Mr. Heller.”

But I just sat there. The son of a bitch knew my curiosity was up.

He began flipping through the file. “You’ve had a rather checkered career, Mr. Heller … friends and enemies in high and low places. It says here you once spoke ‘disrespectfully’ to Director Hoover.”

I shrugged. “I just suggested he do to himself what Clyde Tolson does to him behind closed doors-is that my FBI file? As a taxpayer, I’m gratified to see the various branches of the government rising above their petty differences to cooperate in running roughshod over the rights of the individual citizen.”

“You had some dealings with the Secret Service back in ’32, in Miami…. This is impressive-Mayor Cermak’s bodyguard at the bandshell when Zangara tried to assassinate Roosevelt?”

“It would be more impressive if Cermak hadn’t been killed.”

He paged through the file, slowly, savoring its contents. “When you were with the Chicago Police Department, you went to New Jersey to serve as their liaison on the Lindbergh kidnapping case, working with both Frank J. Wilson and Elmer Irey, two of my former bosses here at the Service. Both apparently have a … guardedly high opinion of you and your abilities. In particular, Chief Irey cites your good work for him in the IRS inquiry into Huey Long and his confederates…. My! So you were Huey Long’s bodyguard as well. Didn’t he also get killed?”

“I’ll do the jokes, if you don’t mind.”

“No, actually it’s a very unusual, even noteworthy file. When Eliot Ness was with the Treasury Department in Chicago, and later with the Alcohol and Tax Unit in Ohio, you aided him on several government matters. Then later when he was safety director of Cleveland, you worked with him on several successful investigations …”