Max Collins - Majic Man

“I hear he’s a Mormon,” I said, shaking his clammy hand. “Is he a Mormon like you’re a Quaker?”

Raised in that faith, Pearson only used the “thee” and “thou” routine at dinnertime with family, and while he didn’t smoke, he had a reputation for hard drinking.

He lifted an eyebrow, as he sat back down. “You understand this is broadcast day. I can only give you a few minutes.”

Ignoring that, I prowled his office. The dark-painted plaster walls wore framed original newspaper cartoons featuring Pearson, and photos of him with various political figures, including the last two presidents. A primitive rural landscape in oil-a relative’s work, apparently-hung near a portrait of a man who might have been his father; snapshots were lined up along the mantelpiece of a working fireplace, and the window-sills were piled with books and papers.

“Why don’t you buy yourself a new typewriter?” I asked, nodding toward the battered Corona on the typing stand. “Live a little.”

“That machine was given to me by my father”-and he nodded toward the portrait, confirming my suspicion-“in 1922. It’s my pride and joy; take it with me on trips, and nobody touches it but me.”

“How do you get away with that?”

“When it breaks down, I simply get it fixed at a certain small machine shop-”

“I was talking about the blonde.” I shook my head. “Right under your wife’s nose?”

His wife, Luvie, was an elegant, model-thin blonde; his second wife, actually-he’d stolen her, like his column, from a close friend.

“Well, she’s at the farm today,” he said, “but she doesn’t mind my dalliances. Boys will be boys. She understands my appetites.”

“Does she have a sister?”

“Who? Luvie or Anya?”

I pulled up a chair and sat. “Where’s the blonde from, anyway? Transylvania?”

“Yugoslavia. War refugee.”

“You are a public-spirited son of a bitch. And open-minded by not insisting that your secretary speak or write English. You’re in arrears three hundred bucks, by the way.”

Pearson tilted his chin and looked down his considerable nose at me. “Your expense account was outlandishly out of line. We’ll call it even-or you could always sue, though you’d have to take a number.” He was smiling; he smiled a lot, a smile that creased his eyes into slits.

“Didn’t do General MacArthur much good, did it?”

“None whatsoever,” Pearson chuckled. He had a quiet, gentlemanly manner, and the chilly, aloof bearing of an ambassador to some unimportant country. “By the way, does your current client know of our past association?” He posed this mildly, sitting forward, stroking his cat, its back arching.

“No,” I admitted.

In the mid-thirties I’d done a few jobs for Pearson, having been recommended to him by another former client of mine, Evalyn Walsh McClean, wife of the publisher of the Washington Post, owner of the Hope diamond, and a prominent if eccentric D.C. socialite and party-giver. Evalyn was a friend of Pearson’s first wife and her mother.

The initial work I’d done for the columnist had been so long ago, it well predated my relationship with Forrestal, and had apparently not made my FBI file, or Baughman would have rubbed my face in it, the other night.

And the government apparently wasn’t aware that, as I’d mentioned to Jack Anderson, I’d done some work in Chicago for Pearson, not long ago, despite swearing I never would again, as he really was the cheapest son of a bitch on the planet. He negotiated you down to nothing, then took forever to pay.

“Your client’s ignorance of our past history,” Pearson said, “puts you in a delicate position, Nathan-and me at an advantage.”

“Sure it’s not the other way around,” I asked, “since I know how you’re getting inside info from Forrestal’s house? If I tell Jim about that colored maid, he’ll fire her … but then, of course, maybe you could hire her as your next secretary.”

He just smiled, corners of his mustache up, eyes lost in slits. “For a man who’s been in your tawdry profession for as long as you have, Nathan, you have a less than firm grasp of blackmail.”

“Well, hell … then I’ll defer to the master.”

That didn’t seem to offend him in the least. Amid the mess on his desk was a glass jar filled with small chocolate chip cookies; he lifted the lid, plucked one out and began nibbling it. “Would you like one, Nathan? Anya made them.”

“How much are they?”

“Now that’s unkind. I pride myself on being a gracious host. You’re the one charging fees; you’re the tradesman.”

“And knowing your politics, Drew, I’m sure you mean that in the nicest way, friend to the working-man that you are.”

He took a last bite of cookie, chewed it and swallowed before speaking. “How do you think Jim Forrestal-in his current delicate mental condition-would react to the news that his trusted investigator has done numerous jobs for his archnemesis-yours truly?”

Obviously, it would further fuel his paranoid delusions and I’d be out on my ass.

But I said, “Jim knows I’m not terribly particular about who I work for.”

Pearson selected another cookie. “And does he know your loyalty is to the dollar?”

“Now you’re being unkind. But then that’s your stock-in-trade, isn’t it?”

He bristled a little, leaned back in the chair. “My stock-in-trade is telling the truth, and letting the chips fall where they may.”

Chocolate or otherwise.

“Telling the truth, Drew, like that story about Forrestal running away from robbers who stripped his wife of her jewels and money? The truth is, Jo Forrestal was on her way home from a party, with another man, and Forrestal wasn’t even at the scene. You knew that and printed the lie, anyway.”

He shrugged, rocking gently, nibbling his cookie. “It could have been worse-I could have told the real truth: that he and his wife live a sham marriage.”

I laughed, once. “You can say that with a straight face, while Miss Yugoslavia 1946 is out in the other room buttering your scones?”

He frowned and his close-set eyes almost crossed. “I’m not a public official.”

“Jesus, Drew-can you imagine, a proud guy like Forrestal, responsible for the safety of his country, how a false accusation of base cowardice could affect him?”

The smile returned; he looked like your rich uncle. “Please, Nathan. You don’t wear moral indignation very well. Come on, man! People forget that I’m trying to do something for my country, and the world.”

“By lying to ruin a man’s reputation?”

“In politics, questionable actions are often employed for desirable goals.”

“The ends justify the means, you mean.”

“Isn’t that how you operate? I’m well acquainted with your mode of operation, Nathan.”

I sat forward. “What the hell’s the idea of putting all your muscle behind destroying an able, dedicated guy like Jim Forrestal?”

“Sure he’s able,” Pearson huffed. “Of course he’s dedicated. But to what? He’s a man who lives only for himself. He’s broken his word, turned his back on his friends …”

This was rich, coming from the guy who stole “Washington Merry-Go-Round” from Bob Allen.

“… and he’s driven by one ambition and one ambition only: to be top man, first of Wall Street, then the cabinet, and now he’s got his eye on the presidency. And were he president, with his worldview that the godless, evil Soviet Union is on the verge of invading us, we’d find ourselves in a catalysmic world war. He has to be stopped. I have stopped him.”

“You’ve crushed him, Drew.”

“Then good for me.” Pearson was shaking his head. “He’s been a law unto himself, Nathan, and behavior like that can’t be countenanced.”