Max Collins - Majic Man

I met her as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “You look swell,” I said.

“Thank you.” She had a watch on now, and was winding it. “I’m, uh … sorry if I seemed rude, earlier. I have a bad habit of speaking my mind-particularly to people I like.”

“I thought you’d decided not to like me.”

She touched my face with a slender hand. “I changed my mind. Would you see if my cab is out front? I have to leave some instructions with Remy.”

“I haven’t seen him since you tossed that glass.”

Her tiny smile was an odd mix of embarrassment and pride. “He retreats to his rabbithole when I’m on a rampage.”

The cab indeed was waiting, and I went out and told the cabbie his fare would be along shortly. In the meantime, I carried out her bags and the cabbie helped me load them in his trunk, though they wouldn’t all fit; a few had to go in the backseat.

Inside, I found her snugging on some white gloves; a big black patent-leather handbag was slung over her shoulder, and she looked rather stylish-as chic as a well-dressed Wave.

“Have a good trip,” I said. “I’m making a full report on my investigation to your husband, tomorrow. Any message for him?”

“Just that I hope he’ll join me soon.”

“Is that concern I hear?”

“I love Jim, in my way, as I’m sure he loves me in his.” She kissed my cheek, tickled the side of my face with gloved fingertips. “You’re really a very sweet man.”

“You know, you haven’t cursed in something like five minutes; it makes me uneasy.”

She laughed and this time it lacked the brittle hysteria. “Well, then, Nate, why don’t you go fuck yourself.”

“That’s extra, too.”

She laughed some more and, as if she were a duchess on her way to the ball, I escorted her to the cab and waved as she drove off. She waved from her backseat window, and smiled, but if I’d ever seen a sadder expression, I couldn’t remember when.

My day’s work was done; I’d be leaving Washington tomorrow, I’d decided. The evening was mine, and I had a date with Anya, the blonde in Pearson’s office, who in that wonderful accent had requested I not tell her boss.

Well, if she insisted.

Anyway, it was nice to know Drew Pearson wasn’t on top of everything that went on in this town.

The day after he reluctantly stepped aside as Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal was honored by a rare special meeting of the House Armed Services Committee, at which he was lavishly praised by committee chairman Carl Vinson and ranking minority member Representative Dewey Short. Forrestal was presented with a silver bowl, “engraved with our names in testimony of our regards-a regard also indelibly inscribed in our hearts.”

The flustered Forrestal of the day before, struck dumb by surprise and emotion, was replaced by a prepared, dignified statesman who delivered several brief, gracious speeches.

Also attending-and celebrating Forrestal’s accomplishments in public life-were his successor, Louis Johnson; Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall; Secretary of the Navy John Sullivan; and Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington. The press made much of the kind words the latter said about Forrestal, and vice versa, as the onetime friends had become bitter adversaries over matters of budget, among other things, with the Air Force Secretary’s disloyal, harsh criticism of Forrestal in a notorious New York Times interview almost getting Symington fired.

The warmly positive press coverage of Jim Forrestal and the honors bestowed him on that Tuesday morning held no hint of the bizarre, even tragic turn the rest of that day would take.

My appointment with Forrestal, to report on my investigation, was in the afternoon, three o’clock, and shortly before that time I rang the bell of Morris House on Prospect Street. A light, pleasant breeze ruffled my lightweight tropical suit and my hat was in my hand when the Filipino houseboy, Remy, again wild-eyed, answered; but this time Remy was not annoyed, but visibly upset.

“Mr. Heller,” Remy said. “So glad to see you.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Please come in.”

I did. The house was dark-every light was off, all the blinds drawn.

“’Cept for cook, I am alone of staff,” Remy said. “Mrs. Forrestal give Miss Brown, Mr. Campbell week off. Because of Florida trip.”

Stanley Campbell was Forrestal’s butler/valet, a trusted right-hand man.

Turning my hat in my hands, I asked, “Where’s your boss?”

Remy pointed a tremulous finger, toward the living room. There, seated in the same easy chair Jo Forrestal had curled up in yesterday, sat Forrestal, but on the edge of it, rigidly erect. He was wearing his hat, and looked small in his well-tailored gray suit, which was only a slightly darker gray than his complexion; he seemed even thinner and more haggard than he had in his golfing attire, collar hanging loosely from a creped neck. His hands were on his knees, his eyes staring straight ahead, unblinking. He might have been a statue; he might have been dead.

Before him on the coffee table was the engraved silver bowl.

Then I realized he was saying something-muttering-though the thin line of his mouth barely moved.

“Hello, Jim,” I said, taking off my hat, moving into the room.

Now I could hear him. “You’re a loyal fellow,” he was saying, with no inflection whatsoever. “You’re a loyal fellow.”

I pulled over a fan-back chair and sat opposite him, with the coffee table between us; his eyes showed no sign of registering my presence.

“We had an appointment, Jim,” I said. “I need to make my report. I think you’re going to be pleased.”

He blinked, once, and now his eyes seemed to land on me, instead of look right through me.

But he still said only, “You’re a loyal fellow.”

Was he talking about me, or himself? Had he discovered my affiliation with Pearson, and was this a sort of shell-shocked sarcasm?

Remy was standing in the archway between the living room and the entry hall; he called out, “Mr. Forrestal! It’s Mr. Eberstadt again! He says you must come to phone.”

Forrestal’s head turned slowly on his neck, like a well-oiled moving part.

“No,” he said.

Then just as slowly, his head returned to its forward staring position.

“Just a second, Remy,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

The phone was on a stand in the hallway, but out of Forrestal’s earshot, so I was free to talk.

“This is Nate Heller, Mr. Eberstadt,” I said. Investment banker Eberstadt was one of my client’s oldest, dearest friends; I’d seen them playing golf together at Burning Tree, Saturday.

“You seem to know who I am,” he said, in a commanding baritone. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m an investigator Jim hired to see who was trying to kill him.”

“Oh, my God,” he groaned. “I hope by now you know the real nature of his problem.”

“I’d say I do. Right now he’s sitting in the living room with his hat on muttering about what a ‘loyal fellow’ he, or somebody, is.”

“What’s your appraisal of the immediate situation?”

“I’d say he’s about two inches away from falling off Catatonic Cliff.”

“Damnit.” A weary concern colored Eberstadt’s tone. “I got a similar report from Marx Leva, his assistant at the Pentagon. Seems James was fine at the ceremonies honoring him this morning, but when he returned to his office, he just sat and stared at the wall … with his hat on. I think it may have been that goddamn Symington’s fault.”

“Symington?”

“James was supposed to go back to the Pentagon, not to his old office, but another one that’s been set aside for him, so he can deal with the nice letters that’ve been coming in from all over. Symington apparently went out of his way to give Jim a ride back over there.”