Max Collins - Majic Man

It was a single office, not very wide, and not very long, either, barely big enough for the ceiling fan that was lazily whirling, like a propeller warming up; no receptionist-no room for one. By an open window looking out on Main Street, at a work-piled rolltop desk, a boyishly handsome blue-eyed blond young man-maybe twenty-six, in shirtsleeves and a red-and-blue tie and blue slacks-was on the phone, talking life insurance with a client.

He waved me toward the hardwood chair alongside his desk and I sat, removing my straw fedora. The blond kid smiled at me, motioned that this call wouldn’t take long. It didn’t.

“Walter Haut,” he said affably, without standing, extending his hand, which I took and shook. “And you are?”

“Nathan Heller,” I said. “I believe Jesse Marcel warned you I’d be stopping by.”

“Oh, oh, yeah-sure! Glad to see ya. But, uh … you mind if I check your i.d. first?”

“Not at all.” I showed him the Illinois license and the honorary deputy’s badge.

His grin was affable and embarrassed. “You’ll have to excuse the less than lavish digs … I’m just getting in the insurance game … independent agent. I was in your field till about two months ago.”

“Investigation?”

He rolled his eyes. “Collection agency. I don’t know how you guys stand it.”

“My firm doesn’t do repo or skip tracing. Ugly work.”

“I agree.” He leaned an arm on his desk, leaned forward. “You know, I like people-I’m a member of the chamber of commerce-and the last way I want to make my living is doggin’ folks for a dollar. So … let’s make it ‘Nate’ and ‘Walt’ and skip the formalities. Any friend of Jesse’s is a friend of mine.”

“I don’t want to overstate my case, Walt. I’ve only spoken to Jesse once. But my feeling is he’s pretty bitter about taking the fall for Uncle Sam.”

Haut’s head bobbed up and down. “He got a bum shake, all right. Which is why I’m willing to talk … off the record, of course-confidential source, that kind of thing?”

“You got it. Mind if take notes?”

“Feel better if you would. Only thing … if my phone rings, I have to take it … one-man agency, you know how it is.”

“Actually, I do. I spent almost ten years that way, myself. When did you leave the service, Walt?”

“I left last August. I never intended to make a career of it. Were you in the service, Nate?”

I nodded. “Marines.”

“Overseas duty?”

“Guadalcanal.”

He blew an appreciative whistle. “Then you can understand how good civilian life looks to a guy who flew thirty-eight combat missions against the Japs.”

“Not a pilot, I take it.”

“Bombardier and navigator.”

Pen poised over the pad, I said, “Your postwar position out at the air base, I understand, was public relations officer?”

Haut leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, elbows winging. “Yeah, it was a pretty uneventful ride-except that Tuesday after the Fourth, in ’47. You gotta understand my job was kind of a funny mix-there was a lot we kept the lid on. Very tight security out at that base-keep in mind, you’re talking to the guy who dropped glass-gauged instruments smack dab into the Bikini explosion, and yet even I couldn’t get near aircraft with atomic bomb configuration.”

“Tightly run operation.”

He nodded vigorously. “Secure areas fenced off, MPs on twenty-four-hour guard-not only do you need a pass to get on that base, you need a further pass to even get near those aircraft.”

“Understandable.”

Haut sat forward again. “At the same time, for all of that, we wanted to foster good relations with the local community. Colonel Blanchard’s first duty out of West Point was same as mine, a public relations officer. So he had a real thing for building good feelings between the town and the base. Anything we were doing that was newsworthy, I was to let the two newspapers and two radio stations in on it. We let ’em come out and take pictures, whenever and whatever they wanted-long as they didn’t try to snap pictures of the B-29s.”

On the morning of July 8, 1947, Haut told me, he’d been called into the base commander’s office. Colonel Blanchard dictated a statement to his public information officer for immediate release to the local press acknowledging the 509th Bomb Group being “fortunate enough to gain possession” of a downed flying saucer (I had read the clipping in the file Pearson gave me).

“Around ten-thirty that morning,” Haut said, “I drove to town and made the rounds, dropping off the release at the radio stations, KGFL and KSWS, then over at the Roswell DailyRecord and Roswell Morning Dispatch. The Record’s an evening paper, and they’re the ones that had the headline story, that night-I just barely beat their deadline.” He shrugged. “Then I had lunch.”

“You didn’t think anything of it? Another day, another captured flying saucer?”

“Hey, it was lunchtime, so I ate lunch. I didn’t give it a second thought; when a superior officer said, ‘This is what it is,’ that was what it was. I went back to the base, to my office, and nothing much happened the rest of the afternoon, except the phone was ringing pretty heavily for a couple hours, there.”

“The press?”

“Oh, yeah, from all over the world!” Haut laughed, shaking his head, struck by a funny memory. “First call I got was from London, this very proper English accent asking me how the ‘chap’ who found the saucer had known how to fly the ‘craft’ back to the base! I had to explain it was just wreckage that was found.”

“Walt, you and I both know how cautious, and secretive, the military usually is. Here’s the first instance of the Air Force capturing a flying saucer … obviously, an event with national security implications, and international repercussions. Do you think Colonel Blanchard could have issued that press release on his own authority?”

Haut rocked in the chair, thought about that. “Well, the Old Man could put out just about anything he wanted, short of information about the atomic weapons on the base. Things of a secret nature, that’d have to be cleared with the Eighth Air Force, and probably further up the chain of command….”

“Don’t you think a flying saucer would fall into that category?”

The insurance agent sighed, nodded, mulling some more. “Come to think of it … I honestly don’t think Colonel Blanchard did authorize that release. My feeling is it went to General Ramey and probably on to higher headquarters.”

“Why would they sanction something this sensitive?”

An eyebrow lifted. “I can hazard an informed guess, if you like.”

“Guess away, Walt.”

Haut sat way forward, eyes narrowing. “That same afternoon, remember, word from General Ramey came down that the wreckage wasn’t from a flying saucer at all. And all of a sudden, we’re sending out pictures of Jesse Marcel holding up fragments of your everyday garden-variety weather balloon, looking like Public Idiot Number One.”

I was shaking my head, confused. “Why would the brass do that? Issue a statement about a flying saucer, then a couple hours later contradict themselves?”

Haut’s smile turned sly. “I believe they knew the cat was out of the bag … the rumors about a recovered saucer were flyin’, around here. So the best cover-up is to announce a saucer’s been found, attributing it to Major Screwup, then have the much smarter, more knowledgeable general say, ‘Oh no, you children got it wrong-it’s just a weather balloon.’ And the incident gets laughed off and forgotten. It was a real sleight-of-hand trick, typical disinformation.”

“Disinformation?”