Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (24 page)

“You’re a swell guy, Miller. I feel so good with the security of my nation in your principled hands.”

“You’re a funny one to talk about principles…. You forget I’ve read your FBI file. You have a reputation for looking the other way, when money’s involved.”

“Then let’s see the color of yours.”

“An interesting notion, and I don’t rule it out…but I think in this instance we’ve gone past your innate avarice and passed into an…emotional realm. You see I’m aware—unlike Mr. Putnam, who is cooperating with us, but knows less than he thinks he does—of your…this is delicate…
friendship
with Mr. Putnam’s wife.”

Funny how a guy threatening to torture me with a blowtorch a few seconds ago now felt the need to indulge in arch euphemism.

“I’ll tell you this,” I said. “I know Mr. Putnam’s wife well enough to know that she wouldn’t get in bed with the military. She hates war.”

“Yes, and she cooperated with us for that very reason…and because she and her husband could not get sufficient backing for the world flight, otherwise.”

I leaned forward as far as the rope around me would allow. “Why Amelia? Why drag a public figure, a
beloved
public figure, into your dirty business?”

He sighed. “This was a service only she could provide, Mr. Heller. As the most famous civilian aviatrix in the world, she enjoyed an unparalleled advantage: the freedom to fly anywhere in that world, including places where her own country was banned.”

I sneered at the son of a bitch. “She was a civilian, and a heroine to America, and you cheapen that into making her a spy? Not to mention putting her life at risk!”

He waved that off. “That Lockheed of hers can outrun any unfriendly plane—and Mr. Noonan is
not
a civilian; he’s the anchor of this mission. We did not consider Miss Earhart to be in any danger. Even the Japs would think twice before shooting down Amelia Earhart because she was off course!”

“Off course in a plane whose belly’s packed with aerial survey cameras.”

That rated a shrug from Miller. “The world would write that off as the Japanese trying to cover up for their ill-advised actions. Which is something the Japs, who are hardly stupid, would figure out for themselves.”

“Then what the hell happened? It looks like they
did
fire on her….”

Another shrug. “Just trying to force her down…. She did stray off course, after her mission was accomplished. It’s unfortunate….”

“You screwed up.”

Something like regret touched the impassive features. “Actually, Amelia did. She’s not really much of a flier.”

“You
knew
where she was, when she was radioing for help. You knew she was down in Jap waters.”

He said nothing.

“But you didn’t go in after her, did you?”

Now he put his hands on his knees and leaned forward just a bit, as if lecturing a precocious but difficult child. “Mr. Heller, we believe Japan is building military bases throughout the tiny islands of the Pacific. They are forbidden by treaty to do this, but their islands in the Marshall, Carolines, and Mariana groups are closed to ‘foreigners’ like us. We believe they’re fortifying for war, Mr. Heller, violating their covenant with the League of Nations.”

“And you want to prove that.”

The tiniest shrug. “We at least want to know it. The President has to know, if he’s to carry out his responsibility to provide our country with an adequate defense, should the Philippines or Hawaii be attacked.”

“Sounds pretty far-fetched to me.”

He stood. His voice was firm; though he wasn’t speaking terribly loud, echo touched his words: “Amelia agreed to cooperate. She did this in part as a favor to her friend, President Roosevelt. If you make this public, you will not only go against her wishes, but tarnish her image not just here, but abroad.”

I raised a forefinger. “Plus start the next war. Don’t forget that.”

“Your actions may endanger her—might cause her captors to…destroy the evidence.”

“Execute her, you mean.”

“We believe she’s alive. We prefer to keep her that way.”

“I doubt that. The best thing for you people is for her never to be seen again.”

“We’re not monsters, Mr. Heller. We’re soldiers. But so is Miss Earhart.”

I had to laugh. “She’d slap you for that…. Did your people hear what Robert Myers and I heard last night?”

An eyebrow arched. “Frankly, no…. But various of our ships in the Far East fleet have intercepted coded messages sent by Japanese vessels and shore installations in their Mandated Islands back home to Japan…messages that indicate Miss Earhart and Mr. Noonan are indeed in Japanese hands.”

“Jesus! Why don’t you negotiate their release, then?”

“We can’t admit we sent Earhart and Noonan,” he said, “and the other side can’t admit they have Earhart and Noonan. That is the reality of world politics on this very shaky stage.”

I looked at him for a long time, his oval face with its lifeless features, the dead eyes, the soft mouth. Then I asked casually, or as casually as a man tied in a chair could ask, “You just shared top-secret information with me, didn’t you, Miller?”

“Classified material, yes.”

“That means if I don’t cooperate, you’re going to kill me.”

The mildest amusement puckered the soft lips. “Oh, Mr. Heller…I would never do that. You’re a citizen of the United States of America, the country I love, the country I serve.”

“You’d have somebody else do it.”

“Precisely.”

I held out my hands, palms up. “These are free because you want me to sign something.”

“Perceptive…. Yes. It’s a contract, actually.”

“A contract?”

He withdrew the document, folded lengthwise in thirds, from an inside suitcoat pocket. “A backdated contract. You’ve been working for the government, in the capacity of investigator. As such, you’re subject to a policy of strict confidentiality.”

“Really,” I said, taking the contract, reading it over quickly, finding it surprisingly simple and in keeping with what he’d outlined. One portion remained to be filled in. “What are you paying me?”

“You’ve suffered a lot of inconvenience, Mr. Heller, and had considerable travel expense. What would you say to two thousand dollars?”

“I should throw this in your face.”

“Have I insulted you, suggesting you take payment to walk away from a matter so personal to you?”

“Make it five.”

I agreed to take their money, for two reasons. First, money doesn’t know where it comes from, and this foul sum would spend just like money that smelled better. Second, this would convince Miller and those he represented that I would forget what I’d seen and heard.

“You
are
going to try to get her back,” I said, as I signed the contract, using my leg as a desk.

“Of course…but it will be delicate. It’s difficult for a country that denies responsibility to arrange the release of prisoners whose captors deny their presence.”

He took the contract from me, then looked sharply into the darkness just over my shoulder and nodded and footsteps came up quickly behind me and a hand reached around in front of me and again a chloroform-soaked cloth masked my face.

I awoke in a private compartment of a train eastbound for Chicago. I found my nine-millimeter in my packed suitcase. Neatly folded in my billfold was a five-thousand-dollar check from the Office of Naval Intelligence. In the inside suitcoat pocket of my blue garbardine, which I wore, was my copy of the contract, with Miller’s signature.

Legal and aboveboard.

On July 19, the Navy abandoned its efforts and declared the search for the Electra over. Though intercepted radio messages (never made public) indicated Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan had been picked up by the Japanese almost two weeks earlier, the Navy used the continuing search as an excuse for continued, expanded reconnaissance of this strategic area of the Pacific. They were not allowed into Japanese-controlled waters, however, though the Japanese professed to be helping in the search.

Ten ships, sixty-five airplanes, and four thousand men had scoured two hundred and fifty thousand square miles of Pacific Ocean in a four-million-dollar effort. Not a trace of the Electra or its crew or even a life raft turned up. No oil slick, no scrap of floating debris. Nothing.

One month to the day after the search for Amy ended, Paul Mantz married Terry Minor in Hollywood’s fabled wedding chapel, the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather. When the papers covered it, they described Mantz as “technical advisor for Amelia Earhart,” and quoted him as saying, “It’s time to get on with our lives.”

Miller apparently got to everyone I’d talked to, because no one came forward, and I certainly didn’t go to the papers.

I was a good American, after all; and anyway, I had no desire to be the government’s next disappearing act. But as the days and months passed, I would open the paper each morning, looking for the headline announcing her return. Amy’s good pal President Roosevelt wouldn’t let her rot in some Japanese jail, would he? An arrangement would be made; some exchange; something that would allow both countries to achieve their goals and the honorable Japanese tradition of saving face.

But the headline never came. Amelia Earhart had vanished from the pages of the papers as completely as she had somewhere over the Pacific. She had flown out of the news and into the pages of history, where she lay prematurely buried.

The mural behind the Cine-Gril bar depicted early Hollywood days, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, way back when movies couldn’t talk, a dozen years ago. The soothingly air-conditioned lounge was cozy but large enough for a bandstand and postage-stamp dance floor (Russ Columbo’s radio show was broadcast out of here) and the lighting was subdued, but not so much so that you couldn’t be seen if you wanted to. That ultramodern material, Formica, covered the front of the bar in deep red, with horizontal stripes of chrome and indirect lighting from under the lip of the mahogany countertop. The blue leather and chrome stools were shaped like champagne glasses and I was perched on one of them, sipping a rum and Coke.

I was a little early—the meeting was set for four-thirty, and I’d arrived here at the Roosevelt Hotel, by cab, having arrived by train at the impressive new Union Station on North Alameda around three. Checking in, washing up, and slipping into my Miami white suit, black-and-white-checkered tie, and black-banded straw fedora, I’d ambled through the pale chamber of the impressively decorative, Spanish Colonial-style lobby trying to inconspicuously spot movie stars among the potted palms, plush armchairs and overstuffed couches. I’d made several trips to Hollywood—including one late last year—and my pals at the Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge and the Dill Pickle deli always looked forward to my blasé rundown on any Tinseltown somebodies I’d set eyes on. The joke was the few starlets, would-be matinee idols, and low-rent agents clustered here and there, chatting—not a seat taken, no one wanting to be seen “waiting”—were sneaking peeks at me, not realizing I was nobody.

The first person in Hollywood I recognized was in the movies all right, but most tourists wouldn’t have known his name any more than his Gable-mustached, nearly handsome face: Paul Mantz—in a single-breasted hunter green sport jacket with gathered waist and double-patch pockets, a yellow open-neck shirt, and light green slacks—sauntered into the Cine-Gril, put his hand on my shoulder, ordered a martini in a frosted glass from the black-jacketed bartender, and then said hello.

Other than a touch of gray at the temples and perhaps a slight further receding of his hairline, Mantz looked the same: dark alert eyes, familiar cocky set to his thin mouth, and jutting jaw.

“How’s married life?” I asked him, as he stood next to me, not taking a stool.

“Much better the second time around,” he said. “I’m a dad now, you know.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. I’d had my own ruminations over fatherhood since I’d seen him last. “Congratulations.”

“Well, two kids were part of the package,” he said, accepting the frosted martini from the bartender, finally sliding up onto a stool. “Terry was Roy Minor’s widow, y’know, the racing pilot? His kids, good kids, Tenita and Roy Jr., are mine, now…but Terry and me have our own boy—Paul Jr. He’ll be two in August.”

“Hope business is good, with all those mouths to feed.”

Half a smile dimpled one cheek. “Real boom in war pictures. The country may not wanna get into this scrap, but they sure like to see it at the movies. Also, test flights and aerial camera jobs for Lockheed. Charter service is doin’ great, including a branch in San Francisco—set up two amphibians at the Golden Gate Expo and flew thousands of gawking Midwest bumpkins like you over the fair. Oh, and the Vega crashed—ground accident, I was fully covered.”

“No more
Honeymoon Express
?”

“Oh, sure, but it’s a Lockheed Orion, now. You keepin’ busy?”

I shrugged. “Retail credit, divorce work, a little industrial espionage now and then.”

“Industrial spying? You doin’ it, or stoppin’ it?”

I let him have half a smile. “I’m a priest to my clients, Paul. Don’t expect me to violate a sacred trust.”

“Unless there’s a buck in it…. Don’t look so hurt.”

“That was acting,” I said. “When in Hollywood…. What can you tell me about this little business conference?”

He swirled his martini in its glass. “What have they told you?”

“Not a damn thing. Margot DeCarrie called, asked if I’d come out here and listen to a business proposition; she offered train fare, two nights’ lodging and meals, plus a C-note and a half for my trouble and other expenses.”

“And that’s all she told you?”

“She said she represented the Amelia Earhart Foundation. Does that mean she’s working for Purdue University?”

“Naw. Purdue set up the Amelia Earhart
Research
Foundation, but that was active only when Amelia was alive.”

“You think she’s dead, Paul?”

He didn’t quite look at me. “Probably. I think she probably crashed into the sea. She bit off more than she could chew, Noonan missed the island, she was tired, and tried to land too high over clear water, or misjudged the distance and flew into a heavy roller. Either one would’ve killed them instantly.”

I didn’t tell him what I knew; the confidentiality clause in the agreement I’d signed with Uncle Sam precluded that. In fact, according to the terms of my contract, I hadn’t even been in California in 1937.

“But ‘probably’ isn’t ‘absolutely,’ is it, Paul?”

He nodded, gazed into his martini, as if an answer might be floating there. “She was a great lady,” he said. “It’s hard to let go.”

“Is that what this is about?”

“I should leave the particulars to the others,” he said. “Margot and the rest’ll be here soon enough.”

“This, uh, Amelia Earhart Foundation…. Does G. P. have anything to do with it?”

“Hell no!” Mantz’s chuckle was edged with bitterness. “Not with me involved.”

“You two were never exactly bosom buddies. Do I detect a further deterioration in the relationship?”

He sipped the martini. “Amelia and I were involved in several businesses, including my charter service. But we both signed a contract that gave the surviving partner the entire business. Gippy, as executor of the Amelia Earhart Estate, is suing for half, just the same.”

I frowned. “How the hell can there be an estate? Doesn’t it take seven years to be declared legally dead, anymore?”

Mantz raised an eyebrow. “Not if you’re married to Gippy Putnam. I don’t know what kind of strings he and his lawyers pulled, but Amelia’s been legally dead since late ’38, I think, or early ’39. Gippy’s been screwing over Amelia’s mother and sister, too, makin’ sure they don’t get a share.”

“He always was a classy guy.”

“Well, he’s scramblin’ for dough. The estate was smaller than you’d think, at least that’s what I hear. They had a lot of their own money tied up in the world flight. I heard he had to sell the house in Rye; the book ‘by’ Amelia, about the last flight, got rushed out but didn’t do so hot. You do know he remarried, don’t ya?”

“No!”

My response seemed to surprise Mantz, who shrugged and said, “Got a good amount of play in the papers out here.”

“Not in Chicago. Remarried…”

Mantz was nodding. “Last year about this time, to a good-looking brunette who got a divorce from a successful lawyer in town—one of these Beverly Hills housewives who hit the garden club circuit. I hear Gippy picked her up at one of his ‘Amelia’ lectures…that’s how he’s makin’ most of his money these days.”

“Didn’t take him long to get back in circulation.”

“Hey, just a few months after Amelia disappeared, he went off on one of his ‘expeditions’ and took this
other
good-lookin’ gal along for company…. They say he was shacked up with her for months, after they got back from the Galapagos or wherever the hell. Till she got sick of his browbeating and foul temper.”

“Jeez, Paul—you turned into a regular Hedda Hopper.”

That made him smile. “Hey, I figure you might enjoy the dirt on Gippy, since you love him about as much as I do.”

“Maybe more,” I said.

“Ah,” Mantz said, swiveling on his stool, “here’s our little party now….”

In a white frock with a cardigan collar and white buttons down to the navy and white polka-dot sash that served as her belt, pretty Margot DeCarrie had just entered the Cine-Gril, and behind and on either side of her were two well-dressed gents who each carried the unmistakable air of the business executive.

Margot—brunette hair longer now, a sea of curls nestled under a white beret—beamed upon seeing me; her cutie-pie heart-shaped face, its babyish mouth turned cherry red by lipstick, not to mention her Betty Grable frame, would have been the envy of many a starlet, white high-heel pumps doing nice things to her bare, untanned legs. She was hugging a patent leather bag under one arm, a small briefcase in her other hand.

“Nathan, it’s so wonderful to see you,” she said as she approached; some of the chirpiness had matured out of her voice. “Paul, I’m glad you could make it…. Nathan, this is Elmer Dimity, the manufacturer and inventor.”

This was said as if I was supposed to recognize the name, so I said, “Oh, yes.”

Dimity was solidly built and rather tall, in a dark suit whose lapels were trimmed with scarlet suede, and his scarlet tie bore a diamond stickpin, an ensemble that sent a mixed message of austerity and flash, solemnity and goofiness. His dark hair was combed back, his face a long oval, his nose a beak dropping over a small, indecisive mouth, his chin rather weak as well; but the eyes behind the wire-frame glasses were strong and alert, and his expression was open, friendly.

“Heard a lot about you, sir,” he said, in a somewhat high-pitched, clear voice.

We shook hands and there was power in it, but no showing off.

Dimity picked up the introductions from Margot, gesturing to the other man, saying, “And this is James Forrestal, late of Wall Street.”

“Make it Jim,” Forrestal said, stepping forward to present a small hand for me to shake. His grip tried a little too hard to impress.

He was much smaller than Dimity, and in fact was shorter than Margot, yet his frame was slimly athletic within a pinstriped vested gray serge suit with four-in-hand black-and-gray-striped tie, apparel that made no allowance for the Southern California weather.

“And I’m Nate,” I said.

Forrestal’s spade-shaped face had a combative Irish look, dominated by the flattened nose of a pug; but his features otherwise reflected business-executive restraint: intense blue-gray eyes, thin lips compressed into an uncompromising line, and a ball-like cleft chin. His iron-gray hair was cut short and swept neatly back.

His small hard eyes appraising me, Forrestal asked, “Are you a Jewish fella, Nate? You don’t mind my saying so, you have an Irish cast.”

“So do you, Jim,” I said. “My looks are my mother’s fault. The name’s my father’s, but he wasn’t raised Jewish and neither was I.”

“Were you raised in your mother’s faith?” Forrestal asked. “Are you a Catholic, then?”

Margot and Dimity were clearly embarrassed by this line of questioning.

“No, Jim,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m not much of anything. The only time I pray is when I’m in a jam, and then it’s pretty nondenominational.”

“Like most people,” Mantz said with a nervous chuckle.

“I’m not a religious man myself,” Forrestal said, rendering our conversation even more oblique.

Mantz gestured toward the grill, which was sparsely populated this time of day. “Shall we find a table?”

Soon, our drink orders placed, we were gathered at a red Formica-topped table, settled on chrome-tubing chairs along a beige-drapery-flanked wall of mirrored Venetian blinds that allowed us to watch the world pass by along Hollywood Boulevard; Grauman’s Chinese was just across the way, that grandiose pagoda with movie star foot-and handprints at its gates, the mysteries of the East Americanized into a tourist mecca. I sat near the window with Mantz beside me; Forrestal was directly across from me, his gaze unnervingly steady, Dimity next to him. Margot sat at the head of the table, facing the mirrored blinds.

She tented her fingers—the nails of which, I noticed, were the same cherry red as her lipstick—and began: “As I’m sure you know, Nathan, Mr. Dimity…”

“Elmer,” he interrupted cheerfully. “I can’t be the only ‘mister’ at the table.”

“Well,” Margot said, touching his hand, “I’m going to call you Mr. Dimity because you’re my boss…. And Mr. Dimity
is
my boss, Nate, and a wonderful one—I’m working full-time for the Amelia Earhart Foundation, as executive secretary.”

“This little whirlwind is our
only
full-time employee,” Dimity added. “And the only person on the payroll. I’m the chairman of the board, and strictly a volunteer. Jim here is a board member, though he’s asked not to have his name on the letterhead, so that there’s, uh…no misunderstanding.”

That was provocative; but I let it go for the moment.

“Mr. Dimity is also
founder
of the Foundation,” Margot said proudly.

“Swell,” I said, getting a little weary of this mutual admiration society. “What is it?”

“The Foundation?” Dimity asked. “Well, our mandate is to ‘inspire the study of aeronautical navigation and the sciences akin thereto.’”

“Ah,” I said, as if that had answered it.

A white-jacketed waiter brought us our drinks. Actually, I’d held onto my rum and Coke, but Mantz was onto a second martini. Dimity had ordered a Gilbert, Forrestal a whiskey sour, and Margot a stinger.

Then Dimity jumped back in: “But our primary objective is to conduct an expedition to clear up Amelia’s disappearance.”

“An expedition?”

“Yes. We hope to send a search and rescue team to the Pacific to discover whether our friend is still alive, and if not, find an explanation to the mystery of her disappearance.”

I couldn’t tell them what I knew, which was that to find Amy, going into Japanese-held taboo territory would be a necessity.

Instead I merely said, “That would be extremely expensive.”

“Yes, we know,” Dimity said, and sipped his Gilbert. “Tens of thousands of dollars, which we intend to raise. I’m not the only friend Amelia had in business and industry, and in the higher echelons of society and finance. We already have the blessing of Amelia’s mother, and of course Mr. Mantz here, and the President and Mrs. Roosevelt.”