Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11 (27 page)

“You’re the naive one, Maria, if you’re
really
buying Forrestal as a suicide. If you’re not lying about that, then somebody in your little group is cleaning house without permission.”

Her eyes tensed. “Explain.”

I nodded toward the hospital. “Why don’t we let him do the explaining?”

A rather distinguished-looking individual in a brown button-up sweater was exiting, a blond man so pale his face seemed to glow as he stepped away from the well-illuminated entrance and moved briskly across the driveway into the relative darkness of the parking lot. Dr. Bernstein—apparently finished with his interview with Chief Baughman of the Secret Service—was heading into the lot, off to our left.

We watched as he got into a ’49 Cadillac, a dark blue Coupe DeVille sedan; apparently even government doctors were well paid. He started the engine and turned on his lights; they streaked across us like prison searchlights as he pulled out of the lot—but we had ducked down.

Sitting up, I started up the Studebaker. A small, strong hand clutched my forearm.

“You’re going to tail him?”

“One of the tricks of my trade, baby.”

Urgency colored her tone. “He might recognize my car. Listen … I know the way he goes home. I can take you another route.”

“What if he gets there before we do?”

“We want him to,” she said emphatically. “He lives on a very quiet street, on a cul-de-sac. We don’t want to beat him home, trust me.”

“Trust you…. I love you dearly, Maria, but if you’re fucking me over, I’ll shoot you without blinking.”

She studied me for a moment, swallowed and said, “I believe you would, at that, Nathan…. Let’s go—I’ll take you to him.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why Maria had been to Bernstein’s house before; but I had more important questions to ask as I tooled south on Highway 240, heading back toward the District of Columbia. At after four in the morning, traffic was light, and an alternate route was a good idea—it would not have been an easy tail job.

“Is Bernstein married?” I asked her.

“He was. He lost his wife in the war.”

I smirked. “What, Dresden?”

“Actually … yes. They didn’t have any children. He lives alone.”

“I’m liking this. I do hope you’re not lying. Any guard dogs? Alarms?”

“I’m not lying, and there’s no dog, no alarm.”

“Good. Now describe the neighborhood, and the layout of the house—quickly but in detail.”

She did, interrupting only to guide me through the shade-tree-rich suburban streets of the Bethesda area. Soon we’d turned off Fairfield Drive onto a quiet lane where a wooded area had been developed for housing. In the yellow glow of streetlamps sat half a dozen interchangeable new homes on either side, those anonymous boxy white cookie-cutter clapboard dream houses that were popping up these days like toadstools in every spare patch of suburban real estate. Their slightly sloping, generous lawns were golf-green immaculate, their yards stingily dotted with baby trees, while behind them loomed father forest, part of which they’d displaced.

Bernstein’s house, rather isolated on the cul-de-sac, although the smallest house in the little development, was no exception; like all of these homes, it had an attached two-car garage, and we were half a block away from the darkened house when he drove the Caddy up inside. Maria touched my arm, signaling me to stop and wait, and I did, and we watched him pull down the garage door. Soon a light switched on inside the house, creating a warm glow behind the drawn curtains of the living room.

Cutting the lights well before I got there, I guided the Studebaker up the gentle slope of the driveway, gliding to a stop.

“What now?” Maria whispered.

“Now,” I said, withdrawing the nine-millimeter from under my arm, “you drop in on the doc.”

She gave me a sharp look. “What’s my excuse for being here?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not gonna get that far.”

She clutched my sleeve again. “Nathan … don’t underestimate this man. He … he’s capable of terrible things.”

“Concentration-camp-type things, you mean? Or is he just a strict boss?”

Then we were standing on his front stoop, a few cement steps up from the lawn, and the nurse was ringing the doctor’s bell and I was standing with my back to the house, against the outer wall, just to the right of the door, covering up the street numbers and mail slot. The nine-millimeter, in my right hand, was tucked behind me.

The door opened, and Bernstein, in that clipped precise middle-European-accented English, said, “Why, Maria—what are you doing here at this late—”

That was all he got out before I bulled my way in, grabbing onto Maria’s arm with my left hand, yanking her along—not really trusting her, after all—and sticking the nose of the automatic, clutched in my right fist, into the bastard’s neck.

“Shut the door, Maria,” I said, “then come around where I can see you.”

She shut the door and scurried into view.

“I see you don’t keep
shabbes,
Doc,” I said, digging the snout of the nine-millimeter into his neck, dimpling it; he was lifting his chin, looking down at me with unblinking blue-gray eyes. “Electric lights, driving after sundown—but then, that’s right, you’re not Orthodox, are you?”

“Mr. Heller, what in—”

“That’s all right, Doc. Neither am I.”

I withdrew the gun from his neck, gave him a push—not a shove, I’m no sadist—to back him off from me, a ways; he put his hands up, without being asked, and that pale well-chiseled face of his had gone white as milk, only his expression was curdled. Keeping the automatic trained on my reluctant host, I took the place in, the living room, anyway—checking to see if Maria had been truthful about the layout. To the left, an archway leading (she’d said) to the bedrooms and a TV room; just behind and to the right of Bernstein, an archway into the kitchen. So far, it seemed, she’d played it straight.

We were in the largest room in the house—cream-color plaster walls and a Chinese blue pile carpet, and a modern living-room suite with medium-blue boucle overstuffed sofa, matching easy chair and blond modern occasional pieces. Still, the place was underfurnished—Bernstein was a bachelor, after all—and the living room in particular didn’t look lived in, like a display room in a furniture store, only a little less homey. Nothing of the person living here showed.

“Nice digs, Doc—you’re really enjoying the all-American good life, great job, Cadillac, nice new house … that wonderful postwar world they promised us fighting men, looks like you wound up with it. Congratulations.”

Bernstein’s voice was calm, soothing; he patted the air with his upraised palms. “Mr. Heller—you’ve obviously had a relapse of your battle neurosis. You’ve fixated upon me for some reason, and I would suggest—”

“If I even suspect you’re layin’ a posthypnotic suggestion on me, you son of a bitch, I’m going to repaint these walls red. Guess how.”

His voice remained soothing, reasonable. “Can we talk about this, whatever it is?” He craned his neck to look at his nurse. “Maria? Can you explain?”

“I’m his hostage, too,” she shrugged, but her hands were on her hips, not in the air.

I nodded to a mirror with birds painted on it, over the sofa. “Gee, with your Zionist leanings, Doc, I’d figure you’d have a painting of Palestine on display, or maybe a big autographed picture of you and Ben-Gurion. I mean, you are the guy that suggested I embrace my Jewish side.”

“Obviously Mr. Forrestal’s death has unsettled you,” he said gently, the invisible eyebrows raising. “I only want to help you, Mr. Heller—why don’t you just put down the gun … after all, I’m unarmed, I’m in no way a threat to you … and we’ll talk.”

I pointed with the automatic, toward the archway just behind him. “We’ll talk in the kitchen, Doc. Come on, Maria—we’re all going to sit down, like one big happy family.”

The kitchen was small and blindingly white, closed white window blinds, white dinette set with chrome legs and white-and-chrome chairs, white cupboards, sparkling white Westinghouse refrigerator and gas range, with only the black-and-white speckled linoleum floor for relief. A shining steel electric percolator and toaster sat on the white countertop, but otherwise the kitchen had that same unlived-in look as the living room.

This was not a home; it was a place to hide.

I had Bernstein sit with his back to the countertop while I sat across from him, the stove behind me, my arm resting on the tabletop, nine-millimeter trained on him. Maria sat to my right, and both of them I directed to sit with their hands folded on the tabletop. The three of us sat there like we were waiting for Mom to serve us something.

His fingers interlocked prayerfully, Bernstein—his complexion seeming less albino-like in contrast with the harsh whiteness of the kitchen—asked, “Are you ready to tell me what this is about, Mr. Heller?”

“Sure, Doc—why don’t we start with Roswell?”

“Roswell,” he said. He pretended to think about that, shrugging. “And what is Roswell?”

“My intelligence may be limited, Doc, but don’t insult it, okay?”

His mouth twitched, or was that a sneer? “Have I treated you disrespectfully, Mr. Heller? I’d prefer you dispense with the ‘Doc’ cuteness. My name is Dr. Bernstein.”

“No it isn’t. I don’t know what it is, but it sure as hell isn’t Bernstein—though speaking of cute, that Jew routine of yours sure was. The Star of David tie tack—nice touch, Doc.”

His nostrils flared; the gray-blue eyes showed no fear, just an icy cast. “Gun or no gun, I won’t stand for this. My name is Joseph Bernstein and I’m a Jew … unlike you, Mr. Heller, a proud Jew, and this is some bizarre case of mistaken identity on your part. If necessary, I can get you the documentation to prove who I am.”

I smiled at Maria, whose eyes—like those of a spectator at a tennis match—were moving from me to Bernstein and back again, as our conversation bounced along on its merry way. “I’m sure you can, Doc,” I said. “I bet you have a better pedigree than a prize-winning poodle. I’m curious, though—as a member of the master race, does this Zionist masquerade sicken you, or amuse you?”

A sneer, this time, no question. “This farce sickens me.”

The nine-millimeter in my fist remained trained on him.

“And please, as our little talk progresses, Doc, let me save you some time—spare me about how you weren’t really a Nazi, you were a man of science, caught up in winds of political change not of your choosing. Serving science and mankind, as best you could, under unfortunate circumstances. Hating Hitler, much as you now love Uncle Sam. One word of that shit and I just fucking shoot you—clear?”

Now, finally, a little fear was melting the icy eyes; he swallowed thickly. “You’re a very sick man.”

“Well, why don’t we pretend I’m on your couch and you can have a listen to my crazy story. And it’s a crazy story, all right. Seems some Nazi scientists were working on a project at White Sands involving a flying-saucer-like vehicle. Actually, it was shaped more like a wedge, and I’m just piecing this together, but I understand, during the war, you Germans were trying to build a saucer-shaped bomber, that could lift off vertically, since all your runways were shot to shit; and this project grew from that wartime research. Now somehow, at White Sands, for some reason, Japanese engineers and pilots were also involved …”

Bernstein’s mask slipped; my mention of the Japanese startled him. He clearly didn’t expect me to have such esoteric information.

“… possibly because their knowledge, combined with their small stature, made them ideal pilots. And, since Uncle Sam is willing to collaborate with Nazis, why not with Nips? Fair’s fair, isn’t it? Anyway, there was a crash, maybe the craft got struck by lightning; seems to have been a midair explosion, over the Brazel ranch, scattering some debris, with the vehicle crashing, or crash-landing, some miles away.”

Those eyes of his didn’t blink much—the icy-gray eyes fixed on me like a cobra looking at a mouse; it would have been unsettling, if I hadn’t had the gun.

I went on with my tale: “Colonel Blanchard and his boys found the craft with the crew mostly dead, with maybe one left alive. In the darkness of the night, some of the witnesses apparently took the craft for one of those new-fangled flying saucers they’d been hearing and reading so much about—the Japanese crew, in their silver flight suits, maybe with their heads shaved, maybe with swelling around their eyes … traumatic hematoma can cause that … must have looked pretty damn strange. Like little men from outer space, in the dark, next to their ‘flying saucer.’ How do you like my story so far?”

“Delusions like these, Mr. Heller, can get a man committed.”

“I’ll bet. You could probably even arrange a little shock therapy, huh, Doc? Now some of the witnesses knew they weren’t looking at spacemen, recognizing a Jap when they saw one, puffy eyes or not … and some of the fringe players didn’t really see much at all—Major Marcel just found some weird debris, that p.r. guy Haut just issued the press release as ordered, Maria’s mortician sweetie just had some phone calls for small caskets, then got the bum’s rush when he dropped by the base hospital. Maria here was the one who ‘saw’ the autopsies and the weird corpses. That’s where the black propaganda campaign kicks in.”

Bernstein shifted in his chair, but knew enough not to unfold his hands. “Mr. Heller, if this were true, it would be classified material, top-secret information, and a wise man would walk away—right now. I might be willing to forget this intrusion … even including you threatening me with a gun.”

“Well, that crashed aircraft does represent a threat of exposure of top-secret technology, all right; but that wasn’t the big worry. The upper echelons of our great democracy—for example, an advisory panel called Majestic Twelve, including one James Vincent Forrestal—shrewedly deduced that the public’s reaction to the government collaborating with both Nazis and Japs would have been a public relations disaster. Nazi scientists retooling V-2s, Japs test-piloting U.S. experimental aircraft—this stuff doesn’t go over big with families that haven’t gotten over, yet, losing sons and fathers at Bataan and the Bulge.”

His lips pursed in a smile as he pretended to be amused. “So now, Mr. Heller, you’re suggesting the federal government concocted the ‘flying saucer’ hysteria themselves, to cover up testing of experimental aircraft?”

“That I don’t know. The saucer hysteria may have been a natural by-product of a nation exiting a catastrophic world war, and needing something new to be afraid of. Maybe the government fueled that hysteria for its own purposes; I just don’t know. But I do know, with so much talk of flying saucers in the air—so to speak—it provided the perfect cover-up for the Roswell crash.”

An invisible eyebrow arched. “Paranoid schizophrenics, Mr. Heller, see conspiracies everywhere they look. Tell me, have you been hearing voices?”

“Actually, I have: yours. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself, Doc. You see, the brilliance of this cover-up is that it substitutes a fake cover-up for a real one … leading people to believe that what the government is trying to hide is evidence of flying saucers and outer-space men. You feed, and feed off, the rumors that a flying saucer crashed in the desert; this plays into the witnesses who didn’t see much, or didn’t see anything, and probably a handful—perhaps Kaufmann—who misidentified the Japs as Martians or whatever. Still others, who saw the Japanese pilots and knew damn well what they were seeing, were warned and threatened into silence. Some of those who saw too much—Sheriff Wilcox, Mac Brazel, again maybe Kaufmann—were taken to the Walker base ‘guesthouse,’ and this is where you come in, Doc—and you, Maria.”

The mention of her name made Maria visibly uncomfortable.

Bernstein’s expression took on an air of patronizing disgust. “I’ve never been in Roswell in my life.”