Super (20 page)

Agent Lyons beamed. “My mother adores this guy. She’ll never believe it when I tell her.”

“Mr. Gable,” said Jack Pryor, stepping in front of Gable. “I have a man here who’d love to meet you. This is Special Agent Lyons of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Lyons shook the right hand of The King. “This is a real honor, Mr. Gable,” he said.

“I’d better get back on the train—right now,” said Gable quickly. “Wouldn’t want to be left in Albuquerque.”

He turned and almost ran back to the Super Chief.

“I can’t believe it,” said FBI Agent Lyons. “President Truman and Clark Gable—on the same train.”

“All in a day’s work on the Santa Fe,” said Santa Fe agent Pryor. “If you’d like to switch from the FBI to the Santa Fe, let me know. I’ll put in a good word.”

Agent Lyons said he’d take a pass.

At 9:45 a.m., an hour and a half behind schedule, the Super Chief eased into Union Station at Los Angeles. The various emergency-related stops and pauses had caused the delay.

But it was still a major occasion. The arrival of the Super Chief always was, with chatter from people, noise from the trains and the baggage carts, the sounds and excitement of return, the pleasure of arrival. Home again for some, California here I am! for others. Chauffeurs and assistants for some, taxi and bus rides for others.

“I was right, the lawyers are waiting for you, Dar,” said Gene Mathews. “I can see them. Three guys like vultures, each with a large briefcase. They’re all standing just inside the station doorway.”

Darwin Rinehart slowed the pace of their walk, signaling their redcap with his cart to do the same. “I don’t think I can go through with this, Gene. I can’t handle it, Gene. I can’t do this, Gene.”

“No choice, Dar. You have no choice. You can come back. This is Comeback City. People come back all the time. You’ll come back.”

“My company. It’s mine. My office. I love my office. What about my Brancusi? I love that egg. I bought it in New York … you remember, Gene, at the gallery on Fifty-seventh.”

“I remember, Dar. It’s worth a bundle—that’s why they want it now.”

“My house. Will they take my house, Gene?”

“Probably. They’ll give you the complete bad news in a minute. Look, you knew it was coming. We should never have gone to New York. That was crazy, like I told you. You should have stayed here, Dar.”

They were no longer moving. Other passengers had to walk around them on the platform, heading toward the station.

“Look, Dar! Look!”

Rinehart reluctantly followed Mathews’s stare. “See this guy coming from the train?”

“Yeah, what? I’m looking,” Darwin said.

“There’s no mustache and his hair’s been combed differently but look at him. He’s almost a live replica of King Clark Gable. A little shorter—slightly smaller ears. Wonder what his breath smells like?”

Rinehart said, “What this country does not need are two Clark Gables.”

They said their farewell words on the station platform, as redcaps and local California Democrats sorted through the commotion of Truman’s arrival.

“This has been the ultimate honor for me, sir,” said Albert Carlton Browne.

“I’ve enjoyed it myself, Browne,” said Harry S Truman. “We had quite a bit of excitement on our trip, I’d say.”

“A killing, an A-testing protester and, to top it off, a potential Clark Gable imposter—and that’s only what I know about,” said Browne, then, after a pause, adding, “That railroad detective never said anything further to me about our Clark Gable doubts. Did he to you?”

“No, he didn’t,” said Truman. “Clearly the detective team of Truman and Browne was not that persuasive.”

“All told, this really would make a great ‘My Spring of ’56 Trip on the Super Chief’ story for me to write,” Browne said.

Truman lifted his walking stick as if it were a club. “Permission still
not
granted.”

As they stepped apart, Harry S Truman halted, grinned and said in a quiet voice, “You’re almost back to talking like a Kansan, Browne.”

“Thank you, Mr. President—I think,” Browne replied.

“I did finally remember something more about that Dale Lawrence,” said the former president.

The prominent journalist took a breath.

“Yeah, he may very well have been in the Oval Office with Stimson. I think Stimson may have made me let the guy talk for two minutes—not a second more. I’m pretty sure he made the case for delaying the testing. He wanted more data known and studied before any more explosions were allowed. But the guy was in the minority so I didn’t pay much attention. Nobody did. All the Atomic Energy Commission top brass said there was no danger.”

A. C. Browne put his monocle back into his right eye. “On the train, that Lawrence certainly seemed awfully sick himself, didn’t he?”

Harry S Truman said, “But from what cause? Or what disease?”

“Are you going to look into it further, sir?”

“No, I am not.” A half grin came across Truman’s face. “And I don’t want to read about this in
Reader’s Digest
or any other goddamn magazine or even in the
Strong Pantagraph
.”

Browne was not grinning. He looked down at the station platform.

“You gave me your word—no story,” said the man from Missouri. “I have to go, Browne.”

This was not an easy situation for A. C. Browne. He was at this moment a reporter with one helluva story—and he was going to have to give it up.

But he said, “All right, Mr. President.”

Darwin Rinehart and Gene Mathews and their redcap stood motionless in a quiet corner of the giant waiting room. The humiliation ceremony was suddenly over, the lawyers had in less than a minute acquired Rinehart’s signature and life, including his Brancusi egg. He’d been granted five hours to go to his house and, under court supervision, remove his most personal effects.

Remove them to where exactly?

Mathews suggested a hotel. Not the Ambasssador and certainly not the Beverly Wilshire, Rinehart’s most favorite Hollywood place. Something cheaper. They did have some cash, but maybe only fifteen hundred dollars or so.

Rinehart said, “We’re getting back on the Super Chief, Gene, where we belong—where we’re safe.”

Mathews pointed toward the steps from the train platform and the Super Chief. “Look! That’s Harry Truman! He’s coming right this way.”

Rinehart looked. “My God, it sure is. Was he on the Super with us?”

“Must have been the big-name passenger who was in the ‘Kansas City’ sleeper car,” Rinehart said.

Truman and a group of five or six other men passed right by Rinehart and Mathews on the way to the front entrance.

“Mr. President—I was always with you,” Rinehart said to him.

“Me, too,” said Mathews. “I loved the way you gave ’em hell.”

Truman raised his walking stick to his hat to acknowledge the good words. “Thank you, thank you,” he said, as he kept walking.

Someone started clapping. And then a few others did, including Rinehart and Mathews. Truman acknowledged it all with smiles and more salutes with his stick.

“There was a lot more happening on the Super than we knew about, Dar,” Mathews said, once Harry Truman was gone.

“We’ll be on it again tonight. We’re going to stay right here in this waiting room until it leaves. We’ve got enough cash for tickets, a drawing room with an adjoining bedroom. Same as always for us, Gene.”

Mathews shook his head slowly, sadly. “All I’ll get is a ticket for you, Dar. I won’t be going.”

“No, no, Gene. Think of it as a story. A failed movie producer goes into a deep dive, flips out …” He stopped, waiting for Mathews to pick it up.

“I’m not playing anymore, Dar,” said Mathews.

“What?”

“I’m leaving you.” Mathews turned and headed in the direction of the station’s front door.

“No! Gene, no!”

Mathews did not turn around. He kept walking.

“Think about it, Gene!” Rinehart yelled after him. “He flips out and spends the rest of his life riding back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between LA and Chicago …”

Gene Mathews made no sign he’d heard anything as he moved farther away.

If Darwin Rinehart had been a streamliner he would have sounded his howling horn loud enough to shake Mount Rushmore.

Jack Pryor had had a brief exchange of departing words with Ralph, the sleeping car porter. The detective gave instructions about taking the linens and other evidentiary items from the late Otto Wheeler’s compartment to the station dispatching office. And he warned Ralph again to get out of the Private business and stay out of it.

“I am certain you let that guy on to bother President Truman,” Pryor said. “I promise you with an oath on my badge that I’m going to get you. Every time you take money from a guy like that, think: This could be it. This could be a company plant. This could mean your job and your life. Think that every time.”

“Yes, sir,” was all Ralph said in response.

Then Pryor went into the station, where there was word in the railroad police office for him to call his boss, Captain Lordsburg, in Chicago.
URGENT
, was the message.

“Did you put somebody off the Super in Dodge City?” were Lordsburg’s first words. No hello greeting, no how did things go with the death of the Bethel regular?
That
was now up to some Kansas sheriff to sort through.

Pryor confirmed that he had indeed tossed a man off at Dodge City.

“He was bothering President Truman, for one thing,” said Pryor. “And he was a Private. That porter Ralph put him on board, I’m pretty sure.”

“The guy you tossed turned up in Boot Hill.”

“The cemetery?”

“You know another Boot Hill in Dodge City?” said the captain. “But he’s not dead, not yet. They found him lying by one of the tombstones. He’s sick as hell. They’ve got him in a hospital. Some of the railroad lawyers don’t like the idea of a dying man being put off one of our trains in the middle of nowhere—no matter the reason. Did you know he once worked in Washington for the government?”

“I did hear him tell Mr. Truman that. He was coughing but I didn’t know he was dying. Dodge isn’t really nowhere—”