The Throat (53 page)

That man
had claimed to be a visitor at Lang Vo on the day before its invasion
by the North Vietnamese: a certain Francis Pinkel on the staff of the
much-loved Senatorial hawk, Clay Burrman, conducting his yearly tour of
his favorite projects in Vietnam. These being so many, he had
dispatched Pinkel, his aide, alone, to a CIDG camp assumed to be in no
great danger. Pinkel arrived, quickly saw that nothing in Lang Vo would
interest the Senator, and penned the usual pack of lies lauding the
work of the Special Forces. Pinkel had come to praise Caesar, not to
bury him. The helicopter returned to bring Pinkel back to his boss at
Camp Crandall, and lifted off before sundown.

Once
they were up in the air, Pinkel saw—imagined he saw, as he was later
advised—something he did not understand. Beneath the helicopter, less
than a kilometer from Lang Vo,
was
another tribe of "Yards" under the
command of a Caucasian male.
What were they doing there? Who
were they?
There was no second officer detailed to Lang Vo, and the tribesmen in
the little encampment could not have been so numerous. The tribe and
their leader scattered across the ridge where the helicopter had come
upon them, fleeing for cover. Pinkel made an addendum to his puff of a
report. The next day the North Vietnamese struck. Pinkel mentioned his
odd sighting, and was ignored. The Senator mentioned it, to loud
protestations of ignorance and impossibility. Fletcher Namon of
Ridenhour, FL, wondered if the white man seen by Francis Pinkel—seen
lurking on the outskirts of the camp under the command of Captain
Ransom—was none other than Franklin Bachelor. Francis Pinkel and
Senator Clay Burrman had suggested this possibility, once returned to
Washington. They were suggesting that Bachelor had come down from his
mountain redoubt to assist a fellow Green Beret in time of trouble. But
how could Bachelor have known what the rest of the command did not? Or
if he knew, why not issue a warning, as he had done at other times?

The
upshot, Pinkel had told the bartender, was that the Shadow Masters had
come to unwelcome conclusions and expunged the disaster at Lang Vo from
military records. Everybody who had been there was dead, their
survivors informed that they had died as a result of enemy action at
Lang Vei. Pinkel and Burrman were put under order of silence, in the
name of national security.

The
letter ended with the wish that I would find this information
interesting. It may have been no more than "a tale told over a bar,"
but if the man Pinkel saw was not Bachelor—who was he?

I did
find this "interesting," mild word, interesting indeed. It is the final
bit of evidence that locks all else into place. To conceal the
treachery of one of its favorite sons, the army instituted a massive
cover-up which has been in place to this day.

I
replied to my correspondent in Ridenhour, but soon my grateful screed
returned to me stamped with the information that no town of that name
exists in the state of Florida. And I have since observed that "Namon"
is
No man
spelled backwards.
This in no way shakes my belief in the
veracity of the much-travelled letter. Mister "Namon" is a man who
takes sensible precautions, and I salute him for it!

Franklin
Bachelor disappeared once again, it was said into North Vietnam. This
rumor was false. In 1971 a marine patrol near the DMZ came upon an old
camp, long since destroyed, littered with the remains of dead
tribesmen. Amongst these bodies lay the severely decomposed corpse of a
white male of indeterminate age. Franklin Bachelor had met, too late it
is true, his proper fate. His entrails had been picked apart by birds,
and wild foxes had torn his flesh. After a fruitless search for his
relatives, Bachelor was buried by the army in an unmarked grave—sprung
from nowhere, he was returned to the selfsame place.

For of
all the oddities we have observed in the case of Major Franklin
Bachelor, this is perhaps the oddest of all, that the man
never existed
at all.
It was one of those cases where a lad enlists in the
service
under a false name, hiding his origins or his identity, and so enters
from the dream world, the shadow world, the night world. Though he was
responsible for untold tragedy, this figment was tolerated, nay
embraced by the army's great sheltering arms, and encouraged toward an
unwise independence that led to a dishonorable death. Call me foolish,
hidebound, what you will, but in this progression from the dark dream
world to success, thence to corruption and a return to nothingness and
the dark, I see an epitome. Franklin Bachelor—"Franklin Bachelor," a
true unknown soldier, he is the ghost that haunts us when our
principles are laid aside.

Here I
closed the book to resume my own work.

The
three Ransoms came in through the front door on a wave of talk a few
minutes after eleven. They had seen a double feature of
Double
Indemnity
and
Kiss Me Deadly
and then stopped in for a drink at
Jimmy's. It was the first time I had seen them relaxed and comfortable
with each other. "So you finally came home," John said. "What have you
been doing all day, shopping?"

"You
spent the day shopping, big guy?" Ralph fell into the couch beside me,
and Marjorie sat beside him.

"I
talked to a few people," I said, looking at John to let him know that I
wanted him to stay up after his parents left for bed.

"Just
let the cops handle everything, that's what they're paid for," Ralph
said. "You should have come to the show with us."

"Honestly,
I don't know why we stayed for the whole thing," Marjorie said. She
leaned forward to give me the full effect of her eyes. "Gloomy? Oh,
Lord."

"Hey!"
Ralph said. "Weren't you going to see if old Glen-oy is still at the
hotel?"

"Were
you?" John said.

"I had a
long talk with him, that's right."

"How is
old Glenroy?"

"Busy—he's
getting ready to go to France."

"What
for?" He really could not figure it out.

"He's
playing in a jazz festival and making a record."

"The
poor bastard." He shook his head, evidently at the notion of an ancient
wreck like Glenroy Breakstone trying to play jazz in front of a crowd
of French people. Then his eyes lighted up, and he pointed his index
finger at me. "Did Glenroy tell you about the time he introduced me to
Louis Armstrong? Satchmo? What a thrill. Just a little guy, did you
know that? No bigger than Glenroy."

I shook
my head, and he dropped his hand, disappointed.

"Ralph,"
Marjorie said. "It's late, and we're traveling tomorrow."

"You're
leaving?"

"Yeah,"
John said.

"We
figure we've done everything we could, here," Ralph said. "There isn't
much point in sticking around."

So that was why they had been able to
relax.

 Marjorie said, "
Ralph
,"
and tugged at his arm. Both of them got
up. "Okay, guys," Ralph said. Then he looked at me again. "It's
probably a waste of time, anyhow, you know. I don't think I ever fired
more than one person, myself, and that didn't last long. Bob Bandolier
pretty much took care of that kind of thing."

"Who was
the person you did fire?"

He
smiled. "I remembered it when we were sitting in the movie—it seems
kind of funny now, to think of it."

"Who was
it?" I asked.

"I bet
you could tell me. There were only two people in the hotel that I
would
fire, me personally, I mean."

I
blinked at him, and then understood. "Bob Bandolier and Dicky Lambert.
Because they were directly subordinate to you."

"Why is
this important?" Marjorie asked.

"John's
friend is
interested
, that's
why it's important," Ralph said. "It's
research, you heard him."

Marjorie
waved a dismissive hand, turned, and walked away from us. "I give up.
Come up soon, Ralph, and I mean it."

He
watched her walk away and then turned back to me. "It just came to me,
watching Double Indemnity. I remembered how Bob Bandolier started
shaving hours off his time, coming in late, leaving early, making all
kinds of excuses. Finally the guy came out and said his wife was sick
and he had to take care of her. Sure surprised me. I didn't even think
he was married. That was some thought, Bob Bandolier with a wife, I
tell you."

"He came
in late because his wife was sick?"

"He damn
near missed a couple of days. I told Bob he couldn't do that, and he
gave me a lot of guff about how he was a better manager in two hours
than anybody else would be in eight, or some crap like that, and
finally I fired him. Had no choice." He held his hands out, palms up.
"He wasn't doing the job. The guy was a fixture, but he put me over a
barrel. So I gave him the axe." The hands went into his pockets and his
shoulders went up, in that gesture common to father and son. "Anyhow, I
hired him back in a couple of weeks. When Bob was gone, things didn't
go right. The meat orders went completely haywire, for one thing."

"What
happened to his wife?" John asked.

"She
died—during that time before he came back. Dicky Lambert told me, he
got it out of him somehow. Bob wouldn't have ever said anything about
it to me."

"When
was this?" I asked.

Ralph
shook his head, amused by my persistence. "Hey, I can't remember
everything. In the early fifties sometime."

"When
James Treadwell was found dead in his room, did Bandolier handle the
details?"

Ralph
opened his mouth and blinked at me. "Well. I guess not. I remember
wishing that he
could
handle
the details, because I moved Dicky to
days, and he was no good at all."

"So you
fired Bob Bandolier around the time of the murders."

"Well,
yeah, but…" He gave me a sharp, disbelieving look, and then started
shaking his head. "No, no, that's way off base. We're talking about
Bob
Bandolier
—this upright character who organized prayer meetings."

I
remembered something Tom Pasmore had said to me. "Did he have any
children? A son, maybe?"

"God, I
hope not." Ralph smiled at the notion of Bob Bandolier raising a child.
"See you guys in the morning." He gave us an awkward half-wave and
started up the stairs.

John
said good night to his father and then turned to me. He looked tense
and irritated. "Okay, what have you been doing all day?"

"Mostly,
I was looking for traces of Bob Bandolier," I said. John uttered a
disgusted sound and waved me toward his couch. Without bothering to
look at me, he went into his kitchen and returned with a lowball glass
filled to the brim with ice and vodka. He came to the chair and sipped,
glowering at me all the while. "And what were you up to last night?"

"What's
the matter with you, John? I don't deserve this."

"And I
don't deserve
this
." He
sipped again, unwilling to sit down until he
had come out with whatever it was that troubled him. "You told my
mother you were a college professor! What are you these days, some kind
of imposter?"

"Oh,
John, Joyce Brophy called me Professor Underhill, that's all."

He
glared at me, but finally sat down. "I had to tell my parents all about
your illustrious academic career. I didn't want them to know you're a
liar, did I? So you're a full professor at Columbia, and you've
published four books. My parents are proud that I know a guy like you."

"You
didn't have to lay it on so thick."

John
waved this away. "You know what she said to me? My mother?"

I shook
my head.

"She
said that some day I'd meet a wonderful young woman, and that she was
still hoping to be a grandmother some day. I'm supposed to remember
that I'm still a healthy young man with a wonderful house and a
wonderful job."

"Well,
they're leaving tomorrow, anyway. You're not sorry they came, are you?"

"Hey, I
got to hear my father talk about Indian theology with Alan Brookner."
He raised his eyebrows and laughed. Then he groaned, and flattened his
hands against his temples, as if trying to press his thoughts into
order. "You know what it is? I don't have time to catch up with myself.
Is Alan okay, by the way? You got him a nurse?"

"Eliza
Morgan," I said.

"Swell.
We all know what a fine job—" He flapped a hand in the air. "No, I take
it back, I take it back. I'm grateful. I really am, Tim."

"I don't
really expect you to act as if the worst thing that ever happened to
you was a parking ticket," I said.

"The
problem is, I'm angry. I hardly even know it most of the time. I only
figure it out when I look back and realize that all day I went around
slamming doors."

"Who are
you angry with?"

He shook
his head and drank again. "I guess actually, the person I'm angry with
is April. How can I be angry with April?"

"She
wasn't supposed to die."

"Yeah,
you went to shrink school at the same time you were becoming this
English professor at Columbia." He leaned back and gazed at his
ceiling. "Which is not to say that I don't think you're right. I just
don't want to accept it. Anyhow, I'm grateful that you can overlook my
acting like an asshole." He slouched further down in the chair and
cocked his feet on the coffee table. "Now will you tell me what
happened to you today?"

I took
him through my day: Alan, the Belknaps, Glenroy Breakstone, the trip to
Elm Hill, the irate old man on Fond du Lac Drive.

"I must
have missed something. What made you go to this man's house in the
first place?"