Day of the Bomb (23 page)

“No objections, your honor.” She spoke for both.

“Good. Mr. Lithington, is it true that you chained
your son to a woodstove and if so, why?”

The accused coughed and his voice quavered. “Your
honor, I had no choice. I was fearing that Leroy’s mama would come
on back home and take him away once and for all.”

“Where is his mother?”

“I don’t rightly know. About six years back she runs
off with some piano player. From what I be told he plays down
around the Chtilin’ Circuit.”

“The what?”

“Chitlin’ Circuit. That be all the dance halls and
juke joints that be spread out all over everywhere in the
South.”

“Did she take the boy with her when she left?”

“At first. Then one day about five years back, she
dropped him off. She said she’d be back for him but I ain’t seen
her no more since.” He turned and pointed at Leroy. “I didn’t mean
him no harm. I just wanted to keep her from snatching him when I
wasn’t at home is all.”

“I see.” The judge turned toward Leroy. “Now it’s
Leroy’s turn. Do you remember your mother at all?”

“Yes, sir. But just a little bit. Mostly I just
remember one day she hugged me and told me to be good and she would
be back to get me. I figured I must not have been good enough
because she never came back for me.”

“How long has your father chained you up?”

“He only does it when he be gone a spell. Like when
he goes on off to town or out to work on the fields. He takes the
chain back off when he be in the house.”

“I meant how many years has he been chaining you
up?”

Leroy shrugged. “Long as I remember for.”

The judge sighed and stared at the gavel he had
wielded thousands of times to maintain his sense of order. “Will
you two please approach the bench?” When the social worker and
attorney were two feet from him he lowered his voice. “Any deal you
two can work out between you?”

“I’d like to keep Leroy at the children’s home until
we can investigate his home and their stories further, your honor.”
She tapped her crimson nails on the oak top of the bench, reminders
of the blood she had drawn in other court battles.

“Meantime I request the accused be released on his
own recognizance, your honor.” The lawyer placed both his hands by
the gavel.

“Very well.” He waited until the two had returned to
their clients. “Leroy Lithington is hereby remanded to the
children’s home. Monroe Lithington is released pending
investigation of the living conditions at his home and verification
can made of the mother’s whereabouts so that custody can be granted
to the appropriate parent. Court adjourned.”

***

The lone detective from the Madisin Police
Department stared at the teletype message from Mobile, Alabama. He
tore off the sheet and walked across the street to the public
defender’s cramped office. The balding attorney stared at him over
stacks of dusty folders. “What’s up, Vic?”

“Remember the guy who kept his kid chained up?”

“Monroe Lithington?”

“Turns out his wife died in a car wreck about four
and a half years back. The only ID on her listed a Georgia address
so they never found out about her husband and kid.”

“Whenever a new agency starts up, get in on the
ground floor.” Agent Bill Sampson’s supervisor gave this advice to
two kinds of agents, those he liked and those he wanted to get rid
of. Bill was the only one to follow it.

“I’d move on over to the Defense Intelligence Agency
myself if I were younger,” his boss said.

“Well, I figure I got another six or seven years
before I can retire,” Bill said. “Maybe the change will help me
ease into my golden years.”

“I hope so. Good luck.”

***

With its Uniform Code of Military Justice and
multiple chains of command, the military needed a separate
intelligence entity to flush out any spies or traitors within its
ranks. Such beliefs intensified at the DIA when an ex-Marine named
Lee Harvey Oswald defected to Russia.

Bill did not know what to make of his new job. After
comparing notes with agents at the FBI and CIA, he wondered if his
move had been right. But when an organizational structure was
cemented at the DIA his new supervisor squashed such misgivings
with Bill’s first assignment.

“Have a seat, Agent Sampson.” He continued talking
before Bill had settled into the green vinyl chair. “I have an
important assignment for you. You’re going to check out the bases
in Southern California that are doing research and development.
We’ve got to catch any more like that Oswald nutcase before they
defect. The CIA handles all the hush-hush stuff over at the Nevada
Test Site so that’s out of our hands, at least for now. But I want
you to assess the security risks there in California. Any
questions?”

“Can I have a list of the personnel assigned to the
bases?”

“Sure. My secretary will bring the lists to you.”

Only one name jumped out from the lists, Technician
Dave Freight. Bill jotted his name and location in a notebook and
went home to pack.

***

LAX reminded Bill of a hornet’s nest as he counted
the dozens of aircraft arriving, departing, and sitting on the
tarmac. His 707 was on time, nonstop from Washington, D.C. The
expanding federal bureaucracy had enough of a presence in Southern
California to merit its own motor pool of vehicles near the airport
so Bill took the shuttle to it and checked out a 1961 black Ford
two-door sedan. He found the 405 freeway and began winding through
the concrete maze that connected L.A. with dozens of suburbs.

By the time he reached Whittier, the cool ocean
breeze had died. Just west of San Bernardino the temperature was
twenty degrees hotter than at LAX and the smog tasted nasty so he
rolled up the windows and searched for a distraction on the radio.
He found it on KFWB.

The disc jockey sounded like he was high on bennies
or too many cups of coffee or both as he crammed his patter between
the 45 rpm discs he played. Bill had promised his teenaged sons and
twenty-two year old daughter to listen to top-40 radio at least
once in a while “so you can dig us, Dad.” He ignored the DJ’s spiel
and tried to focus on the music.

Elvis Presley’s latest album was out
and the song
Blue Hawaii
made him sound tamer than his days of dancing to
the jailhouse rock after suffering a breakdown at a heartbreak
hotel. The Marvelettes pled with Mr. Postman to bring a letter from
lover boy. Harry Mancini’s
Moon
River
calmed Bill’s nerves as he battled
rush hour traffic but then Ray Charles’ backup singers began
calling him Jack and telling him “to hit the road.” Jimmy Dean
spoke more than sang about Big John, who was as bad as he was tall.
Roy Orbison had two hits in the top 40,
Candy Man
and
Cryin’.

Folk music was still popular and the
Highwaymen harmonized about Michael rowing his boat ashore. There
were songs about a water boy, a great imposter, an astronaut, an
errant girlfriend named Runaround Sue. Moving one’s feet was
expected, according to the
Bristol
Stomp
and
Foot
Stompin’ (
Part 1).

The station’s signal was fading by the time Bill
pulled into his motel’s parking lot. He reviewed the hour of music
he had endured. Out of fifteen songs, he had enjoyed three.

“Guess I’m just a hopeless square,” he grumbled as he
carried his suitcase to his room.

The window air conditioner lowered
the room’s sweltering temperature by only ten degrees so Bill swam
laps in the 30-foot long pool. The remembered lyrics to
Hit the Road Jack, Candyman,
and
Michael
inspired him to finish forty laps. He was far enough out in
the desert that only one of L.A.’s eleven television stations
produced a decent picture on the room’s 15-inch TV screen so he
opted for a local station. He fell asleep during a movie from the
1940s and awoke the next morning as the station began its day with
the national anthem.

By the time Bill reached the first installation on
his list it was 8 a.m. and his stomach growled. He followed the
directions of the MP stationed at the front gate and found a
cafeteria that served eggs greasy, bacon burnt, and coffee
strong.

One out of three is not bad.
Bill finished his second cup of coffee and drove
to the base commander’s office. His clipped manner did little to
hide his nervousness.

“DIA, huh?” The colonel studied Bill’s I.D. card. “I
heard about you guys.” His voice went up an octave as each sentence
ended and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. “What are you
looking for?”

“This is just a routine inspection, sir.” Bill
employed his slow-paced monotone, which had calmed many such scared
individuals during his long career with law enforcement and
espionage. “We don’t sweat the small stuff, Colonel.”

“Well, I do. Now that President Kennedy wants us on
the moon within nine years everyone is sweating bullets.”

“I’ll talk to you before I leave. You, know, to
debrief you on any findings.”

“When will that be?”

“Depends on if I find anything questionable. Then I
have to dig deeper. If not, I’ll be done by tomorrow.”

Agent Sampson spent the morning checking the security
for the base. Then he interviewed those who commanded the secret
projects. Finally, he walked through the sites of those projects,
occasionally talking to random workers. At 4 p.m. the next day he
drove off of the base after assuring its commander that he “ran a
tight ship.”

***

The next military installation interested him for
only one reason; it was where Dave Freight labored. After his
initial inspection of the fort, Bill repaid Dave for the meal of
Mexican food from fifteen years ago.

“First time I ever ate at an officer’s club.” Dave
admired the white table cloth, bow-tied waiters, and fancy place
settings.

“Rank has its privileges,” Bill said. “I’m high
enough up the GS chain to get me in here. So, what’s with the
beard?”

“My goatee?” Dave stroked the mostly gray hair. “Have
to have it to be hep, man; a cool cat. You dig?”

“The only people that talk like that on the East
Coast are beatniks.”

“Ten-four, daddy-O. Beats are the coolest cats
around. Too bad I can’t take you to some of the folk clubs in L.A.
They’re really swinging.”

“You still have your ear to the ground on what’s
going on?”

“You fishing for the unofficial jive? You know, the
buzz on what’s really going on down?”

“Yeah. I’ve been fed the official line for three days
now. It’s all sounding the same, whether it’s Air Force or Army. I
have a feeling the Marine and Navy bases will be the same too.”

“I can dig it. Man, you need to be checking out those
cats over at Area 51 in Nevada. What’s going on down here in
California is small potatoes compared to what’s happening over
there. Most of what we get here was developed over there. We just
run the final tests before it goes operational.”

“My boss said the CIA runs that show.”

“All the more reason for a cat like you to be keeping
them honest.”

“About what?”

Dave glanced around the room. Because it was two days
before payday, the club was mostly deserted as officers stretched
the last of their monthly pay at home on meals of pork and beans or
tube steak. He lowered his voice. “There’s no way of knowing what
all they’re doing. A while back pilots flying near Area 51 that saw
the new top secret jets being tested out of there swore they saw
gorillas flying them.”

“Those were just test pilots wearing masks. They were
messing with the other pilots’ minds.”

Dave nodded. “That’s my point. They’re messing with
our heads.” He pointed at his and rotated his finger. “The stories
I hear are that they’ve got access to alien technology from the
crash at Roswell, New Mexico and are back engineering it.”

“UFOs?” Bill began to regret his invitation.

“Uh huh. Only they don’t know how they’re playing
with fire. Someday they’re going to get burned.”

“Huh?”

“This is totally off the record big daddy. Some cat
in L.A. invited me to something he called a gathering. Turned out
the cat was a devil worshipper and he was trying to get me to join
up.”

“But what’s that got to do with –”

Dave held up his hand. “Don’t get up tight, daddy-o.
They had their meeting out in the desert somewhere. They
blindfolded me on the way there and on the way back to L.A. so that
I’m still not sure where it was we were at. Anyway, they drew this
giant pentagram in the sand and started chanting all their hocus
pocus spells. Pretty soon this great big blob of light comes up out
of the sand. After about twenty minutes it took on the shape of a
flying saucer and zoomed on off. Must have been going Mach-10 at
least.”

Bill rolled his eyes. “You smoke that marijuana that
I read the beatniks like so much?”

“I have to take the Fifth on that. But I was stone
cold sober when I saw it. Scout’s honor.” He held up the
three-finger salute. “I never went to another meeting. Not this
cat. From what I heard some of those devil worshippers use up all
of their nine lives before their time. Scary stuff. The guy who
invited me disappeared a few months later. Everything was still in
his apartment. The cops are still baffled. They didn’t believe my
story either. Say, cool daddy-O, let’s deep six all this cloak and
dagger jive. You’re cool even if you are a spook turning over rocks
looking for threats to our country. Let’s head on back to my pad
and I’ll spin you some really boss jazz.”

“Uh, maybe some other time.”