“Hello, Dick, how are you? This is Ann Chambers. Remember me?”
“What’s a nice girl like you doing with those two?” Canidy replied.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We have Sarah as a chaperone.”
Sarah took that as her cue to take the telephone. Ann gave it up willingly.
Now that I finally had the chance to talk to him, I couldn’t think of a damned thing to say.
But by the time everybody, including Charity, had talked to Canidy and the phone was back in its usual place, she did have something to say.
“I think I know where he is,” she said. “On the seashore, near Lakehurst.”
Douglass looked at her curiously.
“My father and Chesly Haywood Whittaker were friends. Chesly Whittaker had a big place on the shore at Deal. Summer Place. I was there once with my father,” Ann said. “I’ll bet that’s where he is.”
“That makes sense,” Douglass said. “Donovan and my father have taken over the Whittaker place here in D.C. But so what?”
“So, no matter what he’s doing, I don’t think he’ll be doing it on the Fourth. If you two wanted to see him, I mean.”
“Damn right I want to see him,” Ed Bitter said, a little thickly. The alcohol was getting to him. “Jesus, I owe him an apology.”
“Yes, I think you do,” Ann said, reinforcing that argument.
“The seashore sounds splendid to me,” Charity offered. “Anyplace but this steam bath.”
“But how would we get there?” Bitter asked reasonably. “I don’t want to take the baby on a train. And it would take forever. And we don’t know he’s where you think he is.”
“We can drive,” Douglass said.
“You need gas to drive,” Bitter said.
“The tank in your car is full,” Douglass said. “And there’s a hundred gallons’ worth of coupons in the glove compartment.”
Ed Bitter, surprising his wife, accepted the black-market gasoline and ration coupons without comment. But, as if he sensed that they really shouldn’t be going through with their plan, he offered a last objection.
“Who’s going to drive?” he asked, focusing his eyes with an effort on Douglass. “I’m a little tiddly myself, and you’re obviously in no condition to drive.”
“I’ll drive,” Ann said.
2
SUMMER PLACE
DEAL, NEW JERSEY
2230 HOURS
JULY 3, 1942
Even with a priority, there had been no airline seat available from Louisville for Eldon Baker. And he had elected not to use his priority to evict from their berths officers traveling by train from Fort Knox northward. He had consequently caught what sleep he could sitting up in a passenger car to Washington, and it had been nearly six in the evening when he finally reached Summer Place.
He was not especially pleased with what he found. First, Canidy had allowed Second Lieutenant C. Holdsworth Martin III to call his parents. Then Mrs. Chesly Haywood Whittaker had taken it upon herself to invite Mr. and Mrs. C. Holdsworth Martin, Jr., to come out of the brutal heat of Manhattan and spend the Fourth of July with their son at Summer Place.
“I said they could come,” an unrepentant Canidy told Baker after the damage was done. “Martin père came to the horn and asked me if it would be all right.”
“You should have politely told him no,” Baker said.
“I was not about to do that. From where I sit, one of Donovan’s Disciples ranks the hell out of a lowly Dilettante like myself. And I also thought it would please the admiral.”
“And you didn’t think you should keep them away from Fulmar?” Baker demanded. At this moment, Eric Fulmar, wearing trunks and a beach robe, was sitting with the Martins and the admiral beneath one of the umbrellaed tables on the lawn.
“Again, Eldon, when Martin père asked to speak to him, I didn’t think it was my place to tell him no.”
The damage has been done, Baker decided. First thing in the morning, I will report what’s happened to Captain Douglass. In the meantime, I will do what I came here to do.
“Captain Douglass thought it would be a good idea if I sat in on the first session between you and Fine. In case the two of you don’t have everything you should have.”
“He told me to put the briefcase in Reynolds’s safe at Lakehurst and start on it fresh after the Fourth.”
“Then, inasmuch as Commander Reynolds doesn’t know me, I think that you and I had better ride out there to get it,” Baker said.
“What about waiting until after the Fourth?”
“I plan to leave here at five tomorrow afternoon,” Baker said. “So it’s either tonight or tomorrow