Free Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery by Dallas Murphy

discuss this and any other matter relating to Mrs. Burke's care at your earliest.
    Sincerely,
    Elwood Dibbs
    Total Amount Due: $2,158.68

NINE

    I  GOT TO the library well before five and made out a call slip for
Life
magazine, July 18, 1944. I stood anxiously at the periodicals desk as an indifferent young clerk went to look for it. I was still feeling crazy and frustrated, and sure enough, she returned empty-handed and lazily muttered something at me.
    "What!"
    She jumped. "It's on microfilm," she said. "Microfilm. On the third floor."
    I spun the old machine to the table of contents, and there it was, the caption to the cover photograph:
    Maj. Danny Beemon, Fifth Fighter Group, Eighth AF, after his return from an escort mission over the German heartland.
    I spun to the article. It was general rah-rah typical of wartime press, about what a terrific job the Eighth Air Force was doing in Europe, how D-Day couldn't have come off without them, and what a fine leader Jimmy Doolittle was. This Danny Beemon was mentioned as being among the top pilots in the European Theater. Though I'd never heard of Beemon, I'd heard of the others, of Gentile, Blakeslee, Zemke, Johnson. If dreaming of doing a thing were the same as doing it, then when I was twelve I flew with them, searching out FW-190s on the frigid upper edge of the atmosphere where vision is endless.
    I returned the reel of microfilm and hauled down the
Official History of the Eighth Air Force
. Beemon, it told me, had destroyednineteen German fighters in air-to-air combat by the end of the war. In the bibliography, I found a newsletter called "The Big Eighth." It had a New York address and was listed in the phone book. I called from a booth in the marble hallway.
    "Hello. I wonder if you can tell me anything about Major Danny Beemon, about what happened to him after the war, his present whereabouts. I'm writing a book."
    "A book?"
    "Yes, sort of a
Boys of Summer
approach."
    "Good for you. Danny Beemon, ey? He was a hot one, all right. Hang on. I'll ask Buzz."
Buzz?
There was a guy actually called Buzz? "Buzz is remembering. Gotta give him a second." We waited while Buzz remembered. "Buzz says Beemon survived the war, all right. Buzz says they sent him out to the Pacific. Saipan, but he didn't see no action. Buzz says he don't know what happened to him after the war. Wait, he just remembered: Beemon got killed testing jets in California."
    "He's dead?"
    "That's what Buzz says."
    "Does Buzz remember about what year that was?"
    "Fifty-one, fifty-two, thereabouts. If you wanna come in and talk about that book, we'd be happy to see you."
    "Should I call for an appointment?"
    "Naw, just come on in. Most of us are dead, you know."
    "Pardon?"
    "I'm just saying you better hurry it up with that book."
    The Map Room is beautiful, richly wooden, with an elaborate projection of the world painted on the vaulted ceiling. In fact, the entire library is an architectural treasure, but the Map Room is my favorite, and I used to use it as my personal retreat. I wished as I entered to see grizzled, bearded explorers planning expeditions to Borneo or Ellesmere Island, but there were only a bored clerk sitting at the front desk listening to her Walkman, and Sybel. She was sitting at atable in the far corner eyeing me with mistrust and resentment as I approached. "Look, don't come around the store anymore."
    "Why?"
    As an answer, she stood, gathered up her bag and umbrella, and banged her chair in.
    "Okay," I said, "I won't."
    She looked into my eyes to see if I was lying, which I was, then sat back down. "So?" she snapped.
    "There were photographs in that ice tray. Negatives. I had them enlarged." I tapped the manila envelope as portentously as possible and sat down across the table from her. Her eyes were beautiful, deep and dark, but hostile. It's tough, even under the best of circumstances, to deal with the person, man or woman, who shared your lover.
    I removed the photographs from their