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  While I was counting up the bill, the owner of the Brown Derby, Robert Cobb, stormed over to our table, quite upset that I’d been gone from my security job here for the last two weeks.

  I wasn’t much bothered by his rant, having expected and even planned for it accordingly. “Mr. Cobb,” I told him, folding my napkin. “I was on a vitally important mission for our government. And if you don’t believe me,” I continued, gesturing to a man seated on my left, “just ask President Eisenhower, here.”

  Cobb had met a ton of famous celebrities in his time, but he now stared open-mouthed at the smiling man with the high forehead, who sat with our party, quietly waiting for this moment. The restaurant owner gushed like a ten-year-old, shaking hands and asking for an autograph on the back of a menu. He didn’t know that Ike was really the impressionist, Frank Gorshin, in town to appear in an episode of Mr. Lucky, called “The Last Laugh.”

  Sometimes you tell people the damnedest things, hoping they’ll believe you.

  The Facts Behind the Fiction

  Goldeneye: Ian Fleming’s Jamaican retreat where all the Bond books were written.

  Ska & Bob Marley: Precursor of the Twist and Reggae.

  Hiller Flying Platform: Tested and used by both the US Army and the Office of Naval Research, you can view this device in action on the internet.

  U-2 flights over USSR: May 1, 1960 the soviets shot down Francis Gary Powers and brought back the chill to the cold war.

  Paris: City of Light, Disneyland for Adults and site of the proposed Peace Summit, cancelled after the U-2 incident.

  Boris Karloff: Sweet guy.

  Gitmo: A little piece of American culture in Cuba’s south end. Nice, rocky beaches, very few crowds.

  Mickey Cohen: Dapper, diminutive, and deadly LA gangster.

  Ben Hur: The most expensive movie made to date -- $14 million -- released 11/18/1959.

  Frank Gorshin: Intense actor who became a riddle to television viewers, old chum.

  Errol Flynn: Hollywood heartthrob who would suffer a heart attack and die a few weeks after the events told here.

  Elvis Presley: Another heartthrob who would later yearn to be a federal investigator.

  Whirlybirds & Bob Gilbreth: Passed away in copter crash while fighting forest fire two years after the events of this story.

  Lockheed Skunkworks: Secure aviation development area, north of Hollywood, where the U-2 and later the Stealth fighter were created.

  The Bells are Ringing: Judy Holliday’s and MGM’s last great musical.

  John Steinbeck: Author who travelled with Charlie.

  Vogelsang: Site of Europe’s nuclear-missile crisis. One of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets, until files were de-classified in 2012.

  }

  Taser: A later version of Norman’s Tingler.

  If you enjoyed

  SPYFALL

  Keep reading for a preview of

  STARFALL

  the next book in the Stan Wade Series

  Coming from John Hegenberger and Black Opal Books in 2016

  PROLOGUE

  I loved my job. I got threatened and shot at by the most interesting people. Today it would be another Hollywood star. Tomorrow? Maybe a mobster. Maybe a commie. Maybe even an astronaut. But today’s assignment was to go and bring back a wayward starlet. Or so I’d assumed.

  So I grabbed an early lunch and pointed my battered ’53 Kaiser Manhattan toward Palm Springs, cruising east on highway 111, past Cathedral City and Palm Desert. Eventually, the road snaked up a hill of boulders and rattlers to a swell hideaway spot. The low ranch-style house was a combination of Spanish and modern. I parked next to a chartreuse Caddy and checked the license plates. A hot, dry wind blew off the mountains and lightly touched up my hair. I hung my sunglasses on the rearview mirror and got out to approach the front entrance, listening to my footsteps crunch gravel.

  I knocked, listened, and tried the door. It was part wood and part glass and all locked. I took off my jacket, held it to the glass, and struck it smartly with my right elbow. Now I could hear pulsating music coming from a room in the back of the house. I walked toward it.

  She was dancing, arms and legs spread wide. A leopard-skin one-piece bathing suit. The pool on the terrace behind her moving body shimmered in the afternoon sun.

  I lifted the needle from the LP on the stereo, and she staggered when the sound stopped, turning to raise a fit.

  “All right, Annette.” I sighed, jabbing a thumb over my left shoulder. “Party’s over. Let’s go.”

  She screeched and let fly with a heavy cut-glass tumbler that bounced off the wall behind me. I smelled expensive whiskey.

  She charged forward with raised claws, so I lifted the record from the stereo and skimmed it at her, like one of those new Frisbees. I gently took hold of her right wrist, spun her around, and enfolded her tight until she stopped twisting and stomping. I nudged the phone receiver off the hook with my right knee and dialed “0” with my left forefinger.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Guy Williams come into the room, tightening an electric-blue bath robe. I raised the phone receiver to his handsome face. He stepped back, smiled, and bowed graciously.

  This tough-guy persona was working fine for me and I figured this was going to be one of my better assignments. “Hello, operator? Get me Disney Studios. Hollywood. Stan Wade calling.”

  CHAPTER 1

  And now, all I wanted to do was collect my fee.

  Tuesday, March 24, 1959, I waved through the gates of one of the biggest little movie and television production companies in town and parked in a visitor slot next to the four-story factory, complete with its own water tower. They’ll put ears on that thing one of these days.

  Here, across sun-washed Burbank acres, pirates and frontiersmen, cartoonists and cameramen, accountants and actors toiled daily under the benevolent guidance of “Uncle Walt.”

  I’d worked a couple of jobs in the past for him and was here to see again today about money. Inside the fun factory, I slurped cool water from a stainless-steel drinking fountain and pressed the elevator’s “Up” button to ride to Disney’s office. As the mirrored interior doors slid shut, my reflection nodded at me and almost cracked a smile. Brown eyes with an arching eyebrow, dark hair with a streak of white, average build with the average face of an average office worker. Only this average guy hated office work, preferring to be out in the field, or on the street, or just about anywhere, except heavy LA traffic.

  Walt, on the other hand, was a man of sixty, possibly a little more, and had a lot of powdery gray hair, a thin moustache, and a handsome dissipated face that was beginning to go pouchy. His suit was tan and his tie was brown. The exact opposite of mine. A white handkerchief peeped out of his breast pocket and the fingers of his right hand drummed the change in his pants pocket.

  I jerked a pack of Luckies toward him so a couple cigarettes extended in his direction. “Worried about me?” He was a chain smoker and this was his brand. “By the way, isn’t Annette still under age?”

  He accepted a smoke and lit up from a desk lighter shaped like the Nautilus submarine--the one from his movie, not the one that went under the North Pole last year. “She’s twenty-one.” He exhaled. “And some security analyst you are. Didn’t you figure out during the long drive back that the girl I sent you after is really just her stand in?”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him. He’d kidded me before, so I gave him my poker face. “Professional investigator, if you don’t mind.”

  He took a deep drag, saying, “That still means you’re only a PI. Hell, Stan, you need to think bigger. Quicker, too.”

  “Walt, she sat in the back seat the whole time and wouldn’t talk. I dropped her off at the front gate and she stomped in without a word. Besides, you should know by now that I always get results when you hire me.”

  He stared for a moment at a framed photo on the wall beside a potted ficus. It was an old tintype of a steam engine crossing a high wooden trestle. �
�Maybe,” he allowed.

  “Look, you sent me out there and I brought her back alive and kicking. Scratching, too.”

  He let that go and rested a hip on the side of his desk. “She does Christmas parades and other events for us, where the public can’t get close enough to tell the difference. Still, we can’t have her running loose, like that. Bad for the company’s overall image. Thanks for bringing her back, Stan. And thanks too for helping Fess with that blackmail thing last month.”

  I shrugged. “Always a pleasure. Just pay my bill and I’ll be glad to keep watch over any of your cowboy heroes, anytime you ask.”

  “Humph. I’ve got another kind of hero that I want you to work on.” My number one client went back around behind his desk and settled easily into a high-backed chair. “I have a featurette in development about weather satellites and another one about Project Mercury.”

  “Oa-kay.” I’d read a little in the LA Times about the orbiting satellites which could track and maybe someday influence the weather. Sounded pretty far out there, literally. I’d also read about the test pilots that our country was assembling for the august challenge called Project Mercury.

  Every branch of the military was being evaluated as part of America’s program to launch a man high into the upper atmosphere where he’d circle--scratch that, orbit--the earth. If he was lucky, like that Russian had been, he’d come down in one working piece. I had to admit, it was a hell of an idea. The slide-rule boys insisted that we needed to do it or the Soviets would take over the world from on high and maybe even stake claim to the moon. Yep, pretty far out.

  Walt got back up and straightened a picture on the wall that, as far as I could see, didn’t need straightening. He mashed out his cigarette in an owl-shaped ashtray on his desk.

  “You’re still worried,” I said, waiting him out. “What’s all this space stuff got to do with you, anyhow?”

  From a desk drawer, he pulled out his own pack of Luckies and lit up again. “I’m not going to get into that right now, Stan. Suffice to say that I’ve got a heavy investment in it. I need you to go up to Edwards Air Force Base to meet with Colonel Fielding Scott.” He nudged a sheet of paper toward me across the polished surface of his desk. “He’ll be expecting you. This will get you access to the base.”

  I scanned the paper. There was no indication that it came from Walt. It began and ended with a string of numbers like a coded telegram or a Christmas club account at the savings and loan.

  “I still don’t get it,” I said. “All this for a space movie? Why am I meeting this guy?”

  “In the past, when I’ve hired you, you’ve been discreet. I value the fact that you didn’t ask me dumb questions.”

  “For a hundred dollars a day, plus expenses, right?” I wondered if he noticed that I’d just asked a question.

  “Yes, well, we’ll talk about those expense reports later. He gave me a lean grin, and I wished that it had been broader. “What I need now is an objective and confidential investigation into the death of a Mercury Project test pilot. You’ll act under my direction and report back the details, plus whatever insight your investigation generates.”

  “Wait, now. Slow down.” I held up my right hand, the one I used to scratch my head when I was confused. “Is this for real or are we talking about one of your movies? Who’s dead and how?”

  “I’m not the one you should be questioning,” he said. “But the pilot’s name is, or was, Albert Taffe. He was an air force captain stationed at Edwards, where he drowned.”

  “Drowned? Edwards is on the edge of the Mojave Desert.”

  Walt stared at me like he needed an antacid.

  “Oh,” I quickly said, “that’s why you want me to investiga--”

  An angry buzz sounded from an intercom box on his desk and a sweet Southern drawl said, “The people from ABC have arrived for your meeting.”

  Walt pushed a button on the box. “Put them in conference room B, Tommie. And let them know that I’ll be right there.” He snuffed out his smoke in the owl as I hesitantly got up to leave. “You have my private phone number, Stan. See Tommie for your check. You’ll get the rest of details from Colonel Scott. Bring them back to me, along with your insight.”

  At the moment, my insight needed a telescope.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Hegenberger writes adventure, mystery, science, and horror fiction. Born and raised in the heart of the heartland, Columbus, Ohio, he is the author of Tripleye series and the Stan Wade LA PI series from Black Opal Books. Father of three, a tennis enthusiast, collector of silent films and OTR, hiker, Francophile, B.A. Comparative Literature, ex-navy, ex-comic book dealer, ex-marketing exec at Exxon, AT&T, and IBM, he has been happily married for 45 years.

  Over the years, he’s published two non-fiction books about collecting pop-culture movie memorabilia and comic books and sold half a dozen stories to magazines and anthologies. Follow his adventures at johnhegenberger.com and have fun.

  GENRE: SPY THRILLER/MYSTERY-DETECTIVE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, businesses, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only. The publisher does not have any control over or assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their contents.

  SPYFALL

  Copyright © 2015 by John Hegenberger

  Cover Design by John Hegenberger

  All cover art copyright © 2015

  All Rights Reserved

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-626943-47-6

  FIRST PUBLICATION: OCTOBER 17, 2015

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