Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “I learned a lot.” I halted. “I learned a lot,” I said, “and then I didn’t have any contact with the instructor.”

  You could always count on the cold benefit of being able to look directly into his eyes. They were devoid of incidental affection. “Well,” he said, “you are a tricky case. I don’t want to waste you, and don’t know how to use you. That, in sum, is why I’ve let you dangle.” He hawked his throat. “All hope, however,” said Harlot, “is not dead. Lately, I’ve had a thought or two in your direction.”

  On the flight to Washington, I had had ample time to recognize how much it had cost to stay out of touch with him for so long. “Well,” I answered, “I won’t say I am not ready to listen.”

  “Oh, no, not yet,” he said, pushing away dessert to light a Churchill. After a first puff, he reached again into his breast pocket to offer me one—were his brand of Churchills the best Havanas ever made? Puffing on his gift, I understood Cuba better—perfumed fecalities had been blended with honor and iron will—yes, alchemy lurked in the nicotine.

  “Oh, no, not yet,” he repeated. “I don’t want to let go of Cuba just yet. Do you have any idea of what a comedy is cooking?”

  “Well, I hope not.”

  “Prepare for a farce. Cuba is going to be our penance for Guatemala. It can’t be helped. Likeable Ike has not read Martin Buber.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “Read him. Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim. Perfect. Enables you to dazzle visitors from the Mossad. Those beady Israeli eyes go moist when I quote Martin Buber, their fellow Jew.”

  “May I ask how Buber is relevant to Cuba?”

  “He’s relevant. There’s a nicely balanced tale he tells of this poor, infertile, married woman who is so obsessed with having a child that she travels across half of the Ukraine on foot in order to meet a traveling rabbi. In the late eighteenth century, these gentlemen called Hasids were not unlike our evangelists and used to make tours through the Russian hinterland. Accompanied by a horde of followers, a Hasidic rabbi would wend his way from ghetto town to ghetto town, accompanied invariably by a brilliantly handsome and seductive wife. The Jewish women, unlike our more pagan Christian cheerleaders, were always drawn to the power of intellect, which, in this near-medieval situation, centered, you may be certain, on the rabbi. In our tale, the sad, barren Jewish housewife has to travel endless versts across primitive country beset by every sort of riffraff, but she does reach her goal, whereupon, our peripatetic eminence blesses her. ‘Go home to your husband,’ he says, ‘and you will have a child.’ She returns safely, conceives, and nine months later, delivers a bouncing babe. Naturally, another woman in her village, desirous of the same result, decides in the following year to make the same trip. This time the rabbi says, ‘Alas, I can do nothing for you, my dear. You have heard the story.’ Moral: We won’t take Cuba in the same manner we rolled up those Guatemalan Communists.”

  “I said as much to Hunt.”

  “Pity you don’t tend to your words.” He sniffed at his cigar smoke as if somewhere in the center of the cloud was a line between judgments good and bad. “I can understand why Eisenhower is off his feed. That business last month when Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2. Likeable Ike caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Khrushchev cussing him out for all the world to hear. And then the Negro sit-ins. That must have deranged him a bit. He keeps talking about Cuba as the black hole of Calcutta,” said Hugh Montague, sipping his brandy.

  I had often noted that a trip to a restaurant with Harlot had to obey its signal forms. The check was carefully calculated out for our separate shares; coffee and Hennessey always concluded the repast; and he never seemed to care how long lunch took. I asked Kittredge about that once, and she laughed sadly and said, “Lunches are his hobby. Afterward, Hugh works on such days until midnight.” By the manner in which he now turned the end of his cigar in an ashtray, his fingers dancing lightly on the shaft, I could see that lunch at Harvey’s would go on for a while. Once again, we had become the last table on our part of the floor.

  “What do you think of this place?” Hugh asked me.

  “Adequate.”

  “It’s J. Edgar Buddha’s favorite joint, so one wouldn’t expect better, but then, I’ve decided lately to keep switching my midday endroit. Makes it more difficult for others to keep up with your conversation. And I do have a sensitive matter to discuss.”

  He was coming at last to the point of our meeting. As I had observed from attending a few poetry readings at Yale, good voices do not offer the best stuff first.

  “I want,” he said, “to get right to the point. What would you think of resigning from the CIA?”

  “Oh, no.” I had a whole unhappy recall of the time he told me not to do any more rock climbing.

  “Don’t cross before you see the road. I’m going to propose a venture so secret that if I have misjudged your reliability, you will know too much. So put aside all your notions of how we keep the secrets. It’s not by the aid of all those fenced-in kraals and coops. Forget them. They leak. But, here and there, is a coffer where we do hold some real stuff. From our inception, Allen, in close conjunction with a few of us, has kept one operation sacrosanct. We have a few officers who never did get to put their name on a 201 file. No payment, no paper. Most Special Fellows. Allen’s term. I want you to become a Most Special Fellow.” He did tap his glass lightly while whispering these last remarks to me.

  “For instance,” he went on in that whisper, “if our Harry Hubbard were to resign now from the Agency, one could underwrite a quick twelve-month course with highly respectable pay by a prestigious Wall Street brokerage house, followed by assignment as a customer’s man to some very good clients. Most Special Fellow would then, under the guidance of more practiced hands, manage certain selected fortunes until he had learned the business for himself. That would enable him to enjoy the career of a rising stockbroker for the rest of his life. An agent in place. Over a long career, Most Special Fellows are used sparingly. I promise you, however, that one can serve to extraordinary purpose on those special occasions when the work is needed. You might be out there stirring huge cauldrons of international finance while blessed with a cover nigh impenetrable.”

  I did not trust this presentation. I was thinking it was a hell of a way to be told you ought to resign. He must have picked up my sentiment, for he added: “If you wish a little Muzak to accompany the proposition, I will add that we only make this offer to young men we deem extraordinarily talented when”—he held up a forefinger—“they are not concomitantly gifted with those bureaucratic instincts so requisite to doing a proper job within the formal structure. Allen needs a few of our best people out there, ready to lend a covert shoulder to the wheel. Do you have the courtesy to feel honored by the seriousness of this offer?”

  “I would be,” I said slowly, “but do you know, I enjoy the daily routine of the Company. I don’t believe I would be as devoted to bonds and margins. I’d rather take my chances here.”

  “You might not do all that well. Your temperament is to work alone rather than on a team.”

  “I don’t really care how high I climb. I don’t think ambition is my guiding principle.”

  “What, then, do you look for among us?”

  I thought for a moment. “Some extraordinary job that I alone might be able to bring off,” I was surprised to hear myself say.

  “You feel ready for the exceptional?”

  I nodded. Whether I did or did not, I nodded. He was, as always, impenetrable, but I began to suspect that he had known I would not want to become a stockbroker. Perhaps he had merely been marinating me in a throwaway scenario so that my powers of rejection would be softened.

  The next proposal came soon enough. “I’ve got another of these ex officio jobs for you,” he said, “and this one, I hope, you won’t turn down. You will, of course, have to take it on in addition to all of Hunt’s precious stuff.”

  “I assume it’s to report only t
o you.”

  “Depend on that. You will keep no official records.” Holding his cigar in the three-finger bridge one forms around a pool cue, he tapped his middle finger lightly on the cloth, so lightly as not to dislodge the ash. “You understand, of course, that Allen does keep me around to serve as a floating spirit of investigation, and that does get one in and out of some places in the Company.”

  “Hugh,” I ventured, “everyone knows you have a pipeline into everything.”

  “The legend may be mightier than the few pipes laid,” he said, and his fingers kept tapping the cigar until the ash looked ready to go, whereupon he twirled it to his plate. “Of course, I have GHOUL.” That was worth a pause. “And GHOUL does keep up with the FBI. I sometimes have a good idea of what J. Edgar Buddha is tucking away into his more private recesses.”

  I had an odd reaction. It seemed excessive. The hair stirred on the back of my neck. I felt as if we were two priests alone at a refectory table and he was showing me the key to the sacred closet where our relics were stored. I did not know if his confidence was sacrilegious, but I was powerfully and somewhat agreeably disturbed. He had touched my inclination to get into things others did not know.

  “I will,” said Harlot, “furnish more information as soon as you accomplish the first element in your task.”

  “I know I’m ready,” I said.

  “You will have to strike up acquaintance with a certain young lady whose activities are, by now, surrounded with FBI taps. Given the candor with which she talks into her telephone, it is obvious she does not know that she is sitting well within the shadow cast by Buddha’s huge posterior. One might think of her as a damsel in distress, except one can’t. She’s too enterprisingly promiscuous.”

  “A call girl?”

  “Oh, no. Just an airline stewardess. But she’s managed to get herself wrapped into liaisons with a couple of prominent gentlemen who don’t add up when taken together.”

  “Is either one of these men American?”

  “Both, I assure you.”

  “Both? May I ask why the Agency is involved?”

  “It’s not. Except for GHOUL. Let us say that GHOUL is interested because Buddha is interested. We may yet have to consider Buddha as much of a threat to this nation as Joseph Stalin ever dreamed of being in the old days.”

  “You’re not suggesting that Hoover is a Soviet agent?”

  “Heavens no. Just one hell of an agent for himself. I suspect he would like to control the country altogether.”

  I was recalling an evening at the Stable when Harlot had given me his sense of our duty: It was to become the mind of America.

  “I see I will have to take a great deal on faith,” I said.

  “For now. Once you get to know this airline stewardess, however, I will offer you entry to the material. I have the Bureau tapes on the girl, and what a tale they tell. They’re yours, I promise, once you meet the mermaid, and hook her.” In case I was not appreciative of the verb, he added, “The deeper, the better.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “You’ll feel no great pain.” He reached into his breast pocket and brought out a color snapshot taken probably from a moving car. The features were a bit blurred. All I could discern was a good-looking girl with a nice figure and black hair. “I don’t know that I would want to depend on an identification from this picture,” I told him.

  “It’s close enough. You’ll meet her, you see, on your plane back to Miami. She’s working the First Class section of the 4:50 P.M. flight on Eastern this afternoon, and I’ll bump your return ticket up, and find a way to bill the extra disbursement.”

  “She’s based in Miami?”

  “There’s the beauty of it.”

  “And if I get to know her well?”

  “You will be as amazed by our country as I am.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Well, we’re all stuffed with these incredible radio and TV romances. Trashy novels. Not us, but, you know, them! Our fellow Americans. All that love glut and plot pollution. But when it comes to the real stuff, our Lord is more of a commercial novelist than the novelists. This is one hell of a story. It even surprises me.”

  He was to tell me more before we broke lunch at 3:30 P.M. The young lady’s name was Modene Murphy, her nickname was “Mo,” her father was half-Irish, half-German, and her mother of French and Dutch descent. She was twenty-three years old and her parents had a little money.

  “How was it made?”

  “Oh,” said Harlot, “the father is a skilled machinist who patented some kind of valve for motorcycle intakes just after the war, sold the patent, and retired.” Modene, he went on, had grown up in a rich suburb of Grand Rapids where her family was, if not respected, accepted at least for their money. “She’s some sort of minor debutante,” said Harlot, “the Midwestern sort. Of course, there’s neither enough money nor enough of anything else for them to have any idea of how far away they really are from everything. I suspect being a stewardess gives her some sense of social balance, although I am really at a small loss to explain her choice of occupation.”

  “What makes you think I’ll get along with Modene Murphy?”

  “I’ve no idea you will. But your father, remember, used to be good at this sort of thing in OSS days. Perhaps a spark will trot across the gap. Yes,” he said, “and one more bit of news. One would like to keep it simple, but I’m afraid we have to give you another name. We won’t be able to backstop it either, since you are definitely not getting into our records on this, but I can obtain some rudimentary pocket litter for you, and, yes, even a credit card. You’ll need that to squire the lady around.”

  “Let me keep Harry for a first name,” I said. “I’d like to react naturally to her.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Harry. What’s your mother’s maiden name?—Silverfield. Is that considered Jewish?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, let’s make it Field, in any event. Harry Field. Should be easy to incorporate.”

  I did not know whether I felt promoted or down-graded now that I had three names.

  6

  IT’S HARD TO SAY THAT I WOULD HAVE BROUGHT OFF THE FIRST LEG OF MY mission if not for a curious piece of luck. In the Eastern waiting area, just before boarding my plane, I encountered Sparker Boone, an old classmate from St. Matthew’s. One of our lesser lights, he had always been built like a pear armed with buck teeth. He had now added a premature bald spot to the back of his thin, sandy hair. Of course, I had no wish to go down to Miami with Bradley “Sparker” Boone when I was hoping to present myself as Harry Field, but on boarding the plane, I could find no way to avoid his invitation to sit with him since First Class was half-empty. I had to content myself with obtaining the aisle seat.

  He told me soon enough that he had become a photographer for Life magazine, and was on his way to Miami to photograph some of the leading Cuban exiles. Before I could digest how worrisome, from an Agency point of view, this news might be (since Life—Kittredge had also assured me—was considered by us to be somewhat less dependable than Time), he added, “I hear you’re in the CIA.”

  “God, no,” I said. “What gave you that idea?”

  “The grapevine. St. Matt’s.”

  “Someone is playing fast and loose with my name,” I told him. “Why, I’m a sales rep for an electronics company.” I was about to present the evidence when I recollected that Robert Charles happened to be the name embossed on my business card. My only excuse for such near-carelessness is that I was prodigiously distracted. To my small panic, both stewardesses in the First Class section fit Harlot’s description: They had dark hair, and were attractive. I did not feel ready to settle into a conversation until I made certain which girl was Modene Murphy.

  The answer, however, soon declared itself. One stewardess was carefully groomed and well featured; the other was striking enough to be a movie star. As she went up and down the aisle checking seat belts and overhead compartmen
ts, she looked much pleased with herself, and tended to passengers’ needs with a subtle contempt, as if there was something second-rate about having needs to begin with. She did not seem to belong to her job so much as to be an actress in a role. The worst of it was that I thought her looks were marvelous. Her hair was as dark as Kittredge’s, and her eyes were a brilliant, insolent green, ready to suggest that she would compete with you over everything from an early-morning run down a powder trail to the first knock in gin rummy; she had a figure described immediately by Sparker as “a body I would kill for”—Sparker with his wife and bald spot and two daughters, their snapshots already presented to me, yes, Sparker, with his house in Darien, still ready to kill for possession of Modene Murphy, yes, I had the right girl. The nameplate pinned to her breast, which I glimpsed when she stopped to tell me to strap my safety belt, was confirmation.

  I started to take off my jacket. “Could you hang this up, miss?” I asked.

  “Put it on your lap for now,” she said, “we’re about to take off,” and without a glance to see what kind of man might be attached to the voice, moved to her bucket seat.

  Once we were in the air, I had to ring for her. She picked up my jacket, and was gone. It was Sparker who gained her interest. With a knowing grin, as if the procedure had been successfully tested before, he reached to the floor, set his camera bag on his lap, and proceeded to load film, first into a Leica, then a Hasselblad. She was back before he was done. “Can I ask you?” she said. “Who do you work for?”

  “Life,” said Sparker.

  “I knew it,” she said. She called to the other stewardess. “What did I say, Nedda, when this one”—pointing to Sparker—“came on the plane?”

  “You said, ‘He’s a photographer for Life or Look.’”

  “How could you tell?” asked Sparker.

  “I can always tell.”

  “What would you have said was my occupation?” I asked.

  “I didn’t give it consideration,” she answered.