Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “And Maheu?”

  “His loyalty is to Howard Hughes.”

  “Is Hughes interested in Havana?”

  “Who isn’t? Havana will put Las Vegas back in the desert again.”

  “This collates,” said Harvey. “You are not to deal any longer with Bob and Sammy. Consider them untrustworthy and surplus.”

  “I hear you. I concur.”

  “Down the hatch,” said Harvey. He held out his martini glass for a refill, and after one good gulp, added: “Let’s look at the situation with Santos.”

  “He is the menu,” said Roselli.

  “Horseshit,” said Harvey. “Trafficante works with us, he works with Castro. How are you to trust him?”

  “The Saint works with a lot of people. He used to work with Batista. He is close to some of the Batista people today, Masferrer and Kohly. The Saint has friends in Inter-Pen, in MIRR, Alpha 60, DRE, 30th of November, MDC and CFC. I can name a lot of organizations. Around Miami, half the exiles is taking hits on the other half, but the Saint is friends with all. He is friends with Prio Socarras and Carlos Marcello in New Orleans—a very big friendship—and Sergio Arcacha Smith. With Tony Varona and with Toto Barbaro. With Frank Fiorini. He is friends with Jimmy Hoffa and some of the big oil money in Texas. Why shouldn’t he be friends with Castro? Why shouldn’t he be friends with you? He will tell Castro what he wants to tell him; he will tell you as much as he feels like telling you. He will do a job for you and do it right, he will do a job for Castro and do it right. His real loyalty—”

  “Yes,” said Harvey, “the real loyalty?”

  “To the holdings in Havana.”

  “What about Meyer?”

  “Santos is also friends with Meyer. He don’t worry about Meyer. If Castro goes, Santos will be holding the casinos. That is bigger than being Lansky or Jimmy Hoffa. Santos could become number-one in the mob. That is equal to being the number-two man in America. Right under the President.”

  “Who taught you to count?” asked Harvey.

  “It’s a matter of debate. Give me that much.”

  “If I was Santos,” said Harvey, “I would put in with Castro. Castro is there. He can give me the casinos.”

  “Yes, but then you got to run them for Castro.”

  “A point,” said Harvey.

  “Castro will never give the casinos back,” said Roselli. “He is keeping them closed. He is a puritan right up the ass. I know Santos. He will come along with us to get Castro.”

  “Well, I have my hesitations,” said Harvey. “There is a little prick with fire coming out of his ears named Bobby Kennedy. He does not cut a deal. Sammy may have helped to bring in Illinois for Jack Kennedy, but the FBI is persecuting Sammy right now. Santos can read that kind of handwriting.”

  “Santos will take his chances. Once Castro is dead, Santos has a lot of cards to play.”

  A silence came over both men. “All right,” said Harvey, at last, “what are the means?”

  “No guns,” said Roselli.

  “They do the job.”

  “Yeah,” said Roselli, “but the guy who makes the hit would like to live.”

  “I can get you a high-powered rifle, equipped with a silencer, and accurate at five hundred yards.”

  Roselli shook his head. “Santos wants pills.”

  “Pills,” said Harvey, “have too many links. Castro has always been tipped off.”

  “Pills. We need delivery next week.”

  It was Harvey’s turn to shrug. “We will produce the product on date specified.”

  They spent the next few minutes talking about a shipment of weapons for an exile group that Trafficante wanted to supply.

  “I will deliver the ordnance myself,” said Harvey.

  He stood up, packed away the scrambler, and shook hands with Roselli.

  “I’d like you,” said Harvey, “to answer another question for me.”

  “Sure,” said Roselli.

  “Are you any relation to Sacco of Sacco and Vanzetti?”

  “Never heard of the cocksucker,” Roselli said.

  11

  THE CONSCIENTIOUS EFFORT TO LOOK AT ROSELLI AS IF HE WERE SOME- thing to wipe off the wall, had left me as tired as an artist’s model who has been posing in one position for too long. Harvey, who may have been equally tired, did not speak on the ride back, but merely kept filling his glass from the jug of martinis.

  As we were getting out of his Cadillac, he said, “When you report to his lordship, tell him to clear Trafficante with Helms. It’s rotten meat all the way, and I am not sitting down to this meal alone.”

  I sent a six-page description to LINE/GHOUL—SPECIAL SHUNT of what had transpired, but all the while that I was writing to Harlot, I found myself debating whether to tell Kittredge as well.

  I decided not to. Some material was too privileged. On the other hand, I had to tell her something. I sent, therefore, the following fiction:

  April 27, 1962

  Dear Kittredge,

  The most extraordinary course of action is underway, and I can see why Harvey did not want me as his adjutant, and Hugh thought I was acceptable. You must, however, not indicate to His Nibs that you have even the smallest intuition of what I will tell you, for we are sitting on a good deal—the attempt is going to be made to kidnap Fidel Castro. If successful, we will fly him to Nicaragua unharmed and let Somoza, who loves publicity, take responsibility. It’s the nonaccountability scenario of the Bay of Pigs again, but this time it could work. The Nicaraguans will put Castro on trial. Special laws will be written for the occasion declaring it a major felony for a Latin American statesman to allow Soviet Communism any entrance into this hemisphere. The gamble is that this prodigious theatrical caper will succeed in making Castro look more like an underling than a martyr. And, of course, Cuba will be in disarray.

  The dangers are obvious. Our greatest fear is that Castro could get killed in the process, which is why Harvey is now on a talent hunt to recruit only the most special Latin personnel. This also enables me to see why he had so little enthusiasm for taking me on. I am obviously out of my element. On the other hand, given the stakes, Hugh must have wanted someone whom he can trust to report exactly what Harvey is up to.

  I will provide more details as our meetings with various extreme exile groups continue. My next letter will, presumably, be longer. Refer to the op, incidentally, as CAVIAR.

  Devoted to the facts, ma’am,

  Herrick

  The mendacity did not bother me. In truth, I felt pleased with my ingenuity. If Castro was assassinated, I could ascribe it to a failed kidnapping; if nothing occurred, well, the job proved too difficult.

  On the same day, a letter from Kittredge crossed. I offer an extract from it.

  . . . Don’t be dismayed if I have been sounding grandiloquent lately. The reason I wish to know so much about what you are doing is not because I am suffering under the weight of so Faustian an ambition as to comprehend the Agency and guide the Brothers K through perils ahead, no, my motive is essentially modest provided we disregard the prodigious announcement I wrapped around it. In truth, I need to know much more about everything if I am ever to be able to write about Alpha and Omega in many walks of life. I get out, of course, and I do meet people, but I know so little of how the real gears work in that hard fearful real world out there.

  I was stricken on reading this passage. Kittredge wanted to know how the real gears worked and I was designing surrealistic machinery for her. A line came back to me from a book whose title I could not recall—“For it’s exactly when we come closest to another, that we are turned away with a lie, and blunder forward to comprehend ourselves on the misperceptions of the past.”

  Now I was agitated. I had to remind myself that she could also play games, and some were not particularly attractive. I returned the following note:

  April 28, 1962

  Kittredge,

  It is some months now. What is it you have been waiting to tell me about
Modene? Half-loves die best when fully buried.

  April 30, 1962

  Harry dearest,

  I owe ten thousand apologies. I haven’t had the time to write the full letter that this subject deserves. Since I have thirty pages of transcript you haven’t seen, I am tempted to send it to you in a stout package, but I know that I owe you a summing up and will try to provide it. Allow some time.

  In the interim, keep me abreast of CAVIAR. I can’t believe your last letter. No wonder the fat man is a legend. And Hugh! How fortunate is society that he did not choose to become a master criminal.

  May 1, 1962

  This is written in a great hurry, Kittredge.

  Three days ago, I flew up to Washington, picked up some knockout drops from TSS that will be used for CAVIAR, and flew back the same day. The following noon, Harvey and I met with an Italian-American representative of the Nicaraguans in the cocktail lounge of the Miami Airport. This Italian who walks among us as one Johnny Ralston was wearing a custom-tailored silk suit with a silver sheen to match his hair, alligator shoes, and a gold watch. Harvey was wearing his usual white shirt and black suit, sweat stains in the armpits from the shoulder holster, and his shirt was blousing up above the belt from the other handgun he packs in the small of his back. I was feeling like an impostor. (I was wearing a tropical shirt.) Harvey had his double martinis, Ralston sipped Stolichnaya on the rocks, and the four capsules I had transported were duly passed from hand to hand.

  After drinks we went out to the airport parking lot where Harvey pointed out a van to Ralston. I had been busy since 6:00 A.M. renting that particular U-Haul and helping to fill it with about $5,000 worth of Czech rifles, East German handguns, and various explosives, detonators, radio transmitter-receivers and one fine piece of boat radar from our JM/WAVE warehouse. Harvey merely handed the van keys over to Ralston and we all walked away. Once again I discovered that even the cleanest transfers of this sort do bring out a drop of sweat in the small of the back.

  Later that afternoon, hell broke loose of another variety. Bobby Kennedy was down for a couple of hours to look over JM/WAVE, and so Harvey took him on a tour through the halls of Zenith. Needless to say, they are not happy in each other’s company. In the Message Center, Kennedy wandered off by himself and started reading the code-outs on a few of the cables. One of them certainly caught his eye, doubtless a piece of information he could whip out at the next gathering of Special Group, Augmented, so he tore it off the roll and started for the door.

  Harvey raced after, “Here, you, mister!” he yelled out. “Just hold on. Hold on! Where do you think you are going with that piece of paper?”

  Kennedy stopped as if shot. Harvey, catching up, was now able to pay him back for a few of those scalding SGA sessions. “Attorney General,” he boomed out—no small voice today!—“do you know how many message indicators and operational codes are salted onto that message? I can’t let you out of this room with such a piece of paper,” and so speaking, he grasped culprit paper with one hand and opened Bobby’s fingers with the others. I can’t conceive of what the ultimate repercussions of this will be.

  Yours—H.

  May 4, 1962

  Dearest H.,

  About a month ago, Hugh and I were invited to a small supper at the White House, and before we left, Jack took me aside for ten minutes and told me in strict confidence that he had had an extraordinary lunch that day with J. Edgar Hoover. I don’t know why I was chosen as confidante—can it be my virtuous face? You and I know, however, what a poor choice Jack made! Secrets sit in me about as comfortably as half-triggered tumors. I wanted to pass the little fact on to Hugh, but, at some pain, didn’t.

  Now I discover that I want to tell you. It burns in me with an unholy fever. I sense that Hoover was talking to Jack about Sammy G. and Modene. The transcripts you have not yet seen do suggest a purpose for Hoover’s visit.

  You are aware, of course, that Modene, no matter what kind of blow she received last summer when Jack suggested she might be telling tales out of school, was pleased to be invited again to the White House at the end of August; she certainly sounds happy describing it to Willie. According to Modene, Jack told her that he loved her. I don’t know whether to believe it. Polly Galen Smith confided to me that one of Jack’s virtues is never to mix sex with love. He told Polly that a woman ought to have an understanding from the outset whether it can or cannot be a question of love. Jack does seem irrationally sweet on Modene, however, and it may be that she satisfies some virtually lost side of him—maybe it is that carefree Omega fellow who might have preferred to be a ski bum, or a Newport deckhand, addicted to sun and sea and splendid vacations, but is serving at present under lock and key to Presidential Alpha, always on the job.

  After an Indian summer Saturday or two, Jack and Modene move on, however, to the cold fall. His back begins to bother him again. The unmistakable impression is that they have passed their high mark as lovers. Now, as she expresses it to Willie, “he wants me to be the one who makes love.”

  “Well, you told me he is a very tired man,” says Willie.

  “Maybe,” says Modene, “he just likes being tired a little too much.”

  This is the ugliest remark Modene has so far uttered on the subject, but in late November she says, “I dread getting a call from the White House. I love Jack, but I don’t enjoy seeing him in that place.”

  Harry, I know what she is talking about. The White House, for all its patriotic pull, does give off the grave and measured consensus of a courthouse. I think the old manse has lived through too many weighty compromises and suffered the platitudes of a few too many powerful politicians. I exaggerate these negative aspects because Polly Galen Smith, having had her several trysts in the same quarters, tells me that the White House could be affecting Jack. “It certainly seems to be draining his appetite,” she said to me once.

  All the while, Modene is seeing more of Giancana, although irregularly. He is not wholly dependable. For example, this last October, just two months after they first went to bed, Sam shifted his attentions from Modene back to Phyllis McGuire and traipsed around Europe for a month with the singer. Either Mr. G., like Modene, needs two lovers, or can it be that he was furious at Modene for continuing to see Jack? In any event, as I discovered, their affair had not been wholly consummated. The evidence had seemed clear to me at the time, but I did not read the relevant transcript with Willie on August 16 skillfully enough.

  MODENE: Well, I finally said yes to Sam.

  WILLIE: I can’t believe he was willing to wait all these months.

  MODENE: It has been more than a year. And every day there were six dozen yellow roses.

  WILLIE: You never got tired of receiving all those roses?

  MODENE: I cannot have enough of them.

  WILLIE: All right. How was it with Sam?

  MODENE: I cannot have enough of him.

  WILLIE: You are really telling me?

  MODENE: It was virtually complete.

  WILLIE: What does that mean, virtually complete?

  MODENE: Figure it out for yourself.

  As I say, I did not recognize we were being given a description rather than a performance rating. After that sole indication, Modene would not refer to relations with Sammy for quite some time, although Willie was always after her for more. The following is from early November 1961:

  WILLIE: Why did he ask you to marry him if he was going to disappear with his singer?

  MODENE: He happened to be very unhappy when I told him that my first loyalty is still to Jack.

  WILLIE: But you told me that Sam has it over Jack.

  MODENE: He is more demonstrative. Sam shares himself with you. He has a lot of gusto. It’s as if you are both eating Italian food out of the same plate.

  WILLIE: And Jack is a one-way street.

  MODENE: Yes, but I am the woman on his street. Sam knows that. He knows there is one thing I share with Jack that I will not get into with Sam.

  WIL
LIE: And what is that?

  MODENE: The last thing.

  I protect you from the three pages of transcript that ensue before we learn that “the last thing” is, carnally speaking, the first. Sam has never been allowed to enter Modene. So, three pages later:

  WILLIE: I can’t believe it.

  MODENE: We do everything but.

  WILLIE: How can it be so good then?

  MODENE: It is earthy. Sometimes I think sex can be more intimate that way.

  WILLIE: You’re too sophisticated for me.

  On Sam’s return from Europe, he shows Modene a great many good times in Chicago. At the hangouts, she is treated like a queen. In bed, it remains everything but. I will not judge her. Years ago, I remember putting your nose out of joint by confessing that Hugh and I had an Italian Solution. All the same, it irked me that I could not quite grasp Modene.

  It is later than I expected. Tomorrow I will write about the second and true seduction of the lady. Bear with me.

  Love,

  Kittredge

  12

  THE PROMISED LETTER DID ARRIVE THE NEXT DAY, BUT NO LONGER EXISTS. As soon as I read it, I destroyed it.

  I do not regret that altogether. It brought me to recognize how intensely I had been mourning the loss of Modene. I could even feel the loss in my fingers as they fed the last page to the paper-shredder. I was in a fury at Kittredge for sparing no details.

  All the same, it is a loss. One of Kittredge’s best letters is gone, and my literary task might be simpler now if I had it before me. Much later, sixteen years later, I did, however, obtain, in 1978 (by way of a senator’s aide), a copy of the transcript upon which Kittredge based her letter, and it will have to suffice. Let me not make too much of it. A good many years have gone by.

  In January of 1962, Modene’s parents were in an auto accident. Her father took a turn at high speed, hit a patch of ice, and ended upside down in a ditch. Her mother escaped unscathed, but the father was left in a coma; the only question was whether it would take a few days or several years for him to die.