Watching Jack scribble in the notebook, Escalona worked his way down the brigade’s shopping list. From somewhere in the hills above them came the staccato crackle of rifle fire, each shot followed by a whisper of an echo. A squad of baby-faced Cuban recruits, carrying American M-1s at various angles across their chests, trotted by; an American advisor in khakis and penny loafers, with a paunch to rival Barrigón’s beer belly, breathlessly shouted out cadence as he brought up the rear. “Hep-two-hep-two-hep-two.”
“Last but not least,” Escalona said, “we got a major security problem. On any given day roughly fifteen percent of my people go AWOL.”
Jack glanced at the snake-infested mountains around them. “Where do they go AWOL to?” he asked.
“The village of San Felipe, which is nine miles across the mountains.”
“How in hell do they get to San Felipe?”
“The ones who can, swipe a Jeep or a truck. The ones who can’t hitch a ride, they walk. There and back. In one night.”
“What’s the big attraction at San Felipe that’s worth an eighteen-mile hike across the mountains?”
“Whores.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Whores.”
“Naturally, we indoctrinate the recruits about not shooting off their mouths—but these girls got to be deaf, dumb and stupid not to know somebody’s running a military-type training camp out here at Helvetia. For all I know some of the whores could be spying for Castro.”
“That certainly comes under the heading of a problem that badly needs a solution,” Jack agreed. “I’ll see what I can come up with.”
Escalona came around the side of the Jeep and deposited Jack’s duffel on the planks of the walkway. Slipping the notebook back into his pocket, Jack slid out of the seat. Escalona eyed Jack for an awkward moment. Then he cleared his throat and looked at his boots. Then he looked up and said, “Listen—“
“I’m listening.”
“The people here—the Cuban kids learning to strip M-1s and put them back together blindfolded, the mortar teams learning to bracket a target, me, all of us—we’re in this thing for keeps. We are going to win or we are going to die.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Jack asked.
Escalona shrugged. “Like that,” he said. He started to walk away, then turned back. “I tell you this so you’ll know where you are. I tell you this so you’ll know who we are—so you won’t think this is a summer camp for Cuban boy scouts, which is what it looks like, even to me.”
Jack tamed his Cossack mustache with the back of a forefinger. “I’ve been on front lines before. I recognize one when I see it. I’ll do everything I can to help you, Señor Escalona.”
“Roberto,” Roberto Escalona corrected him.
Jack nodded. “Jack.”
The two men shook hands for the first time.
In the days that followed there was a flurry of messages that entertained the handful in Quarters Eye who read them.
TOP SECRET
WARNING NOTICE: SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION
FROM:
Carpet Bagger [Jack McAuliffe’s cryptonym]
TO:
Ozzie Goodfriend [Leo Kritzky’s cryptonym]
SUBJECT:
Getting ashes hauled
1. Discovered serious breach of base security due dozens of recruits going AWOL daily to get ashes hauled at nearest village nine miles away. Discreet inquiries in village reveal that ladies of ill-repute are Guatemalan nationals employed by local drug dealer running whorehouse on side. New girls bused in weekly to replace those who worn out or fed up or ill. Thus impossible perform background checks or debriefings to see who learned what from whom.
2. Request permission recruit Portuguese-speaking Brazilian females who won’t be able to communicate with Spanish-speaking recruits except through body language, and set up brothel, code-named PROJECT PHOENIX as it will be associated with ashes, just off-base to control situation.
3. For God’s sake don’t let my wife find out what I’m up to.
TOP SECRET
WARNING NOTICE: SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION
FROM:
Ozzie Goodfriend
TO:
Carpet Bagger
SUBJECT:
Ash-amed
REF:
Your Getting Ashes Hauled
1. Raised delicate matter of PROJECT PHOENIX with Kermit Coffin [Dick Bissell’s cryptonym], who hit proverbial ceiling. He says there is no question of using taxpayers’ money for hauling ashes. He asks you to imagine furor if Congress gets wind of services you propose to provide to recruits. Coffin suggests tighter perimeter patrols of camp would solve problem.
2. Don’t worry about your wife. She thinks you are teaching Cubans exiles to be altar boys in local churches.
3. Ball in your court, pal.
TOP SECRET
WARNING NOTICE: SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION
FROM:
Carpet Bagger
TO:
Ozzie Goodfriend
SUBJECT:
Ashes to ashes
1. Helvetia consists of 5,000 acres with sixty repeat sixty miles of private roads. According to my rough calculation, patrolling perimeter would require entire Washington, DC police force, which is impractical as absence might be noticed by Congress, raising embarrassing questions.
2. Not proposing dip into taxpayers’ money to finance brothel. Propose to recruit Brazilians and launch PROJECT PHOENIX using unvouchered funds. Once enterprise is up and running on capitalistic pay-as-you-go profit principle, which is one of the doctrines we are defending in this hemisphere, propose to reimburse unvouchered funds. Propose to use subsequent profits from PROJECT PHOENIX to improve living conditions here.
3. Ball back to you.
TOP SECRET
WARNING NOTICE: SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION
FROM:
Ozzie Goodfriend
TO:
Carpet Bagger
SUBJECT:
PHOENIX rising from its ashes
1. Kermit Coffin doesn’t want to know any more about PROJECT PHOENIX. You were sent down there to make sure recruits were trained and ready for action. If the action they are ready for requires you to make decisions that can only be described as creative, so be it. You are to do whatever in your judgment is necessary to ensure the good health, mental as well as physical, of the brigade.
His shirt drenched in sweat after leading the brigade on a two-day hike over mountain trails, Roberto Escalona found Jack stretched out on the lengths of cardboard covering his army cot (to absorb humidity) in the coffee-grading barn. “Hombre,” he said, shaking Jack awake from his siesta.
His Cossack mustache sticky with perspiration, Jack propped himself up on an elbow. “How’d it go, Roberto?”
“Great. Aside from three sprained ankles and a squad that read the map coordinates wrong and missed a rendezvous, everyone came through with flying colors. Having snakebite serum with us made a big difference—the men weren’t afraid of walking the trails at night. Coming back, without me saying a word, the pace picked up. It was like horses breaking into a trot when they smell the barn. The men with coupons for your bordello washed in the finca pool and made a beeline for the Phoenix Quonset.”
“You need to get it into your head that it’s not my bordello, Roberto.”
Escalona sat down on the next cot and started unlacing his boots, which had lost their spit-shine. “It’s not just the whorehouse, Jack. It’s the refrigerators you got us to keep the Pepsi cold. It’s the showers behind the Quonset huts. It’s the Hollywood movies you show every night on the big screen in the canteen. It’s the crates of M-1 ammunition—everyone’s getting two hours of target practice a week now. Morale is soaring. The men are starting to understand we’re not alone in this thing. Now that Kennedy’s been elected President, they’re beginning to think America’s behind us. With America behind us we can’t lose.”
“We can lose, Robe
rto. America will supply you with B-26s and train your pilots and give you a lifetime supply of M-1 ammunition. But you’ve got to defeat Castro on your own. If you get into trouble on the beach, America won’t lift a finger to get you out of trouble.”
Escalona smiled knowingly. “I know the official line as well as you do.”
Jack was wide awake now and shaking his head in dismay. “It’s not an official line, Roberto. It’s official policy. It’s the name of the game. We’ll help you covertly but not overtly.”
“Sure thing, Jack.”
“Damnation, I hope to God you don’t have to find out the hard way that I’m telling you the truth.”
2
NEW YORK, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1960
WE KNOW THIS JACK KENNEDY INDIVIDUAL AWRIGHT. WE KNOW his father, Joe, awright also,” Johnny Rosselli was saying. “What we don’t know—” The consiglière lazily turned his head and gazed through horn-rimmed shades at the Fallen Angel, who was leaning against the fender of the Sorcerer’s dirty-orange Chevrolet parked on President Street outside the small park, his angelic face raised toward the sun, his eyes closed. “What didja say was his name again?”
“I didn’t say,” Harvey Torriti replied. “His name is Silwan II.”
“That don’t sound completely American.”
“He’s Rumanian. We call him the Fallen Angel.”
“What’d he do to fall?”
The Sorcerer wondered if Rosselli’s interest was purely professional; one killer appreciating another, that kind of thing. Tall, silver-haired, impeccably dressed with a silk handkerchief spilling from his breast pocket, Rosselli looked like someone Hollywood would cast as a mortician. He had started out in the Cosa Nostra working for Al Capone in Chicago; along the way he’d been involved in more than a dozen gangland murders. “It’s not the kind of question I’d encourage you to ask him,” Torriti finally said. “Curiosity has been known to lower the life expectancy of pussy cats.” He nudged the conversation back on theme. “You were talking about Jack Kennedy, you were saying how you knew him—“
“Like I was saying, Jack’s got his head screwed on right. What we don’t know is his kid brother. Who is this Bobby Kennedy? What ideas are rattling around between his ears, makes him go around the country shooting off his mouth about how he’s gonna go and shut down organized crime? Maybe the Micks are jealous of Italians, maybe that’s it.”
“It’s not about race,” Torriti said. “It’s about politics.”
Rosselli shook his head. “I do not understand politics.”
“The way I see it,” the Sorcerer said, “politics is the continuation of war by other means.”
“Come again!”
The Sorcerer surveyed the park. Except for five of Rosselli’s hoods scattered around the benches, it was empty, which was odd. It was lunch hour. The sun was shining full-blast. At this time of day old men speaking Sicilian would normally be playing bocce on the dirt paths. Which meant that Rosselli, a man with connections in South Brooklyn, had requisitioned the park for the meeting. The hood nearest the Sorcerer leaned forward to scatter bread-crumbs to the pigeons milling around his thick-soled shoes. Under a loud checkered sports jacket, the leather harness of a shoulder holster was visible coming over the narrow collar of the man’s shirt; for some reason it reminded Torriti of the times he’d caught a glimpse of Miss Sipp’s garter belt.
The meeting with Rosselli was supposed to have taken place in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. When the Sorcerer turned up in the lobby, a slight man had approached him. One of his eyes had looked straight at Torriti. The other had stared off over his shoulder.
“You need to be Torriti.”
The Sorcerer could feel the Fallen Angel slip around to one side, his right hand fondling a five-inch switchblade in the pocket of his windbreaker. Across the lobby, at the newsstand, Sweet Jesus watched over the top of his newspaper.
“So how’d you pick me out, sport?” Torriti asked.
The slight man’s wild eye seemed to take in the Fallen Angel. Not at all intimidated by the presence of Torriti’s bodyguard, he said, “Like I was told to look for a gentleman who oughta go on a crash diet real quick.” He handed Torriti a note. “PLAN B,” it said in block letters. “WAITING FOR YOU IN SOUTH BROOKLYN IN CARROLL PARK CORNER OF SMITH AND CARROLL USE THE GATE ON CARROLL.” There was a crude diagram on the reverse side showing how to get there from the Brooklyn Bridge.
Coming off the bridge into Brooklyn, Torriti immediately recognized the turf. Young toughs in leather jackets lounged around on stoops, sizing up with insolent eyes everyone who passed. Brownstones had statues of the Virgin visible in their bay windows. President Street, Carroll Street, Smith Street—this wasn’t a low crime neighborhood; this was a no crime neighborhood. And it wasn’t the police who enforced law and order. At the entrance to Carroll Park one of Rosselli’s hoods frisked the Sorcerer (he was obviously looking for wires as well as weapons) just as a blue-and-white patrol car from the 76th Precinct cruised by; the two officers in it kept their eyes fixed straight ahead. Rosselli’s hood came away empty-handed. Torriti had left his guns in the Chevrolet. He didn’t like people he didn’t know fingering them.
“I hope the last-minute switch did not piss you off,” Rosselli said now.
“It was good tradecraft,” Torriti said.
“What’s tradecraft?”
“It’s when you take precautions.”
Rosselli laughed. “Precautions is how come I am still alive.”
“Before the revolution,” the Sorcerer said, “you used to run the Sans Souci casino in Havana.”
“Nice town, Havana. Nice people, Cubans. All that ended when Castro came down from the Sierra Maestras.” Without a change in tone or expression, the consiglière added, “I do not know Castro.”
“Aside from the fact that he closed down the casinos, what don’t you know about him?”
Sunlight glinted off Rosselli’s manicured fingernails. “I do not know what makes a Commie tick. I do not know what they got against free enterprise. Free enterprise has been good to we Italians.”
Torriti thought he knew what Rosselli meant by free enterprise. After the Chicago period he’d been the mob’s man in Hollywood. He’d been caught trying to shake down some film companies and been sent up—for three years, to be exact. These days he ran the ice concession on the Strip in Las Vegas. Judging from the alligator shoes, the platinum band on his wristwatch, the diamond glistening in the ring on his pinkie, he must sell a lot of ice.
“I represent a joker who represents some Wall Street people with nickel interests and properties in Cuba,” Torriti said. “My clients would like to see free enterprise restored in the island.”
Rosselli watched him, the barest trace of a smile on his lips. It was evident he didn’t swallow a word of this. “For that to happen Castro would need to disappear,” he said.
“You have contacts in Cuba. You ought to be able to get ahold of someone who could disappear him.”
“You want us to knock off Castro!”
“There’d be a packet of money in it for you, for the hit man—“
Rosselli’s mournful face wrinkled up in an expression of pained innocence. “I would not pocket a thin dime,” he said with vehemence. “The United States of America has been good to me and mine. I am as patriotic as the next guy. If whacking Castro is good for the country, that is good enough for me.”
“There might be other ways of showing our appreciation.”
Rosselli’s muscular shoulders lifted and fell inside his custom-made suit jacket. “I ask for nothing.”
“Are you saying you can organize it?”
“I am saying it could be organized. I am saying it would not be a pushover—Castro is no sitting duck. I am saying I might be able to fix you up with a friend who has friends in Havana who could get the job done.”
“What is your friend’s name?”
Out on President Street a passing car backfired. Rosselli’s hoods
were on their feet and reaching inside their sports jackets. The pigeons, startled, beat into the air. The consiglière raised a forefinger and cocked a thumb and sighted on one and said “Bang bang, you just won a one-way ticket to bird heaven.” Turning back to the Sorcerer, he said, “People who are friendly with my friend call him Mooney.”
Martin Macy waved a palm as the Sorcerer appeared in the door of La Niçoise, an upper Georgetown restaurant popular with many of the Company’s mandarins. Torriti slalomed between the crowded tables, stopping to shake hands with Dick Bissell and his ADD/O/A, Leo Kritzky, before he lowered himself onto a seat across from his old FBI pal.
“So is there life after retirement, Martin?” he inquired. He signaled to the waiter and pointed to Macy’s drink and held up two fingers for more of the same.
The Company Page 51