“So?”
“It’s called ‘compressed perspective.’ It’s what happens when you shoot stuff with a telephoto lens from a long distance. The guy was probably a hundred, two hundred yards away.”
Alex Moffat was flushed, twittery. “Santo, please, for godsake, what’re we going to---?”
“Alex, be quiet. We’ve got a problem, we’ll fix it.” To Ciccone: “You think Washington...?”
“Except – why?”
“Exactly. Why not just...?” DiMartini made a throat-slitting gesture.
Moffat cut in. “What’re you saying?”
Ciccone shrugged, ignored him.
DiMartini had been re-examining the photos. “Wait. There were other people – next to us...” He pointed at one of the prints. “See? You can make out part of one on the left, behind---”
“A couple.” Ciccone brightened. “And a few others farther down. Some cars, trucks. All with Texas plates. Lupo and I kept all of ‘em within sight.”
“Get Lupo back there today. I want answers tonight. Names, backgrounds, everything.”
His lieutenant nodded, exited.
Moffat shut his attaché case. “Should I contact – uh – anyone?”
DiMartini shot back: “No!” Then, more controlled: “We’ll handle this ourselves. Go give Johnny a hand. And listen to me – stay off the goddam sauce – for the duration.” He was angry at himself for bringing Alex into this, for wanting to believe the added responsibility might somehow be therapeutic, might help reform the man.
Moffat nodded, did not move, looked imploringly at DiMartini.
DiMartini fastened his black eyes on his friend’s blue ones. “Alex – I’ll do what I can...” He held his gaze for a long time, till Moffat looked away. Then DiMartini left the room.
* * * * * *
The light snow falling through the gray dusk melted as it hit Charlie Callan’s windshield. He slowed, the Chevvie’s tappet-clatter diminished. The mountains loomed dark on both sides. Except for Thanksgiving displays and a few early Christmas promotions, Moab’s Main Street looked unchanged from five years ago. The windows of Valley Firestone featured large cut-out Santa Clauses hawking bicycles and toy wagons. Town TV bannered a free trial offer on the latest gadget: cable (4 Salt Lake Channels, Local Weather & News, plus 3 FM Music Channels!). The Holiday Theater advertised a Special Limited Engagement of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.
Charlie smiled when he spotted the sign directing newcomers to the Ocala Motel & Café on South 4th Street East. It was where he and Dorothy had stayed.
Man, if those walls could talk...
Leaving Albuquerque on Saturday, Charlie knew he would have to kill some time. Moab was only a long one-day drive, and he did not want to be seen there any more than was necessary. It was unlikely that the envelope, which he’d sent via airmail special delivery, would be in DiMartini’s hands before Monday morning. And Charlie, before moving to the next step in his plan, would want the sonofabitch to sweat for a few hours. So he drove west at a leisurely speed, reached Gallup at sunset, found an inexpensive motel and a cheap steak. He phoned Dorothy, warmed by the sound of her voice, apologized for not calling sooner. He assured her he was okay, that she probably would not hear from him for several days. He parried her questions about Joe Bob and Marjorie whom, she had heard from the “girls,” was back with Stan, explained that Marjorie had had a change of heart. No bonus, but “something new” had come up for him. He hinted that he hoped to have a major surprise for her by the time he was back in Reno.
Then, after a brief call to Phyllis, Charlie drove to Gallup’s northern outskirts. About a mile up a dark, rutted, road, far from traffic and any lighted buildings, he found what he was looking for. Parked just off the shoulder beside a darkened, falling-down shed, a dusty, rusty ’49 Pontiac, it’s left-front tire flat. Charlie quickly removed the Pontiac’s New Mexico license tags, tossed them under the Chevvie’s front seat, waited till he reached the main road before turning on his headlamps. Back at the motel, he found it difficult to fall asleep.
The following morning, Sunday, while having a late breakfast at a diner a few miles from the Arizona stateline, Charlie and the few others present watched the live TV broadcast of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Dallas lowlife Jack Ruby. Charlie’s surprise lasted about ten seconds, till he realized how smart it was to do it that way; if Oswald died in his cell – and he had to die – even if it was rigged, say, to look like suicide, it would have created immediate suspicion of an official cover-up. That might yet happen, but this was a clever diversion, the killer an apparent crank.
Yeah. Too clever by half for the Italians to come up with on their own.
Had the whole spectacle not been so dispiriting, Charlie might have congratulated himself for not contacting the FBI. There he was, holding – if not the key to the assassination of the President – certainly an important piece of it, and it was now more obvious than ever that there was no way to use it for the right purpose – to nail the bastards – and still come out alive. He did permit himself a small reassurance – the rationale that, short of destroying the film and walking away from the entire mess, the path he had chosen, while risky as hell, was his only viable one.
Besides, he understood the people he was dealing with – had done business with them – the ones in Reno and Vegas, anyway. Geniuses they were not. What would be scary at this point was if they brought their brighter, wiser co-conspirators into it. The government people. He was counting on the Italians being too embarrassed by his photographs to do that.
He continued west into Arizona, where he stayed for another night before circling back to the north, timing his arrival in Moab for late Monday afternoon. He’d stopped briefly on a side road south of town, where he exchanged his own Nevada plates for the New Mexico set he’d removed from the Pontiac. He wrapped the discards in newspaper, dropped them in a trashbin.
Throughout Monday the radio carried almost nothing but the funeral, plus an endless, solemn rehash of the assassination, its aftermath and possible consequences. Oswald had died an hour and forty-six minutes after he was gunned down.
Charlie stopped at a small Moab grocery store, bought a pack of Camels, copies of the Salt Lake City Deseret News and the only local paper, the weekly Moab Mirror-Gazette. Back in the Chevvie, he lit up, glanced at the Salt Lake paper, with its photos of Oswald and Ruby, who was being billed as “crazed by the shooting of his President.” What he found even more interesting were rumblings from eyewitnesses in Dealey Plaza that there might have been a second or even third gunman. One on the “grassy knoll,” the other on the railroad overpass. Already, such claims were being played down/discredited; the official line was that Oswald had acted alone.
Nice. These guys could write the book on how to knock off a President and get away with it.
Charlie turned to the Moab paper. At the back, under FOR RENT, he found what he was looking for: Murck’s Rooms. Single or double. Men only. TV available.
“I apologize for the terrible windows...” The slight, prim woman dabbed at her eyes with another tissue from the box she’d been carrying at least since Charlie arrived.
Charlie glanced at the window, unable to see anything wrong with it. Contrarily, unlike the other two larger rooms she’d shown him, this one faced the tree-lined street.
“...Ordinarily I do floors Friday mornings and windows in the afternoon, but when the news came about the president, well – there went my routine, and... Oh dear, what that poor family has had to endure – Mrs. Kennedy and – and that darling little boy and his sister and... I mean what kind of people could---?” Elizabeth Murck was unable to finish.
“I know. It’s terrible...” Charlie found her use of the word “people” mildly interesting. It was like nobody – especially the politically unsophisticated – wanted to believe that one asshole could change the world the way Oswald supposedly had. Which he figured was how come the people behind it were so busy force-feeding t
he press with their version.
She blotted her eyes, grabbed several more tissues into which she blew her nose, snuffled. “Sorry.” She shifted her eyes from side to side, almost as if she was afraid someone might be listening, then: “Lon – he’d take a fit if he heard me go on like that. He – my late husband, that was his name – Lon – he hated the Kennedys. Especially the father.”
Charlie counted out eighteen dollars. The father. Lon had that one right. “Two weeks.” He thrust the bills at her, placed his other hand on the doorknob.
“Wonderful, Mr. Davis.” She started to leave, paused. “On account of the window – let me give you a TV, why don’t you?”
He shook his head. “Thanks anyway.” And swung the door another degree or two toward closed.
She almost took the hint, paused again, wearing a remembering look. “I’d clip a cigar for him, and he – he woudn’t even light it. He’d just sit there and rant about how unfair it was that Jack made those steel companies back down, or the wisecracks he’d make at those whatchamacallit press conferences, or how Jackie – Lon called her ‘the wife’ – how she was nothing but a clothes horse. But mostly it was about ‘old Joe’ – that’s what he called him. Old Joe...”
Charlie moved the door further, trying to edge her out of the room.
She noticed some dust on the bureau next to the doorway, grabbed the end of her apron, wiped it away. “Anything you need. More towels, anything...”
“Right.”
“And if you need to raid the fridge, feel free.”
Charlie smiled, nodded, all but closed the door.
“Oh. Thursday...?”
Charlie stopped, tried to look interested.
“Mr. Hammerslaw’s gone up to Provo – to his daughter’s...?”
Charlie ran a quick check, decided she must be talking about a fellow-tenant.
She continued. “...So it’s just me and this twelve pound turkey, so if you’d like to join me...”
“Gee, um – I’m not sure...”
“No mind. You can let me know.”
Charlie nodded, shut the door, looked around at the small, neat room. The house seemed to be fifty or sixty years old, unobtrusive, on a quiet street three blocks from the center of town. And according to Mrs. Murck, he would have the upstairs bathroom – in fact, the entire upstairs – to himself.
He looked at his watch.
The snow had stopped, leaving only isolated little wind-driven deposits at the curb and in doorways. Charlie emerged from the burger joint, headed down Main. He hunkered into his old, worn raincoat, wished he’d brought a muffler and an extra sweater. He had wanted to dine at the Ocala Café, to relive his memories of that special time with Dorothy – that was the romantic Charlie. The other one – the survivor – almost simultaneously warned him that someone – a waitress, a busboy – might remember him.
Uh-uh. This was for the whole sack of marbles.
The gas station at the next corner had an outdoor payphone just off the sidewalk. Charlie glanced up and down the street. Almost no traffic, either vehicle or pedestrian. A couple of kids were getting their ancient, rough-idling Beetle gassed by the gangly teenage attendant. Charlie approached the phone, dug in his pocket, jingled the extra change he’d collected, some at the pharmacy, some at dinner, some from a candy store. He pulled out the page from the New Orleans telephone book on which he’d written DiMartini’s number. And worked his neck. The Beetle’s feeble, jaundiced headlights scarcely illuminated Charlie as it rattled past, out onto Main Street. The attendant blew into his cupped hands, retreated into the office.
Through the French doors, Santo DiMartini watched his daughter towel herself, her lithe, almost naked body modeled exquisitely by the pool lights’ undulating glow.
“...But he says he remembers that besides the regulars – and your group, there was this cowboy – with a flashy blonde, sort of mid-to-late thirties, he thinks. Not locals.” John Ciccone was extrapolating from notes he’d written on a legal pad, the results of Lupo’s inquiries at the Fairview Rifle Range and environs.
Alex Moffat’s coffee cup rattled on its saucer. “God, is he going to call do you think, or---”
DiMartini overrode him. “They don’t take names?”
“No, it’s public.”
DiMartini was again finding it difficult to stay with them. After his morning encounter with Nikki, she stormed out of the house, raced down the driveway in the E-type Jag roadster he’d given her for her birthday. He’d seen her turn upriver, knew she was driving at god-knows what speeds. All day he watched the gate with one eye, more worried about her than this burgeoning, potentially disastrous crisis. Her late afternoon safe return was nearly as much of a relief to Ciccone and Moffat as it was to DiMartini, because it allowed him to bring his full attention back to the business at hand. Part of which was the imperative that his beloved Nikki must never, never know what her father had done. However, dinner with Nicole had been impossible, distracting him once more.
Earlier, DiMartini and his two associates ran dozens of scenarios, including the very real possibility that B. Russell was an individual opportunist, or part of a group of them from within the conspiracy – which could mean at least three Agencies in Washington, not to mention the Pentagon. Or a rogue from one of the Families. Or from his own organization. The latter seemed unlikely, because DiMartini had scrupulously limited knowledge of his participation to John Ciccone and Alex Moffat. More remotely, it might be one of the two surviving Dallas shooters, but that would mean the photographer had been hired to do what – document the fact that they were murderers of the President? It didn’t scan. Shaping up as more probable, considering B.Russell’s shrewd-but-crude, un-D.C.-like approach, was that they were dealing with someone totally outside the cabal, that the photos were accidental.
Nicole left the pool area, entered the main part of the house. DiMartini turned, faced the others, moved to his desk. “Yeah. Okay...pretty woman. Guy’s a dirtball. His paws all over her...” He studied the photos. “...They were just beyond us, to our right...” He put the prints down, took a cigar from his humidor, pondering. Moffat and Ciccone watched him expectantly. “...Just out of the frame...” DiMartini clipped the cigar. “Okay – suppose they were the real subjects...”
Ciccone agreed. “That was pretty much Lupo’s thought---”
Moffat saw some hope for the first time. “Sure, sure.”
Ciccone continued: “...He’s still running down whether any of the locals might’ve been under surveillance---”
Moffat darkened: “You mean by the police? Ogod.”
Ciccone tossed his hand. “Whatever.”
It was a theory DiMartini had toyed with even before Lupo had called in his report. And now, the rifle range manager’s recollection nudged his own. It was beginning to fit. “Gold. The woman wore gold jewelry. Good stuff. The guy looked like about twenty-eight cents---” A knock on the door. DiMartini looked off, wary. “Yes?”
The dignified, elderly Black butler, opened the door partway. “Excuse me, Mr. DiMartini. There’s a call for you – on line three. Long distance, person-to-person. A Mr. Russell---”
“Thank you, Peyton.” Line three was the number they gave out to tradespeople. Unlike his private line there in the study, it could be listened in on from any extension in the house. Nor was it secure from outside wiretaps. He waited till the door snapped shut, then picked up the phone, with his other hand, a pen. “Mr. Russell, for privacy reasons, I’ll need to call you right back...”
Charlie had anticipated it, gave him the number, pleased that he wasn’t dealing with a schmuck. Less chance for fuckups.
DiMartini lit his cigar, then, thoughtfully: “We find out who they were – the woman and the cowboy – we’ve got this clown. Her husband, a jealous lover, a PI...” He unlocked his desk drawer, withdrew a white phone, dialed the number on his notepad.
In Moab, the payphone rang. Charlie picked it up. “Yeah.”
“Talk
to me.”
“Okay. In exchange for the negatives, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in untraceable, used tens, twenties and fifties. It comes to Moab tomorrow. Your people check into the Ocala Motel – under the name ‘Gruber.’ G – R – U – B – E – R. I’ll call ‘em and set up the transaction.”
“How will we know we’re getting it all – prints, negatives?”
“Faith, Mr. DiMartini. I’m as interested in staying alive as you are. Which is why we’re having this conversation, instead of my going to---”
“Okay.”
“Oh – one more thing. And this is key. Send your daughter. Not you. Your daughter. She’s the one I do business with. The only one. You stay where you are.”
“That is completely out of the---”
“Mr. DiMartini – shut the fuck up and listen, because---”
“She’s not even here. She’s away at---”
“Right. At Bennington. Put her on a plane.”
“No!”
“Hey. Put a sock in it. This is the only conversation we’re gonna have – so if you hang up on me, or you don’t do exactly what I say, you’re gonna see those pictures in the next issue of Life Magazine.”
Charlie was counting on DiMartini recognizing, as he had, how dumb such a move would be. It never hurt to show the bad guys some armor-chinks – to let them think they’re smarter than you. Plus, it might make DiMartini a little more prudent if he believed he was dealing with a numb-nuts hair-trigger.
Which is exactly what was running through DiMartini’s head at that moment. His glance at the others said as much. As did the resignation in his voice: “Continue.”
“All right. I explain the drill after your daughter and your boys get here. And no more than three of ‘em. Which includes if you send any local talent, like some paisans from Nevada, for instance. I wouldn’t do that. I got a feeling your buddies along the strip might take offense if they were to see those pictures. Maybe not about your involvement, but that you were stupid enough to get caught. Anyway – send an army and the deal’s off. Not to mention your daughter’s liable to get hurt. Oh, and another thing, no substitutes. I know what she looks like...” Charlie held it for a ten-count, then: “You there...?”
The Sixteenth Man Page 19