Corruption of Blood

by Robert Tanenbaum

  Late in the morning of one of these trancelike days, Karp, befuddled with reading, wandered out of his office in search of coffee. Cup in hand, he went into the small bay that was supposed to hold a reception area and the clerical pool, but which still resembled the site of a terrorist bombing. There Bea Sondergard was standing like a ringmaster, directing a team of phone engineers, a crew building partitions, and three men with huge cartons from Xerox, carrying on at the same time a conversation with a short, bespectacled, red-bearded young man. Sondergard waved Karp over and pointed him at the other man.

  “Butch, I want you to meet Charlie Ziller. Charlie’s a loaner from Congressman Dobbs. Charlie, Butch Karp, your new boss.” She coughed as plaster dust settled in a cloud around them. Karp shook hands with Ziller and said, “I’m sorry, we seem to be a little disorganized… .”

  At this Sondergard uttered a cackling laugh and raced off after the Xerox people who were, despite her instructions, moving their copier to the wrong room.

  “Actually,” said Karp, “it’s a nonstop Chinese fire drill around here. Do you have a desk yet?”

  Ziller grinned engagingly and shrugged. He looked about twenty-five and had small, bright blue eyes. “No, I’m going to have a cubicle when they’re built, according to Bea.”

  “Great. So—you’re a volunteer, or did you fuck up something important?”

  A polite laugh. “No, I wangled it, in my subtle way. The Kennedy thing—just something I’ve always wondered about, and maybe this is a chance to be in on the real story.”

  “Another Camelot fan.”

  “I guess. My folks were in the administration then and it’s something that hit them pretty hard. I was in junior high at the time. Sixth period, they announced over the PA. My math teacher burst into tears. I’ll never forget it; it was … I don’t know, like finding out you’re adopted. It shook up the whole world, you know? Especially with us all being in the government. I guess it just feels like a natural thing for me to do.”

  “So what’re you supposed to be doing for us?”

  Ziller shrugged again. “The representative didn’t specify. I’m just supposed to come over and make myself useful.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like how? Expand on your talents.”

  Ziller made a self-deprecating little writhe. “I’m a staffer. I can talk on the telephone. Type on the typewriter. Go to meetings. Have lunch. That’s what we do here in the nation’s capital.”

  “Okay,” said Karp, “in that case, let’s have lunch. You can show me your stuff.”

  Ziller took Karp to the Green Hat, a small multileveled saloon on Maryland off Third. They walked up the Hill and behind the Capitol, Ziller pointing out the sights knowledgeably. It turned out he was a third-generation civil servant; his father was a fairly high mandarin at State, his mother a budget officer at the General Services Administration. Ziller had been educated at American U. and was one of the rare natives of the town. He seemed happy to speak freely about himself, Washington ways, and his recent job, which was staffing the House Intelligence Committee. He touched amusingly on the idiosyncrasies of various congressional characters as well, pointing out several who were dining in that very place.

  Ziller did this last discreetly, in a low voice. Most of those he indicated were solid-looking men in their fifties or sixties, with graying hair and very pink skin, but there was one woman, an undersecretary of something, lunching with another, an assistant secretary of something else. Karp learned, whether he wanted to or not, that an undersecretary was more important than an assistant secretary, but that a deputy assistant secretary was more important than a deputy undersecretary, except at the Pentagon, where the reverse obtained.

  They ordered; food was brought. Karp found himself unexpectedly ravenous, and tore into his meal, a cheeseburger as large as a regulation Softball.

  “Good burgers here,” observed Ziller as he plucked at a shrimp salad.

  “Yeah. So—how am I doing? Am I having lunch yet?”

  Ziller grinned, showing the small neat pearly teeth you get if you have been covered by the government’s generous health plan from birth. “Not quite,” he said. “Lunch actually happens when I tell you something I’ve been sworn not to tell you, and tell you not to tell anyone else, knowing that you will tell exactly the person I want to find out about it, but couldn’t tell. That’s having lunch.”

  “And … ? What’s the secret?”

  Ziller shrugged and his expression became more guarded. “Avoid the apple pie. It tends to be watery.”

  “I’m serious,” replied Karp, placing the stump of his burger on its plate. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and regarded Ziller unsmilingly. “I appreciate the walking guidebook act, but let’s not screw around with each other. Dobbs sent you over here to watch the store for him and also to slide me information he thinks I should have without having to do it officially. Obviously, you don’t want to do that on our first date, so to speak; you want to feel me out a little, learn something about who I tell secrets to before you let loose, maybe check out do I know what the hell I’m doing around an investigation. I appreciate that, but here’s a tip. The problem with telling me secrets, is I don’t pass them on. That’s because I’m basically a simple country boy. Around here, as I gather, you’ve got to show what you know to show everybody you’re somebody. Like, ‘Look at me, I know some Senator is schtupping the assistant secretary of what’s-its-face, hooray.’ But basically, I don’t give a flying fuck about being somebody in Washington. I didn’t much like it when I was somebody in New York. Plus, I left my family in the city, and as a result I’m horny and generally pissed off. I’m here to do a job and scram, the quicker the better. And I could put all the patience I have with all this shit—‘don’t mess with that one’ and ‘respect this one’s fucking sensitivities’—in my belly button. I told Crane I had no political skills and it’s true, and he said that was okay, and if it turns out it’s not, I’m on the next plane out. You can convey the same message to Representative Dobbs.” He paused and produced a mild version of his famous stare. Then he grinned, to forestall any tension.

  Ziller made a mock swipe at his brow and said, “Well, that was a cold douche. Are you always this charming?”

  “No,” Karp said, still smiling, “sometimes I’m extremely obnoxious. For example, when I think somebody is not telling me stuff I need to know.”

  “Which is certainly not the case here. Look, we’re on the same side. I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help you.”

  “Help me how?”

  Ziller laughed, “No, it’s a joke—the third biggest lie.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That’s right, you probably haven’t heard it eight million times: What are the three biggest lies in the world? Answer: I’ll respect you in the morning; the check is in the mail; and I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help you. Ho, ho. Well, I really am here to help you.”

  Karp waited, his expression neutral. Ziller took a breath and resumed.

  “Okay, I got this from a buddy of mine who shall remain nameless. He’s a staffer with the Church committee.”

  “The Senate Intelligence investigation.”

  “Yes, the Intelligence investigation. Church is the chair, but Dick Schaller is the leading light. They subpoenaed a shitload of stuff from the CIA and most of it was either trash or blanked out—par for the course with the spooks—but there was one incredibly juicy little package that came through untouched. Some of it bears heavily on the JFK investigation.”

  “In what way?”

  “This I don’t know, but my guy says it’s dynamite.”

  “And Schaller is going to give us this stuff?”

  “Yeah. What he wants is to get rid of it. The investigation is finished, the report is out. The last thing he needs is to be sitting on something this big that he didn’t use.”

  Karp frowned. “Wait a minute. What you’re saying is that a U.S. senator had information german
e to the assassination of the president and he’s playing footsy with it? He’s not going public with it immediately?”

  “That’s not the point. It was ancillary to the intelligence investigation proper, and if he used it, he’d have had to branch off down a line of investigation he chose not to pursue.”

  “Why not?”

  Ziller paused and said meaningfully, “Because in certain quarters of this town, getting excited about who did JFK is considered on the same level as having food stains on your tie or walking around with your fly open.”

  “That’s good to know,” said Karp, and then asked, “So what do I do? Beg him?”

  “No, we’ll set up an appointment, you’ll go over to the Dirksen Building, you’ll chat, talk about the weather, and when you leave the stuff’ll be in your briefcase.”

  “Great,” said Karp. “Is that it?”

  “No, Mark Lane has some dynamite stuff he got on an FOIA request from the FBI, another miracle. There must be a rat in the public information office there,” said Ziller. He looked at his watch and beckoned to the waitress for the check. “I have to run; there’s a staff meeting over at Rayburn in ten minutes.”

  “Wait a second—what’s this about Mark Lane and a rat in the FBI?”

  “Yeah, it’s a long story. It’s another document, and I’m sure Lane’ll be around to see us. It’s apparently signed by J. Edgar Hoover’s own soft, pink hand.” He stood up. “I should be able to start full-time next week, if that’s okay.”

  “Yeah, sure, fine,” said Karp, feeling vaguely one-upped and unsure about whether it was fine or not.

  Back in the office, Karp found a message from V.T. on his desk. V.T. himself was in his own dingy room poking into one of several heavy cartons made of a dark, waxy-looking cardboard.

  “What’s up, V.T.?”

  “How was your lunch?”

  “I had the cheeseburger special. What’s in the boxes?”

  “National Archives,” said V.T. “Your research director has been researching, and I had these sent over. It’s the photographic stuff, copies they let us have. The actual stuff, they send a guy over and he watches it. I imagine we’ll need to do that when we go to hearings.”

  “What actual stuff?”

  “Oh, the Rifle. The Bloody Shirt. The Magic Bullet. I went over there this morning. They let me Handle the Items. You get a chill.”

  “I bet. So you got all the evidence and autopsy shots?”

  “Those they had. Plus the films. That’s what I wanted to show you. I set up a projector already.”

  V.T. led the way to a freshly painted bare room down the hall, in the center of which he had a projector set up on a metal typing table. There were two straight chairs on either side of it. The blinds were closed, and when V.T. shut the door and clicked off the lights, the room became quite dark.

  “What are we watching?” asked Karp, sitting in one of the chairs.

  “You’re a trained investigator—see if you recognize it.”

  V.T. flicked the projector switch and sat down. The white wall opposite lit up. The usual leader numbers counted down and there was a message informing the viewer that this film was copyrighted by Life magazine and a brief look at the seal of the National Archives. Then bright sunlight, a road, a crowd, a motorcade coming down a street, led by motorcycle cops, preceding an open limousine in which two men and two women are waving and smiling.

  Karp realized that he had never actually seen the film shot by Abraham Zapruder on assassination day, although he had seen the grainy color stills made from it. It was different, more chilling, in motion. He asked, “This is the original?”

  “No, that’s in a vault at Time-Life. This is the archival copy. Let me slow it down for you.”

  V.T. turned a lever and the scene slowed to a nightmare crawl. The Kennedy limo passed behind a large sign and emerged, the president grimaced and snapped both his hands up to his throat, elbows high, then John Connally puffed his cheeks out in pain and slumped to the side, then Kennedy’s head exploded in a pink cloud. Jackie scrambled out onto the rear deck of the car, a big Secret Service man leaped up on the rear deck and thrust her back into her seat, the car accelerated and moved away until it vanished under a freeway overpass. The screen went white again and the most famous snuff film ever made was over.

  “Like to see it again?” asked V.T.

  “Yeah. Can you stop it on a particular frame?”

  “No, not with this projector. I want to get us a Moviola for that and for some other film material I have. There are eight-by-ten prints of each frame, of course, but they’re not as … compelling as seeing the real thing. I’m also going to go back to the city and take a look at the original. What I hear is that it’s got detail you can’t see on the archival copies.”

  “That’s interesting. I mean why take any trouble to make a good copy? It’s just the most important piece of film in history. If Zapruder hadn’t shot that film, we’d both be back in the city, eating bagels and putting asses in jail. There wouldn’t be an investigation. There wouldn’t be any single-bullet theory because you wouldn’t need one, because without the film to time the bullet impacts and show their order in detail, all you got is a dead guy, a wounded guy, and a rifle in a high building. Let’s see it again.”

  V.T. rewound it and they watched the Zapruder film again at normal speed. It took twenty-two seconds. They were silent for the few seconds it took to rewind.

  “Again?” asked V.T.

  “Not right now,” said Karp. He rose, stretched, and turned on the lights. “We have a photo tech yet?”

  “Uh-huh. I convinced Jim Phelps to join the cause. You don’t recognize the name? He’s the guy who liberated the Zapruder film and he’s done some interesting enhancements. He impressed me. A certain passionate sincerity that ought to balance my own blithe amateurism.”

  “I’ll need to meet him.”

  “I’ll set it up. Also, I have that list for the autopsy panel you wanted.”

  “Murray’s heading it, right?” Newbury bobbed his head in assent, but with a sour expression on his face.

  “What’s the matter, you have something against Murray Selig?” Karp asked.

  “No, not as such. The credentials are fine. You can’t beat chief medical examiner in New York City. On the other hand, you and he have been pretty tight over the years. His objectivity may be called into question. It might have been better to give it to someone with whom we have no prior connection.”

  “Come on, Murray’s the best in the business. You think he’s going to shave the findings to make me happy?”

  V.T. shrugged. “You’re the boss. Okay, next: I’m going to set up an index for the materials we’re gathering. I’ll base it on the index Sylvia Meagher made in sixty-four, of course. We’d really be even further up shit’s creek without that. And I’ll make a separate list of the stuff we should have that’s missing, not that I have very high hopes of finding it.” He rose and sighed and ran his hand through his fine pale hair.

  It struck Karp that V.T. had been putting in hours as long as his own and even after a few weeks his face was beginning to show the strain.

  “Fulton’s coming on Monday?” V.T. asked.

  “Yeah. He called yesterday. He’s got his little mafia of retired cops ready to start as contract investigators. Speaking of which, first thing Monday we should have a meeting. I’ll get Selig to come down, and you should get your photo guy in. I’ll try to figure out which of the people wandering around here knows what the hell they’re doing.”

  V.T. nodded unenthusiastically and went to the door. Karp said, “I’d like to see that fist of missing stuff as soon as possible. I’m going over to see the Senate Intelligence Committee. Maybe they’ll know about some of it.”

  “Tomorrow morning all right?”

  “Sure. Like what kind of stuff, by the way?”

  V.T. shot him a glum look. “Like Kennedy’s brain, for starters. And it’s probably not in the Dirksen Bui
lding.”

  Karp read for the rest of the day until his eyes burned. He reached the end of a chapter and threw the heavy book on a pile. He’d gone through three yellow pads making notes on the Warren Report, cross-checking his reading with the critical works also spread out across his desk: Meagher’s Accessories after the Fact, Thompson’s Six Seconds in Dallas, Lane’s Rush to Judgment, Epstein’s Inquest. He reviewed his notes and distributed more little yellow slips among the critical books. As always, he finished these sessions with an incipient headache and a queasy sensation in his belly.

  Having entered this work without any prejudgment of the Warren Report, he had never concerned himself particularly with its critics. He had read the Times and watched Uncle Walter on CBS like millions of Americans, and the idea that a lone nut had shot the president was perfectly reasonable to him. He also had a deep-seated reluctance to accept the idea of conspiracy on the part of government agencies, even though he had in his career exposed several such conspiracies.

  That was the point, in fact. If he had exposed conspiracies, and he was a law-enforcement official, it was difficult to believe that other law-enforcement officials could not have done likewise. Since none had, in the last decade, it had seemed to him probable that no conspiracy existed. He also had a professional’s reluctance to accept the conclusions of amateurs. In his long experience at the DA’s office in New York, and in contradiction to the great mass of popular culture pertaining to the subject, no amateur, no Miss Marple, no Poirot, no Sam Spade, no Lew Archer, had ever contributed in the slightest to the solution of a homicide. Private investigators were a joke among the pros he worked with.