“If you’re really Oswald,” he asked, “how come you give such good head?”
“Oh, puh-leeze!” she crowed. “Look at the pictures of him, or me, that is! Is that every ten-dollar male hustler you ever saw on the Deuce?”
“I guess you’ve got me there … Lee. Well, this is certainly going to add some piquancy to our sex life from now on.”
“Speaking of which,” she said, wriggling her upper body onto his chest, “what time does your flight leave?”
“Eight-twenty.”
“Oh, good, we have time for a quickie.” She threw a hot thigh over his midsection. The oversize T-shirt she wore to bed had ridden up and Karp could feel the amazing heat of her sex pressing against his hip.
“I guess this means you don’t hate me anymore,” he said among the kisses. She straddled him and set herself up, bouncing lightly on the tip before the first delightful drop.
“No, I still hate you a little,” she said, “especially since you’re running off to bask in the sun.”
“I’m not basking,” Karp objected, not very seriously. “It’s business.”
“Don’t be silly, you’ll bask your ass off, while I’m stuck in the freezing rain, but as you can see my hatred has fallen below my fuck threshold,” she said, and then she said, “Aah!”
“Well, this sure as hell beats chasing muggers through the sleet on St. Nicholas Avenue,” said Clay Fulton brightly. They were driving across a sparkling Biscayne Bay on Broad Causeway in warm sunlight, Fulton at the wheel of the rented Pontiac, Karp beside him, studying a road map.
“Make the first right you can, onto Bay Drive,” said Karp.
“Hey, I been here before, remember? Nice neighborhood,” Fulton observed as they drove down a street lined with palms and clipped bushes flowering pinkly with oleander and hibiscus. “We’re in the wrong business.”
“Yeah, we should’ve been mobsters,” Karp agreed. “On the other hand, he probably suffers from skin dryness due to overexposure to the sun’s rays. It’s a trade-off.”
Fulton made a turn and pulled to the curb. “Okay, this is it, we’re here.”
Karp grabbed a battered cardboard folder and stepped out of the car into the bright warmth of the street and the odors of flowers, hot stone, salt water.
It was a small stucco house, two-story, colored sun-faded pink with white trim. There was a low wall around the property, topped by a tangled bougainvillea vine. They walked through a wrought-iron gate and entered a small courtyard that contained a kidney-shaped pool, some chairs and loungers, a round table with a Cinzano umbrella stuck through it, and a redheaded woman in a yellow bikini, sunning herself on one of the loungers.
She lifted her sunglasses and peered at them, squinting. She was leather brown from the sun and her skin had the smooth and slightly oily look of an old saddle. Karp judged her to be in her late thirties. She had the sort of lithe body you get if you danced professionally in youth and you work out a lot after youth has fled.
“We’re here to see Guido Mosca,” Karp announced.
The woman cupped her hand around her mouth and shouted, at surprising volume, “Hey, Jerry, you got visitors!” Her vowels were from south Jersey. She gestured to a pair of white-painted steel chairs with flowered cushions, and said, “Have a seat.” They sat and she went back to reading The Racing Form and working on the tan.
In a few minutes, they saw a glass door at the back of the house slide open, and Guido Mosca walked out onto the flagged patio. He was a medium-sized man in his early seventies, with a deeply lined face, small, bright eyes set close together, and a wide lippy mouth. He was bald save for a fringe of silvery hair, and his skin was the same tanned-leather color as the woman’s. They might have been sprayed out of the same can.
Mosca approached them and shook hands without smiling. His eyes flicked toward the woman, who ignored them, and he said, “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
They walked around the side of the house down a narrow path lined with crotons, and out onto a lawn facing a broad channel, a large island park with a golf course in it, and the bay. The property was small but well maintained: the lawn green and crisp under foot, the bordering shrubbery clipped square. There was a little dock with a white powerboat tied to it under a striped awning. It was the kind of modest setup that might have belonged to a small and successful businessman in his retirement. Which Mosca was, in a way.
A white wrought-iron umbrella table and four chairs sat on the lawn. When they were seated, Karp said, gesturing to the place, “So, Jerry, you look like you landed on your feet—nice house, a boat. What’s the secret of your success?”
“I kept my nose clean, my mouth shut, and I put a little money away. Look, what’s the deal here? Tony says I got to talk to you guys and go testify.”
“Yeah, provided you have something we need,” said Karp. “Why don’t you start by telling us what you were doing in New Orleans in 1963?”
Mosca leaned back in his chair and played with his lower lip. “Sixty-three, sixty-three … okay, sixty-three I was working in a crew with Jackie Colloso and Chick Fannetti. We had some money on the street, also some girls, punch cards, like that.”
“This is in Marcello’s outfit?”
“Yeah, Marcello. He was the capo there.”
Fulton asked, “Jerry, so how did a Philly boy get to be working for Carlos Marcello?”
“Out of Cuba. I used to go down there a lot when it was open, the fifties. I took care of some things for Trafficante, as a favor, you know? And he offered me a job, watch his interests in some of the casinos. And while I was there I met Sam Termine.”
“This is the one who worked for Marcello?” asked Karp.
“Worked for Marcello. Yeah, he was his driver and, like, his bodyguard.”
“You ever meet Termine’s friend, Dutz Murret?”
“The bookie, right? Yeah, later he was a, like a client.”
“Meaning you collected for him.”
“Yeah, later, when I was with Marcello, him and the other bookies.”
“Did you know his nephew?”
Mosca nodded, slowly, as if realizing that this was the point of the whole thing, the nephew of an insignificant part-time bookie for the New Orleans Mob. “Lee Oswald. No, that was before my time, when he was a kid, hanging around in New Orleans. Sam Termine knew him, though. Sam used to go with his mother.”
“So, you met Termine in Cuba,” said Karp, switching back. “What happened then?”
“Well, Castro took Cuba, we had to get out. Traffìcante asked me to stay. He couldn’t leave because Castro wouldn’t let him. They were gonna put him on trial or something. So some of his people got some big shit-load of money up, then Jack brought it in, and I gave it to some Castro guys, and we flew out that night. After that—”
“Wait a second,” Karp interrupted. “This was Jack who? The bagman …”
“Jack Ruby,” said Mosca blandly. “Worked for Carlos as a bagman at the time, and then he ran a nightclub in Dallas.”
“I know who Jack Ruby is, Jerry,” said Karp. “I was just surprised that he was the guy who bailed out Trafficante. Okay, go ahead.”
“After that, I worked for Trafficante for a while, and then one day, must’ve been the summer of sixty-one, Termine calls me up and says there’s something going down, they want to get some of the old Havana fellas together, could I come. So I ask the boss about it, and Trafficante says he heard about it too, and yeah, I should go. They’re gonna whack Castro, they need muscle for the job. So I get to New Orleans, and I see Sam and he introduces me to a guy, Johnny Roselli, out of the Chicago outfit. He’s setting the whole thing up. He’s talking about how the CIA is behind the deal, which doesn’t make me feel too fucking relieved, because look how they fucked up the invasion, you know? He asks me can I do a machine gun, can I do a bazooka. Right then I know this is gonna be fucked up, but what can I say? It’s a contract. Okay, so Roselli says the CIA guys want to see us, we’re supposed
to go to such-and-such a bar at such-and-such a time and they’ll pick me up. So Sam and me go out and we end up at this bar we were supposed to be at, I think it was Armand’s on St. Charles. And we see Dutz Murret and we sit down at a table with him, just shooting the shit, waiting for this CIA guy.”
He stopped and looked at Karp, a faint smile on his face. “You know, it’s funny you asking me about Dutz just now, and Oswald, because what happened was, this guy walks in the front door and looks around, and Sam spots him and says something like, ‘Holy shit, Dutz! There’s your nephew.’ And Dutz looks over and he kind of jumps and starts to get up and then when the guy gets a little closer he says like, ‘Nah, it ain’t him. Besides, he’s in Russia, the little prick.’ Then this character spots me and walks over and says his name’s Caballo and I should come with him, and he notices Dutz is staring at him and he asks him if something’s wrong, and Dutz says, ‘No, but you’re a ringer for my sister-in-law’s kid,’ and Dutz tells this guy how Lee had gone over to the commies in Russia. Okay, then we got up and—”
“Wait a second, Jerry,” said Karp, and brought out an eight-by-ten print made from the Depuy film. “Is this him?”
Mosca studied the photo, holding it at a distance from his face in the manner of elderly men who need glasses.
“Yeah, that’s the guy.”
“What was your take on him—then?” Fulton asked.
“Caballo? Just a guy. Hard kid, though. If I didn’t know he was G, I’d’ve said he was one of ours, you know? Anyway, we left Armand’s and he drives me to this motel out on Hayne by the old airport. There’re some guys there in a room, Roselli, a couple guys I knew from the old days, Cuban muscle.”
“Names?” said Karp.
“Oh, one of them was Angelo Guel, used to work out of the Hotel Nacional, ran girls, the other one—I can’t recall his name—Chico something. And then there was the government guy, Bishop.”
A quick look passed between Fulton and Karp. Karp pulled another photograph from his folder. “Is this Bishop?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” said Mosca after a quick look, and Karp felt a jolt of elation. Mosca had identified a photograph of Paul A. David. Karp spread out several other stills from the film. Mosca picked out Angelo Guel as one of the men who was riding in the jeep, confirming Veroa’s ID.
“So anyhow,” Mosca continued, “Bishop starts in with these charts and plans and shit, how we’re gonna whack Fidel. He’s got this tame Cuban to rent a place that’s got a clear shot of this platform where Castro’s gonna give a speech. The Cubans are supposed to go over in a boat at night and land the gear, and some other Cubans’re supposed to take the stuff to Havana and set it up in the apartment. So while he’s talking, I’m thinking, How come these guys need us, they got the whole thing figured. So I ask them.”
He paused dramatically, until Karp said, “And … ?”
“Deniability,” said Mosca, pronouncing the word carefully in a tone touched with sarcastic contempt. “Deniability is they’re using Cubanos we used as muscle around the casinos, they got Roselli to front it, which means Giancana and Chicago is in on it, and Santos is in on it, with me there, so whatever happens the government’s in the clear. It’s a revenge hit from the outfits, Castro flicked them so bad, you know? Horseshit, but that’s the plan. So I say to Bishop, ‘Yeah, but you’re involved, you got people there in Cuba, the guy who rented the apartment for the hit, that’s your guy. You’re the CIA.’ They all looked at me like I laid a fart or something. Bishop says, ‘Who said I was CIA? I’m not CIA.’ Then he gives me this line that he’s representing some businessmen who want to see Castro whacked. Anticommunist types from Texas.”
“You didn’t believe him?” asked Karp.
“Hey, the fuck I know! Roselli sure as shit thought he was working for the G. He was fucking proud of it. So we bullshit some more. They tell war stories. Roselli’s got all these schemes he tried to get Castro. A poisoned cigar, stuff to make his beard fall out. Totally fucked up, it sounds like to me. The Cubans are saying all about being in on the Bay of Pigs deal, why it went wrong and fucking Kennedy, how he fucked it up, they would’ve taken over if he’d’ve let the bombers work over the commies. Bishop was on the Bay of Pigs too, he says, and they’re all crying in their beer what a shame it was. I’m getting bored here, listening to all this crap, so I ask Roselli when we’re gonna do him, Castro, and what’m I supposed to do. Sometime in October, he says. So, I say, that’s two, three months from now, let me know when you’re ready, and I get up to go. They say, wait, we gotta do a picture for your passport. So they take some Polaroids of me and Guel. Then Bishop says they’ll be in touch and I shouldn’t talk to anybody about it.” He smiled. “Like I got a big mouth, you know?
“Anyway, I get back to my hotel, I right away call and leave a message for Santos at this phone booth we use and about an hour later, he gets back to me. I tell him, Santos, these people are fucked up. I say, hey, you want to whack Fidel, I’ll get some people together, we’ll go there and whack him, but these people, especially Roselli, they’re a fuckin’ joke. Santos, he laughs, he says, yeah, he knows that, nothing’s gonna happen to Fidel, but we got to stay involved with these fuckheads because whatever goes down, we got a piece of the government’s ass forever, they’ll owe us to the next pope. So that makes sense, so I go back to Florida and wait. Next thing, the end of September, I get a call from Caballo, the thing’s on, get my stuff and go down to the airport, the commercial terminal. They got this plane there, a little private jet, I never been on one of those things before. Guel’s there, and Caballo. Caballo’s not coming but he gives me this envelope. It’s got money in it, American and Cuban, and tickets for a regular Cubana flight out of Mexico City and phony passports for me and Guel and for this other guy we’re supposed to pick up in Mexico City. The passports were perfect, but, why not? These guys are the government, right? And we take off. You guys want a beer? No? Well. I’m gonna have one.”
Mosca got up and went to the house. Karp said to Fulton in a low voice, “This is real, right? I’m not having a wet dream?”
“If you are, I’m in it too, son. This guy is from heaven. He IDs Bishop as David, he puts Paul David together with a guy who’s a ringer for Oswald, and puts Guel with Bishop way before the film, before the assassination even, and they’re all sitting around jiving about what a bad guy JFK is. I love it! All we need now …” He fell silent as Mosca returned, clutching a can of beer.
“So. No problems in Mexico City,” Mosca resumed after a long swallow. “We fly to Havana and—”
Karp interrupted. “Who was the guy you picked up in Mexico City?”
“I don’t know. I never seen him before. He didn’t give his name.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
“Havana. We make contact with Bishop’s Cuban, the guy who’s setting up the apartment we’re gonna shoot from. Name’s Tony something, Verana …”
“Veroa,” said Karp. He showed another photograph.
“Yeah, that’s the guy, Veroa. Anyway, I check the setup and it’s complete amateur hour. There’s one escape route. One! We’re gonna have to run down eight floors after we do the job. He got us two cars, but no switch cars, which means we’re gonna have to race to this dinky port where there’s a boat waiting for us, he says, with every cop and soldier in Cuba looking for us, in the same goddamn cars we left the apartment in. Plus, the jerkoff rented the fucking place in his mother-in-law’s name, so of course he has to get her out of the country before the hit, only he finds out the Cuban cops are looking funny at the boat he’s supposed to use and he gets nervous and, of course, Guel and the other Cuban get even more nervous, and they call the thing off the day before it’s set to go. And that was it, the story of the great hit on Fidel. Assholes!”
He finished his beer and was silent for a moment, looking out at the water. “Veroa takes off in the boat with his mother-in-law, Guel and the other guys disappear, and I fly back to Mexico and then Miami. Santos h
ad a big laugh over it. I say to him again, like, Santos, you want Castro hit, I’ll put some guys together, we’ll do it. A bomb is what I would’ve used, none of this bazooka crap. But he says, I got to check with Giancana, it’s his thing, the thing with Roselli and the G. Which is fucked, because Miami’s open, it don’t come under the Chicago outfit, why should Santos give a shit what Giancana thinks? But I figure, what the fuck, they got some kind of deal working on it, I don’t need to know about it. It ain’t my affair. Meanwhile, after that, Santos is telling everybody he’s gonna get Castro, he’s in on the hit, it was all horseshit as far as I could see, but you know Santos, he likes to blow smoke like that.”
Karp thought of something Veroa had said and asked, “Jerry, tell me one thing. Did you ever get the feeling that the Castro thing was a scam, that Bishop and the other CIA people didn’t really want to hit Castro?”
Mosca shrugged broadly. “Hey, the fuck I know! Like I said, I didn’t think it was a serious operation, from what I saw. And Fidel’s still around.”
“Did you ever see any of these people again?” Fulton asked. “Bishop, Caballo, the Cubans, or the other guy, the one in Mexico City on the plane?”
Mosca thought for a while, and then nodded, looking directly into Fulton’s eyes, with a cynical smile on his wide mouth. “JFK. That’s what this is all about, right? Well, the fact is, I don’t know squat about any of that. You guys are out of luck.”
With some effort, Fulton kept the confusion he felt from appearing on his face, and said casually, “Yeah, we understand that, just tell us what you do know.”
“Okay, along about sixty-two, late, I got into a situation in Miami, we thought it would be good if I spent some time out of town. So Sam Termine arranged I could work with one of Marcello’s crews for a while. I’m there a year or so. So, one night, this is like fall of sixty-three, me and Sam and a couple other of the fellas are standing around outside Gella’s on Canal and a bunch of guys get out of the car and start walking down the other side of the street. Sam looks over at them and waves, and one of them walks across the street and comes over to us. First thing I think, it’s this guy Caballo, but no, it turns out this is the real Oswald. He shakes with Sam and then Sam introduces him to me. So they bullshit for a while, how’s your mom, like that and then Oswald goes back across the street. But while he’s talking, I’m looking over at the guys he’s with; they look, like, familiar, you know? And I see it’s the bunch from the Castro thing, Guel, and another Cuban shooter we had in Havana, name of Carrera, and the other guy, the third guy from the plane. It stuck in my mind because here’s three guys connected with a guy who’s a ringer for Oswald, and here they are with the real Oswald. Funny, huh?”
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