Corruption of Blood

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t get seen again. Our friend would be extremely upset if you were seen again.”

  NINETEEN

  Karp had to admit it, Claude Wilkey knew how to run a meeting. He was running it in the wrong direction, but at a good clip. They were sitting around the conference table in the chief counsel’s office—Wilkey, Karp, V.T., several young, intense-looking men whom Wilkey had recruited, and a small, tight-faced young woman, the new administrative chief. Bea Sondergard was gone with Crane.

  Wilkey was talking. He had a pleasant, light, confident voice, well suited to reasoned academic discussions. He looked like the professor he was: a bland, pale face topped by thinning brown hair, horn-rims magnifying mild blue eyes. He wore a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows over a knitted sweater bearing a diamond pattern, slacks, polished loafers, and a striped button-down shirt with a foulard tie. Everyone else in the room, including the woman, wore dark suits.

  Wilkey’s lecture was well organized and easy to understand. The staff had one purpose and one purpose only: to complete the committee hearings as quickly as possible and to write a report. The staff would be reorganized into teams, each responsible for a section of the final report; the intense-looking men would be in charge of these teams. As Wilkey described their duties, Karp realized that no one was assigned to the conduct of any field investigation.

  “What about the people we have in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas?” Karp interrupted. “What happens with those operations?”

  “I’m afraid we’re closing all that down,” explained Wilkey in a patient tone. “We simply don’t have time for it.”

  “You read my report?” Karp demanded. He had, on Wilkey’s request, composed a brief summary of the major new leads he had uncovered: the Depuy film, the CIA papers, the interview with Mosca, the trove of material from Guel’s house, the investigation of P. X. Kelly. He had included some of the more obvious next steps.

  “Yes, I did. Interesting. But really, you don’t have anything I can bring before the committee, do you? Some unsolved murders, a film of uncertain provenance, suspicions …” He glanced at his new people as if to say, This is just what we want to avoid. “No, I want to redirect the core of this effort toward the scientific analysis of solid evidence.”

  “You mean like the magic bullet? That’s what you call solid evidence?”

  Wilkey pursed his lips. “Yes, that’s what we have to work with. We’re going to settle the scientific issues, the forensics, the autopsy, once and for all. That’s what the Congress expects and that’s what we intend to do.”

  Karp was about to make his old point about the chain of evidence for all the physical sequelae of the assassination being hopelessly corrupt, but thought better of it and slumped disconsolately in his chair. The meeting resumed. Wilkey was also, it appeared, going to deal with the organized crime issue “once and for all” as well. Karp listened without interest. Of course they would try to pin it on the Mob! Congress would love that—Wilkey had written a book on the Mafia, Karp now recalled—because of all the powers in America, the Mob was the only one that didn’t have a lobbying office in Washington. Not an official one anyway.

  The meeting broke up. It was clear to Karp that the “team leaders,” all three of them Wilkey’s men, were not going to report to him in any meaningful way. It was a neat and familiar bureaucratic maneuver. The graceful thing would be for him to resign, which he intended to do as soon as possible.

  He walked out of Wilkey’s office and through the corridors. There was a heightened purpose in the air. People were bustling about, carrying papers; the new people were cracking the whip.

  Karp had no doubt that Wilkey would produce a professional report, on time and within budget.

  He went out of the building for a bite to eat. The snow had melted off the roadways but lingered in slushy piles in the gutters. The temperature was moving up into the fifties and the cherry trees in front of the botanical gardens were showing the little knobs that would be blossoms in a week or two. He doubted that he would be there to see the famous display.

  Two hot dogs and a root beer later, Karp walked back to the Annex and went to see V.T.

  V.T. was arranging files on his long table, working off a large stack of paper that he was distributing among the various folders.

  “What zeal!” said Karp. “I guess our new leader’s inspired you to really start working.”

  “Yeah,” said V.T., “old Claude has that charismatic, inspirational quality that makes you want to do a lot of busywork, puke your guts out, and quit.”

  “You’re quitting.” It was not a question.

  “The resignation’s being typed,” said V.T. “In fairness to my successor, I’m just placing the last of this stuff in the personality files. Then I’m out of here. You?”

  “Me too, I guess,” Karp responded in a dull tone. “I need to call Clay and tell him the party’s over.”

  V.T. looked up from what he was doing and sat on his desk. “Well, it’s true. We gave it our best and we got whipped. Like Clay said, way back, we were way over our heads. If they had wanted a real homicide investigation …”

  “What did they want?” asked Karp, idly flipping through some folders. “Remind me.”

  “To forget. Warren was right, in a way. Blame it on a nut, conveniently dead, and forget it. And then we can blame all the failures of the country on the loss of Camelot—that fucking war, the riots, crime, greed, every goddamn thing we don’t want to take responsibility for. If only Kennedy had lived! So. Tidy up the files and go back to real life.”

  “We never found out who Turm was, did we?” asked Karp waving a file.

  “No, we didn’t. I doubt Mr. Wilkey will be overly concerned, however.”

  “No, but I’m sure he’d like the bastard’s phony name spelled right.” He showed V.T. the file tab. “It’s not T-E-R-M. It’s T-U-R-M.”

  V.T. looked at the lettering. “Turm with a U. Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Mosca saw the forged passport. He made a point of mentioning it.”

  V.T. turned away from him. “Turm with a U. Oh, God. Oh, shit.”

  “What’s wrong? Why does it matter?”

  V.T. slammed the file to the floor and whirled. His face was stricken, going white around the eyes and mouth. “Those bastards! Those fucking infantile macho bastard cocksuckers …”

  “V.T., what’s—”

  “Turm with a U. It was like a kid’s game with them, wasn’t it? Secret passwords and wiseass fake names. They didn’t even bother to be subtle about it, because who was going to look? And it’s an impossible move, so who would catch on? And nobody did, and now it fucking doesn’t matter.”

  “Newbury, what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Turm. It’s the German for rook, the piece in chess. And, of course, there’s Bishop. And Caballo is the Spanish for knight—the one with the sneaky moves. And PXK isn’t some goddamn Irish trucking executive in Baton Rouge. It’s chess notation, but it’s a notation for an impossible move, so of course, nobody would ever get the joke. Except the bastards who thought it up.” V.T. sat on the edge of his desk and hung his head, as if exhausted.

  “What do you mean, chess notation?” asked Karp.

  V.T. looked at him bleakly. “In chess notation P x K, with a little x in the middle, would mean ‘pawn takes king.’ It’s never used, of course, because the king is never taken in chess. The game ends in a checkmate, when the king can’t make a legal move out of check. In real life, of course, it’s different. PXK isn’t the name of an individual; it’s what they called the operation! Pawn takes king. Well, we know who the king was. And the pawn, of course.”

  “Oswald.”

  “Uh-huh. Oswald. The pawn. The necessary nut. So now we have all the pieces, so to speak.” V.T. laughed bitterly. “No, one’s still missing. There’s a queen on this board, and I doubt very much if it’s Mr. Kelly of Baton Rouge.” He laughed again, a laugh
edged with hysteria. “It’s the perfect paranoid confection. Of course there has to be a mastermind behind all this, pulling the strings—no, that’s mixing metaphors. Controlling the pieces.”

  He got off the desk and walked toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Karp asked.

  “To see if my resignation is ready for signature. If you want me, I’ll be outside the building wearing a red hat and carrying a shopping bag full of old clippings.”

  Karp went back to his office and sat at his desk for a few minutes before it really hit him that he had nothing to do. He called Clay Fulton in New Orleans and left a message, and then waited around for Fulton to call back. He pulled a few files from various hiding places and stuffed them in the red envelope, tattered now from being carried around with him nearly everyplace he had gone for many weeks. He spread the material from the envelope out on his desk and looked at it. For an instant he felt a thrill of panic when he realized that the Depuy film was missing and then recovered when he recalled that he had left it at home, on the kitchen table among Marlene’s films. Or had he?

  Frantically, he dialed his home number.

  Marlene picked up on the first ring. “God, this is weird!” she exclaimed. “I was just about to call you.”

  “You were? Is anything wrong?”

  “No, I … I just found out something you need to know.” She paused. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it on the phone.”

  “Is my, is the thing I, um, left on the kitchen table … ?”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s here,” said Marlene in a peculiar voice. “I’ve been playing with it. We’ll talk when you get here.”

  Karp packed the red envelope and left his office, informing his secretary that he’d be working from home for the rest of the day.

  “You want me to forward calls?” she asked with a knowing look; “working at home” was a well-understood Washington euphemism for looking for another job while remaining on the payroll. He nodded and left.

  When Karp walked into the apartment, Marlene met him with a finger to her lips. She then turned on the radio in the kitchen to a rock station at considerable volume. Lucy was in the living room happily watching cartoons at a similar noise level.

  “I was going through some of Dobbs’s later films, to finish up my notes on the case and to check whether he left any other little surprises in them.”

  “Did he?”

  “No,” she said. “But watch this!”

  Marlene sat down behind the editor and rolled it. “A pleasant backyard barbecue. Nice house, pool. A bunch of Mexican-looking servants roasting a side of beef on a spit. Prosperous guys and women in western gear, drinking and laughing. It says ‘Texas’ doesn’t it. It is. Notice how steady the shot is? The camera’s on a tripod, panning back and forth. Everybody’s mugging for the camera. Okay, watch this! The cameraman wants to get in the frame. There’s his back, now he’s turning around and posing for the group.”

  She stopped the film on one frame and Karp saw a largish, intelligent-looking man with an even-toothed smile and short, dark hair, wearing a western shirt and jeans.

  “Harley Blaine,” said Marlene. She rolled the film rapidly. It flickered like an old silent movie. The partying people jumped around like fleas, gobbling their ribs, jerking their elbows as they drank. The film ended with some sort of ceremony; a fat man got a plaque from another fat man. Marlene slowed it to normal speed. There was a blackout and then the scene showed a forest at night, tropical swamp foliage, a white, open road, and then a line of military trucks approaching.

  “Jesus! It’s our film!” cried Karp.

  “Yep. Your film. Shot by Harley Blaine. He did his little memento of a civic party at his ranch and then he trucked on down to Louisiana to take some pictures of the counterrevolution-to-be. Which means he was up to his neck in the Cuban business too, a dozen years after he retired from the CIA.”

  “But how did Depuy get hold of this?”

  “No problem. We know he got it from Ferrie. Ferrie was at the training exercise. He just snitched the film. Maybe Depuy paid him for it. Maybe Blaine didn’t miss the film. Selma Dobbs’s letters have some stuff about him misplacing cameras. It was a family joke.”

  “Hilarious,” said Karp. “So Ferrie gets the film and shows it to Depuy. No big deal, just Ferrie boasting and Depuy fishing for a story. After the assassination, that’s a whole different situation. Whoever did it found out that Ferrie has some evidence linking Blaine and some other CIA types to Oswald and a guy who looks a lot like Oswald, via the anti-Castro stuff. It wouldn’t have been difficult; Ferrie had the biggest mouth in Louisiana. So they ace him with a drug overdose and get the film. Meanwhile, Depuy’s on the sauce, he’s forgotten his copy of the film, or doesn’t realize its significance. He dies and his wife gives all his stuff to the AP archive.”

  “So now we have the connection that explains why Hank Dobbs is jamming up the investigation,” said Marlene. “He’s working for the man who saved his father, even though Blaine has to know that Richard Dobbs was really guilty.”

  “You think Blaine was blackmailing Dobbs? You think he said he’d spill the beans on the old man if Dobbs didn’t help him protect Blaine’s old CIA buddies?”

  “No, that’s not it,” said Marlene definitively. “Blaine saved Richard Dobbs in 1951, in the teeth of the CIA. Why would he have pulled a switch at this late date? No, the Dobbs family was the core of his life: he loved the husband and he loved the wife. That wouldn’t change, even if he pulled the trigger on JFK himself. No, he didn’t need blackmail at all. Hank Dobbs was covering for Blaine from sheer gratitude.”

  “But what the hell was he covering?” asked Karp, his brows knotting in frustration. “Blaine’s not directly tied to anyone we’ve turned up except Gaiilov, who’s peripheral to the Oswald story, as far as we know. Like you said, Blaine retired from the CIA long before JFK became president. He was on the CIA shit list, in fact, because of the Dobbs thing, and we have no evidence that he knew the one guy we’ve identified as being central to the whole thing.”

  “Who?”

  “Paul David, aka Maurice Bishop.”

  “Oh, yeah. But wait a minute—isn’t Bishop in this film?”

  “Yeah, but so’re a hundred other people. Because Blaine took the film doesn’t mean he was in bed with Bishop. Nobody we’ve talked to has ever mentioned Blaine.”

  Something tugged at Marlene’s memory. She had an extraordinary memory for faces, the product of years of going through mug books, looking at the faces of sex criminals, of hours and hours spent with victims trying to tease a face out of violence-clouded memory.

  “Bishop slash David is on the film, huh? Let me see if I can pick him out.”

  She started to wind the film, but Karp stopped her and got out the black loose-leaf book that V.T. had assembled, consulted it, and turned to a glossy blowup of the best David/Bishop shot on the film.

  Marlene looked at it and cried “Yesss! It was nagging me. I knew I’d seen that guy before, and of course, I was thinking of Blaine when I watched the film, so I was ready for the connection. This guy, ten years younger, is in a picture with Harley Blaine that’s hanging in the hallway behind Richard Dobbs’s study. Blaine knew Bishop, all right, from way back. His protégé, you might say.”

  Karp sat on his excitement and tried to argue against the most obvious conclusion. “Okay, great, Blaine knew David/Bishop way back when. He took home movies of a Bishop operation. He’s still a retired guy, a lawyer, not an active spook like the rest of them.”

  “Okay,” Marlene conceded, “then let’s look at this joker you were talking about, this Kelly guy in Baton Rouge? We know he’s connected because Guel was getting all that cash from PXK. Maybe we should check that out, if Blaine knows him too.”

  Karp sighed and told her about V.T.’s enlightenment concerning the meaning of PXK. He concluded the tale with, “So according to Newbury, Kelly’s yet another of the ten million false trails generated
by the assassination. Hell, maybe the chess names are a coincidence too. Nah, that’s hard even for me to swallow, that on top of the two murders, and seeing Oswald number two in Miami. I think the killer is really it, the core of the conspiracy. And there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it.”

  He told her about Wilkey and the meeting that morning, about V.T. quitting.

  “Well, a total disaster,” Marlene said when he was finished. “What are you going to do?”

  “Oh, I’ll quit too, I guess. It gripes me, though. I can’t make a case, but I’d just like to know who the queen was.”

  “Queen?”

  “Yeah, that’s what V.T. said. King, pawn, knight, rook, bishop. We’re not sure about the rook, Turm, except that he was apparently an expert in organizing assassinations, among other things. But the guy behind it all—the master piece on the board—V.T. called him the queen.” He laughed. “It’d be funny if it turned out to be Clay Shaw, considering.”

  “Yeah, but how’s this for another fascinating coincidence. You know they have this King Ranch in Texas, supposed to be the largest ranch in the world? Well, when Harley Blaine went back to Texas, he added pieces to his parents’ old property and set himself up as a gentleman rancher. And do you know what he called his ranch, the old funster?”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Yes. The Queen Ranch.”

  They were silent amid the noise from the radio and the TV. Karp reached for her hand. “Jesus, Marlene, what’re we going to do?” It was a rhetorical question, but Marlene responded with scarcely a thought.

  “Well, obviously, we have to go and see Blaine. We’ll fly out to Texas, to the old Queen Ranch and have a little talk. About Dick Dobbs and John F. Kennedy.”

  Karp’s wife had once again succeeded in amazing him. “Why would we want to do that, Marlene?” he asked weakly. “Why should Blaine talk to us? Because we found one of his home movies? He’ll laugh in our faces.”

  “No he won’t. He’ll talk. Maybe not on a witness stand, but he’ll tell us what we want to know, which is all that matters right now. Aren’t you dying to know how he did it? Speaking of which, he’s dying himself. Maybe he’s just waiting to spill his guts.”