“I was a kid. I…” It was barely a murmur.
“What? We did not hear you. Speak up.”
“Nothing. I have nothing to say.”
Cassidy had never heard his father sound defeated before.
“Well, I have something to say. We do not need your kind in this country. Fortunately we have laws that allow us to get rid of people like you. The Immigration Department will take you into custody today, and procedures for deportation will begin immediately. We will, Mr. Kasnavietski, ship you back to Russia, a country you seem to like more than ours.”
The applause reddened McCarthy’s face with pride.
Tom Cassidy struggled to his feet. “Why are you doing this to me?” The applause died so people could hear. “Why? I love this country. Why are you doing this?”
McCarthy did not reply. He picked up his briefcase and left the room, but Roy Cohn looked up at Cassidy at the back of the room and pointed a finger like a gun, and he understood that everything that had happened here was on him, that it had all started with his confrontation with Cohn on New Year’s Eve outside the Stork Club. Cohn nodded as if to confirm the thought, then turned and followed McCarthy out of the room.
Two immigration officers converged on Tom Cassidy. Each took an arm and moved him toward a side door. Cassidy pushed through the crowd to intercept them. The two officers leaned on Tom Cassidy when he tried to stop to speak to his son. “Keep moving,” one of them said.
Cassidy showed them his badge. “He’s my father.”
The bigger of the two men blocked Cassidy’s path. “I’m sorry, but my orders are no one speaks to him.” The other officer urged Tom Cassidy toward the door.
“I’m a cop. I need a minute with him.”
“Sorry. No can do.” The man was braced in case Cassidy tried to go through him.
Just before the door, Tom Cassidy shouted over his shoulder, “Call Frank. Get hold of Frank.” Then he was gone.
* * *
The family met at Tom Cassidy’s apartment in the St. Moritz on Central Park South. It was a big apartment on the thirty-fourth floor, and the windows of its living room, master bedroom, and study gave out on a view of Central Park. At night the park was a dark rectangle threaded with lights and bounded by the walls of lighted buildings along Fifth Avenue and Central Park West.
The living room was furnished with comfortable chairs and sofas. Some were pieces Cassidy remembered from his childhood and the house on 66th Street, some Megan had bought. There were large, colorful abstract paintings on the walls. A corner bookshelf prominently displayed leather-bound scripts from the plays that had made the apartment possible. Even the flops were there, because, as Tom would explain, even though there may have been some mistakes in casting them, or in their direction, or maybe the critics didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, they were all good plays. They had to be good plays because Tom Cassidy had agreed to produce them.
Megan stood looking out the window. One leg was slightly bent and the instep of that bare foot rested above the calf of the other leg, the unconscious stance of a dancer. When she turned to say hello to Michael, he could see that she had been crying. “Make yourself a drink, Michael.”
Leah sat in an armchair near the fireplace. She looked angry. Her husband, Mark, sat on the arm of the chair with a hand on her shoulder as if to keep her from launching.
“Mike, how are you?” He stood and offered a hand. He was a former college hockey player, still solid and compact, with an air of easy competence and calm, the perfect complement to Leah. He had a square head, thinning blond hair, and an open face and manner that invited confidence. He had made a great deal of money very quickly after college with the same apparent effortlessness with which he’d scored on the ice. People were already talking about his political future.
Cassidy leaned down to kiss Leah and she offered him a tight smile.
Brian came away from where he leaned against the mantel to hug Cassidy. “I caught the first train from D.C. after you called. What the hell?” He looked stunned.
“Yeah. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.” What would they figure out? How they were going to go up against the McCarthy subcommittee?
How could their father have a bootlegger past they had never heard of? That’s what we do. We talk of what we like to remember, and we push away the rest as if it never happened. Why would his father be different?
“A drink.”
As they crossed to the bar built into the wall and concealed behind cabinet doors, Cassidy saw Harry Gould talking quietly on a phone in Tom Cassidy’s den, a room of tall bookcases and leather chairs. Framed posters from Cassidy’s plays hung on the walls. Gould nodded and held up a finger indicating he’d only be a minute.
“Bourbon?” Brian asked.
“I’m going to make a martini. Do you want one?”
“Sure.”
Harry Gould came out of the den and shook hands with Cassidy. “Michael, I’m sorry. I’ve never been so badly used in all my years as a lawyer. The arrogance of those people. We’ll get him out. It’s still the rule of law in this country.”
Gould took a stance at the fireplace. His head barely reached the height of the mantel where Brian had easily rested his arm. He took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief and put them back on, an old courtroom trick that quieted the action and made everyone turn to him.
“As you all know, Tom was arrested this afternoon by Immigration Department officers on the charge that he lied on his application for citizenship thirty years ago. This is a minor technicality, and it is unusual for them to use it to pursue deportation for someone who has been as productive and well known a citizen as Tom has been. I’m sure that when we have our day in court, the outcome will be in our favor.”
“Harry,” Brian said, “I spoke with some people at the network, and they say there are cases where the proceedings don’t come to court, that the decision is made on camera.”
“Yes, it does happen, but it is very unusual. Almost never.”
“But it could happen. He could be deported without trial.”
“It is highly unlikely. We’re going to get a good lawyer for him. The best. Someone who specializes in immigration cases.”
“Who?” Brian asked.
“I’m still working on that.”
Cassidy could hear the evasion. “Harry, how many immigration lawyers have you called?”
Gould looked uncomfortable. “Six.”
“They turned you down.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They’re all carrying heavy caseloads, and they don’t feel they can devote the time and effort necessary.” He said it like a recitation.
“They’ve been warned off, haven’t they?”
“It’s possible. I’d prefer not to think that. There’s a general reluctance to take on these cases at the moment. No one wants to be tarred by the same brush. The mood of the times.”
Megan had moved from the window. She stood clutching the back of a chair hard enough to whiten her knuckles. “He did something thirty years ago. Why do they care now?”
“Mike, do you have any ideas?” Mark had been watching him, and now everyone looked at him.
“Last New Year’s Eve my partner and I arrested an armed robber. He stuck up a pharmacy over on Sixth, fractured the pharmacist’s skull, and took off. Orso and I ran him down in front of the Stork Club. There was a guy there who took exception to what we were doing. We were blocking his car. It was inconvenient for him. He wanted us out of his way.”
“Who?” Brian asked.
“Roy Cohn.”
Gould scrubbed his bald head with the flat of his hand. “Did Cohn know who you were?”
“Yes.”
Brian said, “What happened? He pushed and you pushed back, right? You don’t have to rise to every challenge.”
“I was doing my job.”
“Cohn’s a powerful man. Do you think he engineer
ed this?” Gould asked.
“I know he did.”
“He had Dad arrested just to get back at you?” Brian asked.
“Yes.”
“Shit.” Leah sprang up from under Mark’s hand. “I want a drink.” She crossed to the bar and banged bottles around angrily.
“Harry, how much time do we have?” Megan asked.
“I don’t know. I suppose if Cohn wants he can move Tom to the top of the list.”
“Tom has spoken out against Russia many times. He’s given money to anticommunist causes. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“If it comes down to a matter of law, the law says that if you lie on your application for citizenship, they can revoke it and deport you. And, of course, if he is deported they’ll…” Gould stopped abruptly.
Megan finished his thought. “If he’s deported, the Russians will know that he’s worked against them. They’ll kill him. That’s what they do with their enemies.”
For a time no one spoke.
“We’ll find a lawyer,” Brian soothed. “There has to be someone with the courage to take this on. Mark, you know people in politics, people who don’t agree with what Cohn and McCarthy are doing. I’ll talk to people in the news business. If we get this out in front of people, shine some light on it, it may slow them down. Harry, you’ve got to find us that lawyer. We’ll get an injunction. We’ll—”
“Talk. It’s just talk.” Leah banged her glass on the table and it shattered. “Michael, you started this with Cohn. You got Dad into it. Do something.”
13
Cassidy stood back as a woman in a white mink coat came out of the Copacabana. He and the doorman watched in admiration as she stilted up 60th Street on impossibly high heels. He went in and nodded to the bartender and stopped near the maître d’s desk at the entrance to the dining room. It was after eight and the big room was three-quarters filled with men in tuxedos and women in evening dresses and jewelry listening to Harry Belafonte in his early set in front of a small orchestra. The cigarette girl was making a delivery to a table near the door. She saw Cassidy and winked and then bent over just enough so the man buying cigarettes could appreciate the view down her top. She thanked him for the tip and then swayed toward Cassidy. She was dressed as an island beauty, a flowered sarong around her hips, and fake fruit held in her hair by a bright bandana. Her lips were glossy and as red as blood. “Hi, Michael. Long time, no see.”
“How are you, Francie?”
“I’m as good as they get. And I’m off at midnight.”
Jules Podell, the manager, appeared at Cassidy’s elbow. Podell was a sleepy-eyed thug in an expensive tuxedo. “Francie, there’s a guy on table six trying to get your attention.”
“I’m going, I’m going. Can’t a girl stop to say hello to a friend?”
She winked and at Cassidy and went away on high heels following her tray of smokes.
“What do you think of the coon?” Podell pointed at Belafonte on the bandstand.
“I like him.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure. First one we let play here, you know. He brings in a good crowd. And he’s not one of them real dark ones, so I said what the hell.”
“You’re a real humanitarian, Julie.”
“Yeah? You think so?” Missing the irony. “How about that?”
Harry Belafonte, tan and impossibly handsome, finished singing about a banana boat in a voice like syrup and went off to strong applause. The band swung a little light music out, and a handful of couples got up to dance.
“You been sick, Michael? You don’t look so hot.” Podell’s eyes never stopped moving as he monitored the club. He snapped fingers at a passing waiter. “Water on twelve. And fifteen’s waiting on the check. Hop it.”
“Is Frank here?”
“At his table.”
Until the televised investigations by the Kefauver Committee on organized crime in 1950, Frank Costello had lived in the shadows. He was known only to people who needed to know him, who required his services, or who had something he wanted. Television changed that. He had been subpoenaed to appear before the committee and had agreed to testify on the condition that his face would not be shown on camera, but that dam did not hold, and soon he was known to millions of Americans. The newspapers called him “the Prime Minister of the Underworld,” a grandiose title that was almost accurate.
Cassidy knew his story. Costello’s mother had fled the poverty of Calabria when Frank was five and he grew up in New York where opportunity abounded, where like-minded men could come together to prosper. Jail for eleven months in 1915 was a small price to pay for his introduction to Lucky Luciano and his crew, men of vision who provided New Yorkers with services they wanted but could not legally obtain. Luciano ran the muscle to keep competitors in line. Costello showed a talent for greasing the intersection between their businesses and the legitimate world. If a politician needed money in his war chest, if a businessman was having trouble with a union that did not appreciate the problems of his thin profit margin, if a judge was embarrassed by a woman who mistook his intentions, if a developer found it difficult to get the right permits from City Hall, Frank Costello could mediate. He developed a reputation as a discreet, forceful, efficient man you could trust to get things done in an increasingly difficult world.
Two men got up from the table next to Costello’s and blocked Cassidy as he approached. They could have been brothers. Both were dark and agate eyed with lumpy faces that had been hit hard a few times. Their dark business suits could not hide what they were, gun muscle to watch Costello’s back. They recognized Cassidy. “Give him a minute, Detective Cassidy, okay?” the bigger one said. Lou and Franco. Franco and Lou. Interchangeable parts. There’d been a couple of guys like them near Costello for as long as Cassidy could remember.
Cassidy recognized the man sitting next to Costello, the shock of white hair, the square jaw and strong nose, a face made for the news cameras. He was leaning in, talking fast, selling. He tapped Costello’s wrist for emphasis and Costello pulled his arm back. He did not like to be touched. The man slipped a thick envelope from his inside pocket and slid it out on the table. Costello palmed it and put it in his pocket without counting the contents. The big man stood up, shook hands, and turned to go.
“Good evening, Senator. How’re you doing?” Cassidy said.
“Great, great.” Mistaking Cassidy for a constituent, he shook his hand and massaged his shoulder. “Great to see you again.” As he headed for the door, he stopped at several tables to dispense charm to the voters.
Costello got up and hugged Cassidy, and Cassidy smelled the familiar lime cologne and talcum powder from Costello’s daily shave at the Biltmore, a smell from his childhood when Costello was regularly in the Cassidy home. Costello had a long, rounded face with a prominent nose and thinning dark hair brushed back from his forehead. His eyes were black, small, cold, hard. They were also, Cassidy knew, capable of sentimental weeping over songs of childhood, the sad end of romantic movies, a fallen sparrow. He wore a well-tailored dark suit in a muted windowpane pattern, a white shirt with a starched collar, and a dark red tie with blue diamonds. He looked like a successful Italian importer or manufacturer, a middle-class businessman doing well enough to afford some of the simpler luxuries: an apartment on Central Park West, vacations to Florida, a mistress in a small apartment on West 90th, the occasional visit to Tiffany to pick up a little something for the wife.
“It’s good to see you, Michael. It’s been too long. You should come by the apartment, see Loretta. She misses you.” He lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“How are you, Uncle Frank?”
“I’m okay. But no more of that Uncle Frank stuff. It was fine when you were kids. Now it makes me feel old.”
After Cassidy joined the cops, he asked his father how he came to be friends with one of New York’s biggest hoods, and Tom waved the question away. “We’ve been friends since a long time. Since when I first got here. He wa
s the guy who showed me the ropes. I was a raggedy-ass kid on the streets. No English, not a clue. He took me up. He’s been a good friend.” No further explanation, but there was clearly more or his father would not have thought of Costello first when he got in a jam.
“You look like hell. You eat? You getting any sleep? Here, eat something.” He pushed a platter of egg rolls and spareribs toward Cassidy. “Let me get you some wonton soup. Best Chinese in the city. Better than anything you get down in Chinktown. It takes an Italian in the kitchen to make good food.”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
“You should take better care of yourself. You don’t have your health, you don’t have nothing.” A man who had taken health from a lot of people. “You want a drink?” Costello asked.
“Why not?”
Costello raised his hand, and a waiter jumped to take their order. When he went away, Costello slapped the newspaper he had been reading. “McCarthy’s going too far. Commies are one thing, but you don’t want to hit the army, not with Eisenhower in the White House.” He tossed the paper down, and McCarthy looked up from the front page with his bad boy’s grin. “He’s going to get it in the neck, you wait and see. I just wish he could take that Kefauver bastard down with him.” Costello was still smarting from his raking over the coals at the Kefauver hearings. “Fucking hypocrites. Every one of them’s got his hand out. I’ll tell you something, Michael. It doesn’t take much to buy a politician. Just like the Automat. You keep pushing the nickels in till what you want comes out.” He laughed.
The waiter put a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks in front of Cassidy and a rye and soda in front of Costello and retreated.
Cassidy told Costello about his father’s arrest.
Night Life Page 14