“Sure. Call me.”
“Oh, we will.”
Crofoot watched Cassidy get into the elevator. He waved as the doors closed. Why had Cassidy lied about the pictures? To be fair, he hadn’t really lied. He just hadn’t admitted that he had them, but Fraker had heard him tell Werth that he had them. It wasn’t money. Cassidy had money. No need for blackmail. What was it, then? Power? Maybe. Everyone wanted power. What kind did Cassidy want? It would require some thought.
* * *
When Cassidy got back to his apartment, the phone was ringing, and for a moment he thought it might be Dylan, and his heart rose, and as he went to answer it, he wondered at his own delusions.
It was Leah.
“Michael?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in trouble.”
36
Cassidy found Brian in his new office on the sixth floor of the ABC headquarters building. The curtains were drawn to darken the room. Brian, in shirtsleeves, leaned close to a kinescope to study the grainy images on the small screen. He looked up when Cassidy came in.
“I’ll be right with you.”
“Take your time.”
Most TV newsmen had their ego walls, photographs of important people they had met and interviewed, ramrod generals in medal-weighted uniforms, puffed-up senators, movie stars with perfect smiles, jocks holding bats or balls, or leaning forward with their fists raised. Brian had only pictures of family: Marcy, dark and petite, and the girls on a boat on Long Island Sound; the girls sitting together wearing party dresses and looks of solemn good behavior; Marcy laughing at the camera; Leah on her wedding day; Michael in uniform looking young and wary just before he shipped overseas; formal portraits of their parents, publicity shots of Tom Cassidy, society page shots of Joan at this ball or that opening; pictures of Michael and Brian as teenagers in baseball gear playing at Randall’s Island.
Brian offered love easily, without thought or restraint. Leah accepted it the same way, as if it was her due. Cassidy could do neither and envied their ease.
“Hey, I’m glad to see you.” Brian came around the desk and grabbed him around the shoulders with one arm and hugged him. “Did you have any trouble finding the new office?”
“No, but I got a couple of funny looks when I mentioned your name. Everything all right here?”
“Yeah. Sure. Not perfect, but okay. You know how it is. People hear Dad’s in jail, they hear what for, they begin looking at you sideways. A lot of people are scared, good people, smart people. They’re afraid your troubles are going to slop over on them. Suddenly they want to keep a distance. I’m not the first guy they call for a drink after work.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“My boss is a good man, and he hates what’s going on with McCarthy and all that. That’s why he wants to film the hearings. He thinks the public’s smart enough to sniff out the bastard if they just see him at work.” He moved to a bar setup against the wall. “I’m pretty much done here for the day. Let’s have a drink. Daniel’s?”
“Sure.”
Brian handed him a tumbler with bourbon and a couple of ice cubes. “What can I do for you?”
“I need an address.”
“Why don’t you look it up in the telephone book?”
“It’s not one I’d find in the telephone book.”
“Whose address?” Brian asked.
Cassidy told him.
“Jesus, Mike.”
“Do you have it?”
“I know where I can get it.” Brian waited, hoping, Cassidy knew, that he would tell him to forget it.
“Good.”
“Are you sure you want this?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. Goddamn it. Hold on. It’s in my files someplace. We did a story on him last year. I’ll find it. Jesus.” It took a few minutes. He wrote the information on a scratch pad and handed it to Cassidy. “Be careful, okay?” Cassidy was headed out-of-bounds and Brian knew there was nothing he could do to stop him.
In the morning, Cassidy rented a two-year-old Ford from the taxi garage on Hudson Street. He took it out through the Holland Tunnel and rammed it south on the newly completed New Jersey Turnpike.
Leah’s problem had to wait. He told her to pay Franklin, knowing that he would be back for more, but the first payment would buy time, and Cassidy needed time. The world was closing down on him. Leah and Franklin. His father about to be deported. And Dylan. He did not know which he felt more, anger or sadness, but whatever it was made him ache.
The farther he drove, the flimsier his plan seemed, but it was all he had.
37
The houses on 30th Place in Washington, D.C., were set back on deep lawns and were shielded from each other by broad yards and mature trees. The house Cassidy wanted was a brick two-story with a small portico at the front door held up by narrow white columns. It was solid and unpretentious, a house where a successful middle manager of a large company, or a civil servant of a high pay grade might raise a family. There were no lights behind the windows, no bicycles on the lawn, none of the untidy signs of family life, because there was no family waiting here.
Cassidy parked down the block and watched the house. He thought it might be guarded, but there were no cars with watchers on the street, no discreet loiterers. There was no obvious alarm box, no wires coming from the house other than telephone and electricity.
Was it going to be that easy?
At three o’clock, a light went on over the front door, and a few minutes later a middle-aged woman carrying a large purse came out, locked the door, and walked down the block toward the bus stop. The housekeeper. He watched her until her bus came and she got on.
A service alley ran behind the houses on the block. Cassidy counted in from the corner and found that the backyard of the house was separated from the alley by a sturdy wooden fence. It was too high to see over. The door in the fence was locked. The windows in the second story of the house across the alley reflected sunlight, and there was no way to tell if someone watched him. The lock was new and it resisted the tickling of his picks. A car slowed at the end of the alley and then went on. The tips of the picks felt for the tumblers. A rattle of garbage cans jerked Cassidy’s head around. A hundred yards down the alley, a housemaid slapped the top back on a can and went into the yard of her house without looking in his direction. He turned back to the lock. Moments later, he felt it yield.
Mature trees shaded the yard, and the fences on either side were high, but the second-floor windows of the neighboring houses had good views. He walked quickly with purpose and hoped that anyone watching would assume he had legitimate reasons to be there. He slipped the lock on the French doors on a patio with white wrought-iron furniture and went into a living room crowded with tables and breakfronts cluttered with ceramic cows and milkmaids, vases holding artificial flowers. The portrait of a strong-faced, gray-haired woman over the mantel looked down at him in stern disapproval. The furniture was heavy and dark in the style of an older generation, and it was pushed back so that there was a cleared space in the middle of the room.
Cassidy went upstairs and began his search.
* * *
At dusk, Cassidy heard the car stop outside the house. He walked to the window on the second-floor landing and looked out at the street. A limousine was parked in front. The driver got out and walked around and opened the passenger door and held it while two men got out. Cassidy heard car doors close as he walked to the top of the stairs and looked down into the living room. The front door opened, and he could hear them in the hall.
One of them said, “How about a drink, Eddie?”
“A drink would be fine.” They came into the living room. The shorter one was reading a note. “Mrs. Jenkins left a shepherd’s pie in the warming oven.”
“Very nice. I think we have some Birds Eye peas in the freezer. Would you like me to heat them up?”
“Wonderful. Yes, peas, please, Clyde.” They both smiled a
t the childish rhyme.
Clyde went into the kitchen and came out a few moments later carrying two ice-filled highball glasses. He went to the bar and poured Johnny Walker Black Label over the ice and added water from a silver pitcher and gave one of the drinks to Eddie. They clinked glasses.
“Cheers,” Clyde said.
“Chin chin.”
They held each other’s eyes as they took the first long, satisfying swallows.
Cassidy started to go down the stairs, but something held him back. He sat down in the darkness on the top step and watched.
“Say,” Clyde said, “what do you think about a little music, and then we’ll go in and eat Mrs. Jenkins’s wonderful shepherd’s pie before it dries out in the oven.”
“Music? Sure. A little music. I’d like that.”
Clyde found a Tommy Dorsey Band record in the pile and slipped it on the turntable. He dropped the needle on the first cut and held out his arms. Eddie stepped into them, his left hand raised to take Clyde’s right. His right arm went around Clyde’s waist. Clyde put his left hand on Eddie’s right shoulder and waited. When Eddie felt the beat, he led them into a brisk fox-trot in the cleared center of the room, and as the music came to an end, managed to dip Clyde without dropping him.
Cassidy came down the stairs as the record ended and the needle buzzed in the last grooves. When they straightened, they both saw him at the same time and froze, Tolson’s hand still on Hoover’s shoulder, Hoover’s arm still around Tolson’s waist.
Tolson took a step forward to put himself between Hoover and Cassidy. “Who the hell let you in here? If you bring a message from the Bureau, you wait outside. Did Mrs. Jenkins let you in? She knows better.”
“I’m not from the Bureau.”
“You’re not from the Bureau? Who are you?” Hoover looked confused, as if he could not get his mind around the idea that someone could and would invade his house. No matter who they were when they started their careers, Tolson and Hoover were now men who saw the world through the windows of limousines and expensive restaurants, from box seats and country club terraces. They were so swaddled in their power and privilege, so insulated by deference and obedience that they had lost all sense of their own vulnerability.
Tolson started toward Cassidy with a hand raised in threat.
“Don’t,” Cassidy said.
Tolson was angry, but there was enough steel in Cassidy’s voice to check him, and he veered toward the phone.
“My name is Cassidy, Mr. Hoover. Michael Cassidy.”
“That tells me nothing.”
It told Tolson something. He stopped next to the table that held the phone. His hand rested on the receiver, but he did not pick it up.
“I’m a New York cop.”
“Yes? And? What are you doing in my house?”
Tolson lifted the receiver. “He was the detective originally assigned to the Ingram killing.”
“Yes? And? You were taken off the case. What do you mean by coming here? What’s going on here? Mr. Tolson, I want this man removed.”
“I’ll call the Bureau,” Tolson said. “They’ll have someone here in ten minutes.”
“You don’t want anyone else here for this.”
Tolson dialed.
“Let’s talk about last New Year’s Eve.”
Tolson looked at him for a moment and put down the phone.
38
Hoover sat in a wingback chair with his feet planted squarely on the floor and his hands on his thighs and watched Cassidy without expression. He had recovered from his initial shock. Cassidy knew he was used to command, to hard decisions. Now he waited for what would come. He would deal with it when he saw the shape of it.
Tolson took a seat at the end of the sofa near Hoover. His face and neck were stiff with the anger he could not slough off, and his hands clenched into fists and then opened again and again.
“Let’s talk about the party in the Schine suite at the Waldorf Towers on New Year’s Eve.”
He took out the red dress he carried rolled up under his arm, unrolled it and held it high for a moment so they could see it, and then spread it on the floor so that it would always be in their sight while they talked.
Hoover’s expression did not change, but he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You have broken into my house, and you have searched it, and now you show me a dress that belonged to my mother, which I keep in her memory. Please explain this outrage.” His voice was low, but the last word came out in a rasp that showed his strain.
Cassidy got up and crossed the room and took the print from his inside pocket and dropped it on the coffee table where both men could see it. “And it fits you so well. Did you have it altered, or are you truly your mother’s son?” The photograph showed J. Edgar Hoover in the red dress holding a glass of champagne high and with a lipsticked smile on his face. His eyes had been heavily made up. His cheeks were rouged, and he was crowned with a curled blond wig. He had one arm around Victor Amado’s waist. Perry Werth stood near them, smiling.
Hoover pushed the photograph away from him with one finger. “A forgery. Not hard to do. Any competent photo lab could have made this.”
“Shall we talk about the other ones? Shall I describe to you what they show? Perry Werth, Victor Amado, Stanley Fisher. There are, of course, no pictures of Alex Ingram. He was taking them with a camera concealed in his cigarette lighter.” Cassidy took the fake Ronson from his pocket, pulled it apart to show the inner workings, and put it on the table next to the photograph. “Shall we talk about the action under the big painting of California? Or what happened in the bedroom next door?” This was the moment when it could all fall apart. He was counting on Hoover’s memory to paint the pictures the blurred photographs did not show. He had the geography of the Schine suite, and the vague blurs that represented the men there, but he had no real idea of what had happened there. All he could hope for was that Hoover’s guilt and his fear of exposure would fill in the blanks.
There was a long silence. Hoover’s head was down as he stared at the photograph and the lighter on the table. Then he raised his head and looked at Cassidy, and his face was stone.
“Are you a Communist, Detective Cassidy?” Hoover’s voice was low and tight with anger.
“Oh, for christ’s sake.”
“Well, if you are not, you are certainly working to advance the Communist agenda, the Communist campaign to destroy this country, to undermine its institutions, to destroy its leaders. We’re at war. I’ve read your file. You know what that means. You’ve been there. There are times when we have to put aside the niceties. There are times that require the strongest measures, because without those measures, we will lose the war. Do you know what happens to the losers? All you have to do is look at what has happened in Poland and Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The losers are stood up against the wall and shot. Don’t you understand that the FBI is the strongest bulwark we have against this insidious invasion?” He flicked the photograph with a fingernail. “These are lies, manufactured lies. They have set out to destroy me, because they know that I am the FBI in the eyes of many good Americans.”
“The FBI, without jurisdiction, interfered with a New York Police Department homicide investigation. FBI agents searched my apartment without a warrant. They searched my sister’s apartment, my brother’s apartment, my father’s and stepmother’s apartment without warrants. The FBI helped jail my father and condemned him to deportation without a hearing. The FBI put pressure on an independent news agency to fire my brother, all of which was designed to make sure that if I found these photographs, I would come running to you. The FBI’s concern in all this was to pull your ass out of a fire of your own making. And you call yourself a defender of American institutions? You’re awfully damn kind to yourself. Five men were killed for these photographs. Five men had everything that they had or ever would have stolen from them to protect your reputation.”
Tolson slapped the table, and Ingram’s Ronson jumped. “Yo
ur father lied on his citizenship application. He lied.”
“Yes, he did. We all have our secrets, don’t we? Most of us don’t kill to keep them hidden.”
“No FBI agent has killed anyone in this operation.”
“The men died because of these pictures.”
“What do you want, Detective Cassidy?”
Cassidy crossed to the bar in the corner and poured himself a large bourbon. If you break into a man’s house and threaten him with blackmail, drinking his liquor without permission seemed a minor transgression. Hoover and Tolson watched him while he tasted the whiskey. He let them wait while he lit a cigarette.
“I want my father released from custody and all records expunged. I want a public apology to him from Roy Cohn.”
“We have no control over what Mr. Cohn does or says.”
“Cohn offered to get my father out if I delivered the photos to him.” He might as well throw poison down that well while he had the chance.
“I see.” Hoover did not seem surprised.
“Remind him what you’ve got in your files. See if that persuades him.”
“What do I get in return?”
“The photographs and the negatives.”
“How can I be sure you won’t keep copies?”
“You can’t. I’ll give you my word.”
“Not very reassuring.”
“It’s the best I can do.”
“On the other hand, I am a very powerful man, as you remarked. With a word from me, your father goes to Russia, your brother and sister and their spouses are subject to very intrusive and very thorough investigations for possible ties to Communist organizations, possible criminal activities. All of which we will find. Their tax returns will be scrutinized. They will spend a great deal of time in court or in lawyers’ offices until they are bankrupted. Until they’re destroyed. And then they’ll go to jail.”
“Yes. I know. You hold a lot of cards, and I hold a few. But I’m a simple guy. If I can’t have what I want, I’ll have revenge. If my father goes to Russia, I’ll get the photographs to every newspaper, magazine, and TV station in the country. You’ll spend the rest of your life as Mary, the G-man with lousy legs in his mummy’s red dress.”
Night Life Page 30