The Man Who Never Returned

by Peter Quinn

  No usher in sight, he went down the steps to row E, seat 21, as indicated on the ticket, which was in the middle of an entirely empty row and an equally vacant section. He studied the ticket to see if he could have possibly misread it. Upper balcony. Section 3, Row E, Seat 21. He was in the right place. More likely, Pully or one of his underlings at ISC had stuck a freebie intended for the firm’s messengers or mailroom boys into the wrong envelope and had it delivered to the hotel.

  Pully was probably sitting at ringside, where the seats were mostly full. Farther back, there were empty patches; lots of people in the aisles, moving around, schmoozing, showing no interest as the tuxedo-clad announcer at center ring began to intone the judges’ decision on the fight that had just ended. There was another round of boos when he held up the hand of the winner.

  “Next fight will be livelier.”

  Slightly startled by the unexpected comment, Dunne turned. Pully had arrived. He was two rows back, standing, hands in the pants pockets of his loosely fitted blue double-breasted suit as he surveyed the arena.

  “Wasn’t sure I was in the right place,” Dunne said.

  “Perfect view from up here. You can see everybody, everything.”

  “Any higher, we’d need airplane tickets.”

  “Sometimes there’s more privacy in public places.” The nearest occupied seats were an entire section away. Across the way, the spectators were just as lightly scattered.

  Instead of sitting, Pully announced he was going to get something to eat. Carefully placing one foot at a time, he went back up the stairs, his waddling, hesitant gait the trademark of a man with bum knees and too much weight. Several minutes later, he descended even more carefully, a large paper cup of beer in one hand, three hot dogs bundled in tin foil in the other. He sat directly behind Dunne.

  Resting his arm on the back of his seat, Dunne swiveled to look up at Pully. “If you try, I bet you can find a seat in this row.”

  “I like the view from here.” Pully looked to his right and left. “No obstructions.” He chomped off half a hot dog in a single bite, chewed, swallowed.

  Down in the ring, the fighters were introduced, went back to their corners and took off their robes. The one in black trunks had big ears, olive skin, a compact build not unlike John Garfield’s; his opponent, in green, was red-haired, slightly taller, and as white as one of Doc Rossiter’s cadavers. In contrast to the lackadaisical ballet that preceded, they started swinging hard as soon as the bell went off. The crowd below roared its approval.

  Pully let out a loud burp. “Pardon me.” He reached down, extending his arm over Dunne’s shoulder, the last hot dog in hand. “Want this? I’m full.”

  “Thanks, already ate.”

  Black trunks parried a left hook and shot a straight right cross that caught green trunks on the side of the jaw. He staggered back. Black trunks moved in, but before he threw another punch, green trunks landed one to match what he’d just received. The crowd was on its feet. Earnestly aggressive but nervous and unsure of themselves, the fighters exchanged another volley of blows, most of which missed.

  The cup of beer came over Dunne’s shoulder the same way the hot dog did. “Take all you want.” This time he didn’t turn down the offer.

  “You probably think this is an odd way to meet.”

  Dunne took a long sip of beer. “Crossed my mind.” He raised the beer cup over his head so Pully could take it back. “You think I’m here to fill you in on the matter I’m handling for Walter Wilkes, you’re wrong. Grateful for your help and for keeping ISC off my back, but this is between Wilkes and me.”

  “The other way around, Fin. I’m here to fill you in.”

  “On what?”

  “Bud Mulholland.”

  After backing off, the fighters were back trading punches, some of them wild, some direct hits. Black trunks went down on the canvas but was up before the referee got to a count of two; he faked with his right and delivered a left that almost sent green trunks through the ropes.

  “Looks like we’re in for a low-budget punch party.”

  Dunne finished the beer. “Not exactly Dempsey versus Firpo.”

  “More like Dumbo versus Harpo.”

  The bell rang. The crowd gave a round of applause.

  “Still young. They’ve got potential. You were about to fill me in on Bud Mulholland.”

  “You’ve known him a long time?”

  “Met Bud when we were both with the police department. I brought him into the OSS. Went overseas together in ’43. When the war ended and Truman put the OSS out of business, we hung around London for a while. But I thought it’s you going to tell me about Bud, not the other way around.”

  “I don’t know him as long as you.”

  “Crossed paths in the OSS, didn’t you?”

  “We didn’t meet until after the OSS closed down. I stayed in Washington to run research and analysis for the Strategic Services Unit. The whole intelligence operation was pretty much a mess until ’49, when CIA was set up to put everything right. That’s when I met Bud.”

  “Bud was in CIA?”

  “You might say he was in the delivery room when it was born. He was exactly what the cowboys in the Office of Policy Coordination were looking for. We shared an office back then. He never talked politics. Mostly he talked about the best ways to kill people. His expertise was impressive.”

  The bell for the second round sounded. The fighters raced to the middle of the ring and resumed pummeling each other. The crowd cheered.

  “It looks like this is going to be a short fight,” Pully said.

  “Short but hard-fought. How long did Bud stay in CIA?”

  “Well, he didn’t stay long in Washington. The other higher-ups sent him right into the field to help train recruits from behind the Iron Curtain to return to their homelands and lead guerilla movements. ‘What we want is bullets, not bullshit’ is what I was told when I objected to wasting resources on their overwrought, ill-considered schemes. Looks like they’re slowing down.”

  The fighters clinched. Green trunks almost seemed to be resting his head on black trunks’ shoulder. The referee pulled them apart. They exchanged several punches, then clinched again.

  “Blitzkrieg turns into trench warfare,” Pully said. “Where was I?”

  “‘Ill-considered schemes.’”

  “I argued that we needed to develop a capacity for longterm intelligence gathering, not short-term sabotage and half-cocked attempts at subversion; nurture agents with language skills and a deep knowledge of the cultures, peoples and parties within the Soviet empire; put aside preconceptions and stereotypes to deal with the real complexities of the situation; and establish a first-rate, reliable research-and-analysis operation that doesn’t mask its incompetence with high-priced gadgetry and political gimmickry.”

  “Tall order.”

  “Far too tall for the midgets in charge, I’m afraid.”

  When the fighters clinched a third time, the crowd began to boo.

  Pully tapped Dunne on the shoulder with a cigar. “Want one?”

  “Sure.”

  “You see it a lot in fights like this. Kids who let the excitement of fighting in the Garden for the first time drive them to shoot their bolt in the opening round. Now they’ll either drag themselves through the rest of the fight or one of them will end it with a lucky punch.” Pully lit the cigar already in his mouth. He reached down and handed the book of matches to Dunne.

  Separated once again by the referee, green trunks backpedaled, black trunks in pursuit. Backed into a corner, green trunks did a successful job of defending himself against a flurry of hard blows. The bell ended round two.

  Pully puffed on the cigar, producing a small cloud over Dunne’s head. “I made my case right up to Allen Dulles but was told, ‘We’re not interested in NATO agents—no action, talk only. We want men that can get things done, and fast.’ They got their wish. Every last agent sent East was caught and killed as fast as they were
sent in.”

  “That’s when you quit?”

  “I still believed there were enough smart, clear-thinking people to push our intelligence operations in the right direction. But it got worse once the fighting broke out in Korea. Swash-buckling tactics that bordered on the insane. They were running Chinese and Koreans through the training camps and dropping them behind enemy lines with little or no sense of what their mission was. It was an utter waste of resources and lives. The net result was that our capacity for gathering intelligence in the Far East was just about zero. That’s when I quit and came back to New York. I took a position with ISC, but I’m still in contact with colleagues who shared my disgust at where things were going. Year or so later, in ’53, I bumped into Bud. Or rather, he bumped into me.”

  “He’d quit too?”

  “He never said so directly. He just wanted me to know ‘my friends in Washington’ didn’t appreciate me nosing around in their business. ‘Once you’re out, Pully, you’re out. Leave it at that. Guys like us should get on with our lives and not interest ourselves in matters that no longer concern us.’ Made it sound as if I were some sort of subversive for following the activities of an agency of the United States government. He did it with that little threatening fuck-you smile of his.”

  At the sound of the bell, the fighters approached each other more slowly and warily than at the beginning of the last round. They traded a few light, innocuous punches. Successfully avoiding a sudden right hook, black trunks snapped a hard left that sent green trunks reeling backwards; moving in close, he delivered several hard body punches that put green trunks on the ropes.

  “This could be it.” Puffing away on his cigar, Pully exhaled what looked like a series of smoke signals.

  “As much luck as skill in a fight like this. It’s not over yet.”

  Green trunks ducked an intended knockout blow and escaped to the center of the ring.

  “How’d you respond to Mulholland?”

  “I didn’t. I got on with my new responsibilities at ISC. There was no time for anything else. Then you called and asked me to find out about Mulholland’s employer. At first, I suspected a set-up. But I figured I know you better than that, Fin. You’re not the type that betrays his friends. So I went ahead and did what you asked.”

  “And connected him to Walter Wilkes.”

  “I knew right away what that was about. Allen Dulles has operatives in every major news organization, CBS, New York Times, Chicago Tribune. Hearst and Luce were eager to help. They all jumped into bed, running fake news items, muzzling reporters, killing stories, giving a cover to agents so they could travel as journalists. No one jumped more enthusiastically than Wilkes. He couldn’t do enough, especially if there was a chance to fan the hysteria the Standard thrives on.”

  Black trunks caught up with green trunks, who stood his ground. The crowd was on its feet once more. Black trunks gave green trunks a relentless pummeling.

  Dunne lit his cigar and reached up to return the book of matches. “So Mulholland is the agency’s point man in the Wilkes outfit?”

  “He’s doing exactly what he did before, running covert operations, but now he travels under the well-tailored guise of guardian angel, disciplinarian and head fixer for Wilkes’s far-flung operations, bailing out reporters, greasing palms that need to be greased, smoothing things over with the police. He’s got a license to go wherever he likes. That’s how he was able to stay in Havana through last spring and summer.”

  “Havana?”

  Green trunks grabbed black trunks, holding on like only a desperate fighter or departing lover will, clinging hard in the knowledge that to let go was to risk losing what couldn’t be regained. Black trunks held him, if not tenderly, then with the peculiar intimacy fighters display amid their brutal give-and-take. The referee pried them apart. Green trunks shook his head and managed to summon enough strength to back away before black trunks could land a punch.

  “The end is nigh,” Pully said.

  “What about Mulholland in Havana?”

  “The Batista government pretty much allowed the CIA to use Havana as a base to do whatever it wanted for planning the coup in Guatemala. Mulholland went down ostensibly to take care of some problems in Wilkes’s South American news bureaus. In reality, he recruited a crew of burglars, hit men and assorted felons to break into embassies, steal code books, kidnap and interrogate potential intelligence sources, the secret dirty work the gentlemen types didn’t want to soil themselves with. Before Havana, it was Istanbul. Same deal. That was his base for helping pull off the coup against the Mossadeq government in Iran.”

  Body lowered in a half crouch, black trunks moved in for the kill. Green trunks stepped back, feinted with his right and hit black trunks with a left upper cut that almost lifted him off his feet.

  “Lucky punch,” Pully said.

  “Appreciate what you’re telling me. But it’s got nothing to do with why I’ve been hired. They’re entirely different matters. Mulholland has absolutely no involvement.”

  Now it was green trunks who seemed to be closing in.

  Pully stood. He looked right and left. “Maybe not. All I’m telling you is to be extra careful. You’re treading near a behemoth of 15,000 people, with an untold amount of secret funding to spend as it pleases, running its own prisons, brothels and airlines, employing mercenaries, assassination squads and thugs of its own choosing, equipped with an array of weaponry that ranges from artillery to lethal gases and poison.”

  Black trunks seemed dazed. Green trunks drew nearer. The crowd was cheering wildly. Suddenly, as if a cloud had passed in and out of his head, black trunks stood erect and delivered a devastating right to the side of green trunk’s head.

  “Think of it this way, Fin. Sooner or later, the day of reckoning will come. I intend to help see it does. Meanwhile, you’re dealing with a drunken, rampaging elephant with a twenty-inch erection. My advice is to get out of its way.”

  Green trunks fell to his knees and toppled face down onto the canvas.

  “Luck can take you only so far.”

  The referee counted to ten. Green trunks lay absolutely still. His handlers rushed out from the corner and rolled him over.

  “Don’t doubt what you’ve told me. Just can’t see what it’s got to do with the case I’m working.”

  Pully made no response. Moving with none of his previous awkwardness, he headed up the steps to the exit.

  A message from Nan Renard waited at the front desk. Please call. Back in his room, he had the operator place a long-distance, person-to-person call to Eddie Moran at the Old Madrid, in Havana. She called back immediately: bingo, she got Moran on the first try.

  “Hey, kiddo, glad to hear from you!” Moran reported he had nothing new on Jimmy Malacoda. He hadn’t been seen or heard from since he returned to Cleveland. Wasn’t exactly a fan club trying to bring him back. The Salavante crew never brought him up.

  Dunne mentioned he’d run into Bud Mulholland. “Knew him back in your cop days, Eddie, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. Cast-iron balls, that’s Bud.”

  “Bump into him when he was in Havana?”

  “You know about that?”

  “He mentioned he was down there for the Wilkes outfit. Helped out with hush-hush work on the side.”

  “Hush hush, my ass. Those CIA boys are the biggest spenders and blowhards in town, traipsing around with lowlifes of every kind—kidnappers, smugglers, gangsters, second-storey men, tin-pot mercenaries.”

  “Bud ever mention Malacoda?”

  “Bud mentioned nobody. Kept to himself, the way he always done. That’s why he stayed the same place you did when you was here. No flashy hotels or nightclubs for Bud. Unlike them others, Bud never drew attention to himself.”

  “Stayed in that hotel the whole time?”

  “Sure. Wasn’t he the one recommended it to you?”

  “Now that you mention it, yeah, I guess he did.”

  “All them spyglasses was l
ike Bud, there’d be no problem, but most is a lot of showboat college types.” Eddie launched into a story about some ninny from CIA who landed reeling drunk in the Starlight Room bragging about the razz they’d played on the Reds in Guatemala and how if the stuffed shirts in Washington would only get out of the way, they’d deep-six the whole commie enterprise. “Ask me,” Eddie concluded, “they were lucky. These clowns couldn’t get laid in the Women’s House of Detention with a handful of pardons.”

  He went to bed without calling Nan. Drew the curtains. Turned out the light. Sat wide awake in bed. Maybe Bud Mulholland’s involvement in CIA had nothing to do with the Crater case. How could it? Strange he’d never mentioned, even in passing, having been in Havana. Maybe Malacoda was blowing hot air when he went off about having a “signed and sealed” deal to bump off some stiff he happened to meet in a hotel lobby.

  Tired but unable to sleep, he realized Stella Crater had probably undertaken this kind of exercise in frustration every night as she lay in the dark for the past twenty-five years, trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with so many unmatchable pieces that no matter how you moved, switched or turned them, they never formed a coherent picture.

  Crow was hanging up his overcoat when Dunne arrived. “Glad you got here early. No sooner did the Kipps file land on my desk, the pension office calls and wants it back. Seems the old guy expired a day or two ago.” He picked up a shoe box from his desk and searched among the files beneath. “Here it is. I’m going to the john. When I return, the file is going back, so make it quick.”

  Dunne skipped past pages of promotion letters, medical reports and retirement papers until he located Kipps’s assignment record. Routine transfers up to 1926, when he was one of several cops detailed to work with enforcement agents from the Federal Bureau of Prohibition. The record indicated he’d been part of the raid on Texas Guinan’s 300 Club, on West 54th Street, which netted two U.S. senators and golfer Bobby Jones.