Fever City

by Tim Baker

  Everyone who was old enough remembered Goodwin James. His working over was legendary. Only real pros could have inflicted that much damage without killing a man. His photo did the rounds—a good-looking, arrogant young man with a chip on his shoulder the size of his IQ transformed into a monster. I stare at Old Man Bannister, a slither of terror now overtaking me. He stubs his cigarette out against the wheel of his chair. ‘You can therefore imagine my reaction when this man stepped forward, claiming to know the identity of Ronnie’s father and demanding payment for his silence.’

  Where can we find his body? is what I want to ask, but instead I play it safe. ‘And who was this man?’

  ‘Was, Mr. Alston? Is. I haven’t had him killed. Not yet, at least. This man, Mr. Alston, is called Johnny Roselli.’

  I gag on the whiskey.

  ‘I see you know of whom I speak.’

  Choose your words carefully. ‘Mr. Bannister, have you ever considered just paying Roselli and letting sleeping dogs lie.’

  ‘Sleeping dogs never just lie; they always awake, savage and ravenous. You are not here to give me advice, you are here to find my son, and when you do, you are here to deal with Roselli.’

  ‘That’s a tall order, Mr. Bannister.’

  ‘That’s why I chose you.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Mr. Bannister . . . ’

  ‘I am not interested in the truth. Or even justice. I just want peace.’

  ‘I’ll do my best . . . ’

  ‘You’re not a Boy Scout, Alston. I want more than best.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Dallas 2014

  Luck is not a state of mind, it is a physical condition; it is a climate, an ecosystem where fortune and providence are born; where blessings and accidents lurk in the foliage, assisting one passerby—ensnaring another.

  In this jungle of chance, fate and circumstance are two sides of the same coin, not opposing entities. Fate is when you try to make sense of luck, circumstance when you no longer have the strength to do so. Death at twenty. Death at eighty. That’s the real difference between fate and circumstance.

  There are all types of luck: good, bad; equivocal. Dumb luck. Most often, there is unregistered, unacknowledged luck: happenstance.

  But when luck is married to conspiracy, it always becomes unlucky.

  Adam Granston is well over eighty yet his voice is quick and solid, and his movements belie the crumpled face, the tobacco yellow teeth, the watering eyes. He threads the audiotape with the care of an old tailor. ‘The signals are clear and followed with military precision. The first horn is to let them know Oswald is coming. The second orders them to kill him.’

  I nod with a betraying intensity. What the hell was I doing in an old lawyer’s over-air-conditioned Dallas apartment fifty-one years after an assassination? Some leads have a way of sounding interesting when you hear them on a phone. But when you’re sitting drinking weak coffee and listening to the panting of an ancient beagle in the corner, you begin to have serious doubts.

  I lean forward as the hiss of memory and time unspools; a once-familiar sound, a pause for contemplation that has almost been removed from our consciousness. Then comes a general, blurred commotion, voices indistinct but excited, and the slap of movement through a crowd. A radio announcer’s voice cuts in, oily in its professional confidence; sinister in the context of what you know is about to happen. The glib announcer is talking about T-shirts. He’s performing his professional patter. This could be a football match or a parade.

  But it’s going to be a murder.

  The old Texan raises a finger, his eyes liquid behind the inquiry of their magnified lenses. A klaxon is sounded, and immediately afterwards the announcer says that Oswald is coming. Voices rush and whisper all around the car park, jealous ghosts seeking the medium’s attention. I lean in closer, still staring at Granston, who raises a second finger. The horn sounds again, and instantaneously the shot is fired, so clear that I can hear the whistle of the bullet as it turns through the rifling of the .38 Colt Cobra’s barrel, husks a passage through the air, billows through the charade of the clothing’s defence and thuds into the fatality of flesh. I can see my own face reflected in the man’s glasses as he nods.

  The announcer seems as stunned as I am. ‘Oswald has been shot,’ he says, his voice stripped of all confidence. This is no longer a carnival sideshow. This is history. The announcer has passed through the assurances of his microphone and has become part of his own audience: he has been caught living in wonder, and in awe. ‘Oswald has been shot,’ he repeats, the disbelief sucking his voice of timbre. ‘Holy mackerel . . .’

  This was in 1963. When disbelief was registered with phrases like holy mackerel. That was back in the old days, when the constraints of the airwaves regulated the private home. Today it is the other way round, when reality television begins in the public home and shatters the constraints of the airwaves.

  The announcer’s voice accelerates; wavers—nearly flutters and dies. Just like the victim, already being transported away in an ambulance. A phantom voice, charred with liquor and inside dope, slurs into the mike. ‘Jack Ruby is the name.’ The announcer repeats this information, his voice rising in disbelief. How can such knowledge be transmitted so quickly? The stranger’s voice sounds pleased with the effect it’s had. It continues with the punch line. ‘He runs the Carousel Club.’

  This is too much for the radio announcer. He can barely repeat this last item of news. I imagine him keeling over, cowboy boots clattering into silence. Holy mackerel indeed.

  This moment of murder, when justice was denied and the truth killed as surely as the skinny kid with the bruised face was captured live on television and radio. Beep. Beep. Bang. The Morse code of the new Cool Media. The birth of a different kind of experience: Real Time. At that very moment, we were all sucked into the vortex: the witnessing instant of history, right now as it happens. It would be only one small step to the moon landing, one giant leap to the Berlin Wall.

  I look up at the old man, who’s tapping his temple. ‘See? What the hell did I tell you: it was a conspiracy. They all knew about it in advance. They were all in on it.’

  ‘And who exactly are they?’

  His laugh is the unforgiving chuckle of an embarrassed father watching a worthless son fail yet again in public. ‘They are not us.’

  But who is he; this old man with the angry spittle on his lips? ‘Us?’

  ‘Patsies. Oswald said it himself, in the station before they shot him. We were all patsies.’

  ‘How were you a patsy, Mr. Granston?’

  His laugh is more a shriek, a rasping intake of breath sucked through a web of mucus. He looks up at me, his eyes whittled with blood vessels. ‘Because I was the man on the car horn.’

  The hum of air-conditioning needles the uncomfortable silence. He had me going there for a second, too. It was like my time in Ciudad Juárez, when people would read about the killings in the papers then pretend that they had witnessed everything. Granston was typical of most people: he wanted in on history. It didn’t matter if he were only a footnote. Not for a crime this big. ‘So you’d like me to write that you were part of the conspiracy?’

  He bumps the table getting up, the undrunk coffee bridging the lip of the cup. The dog takes a shot at raising its head but doesn’t quite make it. ‘We’re done here.’ He sounds like a frustrated felon dismissing his incompetent lawyer. The door is already open. I take a step back to the table, but he blocks my way. In the corner is a sound almost like a growl. ‘I knew your father when he was working on the Bannister Case.’ Another pathetic lie to get my attention. He sucks in breath; half succeeds. Coughs up indignation and mottled phlegm. ‘A travesty of justice.’

  ‘Knowing’s not the truth.’

  ‘The truth, Mr. Alston . . . ? I thought you were just after a story?’ He smiles, his teeth a row of decaying tombsto
nes, yellowed by winter frost. ‘Look all you want, you’ll never find the truth. Not here, in Dallas. Mind your step.’

  I turn to go, the sun spitting blindness, and I miss the curb, nearly turning my ankle. There is that same, mirthless laugh behind me. Indecent in its divide from joy.

  The car is an assault on survival, the air torpid and pressing, like the blast from the crematory door. I turn the air-conditioner up high and think of the child left in the back of the station wagon by his father. The psychologists called it quotidian amnesia; that cycle of mindless routine that most families succumb to. Turn off the alarm, turn on the coffee. Toothbrush, car keys. Drop the kids off . . . The detail the father missed in his exhaustion with the everyday. His wife was sick. She normally took the boy to school on Thursdays. The kid fell asleep in the backseat, the way he always did. That was how they got him to sleep in his first year: they just put him in the car and drove. The dead boy was my welcome to Dallas. On radio talk shows strangers demanded the death penalty for a father on suicide watch. Events are big when the victim is small.

  I drive off, squinting into the setting sun.

  CHAPTER 4

  New Mexico 1964

  Hastings was heading south to Ciudad Juárez. He would disappear in the barrios of the hard town and when he knew he had lost them, he’d start travelling west through Mexico before heading up the coast to Los Angeles. They were expecting a frontal attack, explosive and loud. They were expecting Samson in the temple. But they’d wake in silence and feel the cold bite of the navaja sevillana scouring their throats. No time for panic, not even for pain; just the quick sting of realization: it’s over.

  He was allowing six months for the trip. He didn’t want to return until well after the elections. Otherwise they might think he was going after LBJ too. Bella sat in the passenger seat next to him, her head half out the window, breathing in the strange fragrances of chase.

  He had received the call almost a year before from Ragano, a mobbed-up lawyer for Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante. They had condoned a hit and Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana would control it. There was the first problem. Giancana, like all vain but unintelligent men, surrounded himself with stupid lieutenants; men like Johnny Roselli. The money was two hundred thousand down; three hundred thousand after. Ragano levelled with Hastings up front. This hit would be no picnic. High security. High probability of capture. Capture meant death—no one could ever be allowed to testify.

  There was no mention of the target. Hastings figured Castro or some other foreign bigwig. Or maybe someone domestic, causing problems for the syndicate, Jimmy Hoffa or Howard Hughes or maybe even J. Edgar Hoover. Someone big enough to be scary.

  Roselli set the meeting at the old Monogram Pictures Ranch. Hastings got there two hours early, checked for sniper and ambush positions, and then hid three weapons in separate locations. Bella sat in the slim shade of a stand of eucalyptus that filled the hot air with the scent of medication. Roselli arrived late with two cars full of goons. A display of power that only made him look weak. The two of them went for a stroll along a horse track, the hoods watching them with binoculars, Bella padding silently at their side, her bouts of sudden, frozen attention making Roselli nervous. ‘What the fuck is that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He’s seen something.’

  ‘It’s a she. And she’s just scenting.’

  Roselli looked around, his pale face sweating in the sunshine. ‘Do you believe what they say, that dogs can sense ghosts?’

  There was no point in sharing the truth with a man like Roselli. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’

  Roselli stared at him for a long moment, sweat trailing like tears down his cheeks. ‘A man like you don’t believe in nothing.’

  Hastings whistled and Bella trotted up to him. He raised his chin and the dog sat. ‘I believe in well-trained dogs.’

  ‘I seen a ghost once. Willie Bioff. That fink!’

  ‘So why did he come back to haunt you?’

  ‘I didn’t say he was haunting me. I just said I saw him, right after he died. Reflected in the swimming pool. Practically shat in my trunks. There was this fucking dog barking. No one could shut it up.’

  ‘Bella doesn’t bark.’

  ‘All dogs bark.’

  Hastings looked back at the parked cars. ‘I suppose we’re far enough away to talk?’

  ‘Sure,’ Roselli said, wiping his face with a monogrammed handkerchief. ‘So here’s the deal. You, Chuckie Nicoletti and a Frenchman. The best.’

  The best. Charles ‘Chuckie’ Nicoletti had killed his own father when he was 12 years old. Not even a teenager and an Oedipal hit to his belt. He was Chicago—that meant Giancana was watching carefully. Hastings figured the Frenchman was Albert Luchino, a Corsican killer and drug runner for the French Connection. Rumour had it he was the lead gunman in the Trujillo hit. Fearless. Flashy. Highly dangerous to work with. And Hastings. War hero. Purple Heart. Honest man betrayed. Husband; widower. Lover. Loner. Loser.

  ‘Three shooters, one patsy.’

  ‘Who’s the patsy?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know?’

  ‘Do the other shooters know about me?’

  ‘I don’t know about you—are you in?’

  Dumb question. There was only one answer now. If Hastings said no, Roselli would nod and talk about some amusing bullshit or his bad hip on the way back to the cars. And then they would kill him, dismember him, and cover him in lime. ‘I’d appreciate it if you don’t use my name.’

  ‘Fucking A. That’s why I just said Frenchie and Chicago.’ Except he’d used Nicoletti’s name. It was impossible to tell if Roselli was just dumb, or if it was an act designed to misdirect and control. ‘I’ll call you fucking Elvis, okay?’

  ‘Call me anything you want, except my name.’ Hastings saw the glitter of a telescopic lens from the cars. The goons were scoping them for fun. He hoped the safety was on. ‘How?’

  ‘Two scenarios. The first is a bedroom whack, the broad included.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know? Somewhere with a bed and a broad.’

  ‘Security?’

  ‘Heavy. Very. Always.’

  ‘The second?’

  ‘Sniper attack in public. Moving target, limited opportunity.’

  ‘Who chooses the scenario?’

  ‘A fucking telephone. What do you need?’

  ‘I’ll take care of it myself.’

  ‘We can get you anything you need.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it myself . . . ’ He was thinking of a Springfield Model 1903-A4 with custom mercury rounds for the sniper shot; suppressed .22 to the temple for the bedroom invasion. He didn’t want any materiel from Roselli, which would be traceable, probably back to CIA.

  ‘When?’

  Roselli grimaced. ‘As soon as possible. You’ll all be on alert as of Saturday.’ He slapped Hastings on the back. Bella froze, staring hard, her teeth exposed. Hastings signalled it was all right. Roselli laughed falsely. ‘Half a million. Think about it. You can retire on this job.’

  Of course he could retire. In style. But he would have to make do with a cool two hundred grand; they were never planning on handing over the second payment. They’d clip him first. They’d clip the others; they’d clip their own families and their children and anyone who stood in the way for that kind of money. The target had already become incidental. What was really at play was nine hundred thousand dollars, with the possibility of tracing much of the other six hundred grand. All Roselli had to do was move in fast and capture, torture and murder the top three hit men in the world.

  ‘So who’s the target?’

  ‘JFK.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘ . . . What are you, a Democrat?’

  Hastings liked JFK as well as anyone could like a politician. He was yo
ung; he was bright. He was dangerously extravagant. Hastings knew all about Kennedy’s father—the Rum Row days before he became ambassador. Before he sided with Hitler, he had sided with Frank Costello. Joe Kennedy wasn’t drawn to Nazis, but what they had to offer: prosperous appeasement on the back of a warring Europe. His folks had emigrated from Ireland to escape poverty and brutality. What point was there in placing America in the heart of all that centuries-old hate? Joe Kennedy had voted for self-interest and was vilified, but that was all forgotten when Joe Jr. was blown from the sky; when PT-109 sank in the Pacific. Then Joe Kennedy became the father of heroes and decided to back JFK all the way. Hastings didn’t care about Joe Sr.’s history, just like he didn’t care that JFK couldn’t keep his hands off women.

  Not admirable but audacious. JFK was the first American president who looked his country in the eye and said: I have a hard-on for power and it makes me want to fuck. Men got off on that. It made them feel good about their own dicks. Women got off on it too.

  But then Johnny Roselli came along and hung a bull’s-eye on JFK’s hat. It occurred to Hastings: was this all because of Nick Alston . . . ?

  ‘The President. You’re serious?’

  ‘Fucking A.’

  ‘But why . . . ?’

  ‘Fucked if I know, Momo wants it done, is all.’

  Except Giancana didn’t have that kind of money. Neither did Marcello and Trafficante. One and a half million was Cold War level cash. Cold War level target. Cold War level hatred. They had to be mobbed up with CIA or Big Oil on this one. And they wanted Kennedy dead. They were so out of control, they might even be able to pull it off. Danger simmered in the heat haze. Hastings was trapped. He maintained the patter, trying to think through a survival strategy. ‘Bedroom or sniper job, the getaway will be tough.’