Fever City

by Tim Baker

  Hastings exchanged looks with Luchino. Shooting from a fire escape on a main street, in daylight? ‘C Team and D Team . . . ’ Luchino turned to Hastings, mouthed, ‘What team are we?’ Hastings shrugged. All the shit about team leaders and alphabet armies didn’t make sense. It had to be a distraction: cover for the real hit teams. ‘ . . . At the Trade Mart. E Team on the motorcade going back, right here . . . ’ Sturgis hit the overpass so hard with the cue, he left a blue chalk mark on the map. ‘And Love Field Team back at the airport.’ He turned and looked at a young man with a preppy air standing at the front of the music room, who frowned and whispered to a beefy man with glasses next to him. Sturgis looked worried. ‘Final backup only, sir. We’re talking emergencies here, highly unlikely.’ The young man coloured, whether from anger or embarrassment, Hastings couldn’t say. ‘How come the rich prick gets a name and we only get an initial?’ a gangster next to Hastings asked. Henchmen muttered indignantly. ‘One more thing: see a camera, nab it. Steal it, break it, buy it. If you can’t, put a name to its owner.’

  A voice spoke up. ‘How do we do that, Frank?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know, use your brains.’

  Ruby stuck his hand up. ‘What about press? The place will be crawling with them.’

  ‘Forget the newshounds, that’ll be handled by our guests.’ Faces turned towards the music room. ‘One more thing, and this is for all you people dressed up as cops. Anyone detained is to be taken to the sheriff’s. Not to the police station, to the sheriff’s. You must prevent fingerprinting and mug shots. The idea is to release all detainees within two hours. Got that? Two hours max.’

  A tall man with tousled blond hair dressed like a tramp raised his hand. ‘How will the cops know it’s us?’

  ‘Good question. Anyone detained will be us.’

  ‘What about the patsy, Frank?’

  For the first time there was ringing silence in the room. Sturgis turned to Ruby. ‘The patsy will not be detained. I repeat, the patsy will not be detained. That’s all. Good luck, gentlemen.’

  Hastings pushed his way through the crowd towards Sturgis, who was being mobbed with questions. He reached through the others, and grabbed Sturgis around the bandage below his elbow. Then squeezed.

  Hastings had to give Sturgis credit. Other men would have buckled under the pain. Sturgis remained standing, steeling his features as he turned slowly to his tormentor. ‘What is that, a riding accident?’ Hastings asked.

  Jack Ruby laughed, his voice nasal and self-important. ‘What happened, Frank, got bucked by a filly?’

  Some of the men laughed as Sturgis pushed past them, trying to escape Hastings’s grip. Hastings pressed harder, Sturgis going white, finally on the verge of collapse. ‘Tell the Old Man we need to talk . . . ’

  ‘Fuck you, tell him yourse—’ There was the shrill, whistled gasp of internal agony, of acute combusting pain, perspiration swelling like blisters on his forehead. Then Hastings let go, Sturgis staggering, then straightening, his forearm slick with blood.

  Hastings leant in close. ‘What have you got against me?’

  ‘I was on Iwo Jima with Tommy Alston, that’s what.’ He shouldered past Hastings, cradling his arm as he lurched out of the room, blood pitter-patting after him. Hastings hurried after Sturgis, but Roselli blocked his path, Nicoletti and Alderisio huddling protectively around their boss. ‘So? How do you think that went?’

  Hastings felt like slapping him. ‘What do you think this is, a fucking game show?’

  ‘Now look . . . ’

  ‘You look. I’m walking unless you come up with a real plan. And that includes escape routes I trust.’

  ‘Escape routes? What are you, chicken?’ Alderisio’s sneer slid off his face when he saw the anger in Hastings’s eyes. Even he was smart enough to know he’d gone too far.

  Hastings wiped his bloodied fingers on Alderisio’s jacket. ‘Free sample. Next time, it’ll be yours . . . ’

  Alderisio went for his gun. Roselli stopped him. ‘Are you fucking nuts?’ He turned back to Hastings. ‘Jesus, relax for Christ’s sake. That speech, it was just for the chump change boys.’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me this rent-an-army’s here just for diversion . . . ?’

  Roselli shrugged his shoulders into a big, fucking question mark. ‘What can I say?’ he lied. ‘Everyone’s got a role to play, it’s all part of the plan. Here . . . ’ He steered Hastings towards the music room, Hastings staring back at a still-seething Alderisio. ‘I want you to meet some important people . . . Wal? This is the guy I told you about.’

  The heavy man with spectacles turned to them, instinctively pulling his hands in to his sides as though protecting his wallet, his eyes glued to Hastings’s forehead as he spoke. ‘Sure, sure, Johnny told us all about you.’

  Roselli patted Hastings on the shoulder. The hand of Judas. ‘The best is what you asked for and the best is what you get . . . ’ Other heads turned, eyes locked. Hastings brushed Roselli’s hand away, but the mark remained. Roselli may as well have hung a sign around his neck. Hastings: dead man walking. ‘Nothing but the best for our pals in Miami . . . ’

  Wal smiled with a bashful self-effacement. ‘Sure, sure, we appreciate it. We always knew we’d be in safe hands with Johnny Handsome . . . ’ He rubbed his bulbous nose speculatively, as though it were a tuber that might just snap off, and turned back to the other suits.

  ‘What did I tell you . . . ?’ Roselli said, leading Hastings away. ‘Salt of the earth . . . ’

  ‘Can the bullshit. Where do Luchino and I go?’

  Roselli frowned. Very convincingly. ‘You and Frenchie? You ain’t a team . . . ’ Hastings studied his face. Roselli was a good liar about little things and a bad one about big things. This was a huge fucking thing. ‘You and Nicoletti in the Book Depository and Frenchie and Alderisio in the Dal-Tex building.’

  Meaning Hastings and Luchino would kill the president, and Nicoletti and Alderisio would then kill them. They were back to the exact same setup as Chicago, with the Cubans thrown in somewhere along the line to run false trails and distract any authorities not in on the conspiracy. ‘Where are the details?’

  ‘Relax, we all rendezvous with the patsy in Dealey Plaza at eleven sharp . . . Kennedy don’t fly in till just before noon . . . ’

  ‘What about Morales? Where will he be?’

  Roselli wagged a finger. ‘Now you know I ain’t allowed to divulge privileged information.’ He looked up suddenly, his face crinkled in displeasure. Someone had started playing Rock Around The Clock—the original version by Hal Singer. Loud. ‘It’s that juvenile fucking delinquent, Hemming, I’d stake my life on it.’ He turned back to Hastings. ‘Haven’t any of the younger generation heard of Sinatra? What the fuck will our guests think?’ He stormed off towards the kitchen. Hastings pushed his way through the library, trying to focus on how Sturgis knew he had killed Tommy Alston. The song drifted through the walls, the lyrics taunting him, as though they knew the answer.

  One for the money

  Two for the show

  Three make ready

  Four let’s go

  It started to come back to him. Hastings was in a bar, cigarette smoke gliding across a spotlight. Onstage, Hal Singer was crying out the song with his raucous voice, raw and rowdy, inciting sedition and excitement, his tenor sax hanging like a gleaming weapon from his shoulders.

  Let’s rock

  We’re gonna rock

  Rock around the clock

  The old Casablanca! On South Kenmore. That’s where he’d heard Singer performing the number. And that was where he had met Greta Simmons for the second time . . . It was Greta. She must have talked; that was the only explanation for why the Bannister kidnappers had known about him; why they had dangled Tommy’s killer as bait to Nick Alston. And if Sturgis knew, that meant he had been in on the kidnapping too.
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  Luchino was standing outside the room, half-singing in a broken monotone: ‘We’re gonna rock, rock around the clock . . .’ He smiled when he saw Hastings. ‘I have not heard that song since the old days, at the Welcome Hotel in Villa. Ah, my friend, the 6th Fleet . . . What nights. What parties. When people still danced to jazz.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘We thought we were wild back then . . . We wanted to be bad, very bad . . . But we were just children. Innocent really. We had no idea what bad really was . . . ’

  ‘I have to kill a man tonight . . . ’

  ‘See what I mean? That, my friend, is bad.’

  ‘For him. Maybe for me . . . ’

  ‘Do you need help?’

  Hastings patted him on the shoulder. ‘I can handle this one. But I’m going to need all of your help tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah yes, tomorrow. Quelle catastrophe!’

  They walked together through the shadow of the house, out to the front, the shouts from an angry confrontation between Roselli and Hemming fading as they stepped off the ornate veranda into the gardens. An agent stopped them. ‘No one’s allowed out here . . . ’

  ‘We’re with Wal . . . ’ Hastings said. The Fed hesitated, then walked away, shaking his head. He didn’t really know what was going on anyway. This meet made Vito Genovese’s Appalachian Summit look like a discreet assignation at the Cosmos Club.

  ‘FBI. CIA. Dallas police and sheriffs . . . Texas Rangers. They’re expecting someone big.’

  ‘But who, mon ami?’

  ‘White House big. Think about it. Who has the most to gain if Kennedy dies?’

  ‘Johnson.’

  ‘And this is his home turf . . . ’ The wail of approaching police sirens forced the crows in the cottonwoods to break cover, the rattle of their protesting comb calls and cries mocking them as they scattered overhead, cawing: rock, rock.

  A limo escorted by motorcycle cops was coming in. The Fed waved Hastings and Luchino back towards the lawn, away from the house. The limo pulled up, slurring on the pebble driveway, and former Vice President Richard Nixon got out, surrounded by plainclothes bodyguards. He disappeared inside.

  The final details. Who got what and when. President Johnson now; President Nixon later. And President Bobby Kennedy? Try never. JFK was already dead. Hastings and Luchino too. Unless they thought of something quick.

  Hastings stared up into the empty Texas sky, clouds going to cover, hugging the flat horizon in fear. ‘We can still stop it.’

  ‘It is too late, my friend.’

  ‘We can do it. But only if we shoot.’

  It took Luchino a moment to understand. ‘Shooting and missing . . . ?’

  ‘I have the Book Depository, you have Dal-Tex. If we shoot to miss, they’ll abort everything, including the Trade Mart speech. Kennedy will fly out of Texas and if he’s wise, never come back.’ Just like Hastings.

  ‘There is Love Field Team waiting at the airport but . . . ’ There was the reflective pause of a cigarette being lit, then the exhalation of certainty. ‘The young man in charge has the face of a bureaucrat, not a killer. He will not risk it.’ Luchino took off his coat and laid it down on the sun-bleached grass. ‘It could work. In the meantime I am going to get some rest. I advise you to do the same. Tomorrow will be the longest day . . . ’ He lay down on the lawn, smoking meditatively, his eyes closed.

  Hastings started walking around the side of the estate, glancing in one of the windows. He froze. Jimmy Hoffa sat alone at a table, playing solitaire in front of a quart of rye. Howard Hughes was pacing up and down on his own behind him, holding a white handkerchief over his mouth. But it wasn’t the notoriety of the pair that had riveted his attention. It was something that stood mostly outside the frame of the window; something intimately familiar and deeply hated—just the front rims of a wheelchair showing.

  Hastings made his choice immediately. Forget Sturgis. He was going after the puppet master.

  Hastings kept on circling round the house, nodding to a group of cops who were playing cards on the back porch. One of them looked up at him. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Just going into the kitchen, for a beer . . . ’

  ‘There’s plenty to drink past the stables.’

  ‘Wal told me to bring him a cold one from the icebox.’

  The cop put his cards on the table, facedown. ‘Wal?’

  ‘From Miami . . . ’ Local yokels. They didn’t know what he was talking about. He had to spell it out for them. ‘CIA . . . ’

  The cop straightened in his seat. ‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ He went back to the game, glancing at his hand, then tossing in two more chips.

  Hastings had the password now . . . CIA. Authority plus mystery always breeds fear. And fear was the skeleton key to everything. He entered the kitchen, scanning the steam and gleam, looking for the pretty young cook who had been flirting with Hemming. She was over by a portable record player. He watched her carefully lower the needle. A strange, mournful atmosphere was born with the music. Blue Velvet . . . She turned, blind and lost, already hypnotized by the chorus, almost walking into Hastings. Suddenly awakened, she looked up at him, flustered and flirtatious, focusing on his face—liking what she saw. She smiled. ‘You gonna ask me to dance too . . . ?’

  ‘Like Hemming?’

  ‘You know him?’ Hastings nodded. ‘He runs Operation 40.’

  The kid was pimping his outfit for a dance with a cook. ‘You know what Operation 40 is?’

  She shrugged. ‘Oil, right?’ He laughed. She looked away, a little hurt, her smile fading into something mysterious, something potent and possible. This girl had a special glow. His hand enclosed the small of her back, brought her body into contact with his. She looked up at him, moving with the music. She was a good dancer.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Carmen.’

  ‘Pretty name. Tell me, Carmen, what’s going on here?’

  ‘Can’t you tell? We’re having a party.’

  ‘Who are the guests?’

  ‘Just about everyone from the size of dinner.’

  ‘I saw a man, an old man in a wheelchair?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know who’s here and who’s not. I just cook . . . ’

  ‘And dance.’

  She smiled. ‘I could get into trouble . . . Penny wouldn’t like it.’

  Something caught his eye on the counter, glittering cruelly in the angled afternoon sunlight. ‘Who’s Penny?’

  ‘Head cook . . . Oh, shoot.’

  Carmen let go, and Hastings missed her instantly, watching her rushing to the stove, lifting lids and pulling away instinctively from the assault of steam, spoons stirring frantically at first, then slowing to a confident, muscular twirl. There was the rap of wood against iron edges, the click of lids being replaced. ‘No harm done.’ Carmen turned to him, smiling, but Hastings had his back to her as he slipped the stainless steel skewer inside his jacket. The music ended. Carmen sighed into the sudden silence, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘That song was my alarm clock. I got to get back to dessert now . . . ’

  ‘Maybe I can come by after dinner?’

  Her smile reminded him of Susan’s: innocent and eager. ‘You can help with the washing up.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Thanks for the dance, Carmen . . . ’

  She dropped her head to one side, beaming at him. ‘My pleasure.’

  Hastings headed towards the back porch, turning as he opened the screen door, his face going dark with the force of the western sun behind him. ‘Carmen, where are the guest rooms here?’

  She threw her head back towards the stoves. ‘Other side of the house. The damp side.’

  There was the simmer of protest behind her, as boiling water squeezed through a lid and started guttering the fire beneath it. ‘Shoot.’ She turned the gas down, dabbing at the froth. ‘Say,
what did you say your name was, anyway . . . ?’

  CHAPTER 46

  Dallas 2014

  The JFK Assassination is my first memory, at least the first one I can put an exact date on: November 23rd, 1963. We were a day ahead of the news when the shots were fired. On the other side of the world in Sydney, it was already the Morning After. The beginning of a long hot summer. Dad had moved to Sydney a couple of years earlier, looking for a place that was quiet and safe, a place where he was sure no one would ever know about his past, his connection with the Bannister case.

  The move was supposed to be about letting go of the past. About forgetting. But that’s nearly impossible. You can change the bed but the dreamer’s always the same. And even in the hot amber sunlight of a Sydney that no longer exists, can a dreamer ever really forget the shadows of a nightmare?

  We were sitting in the front living room. A eucalyptus stood outside, its leaves still, protesting another scorching day, the birds that had woken me already going quiet from the assault of the sun.

  I had heard the TV from my bedroom upstairs. That’s what had alerted me to the magnitude of the occasion. The only thing on television early in the morning was the whining geometric challenge of the test pattern. But this was something extraordinary. A handsome young leader cut down under the gaze of newsreel. This was when the infant medium finally came of age. It was the brave new world of television with real-life murder served up in front of the largest audience on earth. This was the beginning of news as convenience food. Smooth as a filter tip, and just as addictive.

  My father sat in his chair, his ashtray already full. There were two beer bottles—the big ones that came with cork caps—empty by his side. My mother was standing behind him, crying. This is my memory of her; my only real memory. She was weeping at the death of a man I didn’t know. The television said that President Kennedy was a man of peace, who would not let the world destroy itself with atomic bombs. A man of change, who spoke of enormous challenges but believed in the possibility of success. A man of justice who fought Segregation. Back then Kennedy was known for his youthful and contagious optimism and the exciting promise of a better world. Today he’s mainly known for fucking. It’s only human nature, I suppose. Just ask Bill Clinton. It’s easier to imagine a middle-aged man screwing a young intern because she’d just shown him her thong than it is to imagine him trying to introduce universal health care or bring lasting peace to Palestine. But back then, in the black-and-white days of television and politics, we didn’t know about the bedrooms. We only knew what we saw: a young man killed in public because he was ahead of his time, because he promised civil rights and education and freedom for all, regardless of race or creed or colour. That’s why people cried and why people remembered. Because they knew that if they could get the president of the United States, they could get anyone, including us and our families. Our homes and dreams were inconsequential compared to JFK’s but they were just as vulnerable. No one was safe. Anyone big or small could be snuffed out with the flap of a dark umbrella on a sunny day.