Better Dead

by Max Allan Collins

  “Nate Heller,” McCarthy said, with a big smile. “Good—you got my message at your hotel, I see.”

  “I did. Is there somewhere we can talk? I have a brief report and I also need some help.”

  McCarthy nodded and turned his hooded-eye gaze on Kennedy. “Wait for us out front, would you, Bob? Roy!”

  Cohn popped up, then stepped up, his eyes gleaming, his smile small yet triumphant. Kennedy’s expression of accomplishment faded and he nodded and went out, filing in behind some reporters.

  McCarthy led us into a small adjacent room where tall windows let in the overcast afternoon. For some reason that kind of cloud-filtered sunlight made me squint worse than the brightest day. We sat at one end of a table suited for six.

  “We do have to make this brief, Nate,” McCarthy said pleasantly, his thick blunt hands folded on the table. “We’re flying back to D.C. this afternoon.”

  Cohn was sitting opposite me, his suit dark blue like his boss’s but hardly ready-made. He was studying me with the expression of a sadistic kid looking through a magnifying glass at the ant he was roasting.

  I gave them a report on the meetings with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. I left nothing out but played down the console table somewhat, saying that finding it seemed a long shot.

  “And if we do,” I lied offhandedly, “I doubt it’s enough to get a new trial.”

  McCarthy was nodding, but Cohn snapped, “What else?”

  “Have I done, you mean? I’ve made contact with a former neighbor of the Rosenbergs, who used to live down the hall from them at Knickerbocker Village. Natalie Ash.”

  “Commie,” Cohn said like he was coughing up phlegm.

  “At one time,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t know if she’s still active. She was on your witness list, wasn’t she, Roy? Why didn’t you call her?”

  “Didn’t trust her to tell the truth,” Cohn said. “She’s one of half a dozen ‘friends’ of the Rosenbergs who we suspected of being Soviet agents. Still suspect them. Some have taken a powder.”

  That shopworn tough-guy phrase made me smile. “You mean Russian agents, or Americans who deal secrets to the Soviets?”

  Small sneer. “What’s the difference?”

  “Plenty. You’d get way more traction finding an actual Russian spy on our soil … right, Joe?”

  McCarthy nodded emphatically. “If we had one of those, that would be fucking Christmas.”

  “See what I can do,” I said brightly. “Miss Ash is taking me on a tour of the Rosenbergs’ building at Knickerbocker Village, to see if there are any neighbors who witnessed David and Julius arguing over money and that failed business of theirs. Or heard or saw anything suspicious.”

  Cohn said, “Good. That’s a dead end. You’ll never get a new trial that way.”

  Several strong witnesses and that console table very likely could, in my opinion, but I didn’t say so.

  Still, there was something I did need to say.

  Pointedly directing my words to McCarthy, I said, “Joe, if I should happen to find new evidence—particularly evidence that seemed to clear the Rosenbergs or at least cast doubt on their conviction—I’ll have to come forward with it. You do understand that, right?”

  Nostrils flaring, Cohn said, “Who the hell are you working for?”

  McCarthy was frowning but said nothing.

  Now I looked at Cohn. His face was red and a scar on his nose was white.

  I said, “Granted I’m a double agent of sorts. But I’m accepting money from the Hammett committee. And you haven’t asked me to turn that money over to you.”

  The hoods on Cohn’s eyes actually rolled back some. “You’re taking our money, too!”

  “Not yours personally. Uncle Sugar’s—as we called him in the service.” I gave Cohn my nastiest smile. “I signed on to your committee as a consulting investigator. Well, I’ve been investigating and now I’m consulting. Got it?”

  His upper lip curled back over feral teeth. “You have a goddamn attitude problem, Heller.”

  “I get that a lot.” I turned to McCarthy. “Listen, Joe, I know your pet monkey here has a hard-on against the Rosenbergs. After all, he went to a lot of trouble helping frame them.”

  Cohn was on his feet, veins standing out in bas relief on his forehead. “You son of a bitch!”

  I smiled at McCarthy like a friendly priest. “I mean, more power to the little guy. He and that Saypol character, who’s a judge himself now I understand, got Ethel Rosenberg a cell on Death Row because she did a little typing. Maybe did some typing.” I transferred my gaze to Cohn. “Not bad, Roy. Not bad.”

  “Listen to me, you smug bastard,” Cohn said, a barking bulldog. “I didn’t frame that goddamn traitor Rosenberg, and his wife was in it up to her fat neck. He was spying for the Soviets. The FBI told me all kinds of things I couldn’t use in court, so I worked with what I had.”

  McCarthy said, “Sit down, Roy.… What’s your point, Heller?”

  It had been “Nate” before.

  “My point is this. As a private investigator licensed in three states, one of which we’re in right now, I am an officer of the court. And as an officer of the court, I am reminding you, a senator of the United States, that I cannot and will not withhold evidence. Joe, I can’t imagine that you’d want me to.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t!” McCarthy said, leaning back in his chair like somebody had opened a furnace door on him.

  Cohn’s tiny hands were clenched. “Fire him, Senator. Fire his ass.”

  “No,” McCarthy said. “He’s doing what I asked him to—he’s reporting back his findings.” With a strained smile, he said, “Just continue to let us know what you uncover.”

  “If anything,” I said with a shrug. Then I leaned forward and gave the senator an earnest look. “But I need your help, Joe. Can you pave the way for me to talk to Gold and Greenglass at Lewisburg penitentiary?”

  Cohn yapped, “Why talk to them?”

  “The Hammett committee expects it of me,” I said, fabricating just a little. “They believe Gold and Davey boy were lying.” I turned to Cohn. “More than that, Roy, they think you coached those two and fed them lies like candy when their own stories came up short.”

  The veins were standing out again. “Now you’re accusing me of suborning perjury!”

  “I’m not. The lefties are. Is that a surprise?”

  Cohn, breathing hard, just glared at me.

  McCarthy said, “But as Roy says … why talk to them at all? Just tell Hammett and crew that the prisoners refused to talk to you.”

  “We could do that,” I said. “But if I go down there and they stay consistent with what they said in court, it’ll undercut any effort to get a new trial.”

  McCarthy and Cohn exchanged raised-eyebrow looks.

  “And why in hell would they change their stories?” I said with a casual shrug. “They probably suspect—and are probably right—that the visitation room will be wired for sound. And they won’t say anything they don’t want the government to hear … since they are hoping for early release on good behavior one of these days.”

  McCarthy was waiting for Cohn’s reaction, which after a few seconds of contemplation was a curt nod.

  “I can smooth the way,” McCarthy said. “I’ll attend to it first thing tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Joe.”

  The senator, smiling to where his blue jowls might burst, rose and offered his hand. I shook it. Cohn and I just ignored each other.

  Outside the meeting room, a clutch of reporters awaited McCarthy and he stopped to chat informally with them, Cohn staying close, anxious to soak up some of the attention denied him earlier when Kennedy was getting it.

  As if summoned by my thoughts, the young assistant counsel appeared at my side.

  “I’ve, uh, been waiting for you, Nate. Step outside with me, would you? We don’t have much time.”

  We didn’t even have enough time for me to ask, For what?

  Ins
tead I just followed the tousled-haired kid, who was in a dark brown suit with no topcoat. I wore a Burberry because there was a chill now to go along with the threatening sky. A breeze with some teeth in it was at us till we stepped behind one of the Grecian columns flanking the entry.

  “There are a few things you need to know, Nate,” he said. It was cold enough for his breath to smoke. “When I was over at Justice, it was, uh, common belief that Roy Cohn invented that Jell-O box yarn.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And then put it in the mouths of his, uh, witnesses. Like medicine they had to take.”

  “Rumor or fact, Bob?”

  “I thought it was rumor at first. Then I checked the files—they weren’t sealed—and read Harry Gold’s first FBI interview.” His light blue eyes held me. “When Gold describes his meeting with the Greenglasses in Albuquerque, he makes no mention of the Jell-O box.”

  “Hell you say.”

  Using two pieces of jagged Jell-O box, cut up in the Rosenberg kitchen, had been such a vivid, unifying detail in the testimonies of Gold, David, and Ruth.

  “Or,” Kennedy went on with a bitter little bucktoothed smile, “that ‘Julius’ sent him. What Gold first tells the agents is he thinks his password was ‘Benny or Joe or somebody sent me.’”

  I grunted a laugh. “But somehow, over time, his memory got jogged.”

  “Somehow it did, yes. And Cohn likes to brag around the office that he, uh, personally prepped Gold and the Greenglasses. No details, of course … just a wink and a grin.”

  I pulled the Burberry collar up; it was getting colder. “How about when the FBI first interviewed the Greenglasses? Did you get a look at that?”

  He nodded. “David barely mentions Julius in his initial interview. Neither does Ruth.”

  “Cohn again?”

  Another nod. “He’s a ruthless little prick, Nate. He railroaded those two. I’m not saying the Rosenbergs didn’t do what they were accused of—there was some talk around Justice that they were getting what they deserved, but—”

  “Nothing more specific?”

  He shook his head. “I can tell you for a fact that the, uh, FBI interviews with all three witnesses have almost no mention at all of the Rosenbergs. At that point Cohn and his U.S. attorney boss Saypol take over, and, uh, suddenly the Rosenbergs are the bad guys and the story gets rich with all this Eric Ambler spy melodrama.”

  I mulled that momentarily. “Eventually Gold did come around to telling the same tale as the Greenglasses. You think that’s strictly Cohn’s coaching?”

  “Call it encouragement. The government housed both Gold and David Greenglass at the Tombs, on the, uh, eleventh floor—the ‘Songbird’ wing where ‘cooperative’ witnesses get preferential treatment.”

  “Next you’ll be telling me they shared a cell.”

  He smirked. “Not quite, but they did see each other on a daily basis—played chess together … and very likely got their stories straight. Follow? This is what you’re up against.”

  I put a hand on his arm. “Thank you for this.”

  He smiled that disarmingly shy smile of his. “One friend to another, Nate. I can’t give you anything on the record. This is just for you to know what you’re dealing with.”

  “I appreciate it, Bob. But it’s not like we’re close friends.”

  “If you can find a way to make Roy Cohn look bad,” he said, with an expression as ruthless as anything his rival had to offer, “we will be.”

  And he slipped away.

  CHAPTER

  8

  I spent much of the tedious train ride to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, going over the transcripts of Harry Gold’s and David Greenglass’s testimony, as well as various newspaper clippings and magazine articles, and some off-the-record information culled from Justice Department sources by Pearson’s man Jack Anderson.

  Particularly interesting was the FBI’s assessment that their star witness Harry Gold was a pathological liar. There had been considerable federal nervousness about how Gold might conduct himself on the stand. I could have told them they needn’t worry—nobody testifies more believably than a pathological liar.

  Harry Gold, the son of poor Russian Jewish immigrants, grew up in a rough section of Philadelphia, a bookworm picked on by schoolmates and imbued with the socialism of his Depression-battered parents. After earning a college degree in chemical engineering, the young man found getting work difficult until a Communist pal, also a chemist, arranged a position in return for some industrial espionage. The recipient of Gold’s criminal toil was Soviet Russia, his justification that he was “helping them along the road to industrial strength” (while pocketing a few dollars).

  Eased over the next several years into actual espionage, Gold claimed he wanted to quit, but feared his handlers would either expose or eliminate him. During the Second World War, the nondescript, pudgy, stoop-shouldered spy became the courier of atomic secrets obtained by British physicist Klaus Fuchs, who was working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. With Russia now an ally, Gold claimed he was only giving the Soviet Union “information that I thought it was entitled to.”

  As he rose in spy ranks, Gold began spinning elaborate tales to his contacts about a nonexistent family life, including a wife and kids (he was a bachelor). Drinking heavily now, he got increasingly careless in his spycraft, almost as if he wanted to be caught. He’d even been given several days’ warning that the FBI was closing in, but didn’t begin removing incriminating evidence from the house he shared with his brother and father until his time had all but run out. Soon he was confessing to the FBI.

  Maybe I didn’t consider myself a Jew, but I could recognize a schlemiel when I came across one, and Harry Gold seemed to fit the bill. That didn’t make him any less a skilled liar, particularly considering he’d fooled all the spies he was working with into thinking he was somebody he was not.

  * * *

  Lewisburg, population 5,268, might have fallen off the cover of The Saturday Evening Post or Collier’s, an idyllic community of shaded lanes, brick houses, and well-tended lawns—perfect for the university there and well suited to be the commercial center of such rich surrounding farm country. Maybe that was why the former Northeastern Federal Penitentiary—the cab took me a mile and a half from town out State 404—looked more like a university, or maybe a monastery.

  Possibly it was the Italian Renaissance–influenced architecture, utilizing rough-kiln bricks, concrete blocks, and cast stone. More likely it was the massive-walled facility’s red-tile roof standing out against rolling green hills. But this was a prison, all right, its endless gray concrete wall with red-brick guard towers enclosing twenty-six acres where red-brick buildings sprawled and a massive smokestack made a break for the sky.

  In the administration building of what had been declared “the most advanced penal institution in the world,” I was told by Deputy Warden Franklin Baxter that the two prisoners—one at a time, of course—would be brought to me in one of the attorney/client meeting rooms.

  “Would it be easier for you,” I asked innocently, “if I just visit them at their cells?”

  I was playing a long shot—if the meeting rooms were bugged, maybe this assistant warden wasn’t in on it. Wiring the cells would be far less likely.

  “Actually that would work out well,” he said. Slender, weak-chinned, about forty, he was bald on top and dark on the sides, with earnest brown eyes behind black-rim glasses. “Less manpower involved.”

  A guard escorted me to Gold’s cell through what was indeed an unconventional, modern facility. The seven-hundred-foot main corridor fed a series of three-story cell blocks alternating with administrative units—chow halls, gyms, clinics.

  Gold was in a one-man cell, six by ten with a metal bed, chair, and toilet. The guard had informed me that this was a cell block for “hardened criminals,” but Gold was here in controlled isolation for his own protection. Apparently spies were about as popular as pedophiles within these
walls.

  In a darker gray uniform than Sing Sing style, Gold was seated on the green-blanketed bed with his back to the wall, reading Irving Stone’s Lust for Life. At first I thought this was the wrong cell because he wasn’t the pudgy character whose picture I’d seen or who had been described by Ethel as a “fat slob.” He must have dropped sixty or seventy pounds inside, though his face retained a roundness and a peculiar lopsidedness, as if he’d had a stroke. His hair was dark, his forehead high.

  No cell was opposite us, just a wall against which a guard stood sentry, down a ways to give us a semblance of privacy. The cells on either side of Gold were vacant, possibly to further isolate him. He came over and stood facing me through the bars. He was about five eight. I didn’t offer a hand to shake—I’d been told no physical contact with the prisoner—and Gold knew not to, either.

  “I wasn’t expecting you here at my cell,” he said. His voice was soft, a second tenor; he reminded me a little of Elmer Fudd without the lisp. Or the shotgun. “You are Mr. Heller, right?”

  “Right. Pull up that chair and sit if you like.”

  “And make myself at home?” He shrugged. “If you’re standing, I’ll stand. I do enough sitting.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Droopy eyes fixed on me. “I admit I’m a little confused. As I understand it, you represent a group trying to get the Rosenbergs a new trial. Private investigator from Chicago, right? Yet word’s come down that I’m to cooperate.”

  “Word from the FBI, you mean.”

  “Well, from on high, anyway.” His eyes were dark and, droopy or not, had an alert intelligence at odds with his unimpressive veneer. “Let me guess. You asked at the last second to see me at my cell, figuring the counsel room was bugged.”

  I had to grin. “Nicely reasoned, Mr. Gold. How about your cell? Anybody but God listening in?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not wired. I’ve looked and looked, and there’s just no possible way, unless a G-man’s hiding down in that stool. That’d be shitty duty, huh?”

  And he returned my grin.