by Noel Hynd
Cooper laughed and introduced Lauren. “Lauren’s a reporter. We work together.”
“At the Eagle?” Winchell asked.
“At the Eagle,” said Cooper. “It’s a real rag, but a living’s a living, right?”
“You know how the game works, kid. A paper’s as good or as bad as its writers. And it’s good to see the ladies in the game, if you ask me, which you didn’t. What are you working on, besides cadavers and their booked-out-of-town notices?”
“Oh, there’s a story we’re following. Lauren and I.”
“Big?”
“Maybe.”
“Crime?”
“Definitely.”
“Scandal?”
“Could be.”
“Sex?”
“Why not?”
They all laughed.
Then, “Tell me about it,” Winchell said.
Cooper brought Winchell up to date on Firebird. Lauren listened. Winchell asked a question here and there, but offered little other than narrowed eyes, a big shrug and smoke from two cigarettes.
Then, when Cooper was finished, Winchell turned slightly to Lauren. “I owe Frank. This young thug used to cover my back from time to time,” he said. “I’ll never forget.”
“Seems you were covering mine,” Cooper said.
Winchell looked at Lauren. “What year were you born, honey?” Winchell asked.
“Nineteen forty-four.”
The old columnist whistled and laughed. “Well, then, holy smoke-ity. The Lepke story was three years before this child was born,” Winchell said.
Never shy about extolling his triumphs, Winchell recounted a few of the details of talking Lepke into surrendering. The old columnist was nearly seventy but could still uncork the charm. Lauren listened in rapt attention. Winchell then concluded, “Ah, but that was yesterday and today is today. Right now, you kids are talking to a sorry old has-been.”
“You must still have some phone numbers,” Cooper said.
“Sure, I have numbers. I also have a pair of legs, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be running in the Tokyo Olympics. No one takes my calls. I’m a pariah. You know that,” he said, measuring Lauren. Winchell fell silent, then ordered another drink. He turned to Cooper before it arrived. “Listen. I’m a tired old man, Frank. If I can do anything for you, I will. But you’ve got more juice on the street now than I do. These days I don’t know anything. Gornisht. Nada. Zero.” Winchell winked at Cooper and gave him a supportive slap on the shoulder. He paused. “Do you kids like big stories?” he asked.
“You know the answer to that, Walter,” Cooper said.
“You never know what you know till you know it, right?” Winchell said, sipping his drink. Winchell looked to Lauren. “Watch this guy work,” he instructed. “You’ll learn a lot.”
“I already have.”
Winchell’s eyes darted back and forth between Frank and Lauren. Then he snuffed out a half-smoked cigarette and leaned forward.
“Listen. I hear some disturbing stories,” Winchell said softly. “I had a source. A guy who talked to the Warren Commission. Then he died suddenly. Fell out of a window. Jumped or pushed. He was telling me about these Russian bastards. Spreading money around everywhere. Oil money. Petroleum development. Some of the money turns up bank accounts held by the Wallace campaign. How do you explain that? And my guy, the one who hit a sidewalk at eighty miles an hour, he was also talking about a squad of snipers who the Russians had embedded in the west. They’ll do anything to disrupt us, you know, those Red bastards. Filthy stuff.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“No. It’s all rumors. Hearsay. And the source is pushing up daisies. That’s all I got. Kook stuff, huh?”
“Maybe not,” Cooper said.
“’Maybe not.’ Thank you, Frank. You make a failing old man feel good.”
The two men shook. Cooper, on impulse, took the older man into his arms for a quick embrace which Winchell accepted.
Then Winchell eased out of Cooper’s hug. “Go get that big story, kids. You don’t need me,” Winchell said.
Chapter 33
It was Lauren’s impression that Frank Cooper’s career and Walter Winchell’s career had intersected in the moment of that impromptu embrace, Cooper’s on the way up and Winchell’s on the way down. She said as much as they drove down Second Avenue toward the East Village.
Cooper laughed. “Don’t fool yourself,” he said. “Walter is probably on to something.”
“What makes you so sure?” she asked.
“The other day, Walter sent a message to my office. He wished me a happy birthday.”
“So?”
“So, that’s a signal between us. ‘Happy birthday.’ It’s a code. It means he wants to know something or tell me something. That’s why we met. He’s snooping on my behalf.”
“Right in front of me and I didn’t know,” Lauren said.
“Don’t take offense. I just brought you into the game. Eventually, you’ll have your own set of signs and contacts. What’s open for dinner in your neighborhood?”
“There’s always Katz’s Deli on Houston Street.”
“That would work.”
“Do you want to come upstairs?” she asked. “You get to see my roach trap. Double park. Cops don’t ticket after dark on 9th Street. I want to get cleaned up, then we’ll go for food.”
Thirty-five minutes later, Cooper sat in the small living room of her apartment, the door half closed to the kitchen where the bathtub was located, thanks to the single line of plumbing, He heard Lauren turn on the water in the tub.
He went to the window in the living room. The shade was drawn. He parted it by half an inch. He stared down onto 9th Street. If either he or Lauren were under surveillance, he couldn’t spot it. He kept looking. No one was bothering his car.
The water stopped in the bathtub. Cooper released the shade. It settled. He turned. Through the half open door to the kitchen, he could see Lauren standing in the tub, her back three quarters to him. She was soaping an arm. He felt his thoughts racing. It had been a long time since he had been involved romantically. He could also feel a bond developing with Lauren, emotional as much as professional. Why else would he have taken her to meet Winchell?
There was a small living area and an adjacent sleeping alcove that was even smaller. The alcove was dim behind a beaded curtain. He sat down on a worn sofa in the living area. He guessed she might have bought it in a second-hand furniture store or even had a couple of strong-armed guy friends help her haul it up from the street. It smelled musty and looked as if it had come around a few hallway corners too sharply. No matter. It was comfortable.
There were periodicals on a side table. Vogue, Rolling Stone and Glamour. Two battered copies of Playboy, left over from the kicked-out boyfriend, Lenny. He did a fifteen-second speed thumb-through. Not bad. He leafed through a new issue of the Village Voice. Sarris and Mekas on films. Hentoff on jazz plus whatever burr he had under his saddle. Then Cooper spent a minute with Jules Feiffer’s comic strip which gave him a smile, as always.
He heard splashing from the next room. He heard water draining from the tub. He heard her adjusting the shower. Then, “Hey, Frank?” she called. “You still out there or did you bail?”
“Where would I have gone and why would I have bailed?”
“Could you come help me with something?” she asked. “Please?”
He stood and went to the door. “You’re asking me to come in there, right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you dressed?”
“No. Why would I be dressed?” A pause, then. “Frank, when I was in college, I used to pose nude for the art classes. It’s no big deal, okay? Do I need to beg?”
“Okay.” He nudged the door. At the fringe of his awareness was a final warning about getting involved with someone he was working with, or getting involved with a woman who was two thirds his age or getting involved with –
The door
swung easily. It went fully open. She was standing in the tub, using two hands to loosely hold a dark blue towel around her. “Can you help me step out of here?” She motioned that she needed two hands to hold the towel, but then the step down to floor was steep.
“How do you normally do it when no one’s here to help?” he asked.
“I don’t use a towel, silly,” she said. “I use one hand on the edge of the tub to steady myself and I take one big giant naked-lady step and I exit the tub. Then, I grab a towel.”
“You could have done that without calling me,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “We both know that, don’t we?” A moment, then. “Come help me.”
He moved forward to the edge of the tub. He held out one hand. She bunched the towel in her left hand just above her breasts and took his hand with her right. He eased back. She took her step and then a second and stood before him, still securing the towel with one hand. Very gently, with a hand on her hip, he steadied her.
“Are you dry?” he asked.
“Almost.”
“Then you don’t need the towel.”
“No,” she said. “Very good. I don’t. Why don’t you rip it away from me?”
“Rip or gently take?” he asked.
“Who the hell cares?”
He pulled it from her and tossed it over the side of the tub. She pressed close to him and they kissed, not as friends any more, but this time with passion. He held her closely and the kiss was followed by another, longer and more intense than the first.
“I knew this would happen,” he said.
“We both did,” she answered. “So let’s stop flirting.”
He took her by the hand. They went to the sleeping alcove beyond the beaded curtain. There was a small window, high up on the wall, an architectural quirk. He undressed quickly. As he did so, she snuggled under some sheets and reached to a box at bedside. Smoking materials: he could see a big box of matches. “Want a joint?” she asked, producing one.
“For real?”
“Yeah, for real. Before or after?” She lit and toked. She exhaled a long stream of smoke.
“Both?” he suggested.
“Good answer. You smoked pot before, right?” Lauren asked.
“Not for a while. When I was in Korea the Mexican-American troops always found some way to get their mota. They liked me and let me sample.”
She laughed. She passed him the joint as he slid into the bed next to her. “I like you, too. So you can sample anything I have also.”
There was still enough light from the street to maintain a pleasant dimness. Outside, a noisy argument had begun between two homeless men. The tires of a motorcycle screeched down the block. As a romantic setting, it had no stars. But it didn’t matter as they settled into each other. Fortunately, Katz’s Deli on Houston was open all night, but they didn’t arrive there until breakfast at seven a.m., feeling like a couple of teenagers.
Chapter 34
Later that morning, Lauren went to the office. Cooper taxied from the East Village to the Eastern Airlines terminal at Newark airport. The cab driver was quiet, but WINS News was not.
Governor George Wallace was the headline story. Wallace was polling more than forty percent of the potential vote with his campaign supporting “law and order” and racial segregation. He was ahead of Nixon in several states. The Democrat Humphrey trailed badly. Wallace was as strong among rural white Southerners as he was with blue-collar union men in the North. And now he was letting it rip with brash in-your-face foreign policy.
“If the Vietnam War is not winnable within three months of my taking office,” Wallace had said in Chicago previous evening, “I pledge an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. And I’m also sick of all our foreign aid dollars being poured down a rat hole. It’s time for our so-called allies to pony it up and pay more for their own defense.”
“He’s got a point sometimes, that guy,” the driver muttered, listening to Wallace.
“Most racist demagogues do,” Cooper said.
“Take it easy, pal,” the driver said. “I’m just saying the man has a point.”
The story on the radio continued. The squeaky-clean former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson was now mentioned as George Wallace’s running mate, as was Mr. G-Man, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Jimmie Davis, the Singin’ Segregationist, was still in the picture. Retired Air Force General Curtis LeMay also emerged as an even stronger possibility.
Cooper shook his head in dismay, but also in quiet amusement. Having been a soldier, Cooper was more than familiar with Curtis LeMay. He knew that among other things, LeMay was often a walking gaffe, waiting to happen.
Marty Friedkin shared a similar opinion in report he penned that afternoon.
“LeMay would be an intriguing choice for the Wallace ticket,” he wrote. “During his military career, he earned the nickname ‘Iron Ass’ for his stubbornness once his mind was made up. The former head of America’s nuclear-equipped Strategic Air Command, LeMay remains a hawk among hawks. He pines for the recent past when ‘we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it.’ He speaks happily about bombing North Vietnam ‘back to the stone age.’ Four years ago, he acquired a second-life notoriety for being the inspiration for General Buck Turgidson, played by George C. Scott, in Doctor Strangelove, a man willing to pay for a victory over the Soviet Union with unlimited American lives.”
Cooper’s driver delivered him to his flight. Take-off was on schedule. Fortunately, the flight was non-combat and not charted to go over Japan where both LeMay and Wallace had flown with the U.S. Air Force during World War Two, the former being the latter’s one-time commanding officer.
Chapter 35
In Washington, Cooper rented a car. It took a few minutes to break free of airport traffic and start a short drive through the Virginia countryside. After a few miles, he picked up the green and white signs directing him toward the Central Intelligence Agency.
Since the late 1940’s, the agency's headquarters had been situated on one hundred forty acres of what had once been farmland. The headquarters were enormous, surrounded by trees, a strange touch of landscaping with an oblong two-story base that occupied a full nine acres, including inner courtyards, offices and cafeterias. The building was retro and newfangled, a Taj Mahal of monotonous and remorselessly middle-brow bureaucratic architecture. Yet it housed intelligence arsenals on the cutting edge of American mid-century technology.
In the ground-floor lobby, Cooper presented himself to a long desk of “reception specialists.” He was assigned a “guide” to take him to his destination. The guide was a woman named Helen. She was attractive with very short brown hair. She wore a jacket and dark skirt. She was from Alaska, she said, and enjoyed living in Washington. She offered nothing more.
Cooper waited in a fourth-floor reception area, Helen remaining with him. Suddenly, the door to an adjoining office flew noisily open. When Brett Molloy appeared, Helen departed. “Hello, Cooper,” Molloy said. “Welcome to the belly of the beast. Come on in, would you?”
Molloy was affable this time. Cooper took the mood change to be proof that Molloy wanted something that only Cooper could provide.
Molloy seated himself behind a massive desk that bore not a single shred of paper. Through the venetian blinds behind Molloy, trees and sky. An American flag stood to Molloy's right. A portrait of President Lyndon Johnson dominated the wall to the left. On a side bookcase, Molloy had several framed photographs which chronicled his career. He was photographed at various ages with every American President, Cooper noticed, from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson, with one exception: Kennedy.
“You missed JFK?” Cooper asked, assessing the collection as he seated himself.
“Jack wasn't popular in this building,” Molloy said. He paused and spoke in a lowered voice. “Playa Giron. Bay of Pigs.”
“Got it,” said Cooper. Cooper noticed a picture of Molloy with the current head of the CIA, Ri
chard Helms. “Okay,” Cooper finally said. “Why am I here?”
Molloy folded his arms, drew a deep breath, and began. “If you help us, we help you. First confirm something for me: You're still sniffing butts in this Stanley Rudawski affair?”
“So to speak, yes. I am,” Cooper said.
“Why you? It's not just an obituary anymore, is it?”
“Maybe not. But it’s my story.”
“Why not give it to a writer who's not emotionally as close to it?”
“Maybe the powers that be consider me the best writer on the paper,” said Cooper.
Molloy chortled. “Best writer on the New York Eagle.” He laughed. “That's a little like first-class passage on a Greyhound bus, isn't it? Best sailor on the Titanic.”
“Worse newspapers than mine,” answered Cooper, “have brought down governments.”
Molloy saw no humor in the remark. But he forged onward.
“Okay, here it is, Cooper,” Molloy said, grimacing. “You're on to something, sure. We, this agency, don't even know what it is. But we're going to help you find it, if you let us.” He paused. “If you're willing to sit quietly in a reading room for a few days and approach all this with an open mind you may come out with some answers. And we might, also.”
“And in return? What do you want?”
“For starters, get the chip off your shoulder,” Molloy said. “You and Central Intelligence would both like to clarify what happened in Paris four years ago. You know what we say about the Soviet Union. Even when you’re wrong about the Russians, you’re right. Look. If you’re agitated with this, go back to Tel Aviv-on-Hudson. No harm, no foul. Or stay here and be a team player. Who the hell knows? May you land a Pulitzer.”
Cooper hesitated. “Thanks,” he said.
“Look, you cannot print anything you see in our files,” Molloy said. “You'll have to sign an agreement in advance, and we'll sue if you break it. Anything you can find on your own, you can run with. We point you in the right direction, we give you background, and you do the digging. It's that easy.” Molloy looked at him expectantly. “Well? Do we have a deal?”