And it came to me.
Before Life had tagged me “Private Eye to the Stars,” I’d been best known—in Chicagoland, anyway—as Private Eye to the Outfit. It was an exaggeration that flowed from a long-ago favor I had done Al Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti.
But the fact was, I’d always made sure to stay in the Outfit’s good graces. I had, from time to time, done them favors. And they me. They were unaware that I had, on occasion, been less than a friend to them, as when I worked undercover with Jimmy Hoffa for Bobby Kennedy’s rackets committee.
Still, to much of Chicago in the know, Nate Heller was “that mobbed-up private dick.” Not a badge of honor, exactly, though it had in several instances kept me breathing.
“We don’t want to approach these folks directly,” he said.
Yes, he said “folks,” Southern boy that he was.
He waved the cigar like a wand. “We need a, uh … an intermediary … to test the waters. We’re aware you are close to Sam Giancana, and to John Rosselli, here in Chicago.”
“You have an exaggerated notion of my status with the Knights of Columbus,” I said. “Anyway, Rosselli works out of Hollywood and Vegas, these days. And Mooney I generally steer clear of.”
Mooney was Sam Giancana, who currently ran the Chicago Outfit.
“Talk to Rosselli, then,” Shep said offhandedly. “We understand he has access to the highest levels of the Mafia, nationwide.”
That was true, though they didn’t use the term “Mafia” much. Rosselli was a kind of roving ambassador for the different national crime families.
“I think I better pass, old buddy,” I said.
“I am trying to appeal to your sense of patriotism, Nate.”
I gave him half a grin. “First of all, whenever somebody talks about patriotism, I put one hand over my wallet. Second, I vaguely remember already serving in the Pacific.”
“You’re the perfect person for this job, Nate.”
“The perfect patsy, if anything goes wrong. Caught in the middle between two armed camps who hate each other’s guts? And I got a son, Shep, remember? In junior high? He may want to go to college, too, someday, like your precious progeny. He can’t do that if I’m dead. Or, for that matter, if he’s dead.”
“I thought these people stayed away from family.”
“As a generality. I’m more attuned to specifics.”
Shep let out a weight-of-the-world sigh—also a cloud of Havana smoke. He leaned across the table.
“Nate, all you have to do is play emissary. Once. Test the waters for us. One of ours will take the second meet. Tell them there’s $150,000 in it for them, if they take the Beard out.”
“Really? You think that kind of money impresses the likes of Giancana or Rosselli? Giancana spills that kind of cash when he’s taking a crap with his pants down around his ankles.”
Shep frowned at me. Motioned me to keep my voice down. I guess I was getting a little worked up. Did I mention that the adjacent booth had stayed empty? With the restaurant otherwise filled, and probably an hour wait?
“Of course,” he said, in a throwaway tone, “there’d be fifty thousand in it for you, plus expenses.” He shrugged grandly, drew on the cigar again. “You could use it to put Sam through college.”
He didn’t mean Giancana. This “Sam” was my thirteen-year-old son.
I didn’t say anything. The gap-toothed smile was back—Shep knew money was my weak spot.
And I had to admit (to myself, if not Shep) that there was a stroke of genius in this: who would believe that the CIA would ever be in league with the Mob?
Plus, the Mob had plenty of reason to want Castro dead. He had taken their money and guns for years, when he was a revolutionary, then when he was president, chased them out of their casinos and seized their funds. Organized crime had long depended on their twin sin cities—Vegas and Havana—for their major cash cows. With the Beard gone, maybe the boys could reclaim their Caribbean citadel of sin.…
Then something else occurred to me and I frowned. “Wait a minute. I get it. I know what this is about.”
This seemed to genuinely confuse Shep. “You do?”
“It’s the ol’ October surprise. Tricky Dick and Jack Kennedy are neck and neck in the polls about now, and if the Eisenhower administration gets credit for bagging Castro, then Nixon wins the White House.”
He was waving the hand with the cigar, making smoke trails. “No, no, Nate, that’s not it.… I told you, the government doesn’t want credit for this kind of operation.”
“Oh, but if it’s timed right—if Castro is done in, in the waning days of the election, Nixon can get just the boost he needs before Ike’s administration gets around to denying having anything to do with something as nasty as political assassination.”
Shep abandoned that fine Havana to an ashtray. His gaze was unblinking but not unkind. “You’re wrong. This can’t happen fast enough to help Nixon. It really can’t. This will take weeks, maybe months of negotiation and planning.”
I was shaking my head. My arms were folded.
“Nate … I know you and the Kennedy boys are tight.”
I kept shaking my head. “Not Jack. I don’t know Jack that well. But I worked for Bobby on—”
“The rackets committee, I know. And I also know that the Outfit doesn’t hold that against you. Which means you likely played both ends against the middle, and that’s why you’re on the grassy side of the ground, at the moment.”
At the moment.
“But know this,” he went on, some edge in his voice, the Southern drawl damn near gone. “The Company doesn’t work for any political party. We work for America’s interests. This plan has the blessing of both Nixon and Dulles, yes … but also Jack and Bobby.”
“What?”
He nodded. “We brought them in on this. The potential next president and his chief adviser. And they approve. They are not fans of Fidel, Nate. You can check with Bobby yourself, and see.”
* * *
I did.
And three days later I was again discussing murder over a linen tablecloth. This time at the Brown Derby in LA.
With Johnny Rosselli.
They called him the Silver Fox, a study in flashing teeth, manicured nails, and gleaming Italian loafers, looking more like a movie producer than a mob guy with his perfectly cut silver-gray hair and blue-gray eyes against a deep tan. His gray hound’s-tooth jacket, like the one Paul Drake wore on Perry Mason, went swell with the gray silk tie, a matching silk handkerchief in the breast pocket.
He made a piker out of me in my pencil-striped brown lightweight tropical worsted. But plenty of starlet-age girls batted their eyes at me, too, so maybe I was holding up in my declining years, or looked like a producer myself.
That made sense in the bustling hat-shaped restaurant, with its framed caricatures of stars—our booth was overseen by James Cagney and Joan Crawford, both veterans of crime movies. And all around us, in the yellow glow of derby-shaded lamps, film folks were talking about ideas for movies, but none wilder than our plot.
We disposed of our respective orders—I had corned-beef hash, Rosselli the Cobb salad, both signature Derby fare—as well as any small talk.
I waited till coffee to lay it out for him. I started by saying “high government officials” wanted his help, and that anything said today would be strictly between us.
He started laughing about halfway through my little opening speech.
“Me?” He had a cigarette in a holder perched between heavily jeweled fingers. “You want Johnny Rosselli to get in bed with the feds? Would this be the same feds who are following me wherever I go? Checking with my tailor, my shirtmaker, seein’ if I pay in cash?”
“This isn’t the IRS, John. It’s … the Company. You know, the Agency.”
That stopped him, but only momentarily. He shrugged, like a bad impressionist doing Ed Sullivan. “Spooks. Yeah, okay. But that’s foreign, ain’t it? They’re strictly overseas,
those guys.”
“They’re supposed to be. And anyway, this is overseas, John. Well … ninety miles overseas.”
His smile froze, then disappeared. Suddenly he looked his age, which was around mine (every year of which I felt, by the way), as he put the pieces together.
He squinted, trying to bring me into focus. Over his shoulder, the cartoon Cagney was giving me the you-dirty-rat look. “They want my help doing…?”
“Just what you think, John. Getting rid of Castro.”
His jaw dropped. Actually, it was kind of fun, or anyway amusing, to see a mob guy look flabbergasted like that. A guy who had hung around with top gangsters and who had killed people as casually as you might slap a mosquito, responding to me with the expression of an eight-year-old viewing Mount Rushmore.
I said, “Can you see where this would be of mutual benefit to certain parties that might otherwise seem at odds?”
He placed the cigarette-in-holder in an ashtray. Then he sipped his coffee as delicately as if taking Communion. His hand was shaking—just a little, but shaking.
“Nate … you are serious.”
“Very goddamn.”
He began drumming his fingers on the table, making tiny thumps against the cloth. “How would we go about this?”
“That would be up to you. You would have whatever support you needed, understanding that this is what they’re calling a ‘black bag’ operation. Enlist anybody’s aid you like. But it’s got to be set up that Uncle Sam had no part of it. And the spooks get … ‘total deniability,’ is the phrase.”
He nodded, the gray-blue eyes moving fast, like a guy watching a Ping-Pong tournament. I could almost hear him thinking how he’d like to be the guy responsible for getting Havana back for the boys.
“This ever gets connected to the government,” I said, “understand that they will deny it. Just like I will deny any role. You say Nate Heller was your contact man, I’ll say you’re out of your gourd. That you’re a fucking liar trying to save his ass. I leave anything out?”
“I think you about covered it,” he said. His eyes had stopped moving. He looked vaguely shell-shocked now.
A red-jacketed waiter came and refilled our coffee cups.
I said, “I’m gonna guess you’ll need to talk to Mooney about this.”
Rosselli nodded and kept nodding for a while, like a bobblehead doll. “That’s right. This is not something I can decide. Sam’ll need to hear this from you.”
I shook my head. “This is my only contact. I’m just the matchmaker, I don’t go out on the dates. If you’re interested in pursuing this opportunity, I’ll give a number to call, and—”
He held up a stop hand. “No. This ends here, goes no fucking further, unless you take the first meeting. I don’t carry something like this to Mooney secondhand.”
I thought about it, but not long. Didn’t see I had a choice.
“Okay,” I said.
He extended his hand across the table, and I shook it. I could say it was as clammy as death and gave me a chill, but it was just a handshake, firm and dry.
Before we left, he said, “Just so you know, Heller—the only reason why I’m doing this is because I am a good American.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “Sure, John.”
“I’m an immigrant, and whatever hassle the G has dumped on me, I still got a great life, and I love my country. You can say I’m a corny wop son of a bitch, if you like…”
I probably wouldn’t.
“… but I am doing this out of patriotic impulse.”
“Cool,” I said.
So by early October, I found myself lapping up Miami Beach sunshine outside that sleekly curving giant wedding cake called the Fontainebleau Hotel. I was in swim trunks and Ray-Bans in a lounge-type deck chair next to an ugly gnome called Sam Giancana.
The top mob boss of Chicago had a tan so dark he was damn near black, the hair on his scrawny chest and little pot belly starkly white against that tan. He was in swim trunks, too, plaid ones, and sunglasses that hid his tiny dark eyes, with a narrow-brimmed straw Panama concealing his thinning gray hair. Nothing could be done to disguise the lumpy nose and the unhealed slash that was his mouth.
Giancana had flown down on a private plane with only one bodyguard, who was also the driver of his rental car. He had left the bodyguard behind in one of the five rooms of the top-floor suite where Giancana and Rosselli were staying, with one other guest. I had my own room, to give these peers their privacy and in hopes of exiting as soon as I’d played emissary, leaving them to talk and think about the Company’s request.
As for the “one other guest,” that was Santo Trafficante, who had brought along three bodyguards, plus a chauffeur/bodyguard, who had driven his boss down from Tampa in a Lincoln with bulletproof windows.
I was not thrilled that another top mobster had joined the party, but was in no position to protest. I assured myself that this Miami Beach meeting would end this mission where I was concerned. Maybe I even believed it.
At any rate, I understood, without being told, why Trafficante’s presence was necessary. The Florida mob boss still had the kind of connections in Cuba that would make getting to Castro possible. Also, Rosselli was really middle management, and could only approach a man of Trafficante’s stature through another don, like Giancana. Politics and respect made the world go round. The underworld, too.
Right now Giancana was pissing and moaning about Trafficante’s bodyguard contingent.
“What is he, a fuckin’ pussy? Who the fuck is gonna bother us down here? Anyway, nobody’s at war. We’re all one big happy fucking family.” His laugh was like the sound a guy makes when the doctor says turn your head and cough. “It’s all because they tried to take him out when he was cooped up down in Cuba. Ever since then, he’s … what’s that shrink term, Heller?”
“Crazy?”
“Naw! Paranoid. That’s what he is, Santo. A paranoid pussy!”
He cackled.
Giancana was on his third tropical drink. It was almost amusing to see a tough top hood like Sam sip at a straw stuck in a pineapple sprouting umbrellas and fruit and plastic.
Almost.
“I brought one man, Heller. One man! All the way from Chicago. Listen, this hotel here, I love it, this fabulous fucking place … they got a small army of hotel dicks. Normally, hotel dicks might give me a pain in the ass. But these guys, they look after us. So what I’m sayin’ is, there are bodyguards on fuckin’ staff. Why bring a platoon down from Tampa? Look at that one!”
Giancana was not pointing out a hotel security staffer or one of Trafficante’s bodyguards, either. Rather he was pointing out—literally—the latest of dozens of good-looking girls in bathing suits, bikinis mostly, that had caught his attention, and caused him to comment loudly on their charms. In a dignified manner, of course, like, “The tits on that one!” and “I would eat breakfast off that ass!”
At a little table under an umbrella next to me was Johnny Rosselli. He was in a white hotel terry-cloth robe and sandals and his own Ray-Bans. I believe he felt he had enough of a tan. I could feel the uneasiness coming off him like heat shimmer.
Rosselli caught my glance and said, “Nate? Let’s get another round.”
His eyes said that what he wanted was a word away from Giancana, who was sipping his fruity drink, and seeing us go said, “Get me another of these Zombie fuckers!”
This kind of language was not generally heard in a public place, where children and families frolicked among the palms, even if the outdoor walls were adorned with sculptures of centaurs and bathing maidens. We got a lot of dirty looks, but Giancana either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
At the thatched bar, Rosselli and I ordered another round, and while we waited, he said, “We got a problem with Sam.”
“Oh, I think he’s delightful when he drinks too much. Takes the edge off his being a psychopath. That’s a shrink term, you know.”
“Heller, if he do
esn’t go up and start talking to Santo, then Santo is gonna get pissed, and I don’t mean drunk. It’s disrespectful. This whole … enterprise, it’s gonna go belly-up.”
“I’m a trained detective, John. I already put that together. What the hell is going on?”
Rosselli sighed. “Momo got word that his Phyllis is, you know, being untrue.”
“Momo” was yet another Giancana nickname. “Phyllis” was Sam’s mistress, Phyllis McGuire of the singing sisters, and Rosselli referring to her “being untrue” in that ridiculous high-school sense meant that Sam (who was married, by the way) thought somebody else was fucking her.
“Okay,” I said. “And this is what’s putting him in a foul mood?”
“It is. She’s in Vegas right now, and word is, she’s banging Dan Rowan.”
“Of Rowan and Martin. The comedy team?”
“Yeah. Shit, they ain’t even that big. I mean, if it was Martin of Martin and Lewis, that’d be another thing.”
“Yeah, it’d all be in the family. Also, it would mean Martin and Lewis were back together.”
“It’s not funny, Heller. She’s the love of his life, this broad.”
I sighed. “Look, maybe there’s something I can do.”
Rosselli’s eyes sparked with hope. “That would be fucking fantastic, Nate. What?”
I didn’t answer him, just took my share of the drink refills and led him back.
“Sam,” I said, handing the mobster a carved pineapple full of liquor and doodads, “I heard about your problem.”
His nostrils flared. “I don’t have any problem!… Rosselli, you got a big fuckin’ mouth, you know that?”
A muscular kid about twenty, with a swarthy cast to his features, was striding over in a small, bulging bathing suit. He was tan, or maybe just Italian.
“Excuse me, mister,” he said, looming over Giancana, throwing shadow on him. Despite the words, this was not delivered in a respectful manner.
“Yeah?” Nor was this.
“I don’t appreciate the comments or the language. This is a respectable place, and if you don’t cut out the filthy talk and the rude remarks about nice girls, you and I are going to have a problem. Do we understand each other?”
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