by Ted Allbeury
4
“Sweetie” Dawson was 22. Just over six foot tall with wavy blond hair and freckles across his nose and cheeks. Athlete, ball-game player to a high standard, he had chosen the army rather than the scholarship to UCLA. He wasn’t intelligent but he was sensible in a slow easy-going sort of way and the army could give him almost the same athletic facilities as the university without the pretence of attending classes that would bore and confuse him. As a second lieutenant he was drawing 690 dollars a month plus some benefits like special training, free time for representing the army at sporting events and no great disciplinary pressures.
He met Debbie after her performance at an army camp just outside San Diego. He thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and had been surprised when she accepted his invitation to the beach-hut he hired at La Jolla. When she seemed to take it for granted that she would spend the night with him he was overwhelmed. He had several regular girl-friends who slept with him from time to time when his training programme allowed such therapy. His sex-drive was normal but not excessive despite his opportunities, but his first night with Debbie he looked back on with embarrassment. He was sure that she must rate him as some kind of maniac.
He was sitting on the steps of the shack the next morning looking out across the ocean, trying to think what excuses he could offer when she woke. The fact that she was a foreigner made it even more difficult. “Sweetie” Dawson was a nice young man from a small town in Kansas and he wanted to do the right thing. And he had fallen for Debbie right from the start.
He turned to look as he heard her footsteps. She was wearing his towelling bath-robe and she was smiling as she settled down beside him on the steps. He waited for her to speak so that he could decide what to say.
“God I’m hungry, Sweetie. Where can we get a real good breakfast?”
Smiling with relief he said, “We’ll go into town to Joe’s Place.”
She looked at him, her eyes screwed up. “You look kind of uneasy. Are you overstepping your leave or something?”
“Will you see me next weekend, Debbie? Same as this weekend?”
“Sure I will. I’ll be here for another month yet. There’s no show next weekend so you can pick me up on the Friday afternoon about four at my place. OK?”
“That’s great. Real great.”
She was surprised when he visited her. It was early afternoon and when she answered the door bell he was standing there smiling. “Hello, Debbie. I was on my way through to San Francisco. I heard you were here. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Come on in.”
She poured them both a glass of wine and they sat in the armchairs with the slatted sunshine lying in bars of black and gold across the room, the voices from the parade ground faint in the distance. They went through the usual social chit-chat when he looked at her and said quietly, “I want you to be … Nancy Rawlins … Nancy Rawlins … close your eyes … good … deeper and deeper … nice and relaxed … eight … nine … ten … tell me your name.”
“Nancy Rawlins.”
“Are you relaxed and comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about your doctor.”
“Washington 547–9077. Ask for Joe Spellman.”
“Will you do something for me, Nancy?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to look at a photograph. This one.”
As he put the photograph on the coffee table between them she leaned over to look at it.
“Do you recognize the man?”
“Is it Cary Grant?”
“No it isn’t Cary Grant. I don’t know his real name but he is an evil man. Very evil. One of my friends was killed because of this man. I want you to point him out to some friends of mine. Just point at him and say—‘That is the man.’”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what you have to do when you see my friends.”
“When I see this man I say ‘That is the man.’ ”
“Very good. Now let me help you pack a case for the journey.”
As she came down the aircraft steps she had to shade her eyes against the mid-day sun and she was startled when someone touched her arm as she reached the tarmac. He was a handsome man in his fifties with black hair laced with grey, and an old-fashioned Victorian moustache.
“Kalimerasis thespinis Rawlins.”
Debbie smiled. “I don’t understand.”
The man smiled back at her. “Panayotis Synodinos at your service. Is this your first visit to Athens?”
She frowned and said, hesitantly, “I think so. Where are your friends?”
“I take you there. I got my car here.”
He took her arm, grasping it firmly, ignoring the terminal building and immigration controls. A uniformed policeman nodded as they passed and another was standing by the Ford Capri as if he had been guarding it.
As she settled into the passenger seat he started the car. They left the airport from a small gate on the perimeter road.
“Is no need to go into city for us.”
She smiled and shrugged. She saw a road sign but it was in Greek letters and she couldn’t understand it. Ten minutes later they were climbing a coast road that looked on to the sea and a cascade of rocks. There was a lot of traffic on the road but the Greek drove as if they were alone on the highway, his teeth clenched, his lips bared. He didn’t speak until they had been driving for nearly half an hour. Then he nodded his head.
“Is Temple of Poseidon. We go to Sounion and a little bit more.”
Ten minutes later he turned off the main road on to a sandy track that passed between groves of olives and through a small village. There, perched up on a hillside, was a large white villa. He stopped the car and pointed. “Is where we go. Yes. We meet them there.”
She nodded and then, turning to her, grinning, he shoved his hand under her skirt and up between her legs. Taken by surprise, she clawed at his face and reached for the door. He pulled back, blood on one cheek, his big brown eyes amazed. “Why you not want? We got plenty time to making love.”
“You must be crazy. Who the hell do you think you are?”
He shrugged. “American girls always like it with Greek men. Always.”
“Just take me to the place, mister. Get moving.”
The white stone walls flowed with bougainvillaea and the big wrought-iron gates were both wide open. As they reached the villa itself there were half a dozen cars parked over by a line of garages. A man stood at the open door. A huge man with a gross belly that overhung his leather belt. The backs of his hands and his arms were covered with thick black hair. He smiled as they walked towards him. And despite his gross body he had a certain charm as he waved them into the cool hallway.
He said in good English, “You like maybe to bath or rest before you meet the others?”
She shook her head. “They want me to catch the plane back tonight.”
“OK. Let’s go inside.” He opened a carved wooden door and there was the sudden sound of voices. Seated at a long table were ten or a dozen men who stopped talking as the big man led her round to the two chairs at the head of the table.
As she sat down the big man sat beside her and started talking in Greek. He spoke slowly and quietly as if he were explaining something. The men listened intently, sometimes looking at her as if the man was talking about her. She had seen him in the first few seconds.
Then the big man turned to her. “And now tell me your news.”
She pointed at the man who looked like Cary Grant. “That is the man.”
For a moment there was silence then like animals they seized the man. The man who had driven her there took her arm and led her through the open windows to a patio. She heard a man screaming, and blows, and men shouting before the driver reached out to close the window. He glanced at her and then said, “Is for going down the steps. You follow me. Nice and quick.”
Two hours later she was boarding the Pan Am flight to New York and San Francisco.
/> She saw “Sweetie” Dawson drive up in his beach buggy and waved to him from the window. As she opened the door for him she saw his face and her smile faded.
“What’s the matter, Sweetie, what’s happened?”
He stood there, hands belligerently on hips. “Maybe you’ll tell me what happened.”
She frowned. “Nothing’s happened.”
“Too Goddam true. So where were you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I came here like you said. Four o’clock Friday. I hang around for two hours but the place was empty. I phoned half the night but there was no answer. I came here four times on the Saturday and twice on Sunday. Nothing. So where you been, little girl?”
“I haven’t been anywhere, Sweetie.”
“You don’t need to give me that kind of crap, honey. You stood me up. You don’t need to lie about it.”
“I’m not lying, Sweetie. I’ve been here all the time, I swear. Why should I stand you up?”
“You tell me, honey. Maybe you found yourself a major or a colonel.”
“You’re out of your mind, Sweetie. Come on in.”
“You must be joking. I just wanted to hear what story you’d give me.” He turned and went down the steps, turning at the bottom to look back at her.
“You’re a two-timing bitch and …” He waved his arm hopelessly, his voice breaking as he turned away and walked to his buggy. He didn’t look back as he crashed the gears and tore away with a screech of tyres.
As she closed the door she leaned back against it, closing her eyes. She felt a floating sensation and she could smell mimosa. She walked slowly to her bedroom and lay down on the bed. She slept, still in her clothes, for a night and most of the next day.
5
Sam Giancana sat in his hotel suite watching the ball-game on Channel Two, the remote control on the arm of his chair. He had his feet up on the coffee-table, his veined and hairy legs exposed below the blue towelling bath-robe. From time to time he looked at his gold watch. He was agitated but not because he was scared. At least, no more scared than a man who is expecting the jackpot and fears that he might only get the second prize. Only half a million instead of a million.
There were mob bosses who still saw him as no more than the useful, competent thug that he had been when he started, and tonight he hoped that he could prove them wrong. There was no risk, no possibility of anything bad, just the question of whether it was going to be good or fantastic. He would be happy to settle for “good” but every instinct he had said that it was going to be the jackpot.
It was nearly two o’clock when she let herself into his room and he could tell from her face that it had worked. He cross-questioned her for nearly two hours. Trying to make her recall every word that had been spoken and every detail of the encounter. Even when she was lying naked on his bed he would stop in his love-making to ask yet another question, and when she had gone back to her own room he sat thinking about how to use it. It was unbelievable but it was true. The President of the United States was screwing one of Sam Giancana’s girls. They only thing he had to sort out now was whether blackmail was better than using the girl to influence the President to lay off the mob. Jimmy Hoffa would surely be grateful as well as pleased.
J. Edgar Hoover looked at the computer print-out of the White House phone logs. There were over seventy calls from the pretty dark-haired girl to the President in the two years since he became President, and the loose sheets from the files recorded their many meetings in hotel rooms and even in the White House itself.
It wasn’t a lunch that the FBI Director was looking forward to. He felt no embarrassment about the material itself. He saw too many files on well-known people to be surprised, shocked or embarrassed. But in this particular case his problem was how to start. How to lead into the subject. And how to leave it so that the President didn’t seek some revenge on him or the FBI in retaliation.
He was actually going into the private room, where the table was laid for a working lunch, when he suddenly realized how it could best be done. Just the summary showing the girl’s relationship with Giancana would be enough. He had been a prime target of the Kennedys for years. The President wouldn’t need the details filling in. Hoover didn’t like either of the Kennedys all that much himself, and he was well aware that they both disliked him intensely.
He sat waiting for the President and then stood as the door opened. John F. Kennedy nodded to him briefly and then turned to give instructions to one of his aides before closing the door.
“I can give you twenty minutes, Mr. Hoover. I thought we could eat as we talk.”
“I can be away in ten minutes, Mr. President. I don’t need to interrupt your lunch.”
“What is it this time? Cubans or Russians?”
Hoover held out two single pages of typescript. “If you could read that, Mr. President. It doesn’t need any discussion or comment from me.”
The President took the two flimsy sheets and sat at the dining table pushing the place-setting to one side. He read it slowly, his chin resting in his hand. Just once he raised his head, gazing in thought towards the window, then turning back to the summary. Finally he looked up, pushing the two sheets across the table to where Hoover was still standing.
“Leave it to me, Mr. Hoover.” He stood up, his eyes hard and his mouth determined. “You’d better take your papers.”
“They’ll be in my private safe, Mr. President.”
“I’m sure they will, Mr. Hoover.” And the President walked across to a telephone on a small mahogany desk. As he stretched out a finger to press a button he turned towards the older man. “Good-day, Mr. Hoover.”
“Good-day, Mr. President.”
Extract from transcript of CIA phone surveillance, February 1962
PERSON UNDER SURVEILLANCE: Angelo Bruno.
STATUS: Mafia head Philadelphia.
INCOMING CALLER IF IDENTIFIED: Willie Weisburg.
STATUS: Associate of Angelo Bruno.
Weisburg: “… see what Kennedy done. With Kennedy a guy should take a knife, like one of them other guys, and stab and kill the fucker, where he is now. Somebody should kill the fucker. I mean it. This is true. But I tell you something. I hope I get a week’s notice. I’ll kill. Right in the fucking White House. Somebody’s got to get rid of this fucker.”
As the months went by Boyd spent much of his free time with Otto Schultz and his family and friends. None of the friends were connected with the CIA but they were all aware that Otto Schultz was a senior man at Langley. There were sometimes joking references to his job but that was as far as they went.
Boyd had operated as an SIS field agent in a number of countries but he found Americans easier to get on with than Europeans. The bonhomie was, perhaps, overdone, but it made for easy relationships and a lack of the usual bureaucratic difficulties that applied in most foreign countries. There were two or three pretty girls whom Patsy manoeuvred in Boyd’s direction. He took them out and obviously enjoyed their company. He slept with one of them and had vaguely thought of marriage, until she announced one weekend that she was marrying a White House aide whom they all disliked as an obvious boot-licker.
Boyd’s favourite place was Great Falls, particularly the old pathways linking the locks on the abandoned Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. He sometimes persuaded the family to hire bicycles for long rides along the canal bank. They were amused that their visitor took them to places that they had never been to before despite living in the area. It was on one of these trips when Otto Schultz and Boyd had been left to guard the picnic basket while the others explored that Schultz first broached the question.
“We’ve asked for your posting to be extended, Jimmy. How do you feel about that?”
“Flattered, I suppose. I don’t suppose London will agree. They don’t like us getting our feet under other people’s tables for too long.”
Schultz smiled at the phrase. “What’s that other thing you say—knock ’em for six?”
>
Boyd laughed. “I don’t know why that amuses you so.”
“It’s kinda neat. Anyway, would you like to stay?”
“If it doesn’t hinder my promotion—yes.”
“One or two people have asked me if you’d be interested in joining us. All official and above board. No funny business.”
Boyd turned his head to look at the American. “To do what, Otto?”
“We spend a lot of time dealing with Britishers, one way and another. Goodies and baddies. We think we sometimes go about it the wrong way and maybe you could advise us. Apart from that people have noticed a couple of other things about you.”
“Like what?”
“One thing is you don’t panic. You don’t flap. And we reckon you’ve played it down the middle. Helping both sides and hindering both sides when you thought it was necessary. But I guess what we really appreciate is that you care about what we do and how we do it. You don’t go along easily with the bit about the end justifies the means. We’ve been a bit light on that recently. It’s time we had a few more on board who question what we’re doing.”
“A kind of professional old-maid?”
Schultz smiled. “No. Anyway American old-maids are pretty tough cookies. Call it a restraining hand. A looker before we leap.”
“You mean a permanent transfer? Or just a short-term engagement?”
“Neither, Jimmy. We mean that you resign from SIS and apply to join us. You’d need to be a citizen before we could take you on but we’d arrange that. You would have the same status as me after two or three months to be shown our funny ways. You’d get 40,000 dollars a year and backdated pension rights. Free medical care and the usual benefits.”
“You’ve only known me for about twenty months. Is that long enough?”
“We think so. Think about it, Jimmy. You’re due to take leave soon. Have a word with me when you get back. There’s Patsy and the kids coming back. Don’t discuss it with her.”
“OK. Anyway I appreciate the offer. I’ll think about it seriously.”
Carlos Marcello had been born Calogero Minacore. He had changed his name because although his parents were both Sicilian he had been born in Tunisia. And if he were ever deported from the USA that would be where they would send him. His place of birth on his passport was Guatemala, which was much nearer than North Africa.