Their shadows deep a nov.., p.25
Their Shadows Deep: A Novel, page 25
“Do you know who murdered Victor?” Caitlin asked, checking to make sure Clara had no inkling that Gabe had pulled the trigger.
“I think men sent by Trafficante. Like the men who kill Max. But there are rumors about Victor. I hear them from the older girls. They say Victor works for the CIA and has a boss the girls call El vaquero Americano. The American cowboy.”
Caitlin was furious, thinking that Gabe was the cowboy and this was another detail he hid from her. Then Clara added, “I never meet him. This is before I see Senator Kennedy.”
“Do you remember the year?”
“Nineteen fifty-eight. Maybe a few months before.”
Caitlin relaxed. Gabe hadn’t started working with the CIA until 1959. And the movie had nothing to do with him shooting Victor. In all likelihood, Danny was right when he speculated that the CIA was going after Castro, Gabe was involved, and, when the Russians found out, they had Gabe killed. “Clara, what happened to the film?”
“I burn it.”
“Trafficante still wants the film, and the men he sends to find you won’t believe you burned it.”
Clara snapped, “Why not?”
“Because I don’t. You’re smart like your mother and probably figured the film would keep you safe. You could trade it to Trafficante if he’ll leave you alone. That’s not how it will go. The only way Trafficante can be sure you don’t have the film is if his men torture you, and if you hand it over, you’re a loose end, so they’ll kill you anyway.”
Clara stood. “Thank you for the sandwich.”
“Wait,” Caitlin said sharply, taking a pad and pen from her bag, then writing her address and detaching the page and holding it out to Clara. “Think about what I told you and talk to Uncle Arthur. You’ve suffered enough, and I don’t want you to suffer more. If you mail the film to me, I’ll phone your uncle and give him the name and number of a man who will make sure Trafficante won’t bother you.”
“And how will he do that?” Her tone implied that it was impossible and Caitlin was lying.
“He was once a man like Trafficante,” Caitlin said. “He knows other men like that who will do as he asks. And there is a police captain helping him. This captain is not a man Trafficante will want to upset.”
Clara smiled sweetly. “You could give me that information now.”
“And you could give me the film.”
“I burn it,” Clara said, taking the page and walking out of the deli.
Chapter 68
Greenwich Village
After retrieving her accumulated mail from the post office, Caitlin planned to phone Reed to let him know she was in the city. However, on top of the pile, under the thick rubber bands, was a picture postcard of the Liberty Bell. On the back Reed had written:
My apologies for my brusqueness last we spoke. An overdose of work and the inclement Philadelphia weather, and a longing to relive our day and night in Belmar were to blame. I’m off to hunt for sunshine. Can’t stop thinking of you. Will call soon.
Caitlin was disappointed Reed was away but glad he was anxious to see her. She sifted through the mail, dropping the junk into the wastebasket and writing checks for the bills. Danny had called earlier. She was going to stop by the station house, but Danny said he needed a break, so they were meeting in Washington Square. Caitlin walked up Waverly Place under a hard-blue late-October sky. In the park, the leaves were thinning flames of orange, copper, and gold. Boys with patchy beards and girls with long ironed hair sat on the stone rim of the fountain and scowled at the women in mink coats who crossed over from Fifth Avenue to let their poodles relieve themselves. Danny was sitting by himself on a bench. His uniform didn’t invite company.
“Did you miss your car?” Caitlin asked, handing him the keys to his Thunderbird.
“Missed you more,” Danny replied.
Caitlin had missed him, too, yet didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, so she answered him only with a smile and sat on the bench.
Danny gave her the keys to her Chevy. “It’s on Waverly. Behind where you left mine.”
“I saw it. Thanks.”
Danny slid the keys into his pocket. “Clara say anything useful?”
“I don’t know yet. She never met Gabe. But there was a rumor another CIA officer—they called him the American cowboy—was handling Victor Diaz. It was before Gabe joined the agency. Is it possible that since Diaz was taking money from the Americans and Castro’s people, this CIA officer was also playing both sides?”
“You got crooked cops,” Danny said. “Why not crooked spies?”
“Agreed, but I don’t know where to begin. That’s why I asked you to bring the report.”
Danny passed her a file folder. “I haven’t read it since February. Maybe you’ll see something I didn’t.” Gabe had written the report following his trip to Mexico City. Caitlin had found it in his suitcase after he was shot. Danny had had the foresight to have the report typed up before two CIA agents appeared at his station house to collect the original.
As Caitlin got up off the bench, Danny said, “I sent a photo of the dead guy at the Allerton to the Cleveland cops. They spoke to a couple witnesses that ID’d him as being at the February art show. I’m sure he murdered Winkie. Remember, the guy who murdered him is somewhere. You see anybody suspicious, promise me you’ll call.”
“I promise, Danny.”
Back in her apartment, Caitlin sat at her desk and read the report, listing the details that caught her attention on a legal pad. Gabe had spent twenty-four uneventful days in Mexico City. He was watching two middle-aged Cuban cousins, operatives for the CIA who were assisting with plans to blow up a European freighter loaded with munitions, destined for Castro’s men, in Havana Harbor. Every day, the cousins sat in the same café and spoke only to each other, except for Thursday afternoon, January 14. A man in a seersucker suit with a Pan Am airline bag on his shoulder stopped to talk to them. Gabe couldn’t see his face. He wore a red baseball cap and aviator sunglasses. He put the bag under the table and walked off.
Gabe wrote: Assume he is CIA. Seersucker popular with Ivy Leaguers. Tailed him, but he doesn’t move like a brainy college boy. More like a halfback in the open field. He stops at the gate of the US embassy, chats with guard, removes cap. Too far away to make out his face. His hair is long and the color of wet sand.
Nearby, she read, a short, husky pasty-faced man emerged from a taxi with a straw sombrero on his head. He wore a baggy gray suit. Gabe believed he was Russian. The Ivy Leaguer walked over to him. They didn’t greet each other and crossed the street and disappeared into a taco-and-enchilada joint. The Russian, Gabe wrote, could be a source for the CIA or a KGB agent.
Caitlin looked at her list: Cuban cousins. Payoff. Red baseball cap. Aviator sunglasses. Athletic Ivy Leaguer. Long hair the color of wet sand. CIA officer goes to eat with a short, pale Russian.
She read the report again. And again.
Chapter 69
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Come along, Kick says.
Jack is dreaming, and he’s in no mood to see Kick. He needs his rest. Tomorrow he continues his push for the Keystone State’s thirty-two electoral votes. Usually his dreams are as drab as charcoal sketches, but Kick’s tunic is gold, and red holly berries are in her hair. The color piques his interest, and he lets his sister lead him to their parents’ Hyannis Port home—site of those Kennedy touch football games his campaign uses to perpetuate the myth of his vibrant health. Now, a big white tent sits on the lawn, and music, as soft as the summery sea breeze, fills the air.
Jack asks, “Whose party is it?”
Taking his arm, Kick walks him into the tent, where hundreds of people drink, talk, and pluck hors d’oeuvres off trays borne by waiters in tuxedo shirts and bow ties. Across the tent Jack sees his mother in a wheelchair, talking to his brother Teddy and his sisters Eunice, Jean, and Pat. His father, scowling, stands behind the wheelchair and holds its handles.
Jack laughs. “Dad has a new job.”
Nothing new about him pushing Mother around.
A young man in a navy blue blazer and white slacks and an auburn-haired young woman in a wedding gown approach his parents.
“Kick, that’s—”
Caroline. She just got married.
Jack is stunned by the sight of his grown daughter. And amazed he survived so long with his Addison’s disease. He asks, “The handsome young guy’s the groom?”
Your son, John Jr.
Eager to congratulate his daughter and to meet his son, Jack heads for them. Kick stops him by grabbing his elbow. They can’t see you, but Jackie can.
His sister steers Jack to his left, toward his wife. Time has been kind to Jackie. She is still as slender and elegant as a tea rose.
“Dance with me, Jack.”
As they dance to a classical piece, Jack asks, “What song is this? It’s beautiful.”
With the fetching smile of a schoolgirl, Jackie replies, “‘The Wild Rover.’”
Jack may not recognize the music, but it’s a waltz, not an Irish drinking song. “You’re making fun of me. Because you think I’m a philistine.”
“And because I love you,” Jackie says.
She vanishes. The music turns brassy, pounding. At his feet, Nikita Khrushchev performs a Russian squat dance, beaming at Jack, extending a hand up to him.
Jack says to Kick, “A couple weeks ago, Khrushchev was banging his shoe on his desk at the UN to protest the Soviets being accused of crushing Eastern Europe.”
Kick grins. His mood’s improved since then. He wants to dance with you.
“My back. I can’t.”
Fidel Castro, in olive drab military fatigues, glides across the floor like an ice-skater and kisses the top of Khrushchev’s bald head.
“Jesus Christ,” Jack says. “Let’s go.”
Kick presses a fingertip to his forehead, and they are transported to the foaming edge of Nantucket Sound. The beach is crowded with women in bras and panties. Normally, women in lingerie would catch Jack’s attention, but these women are faceless, indistinguishable from each other, and as lifeless as mannequins.
All your conquests, Jack.
Jack knows he’s a hero to Kick, and he is floored by her cutting tone.
Go make a movie with them, Jack. And ask Caitlin to look for it. Maybe get her killed.
“I told Caitlin to quit looking.”
Your girling is dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Jack doesn’t need his sister to criticize his behavior. He is ashamed enough that he can’t control himself. Feeling guilty and irritated, he asks, “What the hell’s going on here?”
You’re dreaming, and in our dreams we stand naked before ourselves.
“Does everyone in heaven spit out that pretentious crap?”
We read a lot. Most of the angels were librarians or owned bookstores.
His sister skips from the beach to the top of the hill. Jack follows her into a shining green field. He has no idea where they are. Heaven? Ireland? The Land of Oz?
“Kick, where’s Bobby?”
Talking to a judge in Georgia to get Dr. King out of prison. Those cretins threw him in a cell for a traffic ticket.
“I called his wife, Coretta, and then I got the governor on the case.”
Smart politics, Johnny.
“Even better, it was the right thing to do.”
They ramble on and stop at the interior of a diner—a lunch counter with stools and booths with gray Formica tables. Richard Nixon sits in a booth, eating a hamburger.
He looks so young, Jack.
“He is. That was thirteen years ago. We were congressmen and invited to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to debate labor law. Afterward, we went to that diner. We were friends and talked all the time. He was brilliant. I invited him to my wedding, but he couldn’t make it. I hear when I almost died at the Hospital for Special Surgery, Dick broke down in tears. Did I beat him in the election, Kick?”
His sister giggles. I’ll never tell.
“You enjoy torturing me, don’t you?”
I’m your little sister. Of course I do.
Kick runs through the field. Jack chases her. The sky is gauzy with a cold drizzle. In the distance, Jack sees an old fieldstone church.
“Kick,” he calls. “Where are we?”
When his sister goes by the church and into a cemetery of weathered gravestones, Jack knows they are in Derbyshire, England. Tears press behind his eyes. Kick stops at her grave.
You never visit me, Jack.
“Because I prefer believing you’re alive.”
In Loving
Memory Of
Kathleen
1920–1948
Widow Of Major The
Marquess Of Hartington
Killed In Action & Daughter
Of The Hon. Joseph Kennedy
Sometime Ambassador Of The
United States To Great Britain
Joy she gave; Joy she has found
Jack, his voice breaking, asks, “Did you really find joy?”
Don’t be so sad, Johnny. I’m always here, and I still love you.
Someone has set a small stainless steel shaving mirror against the left side of her headstone. Jack hasn’t seen one since the war. He bends to retrieve it, but his back locks up.
Kick laughs, a sunny musical sound. You never could resist a mirror.
She hands it to him. His reflection is baffling. Jack was forty when Caroline was born. She has to be in her twenties now. Which means Jack is in his sixties. Yet he looks the same as the night in October 1960 when he landed at the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton Airport.
“Kick, my hair isn’t gray.”
No, it isn’t.
“Why isn’t my hair gray?”
Kick hugs him, a fierce parting hug. Jack, I’ve missed you so much.
When Jack opened his eyes in his bed at the Hotel Bethlehem, he wasn’t sure whether he was among the living or the dead. Then he felt the familiar cramping in his stomach. His colitis was acting up. That was the blessing of pain. It lets you know you’re alive.
Part IV
Chapter 70
Greenwich Village
November 1, 1960
Morning frost clouded the windowpanes of her study as Caitlin reread Gabe’s report from Mexico City. She had read it every day since Danny had given it to her and hoped her conclusion was wrong. She considered discussing it with Danny, but cops liked facts, not speculation. The apartment buzzer sounded. She looked out the window. A mailman, not the regular one, stood on the steps. Danny wasn’t always warning her to hear himself talk. Her courier bag was hanging from her desk chair, and she fished out her .38, then tucked it in the waistband of her dungarees and covered it with her sweater.
“Special delivery,” the mailman said, handing her a cardboard packet.
Caitlin thanked him. The packet was postmarked Albany and banded in packing tape. She used a paring knife to pry it apart. Inside was a reel of film and a handwritten note:
Please tell phone number and name of the man who can tell Trafficante to go away from me. Please tell this to Uncle Arthur. His store number is 518-555-3806. I don’t trust very easy. I am trusting you. Clara.
Before contacting Julian, Caitlin had to see the film. She walked to Big Lou’s, a cubbyhole of a used-camera shop on Seventh Avenue. Big Lou was one of those Village characters everyone seemed to know, yet no one remembered how they knew him. He was never without his black-and-green tartan beret or his sense of irony. Big Lou was five feet tall.
Caitlin put the reel on the counter. “What will play this?”
Big Lou inspected the reel. “It’s sixteen millimeter. A reconditioned Bell & Howell will do the trick. You can have it for sixty with the case and the manual.”
Caitlin paid and went home in a cab. She positioned the projector on her desk and plugged it in, then followed the diagrammed instructions, placing Clara’s reel on the top arm, feeding the film through a series of sprockets, looping it around the empty bottom reel, and switching on the motor and lamp. After drawing the curtains to darken her study, she sat in her chair and turned the clutch knob to start the movie.
A ghostly image appeared on the bare wall. To focus the image, Caitlin rotated the lens until the ghost became Clara. She was standing over the ornate metal footboard of a bed with a come-hither pout, slipping off the shoulder straps of her camisole and revealing her high, round breasts. Even in murky black and white, her beauty jumped out as though she were a backlit painting. Clara’s right hand disappeared into her G-string, and her face contorted in a laudable imitation of passion.
Caitlin discovered she hadn’t completely outrun the nuns at Our Lady of Sorrows. She had to stop herself from glancing away from the wall. Whoever was filming behind the two-way mirror had to be to the right of the bed because the point of view shifted to a bare-chested Senator Kennedy lying with his head propped up on pillows. For an instant, the back of Clara was visible. Her G-string was off, and she mounted the senator. The camera pointed at him. His eyes were closed, and his face was as serene as a sleeping child’s. Clara’s long hair swayed in and out of the picture as she rocked on top of him.
Anger boiled up in Caitlin. Working vice at the NYPD, she had come to loathe the prostitution racket, the sadistic johns and the pimps beating their girls in the street. However, this was worse for Caitlin because she knew Clara’s story—a child refugee from Hitler, a father dead in the camps, a mother dying young, a teenager taking care of a younger brother by selling her body to protect herself from a shit-bag police officer intent on taking it for free. And here was Kennedy, a rich Harvard man and Pulitzer Prize winner, a war hero and senator—the gilt-edged best of America—taking advantage of Clara’s heart-wrenching life and risking his aspirations in a scene that struck Caitlin as more pathetic than erotic. She still admired Kennedy the candidate—his intelligence and humor, his clearheaded take on issues, his unapologetic Catholicism and willingness to confront bigots, and that luminous, undefinable quality marking him as the man to lead his country across the New Frontier. Perhaps Été had been right. King Solomon was so wise, who gave a damn about his thousand women? Caitlin would vote for Kennedy. But as she watched Clara climb off him and the film ended in quivering white light, Caitlin doubted she could erase these images from her memory or would forgive Kennedy for his weakness.
