Harlot's Ghost

  Modene grieved to a surprising degree. As she confessed to Willie, she had hated her father for years. When drunk, he had treated her mother badly. Nonetheless, she felt herself to be very much like him. At the end of a week-long visit home, she wept in her mother’s arms because now she could never come close to her father, and she had always assumed that would sooner or later transpire.

  After Modene returned to work, however, she felt recovered, and was surprised at how little her father’s condition now seemed to affect her. Then, a week later, on a three-day visit to Chicago, she discovered that she was at the border of a nervous collapse. She could not sleep for fear that her father seemed to have died; he seemed to be visiting her in the dark. Yet, in the morning when she called Grand Rapids, he was still alive—in coma, but alive. (It may be worth noting that Kittredge, in a monograph called Half-States of Mourning in the Dual Persona, was subsequently to suggest that mourning, like love, was rarely experienced in anything like equal proportion by Alpha and Omega. Indeed, in troubled cases, when a territorial war over mourning rights waged within the psyche, the appearance of ghosts became a not uncommon manifestation.)

  After the second night of such visitations, Modene felt ravaged. Giancana, in deference to her practice of never spending an entire night with him, came to her hotel room to pick her up for breakfast. Quick to sense the depth of her disturbance, he told her that he would make a few calls and then devote the day to her.

  On this occasion, then, he did not take her from bar to clubhouse for his meetings, but had a picnic hamper put together with several bottles of wine, a quart of bourbon, the accompanying ice, and told her in a calm voice that they would have a private and personal wake, and he would help her to bury the ghost of that father who was not yet dead. He had a handle on such things, Giancana stated.

  Driving his old sedan, he confided to her that he could get close to her father because he, Sam, could have been a motorcycle racer himself, and to prove the remark, gave her a demonstration as they drove out through the shabby, working-class back streets of West Chicago, whipping corners at high speed to demonstrate how a skid-turn could be taken at the last moment under “conditions impossible for other drivers. I could have been a stunt man,” said Giancana. “So could your father.” He drove that day out on South Ashland Avenue to a squat, dark church called the Shrine of St. Jude Thaddeus. “This place,” Sam said, “is not named for Judas, but Saint Jude. He is the saint for special cases, the hopeless cases, doomed people.”

  “I am not doomed,” she told him.

  “Put it this way. He takes care of the stuff that’s out of line. My daughter Francine had eyesight so bad she was almost blind, but I brought her here. I’m no churchgoer. All the same, I made a full novena, nine visits, and Francine’s eyes got to the point where she can see with contact lenses. They say St. Jude gives intercession for those who are without hope.”

  “I do not see myself as without hope.”

  “Of course not. But this is a special case concerning your father.”

  “How do you expect me to come here nine times?”

  “You don’t have to. I’ve done the nine. I carry the intercession.”

  She knelt and prayed at one of the smaller chapels of St. Jude and was painfully aware of other people who prayed with her. “Crippled people,” as she would describe it later to Willie. “Some of them looked insane. There was the oddest mood in the place. I felt my father was very near to me and he was angry. ‘You are praying for me to die,’ I heard him say in my ear, but I was in a far-off mood, as if I was learning how to live in a cave. St. Jude’s is like that. Very much so. I felt as if I was in one of the old Christian caves. Maybe that was because there was not much ornamentation on the walls. It’s a poor church.”

  After they left St. Jude’s, he drove out to a cemetery whose name she never noticed, but his wife, Angelina, he told her, rested there. Within the dim but expensively illumined interior of a mausoleum, kept always at seventy degrees, he set out the picnic hamper on the stone floor in front of the stone bench on which they sat. While they ate and drank, he repeated the account he had given her once of life with Angelina. She had been short in height and thin, and ill from birth with a spinal defect. Yet he loved her. Angelina, however, had not really loved him, not for years. “She still lived with the memory of her original fiancé who died young. She was faithful to his memory. I had to win her over,” said Sam, “and I succeeded. After she died, she used to come to visit me at night. Believe me. On her invitation, I would visit this mausoleum.” As he spoke, they ate and they drank and began to kiss.

  At this point, I will use the copy of the transcript.

  WILLIE: You began to kiss him in that mausoleum?

  MODENE: There was nothing wrong with it. Do you have any conception of how hungry you can be for a live person’s mouth when there has been a tragedy in the family?

  WILLIE: I can follow you, I guess.

  MODENE: Well, you are always asking me what really happened.

  WILLIE: I would rather be shocked than frustrated.

  MODENE: You will be shocked. Sam is no ordinary man. He understands all the things that I start drinking to stop thinking about. He told me again how the Sicilians understand dead people, and ghosts, and curses, and can find a way through situations where other people would be lost. He told me that Angelina would have to help us if I cooperated with him. He had taken me to this place, to her mausoleum, because we had to show Angelina that we were not afraid of her. For that, we would have to do something we had not done before.

  WILLIE: What?

  MODENE: We had to fuck.

  WILLIE: Did he use the word?

  MODENE: Yes. He stopped using it in front of me months ago, but now he said we had to fuck right there in front of her. He said that he had never forced it on me because he was a little afraid of Angelina himself, but now he wanted to do it. He loved me. He was prepared to take a chance on things going wrong for him also.

  WILLIE: This sounds awfully sick and crazy to me.

  MODENE: Wait until you are invaded by a ghost. Maybe your idea of what is acceptable behavior will go through a change.

  WILLIE: You actually agreed to do it with him right there?

  MODENE: He took a blanket out of the picnic hamper and spread it on the floor. I lay down and let him put it in me for the first time. Then I stiffened. I would not allow him to finish.

  WILLIE: Oh, my God, after all that?

  MODENE: I felt her presence. It was as if an old gypsy woman was whispering in my ear. She was saying, “Enough is enough.” I thought she was right. It froze me. Sam and I started to argue right on the floor. I was as tight as a clenched fist. “It’s all right,” I told him, “but we have to finish somewhere else or none of it will work.” Do you know, he understood. He got up, he got dressed, he was very flushed, and I have to tell you that he looked sexier than I have ever seen him. He picked up everything, put it in the hamper, and drove me over to his house. I have never been more sexually excited in my life.

  WILLIE: You have said as much before.

  MODENE: Never like this. I couldn’t wait to get to his house. It was spooky in the tomb, but now I felt wild. I hate to say this, but do you know, Sam has an odor to his private parts that reminds me just a little bit of oil and gasoline, and that reinforced my impression that he could do something about my father.

  WILLIE: I don’t know if I want to follow any more of this.

  MODENE: You asked for it, and you can listen to it. When we reached Sam’s house, we rushed down to the private office in the basement where he has his serious meetings with the mob, and after he locked the door, we tore off our clothes and made love on the carpet of the floor. I kept thinking of all the men who walked through there and I am sure that Sam has made some decisions around that table to kill people—and, I have to say that had me so excited that I was ready as soon as he was. Afterward, we just lay there loving each other. Do you know, when I got back to
my hotel that night, there was a message to call my mother. She told me that my father had died just that afternoon, and I said, “Mother, I am so happy for all of us.”

  One comment in Kittredge’s letter I do not forget:

  Do you know, Harry, much as I would like to believe that this is a pure manifestation of Giancana’s Omegic powers, I must also—thanks to living with Hugh—contemplate the possibility that Sam sent out orders that morning to locate some compliant orderly in her father’s hospital who, for the appropriate pourboire, would pull the plug. Having some idea of how difficult such matters can be to arrange, I lean, I confess, to the occult explanation, but do feel obliged to recall us to Hugh’s epistemological dilemma: “Do we enter the Theater of Paranoia or the Cinema of Cynicism?”

  13

  MY KNOWLEDGE OF J. EDGAR HOOVER’S LUNCH WITH JACK KENNEDY IS based on no more than the fact it took place and Kittredge told me about it. Nonetheless, I was to think of that curious meal many times over the years until it took on the incontrovertible confidence we usually reserve for the validity of a few uncommon memories. What I am offering, then, is a conceit, yet I am ready to pledge that it could not have been otherwise.

  I do recall one detail that Jack imparted to Kittredge. It is no more than that Hoover refused an aperitif before lunch, but then one fossil bone is enough to give us the dimensions of a dinosaur.

  “Well, I’ll drink to your health, if you won’t to mine,” said Jack Kennedy. “Sure you wouldn’t care for a Campari? I’ve heard you are partial to Campari.”

  “That is not, I would say, highly accurate,” was the reply. “I have been known on rare occasions to say yes to a martini during the midday break, but for today, soda.” After a sip from his glass, Hoover proceeded to say, “I am disappointed that Mrs. Kennedy is not joining us for lunch.”

  “She went up to Hyannisport yesterday with the children.”

  “Yes, now that you remind me, I heard as much. I suppose her trip to India had to take something out of her.”

  “It’s just you and me,” said Kennedy, “per your request.”

  “At my request, yes it was. Well, I regret not being able to say hello to your beautiful wife. I thought, incidentally, she was most impressive in that tour she provided of the White House for our television audience. In my opinion, she is a notable asset to the White House.”

  “Certainly is,” said Kennedy, and asked, “Do you have time, Mr. Hoover, to watch television?”

  “As much as work and engagements permit, which is not frequently, but I do enjoy TV.”

  “Oh. Tell me. What might be your favorite program?”

  “A couple of years ago it was The $64,000 Question. I confess to thinking that I might have won no inconsiderable sum if I had ever appeared on such a show in a category suitable to myself.”

  “I expect you would have done famously.”

  “We aren’t going to have the opportunity, are we? It was so discouraging to me, as one of untold millions of viewers, to find out that the producers were rigging the results. What a sordid example of corruption in supposedly respectable places. I really cannot forgive Charles Van Doren.”

  “That’s interesting,” said the President. “Why do you single him out?”

  “Because there’s no excuse. How can a boy with all his advantages engage in felonious activity? Ethnic people are always claiming that their poverty is their excuse, but what claim can Charles Van Doren make for accepting the winning answers in advance? I lay it at the feet of Ivy League permissiveness.” He sipped at his soda. “To happier subjects. I can tell you I was enthralled by John Glenn’s three orbits. No doubt the Russians now feel our breath on their back.”

  “I am glad to hear you see it that way,” said Kennedy, “because it sometimes feels like we’re a mile behind them in a five-mile race.”

  “I have no fears. We will catch up.”

  Into lunch they went.

  Over the vegetable and barley soup, the President referred to the one hundred points that Wilt Chamberlain had scored in an NBA game.

  “When was that?” asked Hoover.

  “About three weeks ago. You must have heard. It is an astonishing feat.”

  “Well, I did,” said Hoover, “hear of it, but do you know, basketball is not a sport to elicit my interest.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s boring. Every twenty-four seconds, ten giants leap up in the air for the ball.”

  “Yes,” said Kennedy, “and there is not much to do about it, is there?”

  “Well, I don’t know what you mean exactly.”

  “I, for one, am impressed with the way colored athletes seem to be taking over the game,” said Kennedy.

  “Aren’t you leading my conclusion?” asked Hoover. “I did not say they were Negro giants going up for the ball.”

  “For fact, you didn’t.”

  “I am ready to champion the more respectable Negro aims, but, then, you may have touched on the problem. These people seem to show more aptitude for producing great athletes than great leaders.”

  A Yankee pot roast was served with boiled potatoes and peas. When the waiter, who was black, had left the room, Jack Kennedy said, “I don’t know that I would hesitate to name Martin Luther King as a great leader.”

  “Well, I would,” said Hoover. “I would have a ton of hesitation about naming him anything positive.”

  “You are expressing a strong reaction, Mr. Hoover.”

  “I never employ strong language until I do, Mr. President. Martin Luther King is the most notorious liar of our time, and I can prove it. If the day should ever come when you may need it, I warrant that I have enough on Martin Luther King to cool off a few of his more outrageous demands.”

  “Yes,” said Kennedy, “and one of these days you are going to let me into those special files, aren’t you, Mr. Hoover?”

  “Actually,” said Hoover, “as it happens, I am here today because of my concern on just such another matter in my files.”

  “Revolving, in particular, about what, might you say?”

  “Well,” said Hoover, “it does revolve in some particular around the associations of one of your friends.”

  “Which one,” asked Jack Kennedy, “of my friends?”

  “Frank Sinatra, I would say.”

  “Frank does have a wide range of associations.”

  “Mr. President, this is not a pumped-up newspaper case of an entertainer shaking hands at various tables in a nightclub. This concerns Sinatra’s ongoing ties with Sam Giancana, one of the very top figures in the Mafia. It also concerns a young lady who seems to have shared her favors with both gentlemen, and we have reason to believe, with others as well.”

  Kennedy was silent.

  Hoover was silent.

  “Would you like coffee?” asked Kennedy.

  “I think I would.”

  The President rang a bell and the colored waiter brought it in. When he was gone, Kennedy said, “This, then, is the size of it. You are suggesting that my friend Frank Sinatra ought to watch his association with Sam Giancana.”

  “Yes,” said Hoover, “that would take care of most of it. There could be one loose end.”

  “How loose?”

  “I would call it loose. The young lady with promiscuous connections is named Modene Murphy, and she seems to be most friendly with one of the President’s secretaries here in the White House.”

  “How extraordinary. I will have to look into that. I can’t imagine how you could pick up anything on our lines.”

  “We can’t. We wouldn’t. You may sleep soundly on that. It’s just that given Miss Murphy’s continuing link with Sam Giancana, we thought it requisite to obtain entrance into her telephone traffic. That was not routine. Mr. Giancana sends his people around regularly to check her equipment. However, we did obtain enough short-term insertion to be able to verify that she is, on occasion, in contact, sometimes for a few days consecutively, with White House circuits.”


  He sipped his coffee. “I will let the matter rest at your discretion,” he said and stood up. “When Mrs. Kennedy comes back from Hyannisport, please give her my regards.”

  They talked about spring training as they walked to the door. Mr. Hoover was going down to St. Petersburg to catch a few days with the Yankees, and Jack Kennedy asked him to convey his regards to Clyde Tolson, who would accompany Mr. Hoover. Mr. Hoover said he would.

  14

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, BY WAY OF FBI REPORTS SENT FROM KITTREDGE TO me, I was to learn that on the day following J. Edgar Hoover’s lunch at the White House, my father, still in Tokyo, became the recipient of a cable from Buddha himself. THE CRIMINAL DIVISION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE HAS REQUESTED THAT CIA SPECIFICALLY ADVISE WHETHER IT WOULD OBJECT TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AGAINST THE SUBJECT MAHEU FOR CONSPIRACY TO VIOLATE THE WIRE TAPPING STATUTE. AN EARLY REPLY WILL BE APPRECIATED.

  Then, on April 10, 1962, Hoover sent this memo to Assistant Attorney General Miller in the Department of Justice:

  Boardman Hubbard has now advised that prosecution of Maheu would lead to exposure of most sensitive information relating to the abortive Cuban invasion in April 1961. In view of this, his Agency objects to the prosecution of Maheu.

  Bobby Kennedy then called a meeting on May 7 with Lawrence Houston, the CIA General Counsel, and Sheffield Edwards, the Director of the CIA’s Office of Security. In response to the Attorney General’s pointed questions, they were obliged to admit that Maheu had offered Giancana $150,000 to kill Castro. At this juncture, as Sheffield Edwards would recount it to Harlot, Robert Kennedy said in a low, precise voice, “I trust that if you ever try to do business with gangsters again, you will let the Attorney General know.”

  On May 9, there was a meeting between Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover after which Hoover penned a memo for his personal file: