Harlot's Ghost

  In my absence, stay close to Maheu. He and I came separately to the same conclusion: We need a tap on Phyllis McGuire’s phone in Las Vegas. It will enable us to know whether she is witting. Maheu suggested the Agency do the job, but I cannot chance any of our people being implicated should something go wrong, so I told Maheu that the ball, like it or not, was in his court. After all, what kind of private detective is he?

  Later

  Ay, caramba! Maheu called to tell me Giancana is going to quit unless we lay in a tap on Rowan. Sammy is obsessed with McGuire’s possible infidelity. He must find out. Why not put the tap on McGuire, you may ask, but my assumption is that our guy doesn’t want his calls to Phyllis monitored. Rowan, therefore, it must be. Maheu next proceeded to entertain me with an imitation of Giancana expressing his sentiments: “If this tap comes in with the goods, I will cut Rowan’s balls off and glue them to his chin. I will give him a fucking goatee to go with his mustache.” “Is it,” asks Maheu, “Rowan or Martin who has the mustache?” “Who gives a fuck?” answers Giancana. “I’ll cut off his nose and shove it up his ass.”

  I’m left with the cold assessment that this is a risky caper. You will find, I think, that the larger one’s stake on a job, the more a surrealistic element is likely to pop in. Here we are waiting on tiptoe, day after day, for news that the big tree has fallen in Cuba. Yet, in the midst of such unholy anxiety, up pops the little Eyetalian demon and swears to become a veritable Abaddon—O ye angels of the bottomless pits! I hate everything about this Giancana business. My disaster warning system (which used to advise me from a half mile off that an irate husband was on his way back to the very connubial bed I was in the act of despoiling) now tells me to beware of this one. Rick, stay on top of it! Maheu is only intermittently forthcoming, so don’t hesitate to ask tough questions. Get him to review his safety factors before we give the go-ahead on the job. Fill me in directly by pouch.

  Yours from sleepless Halifax

  Oct. 28, 1960

  Great Caliph Halifax—

  I don’t know if Maheu is a bad man or a fine man. I have seen a good deal of him in the last couple of days, but he is simply beyond my reach. A ponderous yet velvet dimension resides out there. One knows when one is outmatched.

  I limit myself, therefore, to focusing each new question on the gap left by Maheu’s answer to the previous one. We make progress, but I am sure he sees me as some sort of pill to be taken on the hour.

  Nonetheless, I have learned this much: Trafficante and Giancana are certainly devoting time to the Havana op. Sammy, of course, has a good deal of other business here in Miami, as does Traff in Tampa, so it isn’t as if they labor full time in our interest. Still, our agent has arrived in Havana with the medicine. Much depends on whether this former girlfriend can become Fidel’s sweetheart again. Her American-based boyfriend, Frank Fiorini (who fought with Castro in the Sierra Maestra and is now associated with some very hardcore hoodlum Cuban exiles in Miami), has passed on to Maheu the information that El Caudillo sleeps heavily after making love, snores, and in the past was not wholly satisfactory to the girl’s olfactory senses. (At least so she has told Fiorini.) It seems Castro’s cigar breath is offensive.

  God, we hang on these details as if they were the relics of a saint!

  I give the above to bring you up to date on our off-shore venture. Now, for Vegas. I have imparted your concerns to Maheu and he assures me that the job will be relatively safe. For one thing, we will not tap the telephone. A spike-mike, no larger than an eight-penny nail, inserted in the baseboard near the phone will record whatever the target says on the phone, and in addition we will hear any conversation that takes place in the room. In addition, we are not breaking the federal and Nevada statutes that forbid wiretaps. No law exists against eavesdropping from an adjoining room, even if it is by way of a spike-mike.

  Perfect, I tell him, but what if the man doing the installation is caught?

  Maheu gave me an interesting rundown on the precautions to be taken. For one thing, the operator will occupy a suite in the same hotel. He will remove the lock to the door between his living room and bedroom, and bring it to a selected locksmith in Vegas who can then fashion a master key for all the guest rooms in the hotel. Now our operator can knock on the target’s door, and if there is no answer, open it. He will have an assistant standing by to whom he will hand over the master key. The assistant will spill a few drops of whiskey on the operator’s suit, and take off down the hall while our operator enters target’s room and proceeds to make the installation, after which he sets the door button on lock and leaves. If for any reason target should happen to enter the room while the operator is there, the cover story will go as follows: Our operator is drunk (indeed he reeks of booze), he doesn’t know how he got into the room, the door must have been open, he displays his own room key, and wanders out. If it is a house detective who interrupts him, the routine will be similar except that a hundred-dollar bill is likely to change hands.

  “What happens,” I asked Maheu, “if security comes in suddenly and there is our man on the floor with all his tools out?”

  “That is a contingency which a skilled operator would not allow to evolve,” said Maheu. “His tools are small and carried in loops on the inside of his vest. The drill is no thicker than your finger, and the screwdrivers have flat handles. It’s a jeweler’s kit, you could say. Only one tool is kept out at a time.”

  “What about sawdust?”

  “Carefully gathered up as soon as it is created, then disposed of via the toilet fixtures.”

  “Couldn’t the operator be on his knees,” I ask, “using a drill on the baseboard just at the moment security comes in?”

  “Not at all. The door to target’s room will be on the chain. No one, therefore, would be able to enter without a chain-cutter. Our operator will have time to pick up his tool, stow it on his person, go to the door, unhook the chain, and commence impersonating a drunk.”

  “But,” I persist, “if there is a body search, the tools will be discovered.”

  “Yes, but a body search is not the most likely of contingencies.”

  “Still, it could happen.”

  “There are no final guarantees.”

  “What would eventuate if there is discovery?”

  “Well, there can be no legal charge against the operator for the spike-mike. The case comes down to breaking and entering. Since neither the lock nor the door is broken, a good Vegas lawyer ought to be able to get it thrown out of court. Of course, the operator has to stand fast. We’ll get a good fellow.”

  Maheu is planning to use the DuBois Detective Agency in Miami. The operator will be a man named Arthur Balletti. Neither DuBois nor Balletti is to know any more than that they have been hired by Maheu, and he has provided them with the target’s room number.

  Maheu’s precautions do impress me. Given our need to keep abreast of who is telling what to whom, I would vote for a go-ahead. Under the circumstances, reasonably safe.

  ROBERT CHARLES

  29

  ON THE NIGHT OF OCTOBER 31, I AWOKE IN THE EARLY HOURS WITH A feeling that it was imperative to check for messages at Zenith. Since the sleep had been heavy, I thought at first I was in my own apartment, and it took the view of moonlight on Biscayne Bay as seen through the picture window of the master bedroom to remind me that Modene and I were not only at La Nevisca and ensconced in the king-sized bed, but sleeping heavily from the effects of several sticks of marijuana.

  We had started to smoke earlier this night after her flight-mate told her, “It is great for sex,” and gave her half an ounce. Our evening turned paranoid. Modene confessed that Sam Giancana made her nervous. “If he wanted to spy on us, he has the people to do it. He could locate your apartment in no time. Even this place.”

  “Are you sleeping with him?” I remember asking.

  “I told you that I am not. But we are friends, and he does want to sleep with me.”

  “What do you tell him
?”

  “That I am in love with Jack.”

  “Which is true.”

  “It is half-true. Just as it may be half-true that I am in love with you.”

  “But you don’t tell Sam about me.”

  “I tell him that I sleep only with Jack.”

  “And do you? Are you back with him?”

  “You know the answer to that,” she said.

  “It is yes.”

  “Yes.”

  I felt as if I were bleeding within. Yet, the professional requirement was on me: Ignore pain, pursue inquiry. So I said: “Maybe Sam and Jack are in contact with one another.”

  “They may be.”

  “Through you?”

  “I resent your asking. I know who you work for.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?”

  “You are a special agent for the FBI. Your friend, the Life photographer, told me.”

  Good Sparker Boone. “It’s not true,” I said. “I happen to work for the Treasury Department. Bureau of Narcotics.” When she did not answer, I nodded. “I’m a narco.”

  “Why don’t you arrest me? Because I am going to turn you in.” She took another puff on our stick of marijuana and handed it back to me. Soon enough, we began to make love.

  Images of Modene in bed with a would-be President crowded in upon images of vichyssoise and hamburgers in the dining room on N Street. The theater opened in my mind with all the solemnity of a curtain rising on a heavily furnished stage. Yes, there was Modene in the middle of an antique bed performing various kinds of whoopee. Lucky candidate. Large hydraulic pressures in my groin were abstractly reminiscent of lust. Sex on marijuana was bizarre. Large and occult was its arena. Beautiful were the curves of the belly and breast, and eloquent was the harmonium of universal sex; its laws came into my senses with one sniff of her dark-haired pussy, no more at other times than a demure whiff of urine, mortal fish, a hint of earth—now I explored caverns, and our bodies began to obey a master rhythm that came from as far away as the drumbeat of an unseen army, one rhythm, wondrous, yet impersonal. I could have welcomed Jack Kennedy into bed with us at that moment. What the hell, we were all equals in the great eye of the universe; the thought took me over the hill; I was rocked about in the engines of orgasm, and felt sensations as strange as lives one would not know how to inhabit: I saw Fidel Castro sleeping with the blond mistress of Frank Fiorini on a Havana bed one hundred and eighty miles away. A cigar was in the mouth of El Caudillo as he snored. Then I forgot them all, and rolled down the hill, and slept in the tomb of the drug marijuana, and awoke—was it an hour, was it more?—with weights upon my thoughts as heavy as the air of the Everglades in summer. Sleep was possessed of entrails; I had to tear myself loose from them. There was that imperative in my brain: I had to call the night officer at Zenith.

  When I did, there was a message: Contact HALIFAX at Rock Falls.

  Still in a half-sleep, code words came to the surface more sluggishly than pond fish in a swamp—Rock Falls meant . . . Rock Falls meant Call my office as soon as possible. Adrenaline was pressing against torpor—bronze glow across a leaden sky. I did not care at this moment if I ever saw marijuana again.

  There was a pay phone on the road to the Rickenbacker Causeway. I could drive there to make the call. I would have to assume that if Modene awakened, she would not panic at finding herself alone in a safe house with no means of transportation, no, not at all. She could, yes, by all means, ring for a cab. My brain made large leaps to solve little problems.

  By the time I reached Cal at Quarters Eye, it was 3:14 A.M. “Give me your number,” he said. “I’ll call you back in eight to ten minutes.” His voice offered no more than a modicum of recognition.

  Just outside my phone booth, the mosquitoes were demented. I felt the synthetic nature of Key Biscayne soil; beneath one’s feet were shells and ground coral, channel mud, shoulder asphalt. Inside the telephone booth, sizable bugs darted from glass door to glass wall on a high electronic hum. Then the call came through.

  “Listen,” said Cal. “In Vegas, this afternoon, Maheu’s operator, Balletti, went into the target’s room, set to work on the telephone, and then got so hungry that he couldn’t finish the job. He decided to go down to the coffee shop. During the interim, he left behind a few tools, a couple of phone taps, and a half dozen wires stripped and ready for splicing.”

  I could feel my stomach yawing, a physical event I had not experienced so keenly since childhood.

  “A head chambermaid happened to come by,” said Cal, “to check the room. She saw the evidence on the floor. She called the house detective. He was waiting in the room when Mr. Balletti came back from lunch and opened the door with his master key. Mr. Balletti did not reek of whiskey.”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “Do believe it,” said Cal. “When they arrived at the police station, Balletti called Maheu at his Miami office. In order for the police to make the phone connection, Balletti was obliged to give them Maheu’s number.”

  “Oh, no,” I said again.

  “Well, yes,” said Cal. “Wiretapping is a federal offense. For some godforsaken reason, Balletti had not tried to put in a spike-mike, no, he was in the act of tapping the telephone. A federal offense. In a few days we will have the FBI on Maheu’s ass, and he will proceed to support that weight for as long as he can take it, and will then proceed, I expect, to tell the Bureau that he was doing a special for us.”

  “Have you spoken to Maheu?”

  “I have been on the phone for hours with everyone. Bullseye Burns, believe it if you will, has been in my face. Representing the Office of Security. I discovered this afternoon that our overall project actually began with the Office of Security. They hired Maheu, and then, to cover their bald, incompetent asses, Sheffield Edwards talked to Dulles, Bissell, or whoever-it-was, to get me in on liaison. Unfortunately, it was never quite made clear to me that this was not entirely my show.”

  “Could that be in your favor now?” I made the mistake of saying.

  “Not at all. The Office of Security is claiming that I proceeded without Bullseye Burns or Sheffield Edwards. The fact of the matter is that I did, and that I have been had.” He came to a halt and started to cough. Phlegm volutes overlapped in his bronchia.

  “Now,” he said, having delivered one quantum of the misused past to a handkerchief, “we still have to have a real talk with Maheu. Believe me, I have been occupied with Sheffield Edwards and his stalwart henchman, Bullseye Burns, who had the temerity to suggest that I shunted him aside in order to give his job to a tyro named Robert Charles.”

  “I am a tyro,” I said. “I advised you to go along on Maheu’s plan.”

  “Yes, you were a bit of a fathead. But I was a horse’s ass. Maheu has Howard Hughes to deal with daily. He is busy. I know that. He is no longer a private detective; he is a confidence man. He does public relations. How dare he give you such a splendid summary of how to do the job and then choose people who fulfill none of his precepts?”

  “Did you tell him so?”

  “At white heat,” Cal growled. “Until I realized that I need him to hold the line. So I backed off just a little. Now, you go over and quiz Maheu quietly. Go over right now. To his office. He is expecting you. Has been for the last three hours. Where the hell were you tonight? Don’t you ever pick up your telephone?”

  “I was out.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Fucking.”

  “Well, at least one of us isn’t being fucked.”

  Yes, he had come a long way from St. Matthew’s. “Do you want my report in the morning?” I asked.

  “Hell, yes. Make certain it is in the early flight pouch.”

  HALIFAX EYES ONLY

  November 1, 1960, 5:54 A.M.

  Maheu and I shared coffee from 4:00 A.M. to about 5:30, at which time I came back to Zenith to begin this report. Needless to say, I took copious notes, and can give you an accurate summary and reliable quotes.

/>   Let me say that even if I was taken in once by Maheu’s confidence, I would testify that he seems genuinely upset. We spoke in his private office which, as you might expect, is lavish, carpeted, and honored with an antique sideboard. He took the lights down a little, then opened the blinds for the hints of dawn on Biscayne Bay. We have impressive black clouds this morning. It fits the mood.

  Maheu stated that his previous rundown on how to perform the operation described the way he would have done it. He finds himself guilty for neglecting to check out Balletti’s procedure in more detail.

  Here is what, in Maheu’s belief, did occur. For whatever reason, perhaps to save a few extra dollars, Balletti did not hire a backup man in Vegas. It is possible, says Maheu, that Balletti never had any intention of installing a spike-mike. They are difficult to adjust, and may not have been available on short notice. Balletti, however, says Maheu, claims to have misunderstood him. Maheu does not believe that for a moment.

  Now, as to the master key. Balletti did not, in the absence of an assistant, bother to hide it in the hotel hallway, but put it back in his pocket. An unforgivable exhibition of carelessness. Moreover, he did not carry a flask, nor purchase a small bottle. Fastidiousness, or the desire to save on cleaning bills may have been “the withholding factor.”

  Finally—the descent to the coffee shop “for sustenance.” Maheu assured me that that is not at all inexplicable. Breaking into a stranger’s abode kicks off, he says, deep-seated psychological mechanisms. Thieves often defecate on living room carpets, or on the counterpane of the master bed. Some get hungry. It is a primitive reaction. The hotel was quiet, and Balletti did not believe there was one chance in a thousand that a chambermaid would check up. “I do not approve, however, of his odds,” said Maheu.