Better Dead (5 page)

“Make it Dash,” he said.

 

CHAPTER

3

Around four-thirty, a cab dropped me back at First and C Streets—the Senate Office Building, one of three imposing white marble structures facing the Capitol grounds. Even this late in the day things were bustling, sidewalks full of well-dressed professional types, male and female, mostly under forty, lugging briefcases, hugging file folders, in a huge white-collar hurry. And yet government itself was a snail.

I went up the broad flight of steps on the S.O.B.'s southwest corner to a terraced landing, then through the main doorway, which opened onto the second floor. I was back in the marble two-story rotunda with its balcony and conical ceiling, a vast space where worker bees flitted around over-forties who were laughing and talking and ambling along—senators and senior staff.

A uniformed elevator operator delivered me to an endless tunnel of a hallway lined with office doors tall enough to accommodate Abe Lincoln, stovepipe hat and all. Conversation echoed as I slipped unnoticed into a steady two-way stream of people who belonged here, the sound of footsteps on the marble-and-tile floor combining into an awkward tap dance.

When I got to McCarthy's office, a tall shapely brunette in a tailored blue-trimmed white dress was just about to go in. Not quite thirty, Jean Kerr looked like the beauty queen she'd been, but she was much more. Among other things, she'd ghosted McCarthy's anti-Communism book last year.

“Well, Nathan,” she said, beaming, her bright red lipstick completing a patriotic pinup, “hello.”

I held the door for her. Her hair up, her eyes a sparkling blue, this fairly ravishing Irish rose had gone to work for McCarthy straight out of college. Now she was his chief of staff.

“He's in with Roy,” she said, with a fresh-faced openness that wasn't quite flirtatious, “but I'll let him know you're here.… Can I take your hat?”

“Sure.”

She did so, then walked me into a conference area where staffers were at work before we took an immediate right through a short filing-cabinet-lined hall into the central area. Staffers were evenly split between females and males, some at their desks typing or bent over research, others filing or on their way back from or to somewhere. Most were no older than their mid-thirties.

Jean deposited me in one of a row of chairs along the wall near McCarthy's office door and said she'd let the senator know I was here. While I waited, one of the young staffers in shirtsleeves and loosened tie looked over from his desk and squinted at me, removed his reading glasses, and squinted again.

He got up and came quickly over, a slight figure with tousled dark brown hair and boyish features. Until he gave me a bucktoothed grin, I didn't recognize him.

“Bob Kennedy, Mr. Heller,” he said. “You probably don't remember me.”

He held out his hand and I shook it, then started to get to my feet. He motioned me to sit back down and settled in next to me.

“I remember you, Bob.” His father, Joe, had been an occasional client of mine since the mid-'40s, back when the onetime big-league bootlegger had bought the Merchandise Mart much as I might buy a new car.

“My dad and my brother,” he said, still smiling, “always speak warmly of you. You really helped us out of a jam that time.”

He was referring to a job I'd done half a dozen years ago, getting Jack out of a quickie marriage the young senator had screwed and boozed himself into one ill-advised night. It had taken bribing a courthouse clerk, playing with matches, and paying off the socialite bride, just another day's work for a Chicago-bred PI.

Typical that Bob would credit that as me helping the family and not just a brother whose brain went soft when his dick got hard.

I said, “You must be a lawyer by now.”

He nodded. I put him at around twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight. “Graduated last year. I was, uh, at Justice for a while, now I'm working for Joe. Family friend. Assistant counsel.”

“Does that mean you assist that Cohn character?”

His smile disappeared, and his voice lowered to a near whisper. “I keep my distance as much as possible. We don't, uh, exactly get along. He thinks I'm a spoiled rich kid, which
is
, uh, rich since he's a judge's son with his own silver spoon.”

“So—you're married, I understand.”

The grin returned with some shyness mixed in. “Coming up on our third anniversary. Two little ones, boy and a girl, Joe and Kathleen.”

Missing his cue by maybe half a minute, sleepy-eyed Roy Cohn—similar to Bob in height, weight, build, and age but cheerless and darker—emerged from McCarthy's office in shirtsleeves and crisp navy silk tie.

“Mr. Heller, the senator will see you now.… Would you like coffee?”

“That'd be fine,” I said.

Cohn nodded. Without looking at him, he said to Bob, “Coffee.”

I could almost hear Kennedy bristle. Maybe he missed “waiter day” at law school.

Cohn held the door for me while the assistant counsel went off to do his master's bidding.

I went into the rather barren-looking office—beyond a few framed certificates of election, the brown-paneled chamber lacked the usual framed photos and honorary degrees, the only memento a baseball bat on a pedestal between file cabinets on a counter. Burned into the bat were the words “DREW PEARSON.”

In rolled-up shirtsleeves and food-stained tie, McCarthy was in his big-backed swivel chair behind his massive standard-issue senatorial desk, its top littered with files and papers. A pair of button-tufted leather armchairs sat opposite him. He wore black-framed glasses, which took nothing away from the bullnecked-brute effect.

Giving me a tight smile, he flipped aside a stapled report, tossed his glasses on the desk, and waved me over.

“Saw you in the gallery this morning, Nate,” he said, the nasal baritone muted now, the oratorical eccentricities absent. “Hope you enjoyed seeing democracy in action.”

I took one of the leather chairs; Cohn took the other. His face looked like putty awaiting a sculptor to make an expression out of it.

I shrugged. “I thought the mystery writer held his own. I saw
The Maltese Falcon
during the war and didn't have any particular urge to overthrow the government. Except maybe my sergeant.”

McCarthy, who like me had been a Marine, smiled but I knew he didn't like what I'd said. His big shoulders lifted and left his barrel chest behind.

“I agree,” he said, “that it's probably unlikely there's much
overt
Communist content in those books of his. But why should the government put money in the hands of some fool who's going to funnel it into the Communist cause?”

I nodded. “He seemed to agree with you on that point.”

“He's a strange character. One of these oddball left-wing artistic types.” McCarthy shook his head, then his dark eyes bore in on me. “But you're probably wondering why I sent you a plane ticket to come and talk to me.”

“I am. But since you're paying my day rate, too, how could I say no? Like you, Joe, I'm in favor of the capitalist system.”

A big off-white smile blossomed in the blue-jowled face. “I was always impressed by your investigative abilities, Nate … and I got to feeling bad about how I've underutilized you of late. Ever since that bastard Pearson betrayed me.”

In 1953 retrospect, rabid Red hunter McCarthy and arch-liberal columnist Pearson seemed unlikely bedfellows. But in the early years of McCarthy's first term, Joe and Drew had worked together ferreting out governmental corruption.

After all, from 1947 up to '50—possibly due to his New Deal roots—McCarthy had been a liberal Republican, his seat partly won by courting the Communist vote. As Joe said on the stump, they had “the same right to vote as anybody else.” And for several years, the junior senator from Wisconsin had swapped Senate secrets with Pearson's man Jack Anderson for flattering squibs in the nationally syndicated “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column.

I had worked for McCarthy and Pearson, helping them expose D.C. influence peddlers getting 5 percent kickbacks on government business. Then I'd fallen out with Drew over his merciless haranguing of my friend and client Jim Forrestal.

McCarthy dropped Pearson, too, after the columnist attacked him in print as a reckless witch hunter. McCarthy retaliated with an all-out assault on Pearson on the Senate floor (“a Moscow-directed character assassin!”), where Joe had immunity from slander charges.

“I'm gearing up for a major
investigation,
” McCarthy said, the weirdly hypnotic oratorical rhythm kicking in, “into the darkest
shadows
of this
governmen
t—from the
military
to the Central Intelligence
Agency.
”

“That sounds ambitious,” I said. And foolhardy.

“Our country is
riddled
with military bases with security so
lax
it's
criminal.
Roy here is
convinced
that a spy ring rivaling the one that gave the Soviets the atomic
bomb
is operating out of an army base in New Jersey.”

I shifted, uncomfortable in my comfortable chair. “Joe, you do know your Republican president—I believe his name is Eisenhower?—has a certain affection for the military.”

He waved that pesky fly away. “And the
CIA
—its own
director
admits he's well
aware
Communists have infiltrated his organization! But he
justifies
it because other countries have the same
problem
!
Something
must be done.”

“Okay,” I said.

He almost crawled across the desk at me. “But I need trained
investigators.
Most of my staff is not
qualified
or
experienced
enough for what I intend to do. Roy here is the
best
I have—and don't be
fooled
by his youth!”

Now McCarthy sat back and interlaced his hands on his belly, getting chummy and conversational. “I guess you know Roy helped put the Rosenbergs away … but he also put a dozen
other
Commies away, as assistant U.S. attorney in New York,
and
nabbed counterfeiters and narcotics traffickers.”

I gave Cohn a grudging smile and said, “Nice going.”

He looked at me with an unsettling blankness. “Doing my job.”

The door opened behind us and a glum Bob Kennedy came in carrying a wooden tray with coffee cups, sugar and cream dispensers, and a pot of coffee issuing steam like the Little Engine That Could. The nearest corner of the big desk had room for the tray and Kennedy leaned past Cohn to set it there. He gave McCarthy a small nod and smaller smile, and was turning to go when Cohn spoke to him.

“I'll have sugar and cream. Cream for the senator. Mr. Heller?”

“Black is fine,” I said.

Kennedy winced and then returned to the tray and started serving us up.

McCarthy went on: “This young man here, Senator John Kennedy's brother Robert, is probably our second-best investigator on staff, after Roy.”

Kennedy spilled just a little as he poured a cup.

McCarthy continued singing the gopher's praises: “Bob spent half a year at Justice, in the Internal Security Section, Criminal Division, investigating Soviet spies. Here in this office he's been helping expose trade between U.S. allies and Communist China, doing a crackerjack job.… Thank you, Bob.”

Kennedy had just handed the senator his coffee.

Cohn took his filled cup from the tray, as if to minimize contact with Kennedy, who I gave a knowing look and a nod as he came around and handed me mine with half a smirk. Then the assistant counsel gathered whatever dignity he could salvage and went quickly out.

“I am well aware, Nate,” McCarthy said, the speechifying style lingering but muted, “that you're a very successful businessman—three branch offices now. Really something. But your country needs you, Nate.”

I risked half a grin. “The last time I answered a call like that, I wound up with malaria and a Section Eight.”

A veteran of the Pacific himself, McCarthy let out a chuckle; then his expression turned serious. “I assure you I have the budget to pay you a respectable sum. I don't expect you to be a dollar-a-day man, like our late friend Forrestal.”

“How long would you want me on staff?”

He rocked in the chair a little, tossed a hand. “Six months should do it. And it would be excellent publicity for you. A real boon to your business. I don't expect an answer right now. Take some time and mull it. Personally? I think we would be doing each other a
great
service.”

I sipped the coffee. Cohn was watching me. I felt like a fly an iguana was contemplating sending a tongue out after.

I placed the still mostly filled cup on the tray. “I don't need any time to think it over, Senator. I really have to take a pass on this one. I'm flattered, but—”

“Now,” McCarthy said, holding up a big hand, as if swearing me in on the witness stand, “don't be hasty. This could take your career to a whole new level.”

Or depths.

I said, “I just opened a Manhattan office, and I still run Chicago myself. I'm the only one coordinating the three branches. Really, I don't have anybody on staff who could take my place.”

Cohn was still looking at me with those cold hooded eyes. He had skin the color of the scum on butterscotch pudding. “Maybe there's another reason why you're turning down this opportunity.”

A question, even an accusation, was buried in that statement.

I gave him my own cold look. Slapping him would have been rude. “And what would that be?”

Tiny toss of the head. “Maybe we're not on the same team.”