Night Work (30 page)

“Who are we talking about here?” Orso asked. “The guy you told me about clipped what's his name, Echevarria, you took down there on the extradition?”

“Yes.”

“You think this guy wants to try for Castro.”

“Yes,” Ribera said. “I do.”

“Why?”

“Because he and his friends don't think the war is over. They think a few well-selected deaths will put them back in power.”

“Do you have any ideas about where they might be in the city? With the émigré groups, Batista supporters?”

“We're asking. So far, nothing.”

*   *   *

Nine hundred miles to the south, a police cruiser pulled into the parking lot of the train station in Atlanta, Georgia.

It had rained off and on for the last twenty-four hours in Atlanta, a fine, soft, warm, misty rain that lured children out to slide on lawns, and drew flowers up out of the ground. The weather cleared in the evening just about the time Cassidy, Orso, and Ribera ordered their second drinks in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The cruiser pulled to a stop in front of the station doors, and two officers got out. Arlie Spencer hitched up his gun belt where it sagged below his gut and started walking to the station. “You want anything, Lloyd? Coffee or anything? Maybe a slice of pie. Maryellen said she was baking today.”

“No, thanks. I'm just going to stretch my legs. Been cooped up in that car all day.” Lloyd Fairchild was half an inch over the five foot six minimum requirement of the department, and he weighed just over the hundred-thirty-pound cutoff. His beaky nose supported horn-rimmed glasses, and his uniform hat hid a skull that was nearly bald three years before he was due to turn thirty. He knew he didn't look like a cop, and so he worked twice as hard to be the cop he knew he was. He wore black half boots with lifts in them, and he carried himself tall and walked with a swagger that was just on the right side of comic. He lit a cigarette and strolled the parking lot, happy to be out of the car. They'd kept the windows closed while it rained. The cruiser was not one of the new ones that had air-conditioning, and by the time the rain stopped the air inside had been thick. Arlie was a good partner, but Jesus, it was like whatever he ate came back out through his skin when he sweated.

Lloyd spotted a '48 Ford sedan with a broken taillight and a '56 Impala with an expired registration and left warning notes under their windshield wipers. What was it about the Lincoln parked in the far corner of the lot? He walked over and examined the car. Florida plates. Wasn't there something about a Lincoln with Florida plates that came in over the wire? He hurried back to the cruiser and pulled a sheaf of mimeographed bulletins from the glove compartment and fingered through them. There it was. A '55 Continental with Florida plates, three men riding. Do not approach. Notify the FBI. Okay, then. He picked up the radio handset and called it in and was told to stand by. A few minutes later the radio crackled. Officers Fairchild and Spencer were to secure the car and to wait for the arrival of Special Agent in Charge Harmon of the Atlanta FBI office.

SAC Harmon looked like a professor at a small liberal arts college. He was a tall, sandy-haired man in a gray wash-and-wear suit and a straw Panama hat with a red hatband. He clenched a briar pipe in his teeth. “Checked the interior?” He asked mildly.

“No, sir. We were told to secure the car and wait for you,” Lloyd said. “But the car's been here since yesterday morning.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, sir. It's been raining off and on since early yesterday afternoon, but the tar underneath is dry.”

“Hmmm, good, good. Let's take a look, shall we?” It was not a question and the “we” was royal, because when the two cops moved to help, the FBI agent checked them. “Why don't we let me do this one? Less complicated that way.” Harmon said it with a smile, but it was an order. He opened all four doors and the trunk and then slowly and methodically searched the car. He found Coca-Cola bottles, waxed paper sandwich wrappings, a broken fountain pen, a pack of condoms in the glove compartment, and under the passenger seat a single shell for a .30-06 rifle.

“Thirty ought six,” Officer Spencer said when he saw the brass rolling in Harmon's palm. “Good deer rifle. My uncle Boley had one. I prefer the thirty-thirty myself.”

“Fascinating,” Harmon said. “Let's go see whether the gentlemen with the deer rifle took the train.”

The ticket office clerk remembered them. “Three of them together? Sure. Yesterday. Three of them got on the Crescent Limited. They took two double sleepers for the three. Money to burn, I guess. Last people I sold tickets to before I went to lunch.”

“Where were they headed?” Harmon asked.

“End of the line. New York City. Got in there this morning.”

“Can you describe them?”

The clerk thought for a while. “Well, I only really saw the one bought the tickets. The others stood back a ways with the bags. Now that fella who bought the tickets come up to about here on the cage.” He indicated a height on the bars that separated him from Harmon. “A couple of inches shorter than you.”

“About five nine, then,” Harmon said.

“If you say so. Wore a seersucker suit and one of them straw hats with a feather in the band. Not so wide a brim as on yours. Mustache and chin whiskers. What do they call that where the mustache is part of the beard? Kind of thin, the mustache, not the man. Not that he was fat, you see. Ordinary, I'd say.”

“And the others? Anything stick in your mind?”

“I can't say it did. Just looked over to see there was two more of them over there for the tickets.”

In the parking lot Harmon stopped near the cruiser and shook hands with the two policemen. “Thank you for your help, gentlemen.”

“What's this all about?” Lloyd asked.

Harmon took time to load his pipe and light it while looking at the two cops over the bowl. He shook the match out and ground it under his shoe. “Well, as much as I'd like to tell you, I'm afraid I've been told to keep this one under my hat. I can tell you it's a matter of national security and falls under the jurisdiction of the Bureau. I wish I could tell you more, but I can't.” He smiled genially, gestured good-bye with his pipe, and walked back to his car.

“Wishes he could tell us, my ass. When was the last time the FBI shared any information with the local cops?” Lloyd asked. “I'll tell you when. Never. Jesus, that chaps me.” They watched Harmon's car turn out of the parking lot. As it went, his arm came out the window and he waved. “The fucking FBI.”

SAC Harmon went back to the office and put in a call to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, where he spoke to Deputy Assistant Director Cavanaugh, as high up the chain of command as he was allowed to go. Cavanaugh carried the message upstairs and waited patiently in the anteroom outside Associate Director Tolson's office until the severe gray-haired secretary who guarded the double doors allowed him to enter. He went in and closed the door behind him and glanced at the door in the east wall that led directly to J. Edgar Hoover's office, a holy place he had never had the privilege of seeing. Tolson let him wait in front of the desk until he finished reading a report. He pushed it into a manila folder, squared it on the desk and looked up.

“Yes?”

“I had a phone call from SAC Harmon in Atlanta. He believes he has found the car we've been looking for, the Lincoln from Florida.”

“And the three men?” Tolson spoke softly with a Missouri twang.

“They took the Crescent Limited yesterday. They would have arrived in New York this morning.”

“I see.” Tolson ran a hand over his hair while he thought. “Write up the report. Bring it to me. No copies. Call SAC Harmon. Tell him I want his report in the pouch tomorrow, the original, no copies, my eyes. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, Agent Cavanaugh.”

Dismissed, Cavanaugh left, and as always after an interview with Tolson, he felt like he had barely passed a test whose questions he had not been allowed to see.

Tolson waited until the door closed. He got up and took his suit jacket from where it hung on the back of his desk chair. He stopped in front of the mirror on the back of the door to Hoover's office and checked his appearance. He was six feet tall and reasonably trim for a man who spent much of his life behind a desk. He had a high forehead, a fleshy nose, and a heavy chin. He would be fifty-nine in May, but the hair he smoothed with the palm of his hand was still dark. He checked to make sure that his tie was straight and pulled on the hem of his jacket to make sure it hung right. Eddie was a stickler for neatness, and there was no point in starting this conversation off on the wrong foot. He adjusted the handkerchief in his breast pocket, rapped once on the door, waited until he heard the word “come,” and then opened the door and went in.

J. Edgar Hoover stood looking out the window. His bulldog face was clouded with a frown. “Clyde, how many people do you think pass this building in the evening on their way home from work?”

“I don't know,” Tolson said. “How many?”

“I don't know the number. Tens of thousands, I suppose. Now, how many of them do you think are criminals of one kind or another? How many criminals walk by the Bureau every day? I would like to know. We would be a much stronger and finer country if we could spot the criminals in our midst and remove them from our society before they do damage instead of waiting until they commit their crimes.”

“I'll have a word with Research. Maybe they can come up with something.” Eddie got bees in his bonnet sometimes. After a while they stopped buzzing, and he forgot about them. Know who the criminals were before they committed their crimes. A wonderful idea, but how the hell would you do it? Tap everyone's phone, maybe. You'd be sure to pick up word of crimes before they happened, but where would you get the manpower to listen to all those calls? Forget about it. “We got a report from SAC Harmon down in Atlanta. It looks like he found the Lincoln we've been looking for. The men took the train to New York yesterday. They'll be there by now.”

“Ahhh,” Hoover said and went to his desk, sat down, and folded his hands on the leather-backed blotter, the pose he often took when he was thinking.

Tolson knew better than to speak. Eddie would formulate his thoughts, and then they would talk. Tolson sat in a wooden armchair across the desk from Hoover, lit a cigarette, and waited.

“We're at war, Clyde, at war against godless communism. It is a war being fought in the shadows. Many people in this country still don't understand that, but you and I do, because the Bureau is on the front lines of that war, and winning it is our number-one job. Nothing is more important. We must stand strong, because we are good, and they are evil. It is as simple as that.”

Tolson said nothing. He had heard these sentiments before, and Eddie knew he agreed with them.

“I spoke with Vice President Nixon after he talked with this Castro fellow. He spent hours with him, and what he told me is that the man is either very naïve about communism, or he's a Commie. I do not believe he is naïve. A naïve man does not win a war against Batista's army. A naïve man does not surround himself with Communists like this fellow Guevara. No. He says he is a democrat, but he is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and I see through him.” He paused to light a cigarette from the silver box on his desk. “Can you imagine the danger of having a communistic country ninety miles from Florida? We cannot let this happen.” He stubbed out the cigarette in agitation. “Who are these men from Florida?”

“We don't know exactly who they are. We haven't been able to identify them. We believe they are connected to people in Tampa and Miami, Mr. Trafficante, Mr. Lansky. We understand that some people are worried about losing their investments in Havana to nationalization. Our informants tell us they think Castro's nationalization of the telephone company is just the beginning of his government's takeover of industry.”

“In war,” Hoover said, “we cannot always choose our allies.”

“No.”

“Of course, the Bureau cannot go off half cocked in a situation like this. We should take some time to substantiate who these men are who went to New York and if they truly present a danger to Mr. Castro. And, of course, the ultimate jurisdiction in a matter like this resides with the New York Police Department. After all, Mr. Castro is not here on official business. He is here as a private individual, isn't that right?”

“Yes, Eddie, it is.”

“Then I think it would be best if we do not overstep our bounds and trespass on the New York Police Department's territory. If we can help them, we will, but let's not be premature about it. Let's substantiate that these men are a threat to Castro before we interfere with New York police procedure. We don't want them to shift focus and manpower to individuals who may be innocent of any criminal intent.”

“I've asked SAC Harmon to send me the only copy of his report. I'll hold on to it until such a time as it might be useful to send it along.”

“Who's heading the New York office?”

“SAC Susdorf.”

“No need to bother him with this yet. Best to be sure of the information first. As to dinner tonight, I was thinking of trying that new Italian restaurant in Georgetown, but now I think not. Let's just go to Harvey's. We'll have a steak. I feel like a steak.”

“Harvey's is fine, Eddie.”

“He's a Commie, Clyde. I feel it in my bones. The man's a Commie, and we can have no mercy.”

 

18

A maid in a gray uniform with white lace accents greeted Cassidy when he entered his sister's apartment on Park Avenue. He found Leah on the terrace off the living room. She was wearing blue jeans tucked into rubber boots, one of Mark's cast-off white shirts with the sleeves rolled high, and a red bandanna around her hair. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and her gloved hands were deep in the earth of a planter that ran along the terrace wall. The other planters on the terrace were empty. A man in khaki work clothes was removing sacks of dirt and fertilizer from a handcart. He nodded at Cassidy and trundled the empty handcart back toward the open door at the end of the terrace that led to the freight elevator landing.