The Confession of Joe Cullen (13 page)

“How much of that confession was true?”

He chewed and swallowed what was in his mouth, and then said, “Most of it.”

“This Sanchez character threw the priest out of the helicopter?”

“That's what he did.”

“And what did you do?”

“I flew the helicopter back to the strip.”

“This priest was the best man you ever knew, and you watched Sanchez kill him and you did nothing to Sanchez?”

“I was piloting the chopper.”

“And this Sanchez bum let you walk away?”

Cullen stared at her for a long moment, and then he said, “Lady, what do you want?”

Ginny sighed and shook her head.

“I'm not going to call you Ginny, Miss Selby,” Cullen said. “I think you came here to set me up.”

“You're wrong!” she exclaimed.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Let me tell you something. When I took this job of bringing guns down to the contras, I figured I was doing something with the government behind me. I didn't know dope was part of it. I'm not very smart, lady. If I was smart, I wouldn't have been in that crazy Nam killing, and it wouldn't have taken me so long to learn the kind of shit runs this country. Now let me put it to you straight and neat. I knew that this contra thing was a scam to make money for someone, but I needed the job and I figured it was legal. I am no goddamn moralist. When I learned they were shipping dope, I didn't fall down surprised to learn that some kind of Feds were involved. What else is new? You want me to smell out a job that's clean? Lady, I'm a pilot. The only damn thing I know is how to fly a plane. But I was involved. Something happened to me when I met Francis O'Healey. Maybe I felt no damn different than you about the church. I couldn't call him Father; I called him Padre. I don't think you know what the hell I'm saying, but listen. You want to separate shit from shit. I can't do that anymore. The Feds paid me to take a gunship and wipe out Vietnam villages. You ever see a baby child chopped into hamburger by fifty-millimeter shells? You want to separate things and tell me that's legal and running dope and guns is a crime? No way, sister. You know what O'Healey gave me? He gave me grace. You remember what the nuns used to talk about in school? So now figure it out. Thanks for the lunch.” And with that, Cullen got up and stalked out of the restaurant.

Ginny fumbled in her purse, found the bills she wanted, dropped them on the table, and then bolted out of the restaurant after Cullen. He was already halfway down the street toward Seventh Avenue, and she had to break into a half run to get close enough to call out to him.

“Cullen! Cullen!”

He turned, saw her, and waited while she walked toward him with long, easy strides. “Why?” she demanded as she came face to face with him. “I was trying to help you.”

“Yeah?”

“I was. I didn't set you up. Do I look like that to you? It would have been stupid. Do you really think I'm wired?” She opened her purse to show it to him. Her coat and jacket were open, and now she pulled up her blouse to show there was no wire on her waist.

He grasped her arm. “Come on, let's walk. You don't want to stand here on the street undressing.”

“Walk downtown. I have to get back to my office.”

“OK.” They turned down Seventh Avenue.

They walked a block in grim silence, and then Ginny said, “Cullen, did you ever do something and find you couldn't explain to anyone why you did it, and perhaps not even to yourself?”

He thought about it for a while, and then he nodded. “Yeah, I went into a cop station and confessed that I had killed a priest and that I ran drugs.”

“You couldn't explain that to me — why you made that tape?”

“No. Except—”

He swallowed the words and walked on. He had a long stride. Ginny had to move to keep up with him.

“Except what?”

He stopped abruptly, turned facing her, and snapped, “What the hell are you after? Who are you? What do you want of me?”

“You can't explain and I can't explain,” Ginny said miserably.

“OK. Let's leave it that way.” He swung around and crossed Seventh Avenue, leaving Ginny standing on the corner, thinking to himself that there was no reason why he should tell her anything, and it would have made no sense whatsoever to try to explain that before he spilled out his guts onto a piece of electronic tape, he was dead, and that now he was alive. That was feeling and consciousness and there was no way in the world that he could put it into words; except of course to come up with
grace
. He had said
grace
because it was the only word of mystery that he possessed.

Ginny spent the remainder of her lunch hour walking down-town to her office. A nasty November rain began to fall, less rain than a cold mist, and Ginny wrapped her thin coat tightly around her and endured the discomfort as a fitting punishment for her foolishness. Like so many Catholics who have left the church, she functioned within her own set of sins, guilt, and punishment.

Later that afternoon, shortly before five o'clock, she was summoned into Timberman's office. Cohen was already there, fingering a package of cigarettes, lacking the courage to light one. Without preamble, the district attorney said to them, “I've heard from Washington, and they've put a top-secret lock on that tape we saw this morning. You are not to discuss it with anyone, and I want no leaks, because if it does leak, I'll know where it came from.”

“That's hardly fair,” Ginny protested. “How about the West Side cops?”

“I spoke to Freedman up there, and I told him that if he didn't put a lock on it, I and others would be very displeased. I think he'll listen.”

Cohen said, “I'm sorry, sir, but I think I speak for both of us when I state my belief. You can't lock that story, no way. It's going to leak, and when it does, I think you should accept the fact that Ginny and I are not involved.”

Timberman thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “Fair enough.”

It was a gesture of dismissal, but at the door, Cohen paused and asked, “Was there anything else in the way of explanation? Forgive me for being curious.”

“You're forgiven,” Timberman said shortly.

Outside in the corridor, Ginny said, “Thank you for covering my ass.”

“What do you think of all this?”

“It's business as usual, and sometimes the shit hits the fan. This is the most corrupt administration in the history of these United States. Half of the damn Executive is either indicted or on trial, and if there were any way to put some muscle behind it, the whole damn White House would be in jail. I don't mind that they steal and turn the Pentagon into a money machine. That's old hat and we're used to it — but to go into the dope business and compete with the Mafia, that's new.”

“Nothing's new,” Cohen said. “During Prohibition, they were in the pockets of the mob for all they could get. Indignation, Ginny, is self-imposed neurosis, and I got enough neuroses floating around not to want any more. Be thankful that we're running an honest operation here in Manhattan, which is a miracle in itself. There was a time when there was a payoff price on every crime that existed — including murder.”

Back in her office, Ginny opened the
World Almanac
and read, “Nicaraguan and Honduran forces clashed near their common border, and, for the second time in 1986, U.S. helicopters transported Honduran soldiers to the vicinity of the fighting. On Dec. 4, Nicaraguan soldiers overran a Honduran border post in pursuit of Nicaraguan contras who opposed the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and who had established a base inside Honduras …” She read on until darkness fell, and then came to herself with a start. Time to go home. Time to end another day, having accomplished nothing more than she had accomplished the day before.

“I am bored, I am tired, I am sick of this wretched job, which consists of indicting drug dealers and pushers and importers and wholesalers and finding them back on the street or replaced by two where there had been one, and everybody talks and nobody really gives a damn or does anything intelligent about it, and I take my pay and I am lonely and sick of the whole damn thing,” and having said all this to herself, she felt better, put on her coat, slung her bag over her shoulder, and left her office and walked down the long, dismal hallway that led to the wet streets.

And on the way, she asked herself, “Would I? Would I leak this lovely story? I was admonished, but I didn't give my word, and Morty, bless his heart, has covered my ass. So, would I?”

She mulled it over and over in her mind and came, finally, to the conclusion that she would. When the proper time arrived.

The Meeting

T
HEY NEVER TOOK
the big plane to Washington. They had a corporate jet that they flew to El Paso, and from El Paso, they took a regular airline flight to Washington. General Swedenham and Colonel Yancy sat together, and Swedenham gave Yancy a whispered lecture
on looseness of operation
. “It's the way the whole goddamn military is,” Swedenham said. “They never work anything out. They always go off half cocked — and they are nothing for us to imitate. Now look at the way they carried out that stupid operation in Iran, going in there with a rabble of fucken helicopters, with no support and no cooperation.” Swedenham was a man gone to fat, with a hoarse whiskey voice.

“Yes, sir,” Yancy whispered.

“Yes, sir, yes, sir — don't give me any more fucken yes, sir, because I'm not asking for agreement but for a little common sense. On what basis did you hire this man Cullen?”

“His record checked out. He's an old pro, and Kovach went down the line for him with no holds barred. Kovach says —”

“Look,” the general said, his whiskey whisper like a knife in Yancy's side, “you pay off. Not Kovach, not anyone else. What in hell do you think we're into? Do you think we're playing games? What are you putting away, Yancy, a million dollars a month? Is that play money?”

“Well, Senator—”

“Stop!” the general said. “You stupid bastard. Never, never mention that name in public. Never. Not that name, not the name of the undersecretary.”

“Well, sir—”

“Oh, shit, don't argue with me, Yancy. If we blow this, that forsaken Congress of ours will burn the flesh off our bones. You don't understand one goddamn thing about this country. You can have everyone from the president down running a scam with you, and if the bubble bursts, you are alone.”

“Not alone,” Yancy thought, “because if this bubble bursts, let me tell you, my fat friend, Colonel Yancy will cover his hide.” But he bent his head in agreement, reminding the general of the dog in a dog fight who accepts defeat by rolling over on his back with all four paws wagging in the air. He had never been fond of Yancy; he mistrusted men who were strikingly handsome, and Yancy was very handsome indeed. People said of Yancy that he looked like a film star, and he irritated the very devil out of Swedenham by wearing every ribbon he possessed, including his Good Conduct ribbon, every time he put on his uniform. Swedenham himself was retired, and he had the feeling that Yancy paraded his army active-duty status at every opportunity. Swedenham considered it senseless and provocative, and he discouraged it, knowing, however, that he could not forbid Yancy to be in uniform. Yancy's superior officers had only the foggiest notion of what his special duty consisted of, and certainly they were unaware that he was involved in the process of turning himself and others into multimillionaires by selling guns and taking payment in kind in a white powder that was very marketable. Swedenham himself had happily lived his life without guilt or conscience, and while he had never thought of himself as a sociopath, he had in his time given himself many a pat on the back for his ability to make hard decisions without blinking. In Vietnam, he had been an eager supporter of the body-count publicity and of such things as the use of Agent Orange, and in his practical manner of looking at things, he had always accepted the mercantile dictum “Buy cheap and sell dear.”

Yet he had no desire to disaffect Yancy, who was stupid but useful; and now he soothed his feelings by telling him they were facing some hard decisions that would require stiff backbones.

“Into combat!” he said to Yancy, squeezing the colonel's arm.

Monty met them at the Washington airport and led them to a black stretch limousine, and all the way to their destination at the safe house, he said nothing. The general understood that. You don't talk in a car, no matter what, and Yancy was kept quiet by the grim expression on Monty's face. Yancy knew who Monty was and that Monty was short for Dumont, but he also knew enough to ask no questions about him. Monty was elegant, he was handsome, his manners were exquisite, he was blond and tall, and he had the ability to look at Yancy as if Yancy were a tolerable insect. Monty was West Point.