The Confession of Joe Cullen (14 page)

And Dumont Robertson was other things as well. In the three-hundred-acre Berkshire Mountains estate — land that the Robertsons had purchased in 1832 — he was the local mirror image of Ted Kennedy, standing firmly against whatever Ted Kennedy stood for and contemptuous of the fact that the Kennedys did not play polo. In the Berkshires, people like Monty practiced snobbery rather than socially packaged inclusion, but in New York, it was quite different. If the Berkshires were a place for the Robertson children to bring swain and mistress and screw and get drunk and sniff white Bolivian powders, New York demanded another set of rules. In New York, Monty was ready to break the ass, as he put it, of any of his four kids who might step out of line, and since they turned up in New York only on school holidays, his command was not challenged.

The point being that Monty was a reigning prince of New York society. Not that Monty was fool enough to believe that there was such a thing as
society
in the classical sense. He had read enough about London and New York society at the turn of the century to know that the word did not quite apply — yet it was related, and the pack of stock manipulators, merger experts, crooked brokers, real estate kings, media stars, and billionaire lawyers who made up the current New York social mix were the only proper constituency he had. His was old money; theirs was mostly new but there was a lot of it, and Monty accepted the situation with grace. There were still Vanderbilts and Astors and Depews enough to decorate the edges, and there was his wife, a six-foot beauty with a shock of yellow hair that was envied as much as her social position. She needed her rank more than Monty did, although his was decently helpful.

This helpfulness was a rather odd thing, for what Monty desired most eagerly was respectability, not the respectability of the middle class, but the respectability of an honored titled gentleman in London, a man whose name being linked with any devious or sub rosa project would elicit snorting disbelief. It was Monty's simple wish to be both good and evil too, although in his mind he dealt not with evil but with necessity; and where the necessity arose, he dealt with it himself. He sent no other to run his errands, and because he buried his own dead in his own way, the creeps and misfits and scoundrels who abounded in government honored him and respected him.

The general had known Monty for years — as had the others. Only Yancy was kept in ignorance, and when he attempted to make his own relationship with Monty, he had been met with a cold wall of resistance.

“I don't like that snotty son of a bitch,” Monty had once said to the general, “and I don't trust him.” But the general assured Monty that, since Yancy's ass was in the same sling, there was no need to worry.

At the safe house, they were ushered into a conference room, where Fred Lester and Reynaldo Perez and another man, distinguished, white-haired, and nameless, were waiting for them. The white-haired man was addressed only as “sir,” and that in great deference.

The conference room was tastefully equipped. Instead of the modern furniture that most boardrooms contained, this centered on a large eighteenth-century table with ten comfortable Chippendale chairs. On the floor, an Aubusson rug glowed with age and beauty, and on the walls a flocked wallpaper that was either the real thing or a fine imitation. On one wall, a portrait of Nathan Hale, that revered spy of the American Revolution, and on the facing wall, as a nod to the British cousins, a painting of Major Andre. In theory, the room was as safe as anything could be in this age of the new technology, but the general always maintained a sneaking suspicion that there was a microphone somewhere. Well, be that as it may, one functioned as best one could, and the reputation of this room was certainly the best.

At the side of the room, a butler's tray held Scotch whisky and bourbon and the various mixers. Ashtrays and a humidor with several sizes and shapes of Cuban cigars. The humidor was passed around. No servant entered or left the room.

They took their seats in silence. Monty chose a Romeo and Juliet, clipped it with a gold cutter, lit it, and then opened the meeting bluntly with “Gentlemen, we have a difficult situation as a result of pure stupidity. I am being blunt because this meeting requires bluntness. Suppose you explain the situation to our friend here,” Monty said to the general, indicating the white-haired man.

“On the recommendation of Captain Oscar Kovach, reserve, we hired as his copilot Lieutenant Joseph Cullen, also reserve. We needed a copilot and navigator desperately. Kovach is a poor navigator. Kovach described Cullen as a fine pilot on multi-engined planes and an excellent helicopter pilot as well. He also had a bad record of behavior in Vietnam. If not for his skill, he would have been busted on several occasions, and once it came to the edge of a dishonorable discharge. Air force records revealed a troublemaker and a brawler. He had a bad experience with an upper-class Vietnamese woman in Saigon, and she charged him. However, there was no criticism whatsoever of his courage and skill as a pilot, and when Kovach brought us his name for consideration, we felt we had found a good man. He was being well paid and was promised a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars at year's end. He also knew that he was covered and that his own risk was minimal.”

“That's a justification,” Monty said, “not an explanation. But there's no point in blame. The plain fact of the matter is that the situation exists.” He turned to Perez. “Your opinion, Colonel?”

Colonel Perez resembled a bookkeeper more than a fighting man. Plump, pink-skinned, wearing gold pince-nez, his thin hair the color of corn silk, his trim gray worsted suit eminently proper, his white shirt and maroon striped tie totally conservative, he could have passed anywhere as an unimportant cog in some large corporation. He had just the slightest Spanish accent, and his tone was crisp and businesslike. “The operation must continue,” he said flatly.

“Ah, well,” Monty said, “I think we must have some agreement on that. General?”

“Certainly.”

“Colonel?” to Yancy.

“I agree — if it can.”

“And Mr. Lester?”

Lester was a large, large-bellied, easy-mannered, easy-speaking Texan. He wore boots hand-made for him in Mexico, and outside on the coat rack he had left a very expensive Stetson hat — in fact, four hundred and twelve dollars worth of hat. He enjoyed expensive things. His silk shirts cost six hundred dollars plus, his string ties eighty-one dollars, and his Mexican boots, embossed with silver, and in spite of the devaluation of the peso, fourteen hundred dollars a pair. He wore a diamond pinky ring of thirty carats, perfect and unsullied, and he never apologized for his love of the expensive. He was married to a gorgeous twenty-three-year-old blonde who, as he put it, cost him forty million dollars, settled on her with the marriage contract.

His opinion was to the point. “Son, it's a damn sight better than the oil business. In fact, today the oil business stinks.”

The white-haired man said to Swedenham, “General, you engaged in an indiscretion. A man's military record is neither a reliable nor even an approximate picture of what he was or might be in civilian life. Did you trouble to find out whether he had a police record? Whether he was religious? What his religion was? Whether he was a man of guilts, compassion, whether he was innocent of the rape charge or what went on there? What his education was? What other pilots thought of him?”

The general shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Very well. Water over the dam. Monty, tell us what we face. Put it all on the table.”

“Yes, sir. This is in terms of all Cullen's contacts to date. Fortunately, we are dealing with a tight-lipped man. His first contacts were made in Sullivan's saloon on Ninth Avenue. We know that he let no one into his confidence there, and while he left with a prostitute whose name is Sylvia Mendoza, according to her own statement he never mentioned the priest until they were in her apartment. Of course, she'll not mention it to anyone else. At the Church of Saint Peter the Rock, there was a bit of a problem. The church is served by an old priest and a younger curate. We had an operative, female, quite old, go there posing as Cullen's mother. Of course, she understood that the confession was privileged; she only desired to ask the priest's opinion as to the state of her son's health, or some such thing. It was the old man, Immelman. He is dead of a heart attack. He was in fact suffocated, so there is absolutely nothing to indicate other than a natural death. He was a very old man.”

The white-haired man interrupted at this point with a question: “Why didn't you take Cullen out at this point?”

“Yes, sir. Very stupid on our part. He disappeared — that is, for a few hours. We had a man on him, but we should have had two. He walked down to the river and out on an old pier, and he sat there for hours. Our man had to piss, and the damn fool went into one of those portable toilets that had been set up for repair work on the pier. When he stepped out, Cullen was gone. He swears that Cullen had no notion that he was being tailed, and I'd guess that was the case. That's how he came to walk into that West Side precinct without our knowledge.”

“And when did you pick him up again?”

“Not until the district attorney had the tape. He didn't go home and he didn't turn up at his apartment. He went to his bank and cashed a check for nine hundred dollars, most of it in fifty-dollar bills. We should have thought of the bank, but we didn't. Remember, sir; at this point he hadn't made the tape and we felt that we could control the situation until we had some exchange with you and Mr. Lester. We also wished to get a proper handle on the death of Father O'Healey. That was something I did not learn about until a few days ago.”

“Not only stupid but sloppy.”

“Yes, sir,” Monty agreed. “I admit that, sir.”

The white-haired man then said, “It presents us with an untenable problem and possibly an impossible one.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Fred Lester said, smiling, the first smile since they had come together in the room. “Son, you got the money and the clout, and nothing is impossible. You got impediments, remove them. That's the way I see it.”

“Impediments,” the white-haired man said softly.

“Spell it out,” Perez said to Monty. “Put it on the table. We will see what we have.”

“We have problems,” Monty said. “At the precinct where the tape was made, we have five men: Lieutenant Freedman, three detectives — Jones, a black man, Leary, a fat old Irish cop, and Ramos, Hispanic, probably Puerto Rican. Then there's a young uniformed cop, Lefty O'Neal, who ran the tape. Thought is that they've been close as hell about this, but who knows? Five New York cops present a problem. Unique.”

“Are any for sale?”

“We don't know yet. We'll know by tomorrow or the next day.”

“On the other hand,” the white-haired man said, “New York cops take all the shit that's coming down, and nothing surprises them.” The word
shit
came oddly, wrongly, from the elegant, soft-voiced man, whose speech, like his dress, was impeccable. “They've passed this along to Timberman, and I understand that Timberman has been told that this is a most delicate federal matter, and that it will be handled as such.”

“He has two assistants who also saw the tape.”

“Did he tell the cops that this is an absolutely top-secret matter?”

“Well, we must think about this. I would prefer that there be some way of handling that end without violence.”

“I don't know.” Monty waited a long moment before he continued. “Two of his top people saw the tape, bureau chiefs. Names of Morton Cohen and Virginia Selby. They are old pros and, as I hear it, smart. On the other hand, I am told that no lawyer with drive and ambition remains with the DA's office for more than a few years.”

“Which adds up to what?” the general asked.

“Possibly to the fact that we have here two defeated people who have given up on what every good American wants most.”

“For sale?”

“Who knows?”

“The DA warned them to keep their mouths shut?”

“As I understand it.”

“Which leaves Harold Timberman. Tell me something about him, Monty.”

It was a thing of Monty's that he never referred to notes. A lifetime of training had given him a mind like a computer filled with softwear, and it was said that he had burdened his brain with so many facts that there was never room for art or philosophy, although he knew a good many artists and writers through their files in the reference rooms of his organization. He felt that he was properly equipped for his work, and that both guilt and conscience were what Fred Lester referred to as impediments. If he questioned himself, it was to tell himself that, like any other scientist, he dealt with facts.

He spelled out the facts concerning Harold Timberman. “German-Jewish background, fifth generation in America, father and grandfather in public service, plentiful old money out of cotton mills and finance in the 1880s, nominally religious, attends Temple Emanu-El in New York, Park Avenue address, and a reputation for being unreachable.”

“Which is the trouble with the goddamn old money,” Fred Lester said. “They've lost ambition.”

“No man is unreachable,” the white-haired man said. “Where is he vulnerable?”

“He has three children, five grandchildren.”

“Worth considering. Now, tell me, Monty, is there a duplicate of the tape?”

“Absolutely not. We've checked that every which way. There is no duplicate.”

“The tape must be destroyed immediately.”

“Agreed.”

“And Cullen must be taken out immediately.”

“Oh, yes. Certainly.”

“And Kovach?”

Here, the general intervened with a snort of disagreement. “Hold on! Pilots do not grow on trees.”

“No, they don't,” Monty agreed. “Kovach should not be eliminated; he should be involved.”