“It was a Tuesday, but that never meant anything much when it came to us charter member G-man types and our bad habits. Drinking, especially under the Volstead Act, made us special and that’s what Edgah---he liked us to call him that, in that phony New England upper crust way---always told us, the few who’d been with him from the start.
Me, I’m part of that motley bunch of gumshoes, hand-picked by that old ball-breakin schemer, mainly because I knew his family---his real one. With him, it was keep everybody close----specially the ‘bodies’ he liked, you take my meaning!
You see, we were both born and raised in the old southern town we call the capital; back then, it was Mecca to every black family wanting to rise……. and Edgah’s wanted desperately to rise.
My black nanny, Miss Beulah Mae Jackson, God rest her soul, she was a distant cousin to that family.”
As a young black female reporter I was unprepared for the casual nonchalance of that observation, the kind that forces the brain to hold the neural presses in order to produce the ultimate special edition featuring the largest available font headline: REVELATION!
“What’s a matter, hon, you never heard about our moveable spirits lab?” Roiles needled me playfully, a prime instance of why his phonetic middle name had been awarded by Hoover himself.
“Jus jokin, that’s all, it’s how I got the ‘Lee’ part of my name: ‘He frank-ly roils me!’ ole Edgah used to say, didn’t matter if I was the only audience present.”
“Mr. Roiles, of course, the King letter is public knowledge, it just never got pursued; are you saying it should be?” I, somehow, finally had composed myself.
Roiles just smiled like a Sphinx, whose riddle had not begun to be undone. “Alls um sayin is what um sayin, you’re the cub reporter.
“Any who, it was a Tuesday, like I was saying; I made it to the office after sailin full canvas to the wind night before; and that’s when it landed at my feet. ‘It’ gets to your question, but it’ll take some time. Funny how co-incidences get in your face, like some one, thing, force, you get the idea--- is tryin to tell ya something, only you keep wantin to ID it by habit, I guess, ‘chance’, maybe, except you called it by its real name without takin account of that name’s plain meaning—events that happen together, for some unseen purpose, that sorta deal. There’s lots a stuff written about it, try Jung or even Sting, what’s that song, Synchro-somethin….”
“Synchronicity” I added.
“Smart lady……where was I? Oh, yeah….I mainly knew it was Tuesday from Meg Riley’s usual remark about me surviving a car or train wreck. As best I recall, I took the trolley, had em in those days, and a good thing, too, considerin.”
After the first hour, he just couldn’t coherently recall very well; we had decided, when he had finally agreed to do the open-ended sessions, only the first hour would be videotaped----Frank was losing his hair due to the chemo regimen and, even at his advanced age, vanity held sway.
A little background might help; when I first learned about him, I was convinced that he would turn down the whole project; after all, I was still a relatively young woman, just out of journalism school, as he might have put it, ‘ignorant of my ignorance’. My trump card was my great-aunt---Miss Beulah Mae Jackson.
That still left the hardest part: relating to a time whose very leitmotif seemed hard to comprehend, married as I am to a white man, an Italian born in Sicily, to boot (any wordplay attributable to the Italian mainland and its cartographic relationship to his island of birth is purely, well, somewhat unintentional----chalk it up to Frank’s corruptive influence). Irony was my real ace; Frank couldn’t really stand the idea of any new generation remaining unmindful of how things had come to pass the way they had and did.
One clear sign that his heart was in it, if not his body, was when I arrived the first afternoon to commence the video portion I’ve been replaying for edit---it brought home to me the gravitas it held for him: the television had been tuned to Entertainment Tonight’s run down of the 1984 Oscar nominees----they were showing a clip from John Carpenter’s Starman for which Jeff Bridges had been deservedly nominated; the clip was especially poignant on many levels for us both----Bridges is desperately trying to rendezvous with his rescue ship while the authorities are closing in on him. Karen Allen’s character is devoted to this alien being, clonally embodied as her dead husband, Scott. The civilian official, a true scientist in the employ of a mercenary government treating his presence as an ‘invasion’ despite his having been ‘invited’, tongue-in-cheek via the Voyager probe, complete with the now embarrassing voice-over of the discredited Kurt Valdheim, is torn about what to do. In speaking with ‘Scott’, he learns of the great wisdom of this being through but one, piercing statement from ‘him’: “You are an interesting species, intelligent but savage; shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you? You are at your best when things are at their worst.”
Frank noticed me as entranced as he by the scene, saying one word as he switched off the sound: ‘Schoepenhauer.’ That was it, just the name.
“German philosopher, I think…. don’t tell me you knew him too?” was my venture into levity.
“Knew a German who knew him” Frank said with his usual cryptographic smirk. “Fished him outta the Med after we sunk his submarine; I jumped into a god dam burning oil patch, don’t ask me why. But he seemed to know, kept sayin this name, over and over, amazed he could speak, really.”
“I don’t understand” was my flat-footed response.
“Seems this guy was the skipper, pretty well-educated; through the medic on our boat, whose parents were from the old country, we figured out that he was talking about the position taken by this Schopenhauer, bout the way people respond to danger to another being, how they forget all about themselves as a separate person; spent a whole book arguin it was proof we are all connected, underneath surface appearances and all. Stuck with me, I guess; Bridges had that same look in his eyes just then” Frank’s eyes, too, had that look, a look of kinship with me, with just about anyone, any living thing if the situation was right.
I knew then with complete clarity why Frank, and I, wanted, no matter what, to tell his story; I pray that I may tell well what I find beautiful in it, and him. I’ve got 35 hours of tape, mostly audio, to get it right---rent the movie if you want to help me get the eyes right, those haunting windows onto that essence Schoepenhauer may have been writing about so passionately.
Chapter Two
The streetcar was his safest bet; the conductors knew him so he always got a reserved seat near that transport official. This was of prime importance on Tuesdays, Monday nights being the usual inner sanctum booze-a-thon passing as a card game. They, the conductors, were very mindful of forgoing the usual bell ringing for so sensitive a reason.
“Federal Bureau” was the driver’s verbal cadence of an alarm clock together with a firm tapping on his nearest shoulder.
“Thanks, Riley”---he called everyone Riley, except Meg, picked up the habit in the Great War, just like ‘Kilroy’ in the next one---as he gingerly disembarked for the short traverse to the adjoining sidewalk and the office.
Not yet much of a federal presence, the Bureau was ensconced in a nondescript old fin de siecle turreted building still bearing the bas relief name of a long-gone bank once owing its prosperous existence to planters and other agrarian patrons. Its anonymity was, however, overwhelmed by its proximity to the White House, coveted by Edgah.
“Federal Bureau, can you hold?” Meg Riley purred into her oversized headset. Spying Roiles, the ritual commenced: “Hoi, Polloi…. any other survivors from the crack-up?”
His automatic counter ritual involved the rubbing of temples, hat more or less still in place. He was ready with his usual retort: “Save it, Meg, huh; just a late night……”, then, under his breath but still audible by design “cap, or ten.”
Frank made his way to Meg’s perch behind a phone exchange ancient even by 30’s standards; the Bureau was low on the bureaucratic pole of federal totems. As she handed him a phone message she added: “Called twice already, says it’s urgent” smiling at his wincing at the thought of having had no coffee as yet.
“On a Tuesday…..” talking as he read, he then offered “Holy, moley, ain’t this the White House exchange?”
Apparently even the nosy Meg hadn’t noticed, chiming in: “I’m impressed, considerin.”
Regaining his semi-composure: “How bout a break, huh, doll? Get me” and, squinting at the message, “Mr. Carter, ok?”
Meg rotary dialed the number: “Good morning, may I be connected to Mr. ‘Dips’ Carter, Jr.?” she paused for a reply.
“I see, that’s odd, he just called not 20 minutes ago. Thanks, dearie.” As she hung up, she puzzled to Frank “Strange, say he’s left for the doctor’s, feeling poorly.”
Frank, now gaining relative focus and building interest asked, “He say what it’s about?”
“No, very polite gent, older Negro, sounded nervous, you know, jittery.”
Frank grabbed his hat, still more or less on his head, suggesting, “Think I’ll hop over to see FDR, you want I should bring you back a souvenir?”
“Say, you kidding; how’s about an invite to the ‘Children’s Hour’…” Meg paused, noting with her at-the-ready air of superior knowledgability “the poem by Wordsworth, his cue for the drinkeys……oh, never mind!”
Halfway out the door, intent on the consolation of ancient resort of the lesser witted, ‘the last word’, Frank instructed Meg about one track minds and the vocal habits of guilty canines. The aging college fencer in him advised that he had scored a very palpable hit.
There he was, worthless old crab, thought Frank as he warily sauntered up to the flimsy shack its erectors had pretended to make manifest the optimistic inapposite verb ‘guard’.
“Chrissake, what brings the likes a you to the palace?”
Frank expected a wiseacre greeting from such an excuse for a guardian who had been his Chief Petty Officer in what was otherwise a man’s Navy. He braced himself.
“Don’t tell me ole Edgah lost a cat or something!”
“Nah, Jimmy, like ta tell ya, but, ya know, classified way above your station, get me?” Frank gave better than he got, as a rule.
“Oh, well, yeah, sure; what can I do you for?”
“Got a guy on yer roster name a ‘Dips’ Carter, Jr.?” Frank got down to business. But Jimmy wasn’t quite ready to cooperate yet.
“Gotta be a ni….”
“Come on, Jim, ain’t got time for shootin the sea breeze, know what I mean?” Frank insisted.
“Here he is, checked out little while ago, went over to St. Liz’s hospital, you know, the one for nig…”
Frank didn’t care for editorials, especially from jerks like his old CPO.
“When and why” Frank pressed him, barely holding his tongue.
“Bout 30 minutes or so, sick or something, but, well, you know these…”
“Sure do, Jimbo, alls they do is keep the god dam country runnin’s all; hey, do yourself and that country a favor, will ya, take the rest a the day off!” Frank, tipping his hat in the elaborate fashion of the naval semaphore he and his mates had specially devised for James McFarland as the signal for ‘drop dead’, stormed off in the direction of the government car pool to arrange for a vehicle-----the streetcars didn’t run to that part of town.
Stopping by the office to use the facilities, Frank asked Meg to phone St. Elizabeth’s. When he returned, his interest piqued all the more when Meg reported that they had never laid eyes on him.
“Coulda used another name,” Meg suggested lamely.
“Stick to the phones, babe, would ya” Frank was deep in reverie when he popped the payoff question his fogged-in brain hadn’t formulated when he had first learned of the two calls that morning.
“Say, did our friend Dips say who had told him to call me?”
“Why, hadn’t thought of that; let me see” she searched for her notepad.
“What, we were both hung over this morning?” Now in reasonable gear, Frank’s brain decided to lay it on thick as payback for Meg having licked it when its neurons were down.
“Keep your shirt on” Meg said. “I usually do remember something like that----here it is: said an old friend of yours from Alabama gave him your name” Meg said proudly.
“Never even been there” Frank couldn’t figure it.
“This thing is getting screwier by the minute.” The phone rang.
“Federal Bureau…yes, just a moment, sir, please, stay calm….” Meg pointed to the phone as she covered the mouthpiece.
“Roiles, who’s…Carter! Been getting ready to do a personal All Points on you…. where…what the…look, stay put, be there in half an hour…” Frank headed for the door.
“So?!” Meg demanded.
“Call ya when I can; you don’t hear from me for a while, means um busy; gets to be a day or so, send in the Marines---hell, never mind, they’ll never find me unless um on some beach” he replied through a condescending Navy man’s smile, digging through his desk drawer for ammunition for his pug-nosed government issue pistol.
“What if the White House calls?”
“Tell em they’ll have to polish the silver some other time; for some reason he’s scared to go back, so you know nothing; gotta go” and he was gone.
If Frank’s stiff brush of a brain had brushed onto canvas the picture in his head of the landscape that was his immediate destination, he would have been grouped with the surrealist school, ‘really dark’ wing.
It had formed in some part of his neural net marked ‘memorable’ during his slow, circling landing right after discharge from service, flying into Washington from California. A few blocks from the Executive Mansion was a nether world of row houses, not much more than shotgun houses you still found down South that used to nefariously serve as slave quarters. He remembered reading in some art book:’the painterly juxtapositional cacophony of dark, brooding pockets of pigment yields an eerie congeries of gloomy despair somehow integral to the otherwise delightful landscaping, as though an organic cloudlike permanence had been attached there over long-suffered time’-----smiling at his uncharacteristic quality of memory, Frank rehung the painting back in its deep, dark gallery as he approached the shabby dwelling marked 17 ½ Beecher Street,N.E. Dogs were barking continuously, apparently never having seen an automobile, especially one with “U.S. Government” painted prominently on its side----or, maybe, even a white man, at least out of uniform.
Chapter Three
The harbor docks were streaked with the last rays of the disappearing sun, through thinly scattered darkening clouds, the kind that are said to always hover over persons, places, things somehow haunted by bad fortune.
It was dusk, making it a venue whose varietal appreciation was always a matter of the eye’s----and its owner’s---- point of view. At the moment, that vantage was the roughneck turf of stevedores, weary-looking warehouses and relatively organized scofflaws whose penetration of the unionized work force was nothing if not wholesale.
Two men, conspicuous in G-man style trench coats, faces obscured by large-brimmed hats, walked the water’s edge, the night watchman giving every indication that their presence was, if not welcome, at least ‘authorized’; his eyes, thusly relieved of monotonous duties, were engrossed in the latest Superman comic. Having recognized their voices, those same eyes never even left the colorful pages on which he had begun to be amazed by this newly emergent man of steel, fresh from boyhood somewhere in Kansas--- home to America’s other latest darling, Dorothy, he thought, then wondering where the Hecuba Superman had been when she was thrust into the wild blue yonder by that twister; he quickly corrected himself with ‘he was just a boy, knew nothing bout his powers then, fool’--- Hell, he didn’t even know about the dangers of kryptonite, what was he thinking----‘just the gentleman in me’----right down to the proper name for ‘heck’, like my larger than life personages to be referred to proper’, his thought patterns concurred.
As for these two, the object of their attention was very realistic and, yet, not unlike the to-be-avoided effects of that green metallic nemesis of the iron man himself would have to deal with too soon, and unprepared. Well-placed dynamite charges could cripple the whole port authority operation, and for months if not longer.
“You telling me he’s the only protection they’ve got out here?” said the taller man.
“Relax; look, we ain’t at war; besides, everybody knows not to mess with this place, could be very bad for the health!”
“I dunno, you heard what that creep Mussolini’s up to in old Italy” he replied, unpersuaded that such foreigners understood the power of the local mobsters.
“That may be true. He’s going after every Italian family clan around, can’t stand the competition I guess” his diminutive partner agreed through self-amused chuckling. As if zapped by a deep revelation, he added: “Now I think on it, that’s what bothers me----with the right ‘partners’ anybody could shut this thing down but good.” From his more vertical friend, he sensed that look his eyes confirmed: his colleague of many years service, whose tongue was no stranger to uninvited vituperative wagging, had allowed that same vital (he often wished it were not so honored, especially when it came to the sheer palaver it was capable of) organ to defer to the eyes, oddly, he mused, far more effective when giving out than taking in: ‘You’re so fucking naïve!’ , they had screamed, silently. “One thing’s for sure: the Brits gave him a goddam knighthood, so looks like he’s got some mucky mucks’ blessing.”
“Whaddya expect; the Limeys got a tin soldier army just like us---they’ve got those rose-colored glasses on when it comes to that kraut with the bad haircut and his hairless Italian mutt, too” his counterpart called the name of that pacifist tune.
Let’s get some chow, it’s Sammy’s quittin time.”
From across the Atlantic, a similar scrutiny, albeit by some of them, Fascistas, lately come to official power, Fascists, far more intense, was being directed toward that waterfront by some physically distant cousins to their Americanized familia, albeit this crowd liked to wear black shirts and parade around like neo-Roman legions, beating up and disposing of undesirables, including Sicilian clans, most especially. As for what each branch of those often fractious clans might be up to, both in general and in the case of New York Harbor these G-Men were without a clue, especially those who regarded their buddies as ‘naïve’. Any such divining of the nature of that ‘what’ was a job that would require nothing less than the functional equivalent of a certain ubermensch, himself equally vulnerable to the effects of a kind of foreign power. As he turned the page of his vividly colored comic book, the weathered skin of the watchman horripilated with the glee his boyhood had once briefly known: ‘This looks like a Job for.....Superman!’, newsman Perry White exclaimed so resolutely that the trademark ‘balloon’ struggling to contain it seemed ready to burst, fictitiously hinting at the state of a very real ‘Planet’, ‘Daily’ lurching, blindly, toward its uncertain assignation with a harlot-like Destiny.
Chapter Four
The rebellious youngest son of the President, Jeffords Roosevelt had been dissuaded from his course of military service by his mother but, with her concession that he be allowed to leave Washington and its stifling atmosphere----along with Secret Service shadows---for cosmopolitan New York.
There, at a well-arranged private dinner party, he had met Marta. Daughter of an Italian Tyrolian aristocrat and a Swedish mother close to certain alleged (by her, of course) European royalty. Marta Angellini had cast her eyes, and concomitant spell, upon ‘JR’, her code name for the fascist Servizio Informazione Militare’s prime target of espionage and, again, according to her faithful reportage thereto, it was a coup de foudra.
Her cover as the graduate coed has been well planned and executed with skills transplanted in spades from an archetype deeply embedded in her Jungian psyche, labeled Mata Hari. For Marta, if that was her name, it had begun with an abandoned mother, whose putative husband had disappeared, feared dead, officially; he had been a freedom fighter against the perpetual enemy, the Greek, and the result of his alleged heroism had been squalor for his fellows.
No matter, she had found another, also a fighter, ‘Jimmy’. The child learned quickly and well about Mars’ progeny, his transience, especially while next to you, ‘loving you.’ Her philosopher stone was cold, strange alchemies having taken their fractal course in space-time; what came to rest in her was, then, in grateful substitution for what others called a heart.
“I’m very fond of you….” was the refrain of its keeper; no prizer of love and its cloying trappings, amusement was her revenue and expenditure, and a ‘profit’ was always shown.
“That sounds a lot like how I feel about dogs and baby ducks….” Jeffords had, at its first hearing, riposted, feeling, reflexively from his austere youth the sting of a stiff, well-rehearsed parry.
Damned by the faintest praise, a reciprocal thrust was called for.
“I suppose you’re right…..after all, it is a four-letter word” , a palpable strike, despite her having been very much en garde.
“Is my young stud angry with me, dar-ing?” She never used the ‘l’, like some failed Garbo impersonator; he concluded that it must have been those years in London, learning the King’s tongue and, then, using it against his occasional surrogate, perhaps in far more ways than one.
The door closed automatically, in seeming emulation of its momentary, now departed passerby. Staring into the silvered-rectangle of glass suspended directly above him, like some spatial peep hole for cosmic voyeurs, he was aware of his absurdity: a sort of ‘kept’ man of a keeper of bipedal specimens, the sole attraction of a private zoological experiment in which the subject was both wild and docile, Barnum’s freakish permutation, extrapolated from all the blind alleys and detours for destructive work he loosely regarded as his life.
Six months since the electrical voltage from below had discharged and found him its target, he was feeling captivity with strange detachment. The reflective ceiling helped promote the sensation, the observer becoming the observed, only in a way that would cause Siddharta himself to adamantly declare Buddhism a fraud. Risking that conjured possibility, ‘I am the reflection of my reflection’ ran koan-like through his maddening brain. A neural storm regurgitated random phrases and images without any correlation except, maybe, that they lived, however briefly, in the same head. Dreaming. The necktop dreamtrack went as follows: ‘How can I observe my own dreams? There is no ‘I’, except the one ‘I’ have created……that’s right, so I=I proves this refractive theory’----a tautology that he was certain had occurred to him alone in all space-time.
“What the……!” Jeffy screamed, head butting the silhouette hovering blurrily over him.
“Oh, sorry dar……” Marta started.
She rubbed her forehead routinely, he was strangely numb.
“Come join me in my bath, hmmmm?” was the one-size fits all reprise; he preferred to engage on dry land, shaking off the pale overture of appeasement.
“Where have you been?” was his complaint, treated by her as a greeting.
“Are you sure you won’t join me” Dopplered her voice, warping with departing distance en route to her elaborate inverted ablutionary altar.
As they lay there that night, their pre-coital psyches inhabited variant universes: hers on a haj to mercenary Mecca, his a dead end designed by Mobeius himself, with a proposed exit whose construction contract only she would, or could, let.
“Darling, be a dear and run my bathwater, hmmm?” Marta whispered.
Effortlessly gaining his puppy-like compliance, Marta quickly perused the detailed documents her paramour has purloined from his father’s office having to do with detailed longshoreman’s matters for most major U.S. port operations. As he quietly discovered her reading through the papers only just delivered from his latest unscheduled visit to Washington while ‘Dada’ was away, his puerile role playing called for a scolding rooted in scatology, the haunt of the eterna puera, his suitably inadequate psychic response to her superior acoutrements a la the Swiss-accented psychopomp.
“What are we, some old couple, so bored we read dull statistics instead of, well, you know.”
“Don’t be silly, just impressed with how important you must be; I’m certain to gain highest marks on my thesis with this---you’re too good to me” she assured her schoolboy-like book carrier.
Marta quickly laid aside the papers and switched on the radio to some seductive Harlem jazz.
“That’s more like it, Mar; say, now that your reward is so secure, how’s about mine, huh?”
Demurely posing Marta confidently asked: “You mean you don’t wish to read along…”
Caressing her earlobe, Jeffords said: “Madam, you’ve got me confused with that other Mr. Roosevelt; now he would have surely said yes to those documents, especially with a certain espoused cousin, by appointment, of course.”
Marta wanted to control the mood, and guarded against another unfocused channeling off of his energies into his growing alienation from Dada: “Now, don’t spoil the mood with talk of mummy and daddy.”
“You’re absolutely right” as he helped her undress in keeping with Dr. Marta Pavlov’s highly effective conditioning. “Besides, I don’t have an appointment.”
Marta now rang the bell ever so resonantly: “Well, how about a rendezvous, his term, correct?……a rendezvous in blue, instead!” as she seductively pulled him toward a bucking mounting his puerile psyche would later honor, again and again.
Chapter Five
Knocking faintly on a well-weathered door with the numbers ‘ 7 ½’ rustily nailed askew, “It’s Roiles….”
A woman blurted cautiously, “Who dat?”
“Frank Lee Roiles, I just talked with Dips.”
Opening slowly to a darkened foyer, the door seemed unaided by human hand.
A disembodied female voice resignedly uttered a tentative invitation: “Come on in, den.”
Like some haunted house poltergeist, the door seemed to close itself.
Gingerly, Frank greeted the relative darkness: “Hullo….”
Taken back by his increasingly revealed identity, the female asked: “You member me, do ya?” She was smiling now, broadly.
“Holy Jesus!” shouted Frank. “Why, I haven’t seen your sweetness since….”
She took over: “You was knee high, reckon. How’s your mama?”
Hugging her firmly, he said the dread words: “Rest in Peace.”
As if to renew the hauntedness of the shack, another timid voice: “It safe, Missy Jax?”
“Fool, this here’s my baby boy! Raise him up right here in town, almose.”
Frank, finally spying the formerly dark apparition, said: “Hello, Dips. I need some information, right now….”
Dips, seeming to acquire the lighter pigment of a ghost, tensed fearfully: “What dat be, suh?”
Frank’s wry nature determined to play it to the hilt: “Exactly what kinda name is ‘Dips’?!” belly laughing half way through the brief interrogatory.
Notwithstanding the damage to Dips’ already tenuous jumpy central nervous system, they all managed to retire to a somewhat brighter sitting room, the ice now shattered.
“Good thing they’ve still got plenty of those spittoons at the palace” Frank said, noting the spittle cup in Dips’ still trembling hand. It was his customary way of bringing the subject around after a near death-dealing confrontation. Now to business, ready or not, that was the way Hoover had trained his boys----keep em guessing, off balance, best way to the simple truth.
“Shoot, I’m all ears” Frank said holding his Government Issue notepad.
“Now…now, I needs my job…you, you sure…” Dips stammered.
“Missy Jackson can tell ya, shoot straight, and don’t nobody trouble you for telling me the truth” Frank leveled.
With her confirming nod, Dips reached into his pocket, producing a crumpled sheet of stationery.
“See, I foun dis at da House; doan reads too good but Missy Jax sez I needs to keep a look out fur strange happenings; when she seen dis, made me to call you sose ta git da evil offa me”, handing it to Frank.
Reading the almost calligraphically written letter, Frank’s eyes reread a certain paragraph aloud: “……and if you can do this for me, my darling, I should be ever so grateful. My graduate sponsors are talking about ending my stipend should I not excel, and soon, in my thesis. You are so very important, I know that you will save me from this fate. Your adoring Marta.”
Frank, aquainted via that same man’s Navy with a Secret Service pal who’d had to deal with ‘the kid’, asked Dips: “Jeffords been staying at the House lately?”
“Oh, yassir, he come and go all de time; he even use hiz Daddy’s own office sometime when he gone.”
Miss Jackson chimed in on cue: “Mr. Frank, now you knows I read the paper, religious---been reading bout dis Hitler usin peoples to do spyin and such evil things; dis here gal’s some kinda Matta Hari, you axe me, can feel it.”
Frank was now in high gear: “I’m gonna have a Photostat made at a secure spot I know, right away, then, Dips, you’re gonna put it right back where you found it.”
“Yassir, you betcha, cain’t have it roun me no mo, for sure” Dips hadn’t blinked his eyes since they had sat down.
“Right……now, Dips, ya gotta be copacetic for me; nobody knows bout this sept us three and that’s gotta be how it stays. Mum’s the word. Miss Jax, can you meet me at the main post office lobby downtown this evening?” Frank was setting things quickly on track so as to escape anyone’s notice.
“I can iffen you needs me to” Miss Jackson almost whispered, fully into the sense of things.
Bussing her cheek and patting Dips’ shoulder, Frank departed with: “Good; at 5 o’clock; Dips, you done good.”
Chapter Six
Mussolini had fooled even the West early on; a seeming voice of reason in resolving regional border disputes and generally working Italy’s way through the global Depression, with adopted Teutonic proficiency, had earned him a now rescinded nomination to become Sir Benito, compliments of His Royal Highness and his desperately pacific ministers. Like his trains, their fawnings, most often seen in those whose self-assessment is brutally candid, were true to the busy ‘shed-yule’ of a necessarily pacifist world----the one thusly set spinning on a dangerously askew Axis.
The ancient clans of Sicily had a decidedly more accurate view of Il Duce----he was systematically seeing to the destruction of their all too competitive influence throughout the latter day Roman’s domain. In strange inadvertent mock of his black-skinned Moorish antecedents, this blackshirt had ordered them killed, Mafia-style and with dispatch and, they, of like-minded reciprocal sentiment, had devoutly wished that an otherwise, to their eyes, useless King of Britain had followed through with the laying on of sword to shoulder, then ninety degrees hard to either side, making for a truly memorable, though bloody, dubbing---sadly, they risibly opined, he lacked both an Italian heart and enough of his Viking heritage. Absent so colorfully imagined consignment of Duce’s head and soul to a deserved night-like status incapable of rescission, the Dons had reached out to their American contingent for counsel and possible assistance, albeit of a kind not envisioned by the too crudely arrogant Duce or his somnolent American counterparts.
A double exercise was, therefore, necessarily at hand, featuring an elaborately woven design with the inevitable, and anciently artful, double-cross ‘ditching’ within one or more double-crosses, the resulting artful depiction a characteristically vivid and crimsoned tapestry of terror.
At the elaborate headquarters of SIM, discussions were under way in earnest concerning ‘Operation Blue Rendezvous’, aimed at sabotage in America’s Eastern ports as calculated attempt to use, then wipe out the Italy-based Mafia ‘using’ American mobsters as an unwitting ally while hurting any prospect of American aid to England, now that the Pact of Steel has been signed by Italy. As Major Sargento and Colonel Hinche took seats in a rococo office at the Servizio Informazione Militare headquarters in Rome, Colonel Heinrich Hinche was, by nature, dubious, although his doubts had little to do with a fatally flawed view of the secretive consanguineous clans from which these gangs had been spawned.
“I am pleased to report that our initial contacts with the U.S. gangster factions have been most promising; thus far, we have used lower-level contacts, we have both agreed on this, until the payment has been made; this is to the good, as they are completely untraceable to us” reported Major Sargento.
“Berlin wants no mistakes----you and they must not raise any suspicion of our involvement.”
Sargento was no fool, though he had witnessed enough ‘dumb shows’ a la the Italian comic opera that he was, as needed, quite adept at playing one----and such an occasion had just presented itself, for he resented the German’s presumptuousness as to Italian ineffectuality.
“We shall do whatever is necessary to point the blame directly at these gangsters, all of them, in due time”, Sargento motioned to a hovering aide, with less than Teutonic snappiness----as the papers were dropped onto the German’s well-shined boots. “Here you see the key disembarkation ports with the capacity to supply England; we have certain assurances of ‘protection’ from the U.S. mobsters controlling the longshoremen’s guilds, provided they are paid in untraceable commodities, principally gold, to be prepaid in part through our Swiss agents. Not to worry---how did Lenin phrase it: they are ‘useful idiots’, largely illiterate, hardly even speaking their mother tongue, with little connection to these ‘old timers’, with their primitive superstitious ways, do you see?”
Hinche, overlooking nothing, and most condescendingly the recent assault upon his jackboot, as a possible external menace, barked: “I see all, too well. Nevertheless, we want assurances that whoever you select are not double agents. Since the botched assassination in Miami certain suspicions have been aroused, mostly among this Roosevelt’s many Jewish advisors and friends---happily, it is owing only to America’s greedy bankers that we continue our rearmament efforts.”
“Please understand, I have known Sicilians my whole life, we understand each other: they see only the glimmer of the gold!”
Hinche, duly regarding the lesser Italian liaison officer as having made a virtual self-indictment of his organization, was having very little of these assurances, and smiled a forced grimace through clenched teeth. “Your ‘black shirts’ certainly seem to share the same tailors with these ‘mafia’, yes?”
The fool in Sargento now took center stage: “I take your meaning, not my aesthetic, all this plumage and trappings of ancient Roman Legions, it is not simply grotesque, but they seem to forget that black was the color of their greatest defeat, by the black beast, Hannibal---this is somehow to be avenged in Ethiopia…… foolishness.”
For the cynical Hinche this was not what he had expected from Il Duce’s hand-picked operative; the very surprise of it surprised him into a rare moment of candor. “I....trust that you are more discreet when handling our affairs.” “Have no doubts; you see, these walls are soundproof, compliments of Il Duce!” As he uttered those words even Sargento lacked full knowledge of the extent of his foolishness, as, beyond the immediate wall, an earphoned blackshirted operative patiently eavesdropped. “Further to your point, they will serve our needs, the Axis and your Fuhrer; remember, our ruthless homeland roundups of these mafiosi clans here in Italy leave only American gangsterism as culprit when the contracted sabotage is done, nothing more and, then, at the appointed time, they shall meet their ultimate fate.”
“Let us hope so, for everyone’s sake, even these American bumpkins may not be fooled twice.” Sargento’s fool, now in open retreat, had been replaced by what he hoped was now a manifoldly offensive persona.
“Operation Blue Rendezvous will be successful, albeit not the rendezvous of America’s choosing; as I have already stated, these American gangsters are Sicilians first----why, they still pronounce it after Vespucci, ‘Ameriga’---- and understand payment in gold via Switzerland, the perpetual neutral, yes.”
“Their bourgeois movies would seem to bear you out, but.....as I have asserted, are there not Jews involved?” Overt anger now informed the Nazi’s unveiled arrogance.
“True-----mere moneychangers, this time polluting a quite different Temple, yes?” Argento amused himself and, he hoped, his guest master. “And, again, they will be cast out, by a new savior!” Sargento had now consciously and forcefully recalled his fool from flight and into a charge that even the fool’s fool knew was madness.
Appearing assuaged, at least for the present, Hinche came as close as his Prussian roots allowed to humor: “Forgive me for saying so, but it would seem that they have other traits in common, your gangsters and theirs; we, too, have seen this in our SA brown shirts-----but slightly different shades of this same crude spectrum.”
“I take your meaning; be reassured, they will serve everyone’s needs---ours, the Axis’, your Fuhrer’s and, most critically, their own, in the reverse order, of course. They can certainly envision a world without old-fashioned overlords in Sicily and one controlled by us, their new partners....at least for the moment” Sargento’s momentaryily triumphant fool overconfidently concluded.
The German paused for what seemed like a full minute, then observing: “Do you not mean OUR Fuhrer?” Hidden from Sargento, indeed, the world at large behind the cruel smile of the arrogantly proud Nazi was the reverberating philosophic phrase---- invoked in a more limited context by his Italian counterpart, one that, foolishly omitted that same fool -----he admired from so great an enemy as Lenin----‘our cause welcomes useful idiots’.
Chapter Seven
Sleepwalkers. The term was much in vogue in the halls and backalleys of burgeoning Nazi power to describe the European and, especially, American. After all, they had been so mesmerized , into the bargain ,indeed, in the name of the bargain itself: the leading commercial firms and banks, ruled by those who had plutocratized a docile and deeply wounded populace, in a way capitalism, unbridled had been seen to make inevitable since Plato. These devotees of Pluto, Plato’s ‘philosopher-kings’, had always preferred to transpose that divided phrase, and were virtually in open princely defiance of Versailles and its reparations burden, zealously rearming Germany by way of highly imaginative, barely legal, schemes, all framed in the pseudo-philosophic language of capitalistic anti-Bolshevism.
Indeed, it was the Communist Jew and his international cabal that constituted the real threat to the Christian West.
Perhaps their most useful standard bearer, the young dashing Lindbergh was himself of glorious Nordic stock.
Only blocks from the shanty site of the meeting that same day between Mr. Dips Carter, Jr., Miss Jackson and Special Agent Frank Lee Roiles a regal ceremony was taking place, in honor of that very hero himself.
“Mine Herren & Damen, our duly elected Reichfuhrer extends his warmest welcome to Germany….in America!” The sash-bedecked master of ceremonies waited for the mechanical laughter to subside. “I have the great honor of presenting to you a hero of the Fatherland, America and the world; his aerial exploits are only matched by his, so to say, ‘down to Earth’ common sense…..I proudly give you our honoree, the noble Charles Lindbergh!”
As Lindy ascended the dais and approached the podium, he caught, with seeming genuine surprise, in the corner of his eye, the German military attaché approach with an elaborately marqueted box.
“Kind sir, before you begin your remarks, allow me the privilege of presenting to you my homeland’s highest honorary medallion……” applause accompanied the placement by the dress uniformed, complete with swastika, officer of the medal around Lindy’s neck.
“I am truly moved, thank you, danke shein” Lindy gushed, to, now, more vital applause. “Mr. Ambassador, esteemed guests, America stands at a crossroads. One path leading to continued peace, the other to hysterical and unwarranted conflict with countries we need not fear…….”
And now the applause dictated that the room now be reconfigured, on its collective feet, the German hosts beaming after the fashion of their compatriot, Colonel Hinche and his most useful operatives.
Chapter Eight
Frank had staked out a dusty corner of the massive cathedral-like Post Office; it is nearing 5 o’clock and the whole city is losing most signs of human activity save the rush homeward. Hearing a woman’s heels short-stepping toward him, Frank notices Miss Jackson.
“Mr. Frank, ah jus getting here, that street car late, an so was da jitney……” she breathlessly whispered.
“Don’t worry yourself, all to the good; wanted this place empty.”
As he looked around scoping their surroundings as he had done so diligently with his naval deck gun so long ago, Frank handed her a plain manila envelope: “Be sure and see this gets to that address, pronto, no names.”
“Di…….sorry, he nervous as can be but ah make certain he do as you tole him.” She paused as much for breath as to acknowledge the weight of the matter entrusted to her and Dips. “Mr. Frank, ahs got something to say to you, here, awright?”
Frank motioned for them to move outside.
Again using his ex-deck gunner tracer bullet-like eyes, he searched 360, then: “We’re all set, town’s only got ghosts.”
Miss Jackson, realizing he was only joking, sighed the relief of the superstitious: “Whew; now, you knows I be careful as can be…..fore ah comes here lady fren a mine come over; by den, Dips he gone to call his woik at da pay phone down the corner.”
Sensing her deep distress, Frank asked: “Miss J, you act like you’ve seen one of my ghosts----what gives?”
“You see, it’s like this here, she got the giff, the shine they calls it; I don’t tell her nuthin when she say---‘Sense something evil, bad, bad evil….like Judas hisself been here, wit us!’”
“That from a piece of paper?” Frank didn’t know what to say, itself a scary proposition to him.
“Ah doan say nuthin, and she in her spell, but I knows was about this here letter. She never wrong, Mr. Frank, never!” Miss Jackson caught herself raising her voice.
A strong wind blew up from nowhere, on a clear calm day, startling them both.
Frank had to calm her, and himself, her telling had been so sincere, so earnest. “Well, there’s your standard ‘ill wind’….”
He might just as well as have said: Boo!
“…..dat blows no good!” she completed the cliché; “You be careful, you hear”.
Remembering those words issuance a million times in his youth from that gentle, loving mouth, Frank promised: “It’s a bet; come on, my car’s around the corner”, placing his long arm ,of love and the law---whose sole personification in Mr. Frank she trusted--- around her shoulder.
Chapter Nine
In not just any bistro, among so very many, in Little Italy sat two princely embodiments of streetwise hegemony and, as with most royalty, even the small talk had large implications for the rest of the world.
“…..looks good for the slot bandits down in Big E-Z town; had it with Dewey and that pasta-packing guineau LaGuardia” Frank Costello told his notable guest.
“Tell me bout it, can’t a paisan live at the Waldorf in peace!” said Lucky Luciano.
“Well, maybe time fur ya ta use Mussolini, the prick, to our advantage; sides, got all the old time Dons in a twist, cocksucker!” Costello piled on.
“Just waitin for da right time is all; gotta have a scare, then the G-men’ll be all ears. Workin it true a little It-y cunt who tinks she’s got a deal wid us---magine dat, sendin a bitch ta do their dirty work, fuckin marones.”
“What ya got in mind----hey, my boys would love a goodbye kiss-off!” Costello was getting warmer.
“Soon, got us da spot cased, tanks ta some frens with the Feds, easy pickins um told; way ole ‘Ill Duchebag’ is kissin kraut ass could work out better n we hoped” said Luciano.
An obsequious waiter, dazzled by his table, interrupts bowingly with their food.
“Hey, Luigi, what you think a dis Mussolini, uh?” Lucky asked sternly.
A stream of almost undecipherable Italian & broken English expletives went spewing, along with enough obligatory hand gestures to force a contortionist into retirement.
“Hey, ya know, the Limeys gave im uh freakin knighthood!” Costello informed the waiter. “Took it back, though, when they saw he was a scumbag.”
Luciano, poker-faced and frowning: “Enough!!” Costello even started to choke, leaving Luigi noticeably trembling.
“How you know I don’t like him, eh?………” A pause pregnant with quintuplet fecundity materialized. “Relax!!!” Lucky now effortlessly blending laughter with animated speech: “Ya see, I do…..like him……Morta!” Belly laughter, lost on a still tremulous Luigi.
“That’s the kinda ‘night’ I got in mind for that ‘hood’--------permanent night!” Luciano, in his opinion, and that of anyone within earshot who knew what was good for them, had outdone himself.
Chapter Ten
Edgah enjoyed a particularly good relationship with the Old Man, one even he, knowing himself as he all too well did, was pleasantly surprised with.
The President, both patrician and big on security didn’t trust the lowly-origins of Hitler or Mussolini and the dreadful consequences he knew they forebode. And he knew that Hoover, also ambitious to a great many faults, shared those humble beginnings: as he happened to be on on the payroll, he could be most useful, especially when the situation called for dogged determination, the law take the hindmost. There were mortal enemies within and without, questioning the immortality of a nation.
“Find them, Edgah” the President had publicly commanded. And Hoover obeyed, zealously. Soon, enemies lists were compiled; unconcerned about his allies, the services of certain elements of the underground variety were freely, and fruitfully, employed. Besides, his overaggressive brain ratiocinated, they respected him and had been generous with their resources, all to the nation’s benefit, not to mention the satiation of personal peccadilloes and whims only the duly powerful could both furnish and understand. And furnish they did to the extent that Edgah was renowned among the uninitiated to have uncanny ‘horse sense’, at almost any race he chose.
But there was another race about which he was decidedly unenthusiastic. That’s where Frank Lee Roiles truly roiled. He had to be kept close, an agent of his nice versatile talents, not to mention special knowledge. Among the ‘queen’s jewels’ of that unique knowing was the virtually unknown and highly irregular fact that Edgah seemed to have been the only person in his mid-forties in District of Columbia record keeping history to feature a Certificate of Birth issued in 1935; and, then, there was the question of parentage, among so many other similar, and questionable, details of what should have been an altogether ordinary delivery of a ‘white’ child, even in 1898. It was the Negro births that often went undetailed, or even uncertified accurately &/or timely, if at all. Even the White House didn’t, couldn’t know Dips’ age. Yes, Frank was one of his ‘closest’ agents, having been there at the creation, so to speak: creation of just what, when, who, why and how was another subject, for another occasion……perhaps never, if Frank and he dwelt so very near Edgah’s vest, if not in his hip pocket.
It was out of grave concern for the delicacy of that presidential confidence, along with certain confidences of agent Roiles, that Edgah was reluctant, to say the least, to bring any discredit upon the President, even if his son was a naïve little shit.
“So, what you want me to believe, and cause the President to also believe, is that Jeffords Roosevelt himself is a spy ring’s dupe!?” roared Hoover at the go between with Luciano’s men, seated beside him in his sound proof government limousine, whose driver had been chosen owing to the quality of discretion insured by stone deafness.
“Mr. H, don’t get sore, I’m just the mess……”
“Yes, I know, don’t shoot the messenger; see here, and speaking of shooting (Hoover’s right brain assured him in its discreet, ever silent voice how very clever he was), I need a smoking gun, the kind of thing that lays it out so plainly that we---I---look like a hero and not some come lately Keystone cop, capish” Hoover lectured.
The messenger’s own brain, while correcting the fat egotist across from him with its own silent ‘it’s cabish’, responded with what he had thought was fitting such a bloviating puissant, the obvious: “We’re working on it, Chief.”
“That’s another thing, until you earn the title Agent---and don’t think that would ever be possible---I’ll thank you not to call me Chief----that’s reserved for better ilk than you’ll ever see. Now, get me what I need, or my blind eye might just experience a miracle cure, got it?”
Edgah was a tremendous prick, having all the aplomb of lit dynamite, thus giving rise to the following private amusement within the vulnerable skull of the offended messenger: ‘Hell, the half-nigger prob-lee thinks my high brow woid for his style means ‘a bomb’! was the mob messenger’s bemused, at-the-ready silent running minstrel show, starring Edgah as Ir-Rastus-able....this was one of the ways they tolerated this two-bit pissant.
“I’ll deliver your words to Mr. L right away, sir” and the messenger was wobbly discharged near a deserted trucking company offices.
Hoover, tapping his dutiful driver on the right shoulder through a seemingly unnecessary thick sliding glass partition, handed him a preprinted card reading: TAKE ME TO NATIONAL AIRPORT, FRITZ. He was off on a fact-finding trip to the West Coast, with some precious time carved out for the nags at Santa Anita, guest of Mr. Luciano.
Chapter Eleven
Corsica, that sometime Italian possession, had long since lost its primacy along with the dustiness surrounding the exploits of its last unleashed monster; Mussolini obliged by not even acknowledging Bonaparte and his little island as truly Italian: he had bigger fish to fillet.
And, so, when a certain few Dons of Syracusa sat down with a few American paisanos, no note was taken.
“Don Vincenzo, an honor, I’m sure” Luciano’s personal envoy bowed and kneeled.
“Up, up……we meet as equals, with a common enemy” Vincenzo put him and his party at ease.
After a ceremonial toast of wine, mingled with each’s blood offering drawn by an ancient family dagger taken from retreating Moors, they began.
“In Roma these strutting minions from Hades may fool themselves and the swine they herd, but not us: that is why they have been persuaded that we would be betrayed by you, la familia” Don Vincenzo stated.
“Then they have truly accepted our promises to serve their needs in America, on their promises to wipe out any competition to our sharing the spoils of victory----this we could only surmise until now; of course, the worthless ancient Roman ‘rites’ we invented from thin air, must have held sway, so self-impressed they are with their phony legions’ plumery” laughed Luciano’s mouthpiece and the others, their, until then, only probable hopes confirmed.
“A bunch of fools, certainly, but, we must be wary of their Bosch masters; they are not such fools” counseled the Sicilian consigliere. “That is why there must be a convincing demonstration of Mussolini’s ‘success’, which you, our American brothers must manufacture and, for a brief time, take the, how do you say, ‘rap’ for” he advised.
“This will be no trouble; we have certain patrones in high places who will put it down to anarchistic communists----they are everywhere these days in America” Luciano’s man was quite sure of himself, and for good cause: he had Hoover in mind.
“When do you expect the explosions to occur?” was the next item on the Syracusan’s agenda.
“When else but American Independence Day…….explosives are less conspicuous then.” They all laughed heartily and with much mutual loving relief, then, almost instantly, as the vital business demanded, they went to it.
“I am concerned about the interim period, another month, our people disappear by the dozen daily” complained the consigliere.
“Your people must hide out here; just as we have not been detected, these hills will take care of them even if found out; besides, there is grumbling all around after Ethiopia, Duce needs time to regain his prestige” Luciano’s representative urged. Then, like a brother sensing their deep concern, jested yet again “We call it goin to the mattresses!”
For all their reputed savagery, these men who valued consanguinity above all else, knew regional history---not for any ancestral or aesthetic reason, it was a matter of continued survival when ‘difficulties’ arose with those who thought they understood Italy.
What was ‘Italy’? Surely it was unknown to the Etruscans and their Roman inheritors; theirs was a way of being, an organically pulsing body politic, birthed by a she-wolf and thriving upon boundless expansive growth, ceasing only with her own inevitable sclerotic aging. When medieval Venice ruled the seas and trade upon them, again, a boundlessness inhabited and informed her stature, both within and without. Did not Paoli, mentor to the Young Napoleon, demonstrate that an unconquerable spirit dwelling guerilla-style in the rugged hills of Corsica could withstand ‘national’ armies? Yes, ‘Italy’ was less than a ‘Franklin’ old, was the Italian-Americans’ knowing joke, and, even at that, an ideal whose fate, like that of all such conceptualizations, was stilted existence in a one-dimensional flat world of so many lofty, ethereal scratchings upon sheepskin, despite Resurgimento and Garibaldi’s imaginings. Man had been a tribal being for eons and without his tribe he possessed nothing, no heart, and could only be possessed. No, upon this fundamental bond of brotherhood the traditional clans, and their Americanized exports, relied, and seeing it outside their tightly drawn circles most prevalent in the Hebrews, a special respect and understanding and, when felt to be good business, operational connection of the ‘wandering Jew’ only made them stronger---a certain ally, Mr. Lansky knew what, and who, really mattered, and it had little to do with being Italian or American, for that matter.
After another day of cordial discussions, it was agreed that the refuge would be taken, awaiting the machinations of Luciano and his gang.
Unbeknownst to the Americanos, a surprise parting ceremony is arranged by the Sicilians. The capo di tutti capi is wheeled in, having not attended previously due to his frailty. An aging relic of a man whose body, save his glowing visage, is in ruins, spoke to a hushed, dumbfounded audience. “I am 95 years of age.......I have seen much, and many; you, paisano, have made me very glad. I am an old swordsman, and have killed 14 of our enemies in this time-honored way of honor, with the blade. I am the honorary keeper of this symbol of our having been conquered by the Moors; take it!” Turning somber, motioning for the Americans to draw closer; producing the dagger used earlier, he speaks softly. Opera music comes up softly, his favorite. “For 500 years it was the weapon of choice of men of honor....our maestros were sought out all over the world, like the Toledo steel of the blades they used....the Roman legions were beaten with such weapons, used by Hannibal’s armies.....the Romans were no fools, they adopted these blades, never to lose again....until now! You, our American brothers, who know little of this, must know its power, the power we honor in our bloodletting ceremonies.” His lungs now refilled, slowly, and for an intended rhetorical effect foremost above any petty necessity. You, you must lead our botta segreta, con stresso tempo! Sr. Luciano, he is now our Guardia Prima, but we must fight with brace a una spada solo! Go, then, and fulfill our destiny through this brilliant impetinata!” Whispered into the ears of the Americans, a translation which unfolds upon their growingly impassioned faces: ‘OUR SECRET ATTACK, SIMULTANEOUSLY ATTACKING WHILE DEFENDING, TWO SWORDS AS ONE SWORD!’ Without hesitation, and verbally practicing what he has just preached, the old historian histrionically makes the universal gesture of throat-cutting with the sheathed blade. “Il Duce.....and his black shirts, black like the Moors...and, so, blackest death to such blackhearts!” He simulates melodramatically the consequent slumping, tongue out. The Americans were blown away by the gesture, literally speechless; then, during a farewell sendoff, he demonstrated his own sense of levity and its needed timing.
In a parting gesture, after the Americans had been feted to a genuine blood ritual and feast, conjuring that essential tribalism deep within all true men Don Geraldonato himself, aged but strong-willed, sent off the legendary dagger to Luciano as a token, accompanied by a tribute meant for the recipient’s ears: “What is there to worry and fret about----you are, after all is said and done, ‘Lucky’, a child of La Fortuna herself!”
Chapter Twelve
“Welcome back, Dipsy” was the half-hearted greeting from the guard shack where all White House workers checked in every morning, to pick up their employee badge and name tag. The eyes scrutinizing this long-term employee----he had been there long before James McFarland had been able to walk---told a quite different story, one of deep antagonism, whose very existence grew out of the ugliest aspect of hierarchical power, its condonation.
“Don’t look any the worse for wear, me boy; why, even if ya was hung over, couldn’t tell if me life depended…..say, you can tell me, have a few nips, eh, Dips, yesterday whilst we was here runnin the show?”
McFarland arrayed his empty authority in such a way that the very stones beneath his feet might be heard to moan in sorrow under the ponderous weight of such baseless contempt, in the well-worn way that Dips Carter, Jr. had heard it, heard it through that exquisitely sensitive ear of the soul so sensitive that it resounded ruthlessly to the very core of his blameless existence, as had his racial fellows’ ears, it seemed, for as long as there had been stones, perhaps longer still, his wearily pounding heart had, again, told him.
But, he knew, as he, they had always known, that one needed to possess a heart, a truly human heart to learn the crushing weight of such obloquy, not merely a heart-shaped dollop of reddish granite so placed in all the world’s McFarlands’ breasts that it could be said to belong nowhere else on Earth, as it would otherwise render so great an insult to her that all her stony crust should, happily, explode unto dust in happy aversion to it.
“No, suh, I doan drinks tall, no suh, not me, you gots me con fews” Dips pleaded earnestly, eyes wincing with the indignation aroused by uninvited condescending cruelty.
Dips made his way to the back entrance he had entered soberly for 25 years of loyal, albeit invisible service. Once, the President himself, had given him a raise of twenty five cents, and a personal commendation for his politeness and dedication; he had even been an alternate pall bearer at the great man’s funeral and, despite everyone, including Dips, knowing that it was just a hollow gesture as, by law, only whites could tote the lowliest of coffins by law, he was proud of it.
As far back as anyone could remember, all the staff had been Negroes, including during the War between the States when rumors were rampant that spies, even assassins had been recruited amongst Negro house servants, unquestioningly loyal to their masters, for surreptitious placement in government service by the wily Judah P. Benjamin, reputed ‘brains of the Confederacy’, all over Washington. Despite all those lies, several of the staff were actual generational inheritors of their positions, so valued were their forbears.
That afternoon things were especially hectic for the staff, Dips in particular as he had missed a rare day’s chores, held undone for him as he was so uniquely efficient in their dispatch. A formal dinner for certain Congressmen was to be held in the state dining room, Dips’ station, and he hadn’t a moment to spare, except the one he took to do Frank’s bidding, to replace the letter he now carried self-consciously in his breast pocket.
He had taken every precaution he knew to take, double-checking to see whether anyone, anyone at all might be in a position to view him enter the President’s office within an office; it had no windows, so he was certain he had been unseen going in there, for the briefest of moments, to situate the re-crumpled paper exactly where he had found it. After all, it was one of his alternate duty stations; who would remember that today was his day to work strictly in the dining room, unscheduled as it was. No, suh, this‘guilty dog’ ain’t doing no barkin, he thought, as I ain’t done nuthin wrong, no suh’, he repeated in his mind at least a dozen times or more. Why, he even remembered the plush deep pile carpet he had meticulously vacuum cleaned the last time he was in there, only days ago, being exactly as he had left it, nary a footprint on it, as the President, First Lady, even Jeffords, were away from Washington until that evening.
It was 3am, and Dips, a sound sleeper, sat up in his single bed in such a way that it seemed to him he had never even closed his eyes some six hours ago----his pajamas drenched in clammy sweat; his eyes, despite the dark, turned steadily like an anxious lighthouse beacon’s triangled light to the place he knew his shoes had been placed, as was his usual habit, almost ritual owing to his having had no shoes at all until his White House days, his amazing size 19EEE shoes. His stomach sunk below a new wave of wetness dripping, now, from his deeply furrowing brow. While he had been careful to avoid onlookers, he had left his very own calling card in the remembering pile of carpet in the President’s anteroom.
Chapter Thirteen
“I explained to you already why I can’t take you; Pa insists that I be present at some bloody soiree….I should be able to train back tonight…..” Jeffords, the ‘kid’, was reporting to his increasingly jealous lover, before she hung up on him; of course, she knew he would redial, she had feigned a fit of anger, always well-controlled, over a meaningless date they had to attend some lackluster Broadway production. She was right, he called back immediately. Knowing precisely when to change the mood, she did so, and he followed suit. The bell was not even rung this time, she mused, but his responsive hunger no longer made such obvious distinctions; Jeffords had earned his AKC papers, as pure-bred a show dog as she, or her handlers, had ever seen.
As with all such breeds, however, small but damaging flaws are inevitable----the genetic pool, you see, the judges would observe.
His particular imperfection had been his handling of the latest ‘fetch’ routine, careless about leaving the point of contact unchanged. The embarrassment suffered by the trainer was damaging to both their careers and, in her case, could easily prove fatal.
The guests had begun arriving on time; the President, as was his wont, had paid a visit to the anteroom he secreted himself within before any important meeting, business or pleasure. Having wheeled himself into the cosy space, he enjoyed his usual before meal German schnapps aperitif; it was upon his attempted exit that the front of his chair caught something undercarriage----wheeling backwards carefully, slowly, he leaned forward to find a slightly scented hand written letter. The one page, neatly written note featured the letterhead of New York University/Graduate Studies Department, something Marta herself had thought quite good additional cover, in case of difficulties her golden retriever might encounter.
Young Jeffords slept at the White House that night, and indefinitely thereafter; his father had been most insistent, along, therefore, with the Secret Service posted at his bedroom door. Jeffords was informed that an indefinite, though credible threat had been discovered to the First family and all precautions were now in order. And while evidence of his son’s unwitting complicity in that threat had been consigned to fuel for a wooden match, the President had in mind certain changes in the quotidian workings of the White House; all staff were now to receive particular scrutiny as never before.
Chapter Fourteen
“Mr. Seward, what’s all the fuss about the Negro staff?” The President was weary from letter writing to far too many grieving families over the mounting losses of their poorly led sons.
“Sir, with respect, Benjamin’s got his swarthy clutches far too deep into Washington’s private homes; I simply will not allow this one to be so infected with seditious operators” said the now righteously indignant Secretary of State. Lincoln, knowing too well that this had been the customary state of mind of his once jealous rival---and particularly as to his not too long-departed misgivings of his President’s abilities---smiled wryly, taking his time to devote verbal, much less mental, energy to this latest crisis in a place overstocked with what seemed like unceasing products of a devilish ‘Perpetual Exigency Machine’, as the President termed it.
Seeing his cause barely registering on the visage of the stoic chief appellate arbiter, Seward reached into his deep bag of chicanery.
“I shall retire, Mr. President, with but one more point: Mrs. Lincoln shares my concerns about the staff” and then he was gone, stage right. That anguished arbiter, returning to his correspondences, merely sighed deeply. Lincoln knows, however, that he is not the fool of public Folly, but a crafty old fox. ‘MY DEAR MRS. WHITE, IT IS WITH A HEAVY HEART THAT I CONVEY TO YOU THE DIRE NEWS OF THE DEMISE OF YOUR SON JACOB IN BATTLE; IT IS ESPECIALLY BURDENSOME WHEN THE RECIPIENT IS OF A RACE SO ACCUSTOMED TO AN ALREADY INHUMAN BURDEN....’ Lincoln’s poetic pen in service of an all too prosaic duty consoled yet another griever.
Judah Phillipe Benjamin, the ‘brains of the Confederacy’, so-called by both sides and the commentators of Europe, had long been suspected of devising and closely operating clandestine operations in the North. Such a distinction was in no small measure an outgrowth of his reputation for confidentiality and even deep secrecy in most of his dealings; it was this characteristic, as well as his unthreatening status as a lonely Jew in power and the South in general, that made him the close confidant of President Davis.
Unhelpful to his already closely guarded heart’s description as, variously, ‘dark’, ‘cold and calculating’ and ‘full of the crafty Hebraic scheming of a double-Shylock’, Benjamin was multilingual, with a fine facility for French from his days of notable lawyering and socializing in New Orleans as well as his wife, a regular habitué of Parisian salons; he was also well-regarded in sometime sympathetic England and Canada. As one of America’s leading commercial attorneys, he had had a preexisting network of contacts in banking and financial circles. Credible rumors abounded that he had a vast offshore reservoir of capital, unknown even to Davis and his Confederate confreres, with which to sow mischief. And so-called free blacks, or, in some cases, escaped slaves, soon came to realize that there were many forms of slavery, the subtlest perhaps being wage bondage. While the bosses were generally preferable to the enlashed overseer, the inner workings were not especially divergent when it came to their low opinion of the African.
For as long as there had been an Executive Mansion there had been a ‘darkie’ staff; at least, that was everyone seemed to say. Himself, manservant Jedediah Carter was the longest serving on the staff of 7; mostly doing whatever needed doing----carpentry, gardening, even plastering, as there were no funds for upkeep of the place, always open, it seemed, to all sorts of callers, many just the curious and not so trustworthy----he was very well-liked by the three Presidents he had served.
When he had been first questioned by the Pinkerton man he was mostly confused----living on small wages and what he was allowed to grow on the grounds, he didn’t understand what they were trying to learn from him.
A Pinkerton man has approached a older Negro man, one accustomed to house duties; it is a hot day and he is tilling a makeshift victory garden. “Now, Jed, tell us again how you came to leave the South.” “Ah done toll the other man....” the half reply fell much too sharply upon the Pinkerton’s ears, and his pure white blood began to percolate. “You mean Captain Pinkerton, my good fellow.......” he commanded looking down at his official notepad. “Says here that you lived in Louisiana, that right?” obviously trying to trick him into small contradictions, condescendingly. The old sage of the fields was practiced in the art of servile disregard, and he automatically set it into action. “Suh, meanin no disrespek, my peoples been here in dis city since they was a Federal City; ma daddy woiked on dis here buildin, way back den; dose days, wadn’t no where a Negro could go what wiff dem redcoats acomin....dey boin down dis house, he wuz scared, found woik on a plantation there, in da house.” “Yes, working for Senator Benjamin, Judah P. Benjamin, of New Orleans; you know about this man?” “I knows de name, sure does, was mighty good to my kinfolk, treed em ride, I reckon.” “You and your ‘people’ here at the Mansion know what he’s doing now, do you?” “Only what ah sees in de papers.” That self-same white blood now lost its false purity, having been invaded by a jet of adrenal discharge; shocking was the descriptive symbol in his reptilian limbic language of indignation. “You read?” “A liddle, ah guess; ma daddy he knew how ta reed dem drawins, he made me to loin soze to get good woik.” “Took quite a chance, it being illegal and all; are you, Jed, takin any chances these days?” “I is ride now......” seeing the predictable effect upon the increasingly red-colored facial skin of his inquisitor, Jed was playing it to the very hilt of his invisible righteous sword. “If’n ah doan git these here maters out the groun, Foist Lady gonna have my hide!” now wounded mortally as to his feckless cause for being, the Pinkerton sounded a retreat that he, predictably, excluded the Negro’s ears from hearing. “Never mind that, my clever fellow; see here, you having any truck with rebel spies, are ya?” A distinct Irish lilt now characterized this early harbinger of a ‘cop’s voice; he has grown fearfully frustrated with the intelligence of this supposed fool. And, now, for Jed’s bloodless coup de gras. “Eyes a loyal Union man, ah am; loss two cousins in dis here war, down South.” “We’ll be watchin ya, fella, you see that ya keep yer nose in this here dirt” the Pinkerton reacted, his fear having now won the day. Jed decided to hoist that fear’s banner to the top of his pole of well-earned pride. “But suh, ah woiks in de house...ain’t no dirt in dat house!” As the would-be constable on patrol walked off huffily without further words, having been deftly disarmed of those feeble weapons he held as his exclusively, Jed chanced a smile, a smile he bequeathed lovingly unto future generations of his kind.
Chapter 15
The Luciano gang leaders, on the return of their emissaries to the Dons of Sicily,were gathered for a meeting, in pursuit of the actions planned in Corsica: the pressure has been on from Hoover for ‘information’ and, the trickiest part of their double dealing, from the black shirts, competitors to the of the Sicilians, who must, at all costs, be led to believe that they have bought these, their American cousins. ‘Scuse, Don Luciano.....’ came the interruption from a buttonman posted outside the door. “What is it? Has she arrived?” Lucky had been expecting her, in an expectant way that fell right into his, their plans. “Yeah....yes, Don.” “Show her in…..an, uh, Mikey, no interruptions, eh?” This was too important for him to lose the atmospherics he and Meyer had planned for the envoy of these self-satisfied Fascists. Marta entered, commanding, owning the room with her elegance, attired as if just come from a formal evening out, an evening when she was to have displayed her ‘house broken’ puppy, Jeffords, to her handlers for reassurance that her mission was well in hand. “Welcome, Miss Sundstrum.....may I offer you some refreshment?” “Why, yes, thank you; perhaps a mineral water, this is business.” He motioned for the water; she is taken with his manners and his ruggedly handsome face, in the way women drawn to power are. “As you say, to business” Lucky smilingly agrees, looking intently at her expensive Italian purse. “I don’t think you have brought it with you” he publicly concludes, wittily noting the inadequacy of the conveyor to the anticipated conveyance, of gold. “Not quite” she purred, handing him a document from the purse in question. “Will this do?” she adds. Without so much as looking at it, he passes it to a short, balding man, not Italian by appearance. “This international letter of credit is not ‘irrevocable’” the man to Lucky’s left pronounces.
“What about that?” Lucky underlines his associate’s observation, still smiling. Her attention has been gotten, so to say : “I’m at a loss....you see I don’t handle such things, the brass does.” He senses she is merely a sex toy, albeit an elegant one, only a go-between in this instance; this time, she is just the distracting messenger; they never figured on Meyer, a Jew, as Luciano’s ironic touch. “So are we, according to my associate here; tell me my lovely messenger, do you happen to know who does?” She nods yes, like some suddenly hypnotized subject, under the spell of an Italianate Mesmer.
“Well, then maybe you could deliver a message for us: ‘Your attempted delivery tells me that the ‘brass’, as your beautiful messenger calls you, is mostly hangin in your private parts’-----you getting this? Capish? You’re part Italian, right....”
The subject nods again, blankly compliant.
“Good; now, can you see to it that it gets to the ‘brass’ balls band you represent as soon as possible----we need the gelt, as my associate calls it, to acquire certain Chinese fireworks, lots a middle men these days.”
“So I’ve heard; there’s a Depression on, I’m told. Made quite an impression on most of the world, your system’s collapse” she has recovered nicely from her seeming stupor, and he is duly impressed with her brassiness. “You got us confused with those crooks on Wall Street, honey; that’s a closed shop, especially to us; we’re just businessmen....our ‘system’s’ more like a reallocation of previously kleptoed wealth. And just so we’re clearly understood, it’s your people are holding up progress----ours and theirs as new...partners” was Meyer’s choreographed lunge, belying his short stature with great planned effect; Lucky could hardly contain his growing grin. “Yes, be a real shame, no fireworks on the Fourth, of this year...or any other year, for that matter. People suffered enough, don’t you think, need a ‘new world order’, ain’t that right? You ready for the rest of the message?”
“Certainly, all part of the service, and, uh, I believe that phrase is Herr Hitler’s”. She has kept her cool, no giveaway pantomimes, proving them right about her relative innocence. “Touche....heard that in a swordfightin movie once, always wanted ta use it....here goes: ‘Unless we’re made happy about this obvious mistake in the paperwork, we’re gonna need our kinda metal, as in Fort Knox, acid-tested ....and up front.’ Capish?”
“His Excellency’s people will comply, I am sure, immediately in correcting this.... error. On behalf of Il Duce, you have my personal assurances.” Lucky is fascinated, to a calculated point, with her aplomb, her style absent from most of the men he deals with.
“He is, if I may say so, one very lucky ‘cue ball’, you ask me.” “How do you mean?” “Having you in his service, of course.”
“It is an honor to be so; owing to him I have had the privilege of, how do you say, rubbing elbows with certain royal personages of Europe, including, now, of course, Il Duce, Sir Benito Mussolini. But, you haven’t answered my question---cue ball?”
“Usually, it’s me askin the questions...they play billiards, right, these royals......let’s just hope that certain newly crowned cue ball don’t rub up against this here eight ball.... ”smirking as he points to himself with his right thumb. “...tell me, Miss Sundstrum, you enjoy your work, is it satisfying?” “Let’s just say that commerce is the most satisfying intercourse.” They are again duly impressed with her acumen and poise. “Perhaps some day your ‘services’ may be useful to me as well.” She now utters the words that would ordinarily put her, or anyone, in need of a death certificate.
“I’m sorry, but they are the sole property of Il Duce.”
He is nothing if not cool under fire, a course from the streets in which he excelled.
“Dark nights servicing the black Knight, eh? Well, now that we are ‘partners’ in crime, maybe he’ll agree to the occasional loan of your...skills.” This brings a hail of laughter from all but her. She ignores the sexual innuendo, long since immune. “I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning---what is this ‘black’ knight reference you make?” “Oh, that, just a, what you call it, observation concernin a question a sartorial taste’s all; you know, black shirts and all that stuff.” She rises to leave, ignoring beautifully the last innuendo.
“Miss Sundstrum, one more thing: be sure and tell your handlers, the big brass ones, to avoid any further fucking with us, especially with the help, however inadvertent, of so lovely a distraction” says Meyer unblinkingly smirking.
“If it’s any consolation,gentlemen, if it was what you say it was, it was their attempt at a royal fucking.” She is meeting theirs with her own smile, that of one who has knowingly faced down a bullet, for the moment. Impresssed, they stand out of respect for her ‘brass balls’ loyalty.
Chapter 16
FDR is dining with Edgah, per invitation; Hoover has little or nothing to go on, so he bluffs and bullshits, telling the Prez what he wants to hear, he thinks. “Well, Edgah, hope your appetite is good, my Negress cook, Cecelia, has prepared one of your favorite dishes.” He is puzzled, having never eaten there before. “Oh, oh....fine, but that wasn’t necessary.” “Nonsense, gotta keep the Chief copper well-nourished for the tough battles ahead, eh?” “You’re too kind, sir; and I think I can put your mind at ease with this Jeffords business, Mr. President. My confidential sources tell me that this Sundstrum woman, if I recall her name correctly, is from a family of ne’er do well hangers on to Tyrolian Italian-German lesser idle royal types, really low living, sinful” Hoover’s sychophantry was nonpareil. “That so, idle rich, eh; go on.” FDR probes, as he knows more than Hoover knows he knows, by far. “Yessir, in a few days I think we’ll have it all wrapped up, this sordid business; don’t be too hard on Jeff, just impressionable’s all, if I may say so, sir.” “Good to hear, reassuring; is she attractive?” the President, old fencer that he had been, quite unawares with this pointed reference to matters sensual. “Not by my standards, sir, no, just a foreign tart it would appear” he bullshitted as his blushing offered up what the President sought, the unintended eloquence of body language. “Interesting; if my recollection serves, know the type, very sensual. Time was, when I was a young scamp, it was hard....not to be hard!” Edgar hated belly laughter, owing to both his lack of any situation known to him for it and his inability to suffer the contradictory exhibition of it by an aristocrat. And, the President knew this, without Edgar’s discovery of the first clue that he did.
“Sorry, Edgah, didn’t mean to spoil your supper.” Will he never stop with these inane innuendos was what he thought, this is what he said: “Not at all, sir, I take your meaning; still, not a woman born could cause me or any of my trained Agents to compromise themselves or their country.” But the President had many more such feints, right up to the hilt of the rapier Edgah never saw coming, this more, for once, owing less to the speed of the President than the glacial pace of Edgah’s wiles.
“You’re not suggesting.......” ye Gods, he’s displeased, do something, you bl…………, Edgah’s addled consciouness urged.
“Oh, no, sir! Red-blooded young American, your Jeffords; no, just naive, barely 23 as I recall; besides, don’t see what on Earth she could have thought to get out of him.”
Time for some of the fencing President’s diversionary tactics. “You think she’s a spy?”
“If she is, she’s not a very capable one; from what you’ve told me, young Jeff might have given her some dry statistics about shipping, but, no, siree, nothing you couldn’t learn on the street.......” Hoover catches himself, bordering on revealing his cozy ‘confidential sources’ and their nefarious identity.
Roosevelt senses an opening, a gaping one at that; not through with him yet, the fencer’s voice whispered.
“Do go on, fascinating stuff, really; you were saying?”
“Nothing really, sir, just mean that they could have gone about it more easily, using street toughs, that sort of thing if they wanted to probe for weaknesses” and while Edgah was satisfied with his riposte, his opponent simply duly noted it as a weakness best saved for future exploitation. “It’s the ‘they’ part that bothers me, not the young woman or even Jeffy. Do you remember my original, very public charge to you Edgah?” FDR has manufactured a stern of face, posture, catching Hoover, again, off guard---- ‘could’ve taken his head off’, mused the Presidential fencer. “Why yes, sir, you were most supportive, very prescient about this sabotage business being a real potential problem.” Whew, that was close……..shut up, you, he’s speaking again….. “Find them”, I said, stuck my neck out for you, in an important cause. Tell me Edgah, have any plans for the upcoming Fourth?” What the Hell is he up to………now…. careful, careful….
“Why, no sir, nothing in....” he’s going to cut me off, what have I ……
“Excellent; how would you like to go to New York for me, sort of a ‘show the flag’ tour, the kind old TR did with the ‘white navy’, that sort of thing.” Ah, kiss up, right now, bait or no….”Great man, Theodore, like yourself sir; I’d be proud, even though New York is hardly a hostile world; you flatter me.” Bastard. “Don’t be so hasty, Edgah-----remember, I was Governor of New York; and that City can be like a foreign bastion, now can’t it?”
Chapter 17
The Fourth of July celebration is nearing; security is lax, in accord with the Luciano shills’ and fronts’ plan.
HUGE EXPLOSION ROCKS NEW YORK HARBOR read the Herald Tribune’s equally huge typefaced headline, as Edgah held it folded under one arm in the back seat of his otherwise secure limousine; he was en route to pick up Frank Roiles, chosen by him to clean up the mess; as he leapt from the train’s club car bag in hand, his face gave his old boss no comfort, the face he saved for enemies.
“What the Hell were you thinkin, Edgah, letting this sorta thing happen?” Frank, of course, knows HE could have helped prevent it, with the letter he has copied, but he planned to use that as leverage when it might be far more important, when he was sure something he only sensed was up; now was that occasion, when Hoover couldn’t use it against him.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, you low living son of a bitch! Goddam NY cops’re on the take, alls I can say.” Edgah’s canned answers were good enough for the cub reporters he snowed with the brown bovine stuff, but not for the old ‘roiler’.
“Sell it somewhere else, will ya Edgah, that’s news only to newborns.”
“Well, you bastard, I’m sure no newborn; why, I built the goddam Bureau from nothing, trained every Agent........”here it came, and Frank was not going to let it get on his hat or his shoes.
“Would you put a sock in it! Remember me, um one of those agents, know the score, right; you think there’s a mouse farts round here don’t have goddam mobster permission?!” “What’re you implying, you lousy ingrate? Why, I....” “Why,nothin, Ed-gah….except you’re the guy’s got all the confidential informants, and the guy whose gettin hosed by em at the same time’s all.” “God damn it, you been holding out on me, you......Jimmy McFarland over at the White House tells me you been snoopin round there, and the carpool people say you’re visiting some strange places lately. Maybe you need a rest, reassignment, maybe to California, say.” “Ok, Edgah, but any direction I go, the ‘way’ I go, you’re goin with me, capish?” That particular gauntlet down, only a fool of far greater dimensions---or was that ‘dementia’?---would pick it up. Edgah has grown a very pale complexion ; he now is listening intently.
“Look, with the dynamite I’m onto, this looks like what it was: an unfortunate fireworks explosion----see, some wino sleeping in the warehouse there” pointing for effect ”lights a butt and, boom....capish? Do we understand each other, you pickin up what um puttin down? This thing is big, whatever it is, and your pals been screwin with you so hard ya can’t feel the smoke they’re blowing up your shute!”
“Now just calm down, for Christ’s sake; I know you’re an old fencer, alright, so stop sticking that damn sword in me; let’s get this place cordoned off and secure, then it’s back to my---our---hotel!” Frank knows when to lighten things up; now is such a moment. “And for your information, it’s called ‘parrying’, with palpable hits, not even blood drawn sometimes, I might add. A true fencer is a strategist, see, doesn’t always wanna kill the adversary, might be useful alive, reminder to others, that sort of thing. With what I know and they know, could be all this sparring can be turned in favor of America, remember her, Edgah, starts with an A, not an E.” It begins to rain, helping the firefighters behind them. “Come on, got somethin been savin for a rainy day wanna show ya.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, I’m ‘en garde’, now.”
Chapter 18
The ambitious District Attorney, Thomas Dewey, is elated at having finally obtained enough ‘evidence’ to bust up the New York mobsters; this will be his ticket to a Republican White House, as he abhors the ideas of a reelected Roosevelt. “Are you absolutely sure....” Interrupted, anxiously, by his chief investigator: “Thom, would you please relax, we’ve got the goods on him this time, no question. Funny how witnesses can ‘find’ their memories when you make it worthwhile.” “Just as long as we can deport him, that’s all I care about----can you believe it, the son of a bitch never became a citizen!” The laughing DA and his cohorts enjoy a long belly laugh.
Chapter 19
It is 1935 and one J. Edgar Hoover has paid a visit to the long-serving official conveniently in charge of birth and other statistical records for the District; he has a very special request to make. “Well, saints preserve me, if it ain’t J. Edgar Hoo....” he is cut off, again, by the ungrateful prick, he thinks. “Alright, alright, you can cut the Lodge greetings, got it? Are we alone?” Hoover’s neck seems to sport the eerie quality of the bewitched of fables old, doing a 360 degree scan of the place.
“Why, sure, Edgah, told ya everyone leaves 4:30, like clockwork. Don’t worry so much.”
“Can’t be too careful in my position; look, are we agreed on this thing.....you know I can do a lot of good for you and your family.”
“Hey, we’s old pals, ain’t we, no need for all that talk bout favoritism---now that makes me nervous, know I don’t like no public life, no sir; me, just wanna be left alone, doin my job, all proper like.” This pisses off Hoover, a man who, despite his hatred of contradictions, is himself the ultimate paradox.
“You call this proper?”
“Well, sir, yes I do, if’n it’ll kill off all this rabid nonsense the coloreds been spreadin ever since can remember” waving around a paper in his small hand “this’ll do the trick, sure enough. Why, most folks don’t recall that small fire we had back in ‘98.....I was a junior clerk then; yessir, all the Negro records was burnt up, what ones we had, notorious about not reportin, to this day, what with no doc around.” Edgah peruses the Duplicate Birth Certificate and is impressed. “This is nice work....official seal, from that period and all!”
“Packrat, that’s me; throw nuthin out, and this here seal was near wore out” showing it off “why, no good anymore, after this last impression!” He smashes the seal into small pieces, places them in a handkerchief and hands it to Edgah.
“This calls for a celebration!” He pulls out a flask, passing it to Wiley; then, he is out the back door, into the alley, where Wiley’s brother, his deaf driver, is waiting.
Chapter 19
It is July 5th; Marta is found dead by her landlady, strangled; the local Agent tailing her has called in Edgah. “Anybody else on this?” Edgah is worried. “No sir, you wanted.....” the interrupted, half-ignored local agent replies. “Alright; now, you wanna tell me how the Hell this happened with you shadowing her?”
“Well, I was hit over the head, sir.” Frank looks at Edgah with the eyes of a man who doesn’t need to resort to so crude a thing as a tongue-lashing. Instead, he shows overt empathy for the agent on whom the proverbial drop was gotten.
“Smitty, you better get that looked at, huh?”
They are left alone with the coroner, who is preparing to take her to the City morgue. “Say, doc, you know this is a federal matter, no locals, and no press, got it?” Painful as it is, Frank must agree with Edgah, and it hurts no less that the occasion is both rare and obvious. “That’s right, doc.” Frank is left to flash his ID, as Edgah carries no such emblem of authority, in case, he has attempted to explain to anyone listening, their eyes rolling, he’s captured by the enemy. Frank was eternally amused at the very real proposition that nearly every time Edgah held forth publicly he served the needs of those thusly spared the necessity of actually having him in, useless, physical custody. “Ok, ok, hey, what do I know from spies.” “Just keep it like that---ignorance is bliss, eh.” On cue, as the coroner’s men departed, the second rate floodgate Frank knew as Edgah’s mouth widened.
“Well, this is just fucking ducky! What the blazes do I tell the Pres......looks like I’ll have to implicate your Negro friend, what’s his name, Dipsey Carter?” His smirk was a routine feature of that needlessly gaping gate, stupid-looking or not, he couldn’t ever get used to it.
“Slow down, there, Chief, you know you don’t want to do that, Wiley or no Wiley...” Two, three, four……bingo, says Frank’s flawless time-keeper within.
Hoover turns his whitest; as he is relatively darkly complected, this is something new, even to Frank. “Look pretty white to me, all of a sudden; no, if you talk to anyone it’s your ‘confidential sources’ buddies---something tells me they, and the President, may just know more than you think.”
“What are you saying, that the White House is somehow involved, covering up for little Jeffy?!
“Maybe, but not the way you think; he’s far too smart for that sort of thing without a damned good reason. No, even with the ‘40 election, he could use this thing either way.”
“You mean......against the isolationist crowd and her murderers with one stone, claiming Jeffords volunteered for ‘king & country’ as bait?” “Well, here’s one bird already killed that would tend to get you off the hook, huh, Edgah; anyway, I mean he knows who she was, what she was up to.” Frank has been searching the apartment while they spoke; he comes across a phone number, with “LL” next to it.
“Know any one with these initials that she might have met?” and, as the Cheshire grin spreads widely, Frank adds: “One thing’s for sure---whoever did this wanted that to be found.”
“Frame up, seen it to many times.”
“Yeah.....the question is always who’s the framer. Who knows, might’ve even studied your methods.....” Frank dials the phone, handing it to Hoover, who stares intently at it, then puts it to his ear.
Chapter 20
FDR and Jeffords are having a father/son heart to heart; they are both enjoying a cocktail and rare time together. “Pa, you know, these last few days, I can’t recall a time when we were........” “Good from bad, my boy, positive from a negative---why it reminds me of all the hand-wringing when I was diagnosed; they all wrote me off, including me, I suppose, was awfully blue, bluer than I’ve ever been, son.” “Almost the way I felt that evening, when you confronted me about the letter Dips...” Jeffords looked into thin air,adding under his breath “.... introduced me to the ‘blues’....” then picked up where he’d left off: “had found; funny, she referred to our .....well, tryst as a ‘blue.......blue rendezvous’.....how could I have been so...” “Human? Some of the brightest do the dumbest th..... Franklin liked completing other people’s sentences, it added to his mystique; he concluded, having paused for the pretense of reflection only a master political mind could have pulled off; “interesting; might be some sort of code name for her operation......” “You always were keen on this espionage business...” Jeffords saw his opening, the one Dada had widened for him so skillfully; equally skilled was he in keeping an audience, even of one, guessing. “Young man!.......” “Pa, I didn’t mean......” And now for the winning smile, cigarette holder at 45 degrees to his grinning mouth, from which the always unexpectedly witty and wise would come forth.
“You’ve given me a capital idea, young man, simply capital! Be a good fellow and fetch Harry Hopkins for me, will you....and Jeff, I’m proud of the way you’re handling this thing and....so very sorry to have neglected....my fatherly duties, won’t happen again, if I can....” allowing for a genuine tear to prepare to be shed. “Let’s not forget my duties.....I’m off, this time with the Secret Service.”
Chapter 21 The penthouse, the only one due to preemptive acquisition by Mr. Lucky Luciano, was better protected than the White House whose envoy now had arrived. “I don’t have to tell you the risk I’m taking by coming........” was Frank’s first shot on greeting Luciano. “Please, relax; no one knows you’re here, ‘sides, your boss can always call ya a loose, how you say...” “Cannon....I’m an old salt. Edgah says you have a proposition for him; ain’t it funny, we got one for you.”
Chapter 22
“Boss, gotta admit, this is some pickle.” “Harry, you know sometimes the pickle’s just the thing that’s missing to make the sandwich, hey old boy?” “Well, I guess that makes us the meat, half-baked at that, what with the Republicans and Dewey on one side, and the old guard New Dealer ‘domestic’-only agenda squeezing us but good.” “Well said, my boy; which leads me to the extra garnish to this snack, perhaps fit for a ‘king’!” “Just as long as his highness is popular, spell that popularly electable, and throwing the crown into the public coffers, for good measure.” The master politician is now in full flower, best in the face of fearful events. “Amen & Hallelujah, that is the gospel! Now look, thanks to a couple of loyal citizens, old Frankie Roiles--remember him from the Harvard fencing squad?”
“Hell, yes, real pistol.” “Right, good man, he, nonetheless......he and one of our top porters here, we got wind of this ‘Blue Rendezvous’ plan that the Fascists cooked up to please their Bosch corporal master, what with that assassination business down in Miami few years back blowing up in his face---press actually thought to lay that one at the corporal’s feet, my idea, but the Wall Streeters liked doing business with him too much, ‘birds of a feather’....; now, good red-blooded American lad that he was, ‘twas young Jeffords ‘unto the breach’, sacrificing his virginity.....” “Come on, boss, the public isn’t that damnably naive!” “Just joshing with you, Harry, old man, forget the deflowering , good idea, carried to excess to drive home a point, the old fencing enthusiast in me, suppose; nevertheless ‘Young American lad, barred from the military, undertakes to defend America, the homeland, on its own soil, with manhood his weapon’---can see the papers now. Any problems with it, speak up, old man.” “Mr. President.....Franklin, been with you a long time, and you know that I don’t mince words” Hopkins has learned the art of fecund pausing well; “It’s so unorthodox, it might just work, by Jupiter. Why, you, your Bureau and the Party look swell, finally shutting up the appeasers, all that ilk. They’ll simply never see it coming, at home or abroad.” He sees the President grow truly pensive, there’s no actor on stage at present. “Harry, I sense it may just be old mighty Jupiter, or, more properly, the Jewish Jehovah, at work here.” He has turned suddenly somber yet resolutely powerful in his aspect and Hopkins feels it, the thing that has always made FDR charismatic. And, then, suddenly, enter FDR, stage right. “Capital.....get me Edgah, think he’s back from New York.”
Chapter 23
In this secluded spot, Hyde Park on a Sunday’s seemingly normal retreat, long before the days of Camp David or a prying media, and when deference to the President’s privacy was the rule, a diverse group of men have gathered to alter history in a way even they had not forseen. “Gentlemen, all, welcome; I’m sure that most of you who don’t know me or otherwise may have opposed me or my policies from time to time are more than curious about why, and just how, our paths, our ‘destinies’, if you will, have converged.” Hoover, eager to be seen as the initiator, spoke first.
“Mr. President, as you know, the press is expecting an announcement, in exchange for their agreement to keep mum’s the word, so I hope all present understand that we are Americans first and last; party differences, and other so-called priorities, must be subordinate to our present crisis.” Luciano’s mouthpiece, complete with silk stockings, piped up next, strategically smug.
“I share the Director’s, and your, patriotism Mr. President and, as legal counsel to Mr. Luciano, allow me to say that he does as well.”
“Mr. Dewey, may we depend upon your discretion as well?” asked Hoover, sensing the President’s distate at having to actually speak to his bitter rival. “Let me reiterate what I told you in my office, Edgah: America first, politics be damned! I am prepared to wait until Hell freezes over for my chance at the Presidency.......” The President’s thoughts are so intensely pronounced that Edgah believes he actually hears them, another of his many self-acknowledged ‘gifts’ he has graciously employed on behalf of an ungrateful nation. ‘Why you old dog you, playing it to the ‘hilt.’.... well, rather good, old boy….. Why, there’s another of those fencing terms!’ “.......if it means actually being able to defeat the Axis’s growing threat to us all and, into the bargain, remove Mr. Liebowitz’s client from these shores and our headlines.” “Well, Thomas, it’s that last comment we wish to take up in some detail here; you see, Mr. Luciano will be effectively acting as an agent of mine in Italy, a seeming captive tool of Mussolini himself-----he must appear in the headlines, and often, reminding all Americans that we are in mortal danger from these thugs of the Axis. In exchange, of course, he may keep the Axis lucre and enjoy amnesty from all past crimes.” Well done, Hoover rated his last offering.
“Well said, by all. Into this so-called bargain with the Devil, our botta segreta believe the Italian maestros call it, we shall enjoy his unwittingly foolish arousal of Americans of Italian descent against Mussolini whilst Ill Duce, with 2 ‘l’s, mind you, believes precisely the opposite, thinking to portray us as callous, exploitative xenophobes, if not racialists at that!” Roosevelt was now back in charge, having only allowed the supporting players to find the stage. “Begging your pardon, Mr. President, but exactly how will Mussolini and his Fascists be sold this notion that Luciano can control his organized criminals, not to mention us ,through them---no offense intended to your client, Mr. Leibowitz---from Rome?” Harry Hopkins came in right on cue. “To the contrary, Harry, he’d be flattered, way you put it so pointedly....” And, now, the winning smile no audience can resist. “That’s where Edgah and his boys, his agents, headed up by Frank Lee Roiles, old Harvard man, I might add--- hell of a fencer, I’m told, spread the word to their operatives here and abroad that, well, we’re all corrupt, been in bed with them for years!”
Edgah noticeably squirms especially with Dewey and FDR glaring at him. Frank Lee Roiles comes out of the house joining his boss. “Why, here’s Frank now.......just talking about you.” Edgah sought to break any tension. “‘Speak of the Devil, he appears.’...that how it goes?” Frank wasn’t playing along for long.
“Droll, very droll; isn’t there another aspect of your plan, something you’ve called ‘mis-information’, some such cloak ‘n dagger thing?”
“Well, yes; borrowed from an Italian fencing term, actually, call it ‘impetinata’, a feint, false attack, that sort of thing, your ‘dagger’ remark’s right on....point” Frank smilingly brownnoses the President.
“Boy, these bladey terms do get into the language, don’t they!....and the cloak, really a defensive weapon, very useful...apropos to that, the Director here has agreed to a smear campaign aimed at his background-----it seems he’s really a Negro, you see!” Frank started the belly laughter, though laughter never had, before, seen such stressful accompaniment, but what could he do, it was the President. “Mixed, really, sort of a mutt, with Italian and German blood, to boot!” Frank was enjoying himself.
“As in ‘jack boot’, eh?” FDR was back, center stage.
“Nice one, Mr. President; anyway, the ‘Ity/Kraut’ blood gambit is especially cute---Edgah’s own touch, might add --- what with all that racial crap these clowns been weened on from the bloody teets of absurdity; along with the negroid thing, well, it’ll go over big with their propaganda jerks, ‘goosing up’ their bravado to the point of foolhardiness.” “Rather like that comical marching business, that ‘goose-step’, they call it, completely ridiculous; your teet analogy, brings to mind that Roman legend of Romulus & Remus, suckled by a she-wolf-----and they dare to call us bumpkins!” Frank now smiled in genuine admiration for the President.
“This, gentlemen, is the coup de grace...” “You see, another swordplayer’s term, well done; please, continue.....” FDR riposted. “Uh, yeah, thanks again, sir, good a you to point that out to the uninitiated, refers to putting a vulnerable adversary out of their, and our, misery---the ‘grace’ part, nothin to do with whether they deserve it, but, fair play’s at the heart a swordsmanship---sort of a double whammy, with them thinkin we’re so damned Puritanical, no low blows from these guys, ha!, that’s a laugh, ain’t it Edgah. On top a all that, Mr. Luciano, he becomes a valuable propaganda tool for the Fascists and the Krauts, what with your point about America turning on its immigrant populations, second class citizens when the heat is on, that sort of thing; usin him, so visible in the press and all, Mr. Luciano persuades the ‘sweet one’ to lay off his Sicilian cousins, valuable allies in dealing retribution to those ingrate Americans. I met with Mr. L and, well, pretty intelligent fellow, loyal American, really, for a non-citizen, thinks he can hoodwink these nut jobs, with our help, says it’s easier than what he had to deal with growing up in the streets of New York.” A tour de force, as well, Frank thought to himself.
“‘Hell’s Kitchen’, they call it....very descriptive....even profound, actually.” FDR now gave the stage back, for the moment, to Frank. “Now, to really help sell this fine ‘kettle of fish’, we have enlisted the press boys; just got off the phone with all the big editors and the wire services, who’re on board 100% once you confirm it, that is, sir.”
“Of course, it’s hush-hush, press can’t, well, act like the press on this one....they can’t have it in writ.....” “No, sir; they’ve been made to realize that it’s gotta be strictly verbal, like the Italian maestros taught us back there on the fencing team, not up on all my funny Italian terminology, but it means ‘plausible deniability’, that sorta thing....” “Say, like that, don’t recall ever having heard it.... but our particular maestro was a German; Harry, let’s get the War Department onto that, eh, could be rather useful in wartime should it come, heaven forbid.” “Seems they’ve been impressed by the investigative work ole Edgah--- and our boys have done, linking this fireworks display to ‘Ill’ Duchey himself. The dead woman clinched it, really, what with her mother being Mussolini’s main squeeze and all.” Frank was satisfied if only because his boss probably wasn’t.
“Capital, just capital! I wish to propose a toast.”
A black porter, Dips Carter, Jr. himself, comes out with champagne on cue, serving Hoover first who is self-consciously kind to him. “Thank you, Dipsey.... boys, this man here was quite important to setting this whole plan in motion, real American hero, won’t forget it----thank you, my friend.”
Frank Lee Roiles is beaming, Hoover continues to squirm, smiling like the clown he is, crying on the inside.
“Why, th...thank you, suh, thank you very kindly.....” Dips is misty eyed, leaving with his shoulders a little less bent. “Gentlemen, on this momentous occasion for the freedom and sanctity of the lives of all freedom loving men and women everywhere, I propose a toast to what we have decided to call our ‘Blue Rendezvous’, borrowed, like Frankie’s Italian fencing maneuvers, from these Italian brutes themselves, so named in reference---coded of course, to , how shall I phrase this delicately......”
Frank saw his shot at ultimate sarcasm.
“Beggin your pardon for the interruption, sir, but might I suggest we adopt the Limey term ‘buggering’, seems somehow more, shall we say, civilized than the Germanic counterpart......under the circumstances, that is.”
“Can’t be using that gutteral term, splendid, very classy, old boy, sure our staunch allies the Brits would approve, something tells me they’ll be integral to our plan’s overall enforcement, one way or another....yes, now, where was I, oh, yes, to Operation ‘Blue Rendezvous’, and the ultimate fu....buggering of ‘Ill’---- spell that with two ‘l’s----Duchey and” grinning wisely, he paused to add: “those nefarious enemies who have sought to do thusly unto us!” Glasses are raised and clinked. Chapter 24
Carlotta’s story, an exclusive, has just been nominated for a Pulitzer. It is 1985. “I heard bout your good luck” Frank smiled. “Good luck spelled F R A N K, and not just for me, how about the free world.” “Happy for you.” “And I for you, finally you will get the credit you deserve; Frank, I never connected the dots till I finished but you, you’re kind of a modern day Schoepenhauer, the way you brought all those different players together.” “Not like I planned it, don’t get carried away.” “Spare me the humility----just look at the material you had to work with: a deeply conflicted boss, didn’t know, or really want to know, who the Hell he was till the day he died. Then you got a kid trying to get even with the old man, turns into a cardboard hero.........The real miracle was Dewey.” “You kiddin, ever heard of ‘strange bedfellows’----these two took the taco, but .....it had to be a continent-sized bed!” Frank laughed and coughed, vice versa. “Naw, the really tough nut was Edgah goin along with that black thing, all over the press; finally, after I told him it was gettin out one way or the other, he caved ,figured ‘misinformation’ was his best bet, and it worked......too well, made it his signature mode of operation.” “But the King letter, it’s public knowledge.”
“Sweetness, that’s why I got with you in the first place, remember; can’t tolerate folks not knowing their history’s all. Yes Edgah was as black as you, but he hated himself , all the more for hating himself, costliest identity crisis in American history. Yes, he tried to come clean then, in the 60’s, but it was too late, he was in too deep with other elements, the die was cast, just look at the Kennedy thing, goddam disgraceful the way he played everybody, ‘sept his masters----I could piss blood! Today, he’s more hated than he could have imagined being who he was. God may not throw dice, but that rascal’s mode of operation is spelled ‘i-r-o-n-y’!” “Hey, careful or you will; look, I’ll carry the torch from here on out, ok?” “You’re gonna need more than a torch, honey,just remember JFK’s got pissed on but good; do me a favor, get me that tall deal in the closet, got somethin for ya.” “What? You think you can give me more than you have?” She fetches a velvet coverlet with a thin heavyish long object. “Open it......want you to have it, key to the whole deal, really.” “All the fencing references.....of course.” “Actually used it against the President.....” Frank wasn’t finished, at least with his trademark surprises.
”Seriously, great sense of humor: we were sitting down, both in wheelchairs, damnedest thing you ever saw; beat me.”
“Didn’t you hold back?” “You kidding me, man had the upper body strength of a charging bull, but finesse at the same time; really, couldn’t get near him with my rapier. Says to me, goading me, ‘Stop sitting on the fence’, Frank! Really beat me with his mind, you see. Greatest political mind since Lincoln, and Lincoln never fenced. Now, see how important that stick is? It can help win some mighty big battles.”
“I hear you. You know, my favorite story in a story, what I think helped me get nominated was the Carters, how they worked for those two great Presidents.” “Dips....... what a character; know what we did after the world’s first seated fencing match.......listened to the blues, with Mr. Carter himself; President even gave him an engraved spitoon from the White House!” They share a laugh, then Frank grows pale again. Carlotta is asked to leave as Frank is weak.
Chapter 24
It is the Pulitzers, and Carlotta has won.
“Ladies and gentlemen, tonight I have the signal honor of presenting to you this year’s winner of our storied prize, to a great storyteller, fittingly; the truth, while her ally in this superb work, was itself aided by her heartfelt energy, somehow coming through in every word, every page. I give you this year’s awardee, Ms. Carlotta Pietro......along with the Roiles Brothers Trio! Ovation and cheering by her family, children. A blues trio, backed by Frank, is playing, Frank’s surprise.” “Distinguished guests, tonight I am very much saddened.” The crowd is hushed. “I do not exaggerate when I say to you that I would gladly relinquish this honor to have in our midst its inspiration, Mr. Frank Lee Roiles. They say we all have teachers, with a capital T, always there, with us, that angel tapping on our shoulder, or that knowing in your heart that the brain ain’t got a clue about; so very patiently---they know we’ve got eternity--- until one day we finally listen, and we ‘get it’. Frank was mine......And what did I learn? History is made by people, and not just the so-called great ones who, they would all admit freely, all had their quiet Teachers, too. Its made by the Beulah Mae Jacksons, my great aunt, and Frank’s nurse maid; the Dips Carters, and his proud ancestor, Jedediah who served Abraham Lincoln; and, of course, Frank, who, as you know, was America’s practicing disciple of a guy with the unlikeliest name for so exquisite a truth, Schoepenhauer----my editors know I sure couldn’t spell it! Frank’s story, you know the one, of the enemy skipper----that’s our story, all of us, it’s just that we have forgotten it. And what’s the moral of that story of stories: we are all, somehow, some way, connected, like it or not; I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to ever forget it, that moral, again.” Applause, enthusiastic.
“For it’s that sort of moral puts morality itself to shame-----fact is, you don’t need anything else to guide you. Now, Frank, he wasn’t perfect, Lord knows, liked to drink on occasion.....and every day was an occasion. But, often our weaknesses are our strengths, reminding us that we’re all exactly the same underneath, deep down where science tells us what the preacher always knew: an atom is an atom-----even sounds like ‘Adam’, doesn’t it?! That ought to seal it, then, end of sermon, you’ll be glad to know. And, so, in closing, let me share one other Frankism with you........” She is handed the velvet covered sword he gave her. “You would think with all the fencing terms I used in the book that I know how to use this; well, somehow, I do, never had a lesson or even saw one till recently, this one, in fact. He gave it to me, for the battles yet to come. And, so, as their literal sister, I say unto to those among the world’s singular family who have yet to learn this Schoepenhauer’s, a/k/a Roiles’s lesson, be‘en garde’, the truth is right there in your heart, just be still, stop ‘thinking’...and listen! I share this award, and this sword, with you all, my family!” Music up, by the Frank Roiles trio, playing a jazzy ‘Auld Lang Syne’.