Corruption of Blood (26 page)

Karp thought for a moment, mentally shuffling through the hundreds of names associated with the case, concentrating on the New Orleans subdivision.

“Wasn’t there a guy named Termine, a Marcello hood from New Orleans?”

“Yeah, actually Marcello’s driver, Sam Termine,” said V.T. “I thought of that too, but I doubt it’s him. Depuy was a New Orleans police reporter and he would have checked that out, or asked Ferrie right there if he meant Sam. No, this is a new name: I’ll start a folder on it.”

“Okay, but why is this interesting, V.T.? The guy was obviously nuts. It could’ve been a business deal that went sour in 1958. PXK sounds like a company, like TRW or LTV.”

“Yes, that’s true,” V.T. agreed. “On the other hand, Depuy obviously thought it was something to follow up on. One last thing. In Depuy’s pocket diary there’s a notation in mid-1967, way after Ferrie kicked off. It says, ‘Term in N.O. 9-63’ and there’s a phone number. I had it checked out. In 1963 it was the number of Gary Becker’s Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean. So there’s a string of connections: Oswald with Bishop and Caballo and Veroa; Oswald and Becker; Oswald and Ferrie; and now Ferrie and Becker and whoever or whatever Term and PXK is.”

Karp paced for a few moments, thinking. Then he shook his head irritably and said, “Yeah, but so what? It doesn’t get us any further unless we get more on this PXK and Term. Have you got any ideas on how to do that? No? Plus, this Ferrie thing is a miasma—it sucks us down into Garrison territory: innuendo, he-said-I-heard, and all the rest of the conspiracy bullshit. It’s just another pair of loose threads.”

V.T. gave Karp an appraising look and replied in a sharper tone than he ordinarily used, “Yes, but at least they’re new loose threads. You’ve been telling me all along that the minutiae of the assassination weren’t going to advance the cause. So we’re concentrating on Oswald and his merry friends, which now you’re calling conspiracy bullshit. Fine! But if you don’t mind, I’ll keep pulling on whatever threads I turn up, in the hope that sooner or later something will unravel. I mean, what else can we do?”

Karp had no good answer, and almost as a punishment, spent the rest of the day buried in that minutiae. By four, the transient excitement occasioned by Veroa’s story had quite faded.

Clay Fulton tapped on the doorframe and came in. “You look beat,” he said. “You should be up behind this. I thought we just got a good break.”

“Veroa? Yeah, the entrance to another set of blind alleys. Did you set up the ID on David yet?”

“Yeah. David’s speaking at some national intelligence officers’ association thing in a hotel out in the burbs day after tomorrow. I figure I’ll drive Veroa out there and let him loose. Antonio should be right at home in an old spies’ convention. Anything else happen today?”

“The usual. Crane is still talking to that damn caucus, so God knows what’s going to happen. Bea’s still getting grilled by the bureaucrats. Everybody else is tracing witnesses or farting around with experts. Speaking of which, one of the kids went out to Aberdeen and found a film archive of people getting shot. No, seriously! Apparently the army collected films from the Nazis or wherever, showing people getting executed, mostly with head shots. Wound research. We’re having a showing tomorrow.”

“Great!” said Fulton after a heavy sigh. “All right if I bring the kids?”

“No problem. There’s a pool on how many times we’ll see an actual human being getting shot in the head and flinging himself toward the gun like Kennedy did on Zapruder. All the shots came from the rear, says Warren, but after the guy’s head explodes he goes flinging backward.”

“The old grassy knoll.”

“Right. Old grassy knoll’s got me. How was Miami?”

“Warm, with a chance of Cubans.” Fulton snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah! Speaking of Miami: I found our mobster.”

“Which mobster?”

“Mosca, Guido. Jerry Legs. The Castro thing … ?”

“Oh, right! God, this is really important now. The Mob …”

“They were in on it you mean?”

“No, but did you ever see the film from the first press conference? Henry Wade, the Dallas DA, held it the day after the assassination. No? Interesting. He made two factual errors, one about Oswald’s middle name and the other about the name of his phony Cuba committee. In both cases he was accurately corrected by a man standing in the rear of the room. It was Jack Ruby, the guy who never met Oswald, but somehow knew the exact name of an obscure organization Oswald was running. Yeah, I’d like to talk to Mosca about that. So … he’s down in Miami? I thought he was a New Orleans boy.”

“Was. He was with the Marcello organization back in the sixties, like we heard, then I think he must’ve got traded to Miami, for an aging left-hander and two utility outfielders. Worked for Trafficante and then ended up with the Buonafacci organization in South Florida. He still keeps his hand in a little but he’s mostly retired now—he must be pushing seventy.”

“You saw him?”

“Yeah, he’s got a nice little place in Surfside, on the bay. Friendly guy, as a matter of fact. He made me some ice tea.”

“What’d he tell you?”

“Not one fucking thing. He was very apologetic. So, unfortunately, unless he’s been raping babies and we catch him at it, and put on the squeeze, the guy’s a clam. Another dead end.”

“Maybe not,” said Karp.

“How so?”

“Mmm … it’s a long shot, but when you said rape I thought of something I just heard about. Ray Guma may be in a position to do Tony Buonafacci a big favor. I think Mosca will talk to us if Tony Bones tells him to, don’t you?”

“I feel like I’m back in college,” said Maggie Dobbs happily. She was perched on a chair in front of her dressing table, a pile of blouses on her lap, watching pale bubbles rise in a flute of straw-colored wine. “Why is that?”

From her comfortable position on Maggie’s bed, Marlene put down her own wineglass, now empty, stretched luxuriously, and answered, “Oh, I don’t know. No kids whining. We’re talking about men in a bedroom with clothes scattered all around. We’re drunk. Feels collegiate to me.”

She had known girls like Maggie at Smith, pale, arty creatures, inevitably engaged to embryo stock-and-bond men from Amherst, cashmere-sweatered, plaid-skirted, circle-pinned, who dashed blondly through the campus walks like flights of pallid doves. In the usual cliquishness of college life, she had not had a great deal to say to these creatures. Marlene wore black under army surplus, smoked a lot, scowled, talked dirty, and hung out with U Mass boys, or even (shudder) townies from Northampton.

That was, however, long ago, and the two women had both experienced an odd attraction to each other, as if catching up on some missed experience. Since meeting her at the big-shot party, Marlene had shamelessly parasited herself into Maggie’s elegant and well-ordered life. Lucy was installed in a tony play group, hobnobbing with the Ashleys and Jennifers of McLean, under the eyes of perfect mommies or French nannies.

“No hitting,” Marlene had said before dropping Lucy off. “You queer this deal and you’ll go three rounds with me.”

“But, Mommy,” Lucy had complained, “what if they’re mean?”

“They won’t be mean. These are high-class kids; they already know how to kill with a look. In any case, if you have to slug somebody, body-punch. I absolutely don’t want blood on the walls.
Capisc’
?”

Now the two women were lounging in Maggie’s boudoir (and it
was
a boudoir, done in jonquil frillies) with a cold bottle of a nice Moselle nearly down the hatch, and a long afternoon of nothing much ahead.

“Are husbands the same as men?” Maggie asked musingly.

“Well, unlike in school,” Marlene said, “the mystery is gone. It’s like Christmas. You’re in a delicious agony wondering what you’re going to get, and then you tear the paper off and there it is—just what you always wanted. Or, not, as the case may be. Whatever, the thing is, the fascination after that is learning how to play with it. Or him. A different kind of agony, if you’re into it. Which, as it turns out, I am. How about you? Where did you hook up with old Hank?”

“Oh, we met at a freshman mixer. I was at Connecticut and he was at Yale. We got engaged my junior year. Ho-hum. How about you?”

“Oh, Karp? We worked together in the old homicide bureau. No sparks or anything. Then we were at this party and he got plastered and I had to drag him home. I crashed on his bed. The next morning I was taking a shower, and he came stumbling in, hung over, and there and then, to the surprise of both of us, we fell on each other like animals and fucked our brains out. The rest is history.”

“Oh, see, that’s what I mean!” cried Maggie. “Nothing like that ever happens to me.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, the unexpected. The dramatic. The exciting.”

“Well, as to that, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, the so-called exciting life. A lot of it is pissing in your panties. And besides, my life, ninety percent of it, is just like yours. Shopping, cleaning, taking care of the kid, working.” She paused and looked at Maggie. “If you’re bored you could get a job.”

“Oh, right, that’s what
he
always says. It’s not being bored. Besides, I had a job, until Jeremy came. It’s more like—I don’t know—my life is in a, like a railroad siding, just waiting for an engine to pull me along the track again. And Hank is like some kind of express train roaring along the other track getting farther and farther away.” She reached for the bottle and refilled her glass.

“What did you do, when you worked?” asked Marlene.

“Oh, some job in O’Neill’s office. Hank got it for me, of course. Just, basically, your D.C. job: sitting around answering phones with other wife-ofs and the little hard chargers starting their Hill careers. Then when I quit, it was supposedly to start working on the files, getting the book ready, but I haven’t honestly had the energy. And Hank hasn’t said anything, but when I try to talk to him about the way I feel, he gives me this look, like I’m letting down the team.”

“But you’re still basically okay. You and him.”

“Oh, like do we love each other. Oh, yeah.” She twirled a lock of her shining hair, looked toward the heavens, and laughed. “Still madly in love!”

“What with? What do you like about him besides that he thinks you’re letting down the team?”

“Oh, see, I didn’t really mean that,” explained Maggie in a nervous rush. “Actually, he’s wonderful. The minute he looked at me, I went all squooshy.”

“What was it? Body?”

“No, although that was all right—he was on the crew at Yale. No, it was something about his head, or his face. A look. You know, it was sort of intelligent, but not smart-alecky, and noble, and with depth. Like he was injured somewhere inside and hiding the wound. You know what he reminded me of? That central figure in Picasso’s
Saltimbanques,
the one in profile?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s one of my favorite paintings,” said Marlene, thinking that guys who had that look probably got unbelievable amounts of pussy off little blond art lovers. Or Italian tough girls. Karp, of course, had it too.

“Oh, mine too!” said Maggie, delighted. “It’s in the National. We have to go see it.”

“Yes, two aging housewives standing rapt in front of a seventy-year-old painting, our knees trembling, our undies slowing getting damp …”

“Oh, stop it!” Maggie shrieked, and threw a blouse at Marlene.

Marlene caught it and glanced at the label. “Mmm … nice silk. From Bloomie’s.” She sat up and held the sleeves wide, framing Maggie’s face over it. “It’s not your color, really. What do you wear it with?”

“Nothing!” Maggie wailed. “I never wear it. I have cubic yards of clothes and I never have anything to wear.”

“Drag ’em out,” said Marlene, focusing her attention. “Let’s see what we got.”

An hour or so later, the two women stood looking at a gaudy pile of fabric three feet high, stacked on the bedroom floor.

“God, this is so embarrassing!” said Maggie with feeling. “I feel like such a jerk.”

“I still don’t understand it, really,” said Marlene. “You know you can’t wear all these saturated colors and wild prints with your coloring. And besides”—she lifted up a scarlet brocade jacket and a chrome yellow skirt— “none of this stuff makes outfits. Why on earth did you buy it all?”

“I don’t know. I go into a store to shop and something happens—I become a zombie. I feel this pressure crushing down on me, and I guess I just buy the flashiest thing in sight and dash out. Or else, maybe I desperately want to be someone who can wear an acid green pantsuit.”

“Well, at least you’ll make Goodwill happy. I bet a lot of their customers
can
wear this stuff.” Marlene held a red-white-and-blue bulky-knit sweater up to her chest, struck a Foreign Legion salute, and started to hum the “Marseillaise.”

“Oh, stop!” laughed Maggie. “Actually, that’d look great on you. Why don’t you pick out what you want and take it?”

Marlene dropped the sweater and gave Maggie a sharp glance.

Maggie blushed rosily and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God, I didn’t mean …”

“No, I appreciate it, but the funny thing is I really have lots of clothes. I just didn’t bring them with me into exile.” She quickly related the story of her hasty departure from New York, leaving out the shameful proximate cause.

This, of course, was exactly what Maggie wanted to know. It struck her as astounding that someone with Marlene’s extraordinary life, and moreover, one with impeccable
Waffen
-feminist credentials (“You ran a
rape bureau
?”)
,
would dump it to go be a wife-of in Washington. She probed uncomfortably close to the real reason, and rather than snapping out that it was none of her business and perhaps adding that they were
not
actually schoolgirls pouring out their little hearts, Marlene changed the subject.

“What was that all about, what you said a minute ago—about files and a book?”

“Oh, that!” Maggie seemed to slump. A tiny, worried indentation appeared beneath the glossy bangs. “You don’t want to hear it.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s something to do with your husband?”