Better Dead (13 page)

“Not particularly. But I'm not in this case for the money. My old man was a dedicated union man.”

He liked hearing that, as I thought he would.

“I
will
try,” he said. “But about the only way you could get to David and Gold is if you had an in with somebody on the government side. And that's not likely.”

“Maybe I should ask Roy Cohn,” I said, with a grin.

“Or his boss McCarthy,” Bloch said, followed by a horse laugh. “They're in town, you know.” He gestured with a pointing finger. “Over at the Federal Courthouse. Easy walk from here. Doing some kind of press conference.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I believe I read about that in the paper.”

*   *   *

The press conference was held at 1 p.m. in Room 110 in the courthouse, open to the public and televised. Burnished oak walls and floors and even furniture gave the good-size chamber an air of significance. I was toward the back of a gallery of spectators numbering around one hundred as McCarthy—with young Robert Kennedy at his side—announced that he had personally made an agreement with Greek cargo vessel owners to break off trade with Red Chinese and Soviet bloc ports.

Dressed for the occasion in one of his dark blue slept-in-looking ready-made suits, McCarthy said he was making this announcement outside of Washington and in New York because the latter was the USA's shipping center.

“I've negotiated this deal
personally,
” McCarthy said in his familiar herky-jerky cadence, “because I didn't want any
interference
by
anyone
.”

The effect on Red China's seagoing commerce would be damaging enough, he claimed, to hasten a prompt and victorious conclusion to the Korean War.

“I'm
sure,
” McCarthy said, “that President
Eisenhower
and Secretary
Dulles
will be proud.”

I doubted that McCarthy's interference in foreign policy would go down smooth with anybody but his most devoted acolytes. But what did I know? To me politics was being able to get a parking ticket fixed.

Cohn craned around from his seat in the front row, looking in a foul mood as the public and press filed out and the camera crews tore down. McCarthy's favorite weasel could not have liked seeing Kennedy, the architect of the shipping deal, at the senator's side basking in the glow of publicity.

“Nate Heller,” McCarthy said, with a big smile. “Good—you got my message at your hotel, I see.”

“I did. Is there somewhere we can talk? I have a brief report and I also need some help.”

McCarthy nodded and turned his hooded-eye gaze on Kennedy. “Wait for us out front, would you, Bob?
Roy!
”

Cohn popped up, then stepped up, his eyes gleaming, his smile small yet triumphant. Kennedy's expression of accomplishment faded and he nodded and went out, filing in behind some reporters.

McCarthy led us into a small adjacent room where tall windows let in the overcast afternoon. For some reason that kind of cloud-filtered sunlight made me squint worse than the brightest day. We sat at one end of a table suited for six.

“We do have to make this brief, Nate,” McCarthy said pleasantly, his thick blunt hands folded on the table. “We're flying back to D.C. this afternoon.”

Cohn was sitting opposite me, his suit dark blue like his boss's but hardly ready-made. He was studying me with the expression of a sadistic kid looking through a magnifying glass at the ant he was roasting.

I gave them a report on the meetings with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. I left nothing out but played down the console table somewhat, saying that finding it seemed a long shot.

“And if we do,” I lied offhandedly, “I doubt it's enough to get a new trial.”

McCarthy was nodding, but Cohn snapped, “What else?”

“Have I done, you mean? I've made contact with a former neighbor of the Rosenbergs, who used to live down the hall from them at Knickerbocker Village. Natalie Ash.”

“Commie,” Cohn said like he was coughing up phlegm.

“At one time,” I said with a shrug. “I don't know if she's still active. She was on your witness list, wasn't she, Roy? Why didn't you call her?”

“Didn't trust her to tell the truth,” Cohn said. “She's one of half a dozen ‘friends' of the Rosenbergs who we suspected of being Soviet agents.
Still
suspect them. Some have taken a powder.”

That shopworn tough-guy phrase made me smile. “You mean Russian agents, or Americans who deal secrets to the Soviets?”

Small sneer. “What's the difference?”

“Plenty. You'd get way more traction finding an actual Russian spy on our soil … right, Joe?”

McCarthy nodded emphatically. “If we had one of those, that would be fucking Christmas.”

“See what I can do,” I said brightly. “Miss Ash is taking me on a tour of the Rosenbergs' building at Knickerbocker Village, to see if there are any neighbors who witnessed David and Julius arguing over money and that failed business of theirs. Or heard or saw anything suspicious.”

Cohn said, “Good. That's a dead end. You'll never get a new trial that way.”

Several strong witnesses and that console table very likely could, in my opinion, but I didn't say so.

Still, there was something I did need to say.

Pointedly directing my words to McCarthy, I said, “Joe, if I should happen to find new evidence—particularly evidence that seemed to clear the Rosenbergs or at least cast doubt on their conviction—I'll have to come forward with it. You do understand that, right?”

Nostrils flaring, Cohn said, “Who the hell are you working for?”

McCarthy was frowning but said nothing.

Now I looked at Cohn. His face was red and a scar on his nose was white.

I said, “Granted I'm a double agent of sorts. But I'm accepting money from the Hammett committee. And you haven't asked me to turn that money over to you.”

The hoods on Cohn's eyes actually rolled back some. “You're taking
our
money, too!”

“Not yours personally. Uncle Sugar's—as we called him in the service.” I gave Cohn my nastiest smile. “I signed on to your committee as a consulting investigator. Well, I've been investigating and now I'm consulting. Got it?”

His upper lip curled back over feral teeth. “You have a goddamn attitude problem, Heller.”

“I get that a lot.” I turned to McCarthy. “Listen, Joe, I know your pet monkey here has a hard-on against the Rosenbergs. After all, he went to a lot of trouble helping frame them.”

Cohn was on his feet, veins standing out in bas relief on his forehead. “You son of a bitch!”

I smiled at McCarthy like a friendly priest. “I mean, more power to the little guy. He and that Saypol character, who's a judge himself now I understand, got Ethel Rosenberg a cell on Death Row because she did a little typing.
Maybe
did some typing.” I transferred my gaze to Cohn. “Not bad, Roy. Not bad.”

“Listen to me, you smug bastard,” Cohn said, a barking bulldog. “I didn't frame that goddamn traitor Rosenberg, and his wife was in it up to her fat neck. He was spying for the Soviets. The FBI told me all kinds of things I couldn't use in court, so I worked with what I had.”

McCarthy said, “Sit down, Roy.… What's your point, Heller?”

It had been “Nate” before.

“My point is this. As a private investigator licensed in three states, one of which we're in right now, I am an officer of the court. And as an officer of the court, I am reminding you, a senator of the United States, that I cannot and will not withhold evidence. Joe, I can't imagine that you'd want me to.”

“Of course I wouldn't!” McCarthy said, leaning back in his chair like somebody had opened a furnace door on him.

Cohn's tiny hands were clenched. “Fire him, Senator. Fire his ass.”

“No,” McCarthy said. “He's doing what I asked him to—he's reporting back his findings.” With a strained smile, he said, “Just continue to let us know what you uncover.”

“If anything,” I said with a shrug. Then I leaned forward and gave the senator an earnest look. “But I need your help, Joe. Can you pave the way for me to talk to Gold and Greenglass at Lewisburg penitentiary?”

Cohn yapped, “Why talk to
them
?”

“The Hammett committee expects it of me,” I said, fabricating just a little. “They believe Gold and Davey boy were lying.” I turned to Cohn. “More than that, Roy, they think you coached those two and fed them lies like candy when their own stories came up short.”

The veins were standing out again. “Now you're accusing me of suborning perjury!”

“I'm not. The lefties are. Is that a surprise?”

Cohn, breathing hard, just glared at me.

McCarthy said, “But as Roy says … why talk to them at all? Just tell Hammett and crew that the prisoners refused to talk to you.”

“We could do that,” I said. “But if I go down there and they stay consistent with what they said in court, it'll undercut any effort to get a new trial.”

McCarthy and Cohn exchanged raised-eyebrow looks.

“And why in hell would they change their stories?” I said with a casual shrug. “They probably suspect—and are probably right—that the visitation room will be wired for sound. And they won't say anything they don't want the government to hear … since they are hoping for early release on good behavior one of these days.”

McCarthy was waiting for Cohn's reaction, which after a few seconds of contemplation was a curt nod.

“I can smooth the way,” McCarthy said. “I'll attend to it first thing tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

The senator, smiling to where his blue jowls might burst, rose and offered his hand. I shook it. Cohn and I just ignored each other.

Outside the meeting room, a clutch of reporters awaited McCarthy and he stopped to chat informally with them, Cohn staying close, anxious to soak up some of the attention denied him earlier when Kennedy was getting it.

As if summoned by my thoughts, the young assistant counsel appeared at my side.

“I've, uh, been waiting for you, Nate. Step outside with me, would you? We don't have much time.”

We didn't even have enough time for me to ask,
For what?

Instead I just followed the tousled-haired kid, who was in a dark brown suit with no topcoat. I wore a Burberry because there was a chill now to go along with the threatening sky. A breeze with some teeth in it was at us till we stepped behind one of the Grecian columns flanking the entry.

“There are a few things you need to know, Nate,” he said. It was cold enough for his breath to smoke. “When I was over at Justice, it was, uh, common belief that Roy Cohn invented that Jell-O box yarn.”

“Really?”

“Really. And then put it in the mouths of his, uh, witnesses. Like medicine they had to take.”

“Rumor or fact, Bob?”

“I thought it was rumor at first. Then I checked the files—they weren't sealed—and read Harry Gold's first FBI interview.” His light blue eyes held me. “When Gold describes his meeting with the Greenglasses in Albuquerque, he makes no mention of the Jell-O box.”

“Hell you say.”

Using two pieces of jagged Jell-O box, cut up in the Rosenberg kitchen, had been such a vivid, unifying detail in the testimonies of Gold, David, and Ruth.

“Or,” Kennedy went on with a bitter little bucktoothed smile, “that ‘Julius' sent him. What Gold first tells the agents is he
thinks
his password was ‘Benny or Joe or somebody sent me.'”

I grunted a laugh. “But somehow, over time, his memory got jogged.”

“Somehow it did, yes. And Cohn likes to brag around the office that he, uh, personally prepped Gold and the Greenglasses. No details, of course … just a wink and a grin.”

I pulled the Burberry collar up; it was getting colder. “How about when the FBI first interviewed the Greenglasses? Did you get a look at that?”

He nodded. “David barely mentions Julius in his initial interview. Neither does Ruth.”

“Cohn again?”

Another nod. “He's a ruthless little prick, Nate. He railroaded those two. I'm not saying the Rosenbergs didn't do what they were accused of—there was some talk around Justice that they were getting what they deserved, but—”

“Nothing more specific?”

He shook his head. “I
can
tell you for a fact that the, uh, FBI interviews with all three witnesses have almost no mention at all of the Rosenbergs. At that point Cohn and his U.S. attorney boss Saypol take over, and, uh, suddenly the Rosenbergs are the bad guys and the story gets rich with all this Eric Ambler spy melodrama.”

I mulled that momentarily. “Eventually Gold did come around to telling the same tale as the Greenglasses. You think that's strictly Cohn's coaching?”

“Call it encouragement. The government housed both Gold and David Greenglass at the Tombs, on the, uh, eleventh floor—the ‘Songbird' wing where ‘cooperative' witnesses get preferential treatment.”

“Next you'll be telling me they shared a cell.”

He smirked. “Not quite, but they did see each other on a daily basis—played chess together … and very likely got their stories straight. Follow?
This
is what you're up against.”

I put a hand on his arm. “Thank you for this.”

He smiled that disarmingly shy smile of his. “One friend to another, Nate. I can't give you anything on the record. This is just for you to know what you're dealing with.”

“I appreciate it, Bob. But it's not like we're close friends.”

“If you can find a way to make Roy Cohn look bad,” he said, with an expression as ruthless as anything his rival had to offer, “we will be.”