Manhattan 62 (32 page)

“Two men were inside. One says he is KGB, and shows his pass, the little pass with the red cover and the KGB insignia, and introduces his superior, then locks the door. Vassily says later he recalls only the musty smell and the cigarettes, and the odor of men who have not washed, and his own fear. The senior man asks if Vassily wants to help his country by reporting to them on his co-students and friends. They tell him if they know what's going on, it is better for everyone. Vasya says to me he was so frightened he becomes contentious. He says to them, ‘But I'm a biologist.'

“‘Oh,' says the senior man, ‘So you're not a patriot?' ‘Can't I be a biologist and a patriot?' replies Vasya who is irritated now, as well as scared. In the end, Vassily refuses, but they want him to sign a piece of paper saying he would never tell anyone about the meeting. ‘What will you do if I don't, put me in jail?' he says.

“‘You'll wish you were in jail,' says the other agent in a way that terrifies Vassily.

“He never told me about this until many years later, when I ran into him. He was no longer a top biologist. He was working in a lab somewhere in the Urals, and was in Moscow only because his father had died.”

“What about you?” I said.

“They left me alone, until after I finished my degree, and my MA and had begun work on my doctorate. With me they were polite, perhaps because my father is well connected. They proposed I should go on with my studies, and just occasionally tell them what was going on among the students I knew, but, more importantly, with foreigners in Moscow. By this they meant Americans. They told me I would be invited to events—concerts, lectures and exhibitions—like the one I told you about—even parties at the American embassy. If I would tell them who I saw and met, it would be a patriotic gesture. So I did. I told them I would do it. I was recruited for training, and then offered the graduate fellowship in New York.”

“Lucky for you.”

“You could say so. Shall I tell you what I did, the worst thing I did? You asked. I lied to get a better job, to get ahead, as you would say. I lied when I was interviewed,” said Max. “I told them what they wanted to hear. I learned it was the thing you had to do.”

“Are you looking for expiation? Absolution?”

“Those are Catholic ideas, I like to read the novels of Graham Greene, because I admire his writing and his stories, but I wish this thing he believes could be true. I can't believe in a God I don't understand. I can't believe in God at all. Perhaps God would have saved me from what I did.

“I lied about a friend. I colluded. I schemed, and I did it in a way no one quite saw what I was up to. I was some bastard. For instance, this means I always knew how to ask a friend for a favor and make him believe I was doing one for him. I pretended I was only good at telling jokes, and having fun, but my superiors knew I was quite sharp and my superior said, ‘Max is the best, he can see around corners, he can fit in, he has the chameleon character of the best agents. Max can get what he wants, and that can be most useful.'

“Did I tell you how I got my fellowship to New York? Did I say another man dropped out because he had a skiing accident and fell in love with some girl on the slopes? I didn't? Well, Igor Petricov was much more talented than me, a much better candidate who spoke better English and already had his doctorate, and he was not so badly injured, or led by some girl, of course, but I made it seem as if he was unreliable, and I was from a better family and my father knew important people. There were many other students, more serious, I didn't care. I lied and they considered Petricov undisciplined for chasing women, and he got a minor posting far away from Moscow and no real possibility of advancement. I got the fellowship to New York. They believed me. I fabricated just enough. I was a magician. I could easily conspire in my own interest. I told my uncle, the general, that I would so like to have this job, and he was happy to help, and I was charming to him. As my friends, my cousin Sasha most of all, said, Max gets what he wants. I think I even took Nancy from you, Pat. I am sorry. I will take a shower now.”

Max came out of the bathroom, wearing my jeans and sweatshirt with the hood up.

I laughed. “You look like a two-bit gangster.”

“What else am I, Pat? This is what I am, wouldn't you say so? Just a two-bit gangster, a hoodlum, what else is a spy? What I've discovered is that to be a good agent, you have to be without human feeling in order to do your job. We celebrate spies as daring men who will do anything, and we pretend it is about patriotism, and this might be true, Pat, for some, for some who do it for idealistic reasons. They also consider themselves in a sort of brotherhood, as priests, somehow ordained to do the unspeakable in the name of country, instead of God. We used to talk of the great undertakings of the great agents with such envy.

“This is what they enjoy. I enjoyed this. Men together, bound by all the rules of their game—subversion, sabotage, spying—convinced like little boys these games are for the good of all. Did you know we have sports teams at the KGB? We have a house band? We are often bound together by families, because it seems safer to rely on somebody with good family connections. Some are cynical about it, of course. But all of us have a sense of entitlement. We convinced each other that this is for socialism, or capitalism, or freedom, or democracy. And it is all, all of it, as you say so often, Pat, horseshit. Crap. Farce. Malarkey. Isn't that a term your uncle uses? We have much worse words in Russian.”

“So do we.”

“This is not the same as being a cosmonaut, or a great soldier in a patriotic war, like our fathers, or perhaps those girls in France who went behind enemy lines. They were different; they had an idea of what was proper. Professional agents are arrogant, but we are nothing. Just gullible, fallible men, like others, except that we are a little less human.

“In that warehouse I was scared to death, cold, wishing I had, I don't know, all kinds of ordinary things, even a cup of hot coffee and a roast beef sandwich, and a paperback book. I discovered that I am a terrible agent, and I was relieved. It seemed to me I might have a shot at being human. I was probably wrong. It's probably too late, and you'll understand when I tell you something about Bounine. In case you have to finish this case by yourself.”

“Fuck off.”

Contemplating the can, Max finished the peanuts. “Let me talk. Bounine is in trouble. I failed at the job he ordered me to do. This means he failed. They will go after him. He might take chances to prove himself loyal. He's, what do you say, a creep, but he is shrewd, and he may come looking for you. ”

“Is he the assassin?”

“He has a defect.”

“Is he retarded or something? But he's a doctor. He seemed pretty smart to me.”

“His soft spot is my insurance policy. Everybody has a soft spot. Greed. Money. Women. Ideology.”

“He was your friend.”

“He made himself my friend. But it was to provoke me to talk freely so he can make, what you call brownie points. What he didn't know was that two of us could play at the same game, and that I am better at it. But his job was always to watch me.”

“Christ.”

“Do you know what my cousin Sasha always said about me? He says, ‘We always knew this about you, Max. You could get anything out of us even as little children. You could always press the right buttons; you are like the magician with your silk scarves and disappearing coins, you are an actor. We used to whisper about you. Max is going to be a spy. Maxim is a spy. One of the girls even called you Felix.'”

“Who?”

“For the founder of our Secret Service. It doesn't matter. When I was with Bounine at Caffe Reggio, and I see how intimately he speaks with the young man making coffee, I said nothing, but I let him know I saw, that I understood. He had been quite eager once in the summer to show me a new watch he had been given, and after he had enough to drink, he told me it was a young doctor who had presented it to him.”

“You mean Bounine is homosexual.”

“If you need help, you can use this.”

“You're a cold bastard,” I said.

Max nodded. “Oh, yes, sure. Cold. Arrogant. Stupid, treacherous. I now understand that spies are the lowest form of all human life because we think we're invulnerable, and we think we can do anything and say it's for our country, for honor, for the motherland. Anyway, if Bounine intends to kill me, or you, I will use whatever this takes.”

He picked up a letter he had left on an antique desk against the wall. I had seen it. It was addressed to Nancy.

“Did you read my letter?”

“No,” I said. “I have to go now. Do you love Nancy?”

“Yes,” said Max. “I still do. I can let you, would it be right to say, off the hook?” He smiled slightly, sadly. “I know that Nancy gives information to the FBI. I believe she does this so they will leave her father alone. He is very ill. Or perhaps she does it because she believes it is the right thing. What came to me in that warehouse is that I love her anyway.”

CHAPTER FIVE

October 26, '62

I
MADE THE CALL
I
never wanted to make. From the hospital, when I had seen Bounine, I had phoned
up the only friend who might still help me. She had said not to call. Said she would be in touch. Then, nothing. It was a chance I had to take. I had been asking friends for help, friends like Clay Briscoe, now this: I hated it. I hated putting them in jeopardy, but what else could I do?

On my way to see Edward Forrester, I saw the fear on people's faces, fear reflected in their eyes. I walked to Sixth Avenue where I saw a familiar figure. “Hello Pat,” said Muriel Miller; for some crazy reason I wondered if it was accidental. In shop windows, in bars, and cafes, every television was on, and people watched, speechless; a reporter said that the Pentagon had assessed the space in fallout shelters, and concluded that in the whole country there was space for 60 million people. For the rest of us, there was nothing.

The gaslights were already on in Patchin' Place off Sixth Avenue, as I arrived at the tiny house where Shirley Cowan lived.

Shirley was past ninety, spry, an elegant woman with short white hair who had all her marbles; more than most. Her father had worked in Teddy Roosevelt's department when he was Police Commissioner of New York in the 1890s; the first woman journalist to cover both world wars, she had known everyone who mattered, and had been pursued by many of them, though she never married. She had gone into the department as its archivist. In that room at the Centre Street headquarters, she kept files on every cop who had mattered, and some of them she had taken home with her when she retired to this doll's house with poets down the lane for neighbors. She had had enough of cops, she once told me; but she never had enough; her files were her obsession.

“I'm sorry, Shirley. I couldn't wait any more. I'm sorry to come here like this.”

“Just come inside quickly,” she said, closed the door and put the chain on.

“I'm sorry.”

“Enough, Patrick. Enough. Your uncle was my friend. You're my friend. You're the one who always comes when I fall down, or make a fool of myself, and you always make me feel it's your pleasure.”

“It is.”

When I entered the little parlor, she kissed my cheek and said simply, “You're in terrible trouble, Patrick. When you telephoned me on Tuesday, I went through my files, and I made a few phone calls, and if you are somehow involved with Homer Logan, if you've got up his nose, and you have, it's much much worse than you can imagine. Would you like a drink, dear? You'll need one.” She asked me to pour out the whisky from an old glass decanter on an upright piano. Near the decanter were pictures of her—she had been a great beauty—with Douglas Fairbanks, FDR, Caruso, even old Joe Kennedy.

“Thank you.”

She cleared a pile of papers from a small armchair. “Sit. You are in very bad trouble, my sweetheart. I called you at home, but there was no answer.” She sipped her whisky. “Have you talked to your Uncle Jack?”

“He's upstate.”

“Why don't you join him? It would be a very good idea.”

“I can't. I'm so sorry, Shirley, but I'm in a hurry.”

From the pile of papers, she extracted a brown file marked Homer Logan in her neat cursive script. “Logan has a reputation as a man hungry for power, but you knew that. He has been obsessed with getting the Mafia since the 1940s, when he came back from the war, and was only a young cop.” She turned the yellowing pages. “He thinks of every Mafia collar as a notch on his belt, so to speak, and he'll do anything to make it, even if he has to bend the rules or corrupt the information. I do mean anything, Patrick. He takes risks. He puts himself in harm's way. You see he idolizes Bobby Kennedy for what he did on the racketeering cases, and most of all on that union thug, Jimmy Hoffa. To make a Mob case, he feels, is to please Bobby. It's his life.”

I told her about the case on Pier 46. I told her how Logan had pushed me off it, and my own boss, Murphy, had gone along with him. “They threatened me.”

“I'm not surprised. There are a few reporters who eat out of his hand, and write whatever he tells them, and of course, these make good stories. It's never the whole truth. Logan has made certain gangsters disappear so he can claim his victories. I wouldn't be surprised if a few cops who knew too much also found themselves off the force, or worse.”

“What about the case on the pier, the dead Cuban? I heard they're going to indict Cheeks Farigno.

“It was set, then Farigno came up with an alibi. He says he was in Chicago at the time of the murder, and one of the locals, one of Sam Giancana's men, confirmed it.”

“Sweet Jesus. But I guess Logan will say, who can believe anything Giancana's Mob say?”

“Exactly. In fact, I think this will add fuel to Logan's fire, because if he can get to Giancana himself … do you recall during the racketeering trial, when Bobby Kennedy said to Giancana, ‘I thought only little girls giggled, Mr Giancana?' Homer Logan keeps that news clipping on his wall, framed.”

“What about the young woman who was murdered last summer on the High Line?”

“It was dreadful. I looked it up, the best I could, but some of the files were missing, and I can only get access to the archives on weekends, when there's no one around. I made a copy of the key.” Shirley asked for a cigarette, and I gave her one and lit it. “As far as I can tell, her murder was just possibly a real Mafia hit,” she said. “There are some reliable people who believe this.

“Easy, then, to insist that the hit on the pier last week was the same perp, or a copy-cat.” I said.

“Thank you. Shirley, I should go.”

“I'm sorry if that's not much help. I have a few more things on Logan. He's a brutal man. When he was in the air force during the war, he was greedy for missions, and he bragged about people he had killed in Dresden. He flew the fire bombing of Tokyo, and was part of the mission to poison Japanese waterways. Of course, plenty of fliers took these missions, but they say that Logan begged for them, and talked about them, and kept photographs, the cities, the people, on fire; he has said we should do the same to the Cubans. The department had to shut him up,” said Shirley. “Have you heard of General Curtis LeMay?”

“Sure. He's crazy. He wants to nuke everyone.”

“He was Logan's commanding officer.”

I got up. “Thanks, Shirley. Will you be OK?”

“Of course,” said Shirley. “And be careful. I don't want to hear they picked you up as some kind of rogue cop, or worse. Pat, just switch on the overhead light on your way out, would you? And don't worry about me. Homer Logan can't intimidate me, because I'm an old lady and people consider the old incapable and next door to senile. So I'm quite safe. And I know all about him.”

“Thank you. Is there any more?”

“His wives. The other women. The fact that he changed his name. He's Italian. Peasant stock. Logan was his mother's name; his real name is Enrico Pazzo. Where he got the Homer is hard to say, but he went into the military, he was very keen on becoming an officer, and Italians were not entirely popular during the war. So Enrico Pazzo become Homer Logan. He was raised on Mulberry Street. His father was a butcher who beat him up, and before he became an Episcopalian and attended services on Fifth Avenue, Logan went to Old St Pat's where he was in the same confirmation class as your Uncle Jack. He hates everything to do with Little Italy, with his family, the Church, which is probably why he is so obsessed with stamping out the Mafia. Thinks it's responsible for giving Italians a bad name.”

“Jack was pretty upset when I mentioned Logan.”

“No wonder. Logan is certainly aware that Jack's been onto him for a long time. Did you catch Adlai Stevenson on TV today? I thought he was marvelous, the way he stood up to Zorin was very brave, and he will opt for a peaceful solution to this wretched crisis, if they let him.” said Shirley. “I was always a great fan of Adlai's.”