Manhattan 62 (36 page)

CHAPTER NINE

October 27, '62

CUBA SPEEDING BUILD-UP OF BASES, WARNS OF FURTHER ACTION

O
N
S
ATURDAY, THE PAPER
reported that 14,214 air force reservists had been called up for active duty. Adlai Stevenson told the Western Allies the US would take military action “in a brief space of time unless action is halted in Cuba”. Black Saturday, they were calling it.

Ostalsky was gone. Sometime after he had claimed he was going for a nap, he slipped from the house, down to the vacant basement apartment, and then out, and I could only hope he had evaded the spooks who were tailing him. He left the green canvas book bag behind, as a sign he'd be back, or for me to keep.

Friday night, after Ostalsky had gone, I suddenly thought: Jorge. Jorge, the Cuban guy who worked at the optician's on 8th Street. Nancy's friend. The name in Rica's letter!

Saturday, I went over. The owner, a large bulldog of a man with a goatee and tiny wire-rim glasses said Jorge had not come to work, not yesterday, not this morning. I asked if he had ever met Jorge's friends, a girl named Nancy. He knew Nancy all right; he knew Saul; he made spectacles for Saul. I asked him to give Jorge a message to contact me at home, but I wasn't optimistic.

In the street, people seemed to drag themselves as if their feet were stuck in cement. Tomorrow was the 28th. If we went to war, I wouldn't have to worry about this so far elusive assassination that would take place. I didn't know who the victim was or the assassin. I didn't know anything, and I was exhausted and desperate; my stomach tightened at the idea of it, who, where, when God help me, there were no cops I could ask for help. Anyway, even the cops would go home to sit with their families in useless fallout shelters or in bed, thinking about how to survive or how to die.

Still, for now, the Saturday crowds were out shopping; tourists were buying Mexican wedding dresses at Fred Leighton; teenagers considered a visit to the pictures at the 8th Street Playhouse; a young couple, newlyweds maybe, stood in front of the entrance to Bon Soir, maybe wondering if they should spend their last night on earth listening to music. For a second it buoyed me up.

I got a hot dog and an orange drink at the corner because I was hungry, and then I went home to rethink this damn assassination, no point in planning a night out at a club, or a movie anyway; I was alone.

*

Wearing gray slacks, a heavy white sweater, a red scarf around her dark hair, Nancy was sitting on my couch.

I wanted to grab her and drive away, up to the Adirondacks, away from the city, from the coming war, from this whole goddamn mess I was in, that Ostalsky was in, that Nancy was in. What was it that Yuri Gagarin had said? “Let's go!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Pat,” she said.

“What do you want? How did you get in?”

“You loaned me a key once, a while back, a night I was going to meet you here, I think.”

“Where's your friend, Jorge Dias, the Cuban. Do you know where he is?”

She began to cry, not making a sound, and I had never seen anyone weep that way except when she had told me her father was sick; tears coursed down her face without cease. I handed her some Kleenex, and she wiped her eyes, but the tears kept coming. Nancy removed the red scarf from her hair and wound it nervously around her arm, and then unwound it, and wiped her tears again, this time with the back of her hand.

“Jorge is dead.”

“My God. What happened?”

“Rush O'Neill shot him. Just took out his gun and shot him. It's my fault. Jorge never hurt anyone. He was just a nice kid who was trying to save the world. I take it you've met Rush.”

“Yes. You told him you knew me.”

“He saw us together.”

“So he followed me. Very nice. What happened?”

“Please, Pat, please sit down here. Please, can you just sit beside me for a minute and I'll tell you. I can't stop shaking. I saw him do it.”

So I sat, and I put my arm around her and we stayed like that for a few minutes, until she sat up straight, wiped her face and began to talk. She stopped crying as if what she had to tell me was too terrible for tears.

“I met Jorge ages ago, I can't even remember, when I went to pick up Daddy's glasses on 8th Street, and he was a sweet kid and I was interested in Cuba. I thought he was for the revolution, for Fidel, he was so passionate about it when he came to the Labor Day party at Daddy's house. He was sweet and eager to please, and a little bit lost, I felt that.”

“You found out that he had changed his mind. He had fallen out of love with Castro.”

“How did you know that?”

“Did he show you his tattoo?”

Nancy nodded. “He didn't show it to me exactly, but I came into the shop once when he was alone there, and he hurried to put his sweater on. I got a glimpse of something, and I asked him what it was. I said something idiotic like, ‘pretty please with Ketchup on it', and you know, Pat, when I want something.”

“You can be a bitch.”

“Yes.”

“So you saw it.”

“The worm and the words Cuba Libre and I put it together with the terrible murder of the girl on the High Line; I remembered they published a picture of the tattoo. I asked Jorge if he knew her and he said he didn't, but I knew he was lying, and I thought, well, I'll get it out of him.”

“Just for the hell of it, because you can get any man to tell you anything?”

“Not just that. He told me a few days ago that he did know her, and that he knew this man who was murdered out on the pier. They were his friends, he said, and he seemed desperate. I said I would try to help him.”

“So you introduced him to your close chum, Rush O'Neill.”

“Rush knew I had a Cuban friend, so I told him about Jorge, and he says, I'd like to meet him. Says we can help him. He's on our side, after all, and I introduced them, and everything was fine, we had dinner at Seville, that old Spanish place, and we talked, and Rush orders a lot of red wine and he promises to help Jorge. Rush calms him down, he has a certain manner, he makes Jorge believe that they were on the same side and of course, in a way they were—Jorge wanted Castro out, and so does Rush.”

“A match made in heaven.”

“I thought so. Jorge certainly thought so. He confided to us that he had some important information, that something is going to happen, and his friends, both murdered, had the rest of it. Rush says, of course, I see, for the sake of security. Very wise. Why don't you tell me? Rush says. Maybe I can help. To be honest, I think Jorge got cold feet. The next day, he came to my apartment by himself.”

“What? Then why? Why in the name of Jesus, did you do this? Christ, Nancy, it would kill your father.”

“Let me finish.”

“Go on.”

“I had a bad feeling about all of it. Rush had been pretty edgy lately, and I knew Jorge was just a pawn for him. I got Jorge to tell me when and where they were to meet, it was set for Thursday night. Jorge said they were meeting at Hector's, it's a diner in the meatpacking area, and Rush likes it because nobody you know ever goes there, it's on Little West 12th, near the High Line. God, Pat, I'd never been around there but once in my life when Daddy wanted to show me the meat-packers, and talk to me about working men. Anyhow, I managed to wait until they came out, and Rush says goodnight to Jorge and gets into that ridiculous boat of a car.”

“The Impala.”

“I always hated it.”

“Not a cool car. You wouldn't want anyone giving you a lift in it, would you? Not like mine.”

“No,” she said, clutching her wad of wet Kleenex. “Hard to believe I ever cared about that kind of thing. It was like a movie. I saw the car slow down, I heard Rush call out Jorge's name, Jorge walked over to the car, and Rush shot him and drove away.”

“What did you do?”

“I crossed the street. When I felt Jorge's pulse, it was too late. I've never even seen a dead body before. I thought he was dead. I went to a payphone and called the operator and I told her. I told her to send an ambulance or the police, I couldn't leave that poor kid like that, so I waited in a doorway until I saw the ambulance and some cops.”

I reached for the phone. “I better call somebody and tell them who did it. You don't want O'Neill running around shooting people.”

“Please, Pat. Please don't do that right now. If he finds out somebody has reported him, he'll know it's me, and I'll be next. Oh, God, I'm so sorry for everything. I'm guilty of Jorge's death.”

“Don't be so melodramatic. You're guilty of much more than that.”

“Before you do anything, maybe we should talk to Max.”

“Max is gone.”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

“He's safe. He's at my place, he showed up last night.”

“I'm surprised you didn't give him up.”

“I'm not going to give Max up.”

“You knew he was a KGB agent all along?”

“No. Not all along.”

“When?”

“I'll tell you. I promise.”

“Your place can't be safe.”

“It is. Nobody's going to look for him there, because if they thought about it, they'd ask Rush, or his buddy Captain Logan, and Rush thinks I'm a good girl, I'm one of his girls, I'm a patriotic little American. I'm fucking red white and blue. Sorry. He thinks I only ever used Max for information.”

“Didn't you?”

“No. But you don't have to believe me.”

CHAPTER TEN

October 27, '62

I
N HER APARTMENT THAT
night, Nancy held the pink Princess phone in both hands, staring at it, willing it to
ring. The TV was on, the sound low. She had called Rush O'Neill, told him she was frightened and alone, and asked if he would take her out for a drink.

How convincing she had been, imploring O'Neill in her husky low voice, her sweetest, most seductive manner. He said he'd call her back. In her little apartment on West 4th Street, where you could always smell the rancid stink of pizza from the store downstairs, we sat and waited.

Max was asleep in the bedroom.

“There's only a tiny window on the airshaft, you know, so I put him there. But I put a sheet up over it in case,” Nancy said. “I don't think anyone saw him come in. He said he got away from your Uncle Jack's house without anyone following him. Said he thought he had dumped his tail, or both of them. He needed sleep. He could hardly keep his eyes open, and he can't see without his glasses.”

“Too bad Jorge's dead, or he could fix it, the eye-glasses, I mean.”

“You're right to be cynical, God knows. I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry. I've been a fool, and I'm sorry. I'll always be sorry. I was a dope, really a naive idiot. I thought I could get them to leave my father alone, or maybe there was more, and I let myself get sucked in because I was flattered.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You remember you saw me that morning with Rush at the Hip Bagel? I had seen him around, maybe starting a year ago, and then he just kept running into me and saying he was a professor, and after I agreed to have lunch with him, he takes me to a really fancy lunch at Charles' and he tells me he's FBI. Says to me, while we are drinking Martinis, all very cool and sophisticated, says if I help them they would let Daddy alone. It was bad last year, the agents hanging around outside the house. Daddy was deeply involved with civil rights, he was sure the FBI did at least one black bag job on him, you know? They planted stuff in my dad's study, make him look seditious, like he didn't believe in non-violence, which of course he does, he knows Dr King, he believes. They made him look like some crazy man with pamphlets on making bombs. By then he was sick, too.”

“How is he?”

“Dying,” said Nancy. “Rush told me he would get the agents off my father's back, he was high enough up to do that. He just kept after me, and he was charming. Your dad is sick, he would say, and we can be compassionate. When Virginia—Daddy is so lucky to have her—she told me how sick he was, I thought OK, I'll make a deal, I'll do it. Rush kept his part. Daddy told me he felt much better that the FBI seemed to be leaving him alone. He was suspicious, but he felt maybe they had given up on him, and turned their attention purely to Cuba, or something. He didn't like it, either way, but he was tired. He was too sick to do much of anything.”

“What did you think, for God's sake?”

“I thought the FBI had kept their word. I was too much of an imbecile to realize they didn't care about their word, they have no honor, and that they would want more from me. More and more. My God, I was such a fool. Do you know what COINTELPRO is?”

“More or less.”

“Well, to Rush, it's sacred. He never told me in so many words, he never trusted me completely, but I was useful to him, because his big game, much much bigger than my father, was surveying, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political organizations. All of it. He would say it like that. He would list the things he could do, he'd take me to some swell restaurant, and order martinis or whisky sours, and tell me what he wanted. And I had access to them all. Students. Teachers. Writers.”

“Your friends in Brooklyn Heights?”

“Yes. Then Max comes to New York. Rush is thrilled. Says I should make friends with Max. Good friends.”

“A real Red. Like you caught the big fish. So you just pulled him into your web, and told the FBI what you found out.”

“I told them stuff I thought they probably knew like that I went to the Vanguard with Max, or his talks to students at NYU about the Soviet Union. Rush wanted to know who was in the audience. I told him. Probably I slipped and said other things. I was careless. I started feeling queasy about it when Rush showed up at our Labor Day party. We always keep the door open, people come and go, and when I saw Rush, I was terrified.”

“When's he going to call, for Christ's sake?”

“He'll call.”

“Because no man can resist you.”

“I'll call him again.”

“Wait a few minutes. I don't want you to seem too anxious. What did Rush tell you about Jorge?”

“I haven't talked to him since he did it.”

“Killed him. Point blank.”

“Yes. God, Pat, Rush shot Jorge just out of the blue, in front of me. Like it was nothing. I had never even seen a gun, except yours. I hate guns.”

“Some little revolutionary you'd have made. Anything else?”

“I didn't know.”

“Didn't know what?”

“They would kill people like Jorge. In New York.”

“So it was OK in the Soviet Union, or anywhere you couldn't see it. Is that it? You wanted to join the revolution so long as you could get me to drive you around?”

“I don't know. I'm sorry, Pat. I am so sorry. Recently Rush started acting crazy. After the President spoke Monday night, I was at Daddy's for it, so I met Rush at a bar over on Seventh Avenue. I saw him get out of his car and he looked awful. He was furious at JFK. He said the President was a pussy. I had no idea what he meant. I said what's the matter? He said he couldn't tell me yet, then he kissed my cheek and left.” Nancy wiped her face. “What should I do?”

“We need Max. When did you know he was KGB?”

“Not for sure until I saw him last night, and he told me everything. I swear to you. Rush told me he was sure about it, of course, but they think every Soviet is an agent. You're a Red, you even speak the damn Russian language, you're KGB.”

“But Max is KGB.”

“Yes. Please, Pat, go wake him up. Can you make coffee? And turn up the TV.”

I got Max up. Then the three of us sat drinking coffee in Nancy's little living room.

A report on the news showed empty streets in New York, Washington DC, Miami. The other channels went on with regular programming, as if nothing had happened. When the bombs fell, the TV would still be playing—Hitchcock, or the
Tonight Show,
that new guy Johnny Carson in a funny hat, Clint Eastwood would ride the range in
Rawhide.
It was my fantasy that night, this idea that nobody would be left, but the TV would play on and on; even after we were all dead, even after the bombs had wiped us out. Rosemary Clooney would be singing, and Lucy would be there, in reruns, or her new show without Desi, just Lucy and Ethel wacky and comforting; and on it would go. Somewhere I read Lucy had been a member of the Communist Party, way back, once upon a time, but I didn't know if it was true, or care.

All that day and into the night, between the sitcoms and the variety shows, there were reports of different versions of negotiations: letters between Kennedy and Khrushchev; rumors of Soviet nuclear subs off the coast; Cuba demanding the USSR move on America. On WINS radio, when I couldn't stand the news anymore, I listened to Murray the K. He played the Ronettes. He introduced a single by that group I saw in the Liverpool basement, not out in the USA yet, said Murray, but gonna change the world. Rumors on the air of people fleeing New York; the bridges and tunnels jammed with refugees, just like my boss Murphy had told me. People had purchased inflatable boats and were intending to take to the rivers. The banks had seen a run on cash on Friday. Now, the banks were closed for the weekend, and there was no way to get at your money.

Nancy sat down. Silently, Max tried to fix his eye-glasses. We waited. I got up, smoked; I was like a caged animal in that little apartment where I had always wanted to be, with Nancy.

The phone rang.

“Nancy?”

“I've got it.” She ran back into the living room and picked it up.

For a while Nancy spoke into the phone, then hung up and said, “He'll meet me in an hour. I asked him to meet me at a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue. Nobody I know ever goes there. What do you want me to ask him.”

“Get the coffee. And tell me which restaurant.”

“Yes.” Nancy went to the kitchen and brought out a tray with the pot and some cups, and a bottle of brandy.

“And put on a nice dress, and heels.”

By now I was sure it was Rush O'Neill who was the assassin, and I was ready to push Nancy into his arms if necessary; heartless of me, but what else could I do, and maybe she could save her soul. O'Neill was FBI; he knew his way around; he had silver hair, and it seemed to me he was certainly the man Tommy described, the devil as he called him, a man with bright white hair he had seen under the streetlight.

Sunday. A few hours left.

“Does he trust you?” I said to Nancy.

“Yes.”

“He's in love with you?”

“Oh, Pat, darling, not every man is in love with me.”

“But you played the part.”

“When I had to.”

“I need to know where O'Neill is going to be tomorrow. I need you to find out. It might be a church. Max? You listening? I also want to ask you to keep Max here with you tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure. Would you like some brandy with your coffee? I have a bottle of cherry brandy.”

“Yes.”

Max drank the brandy steadily without speaking.

“Go change,” I said to Nancy.

“Do you mind if I do something?” said Ostalsky.

“Like what?”

“Just so we know if Nancy is returning alone or with O'Neill.”

“Sure.”

After Nancy had changed into her red dress and pearls, Ostalsky explained the alarm system he was going to set up with some string and a bicycle bell he had removed from Nancy's bike, parked in the hallway.

“It's very primitive,” said Max. “But at least there's a chance. Nancy, when you get to the front door downstairs, can you find a way to pull this string? I'll make it as invisible as I can. I'll attach it inside to the lock, so your key, when you will turn it, will connect with it. If you pull it once, you're alone. Twice, O'Neill is with you. Does that sound all right?”

“It sounds like a cheap spy novel,” she said.

“I am a cheap spy.”

“I should go.”

After she left, we sat waiting, me and Max, in the dark, listening to every noise in the old tenement building, the sound of a guitar, the sound of some cats shrieking, the radiator banging. We waited for the sound of steps on the stairs, and the bicycle bell. We sat with the lights off in the dark, drinking the brandy, and when the bell rang once, a brief, barely audible sound, we jumped, both of us.

I took my gun out of my pocket and crept down the stairs, though there wasn't much point in the creeping. Every step on the old loose boards produced a kind of wooden scream. It was Nancy.

“I don't have long,” she said. “I told Rush I had to go home because I got my period suddenly, and he was embarrassed, he called it my time of the month, so he drove me here. He's downstairs, Pat. Go on up, I'll follow you. Can you turn the lights on when you get upstairs, he'll think it's odd if I don't put on some lights.”

Ahead of Nancy I went to the apartment, told Max to stay low, and put on the lights. Nancy arrived, and said, very softly, “I think Rush has pretty much lost his mind, and he just talked and talked, going around and around, telling me he had to save America from the Red curse, that unless he did what he had to, we would be overtaken by the Communists, and how God would not forgive him if he failed. He says only General Curtis LeMay ever understood the right way. That LeMay should be in charge. Might be in charge. This is a man, LeMay I mean, who wants to blow up the world. My God, Pat, I never realized that Rush was quite insane. I'm just going to change.” She ran into the bedroom and put on the sweater and slacks she had worn earlier. “What on earth have I done? He made me promise I'd spend the night with him. He's staying in town. He's never done that before, not with me, at least; he's very paranoid about his wife who's somewhere in Westchester, but he said this was so important and it meant so much to him, so I said I'd think about it, but he insisted. I told him I knew something big was on, and I wanted to be part of it, I implied it was the price of my spending the night with him, and he said fine but I'd have to go to mass with him tomorrow morning, and I said, darling, I'm Jewish. He just laughed. I have to go now. By the way, if this matters, he says we're going to Old St Patrick's, isn't that where your Aunt and Uncle go, Pat? Didn't you take me to hear Christmas carols there once?”

“Yes.”

“Well, so long, Pat. Bye, Max. Take care of yourselves,” Nancy said, and without looking back, she went out the door and down the stairs.

“Do you trust her?”

“I don't know,” Max said.

“Could she be telling us a story? Could she be whatever the hell you call it, a double agent or some garbage? I'm going to Old St Pat's.”

“I'll go with you.”

“You can't. I looked outside, they're back.”

“All of them?”

“Just yours. Your friends in the black Plymouth.”

“Get rid of them.”

“How?”

“Call the police, not your own station, but a different one, and tell them the KGB is parked on West 4th Street,” said Max.

“Do you think they'll believe it?”

“Perhaps not. But they may send a police car to check.”

He was right. I muffled the phone with a handkerchief, and by some miracle I got hold of a guy in the First Precinct. Said he'd send someone by for a look.