"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (19 page)

Lee's fascination with the place continued to mount during the following weeks. Initially, he read in his own room, feeling insecure about taking advantage of those amenities. On the third day, having finished
Profiles in Courage,
he moved on to
The Trial
by Franz Kafka, more in line with Lee's preferences in literature. Lee slipped into the pair of swimming trunks in his brightly painted room. Carrying a towel along Lee strolled over to the pool. On arrival he was stunned to see several of the most beautiful women he had ever observed other than in the movies stretched out on lounges. Each wore a bikini so brief they would have put
the new French starlet, Brigitte Bardot, known for her daringly skimpy swimsuits, to shame.

One blonde, lying face down, raised her head, strands of hair whirling all over, signaling to Lee to come on over and take a nearby lounge next to her. Gulping, Lee did as indicated. He also fell madly in love with her at first sight.

"Hi, I'm Honey."

"I'll say you are! I'm Lee."

"Perfect timing, Lee. Would you please undo my top and rub some oil on my back? I don't want to burn."

"Sure," he managed to reply. Moving on to her lounge, his legs rubbing up against hers, Lee did as requested, snapping the plastic pieces apart, allowing the strings of
her top to fall gracefully, one to either side. Lee reached for her container of lotion and squirted some on Honey's back. The blonde then shivered slightly and giggled. Lee rubbed it in, over, across, around ... every contour of her already tan and perfectly proportioned backside, augmented by the white material.

“Ooooh, Lee-eee,” she whispered provocatively.

That pleasurable task accomplished, Honey smiled again and thanked Lee. Swallowing hard, he settled down on his own lounge and attempted to concentrate on Kafka. Suddenly, though, that surrealist's dark vision, one which ordinarily would click with his ever-depressed mind, struck him as ridiculously out of place in this wondrous playground for ... the CIA?

Johnny strolled up, wearing another slick suit, equally impressive to yesterday's if a slightly different shade of gray.

"Hello, Honey. Hey, Lee. What're you up to?"

Lee admitted he was trying to read but could not get into his book. Johnny retrieved a paperback from his inner pocket and tossed it over. "Try this. Just finished it."

Lee thanked Johnny and glanced at the cover. On it, the title was emblazoned in bright red lettering across the top:
Casino Royale
. The author's name, Ian Fleming, appeared at the bottom. The picture featured a rugged looking fellow with cold, hard, merciless eyes. A pair of beautiful, nearly naked women, one blonde, the other brunette, stood behind him on either side, nestled against the man's back shoulder-blades.

Lee considered the image; his dream vision of the way he, like any man, wished his life would be. Of course, this was only some paperback fantasy, concocted in the creative imagination of the author. Yet, Lee guessed, there had to be at least an iota of truth to it. Somewhere,
somebody
lived like this.

Why not me? Hey, I'm doing that right now! From the slums of New Orleans to ... this? My God! I'm halfway there.

"Agent James Bond, 007," Lee read from the prologue. "Licensed to kill."

"Great stuff," Johnny assured him. They made plans to shoot pool in mid-afternoon. How about that? This super-cool Sicilian, treating me as his guest of honor. Johnny asked if there might be anything Lee would like. Honey piped in that she could use a martini. Lee, wanting to be a part of everything, echoed that he'd very much enjoy one, too.

Johnny nodded, then left as quickly as he had come. A while later a brunette, also sporting a skimpy bikini, hers blue, marched up carrying a small tray. With a smile as sweet as Honey's she served the drinks, promising to be back briefly to see if there might be anything else they should desire.

A half an hour later, Honey requested Lee redo her back-strap so that she could head over to her cabin. That task accomplished, Honey rose, allowing Lee an ever better angle of vision on her remarkable body. Before stepping away, Honey mentioned that she'd be busy for the remainder of the day but, if Lee liked, she could stop by his cabin at midnight.

In a suddenly hoarse voice, Lee answered that he would be delighted. Brushing her long-flowing blonde mane against Lee's face, she winked provocatively and strutted away.

*

After the game of pool with Johnny, Lee had to report to the doctor for more photographs and the fitting of yet another mold. With Dr. Martinelli stood another surgeon, Dr. Joe Battle, considerably younger, also Sicilian, introduced as Martinelli's assistant. Following that, Johnny accompanied Lee to dinner. More beauties dined with middle-aged men in sharkskin suits.

“I tell ya, Johnny. Never in a million years would I guess that those guys are CIA agents. They just don't look the part.”

“They're not. GoodFellas. Get my drift?”

Lee didn't, but he was too busy anticipating whether Honey would actually show to think much about it. Later, Lee retired to his cabin, passing the hours by trying to concentrate on
Casino Royale
. At the stroke of midnight there came a rapping from out front. Wearing the luxurious, plush white robe he had discovered in the closet, Lee opened the door. Honey, as good as her word,
now wearing a golden wrap that fit her body like a tightly twisted piece of cellophane, entered without a word. The
blonde slipped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him hard.

When Lee awoke the following morning, Honey was gone. With her lipstick she'd left a note on his bathroom mirror:

 

see you later by the pool?

—XXX! Honey

 

Feeling like a million bucks, whistling a happy tune, Lee shaved and shampooed. Somewhere between showering and brushing his teeth, Lee's ultra-logical mind, always sharpest in the early morning hours, returned to a topic that had been forcing its way into his consciousness: This hospital is not owned and operated by the CIA. The grounds here belong to the Mob
!

Ipso facto, if that's the case, then the Combination is in bed with The Company. Which means I'm working not only for the U.S. government but also organized crime.

Jesus H. Christ! This is so freakin' cool ... .

“Every story must have a beginning, a middle, and

an end—though not necessarily in that order.”

—Jean-Luc Godard, 1963

 

Midway through 1959 mobster Johnny Rosselli, aka Johnny Roselli, aka “Handsome Johnny R.,” aka “Johnny Handsome,” aka a half dozen other monikers (born in Esperia, Frosinone province, Italy), then recently returned to the U.S. following the debacle in Cuba, did something he'd never before considered: the 44-year old asthmatic drove to an L.A. art house to catch a French film.

With
subtitles
, no less!

Previously Johnny had always guffawed at the thought of watching anything but a Hollywood picture. He enjoyed the glossy color items 20
th
Century Fox produced with that woman The Boys liked to think of as 'their girl,' Marilyn Monroe. Also the sort of cheesy crime flicks he'd overseen while executive-producing low-budget items on Poverty Row during his brief turn as a co-producer. Rosselli had been the executive who made certain that, despite weak productions values, such B budget (at best) items conveyed the flavor and heat of America's big cities.

Recently, some guy he knew whispered that one of those new European films the intellectual set adored had been dedicated to none other than ... Johnny! ... more or less.

Wait a minute here. Aren't those frogs highbrow types who likely never even heard of me? This, I gotta check out. God knows I never thought I'd drive halfway across town to see somethin' called
A Bout de Souffle
... what does that even mean?

All the same, here he was: seated in a drab, clammy old bijou, one of those places where movies were referred to as cinema. In the lobby they served wine and cappuccino
rather than popcorn and Pepsi. Rosselli watched as the house lights dimmed and the film's American title,
Breathless
, appeared.

*

When 91-year-old Robert Maheu attempted to rise up out of bed on the morning of August 4, 2008 he felt a sudden sharp pain
tearing upward toward his heart and instinctively sensed that in a
second or two he would be dead. Like a proverbial drowning man whose life passes before his eyes, providing just enough time to decide whether or not he can justify his existence, Maheu's mind flashed back to his education at Holy Cross, particularly those Jesuit values that he'd learned there. One stood out vividly:
Though Shalt Not Kill
. How could Dick Tracy resolve that ideal with his own involvement during the early 1960s in Operation 40, the plot to secretly rid the world of Fidel Castro?

Now, as always since that day of his recruitment, Maheu remained loyal to a theory that way back then allowed him to, if against his better judgment, accept an invitation into a complex spider-web of men, motives, and mechanisms geared to achieving a single goal. All the while hoping he'd been right in believing the greater good of America must remain his top priority. Maheu adhered to an attitude he'd learned from Johnny Rosselli, a questionable source at best, while each was operating out of Vegas. All the same, characters like that could sometimes come up with unexpected bits of worldly-wisdom.

Once, while sharing late night drinks in the neon-bathed bar of a Mob-owned casino, Maheu blurted out: “How do you go on living, believing as you say you do in a God, when you have performed acts that make even me, a former FBI agent who has witnessed pretty much all that's out there, cringe?”

Johnny switched positions, flashing a look of lizard-like comprehension. “Here, ‘Dick Tracy,' is your answer. A Sicilian saying goes like this: The thief knows he is not so
bad because he is not a killer; a killer knows he is not so bad because he is not a rapist; a rapist knows he is not so bad because he is not a child molester; the child molester knows ...”

Even as, in 2008, the elderly Maheu began a slow spiral to the floor, he attempted to offer up a combination of prayer and confession to the Catholic God he still worshipped. If Johnny had been right, the mobster's words recalled by Dick Tracy in the split-second he had left to live, no matter how terribly we sin, always there is someone else who has done something far worse. Might I then be admitted to purgatory, if not heaven? Otherwise, Maheu had just begun his long descent down to hell.

*

“It takes a lot to get Ike mad,” Sheffield Edwards, CIA Director of Security, confided to Bob in the former's D.C. office, “but he's mad as hell right now.”

“Understandably so,” Maheu replied. Shef referred to Fidel Castro's ever more hostile statements about the U.S. in Radio Havana broadcasts. Since seizing power a year and three months earlier, Castro had veered far from his initially hopeful stance as a democratic liberator to something more disturbing to the U.S.'s interests: a hardcore communist. As such Castro left himself vulnerable to what U.S. spies had decoded from messages between Havana and Moscow: the Russian premiere Nikita Khrushchev recently proffered overtures to the Cuban leader about setting up nuclear weapons, pointed at the United States, a mere 90 miles away from U.S. shores. In return, Cuba would receive more financial and military aid than ever.

Nothing, at the Cold War's height, could so swiftly spread fear through America's defense community. The existence of U.S. and Russian nuclear sites equally distant from one another had serious implications. But if this were to become a reality, a delicate balance would be diminished in Russia's favor.

“It'll come as no surprise to you that we've had our agents down there attempting to undermine Castro for the better part of a year. It hasn't worked. Now, we must kick it up a notch.”

“And you believe I can be of service?” Maheu asked as he considered the situation on that second day of March, 1960. Though he'd left the FBI in 1947 to open offices as a private consultant and investigator, first in Washington D.C. and, after considerable success, California as well, Dick Tracy was often contacted by the CIA to make key connections owing to his great expertise as an arbitrator between difficult personalities.

“Yesterday, Dick Bissell asked me to come up with someone who might put us in contact with members of the corporation that owns the gambling casinos in Havana.” By that, Maheu knew, Shef meant The Mafia. Even in the intimacy of his own security-savvy office, such a high-ranking government official hesitated to openly admit such a thing. As for Bissell, Maheu knew that any statements from the CIA's Deputy-Director for Plans would have reached Bissell from Allen W. Dulles, current Director of The Company; this only after Eisenhower ordered Dulles, through his higher ranking brother John Foster D., to ‘do something.' “Anyway, I ran through some names of people I've relied on in the past. Yours, Bob, more or less jumped up and out at me.”

That sounded reasonable. Once Maheu won over Howard Hughes, the bizarre megalomaniac of a multi-millionaire as a client, it became necessary to spend a lot of time in Nevada, all Hughes' business interests headquartered there. As one thing leads to another, during off-hours Maheu visited casinos along the Strip, operated by those same “businessmen” in charge of similar properties in Havana, Miami and Tampa.

Castro's rise to power, his backing down on the issue of closing casinos reversed owing to Rosselli's persuasiveness notwithstanding, led to the loss of one hundred million dollars a year from gambling. That didn't take into account lucrative returns from prostitution and drugs. Castro must be considered as intolerable to The Mafia as, if for different reasons, our government. While the old adage about killing two birds with one stone didn't apply, Shef Edwards suggested it might be possible, perhaps even necessary, to kill one bird with two stones.