“Why,” I asked, “are you going to L.A.?”
“Because,” she said, “Jack invited me. I arranged to get the time off from work.”
I went back to Zenith again. PRECEPTOR, when queried, came in with a five-page printout on SINATRA, FRANK. Under friends and acquaintances, was a considerable list with but one Jack, Jack Entratter, Sands Hotel, and the note: might be member of The Clan. After this, came an entry: for The Clan, see WINNOW.
I did not have to go on to VILLAINS. There in WINNOW, under The Clan, were: Joey Bishop, Sammy Cahn, Sy Devore, Eddie Fisher, Sen. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Pat Lawford, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Mike Romanoff, Elizabeth Taylor, Jimmy Van Heusen.
I sent an unsigned telegram to Harlot in Georgetown. SINCE OUR FRIENDS TURN OUT TO BE JUAN FIESTA KILLARNEY AND SONNY GARGANTUA ISN’T IT TIME TO DELIVER YOUR GOODS TO THE FIELD?
I did not believe that Jack from Palm Beach could possibly be equal to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, ready in Los Angeles to be nominated for President at the Democratic Convention, and yet Ockham’s Razor was always there to remind me that the simplest explanation ready to explain all the facts was bound to be the correct explanation. I did not have too many facts, but all the ones in hand fit Jack Kennedy. I had no difficulty in sleeping, for I did not try. Harlot called the motel at six in the morning and the proprietor, blind in one eye, did not look much better in the other when I answered the knock on the door that summoned me to the motel office phone.
“Try not sending open telegrams,” was how Harlot began. “Success has left you manic.”
He was not slow to the point. I was to come to Washington immediately.
10
TWO CUBAN EXILES, REPORTING TO ME ON THE UNDECLARED ACTIVITIES OF their political groups, had to be serviced this same day in morning and afternoon appointments at two safe houses twenty miles apart. Not able to reach the second agent in advance, I could only tell Harlot that he would have to wait for my late afternoon departure. On arrival, I took a cab from National Airport to his house in Georgetown, and in the antique dining room we ate hamburgers and defrosted french fries, a detail I recall because he put them in the pan himself. It was the cook’s night off and Harlot commented that as a boy in Colorado he had rarely eaten anything else for supper, which was one of the very few items about his childhood he ever imparted to me.
“Whom did you eat with?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I ate alone.”
He got up from the table, led me to his office, opened a double-width attaché case to show a three-inch stack of files, then locked the case and handed me the key. “This is all yours for now,” he said, “and you are to keep these papers in your safe at Zenith.”
“Yessir.”
“I don’t want you leaving any of this out on your desk during the day, nor keeping one scrap of paper in your motel.” In the course of our low-amenities dinner, he had inquired about security arrangements at Zenith and the shape of my living conditions at the Royal Palms.
“Well,” he said now, “how would you characterize the situation?”
“Incredible.”
“Kennedy’s role is clear enough to me. If elected, he will be our first priapic President since Grover Cleveland. But just what is going on with the other one, Gargantua, as you thought to put it in that circus telegram?”
“I was heedless.”
“You were intoxicated with yourself. In our work, that’s equal to catching typhus.”
“Who could comprehend my meaning but you?” I asked.
“J. Edgar Buddha, for one. You simply don’t have the expertise to send open telegrams.”
“Yessir.”
“Go in for one more gaffe of this dimension, and you won’t work for me again.”
“Yessir.”
He cleared his throat as if to declare a new venue. “Now for the hygiene. The project will be referred to as HEEDLESS. Giancana will be called RAPUNZEL. Kennedy—IOTA. Let Sinatra be STONEHENGE. The girl ought to have a man’s name. How about BLUEBEARD?”
I nodded; unhappily, I nodded.
“Her old high school friend, Wilma Raye, with whom—you will discover—she talks all the time, can be AURAL. With an A-U, not an O—A-U-R-A-L.”
“Yessir.”
“I haven’t had the time to go through four bloody inches of transcript. I’ve merely skimmed the stuff. You are to digest all the provenance in this attaché case and summarize it for me. Leave out nothing essential. It’s FBI product, but the transcription, while electronically refined, is still garbled. Par for the Bureau. So clean it up for me. I want the essentials. When transcriptions are too diffuse, summarize the take. Extract from the mess some purchase on the comings and goings of this enterprising Bluebeard.”
He looked at me carefully. “Will you be able to bed the wench?”
“Fifty-fifty.” The answer popped out of me. “I have to wonder if I’m qualified.”
“I’m sure that’s what all the Soviet joy-boys say before the KGB sends them out. I say: Become her confidant. Of course, you must try not to leave your voice on FBI tapes. Take her to a different hotel room each time.”
“That’s expensive.”
He looked gloomy indeed.
“Will you authorize me to use safe houses?” I asked. “I can think of several in Miami that are not bad.”
“Oh, Lord, we’re stepping on the Torah now, aren’t we?” He pondered the possible hazards. “Let’s commence with hotel rooms,” he said. “If expenses get out of hand, we’ll reconsider the safe-house option.”
“Yessir.” I paused. “Assuming I reach the exalted place, we do have to look at other difficulties.”
“Trot them forth.”
“What with the FBI tapping her phone at the Fontainebleau, they are bound to hear her mention Harry Field sooner or later when she talks to friends. She may even suspect that Field is an Agency man. That’s no wild supposition in Miami. The FBI could get a fix on me.”
He nodded. “Is there any way to get the girl not to talk about you?”
“Perhaps I can convince her that RAPUNZEL will break my legs if she doesn’t protect me.”
“Well, that might stanch the drear and open wound of verbosity.” He winked. “Do you know, if not for my duties to the Agency, I might have been just as talkative as she is.”
“You?” I said. “Like her?”
“In our work, the impulse to divulge a secret is comparable to strong sexual desire in priests.” He clapped me on the back with considerable amusement, as if once again I could have no idea whether he was winching away on my leg. “Old sport,” he said, “there’s a midnight plane to Miami. Let’s get you back.”
He drove me to the airport, a rare courtesy from Harlot. On the way, I picked up nerve sufficiently to ask about Kittredge and Christopher.
“I see them once a month,” he said slowly, as if weighing his trust in me. “We have fond reunions in Maine. But, yes, Harry, it is lonely. Of course, it has to be. She is working on a book.”
“Is it going well?”
“The portion Kittredge showed me is remarkable, in my opinion. Wonderful on narcissism. She has a new theory I’ve not come across before, and Alpha and Omega work out very well in it. Narcissists, by her measure, are people whose most powerful human relations all take place within themselves. It’s brilliant, and I hope others see it so. She needs the recognition, does our girl.” He stared straight ahead, his hands on the wheel. “Kittredge is also a remarkably good mother to Christopher. The little boy is splendid. I miss him in ways I can’t even begin to describe to myself.”
We pulled up to the airline entrance and he shook my hand. “Let’s have some fun with this. Our work is cruel until we learn how much fun can be found in it.”
I slept on the plane. I was tired enough to sleep again when I reached Miami, but I went off first to my office, put the contents of the attaché case in my safe, and then caught another couple of hours on top of my desk which, as a bed, was one fo
ot, unhappily, too short. I dreamt that RAPUNZEL had fifty thousand trolls tying my legs with spider’s thread.
11
HARLOT AND I WERE COMMUNICATING WITHIN THE CONTINENTAL UNITED States, and so I could send long cables into a special code box at GHOUL with as much confidence as if I were employing a secure phone. One’s working life, in consequence, was not overly beset with security procedures. My emotional life, however, took one fell whack. How could I wish to refer to Modene as BLUEBEARD? Harlot’s insistence on these ugly-headed cryptonyms struck me as punishment for the open telegram. Of course, Hugh’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side had been a mule skinner whose animals were legendary for being able to start up on a steep hill under a heavy load: Mean genes doubtless persevered best—employing Harlot’s cryptonyms made me feel like one of those mules. It was not all that easy to delve into Modene’s past relations with Sinatra, Kennedy, and Giancana, but I also had to suffer from the transmogrification of her name to BLUEBEARD. That was, yes, a whack on my emotional life. A woman out of my measure—how could I judge whether she was a palace cat or an over-passionate angel?—was now to be charted like a migratory bird with a research number banded to her leg. All good and great jobs sooner or later prove cruel, I kept telling myself.
SERIAL: J/38,741,651
ROUTING: LINE/GHOUL—SPECIAL SHUNT
TO: GHOUL-A
FROM: FIELD
10:00 A.M. JULY 10, 1960
SUBJECT: HEEDLESS
Since security in these communications is not at issue, and the real names are employed in the FBI transcripts, I wonder if we can dispense with the cryptonyms? BLUEBEARD et al., is seriously off-putting.
Await your immediate instructions.
FIELD
They came in an hour, and on low-privilege circuit, a way of reminding me that SPECIAL SHUNT was at Harlot’s terminal, and I did not have the means to decipher a special code. He also signed it GAINSBOROUGH, a substitute for GHOUL. Any word beginning with a G that also contained at least two of the four remaining letters, H, O, U, and L could suffice. (GUINEVERE, for instance, would not do—it had only a U to go with the G, but GASHOUSE, with H, O, and U, certainly would.)
SERIAL: J/38,742,308
ROUTING: LINE/ZENITH—OPEN
TO: ROBERT CHARLES
FROM: GAINSBOROUGH
SUBJECT: SECURE PHONE
Call me immediately.
11:03 A.M. JULY 10, 1960
GAINSBOROUGH
It took an hour to get through. “I’m inclined to indulge you,” Harlot began. “It does, however, set a dreadful precedent. Real names, you see, distort our judgment. Especially for big game. Sediment has already collected, you see, in our evaluation from old newspaper stories. Whereas an ill-fitting cryptonym can stimulate insights. Wrenches one’s mind-set out of context.”
“Yessir.” I felt as if I were back in a Low Thursday. Sitting in the airless plywood booth that housed our secure phone, a first drop of perspiration made its virgin run down my back.
“I can see your side of it, however,” he went on. “This is out of the ordinary course of things. The prime question is whether the material is ultrasensitive or farcical. So, write your report with cryptonyms, or without. Shift back and forth when the impulse takes you. We do want to find out who is doing what to whom, don’t we?”
“I appreciate your flexibility,” I said.
“Good. Now, you be equally open.”
“Yessir.”
He hesitated, as if looking for some way to offer a verb its cryptonym. “Would you say, Harry, that the girl might prove out choice in the hay?”
I took my time to answer. “Hugh,” I said at last, “on the basis of the evidence so far, I would expect the hay to be a most positive factor in her relations.”
“Good fellow. Go to work,” he said, and hung up.
SERIAL: J/38,749,448
ROUTING: LINE/GHOUL—SPECIAL SHUNT
TO: GHOUL-A
FROM: FIELD
SUBJECT: HEEDLESS
8:47 P.M. JULY 10, 1960
The key question is BLUEBEARD’s veracity. She seems artless. She speaks easily of matters others might keep secret. Yet one soon discovers that she is not without gifts for mendacity. For example, my first understanding of her personal situation was that her personal life had been maintained in two halves, each complete, one with a man in Palm Beach she would not name (IOTA) and the other with an airline executive called Walter.
This considerable misperception, provided by her, lasted until I learned through her telephone conversations early this year on Jan. 3 and Jan. 5, 1960, with AURAL that Walter had been asked to walk the plank shortly after STONEHENGE entered BLUEBEARD’s life. While BLUEBEARD certainly enjoyed the perks Walter’s executive position brought to her flight job, STONEHENGE must have made it clear that with his wide range of contacts, a felicitous work schedule could be continued mit or mitout her married boyfriend. Exit Walter. If this sounds cold-blooded, I expect it is.
BLUEBEARD’s continuing relationship with Walter was, however, maintained with me as a fiction. Perhaps it has workaday use for such everyday suitors as FIELD. The only firm conclusion, however, is that she can lie with authority.
Now, to our chronology. I am going to speak of the period from December 10, 1959, to January 10, 1960, as High Stonehenge. Modene met Sinatra while working the flight from Washington to Miami on December 10 and, given her ability to attract attention, we can take it as in the course of things that Sinatra would invite her to be his guest for the following weekend in Las Vegas.
In her numerous phone calls to AURAL during this period, she provides a portrait of the STONEHENGE milieu. Sinatra had reserved a suite for her at the Sands Hotel, and when she demurred at the cost, making the point that she could not afford it herself, nor equally could she permit his generosity, he laughed and said, “Honey, you’re with me. The hotel will eat the tab.”
Las Vegas, December 17–19, 1959. Sinatra keeps a large bungalow at the Sands in an enclave of other similar bungalows reserved for the Clan, and has been known to spend day and night drinking on the patio adjoining the pool that is used exclusively by himself and the Clan. (Present membership is Joey Bishop, Sammy Cahn, Sammy Davis, Jr., Eddie Fisher, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin.) As Modene describes it to Willie Raye (AURAL), the Clan impresses her as well named.
During the transcript of a telephone conversation with Willie, Modene says, “That first day around the pool was as awful as the first day in a new school. They talk in a special code. Somebody says ‘Ring-a-ding,’ and everybody starts to laugh. That is, everybody knew when to laugh but me.”
From: Transcript Dec. 21, 1959:
WILLIE: I’d have packed my bags and left.
MODENE: I nearly did. If not for Frank, I would have.
WILLIE: Did he save the day?
MODENE: Well, not at first. I have to tell you. It was a shock seeing him in Vegas. He was all gotten out in his favorite colors. Orange and black. He has no taste whatsoever. He keeps bird-of-paradise flowers in his suite. In case you don’t know, they’re orange and black.
WILLIE: It couldn’t have been that bad.
MODENE: Well, it wasn’t. But only because they kept playing his songs around the pool.
WILLIE: Did it work?
MODENE: Well, we did get together.
At this point of working on my report to Harlot, somewhere after ten o’clock of an air-conditioned evening in the recirculated nicotine air of empty Zenith offices, I confess that I stopped typing for a moment and ground my teeth just once. If these details were likely to prove as fascinating to Hugh Montague as the first accounts of life on Uranus, I was denigrating some elusive filament of feeling in myself. This girl-woman, vain as a male lion and able to travel in the company of royal gorillas and a bona fide presidential candidate, had nonetheless responded in some degree to me. I was ready to believe that if we ever went to bed, we might each find a way out of the labyrinths of the past. Wasn’
t every improbable love affair a jailbreak? I sat with my fingers poised over my typewriter and wondered if this factual rundown of the behavior of Modene would injure something in the nature of the escape.
From: Transcript Dec. 21, 1959 (cont’d.):
WILLIE: Is Frank as good as they say?
MODENE: He might be.
WILLIE: He doesn’t look that well built.
MODENE: Frank doesn’t have to be.
WILLIE: I guess he knows how to get a mood going?
MODENE: He’s considerate. He knows the importance of details. Under his shell is a gentle and sensual man. He doesn’t even ask for something back. He’s the active one.
WILLIE: Who would ever believe it?
MODENE: Unselfish.
WILLIE: You’re describing a paragon.
Ten days later, Modene spends the New Year’s weekend at Sinatra’s house in Palm Springs. Similar conversations ensue with Willie—“I love him when he makes love. He is so full of finesse.” During the day, while Modene sits in the living room, Frank rehearses new songs with a pianist. Sinatra will walk around the room, repeat a few bars, and squeeze her arm or shoulder whenever he passes. Hours go by. “Frank,” Modene explains to Willie, “is on stage so much, that he loves to stay home when he’s not. It’s restful.”
WILLIE: It sounds like bliss.
MODENE: I love Palm Springs.
WILLIE: How is his house furnished?
MODENE: Oriental in motif.
WILLIE: That little Italian guy must think he’s the Devil.
MODENE: He knows how to get power. ( Jan. 4, 1960)
When they meet again, however, in Palm Springs on January 17, an episode occurs. Excerpt from transcript of January 20:
MODENE: It’s over.
WILLIE: You aren’t serious?
MODENE: I will never allow myself to be that positive about a man again.
WILLIE: What happened?
MODENE: He destroyed it.
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