Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  ROSELLI: Have it your way. I will just keep count.

  HARVEY: They are sloughing me off at a second-level slot, buddy.

  ROSELLI: Sure. I got it. You go around calling people guineas, but you are holding your asshole in your hands like it was a tin cup. You want to rip off Vegas. Watch out—you’ll be a bum. You better do yourself a favor. Learn to talk to Italians before you go over. Don’t try to take away their pride.

  HARVEY: The world is full of bullshit. Did you know? Bullshit, Rosy. Let’s drink.

  Kittredge, the rest of the transcript is non-consequential. I hope you like this. I leave interpretations to you.

  In a rush,

  Harry

  P.S. I confess to some upset at Roselli’s passing reference to Modene. Have you nothing to send on to me about that?

  26

  March 8, 1963

  Harry dear,

  A fine job even if what they were up to comes down to no more than whale-spout. I must say I feared the references to Modene. I knew they would leave you in no happy state but, on the other hand, you are the only one who has listened to both men speak on other occasions.

  I will confess I have been thinking about Modene. Several weeks ago, Hugh handed me a new batch of AURAL—BLUEBEARD transcripts with this comment: “I have the impression these ladies are no longer relevant. However, do take a look.”

  With Hugh, one doesn’t know. He can always be setting a trap. I studied, therefore, close to a hundred pages of chatter between Modene and Willie. Since the calls were made by Modene on a pay phone, count on it, a good deal of conversation consists of no more than listing the annoyances of an outdoor booth. Harry, I will send you the transcripts if you insist, but they won’t differ from my summary. I say you would do better to treat yourself to a drink before reading on.

  Modene has not been in touch with Jack for many months. As you divined from Roselli’s comments, Modene is unhappy. She is drinking heavily. At Sam’s suggestion, she quit working for Eastern and now lives in Chicago. Her expenses are covered by Giancana, and she doesn’t do much else than wait for him to come back to town. She complains constantly of putting on weight, but in the next breath tells Willie that Sam does not speak any longer of marrying her. She looks for Phyllis McGuire’s name in the gossip columns, she fights with Sam. She says to Willie: “How would you like to be Number Two?” “Are you going to leave him?” asks Willie. Modene’s answer: “I don’t know how.” She is pregnant. She and Sam agree she will have an abortion. There are complications. She needs a secondary operation. She believes Sam put the doctors up to botching the job.

  The FBI, in turn, has been harassing Modene. There are days when she will not go down to the corner for a half-pint of cream to put in her coffee since she feels they are in wait for her. Why does she think this? Because her doorbell rang that morning, and she did not answer it. In fact, she does not answer her doorbell for anyone she is not expecting. Even her devoted Willie may be growing tired of Modene. They compare weight-gains. As I suspected, Willie is chubby. Of average height, she is now up to 155. Modene, two inches taller, weighs 145. The conversations suggest that yes, just possibly, Modene is taking up too much of Willie’s time.

  On second thought, I will enclose one transcript of a conversation between Modene and Sam. How Buddha’s acolytes managed to obtain this jewel is, of course, a question. We know how carefully Giancana keeps Modene’s apartment swept of bugs, but let us assume the exterminator had a hangover that morning, or was sufficiently implicated in one criminal matter or another to be obliged to do a job for the Bureau.

  MODENE: Why won’t you take me to San Francisco? I feel like going.

  GIANCANA: You won’t have a good time. It’s business.

  MODENE: You are seeing Phyllis.

  GIANCANA: McGuire is on tour in Europe. She is in Madrid. I’ll show you the clipping.

  MODENE: Yes, you care so much about her that you cut out clippings and keep them in your pocket.

  GIANCANA: I got to. That’s the only way you’ll believe she is where she is.

  MODENE: She is your Number One girl. That’s what she is. Do you know what I am?

  GIANCANA: Don’t get crude.

  MODENE: I am cleaned out. An empty bag.

  GIANCANA: Don’t talk that way.

  MODENE: I am a surgical shell.

  GIANCANA: Will you keep your voice down?

  MODENE: Why don’t you take Number Two to San Francisco now that Number One is away?

  GIANCANA: I can’t, baby.

  MODENE: Because you don’t want to.

  GIANCANA: It is because of your stipulations.

  MODENE: What are you talking about?

  GIANCANA: The night I took you to Denver. You stipulated the kind of room. No suite. Just one room. I can’t spend time in one room. I need space.

  MODENE: Well, I must have it arranged so that there is only one room. I cannot rattle around in a suite. I told you. I hear things in the next room. When we are off on a weekend, you go away for hours. So I want to know that I am safe in one room with a double-bolted door.

  GIANCANA: How can we go anywhere, Modene? You are not in the right kind of shape. What if the FBI jumps us at the airport?

  MODENE: Don’t take me.

  GIANCANA: Just let me get a suite at the St. Francis, and I will take you along.

  MODENE: It has to be a single room.

  GIANCANA: I’ll get a suite for me, and a single for you. When I go out to see people, you can stay in the single. We’ll sleep in the suite.

  MODENE: I will not sleep in a suite. During the night, I hear noises in the other room.

  GIANCANA: Then stay right here and get drunk.

  MODENE: Since you have given me the choice, I prefer to stay here. But I need money for moving expenses.

  GIANCANA: Yeah, what town are you moving to?

  MODENE: I am remaining in Chicago. But I am moving to a studio apartment with a single room. (November 15, 1962)

  Harry, I do not know if you wish to contact Modene, but I have, after some deliberation, enclosed her new address and phone number. It is in the small sealed envelope also enclosed in this manila envelope. I hope you will not call on too small an impulse.

  I do miss you. If only we could find a way to see one another without risking all our inner discipline.

  K.

  27

  ONE EVENING IN A MIAMI BAR, I THOUGHT OF HOW MODENE USED TO putty the underside of her long fingernails and bind them in adhesive tape before she would play tennis. Maybe it was the drink, but tears came to my eyes. I might have called her if the telephone number had been in my wallet rather than in its sealed envelope in my locked office desk.

  I have said nothing of my private life during this period, but then, nothing is much worth recording. I had dates with a few of the more attractive secretaries who worked at JM/WAVE, and the ladies seemed to be looking for a husband while I was certainly not searching for a wife; soon enough, I would go back to drinking with Zenith confreres. When boozing grew too heavy, I would stop for a day or more and write a long letter to Kittredge.

  It was a curious period. The wheels had begun to turn once my father came back from Tokyo, but he was under instructions to reorganize JM/WAVE into a leaner operation. By March we were scaled down—which proved almost as time-consuming as building us up. Transfers wore heavily on my father’s conscience; having been sent out on occasion to regions of the globe that he deemed inappropriate for his skills, he would study the 201 of each officer he was now shifting to an undesirable Station, and would review the file a second time if the man was taking his family along. I thought that was more than gracious until I realized that Cal was protecting himself as well, for he did not wish an undue number of appeals to be recorded against his judgment.

  The Cuban sorties that we sent out through the first months of 1963 were usually chosen with reference to the budget. Any project that had been on the books long enough to run up a sizable expenditure
would receive Cal’s sanction more easily than a new op whose curtailment would be inexpensive. Since this practice usually involved saving Bill Harvey’s projects at the expense of new ones that Cal had conceived, I also perceived this as more than fair until I realized that, once again, my father had his low motive nicely in gear with the good one. “I can’t keep explaining to the Company auditors,” said Cal, “that a money-guzzling op I shut down because it showed no results was commenced on Bill Harvey’s watch and is not my fault. Those auditors never listen. They’re just as lazy as the law allows.” My education was advancing.

  Our largest problem in this period, however, derived from ongoing negotiations between the White House and the Kremlin. Those powers were overseeing the gradual removal of the missiles, and there were hitches. Bobby Kennedy would prod us to throw in a raid from time to time—nothing severe enough to jar the larger transaction, but if Castro wouldn’t honor certain pledges that Khrushchev had made, we, in turn, were not about to forgo attacks on the Cuban coast. It was fine-tuning. The trouble, however, was that the exiles kept tweaking the strings with their own very much unauthorized raids. Alpha 66, Commando 77, Second Front, MIRR, or any one from a number of sleazier outfits (whose names shifted more quickly than we could replace labels on their file jackets) often succeeded in firing a rocket at a Soviet ship or blowing a bridge on some dirt road back of the Cuban shore. That was fine-tuning with a Chinese pitch pipe. The Russians would complain that we were backing such moves, which was exactly what these Miami Cubans wanted the Soviets to believe.

  From the Kennedy point of view, it was not the time for this variety of misunderstanding. Senator Keating of New York, now soaring politically on a Republican thermal, was claiming that the Soviets had filled a number of Cuban caves with unregistered missiles. Helms kept sending memos to Cal to furnish more intelligence. Yet it was not possible to verify the claims. We kept getting reports from our agents in Cuba that Castro was storing tanks, munitions, even airplanes in caves. If the cave’s mouth had a gate and a guardhouse, as indeed it would, any Cuban peasant relaying such observations to an underground group might be all too quick to mistake a large gas tank for a missile. And if they didn’t, the exiles in Miami only passed such news on to Keating after heating up the interpretation.

  It was, yes, a delicate balance, and on March 31 the White House announced that it would take “every step necessary to halt the exile raids.” Such steps soon engaged the Coast Guard, Immigration, FBI, Customs, and JM/WAVE. Government, I now discovered, was an organism with one outstanding property—it did not look back. The FBI went into many an exile camp in southern Florida and came out with bomb casings and truckloads of dynamite. Local Cubans were indicted. Our financial support to Miro Cardona and the Cuban Revolutionary Committee was terminated, and Cal’s raids were closed down completely by the National Security Council. “Politics is weather,” was Cal’s reaction. “We’ll just wait it out.” He passed an advisory across his desk to me. “Next time you’re down in Florida, worry about this first. Came to me from a gentleman named Sapp. Charlie Sapp. Chief of Police Intelligence in Miami. Considering the nature of his work, Sapp is a singular family name, wouldn’t you say?”

  We laughed, but the advisory was still on the desk. It read: Violence hitherto directed at Castro’s Cuba may now be turned toward governmental agencies in the United States.

  “I called Mr. Sapp,” said Cal. “He kept talking about anti-Castro extremists. Inflamed tempers. Wild coyotes. Says a new lunatic fringe has been forming ever since we missed going to war in October. Right now this handbill is being stuffed into letter boxes in Little Havana, Coral Gables, and Coconut Grove. I took the wording down right over the phone.” Cal read aloud: “Cuban patriots—face into the truth. Only one development will make it possible for Cuban patriots to return to their homeland in triumph. That is an inspired act of God. Such an act would place a Texan into the White House who is a friend to all Latin Americans.”

  “Who does it purport to be from?” I asked.

  “No name. It is signed: ‘A Texan who resents the Oriental influence that has come to control, to degrade, to pollute, and enslave his own people.’ The rhetoric does suggest John Birch Society.”

  “Yes,” I said, “all we poor enslaved American people.”

  “Well, you don’t need to get college-boy about it,” said Cal. “It doesn’t solve anything to feel superior to the John Birch Society.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I had never presumed to speak like this to him. I had forgotten the heat of his temper. An oven door might just as well have opened across the desk.

  “All right,” I said, “I apologize.”

  “Accepted.” He caught it in midflight like a hound wolfing a chunk of meat.

  But I was not without my own anger. “Do you really believe we are enslaved?”

  He cleared his throat. “We are polluted.”

  “By whom?”

  “That is a complex question, isn’t it? But ask yourself whether the Kennedys have a sense of a priori value.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  He was still breathing heavily. “At St. Matt’s, my father used to tell us that a man without a priori values soon gets into a pact with the Devil.”

  “I take it that you believe this.”

  “Of course I do. Don’t you?”

  “I would say by half.”

  “That is a damned unsatisfactory remark,” said Cal. “Half devout. Why are you in the Agency?”

  He was going too far. “I like the work,” I told him.

  “Your reply is insufficient. Don’t you recognize that in Castro we are dealing with Communism in its most macho form? He appeals right across the board to the three-quarters of the world that is dirt poor. A wholly dangerous man.”

  I did not answer. I was thinking that only half of Fidel might meet my father’s prescription. The other half could yet prove congenial to the half of Kennedy that was, I suspected, inclined to have a dialogue with Fidel Castro. But then, I was another half-man, ready to live with the bearded one and equally ready to abet his instant elimination. No, I could not answer my father.

  “Would it surprise you to know,” said Cal, “that our dear friend Hugh Montague could have written that John Birch letter?”

  “No,” I said, “not ever. The style would repel him.”

  “All the same,” said Cal, “he does feel that some form of Satanic embodiment is degrading, polluting, and, yes—I’ll say it—enslaving the yeoman virtues and values that this country used to possess.”

  “Does Hugh hate Kennedy that much?”

  “He might.”

  “It is not the impression I get from Kittredge.”

  “Kittredge may have a good deal to learn about Hugh.”

  “Yessir.”

  He was done with the conversation. The light went out of his eyes and his strong features looked as implacable as they must have appeared in those ruthless college days when he was on the way to making Second All-American. “Watch yourself in Florida,” he said.

  Miami proved quiet over the next couple of weeks, but there was an undeniable sullenness of spirit on Calle Ocho; when we drank at our watering holes, there were jokes about satchel-charges coming through the window. Our situation reminded me of hot summer afternoons in adolescence when the air did not move for hours, and I was certain something would happen that night, even if it never did.

  April 10, 1963

  Dear Harry,

  I am beginning to suspect that Jack Kennedy has such an active Alpha (and equally lively Omega) that he is not only inclined to explore in two opposed directions at once, but prefers to. And, do you know, I suspect the same is true for Castro. I have picked up some special stuff on the man by way of an Agency debriefing of James Donovan, who just returned from Havana after a new set of negotiations.

  Donovan’s mission was to obtain the release of a considerable number of Americans who are at
present in Cuban prisons. When Bobby asked Donovan to take this on, he said, “Jesus Christ, I’ve done the loaves and the fishes. Now you want me to walk on water.”

  I think it is precisely this Irish humor that enables Donovan to get along with Castro. Of course, it was a return trip and they were old hands by now at dealing with each other; Castro even took Donovan and his assistant, Nolan, to the Bay of Pigs where lunch was served on a launch, and they devoted a good part of the day to skin-diving and fishing. All the while, they were guarded—I do enjoy this—by a Russian PT boat.

  Here is the part of their conversation which I think you will find interesting. Hugh certainly did.

  “Last November,” said Donovan, “when I ran for Governor of New York State, I got licked. I’m beginning to think I’m more popular down here.”

  “Truth, you are very popular here,” said Castro.

  “Why don’t you,” asked Donovan, “have some free elections? Then, I could run against you. I might get elected.”

  “That,” said Castro, “is exactly why we do not have free elections.”

  From there, they moved toward the edges of some serious political talk. It seems Bobby is trying to get the State Department to lift travel restrictions on trips to Cuba—trying, I say, because Jack has left that matter to be contended over by State and the Attorney General’s office—which does annoy Bobby. “It’s preposterous,” he said, “to prosecute American students because they want to take a look at the Castro revolution. What’s wrong with that? If I were twenty-two years old, that is the place I would want to visit.” Or that, at least, is what Donovan passed on to Castro.

  On hearing those sentiments, Fidel seemed interested. “Can that have any bearing on the future of American policy?” he asked.

  “Well,” said Donovan, “things might be getting a little more open. We did clamp down on the exile groups. From your point of view, you might call that a positive step. Now, it might be your turn. If you release your American prisoners you will remove one hell of a stumbling block.”