by Mel McKinney
Three days into his son-in-law’s Polynesian honeymoon, Gessleman discovered a congressional seat in South Florida that would be ripe in three years. He summoned the newlyweds back to Shady Knoll to tell them they were about to become Florida residents. They offered no opposition, nor had Gessleman expected any.
Cornelius orchestrated the campaign leading to Wesley’s election in 1960. Since then, however, with his meager congressional influence tied to wastebasket committees, Wesley had been a gross disappointment. Until now.
In a voice husked by sixty years of cheroots and strong Cuban cigars, Cornelius turned back and addressed his son-in-law, seated across the massive desk from him.
“You say there’s no way they can trace them to us, and we’re guaranteed ending up with the bastard’s thousand Cubans? How can you be so positive?”
Wesley Cameron smiled. “Cornelius.” Then, correcting himself, “Dad.” Gessleman winced.
Wesley continued. “You’ve seen the man’s restaurant and know the quality of his cigars. He runs a good business. Everything about that place is class—style and class. That’s what draws people like us, like you, as customers. Noches Cubanas is his signature. It shows he’s a professional. He has too much to lose to go off half-cocked. For him, stealing the cigars is a payback. Just like for you. Only you get the extra pleasure of smoking them.”
Gessleman tilted back in his chair, the glint of anticipation dancing in his eyes. “Okay, I’m convinced. You have warmed this old man’s heart. You need twenty thousand dollars, right?”
Cameron nodded. Mimicking his father-in-law’s posture, he leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. A good day’s work. Gessleman’s favor, finally, and a heritage of premium Cuban cigars, either for smoking or investment. In just a month, the price of pre—Castro Cubans had tripled. In years to come, who could say? The sky was the limit. He watched his father-in-law pull out a cigar box and begin counting bills.
“Goddamn! This makes me feel good.” Gessleman snorted. “That embargo’s made criminals out of all of us anyway. Might as well do it in style. Last week, coming home from London with cigars stuffed in my stockings, I felt like some sleazy crook.”
With that, he tapped the bundle together, wrapped it in a rubber band, inserted it in an envelope, and presented it to his son-in-law with a flourish. Cameron stood, preparing to leave.
“Oh, Wesley,” Gessleman said, hunched over, scribbling something on a blank sheet of paper. “Before you leave, sign this receipt, would you?”
THREE
Barnstable County, Cape Cod, Massachusetts November 26, 1963
HIRAM THORPE WOKE with a start, wondering what that godawful smell was. Then he opened his eyes to the tented page of newspaper covering his face. Ink. Funny. Didn’t smell it earlier, he thought. But it had not been the ink that had summoned him from the fight with the striped bass; it was the damned phone. No matter; the dream always ended the same. He had never seen the bass, just felt its surging run into the surf’s foam before its inevitable disappearance.
“Constable Thorpe, here.”
“Hiram, Oscar Fenton. Think you’d better shag your butt over here. Found somethin’ kind of interesting a little while ago.”
Hiram swung his feet off the desk and stood. Then, his wits recharged, he remembered that Fenton was the maintenance man, not part of the security team. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, the funeral had pulled all the Kennedy security people, including the Secret Service group, away to Boston, New York City, and D.C.
“Y’ don’t say. What is it?”
“Well, might be somethin’, might not. Hard to tell. Didn’t want to disturb the Family or the big shots ’til you saw it. To me, looks like a door to the cellar of the place was jimmied. Thought you should take a look.”
Oh, great, thought Hiram, reaching for his fur-collared constable jacket, his mackinaw of officialdom. Just what we need up here, someone breaking into the place while the Family is away burying the man.
“Okay, Oscar. I’ll be out directly.”
Hiram hung up, then raised the microphone from the radio console. “Luther?”
“Yep.”
Now, that’s a surprise, thought Hiram, already conjuring up the number for the Maple Leaf Café.
“Uh, Luther, I’m going to drive on over to the Kennedy place. Take a look around for a few minutes. How about stayin’ in service ’case I need you.”
“Sure thing, Chief. Somethin’ up?”
“Naw, it’s probably nothing. Old Oscar’s got a door with some scratches on it. Raccoon, most likely. I’ll be in touch. Out.”
Hiram eased into the patrol car and scrunched against the corrugated seat-pad backrest as its webbed plastic memory absorbed his 230 pounds in crackling protest. He slid a five pack of Swisher Sweets from his coat pocket and wet one thoroughly, collecting the sweet saliva into a spit, which he sent through the window in a perfect arc. He fired the candied cigar with the Zippo the army had issued him in 1943 and said out loud, “Okay, time to go to work.”
“Well, Oscar, place has been broken into, all right. Doesn’t take a genius to see that.”
The two men stood above the storm entry that led to a remote part of the cellar. The splintered remains of one of the slanted doors hung crazily, shards of weathered wood dangling in mute protest to the injustice of such ignoble destruction after surviving two centuries of New England storms.
“Question is, who, when, and why. Anything missing?”
The maintenance man scratched his chin, eyeing Hiram’s half-smoked cigar.
“Don’t know. Nothin’ much down there. Fact is, this part of the place ain’t on the alarm system. It don’t kick in ’til you get to the door at the end of that corridor.” Oscar gestured with his head, indicating the rock-lined passage that disappeared under the building from the compromised opening.
“Well, let’s take a look-see,” Hiram said, lifting the remaining good door. He started down the rock stairway.
A bare bulb gave sparse light to the arched colonial passageway. Hiram unclipped the flashlight from his belt and played its beam along the uneven walls ahead.
Coming to an opening carved into the side, he explored the space with his light. Then he saw a cord dangling from a fixture overhead and pulled it, flooding the alcove with illumination. Before him stood two massive wooden doors made to look like the entry to a medieval dungeon. Their only link to the twentieth century was the heavy hasp and large, brass, Yale lock.
“What’s in there?” he asked.
“Wine cellar,” Oscar responded. “Old Joe keeps his wines there. Oh, yeah, almost forgot. Young Jack had a place built in there for cigars. Supposed to be a bunch of ’em. Ain’t never been in there myself. Me and the missus never made the dinner list. Just as well. My wedding suit probably don’t fit no more.” Oscar chuckled, pleased with himself.
Hiram tried the lock. It was intact and showed no damage.
After poking around for half an hour, Hiram concluded he had no conclusions. Just a busted storm door and no sign of theft.
“Well, Oscar, I guess that’s it. I’ll write up a report and see that the security folks get a copy. Can’t see that there’s anything I can do. Suppose I’ll hear about it if anything turns up missing. You did good to call. Do it again if there’s anything else.”
Hiram extracted another Swisher from his coat, mouthed it, and slid into the cruiser. Time for dinner.
“Somethin’ else, Oscar?” he asked around the cigar, noting the maintenance man’s intent expression.
“Got ’ny more of those?” Oscar asked.
FOUR
“WELL, SO MUCH for Camelot,” said Cornelius Gessleman. He tipped the last of the bourbon from his glass and stood. “Let’s join the others,” he instructed his son-in-law. Wesley Cameron tossed back the rest of his drink and followed Gessleman toward the massive living room.
Halfway down the hall Gessleman stopped in front of a brass easel bearing a large portrai
t draped in black bunting. Gessleman paused and studied John F. Kennedy’s face.
“God, what a Thanksgiving,” he muttered. “Instead of a feast, we mourn the death of a president.”
Gessleman turned from the painting and faced his son-in-law. “Wesley, if some demented nut can strike down the president of the United States from a book storehouse, no one of us in public life is safe. Besides, even though he was a Democrat, he was our Democrat, know what I mean?”
The congressman nodded. Gessleman continued.
“Jack Kennedy’s father was one of us. He had guts and he had balls. That’s how he built his fortune. The Kennedys were Democrats because old Joe Kennedy was a political opportunist, nothing else. I could live with that. Things that mattered stayed the same. Now we’re going to see all those eastern liberals come crawling out of their libraries again, you wait and see. Kennedy knew how to control ’em. Johnson doesn’t.”
Gessleman resumed his slow walk down the hall, passing the long, manor windows, also draped in black bunting. Outside, the flag in the center of the oval driveway hung miserably at half-mast, limp in the still, humid air.
“You know,” Gessleman said over his shoulder, “I could even forgive him snatching all those Cuban cigars the night before he tightened that goddamned embargo. Hell, in his shoes, it’s exactly what I would have done.”
This was the first mention between them of the cigars since the fiasco of November 15 had come and gone. When they had not heard from the Cuban, they’d chalked the whole preposterous scheme up to an expatriate’s fanatical dream. Humiliated, Cameron had returned the money to his scowling father-in-law. Two weeks later the subject had been buried with the president, an embarrassing lapse in judgment, best forgotten.
As the Gessleman family gathered in the ornate living room for somber reflection and prayer, Gessleman’s subsidized Baptist preacher took his place before them. Cornelius noted with satisfaction that the two members of the press he had invited were present. He nodded to the preacher, who cleared his throat.
Somewhere in the muted distance a phone rang and was quickly answered. A minute later Wesley Cameron felt a discreet tap on his shoulder.
“Telephone, sir.”
“Who is it, Theodore?”
“I do not know, sir.” The liveried houseman paused as a brief flash of distaste flared his nose. “He said he was your ‘amigo.’”
The congressman shook his head. What could he want? Surely he would not be calling about his restaurant’s labor problems at a time like this. Uneasy, Cameron stood and followed the houseman out of the room.
“Yes?”
“Amigo! How are you?”
The jubilance in the man’s voice unnerved Cameron.
“What do you mean, ‘How am I?’ How do you think I am? The president has been shot. I’m devastated, like all good Americans. Why are you calling anyway? Whatever it is can wait.”
“No, amigo. Some things do not wait. Some things cause things that cause even other things. No, some things do not wait. They happen because they must.”
Cameron started to hang up. The man was not making sense. Maybe he was drunk. There had to be many drunk Americans that black day. Why not an expatriate Cuban?
But there was something else in the man’s voice, a clarity. Whatever he was, he was not drunk. Cameron slowly raised the receiver back to his ear.
“So, amigo,” the man continued, “he decreed a trade embargo that is strangling my country, that is starving my people and causing children to go without medicines and die. His grip around the throat of my country also choked off all those good cigars. He took from us those moments of each day that sustain us through all the others, the glow of a love that never disappoints or leaves us empty. But not for him. No, he sent his toad into the field to harvest for himself and his friends a treasury of the finest. One thousand of them, amigo! One thousand! This he did the night before he told the world of his crime. And now, amigo, they are yours.”
Wesley Cameron cringed.
“You can’t be serious. Are you telling me you went ahead and stole the man’s cigars after that maniac shot him? Is this a joke, a very bad joke?”
“Oh, amigo, this is no joke. And there were no ‘maniacs,’ as you say. Oh no, not at all. Remember, I told you it would be like a magic trick? Well, while everyone has been watching the right hand in Dallas and in D.C., the left hand slipped away with the bunny. Only the right hand got caught. But, he knew the risks, and we took care of that. You saw it on TV, no? Mr. Ruby did his job nicely. I told you, we are professionals. Don’t you worry. The operation was just a little messier than it had to be. Stupid Oswald. Had to go sit in a movie. If he had followed the plan, he would have been safely out of the country. Trust me. We are professionals.
“Now it is time to talk of payment and delivery of the cigars to you. Because there were these complications …”
“My God … ,” the congressman began, then fainted dead away.
FIVE
“AMIGO?” SILENCE. THEN some kind of rustling. Then a distant voice, a call. “We need help in here! In the kitchen. Mr. Cameron has collapsed!”
“Amigo, you still there?” More silence. Then footsteps, close together, someone running, more than one.
Raul Salazar willed his pounding heart to quiet. He could not afford to miss a word. Madre de Dios! A fitting end to the roller-coaster ride of the past three weeks. The next few moments could lower the curtain on a play that had started almost ten years earlier, a play that had trapped him on a stage he could not afford to leave until Cornelius Gessleman’s greed for Cuban cigars had come along.
He tried to picture the scene on the other end of the line: the gaunt congressman slumped on the floor; the family retainers gathered around, clucking helplessly; the old man swooping in, commanding, dominating. But, who knew? Maybe not.
He tried again, softly.
“Amigo?”
“WHO THE HELL IS THIS?”
The unmistakable bellow of Cornelius Gessleman ripped across three states in milliseconds. Raul winced and jerked the receiver from his ear. Cautiously, he brought it close again.
“Ahhh, Señor Gessleman. I was just telling your son-in-law the good news. Is he still there?”
“Good news? Who is this? What in hell are you talking about?”
Raul drew a deep breath. This was it: El momento de la verdad; Hemingway’s frozen instant when the matador brought all things together as he plunged the estoque just over the bull’s horn and shoved the slim killing sword home in quest of the instant kill.
“Señor Gessleman, this is Raul Salazar. The restaurant in Miami? You remember? Noches Cubanas? Where you and the congressman like to eat and smoke my fine cigars?”
More silence. Then Gessleman, in the distance: “Is he conscious? Look at his eyes. Did he hit his head when he fell? My God! Look at him. He’s white as a sheet!”
Then, booming through the receiver, “Salazar? Yes, yes, I remember you. What do you want? My son-in-law has passed out. We have a situation here. Is this important? Can’t it wait?”
Willing himself to sound formidable, yet sympathetic, Raul replied, “Well, Señor Gessleman, some of it can wait and some of it cannot. We have the cigars. I need to discuss delivery arrangements with you. Delivery can perhaps be postponed to suit your convenience, considering the circumstances. But payment, I am afraid, cannot wait.
“There were complications. I was telling this to Señor Cameron. Expensive complications. I will leave these matters for Señor Cameron to explain to you when he is able. It is best we do not discuss it further on the telephone. You will understand after you speak with Señor Cameron. I will expect you and Congressman Cameron as my guests at Noches Cubanas tomorrow evening at six. We will have a smoke together, no? Buenas tardes.”
Raul hung up, exhausted, but pleased. The estoque had struck true. Of that, he was certain.
“Clear out of here! All of you—NOW!”
For an eighty-six-
year-old, Cornelius Gessleman possessed an amazing bark, in spite of the clouds of cigar smoke that had bathed his throat. He quickly scanned the shocked expressions circling the large kitchen.
The Baptist preacher shuffled uncomfortably at the entrance; Gessleman’s fifty-one-year-old-wife, Maven, cowered behind the preacher; Margaret clutched her mother’s arm, staring at her downed husband, his head nodding in semiconsciousness. The houseman and several staff who had sped to the kitchen clustered in a corner near the exit through the walk-in pantry.
“Go on—you heard me!” Gessleman shouted, dismissing everyone with an angry wave of his arms. “Wesley just can’t handle politics sometimes. Now get out! I’ll deal with this.”
Satisfied they were alone, Gessleman stood and snatched an empty pot from the center island. He shoved it into one of the sinks, turned on the cold water full stream, and filled it. He dumped the water in an unceremonious gush over his struggling son-in-law, then called out. “Theodore! Come back here and help me get him into my study.”
Cornelius Gessleman was discovering something about himself he had always suspected but never admitted. He was capable of killing someone, slowly, with his bare hands. In fact, as he stared across the desk at his quaking son-in-law, he felt fifty years younger and bristled with the physical compulsion to do just that.
“You pathetic, quivering moron,” Gessleman whispered, aware that if his vocal cords engaged, the resultant thunder of rage would reveal their awful secret to the rest of the household, now disbursed throughout the mansion.
