Corruption of Blood

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “And are you still in contact with Bishop?” Karp asked. Veroa confirmed that this, at least, was too much to hope for.

  “No, in 1971, after the Chilean thing failed, we … no longer trusted each other too much,” said Veroa. It seemed to sadden him.

  “How did that happen?”

  “I had set up an organization in Caracas to run the operation. We had, the Cuban resistance, I mean, many assets in Venezuela, in the police and so forth. And we had a good deal of money too. The plan was that after Castro was killed in Valparaiso, the Chilean army would arrest the two assassins and allow them to escape. But the assassins didn’t trust that plan; they thought they would be killed instead.” He paused. “Actually, it was because of Caballo.”

  “Caballo? The man in the film?”

  “Yes, he was in charge of the escape, in Chile. The assassins, they didn’t trust him, so they arranged their own getaway plan. Which they kept secret from me. But somehow this other plan was betrayed to the DGI—”

  “That’s the Cuban counterintelligence agency,” said Ziller.

  “Yes, and then the assassins refused to go through with it.”

  “Who betrayed the new plan, do you have any idea?”

  Veroa shrugged. “It was—how can I say—a cloudy situation. The Cubans on both sides, the Venezuelans, the Chileans, all penetrating one another, and the CIA penetrating them all. I have heard, although I cannot vouch for the report, that it was Caballo himself who sold them to the DGI, and then let it be known to them that they were sold.”

  “Why would he do that? Why should he care how they escaped? Didn’t he want Castro killed?”

  Veroa shrugged again. “Fidel is still alive, yes? And many other people are dead.”

  Karp glanced at Fulton and Ziller, who both looked blank. “Mr. Veroa … ah … help me out here. I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. Are you trying to tell us that all these plots against Castro that you were involved in were in some way phony? That the CIA guys you were working with, Bishop and Caballo and the others, were running some other kind of game?”

  Veroa spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness and shook his head slowly from side to side. “It would be hard for me to believe that. Bishop I worked with closely for over ten years. He made it possible for us, for the Brigada, to do much damage to the Fidelistas. On the other hand … there were times when he did things that I did not comprehend.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, once we were asked to deliver a briefcase to a couple of men sitting in a bar in Caracas. As our man left the meeting he heard them talking in a language he did not know. Later we learned that these were both Russian agents. Another time we were on a raid at night on the Cuban coast. We were involved in a firefight with the militia. Many of our people were wounded and several were killed, but we drove them off. We destroyed a power plant and left. Later, back in Miami, I heard rumors that another Cuban anticommunist group had been in a raid that same night on the same part of the coast, and had been badly hurt. I thought it was possible that these were the people we had fought. When I asked Bishop about it, he laughed and told me not to worry. He said that all this was coordinated at a level above him and they would not make such a stupid mistake.”

  “Did he ever identify this level above him?” Karp asked.

  “No. We never talked about it.”

  “And you never worked with any other CIA contact?”

  Veroa looked at Karp quizzically. “No, and I am not entirely sure that Bishop was a CIA contact. He certainly never said so. He always presented himself as an agent of private business interests.”

  “What about Caballo? The same?”

  Veroa shrugged dismissively. “Caballo I always thought was Bishop’s dog. He was a man with no conversation, a blank, a technician. Bishop was very different, a man of a certain quality, a thinker. But he was certainly getting orders from someplace, you understand. We knew this because often, when we had planned an action, he would say he needed a go-ahead. Then there would be a delay, and we would either do it or not.”

  “Do you still have contact with him, with Bishop?”

  A shake of the head, and Veroa answered in a slow, reflective voice, like that of a wife abandoned for no reason. “No. He began to distance himself from us, from me personally, after the failure in Chile. He contacted me in the summer of 1973. We met in Hialeah, at the racetrack parking lot. He told me that the people he worked for no longer wished him to continue his relationship with me. He was sorry but this is the way it had to be. Then he handed me a briefcase and drove off.”

  “What was in the briefcase?”

  “About a quarter of a million dollars,” said Veroa.

  Twenty minutes later, Karp and Ziller were still talking in the file room, by the light of the small blank screen, when V.T. Newbury strode in, his cheeks bright pink from the brisk outdoors. He held up a thick manila envelope.

  “Our stills. Want to take a look?”

  V.T. spread two dozen or so eight-by-ten glossies across a table. Consulting the notes Ziller had made during the recent viewing of the film, they were able to put names to most of the portraits. V.T. examined the picture of Bill Caballo with interest and they filled him in on what Veroa had said.

  “So it’s not Oswald after all,” said V.T. “Fascinating! So now we have a guy who looks like Oswald, who’s an operative with the anti-Castro movement, connected to the infamous Bishop, and is apparently an expert shot. My stomach is tingling.”

  “Yeah, this is a break,” agreed Ziller. “I’ll tell you one thing I’d like to do with these pictures. Take them out to Miami and let Sylvia Odio look at them. It’d be interesting as hell if she was able to identify the guys who showed up at her place as one of them.” He looked at Karp as he said this, expecting some response, but Karp was staring fixedly at one of the photographs.

  He said to V.T., “A couple of weeks ago, when we were talking about getting testimony from Paul David, you showed me a picture of him that they took when he appeared before Warren. Could you get that for me?”

  V.T. went to the filing cabinet and brought back a folder. Karp pulled out a yellowed clipping and placed it beside the photograph Veroa had identified as Bishop.

  “What do you think? David is Bishop, right?”

  V.T. and Ziller studied the two portraits. “It’s hard to say,” said Ziller. “The one from the paper is a full face and the one from the film is a side view, and it’s dark and blurry too.”

  “But I saw the guy in the flesh today,” replied Karp. “It’s the same guy. It has to be.” He took the folder V.T. had given him, shuffled through it, and drew out a sheet of paper. “Look at his record,” he continued, excitement starting to show in his voice. “David was a major player in the Bay of Pigs. He was a covert agent in Havana at the same time that Bishop contacted Veroa. He spent his whole career, practically, doing covert work in Latin America, and, of course, he was in charge in Mexico City when the fuckup about the tapes of Oswald’s supposed visit happened.”

  “Yeah, the only thing missing is a link between David and this guy Caballo. If it turned out Paul Ashton David just happened to have a faithful Indian companion who just happened to look like Lee Harvey Oswald …”

  He didn’t need to finish the thought. They all rolled their eyes and made other gestures indicative of astonishment.

  “I think this is what the poet meant by looking at each other with a wild surmise,” said V.T. “This could be the road out of the swamp. It seems to me that the next steps are, one, getting Veroa close to David in the flesh to see if he’ll make a positive ID of him as Bishop, and, two, putting the hounds out on Caballo.”

  “And three,” added Karp, “getting that fucker back in front of the committee with a contempt citation ready if he tries the trick he pulled today. Charlie, why don’t you get that started with Flores and his people, and get Clay to set up the ID run with Veroa.”

  When Ziller was gone, V.T. said,
“Something else interesting in this Depuy material from Georgetown. Let’s go into my office.”

  “This is the last notebook that concerns David Ferrie,” said V.T., bringing out a tattered steno pad from the recesses of his desk. “Depuy interviewed him on February 12, 1967, about two weeks before he was found dead, apparently of a drug overdose. Ferrie was drunk or doped up—he usually was, toward the end—but Depuy wrote down everything he said, whether it made sense or not. Ferrie was complaining about being broke and abandoned by all his friends. He says, ‘I was supposed to get ten grand on that PXK thing. It wasn’t my fault. I could’ve … what the hell, I could still get whatever I want out of those bastards.’ Interesting sentence; what does it mean? In the margin Depuy wrote ‘PXK? Check out.’ He must have asked Ferrie right there, but Ferrie says, ‘No, the time isn’t right. I gotta think what to do.’ Then he starts rambling again. A little later, Depuy must’ve brought up the subject again, because Ferrie says, ‘I need to talk to Term on that first. Goddamn Term won’t talk to me anymore, none of those PXK cocksuckers.’ Then more drivel. Depuy’s got a marginal note, ‘Term who dat?’ ”

  Karp thought for a moment, mentally shuffling through the hundreds of names associated with the case, concentrating on the New Orleans subdivision.

  “Wasn’t there a guy named Termine, a Marcello hood from New Orleans?”

  “Yeah, actually Marcello’s driver, Sam Termine,” said V.T. “I thought of that too, but I doubt it’s him. Depuy was a New Orleans police reporter and he would have checked that out, or asked Ferrie right there if he meant Sam. No, this is a new name: I’ll start a folder on it.”

  “Okay, but why is this interesting, V.T.? The guy was obviously nuts. It could’ve been a business deal that went sour in 1958. PXK sounds like a company, like TRW or LTV.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” V.T. agreed. “On the other hand, Depuy obviously thought it was something to follow up on. One last thing. In Depuy’s pocket diary there’s a notation in mid-1967, way after Ferrie kicked off. It says, ‘Term in N.O. 9-63’ and there’s a phone number. I had it checked out. In 1963 it was the number of Gary Becker’s Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean. So there’s a string of connections: Oswald with Bishop and Caballo and Veroa; Oswald and Becker; Oswald and Ferrie; and now Ferrie and Becker and whoever or whatever Term and PXK is.”

  Karp paced for a few moments, thinking. Then he shook his head irritably and said, “Yeah, but so what? It doesn’t get us any further unless we get more on this PXK and Term. Have you got any ideas on how to do that? No? Plus, this Ferrie thing is a miasma—it sucks us down into Garrison territory: innuendo, he-said-I-heard, and all the rest of the conspiracy bullshit. It’s just another pair of loose threads.”

  V.T. gave Karp an appraising look and replied in a sharper tone than he ordinarily used, “Yes, but at least they’re new loose threads. You’ve been telling me all along that the minutiae of the assassination weren’t going to advance the cause. So we’re concentrating on Oswald and his merry friends, which now you’re calling conspiracy bullshit. Fine! But if you don’t mind, I’ll keep pulling on whatever threads I turn up, in the hope that sooner or later something will unravel. I mean, what else can we do?”

  Karp had no good answer, and almost as a punishment, spent the rest of the day buried in that minutiae. By four, the transient excitement occasioned by Veroa’s story had quite faded.

  Clay Fulton tapped on the doorframe and came in. “You look beat,” he said. “You should be up behind this. I thought we just got a good break.”

  “Veroa? Yeah, the entrance to another set of blind alleys. Did you set up the ID on David yet?”

  “Yeah. David’s speaking at some national intelligence officers’ association thing in a hotel out in the burbs day after tomorrow. I figure I’ll drive Veroa out there and let him loose. Antonio should be right at home in an old spies’ convention. Anything else happen today?”

  “The usual. Crane is still talking to that damn caucus, so God knows what’s going to happen. Bea’s still getting grilled by the bureaucrats. Everybody else is tracing witnesses or farting around with experts. Speaking of which, one of the kids went out to Aberdeen and found a film archive of people getting shot. No, seriously! Apparently the army collected films from the Nazis or wherever, showing people getting executed, mostly with head shots. Wound research. We’re having a showing tomorrow.”

  “Great!” said Fulton after a heavy sigh. “All right if I bring the kids?”

  “No problem. There’s a pool on how many times we’ll see an actual human being getting shot in the head and flinging himself toward the gun like Kennedy did on Zapruder. All the shots came from the rear, says Warren, but after the guy’s head explodes he goes flinging backward.”

  “The old grassy knoll.”

  “Right. Old grassy knoll’s got me. How was Miami?”

  “Warm, with a chance of Cubans.” Fulton snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah! Speaking of Miami: I found our mobster.”

  “Which mobster?”

  “Mosca, Guido. Jerry Legs. The Castro thing … ?”

  “Oh, right! God, this is really important now. The Mob …”

  “They were in on it you mean?”

  “No, but did you ever see the film from the first press conference? Henry Wade, the Dallas DA, held it the day after the assassination. No? Interesting. He made two factual errors, one about Oswald’s middle name and the other about the name of his phony Cuba committee. In both cases he was accurately corrected by a man standing in the rear of the room. It was Jack Ruby, the guy who never met Oswald, but somehow knew the exact name of an obscure organization Oswald was running. Yeah, I’d like to talk to Mosca about that. So … he’s down in Miami? I thought he was a New Orleans boy.”

  “Was. He was with the Marcello organization back in the sixties, like we heard, then I think he must’ve got traded to Miami, for an aging left-hander and two utility outfielders. Worked for Trafficante and then ended up with the Buonafacci organization in South Florida. He still keeps his hand in a little but he’s mostly retired now—he must be pushing seventy.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yeah, he’s got a nice little place in Surfside, on the bay. Friendly guy, as a matter of fact. He made me some ice tea.”

  “What’d he tell you?”

  “Not one fucking thing. He was very apologetic. So, unfortunately, unless he’s been raping babies and we catch him at it, and put on the squeeze, the guy’s a clam. Another dead end.”

  “Maybe not,” said Karp.

  “How so?”

  “Mmm … it’s a long shot, but when you said rape I thought of something I just heard about. Ray Guma may be in a position to do Tony Buonafacci a big favor. I think Mosca will talk to us if Tony Bones tells him to, don’t you?”

  “I feel like I’m back in college,” said Maggie Dobbs happily. She was perched on a chair in front of her dressing table, a pile of blouses on her lap, watching pale bubbles rise in a flute of straw-colored wine. “Why is that?”

  From her comfortable position on Maggie’s bed, Marlene put down her own wineglass, now empty, stretched luxuriously, and answered, “Oh, I don’t know. No kids whining. We’re talking about men in a bedroom with clothes scattered all around. We’re drunk. Feels collegiate to me.”

  She had known girls like Maggie at Smith, pale, arty creatures, inevitably engaged to embryo stock-and-bond men from Amherst, cashmere-sweatered, plaid-skirted, circle-pinned, who dashed blondly through the campus walks like flights of pallid doves. In the usual cliquishness of college life, she had not had a great deal to say to these creatures. Marlene wore black under army surplus, smoked a lot, scowled, talked dirty, and hung out with U Mass boys, or even (shudder) townies from Northampton.

  That was, however, long ago, and the two women had both experienced an odd attraction to each other, as if catching up on some missed experience. Since meeting her at the big-shot party, Marlene had shamelessly parasited herself
into Maggie’s elegant and well-ordered life. Lucy was installed in a tony play group, hobnobbing with the Ashleys and Jennifers of McLean, under the eyes of perfect mommies or French nannies.

  “No hitting,” Marlene had said before dropping Lucy off. “You queer this deal and you’ll go three rounds with me.”

  “But, Mommy,” Lucy had complained, “what if they’re mean?”

  “They won’t be mean. These are high-class kids; they already know how to kill with a look. In any case, if you have to slug somebody, body-punch. I absolutely don’t want blood on the walls. Capisc’?”

  Now the two women were lounging in Maggie’s boudoir (and it was a boudoir, done in jonquil frillies) with a cold bottle of a nice Moselle nearly down the hatch, and a long afternoon of nothing much ahead.

  “Are husbands the same as men?” Maggie asked musingly.

  “Well, unlike in school,” Marlene said, “the mystery is gone. It’s like Christmas. You’re in a delicious agony wondering what you’re going to get, and then you tear the paper off and there it is—just what you always wanted. Or, not, as the case may be. Whatever, the thing is, the fascination after that is learning how to play with it. Or him. A different kind of agony, if you’re into it. Which, as it turns out, I am. How about you? Where did you hook up with old Hank?”

  “Oh, we met at a freshman mixer. I was at Connecticut and he was at Yale. We got engaged my junior year. Ho-hum. How about you?”