The Whisper of the Axe

by Richard Condon

  The day chosen for the Sicilian Massacres was a Saturday. J.D. Palladino had agreed to spend that weekend with Teel at the Teel place in Quogue (the first of the great Negro showplaces at Quogue, in fact). He, Dino, Dom, and Angela were flown out by chopper on a sunny Friday afternoon.

  Binchy Dawes arrived in time for lunch on Saturday with two very, very beautiful movie stars who were also very large on television and who Mr. Palladino was knocked out to meet. He demanded and got autographs “for my little boy” who was thirty-five years old. The world-famous players flew back to New York after lunch and, as a gesture of appreciation for the way they had livened up the party, Binchy Dawes shyly slipped each one three ounces of the purest.

  Mr. Palladino said he had never eaten such stupendous food; some kind of Chinese stuff he had never heard of but strictly sensational, like Sparrows and Pine Nuts and Deer Heart Garnished with Plums, Deep-Fried Lobster Balls. “What do they do with the rest of the lobster?” he asked Teel sincerely. Dom and Dino were careful about their manners; no comments about niggers.

  After lunch there was a phone call for Mr. Palladino. It was Mary, his head secretary. He took the call in a private room.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Mary, Mr. Palladino.”

  “Hello, Mary.”

  Mary began to cry.

  “What the hell is the matter here? I hate a lot of crying.”

  Mary kept crying.

  “Fahcrissake, put somebody on who can talk!” Mr. Palladino yelled into the phone excitedly.

  Gozzi, the accountant, came on. “Terrible trouble, boss,” he said. “The thing is, are you all right?”

  “I’m okay. I’m all right. What trouble?”

  “We been gettin’ calls since eleven o’clock. Twenty-six of our people been blown away in the five boroughs. Dealers, salesmen, and in the houses.”

  “Blown away?”

  Gozzi had to repeat the basic information a few times except that he added how many people had been thrown out of windows and how it wasn’t only New York. He said where there was shooting, the piece men had all been black.

  Mr. Palladino held very steady. He was already figuring out who had done it, but he didn’t panic. He told Gozzi to call him back in one hour with any news, then he settled down on the phone and began to call the Fratellanza people city by city. He talked to wives, mothers, newspaperpeople, cops—but to no one in the Fratellanza. They were all dead. Then he went into the toilet off the telephone room and stayed there until Gozzi called. He couldn’t understand why they hadn’t killed him; he couldn’t figure it out. They had killed practically everyone else in the industry, but him they entertained. So, it came to him slowly, they must want a deal. He pored over it until he got it. They wanted Haiti and only he had all the keys to the government in Haiti. He began to feel less depressed, and he was sorry he had told Gozzi to call him back.

  The phone rang. It was Mary. She began to cry. “Put Gozzi on!” Mr. Palladino yelled.

  “It’s no good, Mr. Palladino,” Gozzi said. “All our people are dead. My brother, my two cousins—whatta business.” He hung up.

  Mr. Palladino’s legs turned to lasagna. He sat down heavily on the bed and waited for Dawes to come for him.

  In ten minutes, maybe a half hour, Agatha Teel and Binchy Dawes came in and shut the door. He stared at them blankly. “I just don’t get it, maybe,” he said. “But maybe I get it.”

  “Perhaps you’ll let me explain as Mr. Dawes’s attorney,” Teel said.

  “You are also my attorney on plenty of things,” Mr. Palladino said.

  “Then let me explain as your attorney.”

  “That’s better.”

  “Well, Mr. Dawes was disappointed when you said you felt a merger was impossible. But, on the other hand, he was convinced that it was very important to have only one organization. However, he has always had the greatest respect for you and your Haitian experience. He would like you to run the Haitian operation for him.”

  “From New York?”

  “From wherever you have always run it.”

  “That’s all?”

  “No. One more thing. He wants you to sign these papers. They merely say that Senator Hobart Simms originated your most successful heroin operation by finding the raw opium and conceiving the Haitian concessionary plans.”

  “He wants a lock on me or on Senator Simms?”

  Teel laughed deliciously. “Why, I would say it’s a lock on both of you.”

  10

  January 1976

  When Jonas got back from China, Teel was so glad to see him that she wept while she laughed and held him.

  “Hey!” Jonas said with mock reproach, “I didn’t know you were the cryin’ kind.”

  “Just cryin’ for you for when you were a little boy,” Teel answered. “You sure filled out in China.” She wiped her eyes, grinning. “Come on in the kitchen. Man, have I got some food for you.”

  “I’d sure like a glass of real wine.”

  “You got it.”

  “And maybe some kind of fish. Haven’t had anything even like fish for four years.”

  He ate Montauk capoles: very small, very sweet bay scallops cooked with butter, garlic, parsley, lemon—lightly flavored. She gave him three small lobsters cooked in court-bouillon, allowed to steep in it for hours, then drenched in drawn butter. Then she laid down before him La Toque du President Adolph Clerc, one of the three greatest pates of the great cuisine, made of hare, woodcock, partridge, thrush, black truffles, and the livers of ducks, which Jonas ate very slowly while he sipped Clos de Vougeot ’59. When he moved on to the cheeses, Teel sat down with him.

  “Hey! Lemme give a real party for your friends.”

  “What friends, Sis?”

  “The people. From China. Kranak. The Simms girl. The ones based in New York.”

  “How about a few more? You’re a rich lady. Let’s fly ’em all in.”

  “No good.”

  “Why not?”

  “The day they left China, each one to a different region, they gotta stay separate. If one of them gets hit and they take him in and they talk to him, there is one thing safe. Except for you, and Simms and Kranak, nobody knows where anybody else is, so the rest of them will be safe to keep going.”

  “Okay. I see. That’s clear. But how about Orin Dawes?”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s a solid man. He’s a double-trained man, having West Point. His Daddy is Binchy Dawes so you know him and they haven’t seen each other for a long time. They’re real close, Ag.”

  “You want Dawes at the party?”

  “I sure do.” He grinned.

  “I’ll put it down to compassionate leave and bring him on in.” She kissed him and he hugged her.

  “Now that everything’s okay, have a little Armagnac.” She poured for him.

  “Just the one thing.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think maybe it’s such a good idea to have Simms and Kranak at the same party.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, they were messin’ ’round out there till he went a little fruit when he found out she hadn’t only been doin’ it with the yellow devils but she had even had it off with li’l ole coal-black me. Kranak is one of those racist pigs you read about.”

  “But never meet,” Teel said.

  “But never meet.”

  “Never mind Kranak,” she said softly.

  “I got to mind him, Sis. He’s a pig. What we been doin’ is getting together a revolution. And I believe in that.”

  “He’s good at his work. Being just a pig and a little bit racist isn’t everything.”

  “Yes, it is, baby,” Jonas said quietly.

  “I want you to put the part about Kranak being a racist pig out of your head. Maybe Dawes had twice the training, but Kranak is twice the leader. He’s got the craziness it’s gonna take when the shooting starts.”

  “What about when the shooting is over?�
��

  “What about it?”

  “We won’t want any racist pigs left—will we? And we sure won’t want to look back and remember how we were led by the most low-down, no-good, racist pig there is, will we?”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” His voice rose. “Because that is why we are fighting this whole murderous, ruinous, catastrophic revolution!”

  “No it isn’t, child. I told you why, a long time ago. We are going to fight it to punish them—all of them. We’re going to punish them for being racist pigs and the brothers for holding still to be racist victims. I don’t care what kind of salvation they find if they can find any after it’s all over—there’ll be ten thousand Moseses to lead them to their next pie-in-the-sky promised land. But they got to be punished first! And Kranak is the strongest arm I have to punish them!”

  They stared at each other until Jonas’s eyes dropped.

  “I forgot you told me that, Sis,” he said sadly. “Well, anyway,” he sighed, staring at the floor, “I got to say two things so you and I can stay with each other and help each other.”

  “Say them straight out, baby.”

  He spoke reluctantly. “First, I’m not to judge. I know that. I’m a cold-ass scientist, not a philosopher. And I love you, always will. And I accept your leadership over everything else.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. She patted his hand across the table. “What else, baby?”

  “Well—it’s just that this revolution has forfeited all possible good, hasn’t it, Sis?”

  “Ever’thing in this world depends on how you look at it,” she answered. “Since I started this thing, then we’re all stuck to have to look at it the way I see it.”

  She got up from the table and brought back a large praline pie and a change of subject. “Tell me how you rate the people, baby,” she said. “We covered Kranak, I figure. And Dawes. What about Simms?”

  “She’s a cheerful, brilliant and fairly unstable girl. You placed her exactly right to handle Intelligence. She can go anywhere and speak to anybody and nobody’s got the revolution fever like Simms.”

  “Winn.”

  “A natural killer. A great, great killer.”

  “Better than Chelito?”

  “There’s a whole world of difference,” Jonas said. “Chelito kills like a delicate woman working at her favorite hobby; Winn is a butcher. She is a mass killer and she kills with enormous hatred. As a soldier, Winn is to be preferred but—on the other hand,” he added diplomatically, “Chelito is a better bodyguard.”

  “What about the men?”

  “Anderson is best after Kranak and Dawes. Very steady. Full of hate. The indoctrinations never extracted the hate from Anderson or Winn. Weems just sheds it like drops of water. Buckley is a good plumber; a steady plodder—wholly reliable. Reyes is the one I would put to diplomatic work when the time comes. He is shrewd and he is crooked and hard. I was only with them a year, but I tell you this, Ag, from the time I left them until I got back to them three years later everybody had changed except Winn and Anderson. They got stronger and better. Everybody else just got quieter and better.”

  “You know what? Army Intelligence knows everyone who was in China.”

  “What?” It was such a strong reaction that it seemed too great a protest.

  “They came to see me during that same year you all went into China.”

  “You? How could they ever find the way to you?”

  “They wanted to know about an Albert Cassebeer.”

  “Me?”

  She shook her head. “Albert Cassebeer. Remember how you argued when I decided you would go in with another name? Suppose you had gone in as Teel? Then what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Albert Cassebeer is a dead experimental physicist. He had to be dead so he died.”

  He couldn’t look at her.

  “Nobody knew Albert Cassebeer was dead, so how could they know he had enlisted in the Army?” Teel continued. “There had to be a plant.”

  “No!”

  “Yes!” Her voice went off like a gun.

  “There isn’t a way for that to be,” he said hoarsely.

  “It has to be! All right. Let’s just analyze. Let’s just think out loud. Who might it be? Who could it be? Not the yard birds. They weren’t going anywhere when Buffalo found them but back to prison after some broken bank job. They wouldn’t give the Army sweat. The Army is just more cops in a different uniform to them. Who does that leave?”

  “Well,” he said thickly. “It leaves Dawes—and Simms.”

  “And you,” Teel said quickly.

  “Me?”

  “You gave up a lot, baby. You had a lot to lose and a lot to gain—right? Wait, wait,” she said, leaning downward on his huge shoulder. “I am not accusing. I am eliminating.”

  He swallowed hard. “Then that leaves the same two. Dawes and Simms.”

  “It’s not Simms, baby.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I put Simms in China. Myself. Separate from all the others.”

  “Dawes?” he whispered with heavy amazement.

  “Maybe. Not for sure. Just maybe.” She lost her cool. She shouted. “I got to know!” She pounded one fist steadily on the table. “I don’t know how they got a plant in there. I go over it again and again. I been over it a thousand times. I mean, that man was on top of me in this house with those questions about Albert Cassebeer right after you boys went in. Buffalo wouldn’t tell anybody nothing. Well, I say—them convicts they got wives, they got girls, they talk. But what they have to talk about? Okay. They could talk about how somebody paid them twenty-five thousand dollahs to jine up. Who would believe any girl, any wife, who would tell anybody a story like that? The robbers didn’t have nothin’ else to tell anybody. I been over it. All over it. Ever’ inch of it. How did they get hip? How? Then why did they go all quiet?”

  “Maybe they found the real Albert Cassebeer. His body. Maybe it was a routine check on the Cassebeer body.”

  Her face was grim. “Nobody ever find that body. Anyway since when Army people take on for the Homicide Detail? Something just went wrong. I just gotta wait an’ see.”

  She took a deep breath, held it a long time, then exhaled slowly. She got up and walked to the refrigerator, took out a closed jug, removed the top and poured herself a glass of cold water. She got it all together again and smiled at him with all of the charm of a children’s ballet company.

  “We will overcome,” she said drily. “It will be my pleasure to cut down on Kranak as a racist pig, so let’s give a glorious party but invite the Simms girl and her glamorous brother even if she and the pig don’t make it anymore.”

  Jonas was still shaken by their conversation. His mind raced to change the entire subject away from people living to people dead. “Say, Sis—” he said. “Did you ever figure how to get the plutonium for me?”

  “All done. All set. Four hundred and twenty kilograms of the purest ploo there is, bro. All stashed and waiting for you.”

  “Four hundred and twenty? But—I mean—Holy jezuzz, how’d you ever do that?”

  “I take it four twenty keyes is enough ploo?”

  “Enough? It only takes me about three kilos to make one fat fission bomb.”

  “Well—great.”

  Pure Number Four heroin began to arrive from the Yunnan Province and from Burma in February 1969. It came in at the rate of 960 kilos for each succeeding month. By September 1969, in her all-cash business, Teel had accumulated a war chest of $53,000,000 while she had her people working out the kinks in the widening distribution system. Excess heroin was warehoused as commercial sugar in Long Island City. Of the 960 keyes each month, 85 were seized by pre-arrangement with the Bureau of Narcotics or the U.S. Customs; 115 were “lost” to any/all official agencies to be sold by them in their “Free Zones” such as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and at naval bases offshore.

  With the first large amounts o
f money Teel accumulated, she acquired all shares in the Belvedere River Power & Light Company through eleven dummy corporations. Belvedere provided electricity for a small rural region between Shady and Masters, Vermont, in the far northern part of the state. O’Connell, Carnaghi, Levin, Zendt & Sweeney got everything cleared with the Atomic Energy Commission and with the State House at Montpelier. In 1970, the Federal government changed its policy about the production of plutonium 239, the fissionable material used to produce nuclear bombs, and Teel, through her Thursday cook-ins, and more directly through Senator Karp, had had ample advance notice of this official intention. Private contracts were let by the Federal government in separate parts of the country for the operation of plants built to isolate plutonium from used nuclear fuel for sale to power and light companies who were to stockpile it against the day when commercial, civilian use of nuclear energy would come. That is, after the last drop of fuel oil extant in the country had been sold.

  As time went on the power and light companies were stockpiling more plutonium than was stored inside all the bombs in NATO, England, France and China. By 1974, the power and light companies had stockpiled more than 75,000 kilograms of plutonium, enough to manufacture 21,428 fission bombs.

  By the spring of 1976, the Belvedere River Power & Light Company had acquired 420 kilograms of plutonium, valued at ten dollars a gram, to an accumulated value of $4,200,000. From this stockpile Jonas Teel estimated that he could make 130 nuclear devices for storage, as required. His sister wanted as many as possible to be accessible and ready to be detonated before July 1. After July 4, she reasoned, all plutonium stocks would be seized by the government.

  The Belvedere Power & Light Company stored its plutonium in a warehouse, in a woodland, two and a half miles outside Masters, Vermont. The building was made of gray steel panels to dimensions of 50 by 110 feet. The building had no windows; one door. It was surrounded by a nine-foot-high chain-link fence; guarded by two men working only two shifts.