by Robert Greer
“Because you’re talking about something that happened almost a half century ago, CJ. Time passes, people forget, the world moves on, and pretty soon nobody but conspiracy-theory nuts, operatives like my sources, and history buffs care about what happened.”
CJ glanced at Flora Jean and winked. “I’ve never really seen myself in any of those camps. Go ahead with what happened in Tampa, Alden; we’re all ears.”
“I’m told it went down like this. Kennedy rolled into Tampa on November 18. He had a motorcade in an open-topped car scheduled for that day. And this time, unlike Chicago, he didn’t call off the motorcade. For almost forty minutes, Kennedy stood up in the limo waving. It’s well-documented that someone threw a candy bar at the limo along the route. The candy bar thumped down on the hood of the car behind him, and even though the thud supposedly sounded like a gunshot, word is, and photos document it, that Kennedy remained standing. I was told that there were lots of possible places for an assassin to take his shot, but that the two most likely spots were as the motorcade made a left-hand turn in front of the Floridian Hotel before heading over a bridge to an armory where Kennedy was to speak, or from a warehouse along the route. Interesting, don’t you think? A 90-degree turn and warehouses, just like Chicago.”
“Eerie,” said CJ. “The whole setup sounds awfully cookie-cutter.”
“It gets even eerier. Turns out, I was told, that in all three cities there was a lawman or an equivalent involved in the plot who was connected to the mob. That person’s job was to monitor any plot leaks that sprang up and squelch anything that popped up on the radar that might suggest that there would be an assassination attempt on Kennedy. And like everything else I’ve told you, the information on the rogue lawmen is both well-documented and readily available. The mafia’s man in Chicago was a guy named Richard Cain, who it turns out was not only a mobster but the chief investigator for the Cook County sheriff’s office. Records show that Cain had also worked on CIA-and mob-initiated plots to take out Castro. In Tampa, the name that surfaces, although his involvement in the assassination attempt there was never confirmed, was another law enforcement type, Frank Fiorini. The Dallas connection turned out not to be a cop at all—Jack Ruby served that function.”
Barely able to digest what he was hearing, CJ asked, “So why didn’t things go off in Tampa?”
“My people say the hit was called off by a local Tampa don, Santo Trafficante Jr., because he thought it would bring down too much heat on him.”
CJ shook his head. “We’re into the soup now, General.”
“And it’s boiling. Now, here’s the final piece of the puzzle, and I think it’s the key to your Antoine Ducane connection. For most of the time between November 1 and the assassination on November 22, Carlos Marcello, always considered to be a key player, if not the key player, in the assassination plot, was involved in his own deportation trial in New Orleans. Turns out the government was trying to slide Marcello the hell out of here. Because of that, he didn’t have the chance to be as active in the plot to kill Kennedy as he probably would’ve liked. The word I have is that he convinced two other key mobsters, Trafficante and Chicago’s Johnny Rosselli, to stand in for him. During the course of his trial, Marcello was reportedly only out of New Orleans for one three-day weekend. A weekend, it turns out, that just happened to coincide with the timetable for the hit in Chicago. Now, here’s the beef. Because of the timing of his trial, Marcello supposedly had to enlist the help of a small-time would-be don out of Denver. Someone who’d been licking his boots for years. Wanna take a crack at who that might’ve been?”
“Not Rollie Ornasetti?”
“None other.”
“Damn! Where’d that information spring up from?”
“Two of my sources, and they’re both golden,” said Alden.
“I believe you, Alden, but why haven’t your sources said anything in all these years?”
“Want to tell him, Flora Jean?” Alden asked.
Flora Jean smiled and faced CJ. “Fraternity rules, sugar. In the world of intelligence and espionage, the rule of thumb is to never swing at balls outside your strike zone. The folks who gave Alden the information he’s passin’ on to us are in another orbit. They got no problem seein’ the moon from where they’re standin’, but they’re obligated not to ever take any trips there. Bottom line is, these guys, just like everyone else in the intelligence community, are in the business of keepin’ secrets. Why else do you think they wouldn’t give Alden so much as a hiccup until those papers you got from Willette Ducane turned up? Wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t talk for another fifty years.”
“But in all these years, don’t you think somebody would’ve said something?” CJ asked.
“In the world you and I live in, sugar, but never, ever in theirs. We’re lucky Alden’s in theirs.”
Shaking his head, CJ leaned toward the speaker. “So you think Rollie Ornasetti was in on the JFK assassination?”
“He sure was,” Alden said matter-of-factly. “Just like Ducane. But I don’t think Ducane was pegged to be a shooter anywhere but in Chicago, and in all likelihood Ornasetti was also probably slotted for Chicago and Chicago only. Ducane would’ve been way too green and too far outside the sphere of the kinds of shooters mafia kingpins like Marcello, or Johnny Rosselli, would’ve brought in for a hit of that magnitude. My guess is that in Chicago, Ducane, just like Oswald, was brought in to play the role of a patsy, and there’s no question in my mind that he would have been if things had gone down as planned. The lingering problem for the assassination planners was that, unlike Oswald, Ducane got a chance to see the big picture.”
“And when he saw what happened to Oswald live and on national TV, he couldn’t have felt all warm and fuzzy.”
“That’s my take,” said Alden. “Especially since Ducane’s notes and sketches support the fact that he was to have been a shooter in Chicago, especially his note about low post and high post. He was probably part of a team of two shooters, maybe even three, and unfortunately, like Oswald, his fate in Chicago would’ve certainly been to play the patsy in the catbird’s seat upstairs. More than likely from a warehouse along the canceled parade route. By the way, those sketches of what you thought were two ladders on one of the pages of Ducane’s notes gave me fits, but I think I’ve figured out what they really are.”
“Clue me in,” said CJ.
“I don’t think they’re ladders at all. My guess is they’re doodles of railroad tracks. South Shore train-line tracks. Tracks for trains that still run around Lake Michigan to this day, shuttling people between, get this, the Windy City and Gary, Indiana.”
“So Ducane was jotting subliminal travel notes to himself, then.”
“More than likely. Because if he was a shooter, fall guy or not, he would’ve been warehoused somewhere a safe distance from Chicago.”
“So if Ducane, like Oswald, was a patsy, who was the real shooter?”
“That’s where, unlike everything I’ve told you up to now, speculation starts to seep in. Ducane’s notes provide clues, but they don’t spell out everything. The page where he describes a man he shared a cab ride with in Chicago gives us the best hint.”
“Yeah, the dark-skinned guy wearing strange-looking shoes, a hat, and sunglasses.”
“That description could fit a lot of people,” said Alden. “But it also describes a couple of top-rung hired assassins the mob used back then. I’d say Ducane was very likely sharing his ride with the person who probably shot Kennedy. There might very well have been a different patsy in each of the three target cities—Ducane, Oswald, and God knows who else—but I’d bet my bottom dollar there was only one actual shooter hired to cover all three cities. It would’ve been too risky to the plot’s secrecy to have had more.”
“There you go bettin’ again,” said Flora Jean, watching CJ’s eyebrows arc in anticipation. “Would you just tell us who?”
“My guess is that it was either James Files, a hit man from the
Chicago family who once confessed to the JFK assassination and was later mysteriously exonerated, or Lucien Sarti, a hired assassin and drug pusher out of Corsica. I’d take Sarti myself. He’s dead, by the way. Killed in a shoot-out in Mexico City in 1972. He fits Ducane’s description almost to a T, right down to the strange-looking more-than-likely-Italian shoes and trademark fedora. Even better, according to one of my sources, a guy who’s paid to know, several weeks before the assassination, Sarti was known to have flown from France to Mexico City. Word is he stayed there a day or so and was eventually brought into the U.S., crossing the border at Brownsville, Texas.”
“Who do you think brought Sarti in for the hit?”
“Marcello or Trafficante, more than likely. They were the two American mobsters with the closest connections to the mafia in Marseilles.”
CJ shook his head and sighed. “So, bottom line is, we’ve got ourselves a hit man and a patsy that nobody else in the world seems to know about but us.”
“You’re only half right there, CJ. The whole world knows about Sarti, and for that matter Files. Books, TV shows, and even documentaries have showcased them. The person the world doesn’t know about is Antoine Ducane, Oswald’s mirror image and a man who, in the end, knew way too much for his own good.”
“Then why didn’t they kill him way back when?”
“I’ve thought about that long and hard,” said Alden. “And the only good reason I can come up with is that the “New York City syndrome” bit somebody involved in the assassination plot squarely in the ass.”
Flora Jean giggled and shook her head as she watched a look of puzzlement spread across CJ’s face. “You’ve slipped into intelligence speak again, sugar,” she said to Alden. “Afraid you’re gonna have to translate for CJ.”
“Easy enough,” said Alden. “Fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of folks in New York City seem to think the sun rises and sets on Gotham. They’re too damn myopic to realize that there’s a whole great-big rest of the world out there. I’m thinking that with a touch of the syndrome clouding their judgment, Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli saw Ducane’s, and maybe even Oswald’s, role as unimportant and secondary. Because of that, I’m thinking they came down with the New York City syndrome in a real bad way. The symptoms probably intensified after Marcello was acquitted in his deportation trial and Kennedy was dead. And why not? To their way of thinking, with Kennedy out of the way, why worry about some small-time New Iberia, Louisiana, ‘Creole boy’ who nobody in the world would’ve believed in the first place if he ever came forward to claim that he’d been involved in the plot to kill JFK. On top of that, who would’ve believed some Mile High City wannabe don like Rollie Ornasetti, looking to work his way up in the organization? Especially in the light of the fact that nothing ever went down in Chicago. New York City syndrome to a T, don’t you think, Flora Jean?”
“Absolutely, sugar. Kingpins—governmental, mafia, or otherwise—sometimes forget to clean off their plates after they’ve been feasting. They seem to expect somebody to do that for ’em. Sometimes you wait a little too long for your dishwasher, and don’t forget Ducane was supposedly Marcello’s little Creole love child.”
“I don’t know,” said CJ, sounding unconvinced. “Marcello was ready to sacrifice Ducane in Chicago.”
“Maybe Marcello’s guilt got the better of him,” Flora Jean countered.
“Seems like way too many loose ends hanging for me,” said CJ.
“Possibly, but for more than forty years it’s worked,” said Alden.
“No argument there,” said CJ. “That leaves us with one unanswered question: How’d they actually kill JFK?”
“Can’t be sure, but here’s my guess,” Alden said. “And it’s based on a feeling in my gut, twenty-five years as a marine intelligence officer, and what my sources say are the cold, hard facts about the physical evidence in the case. Since Oswald certainly didn’t shoot JFK, there had to have been at least a second gunman. Someone who was more than likely shooting from what’s now commonly known as the grassy-knoll area of Dallas’s Dealey Plaza. That would have been Sarti, in my judgment.
“As for the physical evidence, we’ve had decades of speculation about a possible botched Kennedy autopsy, incompetent pathologists, cover-ups, brain stealing, and flat-out prevarication on the part of doctors, the Secret Service, LBJ, and the Warren Commission. But there’s no question from all the photos we have of the events in Dallas that day and the testimony of doctors who treated Kennedy at Parkland Hospital after he was shot that there was an entrance bullet wound in the front of Kennedy’s neck. Which means there had to have been a shot that came at Kennedy from the front. And that brings us to a hard, cold fact. The Warren Commission report, with all its single-magic-bullet theory claiming that JFK was shot in the back of the head with a bullet that also hit Texas Governor John Connally, is pure, unadulterated hogwash.”
Alden drew a deep breath. “That said, here’s your problem, CJ, and it’s probably a life-and-death issue to consider. You’re sitting on documents that could help cement the fact that there was unquestionably a second shooter in the JFK assassination. And that’s a place, quite frankly, where I wouldn’t want to be sitting right now. Moreover, it’s a place I don’t want Flora Jean anywhere near. Here’s my advice. Drop the whole thing. It could get you killed. As we like to say in my business, whether you’re a spook, spy, or private eye, it always pays to know who the other bogeymen are—and in this case, CJ, you flat-out don’t.”
“Want to translate again for me?” CJ asked.
“Sure. Back in 1963 the CIA had a bunch of agents assigned to a program called Operation Mongoose. Mongoose was the code name for ongoing initiatives that President Kennedy set up inside the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department following our disastrous Bay of Pigs attempt to overthrow Castro. The operation’s mission was to coordinate anti-Castro activities, up to and including a Castro assassination, if necessary. Some people have suggested that after Dallas, the mob, if indeed it did orchestrate the JFK killing, tried to deflect suspicion from itself by channeling it in the direction of Operation Mongoose. In doing so, however, the mafia found out it had more in common with the Mongoose people than it expected.”
“Like what?”
“Like greed for power and money, or desire for the ability to control the populace, just to name a few. In the end, some people have argued, including a couple of my own sources, that the two parties became hard-and-fast allies instead of enemies.”
“And my problem with that linkage would be …?”
“Your problem would be that you’d have not one but two groups of people with a bevy of trained assassins trying to clean your clock if you insist on trying to find out who killed Antoine Ducane. Like I said before, drop it, CJ.”
CJ stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I’m thinking about it.”
“Think long and hard because you’re not dealing with gang-bangers and bond skippers or your normal complement of wife beaters, thieves, rapists, and arsonists. And this isn’t Vietnam, where at least you had a .50-caliber machine gun to speak for you. You’re dealing with a whole different animal. These are the people who would kill a president. They won’t hesitate to kill you. One final word. If you’re determined to keep charging ahead, don’t include Flora Jean.”
Glancing at Flora Jean, CJ said, “Gotcha.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” said Alden. “Hopefully by then you’ll have decided to drop the issue. It will be a lot better for your health; trust me.” He cradled the phone, leaving CJ and Flora Jean to stare at one another in disbelief.
Chapter 29
Successful police work, like anything else, Gus Cavalaris had learned, involved making the right choices, and sticking to Floyd, the veteran homicide lieutenant had kept telling himself since leaving Floyd’s office, was the right choice. Especially if he ever expected to find out who had killed Cornelius McPherson.
Solving the McPherson murder might represent
no more than a modest success when viewed against the backdrop of the Ducane murder and the JFK assassination, but modest successes, he’d also learned long ago, often opened the door to greater ones. He had the feeling that when all was said and done, Floyd would take him where he needed to be. He didn’t expect to turn out to be Floyd’s rabbit’s foot again, but from the look of things, Floyd was desperately in need of one. Somebody wanted the nosy bail bondsman dead, no question.
As he peered out through one of the bay windows of Dozens, a breakfast and lunch eatery that sat catty-corner from the Denver police administrative offices and Bail Bondsman’s Row, he could see Floyd’s Delaware Street Victorian. Eyes locked on that building, he wondered how long it would be before Floyd led him to pay dirt.
He’d just taken a healthy sip of coffee when his waitress appeared. “No rush, sir, but we closed at two.”
“Oh, sorry.” He eyed his watch and realized it was 2:10. “L-l-lost myself in a problem.”
The waitress smiled. “Happens to me all the time.”
“Do you g-g-get most of yours solved?” Cavalaris rose to leave.
“Only about half the time,” the waitress lamented, shaking her head.
“That’s better than me.” Cavalaris chuckled and headed for the cash register to settle his bill. He looked back at the waitress as he handed the restaurant’s manager a $10 bill. Smiling back at the waitress as he waited for his change, he said, “Guess I’ll just have to try a little harder.”
After ending his phone conversation with Alden Grace, CJ spent a good part of the next two hours in his office trying to come up with a good reason for continuing to pursue something that Alden Grace had assured him could get him killed. He knew he wasn’t sticking with the Ducane case because of the $1,000 retainer Willette Ducane had paid him to find out who’d killed Antoine. And although he had to admit that the JFK assassination angle fascinated him, that wasn’t the reason he was staying with it either.
