by Robert Greer
“Like I told you last night, you never know who you might end up sharing a lifeboat with, Pinkie.” Cavalaris glanced across the table at Alden Grace. “What’s your take, General?”
“Pinkie’s assessment makes sense to me. With his Teamsters Union trucking connections, Ornasetti, if you believe he called for the hit on Antoine, would’ve had the resources to move a frozen body anywhere he wanted, no questions asked. And the time frame certainly fits. I’ve checked. Antoine disappeared about the time the interior Eisenhower Tunnel mechanicals and the tile support walls were being constructed in late 1972. The exact same time that Congressman Hale Boggs’s plane disappeared in Alaska, just to reiterate.”
“So they s-s-stuck Antoine’s body in with the tunnel wall concrete, and nobody was the wiser?” Cavalaris asked.
“Not they,” said Alden, shaking his head. “From what you and Pinkie have said, that was more than likely Franklin Watts’s responsibility. Since Ornasetti’s gofer, Randall Maxie, told Pinkie yesterday morning that Ornasetti wouldn’t have dirtied his hands with the matter, and you’ve said yourself that Watts was the man on the silo rooftop last night, Watts certainly gets my vote.”
“And I’d stuff the ballot box,” said Cavalaris. “Last night I was n-n-nearly as close to Watts as I am to everyone sitting at this table.” Cavalaris looked at Pinkie and then CJ, whom he was having a harder time convincing. “Watts was your machine gunner all right. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Okay,” said CJ, still sounding unconvinced. “So thirty-five years ago this guy Watts, who nobody here but you has ever seen, killed Ducane out at the sugar-beet factory. He then trucked the body up a mountain, deposited Ducane’s remains behind a wall of concrete at eleven thousand feet, and shuffled off to Buffalo.” CJ shook his head. “Sounds a little iffy. But if Alden’s buying in, I will too. One thing for sure—somebody schooled in handling heavy equipment was up there dancing around with me in Poudre Canyon.” Moving quickly to cover the fact that he hadn’t mentioned his Poudre Canyon encounter to Mavis, CJ said, “What I wanna know is this. If Watts did kill Antoine, who gave him the order?”
“Rollie Ornasetti; who else?” said Pinkie, taking a sip of tepid coffee that was now more bourbon than brew.
Once again CJ looked less than convinced. “Do you think Rollie actually ever had that kind of juice?” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Mario?”
“No way.” Mario’s response was emphatic.
“Then who called for the hit on Ducane?” Pinkie asked Mario, looking puzzled.
CJ responded instead, sensing Mario’s reluctance to talk in front of Cavalaris. “My guess is that it would have to have been Carlos Marcello.”
“You think Carlos called for a hit on his own son?” Willette asked from the kitchen.
“Why not?” asked Cavalaris. “We already know that Marcello probably set Antoine up to be Oswald-style cannon fodder in Chicago, and that he was lucky enough to get Antoine, a huge potential liability, out of his hair and glommed on to Rollie Ornasetti up here in Colorado. Maybe when Hale Boggs started making noises about taking a new look at the JFK assassination, Marcello decided to get rid of all his problems at once. Eliminate one with a plane crash and bury the other one up here in the Rockies.”
“Okay, let’s say that’s what happened,” said CJ. “That Marcello, not Ornasetti, was controlling Franklin Watts from down in Louisiana, and that Marcello gave Watts the go-ahead to kill Antoine. That provides us with a solution to one problem and leaves us with a whole lot of unanswered questions. Like, was somebody pulling Marcello’s strings, where has Ornasetti disappeared to, and is somebody down in Louisiana still controlling what’s going on up here in Colorado? Marcello’s been dead for years, and I don’t think his ghost is in charge of things.”
Sheila Lucerne responded quickly. “I can’t tell you if anybody was pulling Marcello’s strings but I can tell you where Ornasetti probably is right now. He’s either dead or in the process of getting a new identity. I’ve traveled that road.”
“That sound reasonable to you, Mario?” asked CJ.
Still uncomfortable about sharing his opinion in front of a cop, Mario said, “Guess so.”
“S-s-so, who do you think would be in charge of arranging th-th-things for Ornasetti at this stage?” asked Cavalaris.
When Mario didn’t answer, Cavalaris stood and walked into the kitchen. Stopping short of Mario and looking him squarely in the eye, he said, “I know you don’t t-t-trust me, Satoni. Figures. I-I-I’m a cop. But there’re some things that went down l-l-last night out at that sugar-beet plant that haven’t been touched on yet. Real important th-th-things that affect everyone sitting here. So how about h-h-holding off on passing final judgment on me until we’ve aired everything out?”
Mario looked past Cavalaris toward CJ and Pinkie. Watching them both nod, he said reluctantly, “I’m listening.”
“Appreciate it.” Cavalaris pivoted and returned to his seat. Mario said softly, “Nowadays the person in charge of arrangin’ the kinds of things we’ve been talkin’ about would be Carmine Cassias.”
“And what about Franklin Watts?” CJ asked, aware that Cavalaris had squeezed as much information out of Mario as he was going to get. “If Watts survived last night’s shoot-out, would Cassias be the one in charge of lining him up with a new identity?”
“More than likely,” said Mario.
“So the bottom line here is that over the years Watts probably passed from Marcello’s control to Cassias’s?”
Mario’s response was barely a whisper. “Probably.”
Before CJ could follow up, Alden Grace cleared his throat and glanced around the room until his eyes met Flora Jean’s. “What do you think, babe?”
Flora Jean shook her head. “Probably not, sugar.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking too,” said Alden.
“Okay, Mr. and Mrs. Cloak-and-Dagger. Wanna dial us common folk in on what you’re thinking?” CJ asked.
“We’re thinking Cassias isn’t Carlos Marcello,” Alden said. “Probably not even half the man.”
When everyone looked at Mario for confirmation. Mario said, “You’re right there.”
“What we’re thinking,” said Alden, nodding in agreement, “is that Cassias was probably having his strings pulled by somebody too. More than likely the same somebody who’s in charge of Mr. Covert Chameleon Ron Else.”
CJ and Cavalaris eyed one another sheepishly, aware that in their haste to get their arms around the crime of the twentieth century, they hadn’t taken the time to check out Else the way they should have. Cavalaris had received verification that Else was who he claimed to be when he’d sent an initial inquiry to the Los Angeles FBI office. Now he realized he could have been talking to just about anyone—a plant, a cohort, a fictitious supervisor, even some out-of-work actor. “The s-s-son of a bitch played me,” Cavalaris said angrily.
“That he did,” said Alden, understanding the dangerous game Else was playing. “But don’t be too hard on yourself. He’s probably been FBI and CIA and a bunch of other things in between for a long, long time. He’s had time to get good at it.”
CJ’s mistake had been to simply dismiss Else as a pompous FBI windbag. “Okay, Alden. We blew it,” said CJ. “But if somebody was pulling Cassias’s strings, mind letting us all in on who it was?”
Alden smiled. “More than likely that would have been, and probably still is, what we call a combo platter in the trade.”
“Uh-oh,” said CJ. “I feel a case of intelligence speak coming on.”
“And you’re right. But you’ve got Flora Jean here to translate. Just remember, this may all sound awfully implausible.”
“We’re listening,” CJ said eagerly.
“Here’s my take in a nutshell. Everybody gets their strings pulled in this life. And everybody’s puppeteer has reasons for pulling those strings.” Alden winked at Flora Jean. “Whoever was controlling Cassias likely had a set of re
asons that stretched all the way back to the JFK assassination. Reasons that could only have served to benefit them. Here’s a quick list of possible beneficiaries. First off, the CIA. No secret there. Prior to Kennedy taking office, the CIA had carte blanche to pursue its operations worldwide. But as every historian on the globe now knows, JFK was about to put an end to that freedom. He planned to end the war in Vietnam, no question, but more importantly, he was going to end the private little war that the CIA had going on in Laos. A war that the CIA, working hand in hand with the mafia, had set up in order to facilitate its astoundingly profitable drug-trafficking operations.”
Alden glanced at Mario, who offered no response. “Both groups were also making money from their connections inside America’s military-industrial complex. You make war, and somebody makes money. That’s always been the case. By ridding themselves of JFK, the mafia would get an extra plum in its drug-trade pudding. It would also rid itself of JFK’s brother Bobby and put an end to Bobby’s anti-mafia crusade, and its partner the CIA would be able to go back to doing business as usual.”
Alden took a deep breath as every eye remained focused on him. Looking ever more serious, he said, “So there’s your anti-JFK CIA and mafia connection. But you also had scores of politicians, corporations, and top-level government bureaucrats, like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, wanting Kennedy out of their hair. Not to mention the anti-Castro Cuban community who Kennedy had let down with his mishandling of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.”
“Sounds like half the world stood to gain from a Kennedy assassination,” said CJ.
Alden shook his head. “Not quite. But what counts is that the American power elite I just mentioned—greedy politicians and industrialists, the CIA acting on behalf of the military-industrial complex, and the mob—certainly did, and that’s a coalition capable of killing anyone.”
“Strange bedfellows,” said CJ.
“Not really.” Alden smiled and glanced around the two rooms. “Look at the group assembled here. And you have to keep this in mind. Whenever and wherever there’s money to be made—whether it’s Las Vegas, pre-Castro Cuba, or Vietnam—organized crime, governments, and financiers will wheedle their way into the action. During the Vietnam War years, the most lucrative action was in the defense industry. In effect, the way to make money back then, especially if you were the mob, was to extract it from the war machine itself. Kennedy knew that, and he wanted the mob out of that business. They wanted to stay in and voilà—no more Kennedy.”
CJ stroked his chin thoughtfully, realizing that Alden, a man who’d spent a career in the military and espionage game, had everyone spellbound except Mario and Flora Jean, who looked as if they were a page ahead of him in the sermon.
“So here’s the bottom line,” Alden said, his gaze locked on CJ. “As strange as it may sound, the factions I just mentioned—the CIA, the mob, corrupt politicians and bankers and industrialists—were the ones telling Carlos Marcello what to do. Marcello simply hired someone to pull the trigger.”
“Think they’re still telling Carmine Cassias what to do today?” asked CJ.
“They sure are, but not in the way you think—not in a one-on-one sense. Nowadays they operate more like America’s new post-9-11 bogeyman terrorist. But the only thing they’re interested in blowing up is their wallets. Like terrorists, there are select cells and personnel inside our own intelligence community: Ron Else, for instance, whose job it is to maneuver his way around the law and do whatever that combined power elite I keep mentioning instructs him to do. Else and people like him usually carry out their assignments under the trumped-up umbrella of ‘national security.’ You said yourself that one of Else’s machine-gun-toting escorts coughed up that old bromide last night.”
CJ nodded. “Sure did. So, let’s sum up what we’ve got—start to finish. You’re still sticking with the Corsican hit man, Lucien Sarti, as Kennedy’s actual assassin and with Carlos Marcello as the man who was pulling Sarti’s strings on orders from some invisible American power elite.”
“Exactly.”
“Hell of a premise,” said Cavalaris, looking more than a bit dumbfounded. “Any chance you can put a more personal face on that so-called power elite for us?”
“Not really. All I can tell you for sure after swimming around in the intelligence and espionage soup for more than twenty-five years is, excluding the mob, they’re the kind of people who’ve had seats of power in our government since the Revolutionary War. The very same people whose sound bites you hear on the nightly news screaming for the enactment of a one-world monetary system and a global military police force that would supplant monetary systems and police forces that are currently national.”
“And JFK refused to play ball with them?” asked Julie, uttering her first words in over half an hour. As the consummate trial lawyer, she’d learned long ago that you could learn more from listening than talking. And once again, she had.
“That’s it,” said Alden. “And by refusing, he sealed his fate.”
“Quite a postulate,” Julie said thoughtfully. “And not exactly a new one, I’d add. I remember taking an economics law course in law school where the professor claimed that there was a social elite in America and Europe that’s been able to control the destiny of nations around the world for more than two hundred years. I thought he was just blowing smoke.”
“He wasn’t,” Alden said. “What your professor was probably alluding to was the Rothschild plan. A plan built on the premise that wars are fought so that the combatants end up benefiting the international banking community’s social elite by borrowing money from them to fund their wars. The plan’s not a myth—it’s frighteningly real. Thought up by a money-grubbing nutcase named Mayer Amschel Bauer in 1773, a man who made no bones about wanting to control the banking resources of the world.”
“Damn,” said CJ. “Sounds like he wanted to rule the world.”
“He probably did,” said Alden, shaking his head disgustedly. “Problem is, there are people like him born every day.”
“No argument there,” said CJ. “The question for us right now is, where do we go from here?”
“Besides duck and cover, you mean?” asked Alden, flashing CJ the deadly serious look of a commanding general. “Where we all go from here is to drop the issue. We know that Franklin Watts probably killed Antoine Ducane.” Alden glanced sympathetically at Willette. “I’ve told everyone why I think Lucien Sarti was probably JFK’s assassin, and we know that Rollie Ornasetti’s dead or out there waiting in line for either the mob or representatives of my so-called power elite like Ron Else to furnish him with a new identity. We can’t take things much further.”
“Fine. I’m ready to back off.” CJ glanced knowingly toward Pinkie and Cavalaris as he mulled over the threats Else had issued to each of them the previous night. “But here’s a final question. What if Else and his band of rogue FBI brothers or CIA brothers, or whatever they’re calling themselves that day, decide to come back?”
“First off, they’re not rogues,” said Alden. “They’re far deadlier. They can switch identities in an instant, and they’re agency-approved and real. All I can say is that if they come back, we deal with them. Everyone sitting here has to understand that.” He looked around the two rooms. His gaze stopped briefly on each of the ten people. “We’re all going to be living with a secret now, and if Else and his cronies ever decide to raise their ugly heads again, then just like the twelve people who originally made a pact with Mayer Bauer to be participants in his Rothschild plan, the eleven of us will have to make a pact to protect one another and persevere.”
The room fell silent as suddenly all eyes were on Alden and CJ. “Are we of one mind?” asked Alden.
“One,” came CJ’s response as slowly, one by one, each and every head in the room began nodding.
Epilogue
The story that CJ and Pinkie told Sheriff Vickers when they surprised him by walking into his office several hours after the meeting at
Julie’s, in the custody of Gus Cavalaris and with Julie Madrid at their side, sounded as convoluted and improbable as the story Vickers’s deputy had recounted about their disappearance the previous evening.
Reluctant to alarm Julie, CJ hadn’t told her about Ron Else’s threats until they were on their way to meet with Vickers. Focused on the issue at hand and sounding unintimidated, Julie announced that she’d deal with that issue later. She then reminded all three men of two things they had agreed on earlier: there could be no secrets from her if she was to be their lawyer, and when they met with Vickers, she would do the talking.
Their meeting began on a down note with Vickers announcing that Arnie DeVentis had died that morning, and he would therefore unfortunately have to rely on CJ’s, Pinkie’s, and Cavalaris’s accounts of what had occurred at the sugar-beet factory before the sheriff’s arrival. Looking directly at Cavalaris, Vickers said, “So give me the specifics, Lieutenant.”
Cavalaris glanced at Julie, who nodded for him to go ahead. Sidestepping any mention of Antoine Ducane, Cavalaris described the gist of his Cornelius McPherson investigation, including why he believed the man who’d been rescued from the silo rooftop—whom it turned out CJ and Pinkie had also been after—had probably been McPherson’s killer. As he told the story, he glanced back and forth between Julie and the sheriff, thinking all the time about the possibility of a lost career and the single word eggshells.
