Suspects

by David Thomson

  It was the war that Harry had been waiting for. He did fire-watch duty and he started up a salvage business during the Blitz that made him £100,000 in one year. It was not pretty: he and his gang cleaned out bombed houses for the survivors or the faraway relatives. He had an estate agency as a sideline, buying wrecked sites and reselling them. He learned fast and he knew as much about shattered structures as anyone around.

  The London papers got on to him. He was attacked. And then, in a disarming gesture, he formed the International Refugee Office. It was a private organization, but it had several illustrious patrons on the letterhead—the Duke of Abercorn, Bud Flanagan, Roland Northover. It became an ideal way of absorbing money from the other businesses and it allowed Harry to present himself as a Santa Claus for bombsites and broken lives.

  He became an international figure. For much of 1944, he was in America, speaking about the plight of refugees, filling large halls with his orotund voice, moved by suffering he had never seen. I heard him speak in Omaha, and he spent a weekend with us, in the course of which he tempted my wife into a reading of part of The Country Wife that was too much for her. He had been traveling, and he was worn down, as lean and urgent as a tightrope. He was always watching her with his soulful eyes, and Mary Frances was flustered the whole weekend. “What an actress!” Lime said to me. “How can you ever trust her?” You can want to kill a man on Saturday, and be beaten down by Sunday, overcome by his awfulness, aware that you are not what killers are made of, not yet.

  Harry Lime went to Europe in 1945. He was in Vienna soon after it was relieved, setting up his International Refugee Office. It was a tidy front for his rackets, the most lucrative of which involved medicines. He invited Rollo Martins over—it was Rollo who had done the press pieces on Harry when the IRO was formed, “little bits of rehabilitation,” Harry called them. Now he wanted Rollo again, to polish up his image. But the police were on to him and Harry faked his own death. Only for the foolish Martins to appoint himself detective. It all came out, and Harry died in the sewers, larger than ever in a winter coat, sunk in the dark flow of sewage.

  I nearly told Mary Frances, to reassure her. But she could have thought I did it.

  KAY CORLEONE

  Diane Keaton in The Godfather, 1971,

  directed by Francis Ford Coppola; and in The Godfather Part II, 1974,

  directed by Coppola

  A wife in the Corleone family had tasks and duties: to be available for her husband’s lovemaking and to bear children; to suckle these children in plain view of the family so as to foster the fullest reverence for motherhood; and then to pass the care of the young children to nurses and maids, but to be an ultimate court of appeal and a source of intimate advice for the children; to lead visits to church, and to ensure that the children were nicely dressed and making progress toward first communion; to deal with the cooks in the choice and preparation of family meals; to know the names of retainers and associates and greet them warmly; to shop and look decent; and to know when to speak and when to leave the room. In return for an exact performance of this role, the wife and mother received the unstinting adoration of all the men in the family. She should never remark on the inadequacy of the arrangement; she should not get drunk or curse in public; she should have no affairs; she should not have a loose tongue or inquisitive ears; she should never question her man; she should accept adoration modestly and wear dark and plain colors. And be above suspicion, like Don Vito’s wife.

  Kay Adams was born in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1921. Her father, Lawrence, was a lawyer; it was a family of four children, all close in age, in their quarrels and their firm affection. In the long winters they skated and tobogganed, and in the spring Kay developed as a track athlete. She was state champion at 220 yards in 1938, and there was some talk in the Monitor about her as an Olympic prospect. But no one knew then that there would be no more Olympiads for ten years.

  She entered the University of New Hampshire at Durham in the fall of 1940, at which time she wanted to study law and then perhaps join her father in his practice. But in February 1941, she went up to Dartmouth with a gang of UNH girls for the Winter Carnival. During that weekend of parties she first met Michael Corleone, a pale-faced boy with eyes like black olives, a senior majoring in classics, yet seeming younger than she was. He was so hesitant Kay noticed her own moderate voice dropping to a hush when she talked to him. He had a dark aura that enchanted her. She fell in love with him in a quarter of an hour.

  He graduated that spring, and went back to his home in Long Beach, Long Island. But they corresponded, he in his beautiful black script, she in her sprinting hand. He wrote to her in grave sentiments, and she answered as fittingly as she could. She feared that a real declaration of her feelings would have alarmed him. So she curbed her passion, and made herself a cheery girl, full of fun and optimism. From the outset she felt herself responding to him, never taking a lead.

  In the summer of 1942, he took her on a trip to Nantucket, telling her he was going to join the army. He added that he loved her, and wanted to tell her as much. Kay was sure he would ask her to sleep with him; she was eager to be asked. But they only held hands and kissed. She noticed how cool his hands stayed and she wept in the certainty that someone so meek would be killed in the war.

  But he came back a hero, returning in time to attend her graduation at Durham in 1945—not late despite an illness the doctors could not specify, but which she knew was Michael’s absence. They spent that summer together here and there, and in August Michael took her to the Corleone house for the marriage of his sister, Connie, to Carlo Rizzi. Kay understood they were in the olive-oil and groceries business. She was amazed by the scale of the wedding, and the old-fashioned affluence in the house.

  Michael was changed. Still slight and reticent, when he did speak there was a new assurance, nearly an insolence. It was as if in disproving fear he had gained an edge of arrogance. This was there when he told her how his father had once freed Johnny Fontane from a contract—asking the bandleader for his signature or his brains on the legal document—so that she could not tell whether he was boasting or joking with her. But Michael introduced her to his parents in a formal way that bespoke his intentions. She was made welcome. Don Vito took her for a stroll on the beach the next day to ascertain she was not Catholic, but would convert. “Oh yes, of course,” she said, wondering at her own hurry, knowing once and for all that she was a godless slut.

  Then Michael’s father was shot in the street: she had always hated New York. A little while later there were stories in the papers that Michael had avenged Don Vito, killing men called Sollozzo and McCluskey. Then there was no word of him. She went to the Long Beach house, and it was a grove of men in dark coats just hanging around. Tom Hagen, Michael’s adopted brother, said he couldn’t tell her where Michael was or whether he was alive. The only smile on his face was one of irrelevant, distant kindness.

  Kay went back to New Hampshire and she taught school in Concord for two years. Then one day, as she was walking some of her children home, a black limousine stopped and a man in a black coat and a black Homburg got out. It was Michael, and he asked her to marry him.

  He told her he had been away, but it was safe and necessary now to be back. She asked him about the killings. He said he would tell her one thing, one thing only, and then she was not to raise such matters again. Yes, he had killed them: he was proud to say as much about anyone who meant harm to his father. Would she marry him?

  They were married in 1948, and their son Anthony was born ten months later, in 1949. Kay had never seen such contentment in Michael’s eyes. They had another child, a daughter, two years later.

  Kay had whatever she wanted. The wealth so hurt her New England soul that she taught herself never to want, like a visitor to Arab countries. She had a driver for trips to Manhattan, but she saw how she was never free. Michael had quietly discouraged all her old friends; and there were more men to make up for it; and the family, so often
gabbing in Italian. She tried to learn the language, but Michael told her, “Kay, I don’t want you ever to talk in Italian.” So he whispered Italian to Anthony, like a hot, private joke.

  She learned the family business, and realized that the houses—on Long Island, and then at Lake Tahoe—were havens that held her in the same mud, fed by corpses. The children were never close enough to her. All those intermediaries had bred a cold in Anthony such as she had felt early in Michael. There was nothing to do but brood. When she got pregnant again, she managed her own abortion—so badly that she could have no more children.

  Michael was solicitous, like a medieval envoy. She knew as he bent over her in bed that she would have to tell him about the abortion. She reckoned he would likely kill her; or have her killed—he would stay impersonal. But he was crueller. He sent her away, keeping the children for himself. It was only later that her father explained how, technically, she had deserted him. Refusing a divorce, Michael could probably keep the children.

  That was in 1960. For over a year Kay drank. Michael sent her money to live, but not enough to come to Tahoe more than twice a year to see the children. On every visit, Anthony was grimmer toward her. She thought of killing herself; she would never throw off Michael’s baleful authority otherwise.

  Then, in 1962, she was visited in her small New York apartment by George Locke. He was retired, he said, acting for friends. He seemed to know so much about the Corleones already. It was he who told Kay that Michael had been married once before, to a Sicilian girl, in the years he was away. She had been blown up in their car. Locke asked Kay how she felt about her children. Had she thought of seeking custody?

  She said she had been told it was useless. Yet, their father’s character was such that … who knows? said Locke. He went away, but he came back often. He let her guess that he was acting for the Justice Department, for Robert Kennedy. Would Mrs. Corleone sue for custody? For divorce? Her chances might be good, even in Nevada, if she could make the character of her husband an issue. What did she know? The administration was ready to help in any way, provide every protection, if only Michael Corleone might be nailed. What did she know?

  So little, Kay cried. Michael had things done, at second or third hand. Locke told her they were certain he had had Hyman Roth shot. She told him that she was sure Fredo had not drowned in the lake. Kay searched her memory: it was like going through analysis. She laughed out loud when she remembered, Michael had owned up to killing Sollozzo and McCluskey. It might be enough, said Locke.

  The hearings were eventually set for December 1963: Michael’s lawyers managed so many delays. But before then John Kennedy was shot in Dallas. Locke came to her and explained Robert’s distress and his suspicion that organized crime had been behind the assassination. “Going on will be harder,” he advised. “The attorney general is not sure of his position. After all, we do not count on winning in Nevada. It is the appeals process that interests us. But now … we have to consider the danger, and the ordeal, for you.” Kay looked at his kind eyes but knew such prospects were hers alone, like her thoughts of the children.

  She went to live at a military establishment. She was escorted to Nevada, in and out of the courtroom. Michael’s lawyers assailed her time and again, but charges were made in court and newspaper coverage spread as the media realized what was happening. The court awarded Michael custody. But he was already fearful of the appeals process and his lawyers met Kay’s to propose a compromise—Anthony, now fifteen, should live with her half the year, and the daughter the other six months, her settlement to be generous.

  Locke was very tactful. This proposal was in her best interests, he said. Fight on, and she might get far less. Stop the fight and Michael Corleone would escape the larger charges. He supported Kay’s wish to accept the compromise without disappointment.

  And so, in the fall of 1964, Anthony came to live with Kay. She was surprised that he was friendly, so devoid of bitterness. In the last two years, he had grown more antagonistic, but now he was sweet, obliging and considerate. At Christmas, he had his bodyguard rape his mother, saying she was a disgrace, not fit for the family. Then he told the man to beat her.

  She woke up the next day, sure Anthony would be gone. But he brought her breakfast, and chatted with her, until he had her raped once more. He would not do it himself, but saw the rarer disdain in watching it performed. Kay began to drink again and died in June 1965, at which time Anthony told the press he was indeed grateful for the belated opportunity to get to know his mother. Then he closed up the apartment and went back to Tahoe.

  SKIP McCOY

  Richard Widmark in Pickup on South Street, 1953,

  directed by Samuel Fuller

  There she was, her face twelve inches away from his, their bodies bumping and swaying together, all those little enforced touchings—total strangers, so strange they didn’t even need to talk or admit they had noticed each other. Touching, but not noticing, it was what he liked about city life and subway work.

  There she was, this dame, this broad, in a white sleeveless dress. He could smell the cheap powder under her arms and see the stubble of black hair there, shaved in a hurry a day, two days ago. Her hair grew quickly. He could feel it stirring when he let the car’s curve take him into her thigh. Her dress was made there so that it had a flap folded down like a lapel on her hip. She had one hand there resting on it with a noisy bracelet on the wrist, saying look, here it is, come and get it. You were meant to want to unpeel the flap, but he just wondered how he could slip his wafer of a clever hand inside it without her knowing or wanting it to stop.

  So he looked at the flap on her right hip, and she noticed and looked at him watching and made sure he’d seen the sneer. She had big plum-colored lips he wanted to mash with a fork. Her eyelashes moved slowly because of the black gunk on them. He could smell the greasy cosmetics and he could smell her last meal—something with pickles. She had that sort of statuesque tasty look, the bracelet, earrings the size of spoons, her hair off to one side and all done, like a football, the touching flap and the big white plastic shoulder bag resting on her left hip.

  As he looked at the flap and at the Post folded in his left hand, his right felt the bag. It was smooth but sticky with a cinch of a catch made like two big balls. The noise in the train ate up the click when he opened it. The girl sighed, as if she was thinking about her guy eating her pussy. She was a long way away.

  He knew it: her handbag was a mess. There was a handkerchief and several crumpled tissues floating on top of the deeper junk. He went farther and touched something moist and yielding. He looked at her, his hand between this alive thing and the sateen lining of her bag. Her sleepy eyes picked up his look and used him as a voyeur watching her get off on her lover’s licks. It was a sandwich, half out of cellophane. She was eating again. Pastrami on his fingers. He smiled at her thick arms and their glossy pimples.

  Deeper. There it was, a wallet flat and old like a used shoe. He held it in two fingers like tweezers. His one hand lowered the Post, held her pouty look in an insolent stare and lifted out the wallet until the Post covered it. The dip and the lift, fucking her in her sleep. He put the wallet inside the folded paper and shut her bag for her. Again, her features moved, smug and settled, taking a goodbye kiss, looking forward to a snack.

  That was Skip McCoy, also known as Joseph McCoy, the son of Irish immigrants. Limerick people, born in New York City in 1923, raised in the Bronx between 169th Street and Cotona Park. Father a pickpocket, died inside. Mother an ironer and presser in a laundry. Skip one of five kids, taught the trade by his father. A natural for it, which is to say not just good at it technically, but fulfilled by it. Thieving is a sport of the soul, and a dip can only touch anyone without them knowing.

  1938, the year his father died, Joseph “Skip” was sent to juvenile hall for three months. 1939, first conviction, sent to reform school. Refused for military service. 1942, for stealing on the subway, three years in Sing Sing. Out in 1944, afte
r more lessons inside. For three years, then, no one could pin a thing on him, but Skip got rich and took himself a room in a Manhattan hotel for living in. 1947, police framed him on another job, five years in Sing Sing. Got out in 1951, went to live in a shack on the waterfront, Lower West Side. Always lived alone. Two-time loser, next time for keeps.

  So, that day in April 1952, on the Lexington Avenue line, grinding against the broad, giving her the dead-eyed stare. Candy it turned out she was called: perfect! What he would have guessed. Into the shoulder bag, one shithole of a cunt. The wallet had nineteen dollars, old photographs, the cards of a pack of businessmen, and the pieces of film in a little yellow envelope. The film was pictures of pages in a book, as far as he could tell, full of printing and diagrams.

  That was what it was all about. This Candy had been carrying pictures of secrets, atom-bomb stuff, getting it to the Reds. There’d been two FBI guys in the car following her. They’d seen what Skip was doing, but they didn’t want to disturb anything and they couldn’t lay a hand on Skip in the crush.

  So Skip had the cops after him, this Candy and the Reds, all hot for the pictures. A dip had got himself into the spying business! But Candy hadn’t known what she was doing, that dumb shit. She was just doing a favor for her creep Joey, and he slapped her around and told her to find the artist who had lifted her wallet. Cops knew it was Skip, but they were told to lay off. FBI wanted to get the foreign agents, too, big stuff. Which put Mr. McCoy in the best seat. They pay heroes, don’t they?