The Confession of Joe Cullen

by Howard Fast

  He grasped her arm. “Come on, let’s walk. You don’t want to stand here on the street undressing.”

  “Walk downtown. I have to get back to my office.”

  “OK.” They turned down Seventh Avenue.

  They walked a block in grim silence, and then Ginny said, “Cullen, did you ever do something and find you couldn’t explain to anyone why you did it, and perhaps not even to yourself?”

  He thought about it for a while, and then he nodded. “Yeah, I went into a cop station and confessed that I had killed a priest and that I ran drugs.”

  “You couldn’t explain that to me — why you made that tape?”

  “No. Except—”

  He swallowed the words and walked on. He had a long stride. Ginny had to move to keep up with him.

  “Except what?”

  He stopped abruptly, turned facing her, and snapped, “What the hell are you after? Who are you? What do you want of me?”

  “You can’t explain and I can’t explain,” Ginny said miserably.

  “OK. Let’s leave it that way.” He swung around and crossed Seventh Avenue, leaving Ginny standing on the corner, thinking to himself that there was no reason why he should tell her anything, and it would have made no sense whatsoever to try to explain that before he spilled out his guts onto a piece of electronic tape, he was dead, and that now he was alive. That was feeling and consciousness and there was no way in the world that he could put it into words; except of course to come up with grace. He had said grace because it was the only word of mystery that he possessed.

  Ginny spent the remainder of her lunch hour walking down-town to her office. A nasty November rain began to fall, less rain than a cold mist, and Ginny wrapped her thin coat tightly around her and endured the discomfort as a fitting punishment for her foolishness. Like so many Catholics who have left the church, she functioned within her own set of sins, guilt, and punishment.

  Later that afternoon, shortly before five o’clock, she was summoned into Timberman’s office. Cohen was already there, fingering a package of cigarettes, lacking the courage to light one. Without preamble, the district attorney said to them, “I’ve heard from Washington, and they’ve put a top-secret lock on that tape we saw this morning. You are not to discuss it with anyone, and I want no leaks, because if it does leak, I’ll know where it came from.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” Ginny protested. “How about the West Side cops?”

  “I spoke to Freedman up there, and I told him that if he didn’t put a lock on it, I and others would be very displeased. I think he’ll listen.”

  Cohen said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I think I speak for both of us when I state my belief. You can’t lock that story, no way. It’s going to leak, and when it does, I think you should accept the fact that Ginny and I are not involved.”

  Timberman thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. “Fair enough.”

  It was a gesture of dismissal, but at the door, Cohen paused and asked, “Was there anything else in the way of explanation? Forgive me for being curious.”

  “You’re forgiven,” Timberman said shortly.

  Outside in the corridor, Ginny said, “Thank you for covering my ass.”

  “What do you think of all this?”

  “It’s business as usual, and sometimes the shit hits the fan. This is the most corrupt administration in the history of these United States. Half of the damn Executive is either indicted or on trial, and if there were any way to put some muscle behind it, the whole damn White House would be in jail. I don’t mind that they steal and turn the Pentagon into a money machine. That’s old hat and we’re used to it — but to go into the dope business and compete with the Mafia, that’s new.”

  “Nothing’s new,” Cohen said. “During Prohibition, they were in the pockets of the mob for all they could get. Indignation, Ginny, is self-imposed neurosis, and I got enough neuroses floating around not to want any more. Be thankful that we’re running an honest operation here in Manhattan, which is a miracle in itself. There was a time when there was a payoff price on every crime that existed — including murder.”

  Back in her office, Ginny opened the World Almanac and read, “Nicaraguan and Honduran forces clashed near their common border, and, for the second time in 1986, U.S. helicopters transported Honduran soldiers to the vicinity of the fighting. On Dec. 4, Nicaraguan soldiers overran a Honduran border post in pursuit of Nicaraguan contras who opposed the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and who had established a base inside Honduras …” She read on until darkness fell, and then came to herself with a start. Time to go home. Time to end another day, having accomplished nothing more than she had accomplished the day before.

  “I am bored, I am tired, I am sick of this wretched job, which consists of indicting drug dealers and pushers and importers and wholesalers and finding them back on the street or replaced by two where there had been one, and everybody talks and nobody really gives a damn or does anything intelligent about it, and I take my pay and I am lonely and sick of the whole damn thing,” and having said all this to herself, she felt better, put on her coat, slung her bag over her shoulder, and left her office and walked down the long, dismal hallway that led to the wet streets.

  And on the way, she asked herself, “Would I? Would I leak this lovely story? I was admonished, but I didn’t give my word, and Morty, bless his heart, has covered my ass. So, would I?”

  She mulled it over and over in her mind and came, finally, to the conclusion that she would. When the proper time arrived.

  The Meeting

  THEY NEVER TOOK the big plane to Washington. They had a corporate jet that they flew to El Paso, and from El Paso, they took a regular airline flight to Washington. General Swedenham and Colonel Yancy sat together, and Swedenham gave Yancy a whispered lecture on looseness of operation. “It’s the way the whole goddamn military is,” Swedenham said. “They never work anything out. They always go off half cocked — and they are nothing for us to imitate. Now look at the way they carried out that stupid operation in Iran, going in there with a rabble of fucken helicopters, with no support and no cooperation.” Swedenham was a man gone to fat, with a hoarse whiskey voice.

  “Yes, sir,” Yancy whispered.

  “Yes, sir, yes, sir — don’t give me any more fucken yes, sir, because I’m not asking for agreement but for a little common sense. On what basis did you hire this man Cullen?”

  “His record checked out. He’s an old pro, and Kovach went down the line for him with no holds barred. Kovach says —”

  “Look,” the general said, his whiskey whisper like a knife in Yancy’s side, “you pay off. Not Kovach, not anyone else. What in hell do you think we’re into? Do you think we’re playing games? What are you putting away, Yancy, a million dollars a month? Is that play money?”

  “Well, Senator—”

  “Stop!” the general said. “You stupid bastard. Never, never mention that name in public. Never. Not that name, not the name of the undersecretary.”

  “Well, sir—”

  “Oh, shit, don’t argue with me, Yancy. If we blow this, that forsaken Congress of ours will burn the flesh off our bones. You don’t understand one goddamn thing about this country. You can have everyone from the president down running a scam with you, and if the bubble bursts, you are alone.”

  “Not alone,” Yancy thought, “because if this bubble bursts, let me tell you, my fat friend, Colonel Yancy will cover his hide.” But he bent his head in agreement, reminding the general of the dog in a dog fight who accepts defeat by rolling over on his back with all four paws wagging in the air. He had never been fond of Yancy; he mistrusted men who were strikingly handsome, and Yancy was very handsome indeed. People said of Yancy that he looked like a film star, and he irritated the very devil out of Swedenham by wearing every ribbon he possessed, including his Good Conduct ribbon, every time he put on his uniform. Swedenham himself was retired, and he had the feeling that Yancy paraded his army activ
e-duty status at every opportunity. Swedenham considered it senseless and provocative, and he discouraged it, knowing, however, that he could not forbid Yancy to be in uniform. Yancy’s superior officers had only the foggiest notion of what his special duty consisted of, and certainly they were unaware that he was involved in the process of turning himself and others into multimillionaires by selling guns and taking payment in kind in a white powder that was very marketable. Swedenham himself had happily lived his life without guilt or conscience, and while he had never thought of himself as a sociopath, he had in his time given himself many a pat on the back for his ability to make hard decisions without blinking. In Vietnam, he had been an eager supporter of the body-count publicity and of such things as the use of Agent Orange, and in his practical manner of looking at things, he had always accepted the mercantile dictum “Buy cheap and sell dear.”

  Yet he had no desire to disaffect Yancy, who was stupid but useful; and now he soothed his feelings by telling him they were facing some hard decisions that would require stiff backbones.

  “Into combat!” he said to Yancy, squeezing the colonel’s arm.

  Monty met them at the Washington airport and led them to a black stretch limousine, and all the way to their destination at the safe house, he said nothing. The general understood that. You don’t talk in a car, no matter what, and Yancy was kept quiet by the grim expression on Monty’s face. Yancy knew who Monty was and that Monty was short for Dumont, but he also knew enough to ask no questions about him. Monty was elegant, he was handsome, his manners were exquisite, he was blond and tall, and he had the ability to look at Yancy as if Yancy were a tolerable insect. Monty was West Point.

  And Dumont Robertson was other things as well. In the three-hundred-acre Berkshire Mountains estate — land that the Robertsons had purchased in 1832 — he was the local mirror image of Ted Kennedy, standing firmly against whatever Ted Kennedy stood for and contemptuous of the fact that the Kennedys did not play polo. In the Berkshires, people like Monty practiced snobbery rather than socially packaged inclusion, but in New York, it was quite different. If the Berkshires were a place for the Robertson children to bring swain and mistress and screw and get drunk and sniff white Bolivian powders, New York demanded another set of rules. In New York, Monty was ready to break the ass, as he put it, of any of his four kids who might step out of line, and since they turned up in New York only on school holidays, his command was not challenged.

  The point being that Monty was a reigning prince of New York society. Not that Monty was fool enough to believe that there was such a thing as society in the classical sense. He had read enough about London and New York society at the turn of the century to know that the word did not quite apply — yet it was related, and the pack of stock manipulators, merger experts, crooked brokers, real estate kings, media stars, and billionaire lawyers who made up the current New York social mix were the only proper constituency he had. His was old money; theirs was mostly new but there was a lot of it, and Monty accepted the situation with grace. There were still Vanderbilts and Astors and Depews enough to decorate the edges, and there was his wife, a six-foot beauty with a shock of yellow hair that was envied as much as her social position. She needed her rank more than Monty did, although his was decently helpful.

  This helpfulness was a rather odd thing, for what Monty desired most eagerly was respectability, not the respectability of the middle class, but the respectability of an honored titled gentleman in London, a man whose name being linked with any devious or sub rosa project would elicit snorting disbelief. It was Monty’s simple wish to be both good and evil too, although in his mind he dealt not with evil but with necessity; and where the necessity arose, he dealt with it himself. He sent no other to run his errands, and because he buried his own dead in his own way, the creeps and misfits and scoundrels who abounded in government honored him and respected him.

  The general had known Monty for years — as had the others. Only Yancy was kept in ignorance, and when he attempted to make his own relationship with Monty, he had been met with a cold wall of resistance.

  “I don’t like that snotty son of a bitch,” Monty had once said to the general, “and I don’t trust him.” But the general assured Monty that, since Yancy’s ass was in the same sling, there was no need to worry.

  At the safe house, they were ushered into a conference room, where Fred Lester and Reynaldo Perez and another man, distinguished, white-haired, and nameless, were waiting for them. The white-haired man was addressed only as “sir,” and that in great deference.

  The conference room was tastefully equipped. Instead of the modern furniture that most boardrooms contained, this centered on a large eighteenth-century table with ten comfortable Chippendale chairs. On the floor, an Aubusson rug glowed with age and beauty, and on the walls a flocked wallpaper that was either the real thing or a fine imitation. On one wall, a portrait of Nathan Hale, that revered spy of the American Revolution, and on the facing wall, as a nod to the British cousins, a painting of Major Andre. In theory, the room was as safe as anything could be in this age of the new technology, but the general always maintained a sneaking suspicion that there was a microphone somewhere. Well, be that as it may, one functioned as best one could, and the reputation of this room was certainly the best.

  At the side of the room, a butler’s tray held Scotch whisky and bourbon and the various mixers. Ashtrays and a humidor with several sizes and shapes of Cuban cigars. The humidor was passed around. No servant entered or left the room.

  They took their seats in silence. Monty chose a Romeo and Juliet, clipped it with a gold cutter, lit it, and then opened the meeting bluntly with “Gentlemen, we have a difficult situation as a result of pure stupidity. I am being blunt because this meeting requires bluntness. Suppose you explain the situation to our friend here,” Monty said to the general, indicating the white-haired man.

  “On the recommendation of Captain Oscar Kovach, reserve, we hired as his copilot Lieutenant Joseph Cullen, also reserve. We needed a copilot and navigator desperately. Kovach is a poor navigator. Kovach described Cullen as a fine pilot on multi-engined planes and an excellent helicopter pilot as well. He also had a bad record of behavior in Vietnam. If not for his skill, he would have been busted on several occasions, and once it came to the edge of a dishonorable discharge. Air force records revealed a troublemaker and a brawler. He had a bad experience with an upper-class Vietnamese woman in Saigon, and she charged him. However, there was no criticism whatsoever of his courage and skill as a pilot, and when Kovach brought us his name for consideration, we felt we had found a good man. He was being well paid and was promised a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars at year’s end. He also knew that he was covered and that his own risk was minimal.”

  “That’s a justification,” Monty said, “not an explanation. But there’s no point in blame. The plain fact of the matter is that the situation exists.” He turned to Perez. “Your opinion, Colonel?”

  Colonel Perez resembled a bookkeeper more than a fighting man. Plump, pink-skinned, wearing gold pince-nez, his thin hair the color of corn silk, his trim gray worsted suit eminently proper, his white shirt and maroon striped tie totally conservative, he could have passed anywhere as an unimportant cog in some large corporation. He had just the slightest Spanish accent, and his tone was crisp and businesslike. “The operation must continue,” he said flatly.

  “Ah, well,” Monty said, “I think we must have some agreement on that. General?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Colonel?” to Yancy.

  “I agree — if it can.”

  “And Mr. Lester?”

  Lester was a large, large-bellied, easy-mannered, easy-speaking Texan. He wore boots hand-made for him in Mexico, and outside on the coat rack he had left a very expensive Stetson hat — in fact, four hundred and twelve dollars worth of hat. He enjoyed expensive things. His silk shirts cost six hundred dollars plus, his string ties eighty-one dollars, and his Mexican b
oots, embossed with silver, and in spite of the devaluation of the peso, fourteen hundred dollars a pair. He wore a diamond pinky ring of thirty carats, perfect and unsullied, and he never apologized for his love of the expensive. He was married to a gorgeous twenty-three-year-old blonde who, as he put it, cost him forty million dollars, settled on her with the marriage contract.

  His opinion was to the point. “Son, it’s a damn sight better than the oil business. In fact, today the oil business stinks.”

  The white-haired man said to Swedenham, “General, you engaged in an indiscretion. A man’s military record is neither a reliable nor even an approximate picture of what he was or might be in civilian life. Did you trouble to find out whether he had a police record? Whether he was religious? What his religion was? Whether he was a man of guilts, compassion, whether he was innocent of the rape charge or what went on there? What his education was? What other pilots thought of him?”

  The general shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “Very well. Water over the dam. Monty, tell us what we face. Put it all on the table.”

  “Yes, sir. This is in terms of all Cullen’s contacts to date. Fortunately, we are dealing with a tight-lipped man. His first contacts were made in Sullivan’s saloon on Ninth Avenue. We know that he let no one into his confidence there, and while he left with a prostitute whose name is Sylvia Mendoza, according to her own statement he never mentioned the priest until they were in her apartment. Of course, she’ll not mention it to anyone else. At the Church of Saint Peter the Rock, there was a bit of a problem. The church is served by an old priest and a younger curate. We had an operative, female, quite old, go there posing as Cullen’s mother. Of course, she understood that the confession was privileged; she only desired to ask the priest’s opinion as to the state of her son’s health, or some such thing. It was the old man, Immelman. He is dead of a heart attack. He was in fact suffocated, so there is absolutely nothing to indicate other than a natural death. He was a very old man.”