Kiss Me Twice

by Thomas Gifford

  In one of those curious coincidences that tend to give life in New York its unique texture, Winchell had also known Harry Madrid for ages. The connection there had been, way back in ’33, the Nazis. It was Harry Madrid who’d taught Winchell how to use a gun, and ever since Winchell, at Harry’s direction, had slept with what he called his “equalizer” in a slipper beside his bed. Winchell’s mother had been terribly upset that her boy was carrying a gun so Walter told her he’d quit. Anyway, the gun stuff had begun the night Winchell got mugged near Central Park and Harry Madrid happened to be passing by.

  It was a funny thing but Winchell had been entangled in the Nazi business longer than almost any other American in public life. It had begun back in early 1933, right around the time FDR went to Miami as President-elect to make a speech at Bay Front Park. While Roosevelt was speaking a drifter by the name of Joe Zangara, standing thirty-five feet away, opened fire in front of twenty thousand people and managed to kill Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago. Winchell was in Miami at the time, had just filed his column at the Western Union office, and was about to leave when a messenger burst in with the news of the shooting. Winchell took off on foot, raced to the jail, bluffed his way inside, and listened in on the interrogation of Zangara. He wired the story to the Mirror in New York immediately: the result was his first international scoop.

  While the attempt to assassinate FDR was all over the front pages, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler was observing in regard to the coming election that even if the German people should desert us, that will not restrain us! Whatever happens we will take the course that is necessary to save Germany from ruin! The endless night of the Nazis had begun but Winchell’s first reaction—based to some degree on Quentin Reynolds telling him, “Winch, Hitler’s nothing but a fag”—was merely scornful. But he laid on the scorn with a trowel. And quickly it turned to revulsion, more quickly than it did for Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who characterized the Nazis’ campaign against the Jews as “mild.” Winchell took to the air with one of his battle cries: “The Hull you say!”

  He persisted, even in the face of protests from his two employers—the National Broadcasting Company, which was afraid the German authorities might cut off their correspondent in Berlin, and William Randolph Hearst, who was both adamantly anti-British and fearful for his news service, which flourished in Germany. Still, Winchell carried on against what he called “the Ratzis” and by the autumn he could barely contain his delight at a front-page report in Hitler’s Völkischer-Beobachter. Underneath a photograph of himself Winchell saw the caption: “A New Enemy of the New Germany.”

  Buoyed by this recognition he turned his attention—while never lessening his coverage of the Broadway doings of chorines and playboys—to the activities of a certain Fritz Kuhn, whom he described as “Hitler’s secret agent in the United States.” Herr Kuhn was in fact the leader of the German-American Bund, a propaganda unit for the Third Reich that was financed by Nazis both in Germany and the States. These revelations came at the end of ’33, and early in ’34 Winchell further announced that the Bund was composed of seventy-one units throughout the country, including twenty-three in the vicinity of New York City. While the rest of the press ignored the Bund, Winchell kept after Kuhn and his organization. On one occasion that had passed into Stork Club mythology Kuhn arranged to sit at a table near Winchell’s in the Cub room and subsequently tied one on, observing to his friends that Winchell was no better than FDR, both of them damn dirty Jews.

  Winchell’s attacks motivated his friend J. Edgar Hoover to turn the FBI loose on Kuhn, an investigation that uncovered illegal financial manipulations and led to Kuhn’s indictment for grand larceny and forgery. Kuhn was subsequently tried, convicted, and imprisoned. Which was all to the good, but not long afterward Winchell was set upon by Nazi thugs near Central Park. After commenting on Winchell’s parentage at length and in thick accents, they proceeded to blacken an eye, split his lip, and break a tooth.

  Which was where Harry Madrid entered the picture. He had known Winchell for years, from his coverage of the gang wars in the twenties and thirties. This particular night he’d noticed Winchell up ahead and was quickening his step to catch up and join him in his stroll. Then he saw the two figures come from the shadows. At first he thought they were fans paying respects and then he knew they weren’t.

  He lumbered onto the scene like a battle wagon and laid out one of the mugs with a hamlike fist, then broke the other’s ankle with his foot. Winchell, spitting blood, said, “What the hell took you so long?” He proved appreciative as only he could. The event was memorialized in the column and Harry Madrid was depicted not merely as one of New York’s finest but as a warrior in the fight against Hitler. No mention was made of the rough but simple justice Harry Madrid had administered later that night in the back room of a Broadway police station.

  Now Cassidy saw Elliot Roosevelt slide out of the booth and for a moment Winchell was alone, sipping his milk, jotting notes on the back of the folded column. Jack Spooner, the maître d’ of the Cub Room, appeared at his elbow. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Cassidy. What can we do for you this evening?”

  “I need a word with the Old Scrivener.”

  “Of course, right this way. Tonight’s your lucky night.”

  “And why’s that, Jack?”

  “Mr. Billingsley’s sending a bottle of the bubbly to table fifty. Who knows why?” He shrugged. “A Lanson ’twenty-eight. He’ll probably stick with the mild”—nodding at Winchell—“but you’ll enjoy it. You know what they say about gift horses, Mr. Cassidy.”

  Winchell looked up and grinned. “Mr. Touchdown,” he said, his customary greeting.

  “So, whattaya think of the suit, kid?” His raspy voice was as familiar as FDR’s had been. He patted the lapel with a perfectly manicured hand, flicked at the white handkerchief. He was left-handed and still held the note-taking pencil. “It’s new. New today. You like it?” Winchell was always showing off his new suits. He had a rule, new suits and old shoes. He had another rule that had to do with girls: have as many as possible, as often as possible. He kept his family safely tucked away on his sixteen-acre estate up in Scarsdale, and he had a peculiar relationship with his wife June, who knew how he carried on in town. Apparently they had a deal. On the one occasion that Cassidy had seen them together June had dominated the great man completely. She raised the children, who included, as well as their daughter Walda, two Chinese girls Walter had insisted on adopting. June was a pretty good hand at spending money, to hear Walter tell it. It was rumored that June had an iffy ticker but Walter never used that as an excuse for his affairs. He simply couldn’t get his fill of what he invariably referred to as pussy and enjoyed holding forth on the precise anatomical details of movie stars he’d slept with. He used to say that he had a regular exercise regimen—bending, stretching, and coming. Well, that was just Winch being Winch. Cassidy had never quite understood his penchant for girls he really didn’t give a damn about, but then it was none of his business. Socially Winchell had once introduced him to Polly Adler, whose “house” catered to the high and mighty, including a Rockefeller who was a regular patron. It was just the way he was and Polly had told Cassidy to drop by any time and she’d see that he was treated better than right.

  “It’s a nice suit,” Cassidy said.

  “Aw hell, you’re just saying that.” Winchell chuckled.

  “So who was the blonde?”

  “Madge Starling, for chrissakes. You been living on Mars or someplace? She’s a model—get it?” He winked, cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t even give her a thought. She’s busy tonight.” He gave a raspy laugh. “Anyway, she’s been on more laps than a napkin.” A tall man with elegant gray hair combed back in wings over his ears came to the table, leaned down, whispered something into Winchell’s pink ear. Winchell frowned. “Yeah, yeah, okay, okay—can’t you see I’m talking here? Later. Lemme breathe here, Erwin.” The man flushed as if he’d been swatted with a rolled-up newspap
er and backed away. “Guy’s a big producer, got a hot tootsie, want to impress her, get her into the column. I tell you, keed, it never stops. Everybody wants a piece of Winchell.” He sighed wearily, coping with the burdens of fame.

  “Well, Madge Starling is safe from my advances. I’m not really in the market these days, Walter.”

  “Sure, sure, you’re a Boy Scout. An Eagle Scout, you always have been and you can’t say I’ve ever held it against you—”

  “The thing is—well, I don’t quite know how to say this … I need your help. I’m working for Uncle Sam all of a sudden and …”

  “So? And what?”

  “Well … and Karin is back.” He hurried onward. “She wasn’t killed in the Cologne raid after all, she’s alive, they’ve brought her back. … I saw her yesterday—”

  “You wouldn’t shit me, Lew?”

  “No, I wouldn’t do that to you, Walter.”

  “So what’s she got to do with Uncle Sam? You’re sure, I mean, you’re sure she’s back—you’re not having some kind of fit or hallucination?”

  “Listen, Walter, it’s a pretty involved story. It’s all mixed up with the Nazis, for one thing. That’s why I’ve come to you. …”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Winchell was staring at him, eyes wide, appraising. “I’d say you’ve come to the right man, then.”

  Spooner personally arrived with the Lanson ’28. He uncorked it with a flourish and a pop like a pistol shot. Heads turned but then people were always aware of Winchell and the action at table 50. “Mr. Winchell?”

  Winchell pushed his glass of milk away. “For a change, John.” Spooner poured for both of them, then screwed the bottle down into the gleaming ice bucket and departed. Winchell lifted his glass and Cassidy saw that his eyes were suddenly full, glistening. Once in a while sentiment grabbed Winchell by the ears and shook him. “To your beautiful Karin … and her return home.” They drank and he plucked the handkerchief from his breast pocket, dabbed his eyes. It was a nice effect.

  Cassidy smiled. “And to Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea!” He tried to mimic Walter’s staccato delivery, the opening of the Sunday night broadcast that every American had come to know so well.

  “I’ll drink to them,” Winchell said. “Now what’s the story, Lewis?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “You know me, keed. I was good enough for FDR. I’m good enough for Hoover. Secrets are my game.”

  Cassidy made it as quick as he could but he told most of it. MacMurdo and Karin and the Brothers Moller and the Ludwig Minotaur and the submarine and the flight from Nova Scotia and how Maine might figure in it and how no one ever saw Manfred and the plane again.

  Winchell listened intently, said: “You want to help this MacMurdo bird? He’s on the level?”

  “Terry Leary checked him out today and I called Dad. He’s the real McCoy. Certified hero and Nazi hunter.”

  Winchell kept himself tightly coiled; it was his nature. But now he leaned back and gave Cassidy another long look. “One thing I have to ask you—are you in this thing to get Karin back? I’m telling you, love is a pisser and you can quote me. Love fucks up a man’s thinking, his judgment.”

  “I simply don’t know, Winch. She—this woman she is now—she’s never even seen me before, doesn’t know me—”

  “So what? You look at it that way, she’s only three years old, for chrissakes. We’re not talking about her, we’re talking about you. Do you want her?”

  “But I don’t know her either. … That’s the point. We’re strangers. Period.”

  “Okay. Then you want to catch Nazis. And think the Karin thing over …”

  “And I want to give value for money. Don’t forget the twenty grand.”

  “Hell, I make that much a week.” Winchell sighed and sipped champagne. “So what do you want Winchell to do?”

  “Nazis. Put me on to the Nazis around town. The top of the heap. I’ve got to get a jump start.”

  “You want to know who’s likely to be in on this escape-route business. Funny. I’ve been wondering about that myself. I hear things, doncha know. Mainly it’s got to be some of the old Bund supporters, the men I call the Reich’s American Bankers … the Unknown War Criminals.” For a moment he sounded as if he were hunched over the microphone, hand poised over the ticker he kept chattering throughout the broadcast. “These people even I have to be careful about. Me! Winchell! Sure, sure, I’m not afraid of the bastards, Winchell’s afraid of no man, but”—he shrugged—“some you gotta be careful with. …”

  “Such as,” Cassidy prompted.

  “Such as Karl Dauner—”

  “Dauner? You pulling my leg?”

  “Never. Never when it comes to the Ratzis, my young friend. Karl Dauner. Financier, member of half a dozen boards, art collector, you name it—if there’s money in it, Dauner’s up to his ass in it—”

  “But he was an outspoken foe of the Nazis, as they say. He was front man for some of the War Bond drives. … He got movie stars to go out on the road, sell bonds, he’s got a piece of some big studio or something. …”

  “All protective coloration. He was also the German American Bund’s biggest money raiser, so far behind the scenes that only Winchell knows for sure. Probably not more than a handful of men in the world knew that and I guarantee you I’m the only one who isn’t a Nazi. Believe me, Lew. Let me see what I can do. Come by the studio for the broadcast Sunday night. I’ll try to have something for you.” Winchell was tapping his pencil on the tablecloth. He had to get to work. Cassidy stood up and Walter stuck out his hand. “I’ll keep ’em crossed for you and Karin. You made a good team there for a while.”

  “Thanks, Winch.”

  “Now get the fuck outa here. I’m a newspaperman. And, Lew? Love to Terry. And Madrid, too. Ya gotta love Harry Madrid.” He was laughing, beckoning to the tall man called Erwin to come join him, when Cassidy called it a night.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE NEXT MORNING, A FRIDAY, Cassidy went in to the Dependable Detective office in the Dalmane Building near Grand Central and spent a couple of hours distractedly shuffling papers and looking out the windows at the dull gray end of September, absentmindedly snapping his suspenders. The Yankees had petered out and were finishing a disappointing third so there wasn’t a World Series to look forward to. It was still a wartime season and any chances they might have had to win it had been dealt away in midseason when pitcher Hank “Blisters” Borowy, with a ten-and-five record, was traded to the Cubs. He went eleven-and-two with the Cubs and led them to the National League pennant. Without him the Yankees floundered. Snuffy Sternweiss, the second-sacker, had led the league in batting with .309 but it had been a skeleton team and Cassidy hoped things would get better with the return of DiMaggio in ’46. But for now not even baseball could distract him from his own life and, oddly enough for a former star, he’d never had much interest in following football. Playing it was bad enough. It had never really caught his imagination the way baseball did.

  Dependable employed six full-time operatives and there was plenty to keep them busy but nothing for him to do that morning unless he wanted to check expense accounts. He didn’t and Olive nodded understandingly. She’d do it. Harry Madrid was the operations officer of the firm and he’d taken over, organized things. Harry and Olive didn’t really need either Cassidy or Terry Leary to keep things humming on a daily basis. Cassidy and Leary were there mainly to use their connections to bring in clients. And Sam MacMurdo at twenty thousand dollars was a pretty heavy sort of client. Nevertheless, there was nothing for him to do about the office. Every time he went out into the reception area he felt as if he were disturbing Olive. “You hear from Harry lately?” he asked.

  “Oh, sure, Lew. I thought you probably knew.” She pulled a piece of notepaper from a spindle. “He’s up in Maine.” She thought about that. “Lew, why is Harry up in Maine? We don’t have a case in Maine, do we? What should I tell people who call for hi
m?” Cassidy liked Olive. When Max Bauman had decapitated Bryce Huntoon with the undercarriage of the elevator in the Dalmane Building, Olive, poor kid, had been the first one in, the one who’d pressed the button and torn Huntoon apart. Long time ago. Olive said she sometimes had nightmares about it still.

  “Tell ’em he’s up in Maine,” Cassidy said. “He didn’t happen to say when he’s coming back, did he?”

  She looked up again, this time from the columns of figures in the weekly expense reports. “The weekend. He was going to try to be back this weekend.”

  Cassidy nodded. He went back into his office, took his suit coat off the hanger and put it on. Blue chalk-stripe. He took the satchelful of money and went to see Bert Higgins at the bank.

  There was a cold mist in the air. Wind currents slashed it around and he turned up the collar of his trench coat like Charles Boyer in the movies. It was the damp, chilly kind of weather that got inside his bad leg and made him remember running back that opening kickoff at the Polo Grounds. The weather had been coming on ever since that rainy day at the estate in Westchester. So warned, he’d brought his heavy stick with him, the one Terry had given him back in ’42. It had a heavy knob and a little button beneath the knob’s collar. When you pressed the button the knob lifted up into the palm of your hand. The knob was part of the handle of a ribbon-thin, razor-sharp sword. Now, standing at the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, he was simply leaning on it, waiting for a cab to pull over out of the early afternoon traffic.