Firebird_A Spy Story of the 1960's

by Noel Hynd

  “You got that right,” said Sam.

  “You know who’s to blame?” Cooper asked in a mood of provocation. “The same people who Wallace is campaigning against,” Cooper said. “The Democrats take blue collar votes for granted and don’t do anything for those people. In contrast, George Wallace has been sounding like William Jennings Bryan, attacking concentrated wealth and privilege.”

  “Well! Look who’s sounding like a redneck today,” Sam said. “Jesus, Frank! Did Coleman Hawkins hit you on the head with his saxophone the other night or have you been reading Mein Kampf?”

  “I’m just saying, Sam,” Cooper continued. “When a working guy bitches about street crime, he’s called a Fascist by liberals who live in suburbs behind high fences. When he complains about his daughter being bused, he’s called a racist by people who send their own kids to private schools. Meanwhile, the liberal elite tell Polish jokes at Yale and on the Vineyard and nod when Gene McCarthy reminds them that educated people voted for him and the uneducated people voted for Bobby Kennedy. That’s the sort of hypocrisy that creates Wallace votes. And that’s what our man Marty saw out there in Buttcrack, Indiana.”

  “I got to get moving,” Sam said, standing up. “And your dead people are waiting for you, Frank. I’m out of here.”

  “Murphy was also sounding me out about writing an editorial endorsing Wallace.” Friedkin said. “Imagine that, after what I wrote.”

  “Ouch,” said Sam. “Doesn’t say much for our managing editor’s reading comprehension skills, does it? I’m not saying he is, just that it’s possible he’s senile.”

  With that, Rothman left the room. Friedkin also moved toward the door. Then he turned with an afterthought. “Cooper, you should talk to my friend Bill Bradford.”

  “The novelist? The writer?”

  Bradford was a native Alabaman. He was a World War Two veteran who had served in the Pacific. Before the war, had been written investigative reports for the American Mercury, the literary magazine co-founded by H. L. Mencken. After the war, he had returned to the Mercury, then branched out into freelance reporting and the authorship of books. These days, he was an independent reporter covering some of the most notorious events of the civil rights movement.

  “The one and only. He’s in town now. You want to meet for lunch or drinks some time before I fly out to Iowa again?”

  “I’d be honored by the introduction,” Cooper said.

  “We’ll make it happen,” Friedkin said. “Stand by, mate.”

  Cooper ate a late lunch at his desk. The German Communist was in place by three p.m. The write-ups on the music teacher and the air traffic controller practically wrote themselves. Three to five inches each, the writing assigned to a staffer. A long talk with the daughter of the car dealer's wife added dimension to that notice: three inches by two columns on the lower right of the page. Someone from the family would send a photo over. It had to be in Cooper's hands by four. It was. Cooper placed the photo on his desk, face up, as the rough layout started to take shape. His friends at the Eagle were used to seeing dead people face up on Cooper’s desk.

  By five thirty, the text and layout of the obituary page was complete. Cooper read it and reread it, looking for errors. At this point each day that he became maniacal for details and accuracy. He was still reading at a few minutes after six p.m. when Sam appeared again.

  “Hey, Frank,” Sam said. “I've been thinking about it all day. I mean, thinking about it seriously, like you asked me to. The biggest secret of the sixties? Remember?”

  “Yeah?” Cooper cocked his head skeptically and waited. “What?”

  “You mentioned all the elements: Mid-sixties. CIA. Cuba. Russians. Lyndon Johnson. Texas. So here goes: Who really whacked John F. Kennedy? And why?”

  Cooper looked at his friend for several seconds. “Damn,” said Cooper.

  “What's wrong?”

  “That's the biggest secret to me, too, Sam,” Cooper said. “That's what's been bothering me all day.”

  Sam shrugged. “Well,” he mused, “you asked. Listen, I'm looking at retirement in a matter of months and I've never gotten my hands dirty beyond sports. Know what I mean? I'd like to. Just let me back you up sometime, do some footwork. Maybe on something like this. Something solid so that I can taste it for myself just once.”

  “I'm not getting back into anything like that,” Cooper said, genuinely surprised at the request. “But if I do, Sam, you'll be the guy I holler for.”

  Cooper extended his hand. The two men shook.

  A few minutes later the photo of the car dealer arrived by messenger. The page was complete. Cooper sent the page to the city editor who made no changes. The page was quickly initialed on the Sixth Floor by S.W. Murphy. Work was done for the day.

  Chapter 13

  In the evening, Cooper and Sam wandered to the Kitty Hawk Bar on Third Avenue and 37th Street. Lauren Richie, Sam’s assistant, tagged along. Kitty Hawk was a bar and cruising spot for airline personnel, horny cockpit crews looking to score with equally horny flight attendants, who were often passing through the Third Avenue airline depot at 39th Street. The place was a five-minute walk from the Eagle editorial offices. Sam liked the atmosphere. Cooper always wondered about the double entendre of the Kitty Hawk name. They found a table and ordered burgers and Schaefer drafts. The beer arrived quickly. The burgers were AWOL for longer. They talked easily.

  Cooper had been ambivalent to Lauren so far. She was a J-schooler after all, new style. But she turned out to have as much substance as form, Cooper quickly decided. She had worked for the Hartford Courant for a year and the Boston Globe for two. In Hartford, she had been assigned to local high schools and minor sports at college level. In Boston, she was on a city desk and did her fair share of crime reporting. Less than two years ago at, she had moved to the Eagle, hoping for more responsibility. She had ended up back on sports, but with a sexier beat: local universities, plus professional hockey and baseball.

  To Sam, she was a godsend. She was fluent in Spanish. Sam used her to interview Latino athletes and get material the other New York papers weren’t getting, except for El Diario. She lived alone down in Alphabet City, as she called it, the area within the East Village near Avenues A, B and C, currently populated by ethnics, hipsters, artists, drug dealers and street criminals.

  “Jesus! Is a single girl safe down there?” Cooper asked.

  “I’m okay. I’m careful. I know the people on my street.”

  “Which block?” Cooper asked.

  “9th Street east of First Avenue.”

  Sam whistled. “Amazing you’re still alive,” he said. Lauren gave him a playful slap. Sam laughed. Cooper wondered if they were having an affair.

  “My boyfriend lived with me until a month ago,” she said. “I kicked him out.”

  “Got tired?” Sam asked.

  “Lenny couldn’t keep his wandering dick in his pants. I didn’t want to get clap from him. I changed the locks and put his stuff out in the hall. He came by, camped in front of the building and screamed for two days. Kept yelling that I was a whore and a slut. One of the old Polish ladies downstairs called her son, Stanislas,” Lauren continued. “Stanley came over with a Louisville Slugger and threatened to kill Lennie if he ever saw him on the block again. Sayonara, Lenny. Adios, arrivederci, auf Wiedersehen, au revoir, bye-bye, cheerio, shalom.” Lauren took a sip of beer. “Stanley’s this big bad-ass ex-green beret with half his left ear shot off, you know?”

  “Stan the Man,” said Sam.

  “Stan the Man Unusual,” said Cooper.

  “Frontier justice, tenement style,” said Sam. “Works every time.”

  Lauren paused. “I was married for a few months when I was nineteen,” Lauren said. “It was a mistake. The guy was a jerk. I got divorced after seven months. That’s when I got my life together. Took courses. Applied to college. Caught a scholarship. Decided I wanted to write.”

  “You like to cause trouble?” Cooper asked.


  She turned to him and for the first time flashed a beautiful smile. “I love causing trouble.”

  “With an attitude like that, you’ll find plenty.”

  “Yup,” she said. “Generally, I do.”

  The burgers arrived. Big thick ones with cheese, fries and pickles. Over the burgers and a second round of beers, they worked over many of the people they knew in common. Soon enough, the name of the managing editor, S.W. Murphy came up.

  “You worked for ‘Screw the World’ at the Daily News, didn’t you, Frank?” Sam asked.

  “Our paths crossed,” Cooper answered. “I didn’t have problems with him. Some people did.” He turned to Lauren. “Have you had to deal with him yet?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “Only once or twice. I’m grateful: Sam insulates me.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said with a laugh. “And I can’t do it forever. I just don’t want you to get disgusted and quit yet.”

  “What’s the matter with Murphy?” she asked.

  “He can’t be trusted, for one thing,” Sam muttered. “Siegelman, the old Fascist, signs his check. That’s where his ultimate loyalty is. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “The other thing is he’s a lunch box,” Cooper said. “I sometimes don’t think he could find cannoli in Little Italy.”

  Sam turned back to Lauren. “He lives up in Connecticut. Southport, I think,” Sam said. “Has a big place on the water near the yacht club. I think he has a boat. God forbid that he’d get his hands dirty with the day to day business of the big bad city where he edits the news.”

  “Know what he pulled the other day?” Cooper asked. “He phoned me about some obituary for a guy named Bernie Simowitz. He said a friend knew Bernie and wanted to know when the wake was going to be. I said, ‘What’?” Cooper continued. “Bernie Simowitz was Jewish, as if you couldn’t tell by his name. Jews don’t have wakes.”

  Sam winced, then, “They sit shiva,” Sam said, more to Lauren than Cooper.

  “Of course,” Cooper said. “And Murphy says. ‘Oh? Really? How did you know that?’ And I said, ‘By living here, S.W. How did you not know that?’ And he hung up on me.”

  After a moment, “Murphy’s an ass pincher, too,” Lauren said.

  “Yeah?” Sam said. “He’s never pinched mine. He pinch yours?”

  “Once in the hallway and once in the elevator. Every woman who works here knows to watch out for him.”

  “No surprise,” Cooper said. “He’s married but probably hasn’t been laid since Eisenhower. Maybe Truman. I’m okay with him day to day, but I know some people aren’t.”

  “He doesn’t pinch your ass,” she said.

  “Murphy’s a business executive, not a newsman,” Cooper said. “The two are different. You’d think a guy at the top of the publishing food chain would be on top of the news, but he’s not. Doesn’t know, doesn’t care.”

  “Then what’s his job?” Lauren asked.

  “Keeping our salaries and expenses down,” Sam said. “Hell, there used to be twenty-some papers in this city, now there are five. We cling to life here, don’t we? If we do our jobs and don’t embarrass Murphy with his boss, we can pretty much run our own sections.”

  Grudgingly, “I’d agree with that,” Cooper said.

  “Embarrass him with the boss, Mr. Siegelman, and we’d be in Chateau Bow Wow.”

  “So we can run any story?” Lauren asked, “as long as we can back it up?”

  “Any story that it’s smart to run. Or that doesn’t have a downside,” Sam said.

  “Or that hasn’t been ‘captured and killed’.”

  “In what way?” Lauren asked.

  “Okay, here’s an example,” Cooper said. “One of our reporters had a story about the governor of a state in our tri-state area. The guv is having it on with a hippie chick half his age. She scores marijuana for him and bangs him a couple times a week. So he puts her on his payroll The rumor is he likes to be spanked. They went to the Nixon convention in Miami this summer and she rarely left the governor’s room. Someone close to both parties had pictures and recordings. They skinny-dipped drunk at three a.m. in the hotel pool. There were pictures of that too. Frontals, know what I mean? The ‘someone’ brought the story here and got sent upstairs with it. Sixth Floor. Murphy paid for the exclusive story and the pictures, which he has in his safe. He captured and killed the story as a favor to the governor. No way it goes into print. So now the governor owes us big favors. The snitch sold us exclusive rights, so he can’t sell the story anywhere else or Murphy will sue him. One of these days the lady involved is going to give the guv a stroke or a cardiac arrest while he’s pumping away in the saddle and it’s going to get messy. But for now, we sit on the story.”

  “We don’t print the truth, Lauren,” Sam said, “we print what people tell us. And on top of that, sometimes there are stories you just don’t print if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Do you agree with that?” Lauren asked, looking at Cooper.

  Cooper opened his hands, shrugged and sipped his beer.

  “Usually,” he finally said. “At this stage of my life, yes.”

  “You guys are sellouts,” she said. “Come on. I like you both. But you’re sellouts.”

  “Hey, listen,” Cooper said. “I’m more reckless than Sam. I’ll go with a tough story and damn the consequences sometimes, but only if I feel it’ll do some good, all right?” He signaled to a passing waitress for more beer. “Or maybe after a long enough lapse of time.”

  Unsettled, Lauren pressed on. “Give me an example of a story you ‘just don’t print.”

  “Just one?” Cooper asked.

  “A recent one. Something that’s happening now,” she challenged.

  Cooper and Sam looked back and forth.

  “Okay, I got one!” Sam said. “This happened the other night out at the harness racing track on Long Island. The mob lost sixty grand because one of the top drivers, a guy named Sonny, accidentally let his horse get his nose into the trifecta. It ruined a mob betting coup. I was at the track that night. Normally we all go out after the last race on Saturday. We have some beers and food at the hotel bar across the street from the track. There were three harness drivers there and some Long Island newspaper guys. Sonny wanted to go to a different place. Word was Sonny might be in trouble. We knew what it was. The drivers had been fixing races. Every night. They’d pull up three of the horses in the race. Each driver who pulled up a horse would get an envelope with ten C-notes in it late in the evening. On this night, Sonny’s trotter ran away with him. Nothing he could do. So the wise guys were waiting for him in the parking lot behind the burger joint. They worked him over something bad. The State Police found him the next morning locked in the trunk of his car. Took him to the hospital. Questioned him. He wouldn’t rat out the people who’d pounded him. He’ll be out of racing for a month then he’ll owe them a few races.”

  “You’re telling me all the horse races out there are fixed?” Lauren asked.

  “No,” Sam said. “I’m telling you that sometimes you know big stories, but you also know better than to print them. That’s what you asked, wasn’t it?”

  Lauren sat back, all twenty-four years of her. “Maybe someday things will change,” she said.

  “Welcome to the real world, Lauren,” Cooper said. “Maybe you’d be happier writing fiction?”

  “Maybe you’d be happier if I flipped you a finger?” Lauren answered.

  “I’d be flattered.”

  Lauren kissed the center finger of her right hand and flipped off Cooper. “Get used to it,” she said.

  “Ouch,” Sam said. Cooper laughed.

  “Okay, then, Lauren,” Cooper said. “I got a question for you. You’re younger than the rest of us, I want to know what’s current, how you think.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What do you think is the biggest secret of our decade?”

  She didn’t ponder it for long. “That’s easy,” she said.
“Who killed Kennedy? And why the truth has been covered up.”

  Cooper thought of a response but didn’t immediately offer it. Sam beckoned to the bartender and his glass was refilled. Then Sam turned back to Cooper.

  “On your question, Frank,” Sam said. “A consensus has emerged.”

  Lauren looked back to Frank Cooper. “Why did you ask me that?” she asked.

  Cooper shrugged. “No reason,” he said. “Just something I’m working on. Unofficially. Forget I even mentioned it.”

  “Like hell I will,” Lauren said.

  Chapter 14

  There was an abrasive young man named Lou Kaplan at the Eagle, whose office was in Internal Administration across from Big Wally, the research computer. Lou was also the Computer Room Steward. Cooper and Lou Kaplan were not each other’s favorite people.

  “You know what you are, Cooper?” Kaplan had once told Cooper, who hadn’t yet mastered the new computers. “Out of it. Completely out of it in the modern world.”

  “And what you are, Lou,” Cooper had told him on several occasions, “is a high-tech janitor.”

  “Screw you, Cooper.” It went on from there.

  At six p.m. that evening, Cooper stood in the second-floor computer room, thinking himself alone. “No! I do not believe it!” The voice was adenoidal and harsh and very Grand Concourse. Cooper looked to his left. Lou Kaplan wore a jacket and was on his way home.

  “Hello, Lou,” Cooper said pleasantly. “Having a nice day?”

  “Frank Cooper in the computer room!” Kaplan honked. “The Eagle's last holdout against technology.” Lou grinned like a gargoyle. “Are you sick? Or desperate?”

  “Let's suppose I was desperate,” Cooper said slowly. He cautiously eyed the screen of the IBM terminal. On the dark blue background were a set of different instructions, ready to delve into the combined files of all Siegelman newspapers. “And I needed to run an Open Search.”

  “You're the only one on this paper who doesn’t know how.”

  “Could you show me?”

  Kaplan motioned to a shelf of software manuals. “There's an instruction book over there,” he said. “Study the first two lessons on the Power Search program.”