Manhattan 62

by Nadelson, Reggie

  He picked up a letter he had left on an antique desk against the wall. I had seen it. It was addressed to Nancy.

  “Did you read my letter?”

  “No,” I said. “I have to go now. Do you love Nancy?”

  “Yes,” said Max. “I still do. I can let you, would it be right to say, off the hook?” He smiled slightly, sadly. “I know that Nancy gives information to the FBI. I believe she does this so they will leave her father alone. He is very ill. Or perhaps she does it because she believes it is the right thing. What came to me in that warehouse is that I love her anyway.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  October 26, ’62

  IMADE THE CALL I never wanted to make. From the hospital, when I had seen Bounine, I had phoned up the only friend who might still help me. She had said not to call. Said she would be in touch. Then, nothing. It was a chance I had to take. I had been asking friends for help, friends like Clay Briscoe, now this: I hated it. I hated putting them in jeopardy, but what else could I do?

  On my way to see Edward Forrester, I saw the fear on people’s faces, fear reflected in their eyes. I walked to Sixth Avenue where I saw a familiar figure. “Hello Pat,” said Muriel Miller; for some crazy reason I wondered if it was accidental. In shop windows, in bars, and cafes, every television was on, and people watched, speechless; a reporter said that the Pentagon had assessed the space in fallout shelters, and concluded that in the whole country there was space for 60 million people. For the rest of us, there was nothing.

  The gaslights were already on in Patchin’ Place off Sixth Avenue, as I arrived at the tiny house where Shirley Cowan lived.

  Shirley was past ninety, spry, an elegant woman with short white hair who had all her marbles; more than most. Her father had worked in Teddy Roosevelt’s department when he was Police Commissioner of New York in the 1890s; the first woman journalist to cover both world wars, she had known everyone who mattered, and had been pursued by many of them, though she never married. She had gone into the department as its archivist. In that room at the Centre Street headquarters, she kept files on every cop who had mattered, and some of them she had taken home with her when she retired to this doll’s house with poets down the lane for neighbors. She had had enough of cops, she once told me; but she never had enough; her files were her obsession.

  “I’m sorry, Shirley. I couldn’t wait any more. I’m sorry to come here like this.”

  “Just come inside quickly,” she said, closed the door and put the chain on.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Enough, Patrick. Enough. Your uncle was my friend. You’re my friend. You’re the one who always comes when I fall down, or make a fool of myself, and you always make me feel it’s your pleasure.”

  “It is.”

  When I entered the little parlor, she kissed my cheek and said simply, “You’re in terrible trouble, Patrick. When you telephoned me on Tuesday, I went through my files, and I made a few phone calls, and if you are somehow involved with Homer Logan, if you’ve got up his nose, and you have, it’s much much worse than you can imagine. Would you like a drink, dear? You’ll need one.” She asked me to pour out the whisky from an old glass decanter on an upright piano. Near the decanter were pictures of her—she had been a great beauty—with Douglas Fairbanks, FDR, Caruso, even old Joe Kennedy.

  “Thank you.”

  She cleared a pile of papers from a small armchair. “Sit. You are in very bad trouble, my sweetheart. I called you at home, but there was no answer.” She sipped her whisky. “Have you talked to your Uncle Jack?”

  “He’s upstate.”

  “Why don’t you join him? It would be a very good idea.”

  “I can’t. I’m so sorry, Shirley, but I’m in a hurry.”

  From the pile of papers, she extracted a brown file marked Homer Logan in her neat cursive script. “Logan has a reputation as a man hungry for power, but you knew that. He has been obsessed with getting the Mafia since the 1940s, when he came back from the war, and was only a young cop.” She turned the yellowing pages. “He thinks of every Mafia collar as a notch on his belt, so to speak, and he’ll do anything to make it, even if he has to bend the rules or corrupt the information. I do mean anything, Patrick. He takes risks. He puts himself in harm’s way. You see he idolizes Bobby Kennedy for what he did on the racketeering cases, and most of all on that union thug, Jimmy Hoffa. To make a Mob case, he feels, is to please Bobby. It’s his life.”

  I told her about the case on Pier 46. I told her how Logan had pushed me off it, and my own boss, Murphy, had gone along with him. “They threatened me.”

  “I’m not surprised. There are a few reporters who eat out of his hand, and write whatever he tells them, and of course, these make good stories. It’s never the whole truth. Logan has made certain gangsters disappear so he can claim his victories. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few cops who knew too much also found themselves off the force, or worse.”

  “What about the case on the pier, the dead Cuban? I heard they’re going to indict Cheeks Farigno.

  “It was set, then Farigno came up with an alibi. He says he was in Chicago at the time of the murder, and one of the locals, one of Sam Giancana’s men, confirmed it.”

  “Sweet Jesus. But I guess Logan will say, who can believe anything Giancana’s Mob say?”

  “Exactly. In fact, I think this will add fuel to Logan’s fire, because if he can get to Giancana himself … do you recall during the racketeering trial, when Bobby Kennedy said to Giancana, ‘I thought only little girls giggled, Mr Giancana?’ Homer Logan keeps that news clipping on his wall, framed.”

  “What about the young woman who was murdered last summer on the High Line?”

  “It was dreadful. I looked it up, the best I could, but some of the files were missing, and I can only get access to the archives on weekends, when there’s no one around. I made a copy of the key.” Shirley asked for a cigarette, and I gave her one and lit it. “As far as I can tell, her murder was just possibly a real Mafia hit,” she said. “There are some reliable people who believe this.

  “Easy, then, to insist that the hit on the pier last week was the same perp, or a copy-cat.” I said.

  “Thank you. Shirley, I should go.”

  “I’m sorry if that’s not much help. I have a few more things on Logan. He’s a brutal man. When he was in the air force during the war, he was greedy for missions, and he bragged about people he had killed in Dresden. He flew the fire bombing of Tokyo, and was part of the mission to poison Japanese waterways. Of course, plenty of fliers took these missions, but they say that Logan begged for them, and talked about them, and kept photographs, the cities, the people, on fire; he has said we should do the same to the Cubans. The department had to shut him up,” said Shirley. “Have you heard of General Curtis LeMay?”

  “Sure. He’s crazy. He wants to nuke everyone.”

  “He was Logan’s commanding officer.”

  I got up. “Thanks, Shirley. Will you be OK?”

  “Of course,” said Shirley. “And be careful. I don’t want to hear they picked you up as some kind of rogue cop, or worse. Pat, just switch on the overhead light on your way out, would you? And don’t worry about me. Homer Logan can’t intimidate me, because I’m an old lady and people consider the old incapable and next door to senile. So I’m quite safe. And I know all about him.”

  “Thank you. Is there any more?”

  “His wives. The other women. The fact that he changed his name. He’s Italian. Peasant stock. Logan was his mother’s name; his real name is Enrico Pazzo. Where he got the Homer is hard to say, but he went into the military, he was very keen on becoming an officer, and Italians were not entirely popular during the war. So Enrico Pazzo become Homer Logan. He was raised on Mulberry Street. His father was a butcher who beat him up, and before he became an Episcopalian and attended services on Fifth Avenue, Logan went to Old St Pat’s where he was in the same confirmation class as your Uncle Jack. He hates everything to do with
Little Italy, with his family, the Church, which is probably why he is so obsessed with stamping out the Mafia. Thinks it’s responsible for giving Italians a bad name.”

  “Jack was pretty upset when I mentioned Logan.”

  “No wonder. Logan is certainly aware that Jack’s been onto him for a long time. Did you catch Adlai Stevenson on TV today? I thought he was marvelous, the way he stood up to Zorin was very brave, and he will opt for a peaceful solution to this wretched crisis, if they let him.” said Shirley. “I was always a great fan of Adlai’s.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  October 26, ’62

  “WHO DO YOU WANT?”

  “Mr Forrester. E. A. Forrester.”

  “And is he expecting you?”

  “Yes.” I had been to the building the night before. Forrester was out. I had gone up to his apartment and banged on the door; nobody had answered. A neighbor looked out and said they were away. “Back tomorrow. Now stop that racket.” She waited like a guard dog in the doorway until I left.

  Under the canopy of the apartment building on 12th Street, stood the sullen doorman in a shabby blue uniform, cigarette hanging from his lower lip, looking me over with the disdain of the underpaid, nothing except this tiny piece of turf to protect and the power that went with it. It took me a fiver to change his attitude. I didn’t like it. But the bastards were going to murder Adlai Stevenson, and I needed some kind of proof. If Forrester had been whispering in Stevenson’s ear, maybe he would help, if he could, if—and I remembered Ostalsky’s theory that he might be working both sides—he wanted to help. The 28th was coming fast; Sunday would be the 28th. It was Friday.

  “What name shall I say?”

  “Maxim Ostalsky.”

  The doorman tossed his cigarette butt into the gutter, and buzzed the Forrester apartment. After a few seconds, he turned to me. “He says you can go right up. 7C.”

  I could have saved the dough.

  On the way up, with the elevator operator, a dwarfish man who never said a word, I considered what the hell I was going to say. Unlike Max Ostalsky I had no spy tricks, nothing up my sleeve; I was no magician. All I knew was Adlai Stevenson was in danger. This was a long shot, but it gave me a focus; then the elevator door opened and I was standing in front of the door to apartment 7C.

  “Coming. Just please wait. I’m coming.” A woman’s voice trilled out from behind the door to 7C. I removed my sunglasses. Turned my coat collar down. Smile, I thought. The door opened a crack.

  “Yes?” A middle-aged woman in a pink housedress peered through the crack in the door. “Is that Mr Ostalsky?”

  “Yes. Hello. How do you do?”

  She removed the chain from the door and let me inside. “I’m Mrs Forrester. Please, my husband said you’re to go right to his study.”

  The walls were tan, the furniture, the rugs, all old and expensive, were brown; in the faint sunlight that crept between the slats of Venetian blinds swam motes of dust and anxiety.

  I followed her along a corridor hung with watercolors and framed diplomas. The study door was open, and behind a large partner’s desk with a green leather top, was the little man I had seen on television.

  He rose slightly. “Sit down,” he said, removing the thick-rimmed glasses. He wore an open-necked white shirt with a button-down collar, a woolen tie, a dark brown cardigan that you might see on some English professor. The whole apartment had an unused feel, an air of drab melancholy, as if it was an occasional stopping-off place, nothing more.

  “I wondered why Maxim Ostalsky would be here,” he said, pleasantly enough. “What’s your real name? You must know Max, then, isn’t that right? Is he still studying for his advanced degree in Moscow? What news of him? You are not Ostalsky, obviously. The news is not good,” he said, glancing at the TV where a reporter droned on about ships in the Atlantic, possibly carrying warheads to Cuba. There were already nuclear weapons on the island, I knew. Who will believe us? Max had said. Nobody, I thought; nobody at all.

  “My name is Patrick Wynne.” I remained standing. It made him very small. “I’m not, as you can see, Max Ostalsky.”

  “But you do know him.”

  “Sure.”

  “Is he well?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Please sit down,” Forrester said. “You were here yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. My wife and I spent the night with friends on Sutton Place after a long dinner.”

  “Was Mr Stevenson there?”

  “Yes, as it happens. Why?”

  He gestured at a chair. So I sat. I was taller than him anyhow. As he reached for a fancy cigar box, his long hands, the fingers slim and graceful, were out of proportion with his small body. “Cigar?” he said.

  “No. Thanks.”

  He held the match and puffed to get it lit, and smiled. “Cuban,” he said. “Lovely.”

  “Good for you.”

  “If you’re a friend of Maxim’s, I’m happy to meet you. Did you know I met him in Moscow? He was very helpful; he was an excellent guide. In fact, he gave me a whole new sense of what our Soviet friends were like.

  “You were there for what reason?”

  “Didn’t Max tell you? I sell refrigerators and other appliances and we were showing these wonderful American items to the Soviet Union. It was quite an event. Vice President Nixon, was there, I’m sure you recall.”

  “They liked it all, did they, the Russians?”

  “Of course. Mr Khrushchev is a practical man. I believe he would like all his people to have such modern wonders, and has promised them for everyone in twenty years.” He smiled. “Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to see that vast country, I really got to know its people, to understand their culture, even to help them, and I was also able to report to Mr Khrushchev on the economic advances in the USA. And I admired the Soviets, they knew I did, and they appreciated it. After the war, I often thought that only the Soviets understand, only they had suffered enough and knew what it was to fight, in their bare feet, with their bare hands, without food if necessary. You know, I met a few young Soviet officers when I went to Yalta.”

  “Fine, and you intend to cash in this big new market with your refrigerators? What about washing machines?”

  “Certainly. But I was simply there to help our country, as you might imagine. I’ve been of at least a little help in other places, I think.”

  “What kind of places?”

  “Indochina, for example. Shall we get down to business, Mr Wynne?”

  I gestured to the apartment. “This doesn’t look like the place a refrigerator salesman would live.”

  “It belonged to my wife’s aunt and uncle. When she first came to New York, she lived with them, and they were like parents to her. She finds it hard to give up.”

  “But you prefer Florida.”

  “This apartment permits me to spend some days in New York City from time to time.”

  “At the United Nations, for example?”

  “Yes, certainly, it’s a very important organization. Don’t you think so?”

  “I saw you on TV. I saw you sitting behind Adlai Stevenson.”

  “Maxim would have spotted that. I’m so sorry he hasn’t called by to see me in all this time.”

  “Then you knew he was in New York. What were you doing at the UN?”

  Forrester, looked at his watch, then removed his cufflinks, polished them on a tissue, put them on the desk, turned his cuffs back, like a man getting ready for action. I tensed up. Was there a weapon in that big mahogany desk? What was he, this little man who knew so much. “I sometimes act in an unofficial capacity as an advisor,” he said.

  “Who to?”

  “Excuse me one moment, Mr Wynne,” he said, and left the room. In the distance, I heard him talking to his wife, but I couldn’t make out the words. I rummaged in the green leather wastepaper basket, grabbed what I could, and shoved the bits of paper into my pockets. I noticed the gold cufflinks wer
e engraved with a military insignia.

  On the wall, diplomas revealed that Forrester had gone to Princeton and then to Columbia Law School. I had met his kind once or twice, the men with such certainty about everything, so much charming passion for their country, and the assumption of intimate knowledge of many others. He was CIA, clear as day, and Ostalsky must have spotted it; or maybe back in Moscow, he had been too naive.

  Propped on top of a bookcase were photographs from Indochina and Chile, Algeria and the Soviet Union, all meant to look like tourist snaps, but you would ask, why the hell was he in these places, and how did he know so many officials? In Moscow, he had posed with Khrushchev; in Vietnam with one of those dragon ladies who ran the show; in Cuba, he stood alongside Battista, the bastard who ran it before Castro took it over, and Forrester had a picture of a very young Fidel Castro too. I thought about Mrs Reyes’ description of the man who came up with the idea of the worm. I recalled her words: “Somebody quite silly, an American official in Washington DC, one of those, what do you say, gung-ho ex military men who feels he is a diplomat and understands a country after a few months …”

  There were family photographs, too, and snaps from Forrester’s college years when he had played football at Princeton. There were pictures of the young Forrester in uniform, on an airfield with three other young men. In the background was what looked like a B-17 Flying Fortress.

  I was looking at a picture of Bobby Kennedy, when Forrester returned.

  “I admire Bob,” he said. “I saw quite a bit of him when I worked in Washington. He has stood up for the few good men who returned from the Bay of Pigs. By the way, I asked my wife if she would make some coffee for us.”

  “I don’t need coffee. I need to know what the hell you were doing at the United Nations with Adlai Stevenson?”