8
SINCE I HAD TO SEND A CODED REPORT TO QUARTERS EYE ON HUNT’S lunch with the Frente, it was necessary to go back to Zenith. Once there, it required no more than a hike down the hall to start a search for Mr. Flood.
Back in Washington, at the I-J-K-L, was a large computer called PRECEPTOR available to any Zenith computer linked to Quarters Eye. PRECEPTOR was reputed to have fifty million names in its data banks. I was not surprised, therefore, when sixteen listings for Sam Flood came back on the printout. Fifteen, however, did not seem notably eligible: a major in the Air Force stationed in Japan, a plumber in Lancashire, England, a Royal Mountie in Edmonton, a black marketeer in Beirut also known as Aqmar Aqbal—why go on? The entry of interest was Flood, Sam, resides in Chicago and Miami—see WINNOW.
WINNOW was a computer on a higher level than PRECEPTOR and required a code entry number for ingress. Such information was locked away in Hunt’s safe. Since I did not care to wait until morning, I decided to call Rosen. He was bound to be in possession of forty or fifty code entries he was not supposed to hold.
To my agreeable surprise, Rosen was not only in, but entertaining company. I did not have to satisfy him, therefore, on my need to know. He was obliged to get back to his guests.
“I do hate giving out an entry without some sense of your purpose,” he nonetheless complained.
“Hunt wants the background on a Cuban exile who we think has a criminal record.”
“Oh, well, see!” said Rosen. “You do well to confide in me. WINNOW will just send you on into VILLAINS. You probably need both call groups. Hold it. Here it is. Respectively, the punch-in code is XCG-15, and XCG-17A as in capital A, not sub-a.”
“Thank you, Arnie.”
“Let’s talk when I’m not so busy,” he said, “feeding drinks to friends and guzzlers.”
Rosen certainly had a sense of where the bodies might be kept. WINNOW did send me on to VILLAINS and there I located Mr. Flood. The printout offered the following agglutination of information:
SAM FLOOD (one of numerous aliases) for MOMO SALVATORE GIANGONO, born in Chicago May 24,1908. Better known as SAM GIANCANA.
Over 70 arrests for crimes since 1925. Has been booked for assault and battery, assault to kill, bombing suspect, burglary suspect, gambling, larceny, murder.
G.’s staff now estimated at 1,000 “soldiers” in Chicago. G. also maintains ruling position over such loosely associated small-fry personnel as burglars, collectors, crooked cops, extortioners, friendly judges, friendly politicians, friendly union leaders and businessmen, gamblers, hijackers, hit men (assassins), loan sharks, narcotics peddlers, policy runners, etc., estimated at 50,000 total.
Annual estimated gross in Cook County—2 billion dollars.
NOTE: Above is unverified Chicago and/or Miami police data.
FBI evaluation: Giancana is verified solitary boss of the Chicago syndicate with interests extending from Miami, Havana (now defunct), Cleveland, Hot Springs, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, to Hawaii.
Giancana is one of three largest criminal figures in America (FBI estimate).
I went to sleep bemused. Join the Agency and discover the subterranean palaces of the world! I awoke, however, at four in the morning with one livid phrase in my head: Giancana is an avatar of evil! The words drilled through me with the shrill of a tin whistle. What was I getting into? I thought of my first rock face more than ten years ago. Indeed, I had the same thought: One did not have to do this!
When day came, I could pick up the phone and confess failure to Modene Murphy. She would take her 6:00 P.M. flight and see me no more. Then I could report a negative outcome to Harlot and be done with him as well. To keep on, however, as proposed—to hook the mermaid!—might be equal to catastrophe. It was obvious that Modene liked to talk. What I had most enjoyed about her just a few hours ago—that she was indiscreet, and so enabled me to get on with my job—did not delight me now. If we were to have an affair, and she told Sam Flood, well, which one of his fifty thousand hoodlums or one thousand soldiers would break my legs? Honest fear, jumping now like a raw tooth, called for a drink. I tried to estimate the risk. Coldly viewed, how much might it amount to? I could hear Harlot’s contempt: “Dear boy, don’t snivel. You are not a member of Mr. Giancana’s mob and he will not dismember you. Recollect—you belong to the campground of the Great White Folk; Sam, willy-nilly, was born into the fold of the dirty plug-uglies. They feel honored when we choose to mix our meat with theirs.”
With a second drink, I actually fell asleep. When I awoke at seven, it was another day, another state of expectations, and myself, another man. If my nerves were still awash, I could feel anticipation as well. Call it high funk. I thought again of rock climbing, and those days with Harlot when I awakened each morning to the knowledge that I was very much alive (because, after all, it could be my last day on earth). I was remembering how this sense of oneself as endangered and valuable was not the worst emotion to feel.
I also awoke with a great longing for Modene. By solipsistic measure, I now had one monument of a hard-on. Love for Kittredge, no matter how grand, could not subsist forever, I now decided, on letters rarely written and never sent. All the same, I felt conspicuously unfaithful to one-half of myself.