14
I WOKE UP WITH A FULL SENSE OF WOE AND WAS STILL HANGING IN THE weight of my hangover when Harlot’s reply to yesterday’s communication came into Zenith on low-privilege circuit at 10:32 A.M. It was just as well, I decided, that I was there, hangover or not, to receive it.
SERIAL: J/38,761,709
ROUTING: LINE/ZENITH—OPEN
TO: ROBERT CHARLES
FROM: GALILEO
10:29 A.M. JULY 12, 1960
SUBJECT: BABYLON BAZAAR
May I say that your Babylonians are as strange to me as Kwakiutl Islanders. Addiction to a plethora of oral gifts? I have always subsumed the oral under the verbal. In my experience, responsible people allow but one deviation from the progenitorial compass, to wit, the age-old practice of bugger-up. There, commemorative power can be gained at the expense of temporary pollution. (Old agricultural equation.) Obviously, your Babylonians inhabit other tierra. I always thought an oral gift was a strawberry sundae. Keep up this otherwise splendid collaboration. Let all hang high on the hayride. When crinkly-eyes enters big white mansion, will they deck the halls with bales of hay for Miss Hayride?
GALILEO
I sat at my desk for a half hour. I hesitated to move. To the livid landscape of my brain was now added the irremovable image of Kittredge on her knees, Gardiner moon up before the priapic commemorations of Hugh Montague. I did not know whether to be in a rage, full of concern for Hugh’s mental condition, or obliged to recognize I had just been handed my leader’s conception of a joke.
I still had a full day’s work ahead of me to be followed by the nightly stint on HEEDLESS. I decided to ignore Harlot’s message. One would have to live with the possibility that he was now teetering on some far-off balance board, yes, Hugh Montague, my guide to fortitude, spirit, Christ, grace, dedication, and master of the rare art of Intelligence, was also a priapic wahoo!
Besides, I was full of my own fury. The sexual lavishness of Modene’s life! My past seemed so paltry. What had I to muster but Montevidean whores, plus one sordid affair with Sally Porringer? Modene’s description of Sinatra—“gentle, active, earthy”—cut into me like a stiletto. There was one question I did not care to ask myself. Could I make a better lover? The answer had to be: Not likely! Not with the Hubbard synapses!
I made a visual study of my surroundings for the next few minutes. It was a mode of procedure I often employed for restoring concentration. If I have not described any office I have worked in through these years, there has been little need. The walls are always white, off-white, yellow, tan, or pale green. The furniture is metal and gunboat-gray. The desk chairs are white, brown, gray, or black, offer pads for your seat, and can swivel from desk blotter to typewriter stand. The visitor’s chair is plastic: yellow, red, orange, or black. The floor, when not covered in gray linoleum, offers green or brown carpeting. The choice of photographs is unofficially limited. If I had a good snapshot of Modene, I would not have kept it on my desk. It would have stood out more than a bottle of ketchup. I did have a map of southern Florida on one wall, a map of Cuba on the other, and on the partition between was a calendar with twelve photographs of Maine harbors. I had a dark green wastebasket, an oak end table with an ashtray, a mirror near the door, a metal bookcase with four shelves, and a small cast-iron safe. In addition to fluorescent lighting plugged into a rack overhead, I had a desk lamp. I had had offices like this in every place I worked for the Agency, and I was yet to have an office of my own where the walls reached the ceiling. On my floor at Zenith, in a large loft-sized space, were eighty such stalls.
Sometimes I would decide that the purpose of such installations was to keep the mind working when the brain was ready to come apart. My gray, partitioned walls looked back at me like a pale blackboard on which all the writings had been many times erased. I took up my work again. Not until evening did I return an answer to Montague.
SERIAL: J/38,762,554
ROUTING: LINE/GHOUL—SPECIAL SHUNT
TO: GHOUL-A
FROM: FIELD
11:41 P.M. JULY 12, 1960
SUBJECT: HEEDLESS
Aware of your reactions, I will try to be more succinct.
On March 4, 5, 8, 11, and 14, there are phone calls, IOTA to BLUEBEARD, from Concord, New Hampshire; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Indianapolis; and Detroit. Long-stem roses, eighteen to a bouquet, are delivered every day. The conversations address themselves warmly to their next meeting.
On March 17, however, comes a shift in tone. A phone call, IOTA–BLUEBEARD, is received at the Willard Hotel in Washington. Transcription is, I fear, seriously garbled.
IOTA: Has Frank called you?
BLUEBEARD: Not recently.
IOTA: I tried to get you in Miami Beach last night.
BUEBEARD: What a pity. I happened to be out.
IOTA: I hope it was with a good friend.
BLUEBEARD: Oh, just a stewardess I work with.
IOTA: (garbled)
BLUEBEARD: (garbled)
IOTA: (garbled)
BLUEBEARD: (garbled)
IOTA: Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t you want to go to the opening of Frank’s show at the Fontainebleau?
BLUEBEARD: I have been looking forward to it.
IOTA: How long will Frank be in Miami?
BLUEBEARD: Ten days.
IOTA: What a good opportunity to see him.
BLUEBEARD: (garbled)
IOTA: I want to plan a date for us at the Waldorf on the 26th. Will you arrange your flight schedule around that?
BLUEBEARD: Of course. But . . .
IOTA: Yes?
BLUEBEARD: The date seems so far away.
IOTA: (garbled)
The rest is garbled. (Mar. 17, 1960)
From March 18 to March 31, while Sinatra is playing an engagement at the Fontainebleau, BLUEBEARD makes four round-trip flights between Miami and Washington. When off-duty, she stays at the Fontainebleau. During this period, there are no transcripts of calls from the candidate, but we do learn from BLUEBEARD–AURAL Mar. 31, that STONEHENGE, soon after BLUEBEARD arrived, sent a man called The Exterminator over to her room to unscrew her phone and reassemble it. Queried about this by BLUEBEARD, STONEHENGE replies: “I’m getting cautious in my old age.” We can assume a Buddhist phone tap was found and removed. This may account for the absence of BLUEBEARD–IOTA transcripts during the March 18–31 period.
Nonetheless, we do have two calls (March 21 and March 31) from BLUEBEARD to AURAL. The likelihood is that a separate phone tap was put in by the Buddhists at AURAL’s home in Charlevoix, Michigan. Part of the conversation of March 21 is worth quoting at length.
MODENE: I never know in advance whether Frank will be Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde, but when he chooses to be nice, the stars, Willie, do fall on Alabama. I have to tell you that living front and center does appeal to me after all these weeks of hole and corner with Jack. I adore Jack, but Frank, on stage, is another kind of human altogether. It’s close to overpowering. For the dinner show, I sat at a table with some of his friends, and all eyes were on him.
WILLIE: Who was at the table?
MODENE: Oh, Dean Martin and Desi Arnaz are the ones you’d know. But who cares? All eyes were on Frank. He snaps his fingers to establish the beat and pandemonium takes over. Every wife in the audience was ready to run away with him. And during the love songs, it’s the husbands who start to cry.
WILLIE: What did he sing?
MODENE: I can’t name it all. “Love Letters in the Sand,” “Maria,” “How Deep Is the Ocean,” “Just in Time.” It couldn’t have been better. He ended with “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”
WILLIE: Have you started up with Frank again?
MODENE: Miss All-Knowing, you happen to be wrong. He’s mad about Juliet Prowse. She’s with him all the time.
WILLIE: That might not keep him from trying to say hello to both of you at once. (Mar. 21)
At this point, Modene hangs up without warning. There is another transcript dated one minute later, of Willie calling the Fontainebleau. The desk clerk tells her that Miss Murphy, by request, is receiving no outside calls.
That is all we have until there ensues a long conversation with Willie on March 31, initiated by Modene. Much of this, in my opinion, is worth inclusion.
WILLIE: Where is the candidate these days?
MODENE: Away. Campaigning.
WILLIE: You didn’t see him in New York?
MODENE: No.
WILLIE: I thought you were going to see him on March 26th?
MODENE: Well, I didn’t.
WILLIE: Did he break the date?
MODENE: I missed the plane.
WILLIE: You what?
MODENE: I missed the plane.
WILLIE: What did he say?
MODENE: He asked why, and all I told him was, “I miss flights. I have to make so many at work that when I’m on my own, I miss flights.”
WILLIE: That must have been the end of you and Jack.
MODENE: Not at all. Jack and I spoke the day after, and we’re going to meet in Washington on April 8th, after the primary in Wisconsin on April 5th.
WILLIE: Then he wasn’t upset?
MODENE: He was cool about it. But I believe he thinks, just like you, that I started up with Frank again. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason he took up with me in the first place is because he wanted to see if he could take a girl away from Frank.
WILLIE: On what will you swear that you didn’t go back to Frank again?
MODENE: You can’t uncover a fact if it is not there to be found.
(silence)
WILLIE: What were you wearing at the Fontainebleau’s farewell party for Frank?
MODENE: I chose a turquoise blue for my gown, and shoes to match.
WILLIE: Oh, my God, with your black hair! It had to be stunning. I can see your green eyes setting off that turquoise blue.
MODENE: It took some thought.
WILLIE: I’m so envious. Did you meet anyone new at the party?
MODENE: Frank introduced me to a man named Sam Flood who seemed unbelievably sure of himself. Everybody at his table was in total deference to him. I enjoyed the table. The men around him all looked like they belonged in a musical comedy.
WILLIE: Were they that handsome?
MODENE: No. I mean a Guys and Dolls sort of musical. One of them must have been six-feet-six and over three hundred pounds. And another was meaner-looking than a jockey. The rest came in about five sizes. But the moment this man Sam Flood sat me next to him, the others didn’t even dare to look up from their plates. Then the Clan made a point of coming up to the table. They all had to say hello to this man, Sam Flood. He sat like a king. Sometimes he didn’t even bother to acknowledge the person. Sammy Davis, Jr., walked over with a big smile and Sam Flood waved the back of his hand in dismissal. Sammy just fled. “Don’t you know who that is?” I asked Mr. Flood. “I know,” he said, “who that is. That is the two of spades. Forget him.”
WILLIE: What does this Sam Flood look like?
MODENE: Average size. Almost ugly. But kind of attractive. He’s well dressed and has a good suntan. He looks manly, although in a quiet way. Maybe he’s president of General Motors.
WILLIE: Ha, ha.
MODENE: When Frank walks into a room, everybody jumps. But Sam is like the pope. I will say that something very heavy comes off him. He’s both attractive and repellent at the same time.
WILLIE: Fascinating.
MODENE: Exactly.
WILLIE: Did he make a date with you?
MODENE: He tried to, and I explained that I couldn’t because my job had me flying to Washington at eleven in the morning. He said, “I’ll have you switched to a better flight.” I said that I wanted to go as slated. I didn’t tell him how furious everyone at Eastern is by now with my sweetheart schedule.
WILLIE: How did he take the rebuff?
MODENE: He said, “I’ve been brushed before, but never with such nifty strokes.” Then he started laughing at his own joke. I swear, Willie, this Sam Flood is one gentleman who likes himself.
WILLIE: That was all you saw of him?
MODENE: That, I fear, is only the beginning. When I got back to Miami two days later, there were twelve dozen yellow roses in my room, six dozen for the day of my arrival, and six dozen for the day before.
WILLIE: Don’t yellow roses signify jealousy?
MODENE: If they do, he’s making a very large point. There have been six dozen yellow roses every day since.
WILLIE: Do you think Frank told him about Jack?
MODENE: Isn’t that the question? (Mar. 31, 1960)
Yours,
FIELD
I went back to the Royal Palms after work. It was close to midnight, and if I was over the worst of my hangover, I began nonetheless to brood over Giancana and his yellow roses. Sleep became hallucinatory. The large old air conditioner would start up like a hippo lumbering to its feet, only to settle down again with a grunt. The heat came back. In sweats and chills, I drowsed, and awoke in the morning with a sense of dread, for I now had the conviction that I ought to call my father.