24

SUNDAY, THE TWENTY-FIFTH OF SEPTEMBER, MY FATHER CAME TO MIAMI on the earliest plane out of Washington, and in considerable anticipation, I accompanied him to a meeting with Robert Maheu at the Fontainebleau. I say anticipation because Maheu had become a legend in the Agency. Given our compartmentalization, that was no routine achievement. An ex-FBI man who now maintained his own detective agency with Howard Hughes for a flagship client, Maheu could lay claim to more than a few professional feats. I had often heard of a monumental job he pulled off in 1954 for Richard Nixon, who was then, in the interests of an American oil group, looking to complete a multi-million-dollar coup at the expense of Aristotle Onassis.

It is possible Maheu was even more renowned among us for the pornographic movie he was reputed to have made on black-and-white film with two assistants, a man and wife from his office serving as actors to represent, respectively, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia and a large-bosomed blond mistress. Excessively grainy, streaked with light, the movie was filmed by choice under abysmal conditions and a few stills were extracted from the result. No one could later declare to a certainty whether the pornographic lover was or was not Josip Broz Tito when the product was circulated among carefully selected circles in Europe as a means of discrediting the Marshal.

On meeting, Robert Maheu looked to be the most elegant private detective in the nation. He was wearing a pin-striped suit with a vest, his Windsor knot was immaculate, and I would have taken him for a continental banker with a particularly expensive mistress.

“I’ll be going down the hall in a little while to have a chat with our new friends,” Maheu remarked, “and the news I’ve received from them is that Santos Trafficante will be present with Sam and Johnny today.”

“Good Lord,” said Cal, “Trafficante from Tampa?”

“Sam has brought him in. Says we can’t do it without him. Of the three, Santos does maintain the largest resources in Cuba.”

My father nodded. “What are the chances,” he asked, “of taping your meeting?”

“Mr. Halifax, a few weeks ago, I might have been able to. But now, after several get-togethers, I’ve become one of the boys. I tell you this not as a question of where my loyalties are—they are, of course, with us—but rather as a practical matter. It simply won’t work. Giancana and Roselli are feelers. They test your biceps, they run their hand down your back. In effect, you can’t shake hands without getting frisked.”

“Is an attaché case,” asked Cal, “too obvious?”

“They clam up,” said Maheu, “at the sight of one. I have to go in clean. But, as you know, I’ve trained my memory. I can save the high points for you.”

Perhaps he did. When he returned to my father’s room two hours later, it was to tell us that Giancana was stoked up.

“‘Robert,’ he said to me, ‘I have used a couple of names in my day. Cassro is one of them. Sam Cassro. I used Cassro before I ever heard of Castro.’ Roselli actually whistled. ‘You must be destined for this,’ he said. Giancana answered, ‘I have had the same thought myself. Destiny. Robert,’ he said to me, ‘I hate Castro. I hate that syphilitic, murdering bastard. I am ready to do it, Robert.’

“‘Good,’ I said.

“‘I am ready, except for one practical matter.’ Then he paused,” remarked Maheu, “and gave me a very sly look. ‘Maybe,’ Sam said, ‘the job is not necessary. I have heard it from the inside: The guy with the beard is syphilitic. He will not live six months.’

“Trafficante cut in at this point,” said Maheu. “It was the first time that he spoke, but I will underline my observation that even Giancana listens to him. ‘Castro,’ Trafficante said, ‘has 360-degree vision. With all due respect to Sam, I do not think Fidel Castro is all that ridden with syphilis, since his brain seems to be working very well these days.’

“Giancana was not ready to reply to that. So, he changed the subject. He picked up this Sunday’s Parade, which happened to have an old mug shot of him, and said, ‘Can you believe how fucking ugly they make me look?’ Roselli jumped right on this, of course. ‘A conspiracy,’ he says, ‘to tell the truth.’ Giancana goes, ‘Ha-ha.’ Then he stands up and pokes Roselli in the chest with a finger. ‘The fact of the matter,’ says Sam, ‘is that they got a fellow on these magazines, a worm they keep in one of the closets who comes out and crawls over fifty fucking photographs they got of me, and when he finds the worst, the worm pisses on it. Then these other newspaper creeps come in and sniff his piss—here’s the photograph we want, they say, sniff, sniff, and they print it. Always the worst photograph,’ says Sam.”

“You have total recall,” said Cal.

“Just about,” said Maheu. “I like this side of meeting with the boys. They are funny. Trafficante pops into the conversation to say, ‘Think of the impact you make on people, Sam, when they finally meet a good-looking fellow like you.’”

“This is entertaining, I must admit,” said Cal, “but what was substantive?”

“Very little. These fellows sidle up to a proposition. They keep their business vague.”

“We have a target date for late October. At the latest, early November.”

“Comprehended. The little shipment we discussed has been handed over to them. They assure me they are going ahead. They refuse, however, to divulge specific plans. There was some talk about a young lady who is the girlfriend of a gunrunner named Frank Fiorini who has been active in the Cuban exile movement. Apparently, she had an affair with Castro a year ago, and now this Fiorini is trying to convince her to go back to Havana, pop into Fidel’s bed, and drop a powder into his water glass. As backup, they are relying on a restaurant where Castro eats often, and the headwaiter is sympathetic to us. Nothing, however, has been nailed down to my satisfaction. We have no choice but to depend on people who can be as reliable or unreliable as they choose to be. I will not pretend this is a sound operation.”

“When do I get a look at your buddies?” asked Cal.

Arrangements were made for him to drop into the Boom Boom Room tomorrow near midnight. Richard Nixon and John Fitzgerald Kennedy would have had their first debate by that hour, and Maheu would be eating with Giancana.

“Fine,” said Cal. “I have a host of errands in Miami tomorrow.”

What they were, however, he did not impart to me.

Late on Monday night, so late that it was early Tuesday morning and Modene and I were sleeping in our new king-sized bed, I received a call from my father. “I’m wondering about the hygiene at the Fontainebleau,” he said, “inasmuch as I am calling you from my room.”

“If you haven’t brought your own bug-killer, assume the infection approaches plague levels.”

“Oh, we can cope,” said Cal. But I could sense how drunk he was. “It’s easier than getting up to go to a pay phone.”

“Couldn’t we have breakfast tomorrow?”

“I’m gone with the dawn, old buck.” He coughed his heavy cough. “I’ll pouch you a line.”

It was just as well he did. When I removed the strapping tape, it read:

Son—

I was introduced to His Nibs as a sportsman acquaintance of Bob Maheu’s. “Sportsman, huh,” asked G., “what do you go out looking for?” “Big game,” I told him.

“Like Hemingway,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

(Have to tell you—we were scorching the air with our mutual adrenaline.)

“Mr. Halifax is an old friend of Ernest Hemingway’s,” said Bob.

Giancana, I must say, took that one up. “I’d like to meet your friend,” he said. “Hemingway and me got things in common. I know the burg where he grew up.”

“Yes,” I said, “Oak Park.”

He stuck out his hand as if now he could trust me. “Oak Park,” he said, “you got it.”

I asked his opinion of the debate. “A richee versus a guy who’s sucking up to the richees. Take your choice, Mr. Halifax.”

Bob said, “Mr. Gold is for Jack Kennedy.”

“On points,” said Giancana, “I score it. More mileage with the richee.”

After I said goodnight to them, I was up for a while in the other end of the hotel, their Poodle Lounge, dreadful name for a place to get drunk in—I expect the ladies’ room is called Tinkle Time. At any rate, Maheu came by for a nightcap and told me Giancana is obsessed with the way Castro spoke for four hours today at the UN, same day—get it!—as our presidential debate. Giancana said to Maheu, and I quote Robert’s masterful Rules of Recall, “How are you going to kill a guy who can talk for four fucking hours? If,” said Giancana, “you stick a shotgun up his ass and pull the trigger, he won’t even fart.”

Son, that had me laughing like a banshee. If you remember, I called you up. For five minutes it must have seemed awfully important to me to get that arcane piece of hoodlum savvy over to you. How drunk, oh Lord, how drunk. The bones won’t take it much longer.

It’s hard to explain, but I rather like this Giancana. He gives me the confidence (on the most casual level of conviction, of course) that he knows as much about his business as I about mine. Let’s hope I’m right. I do wish security didn’t keep me from getting a little closer to him.

Yours,
Cal

In Post Scriptum:

As you’ve gathered by now, I am something of a hands-off executive. I cannot tell you how many times a day I send up blessings to Tracy Barnes and Dick Bissell for catching the brunt of administrative chores at Quarters Eye. Even so, I expend sixty minutes each morning reading cables-in, and another thirty for cables-out, every blessed working morning, and double on Monday. I think it is for this reason that I write letters, and preferably late at night, when my demons and old ghosts argue with me. I tell you this in case you have similar troubles. A good letter organizes the mind. So, if the mood comes on you, give me the rundown which, given our larger preoccupations, neither of us got around to last weekend, concerning your daily Zenith stint now that Howard Hunt is in Mexico. Even more, give me some idea of what Howard is really up to out there. The verdict at Quarters Eye is that Hunt is too ambitious, and so never sends the bad news until he is absolutely obliged to.

Incidentally, use the pouch. Address it: EYES ONLY, HALIFAX. Bind it with the right tape, needless to say.

Dad

I did not try to gauge whether I had a conflict of loyalties. It was enough that my father wanted some intelligence from me.