“That sounds like an epigram.”
“It is. Senator John F. Kennedy said it.”
“Are you enamored of him? Isn’t he some terrible liberal?”
“I’m enamored of his brother Robert, who is truly heroic.”
Helen pinched herself. “This is the strangest conversation to be having with an old family friend who’s known me since before my father died.”
That Idea-Jesus Christ.
Littell said, “I’ll be heroic for you.”
Helen said, “We can’t let this be pathetic.”
o o o
He drove her to her hotel and carried her bags upstairs. Helen kissed him goodbye on the lips. His glasses snagged in her hair and fell to the floor.
Littell drove back to Midway and caught a 2:00 a.m. flight to Los Angeles. A stewardess gawked at his ticket: his return flight left an hour after they landed.
One last brandy let him sleep. He woke up woozy just as the plane touched down.
He made it with fourteen minutes to spare. Flight 55 from Miami was landing at gate 9, on time.
Littell badgered a guard and got permission to walk out on the tarmac. A wicked hangover headache started kicking in.
Baggage men cruised by and checked him out. He looked like a middle-aged bum who’d slept in his clothes.
The airplane landed. A ground crew pushed passenger steps out.
Bondurant exited up front. Jimmy Hoffa flew his killers firstclass.
Littell walked up to him. His chest hammered and his legs went numb. His voice fluttered and broke.
“Someday I’m going to punish you. For Kirpaski and everything else.”
10
Freddy left a note under the wiper blades:
“I’m getting some lunch. Wait for me.”
Pete climbed in the back of the van. Freddy had a cooling system rigged: a fan aimed at a big bowl of ice cubes.
Tape spun. Lights flashed. Graph needles twitched. The place was like the cockpit of a low-rent spaceship.
Pete cracked a side window for some air. A Fed type walked by-probably listening-post personnel.
Air blew in-Santa Ana hot.
Pete dropped an ice cube down his pants and laughed falsetto. He sounded just like SA Ward J. Littell.
Littell squeaked his warning. Littell smelled like stale booze and sweat. Littell had jackshit for evidence.
He could have told him:
I whacked Anton Gretzler, but Hoffa killed Kirpaski. I stuffed shotgun shells in his mouth and glued his lips shut. We torched Roland and his car at a refuse dump. Double-aught buckshot blew his head up-you’ll never get a dental-work ID.
Littell doesn’t know that Jack’s big mouth killed Roland Kirpaski. The listening-post Fed might be sending him tapes-but Littell hasn’t put the scenario together.
Freddy climbed in the van. He adjusted some graph gizmo and spritzed grief straight off.
“That Fed that just walked by keeps checking out the van. I’m parked here at all fucking hours, and all he needs to do is sweep me with a fucking Geiger counter to figure out I’m doing the same fucking thing he is. I can’t park around the fucking block ‘cause I’ll lose the fucking signal. I need a fucking house around here to work from, ‘cause then I can set up some equipment that’s fucking powerful enough to pick up from the Shoftel babe’s pad, but that fucking Fed bagged the last fucking For Rent sign in the fucking neighborhood, and the fucking two hundred a day you and Jimmy are paying me ain’t enough to make up for the fucking risks I’m taking.”
Pete snagged an ice cube and squeezed it into shards. “Are you finished?”
“No. I’ve also got a fucking boil on my fucking ass from sleeping on the fucking floor here.”
Pete popped a few knuckles. “Wrap it up.”
“I need some good money. I need it for fucking hazardous-duty pay, and to upgrade this operation with. Get me some good money and I’ll kick a nice piece of it back to you.”
“I’ll talk to Mr. Hughes and see what I can do.”
o o o
Howard Hughes got his dope from a nigger drag queen named Peaches. Pete found the drop pad cleaned out-the queen next door said Peaches went up on a sodomy bounce.
Pete improvised.
He drove to a supermarket, bought a box of Rice Krispies and pinned the toy badge inside to his shirt front. He called Karen Hiltscher at R amp;I and glommed some prime information: the fry cook at Scrivner’s Drive-In sold goofballs and might be extortable. She described him: white, skinny, acne scars and Nazi tattoos.
Pete drove to Scrivner’s. The kitchen door was open; the geek was at the deep fryer, dipping spuds.
The geek saw him.
The geek said, “That badge is a fake.”
The geek looked at the freezer-a sure sign that he stored his shit there.
Pete said, “How do you want to do this?”
The geek pulled a knife. Pete kicked him in the balls and deepfried his knife hand. Six seconds only-pill heists didn’t rate total mayhem.
The geek screamed. Street noise leveled out the sound. Pete shoved a sandwich in his mouth to muzzle him.
His dope stash was in the freezer next to the ice cream.
o o o
The hotel manager gave Mr. Hughes a Christmas tree. It was fully flocked and decorated-a bellboy left it outside the bungalow.
Pete carried it into the bedroom and plugged it in. Sparkly lights blinked and twinkled.
Hughes blipped off a Webster Webfoot cartoon. “What is this? And why are you carrying a tape recorder?”
Pete dug through his pockets and tossed pill vials under the tree. “Ho, ho, fucking ho. It’s Christmas ten days early. Codeine and Dilaudid, ho, ho.”
Hughes scrunched himself up on his pillows. “Well… I’m delighted. But aren’t you supposed to be auditioning stringers for Hush-Hush?”
Pete yanked the tree cord and plugged in the tape rig. “Do you still hate Senator John F. Kennedy, Boss?”
“I certainly do. His father screwed me on business deals going back to 1927.”
Pete brushed pine needles off his shirt. “I think we’ve got the means to juke him pretty good in Hush-Hush, if you’ve got the money to keep a certain operation going.”
“I’ve got the money to buy the North American continent, and if you don’t quit leading me on I’ll put you on a slow boat to the Belgian Congo!”
Pete pressed the Play button. Senator Jack and Darleen Shoftel boned and groaned. Howard Hughes clutched his bedsheets, dead ecstatic.
The fuck crescendoed and diminuendoed. Jack K. said, “My goddamn back gave out.”
Darleen said, “It was goooood. Short and sweet’s the best.”
Pete pressed Stop. Howard Hughes twitched and trembled.
“We can have Hush-Hush print this up if we’re careful, Boss. But we’ve got to watch the wording real close.”
“Where… did… you… get that?”
“The girl’s a prostitute. The FBI had her place wired, and Freddy Turentine hooked up on top of it. So we can’t print anything that would tip the Feds off. We can’t print anything that only could have come from the bug.”
Hughes plucked at his sheets. “Yes, I’ll finance your ‘operation.’ Have Gail Hendee write the story up-something like ‘Priapic Senator Dallies with Hollywood Playgirl.’ We’ve got an issue coming out the day after tomorrow, so if Gail writes it today and gets it to the office by this evening, it can make that next issue. Have Gail write it today. The Kennedy family will ignore it, but the legitimate newspapers and wire services might come to us asking for details to enlarge the story, which of course we will give them.”
Big Howard beamed kid-at-Christmas-like. Pete plugged his tree back in.