Fat Sid said their dad knew Jules Schiffrin. Schiffrin kept the real Pension Fund books-liquor couldn’t numb that one fact.

Littell cut over to Lake Shore Drive. His feet ached and his trouser cuffs spilled sand.

It was dusk. He’d been walking due south for hours.

His bearings clicked in. He saw that he was three blocks away from a real live destination.

He walked over and knocked on Lenny Sands’ door. Lenny opened up and just stood there.

Littell said, “It’s over. I won’t ask anything else of you.”

Lenny stepped closer. Words roared out in one long string.

Littell heard “stupid” and “worthless” and “coward.” He looked Lenny in the eyes and stood there while he roared himself breathless.

36

Kemper snapped the lock with his Diners Club card. Lenny didn’t learn that it takes deadbolts to keep rogue cops out.

Littell never learned that INFORMANTS DON’T RETIRE. He observed the retirement gala from the street-and saw Ward soak up abuse like a true flagellant.

Kemper closed the door and stood in the dark. Lenny walked to the A amp;P ten minutes ago, and should return within half an hour.

Laura learned not to press embarrassing topics. She never mentioned that call at the St. Regis.

Kemper heard footsteps and key sounds. He moved toward the light switch and screwed the silencer to his piece.

Lenny walked in. Kemper said, “It’s not over.”

A shopping bag fell. Glass broke.

“You don’t talk to Laura or Littell again. You work Hush-Hush for Pete. You find out everything you can about the Pension Fund books and report exclusively to me.”

Lenny said, “No.”

Kemper hit the switch. The living room lit up-antiqueoverfurnished and trиs, trиs effete.

Lenny blinked. Kemper shot the legs off an armoire. The crash shattered bone china and crystal.

He shot up a bookcase. He shot a Louis Fourteen couch into stuffing wads and wood chips. He shot up a hand-painted Chippendale wardrobe.

Sawdust and muzzle smoke swirled. Kemper got out a fresh clip.

Lenny said, “Yes.”

DOCUMENT INSERT: 10/5/59. Hush-Hush magazine article. Written by Lenny Sands, under the pseudonym Peerless Politicopundit.

CANCEROUS CASTRO COMMUNISTICALLY CALCIFIES CUBA

WHILE HEROIC HERMANOS HUNGER FOR HOMELAND!

He’s been in power a scant ten months, but the Free World already has the number of that slogan-slamming, stogie-stinking strongman Fidel Castro!

Castro ousted the democratically-elected antiCommunist Cuban Premier Fulgenclo Batista last New Year’s day. The bombastic busby-bearded beatnik bard promised land reforms, social justice and pickled plantains on every plate-the standard stipends of welfare-waffled Commie commissars. He took over a small bastion of freedom 90 miles off U.S. shores, pathologically picked the pockets of patriotic patriarchs, nauseously “nationalized” U.S.-owned hotel-casinos, fried the friendly fragrant fields of the United Fruit Company and generally absconded with astronomical amounts of America’s most peonprotecting, Commie-constraining export: money!!!

Yes, kats and kittens, it all comes down to divinely-deigned dollops of dollars-U.S., of course, those gorgeously garlanded greenbacks replete with pulsatingly powerful Presidential portraits, caricatures captivating in their corrosive condemnation of Communism!!!

Item: the beatnik bard bamboozled beleaguered bellhops at the formerly swank Nacional and Capri hotels in Havana, nastily nationalized their tips and rapidly replaced them with a regiment of rowdy Red regulators-bandy-legged bantamweight bandidos who also serve as crucifyingly-corrupt craps croupiers!

Item: fruit fields frantically french-fried! Peons passionately protected by America’s altruistically-altered egalitarian economy are now welfare-wilted., pauper-periled Red Recidivists grubbing for Commie compensation!

Item: Raul “The Tool” Castro has flamboyantly flooded Florida with hellishly horrific, hopheadhazarding amounts of the demonically deadly “Big H”: Heroin!!! He’s bent on needle-notching vast legions of Cuban immigrant slaves: zorched-out zombies to spread the cancerous Castro gospel between bouts of Heroin-biatused, junkiejunketeered euphoria!

Item: there’s a growing number of Cuban exiles and home-grown American patriots who take egregious exception to the beatnik brothers’ broadside of bamboozlement. Right now they’re recruiting in Miami and South Florida. These men are tantalizingly tough tigers who have earned their orange-and-black-not Red-stripes in the jungles of Castro’s jam-packed, jerry-rigged jails. Every day, more and more men like them are arriving on America’s shores, anxious to sing the mellifluous melodies of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

This reporter talked to an American named “Big Pete,” a dedicated anti-Communist currently training anti-Castro guerrillas. “It all comes down to patriotism,” Big Pete said. “Do you want a Communist dictatorship 90 miles off our shores or not? I don’t, so I’ve joined the Cuban Freedom Cause. And I’d like to extend an invitation to all Cuban exiles and native-born men of Cuban descent. Join us. If you’re in Miami, ask around. Local Cubans will tell you we mean business.”

Item: with men like Big Pete on the job, Castro should be considering a new career. Hey! I know a few coffeehouses in L.A. ‘s way-out Venice West who could use a gone beatnik poet like Fidel! Hey, Fidell Can you dig it, Daddy-O?

Remember, dear reader, you heard it first here: off the record, on the Q.T. and very Hush-Hush.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 10/19/59. Personal Note: J. Edgar Hoover to Howard Hughes.

Dear Howard,

I greatly enjoyed Peerless Politicopundit’s piece in the October 5th Issue of Hush-Hush. It was, of course, far-fetched, but subtract the purple prose and what remains is politically substantive.

Lenny Sands has certainly adapted to the Hush-Hush style. And as a fledgling propagandist he shows promise. I found the subliminally-planted plugs for the Tiger Kab Kompany to be a nice little aside to the cognoscenti, and especially enjoyed the lofty sentiments expressed by our pragmatist friend Pierre Bondurant.

All in all, a most salutary issue.

Warmest regards,

Edgar

DOCUMENT INSERT: 10/30/59. Summary Report: John Stanton to Kemper Boyd. Marked: CONFIDENTIAL/HAND POUCH DELIVER.

Dear Kemper,

A short note to keep you advised of some recent policy decisions, You remain hard to reach, so I’m sending this to you via courier.

First off, our superiors are now more than ever convinced that the Castro problem will extend. Although the President’s latest allocation came in low, we have every hope that Castro’s powers of persistence will loosen up the White House pursestrings. To paraphrase our friend Peerless Poiticopundit: “Nobody wants a Communist dictatorship ninety miles from our shores.” (I wish I could write reports like he writes yellow journalism.)

Mr. Dulles, Deputy Director Bissell and selected Cuban-expert case officers are beginning to plan for an exile invasion in late 1960 or early 1961. It is assumed that by that date the Agency will have a pool of at least ten thousand well-trained U.S.-based exile troops to draw from, and that public opinion will be strongly on our Side. The general idea is to launch an amphibious assault force, backed by air cover, from Gulf Coast campsite-launch sites. I’ll keep you abreast as plans develop further. And you keep at our friend Jack. If this plan stays on hold until after January 20, 1961, there’s a chance he’ll be the man to approve it or scrap it.