American tabloid

88

1933 to 1963. Thirty years and parallel situations.

Miami, ‘33. Giuseppe Zangara tries to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. He misses-and kills Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.

Miami, ‘63. A Kennedy motorcade is scheduled for November 18.

Littell slow-cruised Biscayne Boulevard. Every inch of ground told him something.

Carlos told him the Zangara story last week.

“Giuseppe was a fucking nut. Some Chicago boys paid him to pop Cermak and take the bounce. He had a fucking death wish, and he got his fucking wish fulfilled. Frank Nitti took care of his family after he got executed.”

He met with Carlos, Sam and Santo. He bartered for Pete and Kemper. They discussed the fall-guy issue at length.

Carlos wanted a leftist. He thought a left-wing assassin would galvanize anti-Castro feeling. Trafficante and Giancana overruled him.

They matched Howard Hughes’ contribution. They added one stipulation: we want a right-wing patsy.

They still wanted to suck up to Fidel. They wanted to replenish Raul Castro’s dope stash and effect a late-breaking rapprochement. They wanted to say, We financed the hit-now, will you please give us back our casinos?

Their take was too convoluted. Their take was politically naive.

His take was minimalistically downscaled.

The hit can be accomplished. The planners and shooters can walk. Bobby’s Mob crusade can be nullified.

Any results beyond that are unforeseeable, and will most likely resolve themselves in a powerfully ambiguous fashion.

Littell drove through downtown Miami. He noted potential motorcade routes-wide streets with high visibility.

He saw tall buildings and rear parking lots. He saw Office for Rent signs.

He saw blighted residential blocks. He saw House for Rent signs and a gun shop.

He could see the motorcade pass. He could see the man’s head explode.

o o o

They met at the Fontainebleau. Pete ran a wall-to-wall bug sweep before they said one word.

Kemper mixed drinks. They sat around a table by the wet bar.

Littell laid the plan out.

“We bring the fall guy to Miami some time between now and the first of October. We get him to rent a cheap house on the outskirts of downtown, close to the announced or assumedto-be-announced motorcade route-and an office directly on the route-once that route is determined. I cruised every major airport-to-downtown artery this morning. My educated guess is that we’ll have plenty of houses and offices to choose from.”

Pete and Kemper stayed quiet. They still looked close to shellshocked.

“One of us sticks close to the fall guy between the time we bring him here and the morning of the motorcade. There’s a gun shop near his office and his house, and one of you burglarizes it and steals several rifles and pistols. Hate literature and other bits of incriminating paraphernalia are planted at the house, and our man handles them to insure latent fingerprints.”

Pete said, “Get to the hit.” Littell framed the moment: three men at a table and hear-a-pin-drop silence.

He said, “It’s the day of the motorcade. We’re holding our man hostage at the office on the parade route. There’s a rifle from the gun-shop burglary with him, and his fingerprints are all over the stock and barrel housing. Kennedy’s car passes. Our two legitimate shooters fire from separate roof perches in the rear and kill him. The man holding our patsy hostage fires at Kennedy’s car and misses, drops the rifle and shoots the patsy with a stolen revolver. He flees and drops the revolver down a sewer grate. The police find the guns and compare them to the manifest from the burglary. They’ll chalk up the evidence and figure they’ve got a conspiracy that tenuously succeeded and unraveled at the last second. They’ll investigate the dead man and try to build a conspiracy case against his known associates.”

Pete lit a cigarette and coughed. “You said ‘flee’ like you think getting out’s a cinch.”

Littell spoke slowly. “There are perpendicular side streets off every major thoroughfare that I’ve designated motorcade-likely. They’re all freeway-accessible inside two minutes. Our legitimate shooters will be firing from behind. They’ll fire two shots total- which will sound at first like car backfires or firecrackers. The Secret Service contingent won’t know exactly where the shots came from. They’ll still be reacting when multiple shots-from our fake shooter and the man guarding him-ring out. They’ll storm that building and find a dead man. They’ll be distracted, and they’ll blow a minute or so. All our men will have time to get to their cars and drive off.”

Kemper said, “It’s beautiful.”

Pete rubbed his eyes. “I don’t like the right-wing-nut part. It’s like we came this far and didn’t play an angle that could help out the Cause.”

Littell slapped the table. “No. Trafficante and Giancana want a right-winger. They think they can build a truce with Castro, and if that’s what they want, we’ll have to go along with it. And remember, they did spare your lives.”

Kemper freshened his drink. His eyes were still bloodshot from chloroform exposure.

“I want my men to shoot. They’ve got the hate and they’re expert marksmen.”

Pete said, “Agreed.”

Littell nodded. “We’ll pay them $25,000 each, use the rest of the money for expenses and split the difference three ways.”

Kemper smiled. “My men are pretty far to the right. We should downplay the fact that we’re setting up a fellow right-winger.”

Pete mixed a cocktail: two aspirin and Wild Turkey. ‘We need to get a handle on the parade route.”

Littell said, “That’s your job. You’ve got the best Miami PD contacts.”

“I’ll get on it. And if I find out anything solid, I’ll start mapping out the hard logistics.”

Kemper coughed. “The key thing is the patsy. Once we get beyond that, we’re home free.”

Littell shook his head. “No. The key thing is to thwart a fullscale FBI investigation.”

Pete and Kemper looked puzzled. They weren’t thinking up to his level.

Littell spoke very slowly. “I think Mr. Hoover knows it’s coming. He’s got private bugs installed in god-knows-how-many Mob meeting places, and he told me he’s been picking up a huge amount of Kennedy hatred. He hasn’t informed the Secret Service, or they wouldn’t be planning motorcades through to the end of the fall.”

Kemper nodded. “Hoover wants it to happen. It happens, he’s glad it happened, and he still gets assigned to investigate it. What we need is an ‘in’ to get him to obfuscate or short-shrift the investigation.”

Pete nodded. ‘We need an FBI-linked fall guy.”

Kemper said, “Dougie Frank Lockhart.”