Corruption of Blood

ELEVEN

Karp stood in front of the counsel's table and looked down at the witness. Behind and above Karp sat Flores and four other members of the subcommittee, barricaded by their high dais. From his chair at the first witness table Paul A. David projected an air of irritable boredom. The bony face with the heavily ringed eyes told all who watched that a hardworking public servant was being subjected to unwarranted abuse.

Karp almost believed it himself. The guy was good, you had to give him that. Karp had ducked a million lies from culprits of various types in his career, but he could not recall a more bland and skillful liar than Mr. David. David was sticking to the same story he had given the Warren people. A man identifying himself as Lee Harvey Oswald had arrived in Mexico City on September 27, 1963. Thereafter, he had gone to the Cuban embassy and asked about a transit visa to Cuba; when told he had to go to the Soviet embassy for clearance, he went there too. The CIA had photo surveillance of both places and telephone taps and wall bugs as well. Oswald's voice, asking about applying for a visa to visit the Soviet Union through Cuba, had supposedly been recorded on tape, and the tape shipped to CIA headquarters.

"And what happened to this tape, Mr. David?" Karp asked.

"As I've said many times before, since we had no idea Oswald would become important later, the tapes were routinely destroyed by recycling, approximately a week after they were made."

"That would be early October? Assuming, of course, that the call was made on or about October 1, 1963. Yes? Good. Now let's turn to the photographic evidence. It's clear that the photo forwarded as being Oswald bears no resemblance to Oswald. Why was that?"

"It was a mix-up," said David in a tired voice. "Our cameras had malfunctioned."

"All the cameras at both Communist embassies broke down just as Oswald walks in? In all the time he was in Mexico City flitting back and forth among the embassies, you don't have a single clear picture of him?"

"Yes. As I said, we couldn't know he was going to be important."

"So, no pictures, but you did have a tape of his voice. That's how we know he was in Mexico, right?"

"Yes, that and identification by people working in the Cuban embassy."

"Yes," said Karp, "all those identifications. Well, obviously someone went to Mexico City and asked about those visas, and got his voice recorded. Mr. David, are you aware that shortly after the assassination, and a full month after you have testified that this tape was destroyed, the FBI listened to that tape and concluded that it was not the voice of Lee Harvey Oswald?"

You had to give him credit. He didn't blink. "I'm not aware of that," he said.

"So the tapes were in fact not destroyed."

"They were destroyed."

"Not according to J. Edgar Hoover," said Karp, brandishing a photocopy of the FBI memo. It was entered into evidence and David was given a chance to study it.

"So," Karp continued, "if the tapes were routinely destroyed as you claim, Mr. David, how do you explain the FBI listening to them a month afterward?"

"I can't explain it," said David.

"Does the CIA have a copy of this tape still in its possession?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Then who, if you know, ordered this evidence destroyed, after Lee Harvey Oswald became a suspect in the murder of President Kennedy?"

"I can't answer that," said David.

"What does that mean?" asked Karp sharply. "You haven't the knowledge or you refuse to share it with the committee?"

Then occurred the oddest thing that had ever happened to Karp in the course of questioning witnesses. David said, "I don't care to answer any more questions." Then he rose, turned, and walked out of the room.

Karp gaped, his brain frozen. He thought inanely of calling out to David to stop, and checked himself, thus avoiding seeming even more of a fool than he now felt himself to be. Flushing pink, he looked frantically up at the dais. There was no help there. Flores was conferring with Representative Morgan. The other members seemed bemused, including Dobbs, who was staring vacantly at the door closing behind David.

"Mr. Chairman," said Karp at last, "I think we have cause for a contempt citation here."

A frown and a significant pause. "The subcommittee will take this under advisement. Call the next witness."

Who was an official of the FBI; as it turned out, he didn't know where the tape was either.

When the hearings at last adjourned, Karp returned to the Fourth Street building in a foul mood, bit the heads off two junior staff who approached him with minor problems, and retired to his office, seething. Crane was not in. Sondergard was closeted with a trio of suits from the comptroller general. V.T. was with the photo analysts.

Karp tried to get interested in a report about nuclear magnetic resonance as a technique for comparing bullet fragments and found himself reading the same paragraph for the third time.

He was not, it appeared, interested in nuclear magnetic resonance. What he was interested in was Paul Ashton David. The man's face swam into his mind's eye, its calm assurance irritating even in memory. And something else about it, something he couldn't pin down. A face from the past?

He shook these maunderings away and refocused on how to nail David's slick CIA ass to the wall. On this too he was drawing a blank. The problem was secrecy. If the CIA was allowed to be the sole judge of what could be revealed and what could remain hidden for reasons of national security, then the committee might as well hang it up. Karp was willing to bring it to the test of a subpoena, and he thought that Crane would back him on it. The CIA people might claim that their oath of secrecy took precedence over the obligations under a testamentary oath. Fine-they would jail David on contempt charges, and then get the next guy in line and jail him, and so on. Obviously it would be subject to judicial clarification, maybe even a Supreme Court case. Karp started to feel better. He got out a pad and began making notes for a succulent piece of legal research.

The phone interrupted him.

"Butch? Clay here. I'm at National, just got in. Where do you want me to bring Veroa?"

"He's with you? How is he?"

"He's fine. Doesn't say much. Didn't give me any trouble about coming up either. Kind of a mild chubby little guy, an accountant. Doesn't strike me as much of a terrorist leader. You sure we got the right guy?"

"What did you expect, a slouch hat, flaming eyes, a beard, and one of those round bombs with a smoking fuse? Believe me, he's no sweetheart. I tell you what-stick him in the TraveLodge down the street-no, why don't you bring him over to the office. I want him to watch our movie."

They arrived forty minutes later. Veroa did indeed look like an accountant: tall for a Cuban, about five-nine, mustached, with thick black-rimmed glasses and a soft-looking pear-shaped body. Karp went into the file room, and from a locked file in a drawer labeled Administration Forms withdrew the spool of film. He called Charlie Ziller in to run the machine. Fulton, Karp, and Veroa grouped themselves in front of the screen while Ziller cranked the film up to the point marked by the little paper slip. The screen lit up on the road through the swamp.

"This is you, right, Mr. Veroa?" asked Karp when the right frames came by. "Freeze it right here, Charlie."

Veroa peered at the dim scene of the men around the jeep. "Yes, that is me. Younger, of course."

"Could you identify the other men for us?"

"Some, I think." He placed his finger on a squat, pop-eyed man standing near the jeep. "This is Angelo Guel. And here is Gary Becker." He rattled off some more Cuban names. He had forgotten who the driver was. Fulton wrote down the names in a notebook, also marking down the frames they appeared in.

"Who's the tall guy with his face moving away from the camera?" Karp asked. "Near the front wheel."

"That is Maurice Bishop."

"It is, huh? Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes. He was in charge of the whole operation. I knew him quite well."

"Good, okay roll it slow until I tell you to stop. A little more, more, stop! Do you recognize this man?" Karp pointed.

"It looks like Lee Oswald, but it is dark. I can't be sure."

"You never met him at these exercises?"

Veroa shrugged. "No, but there were many hundred men, and many exercises. He was not active, if he was there at all. I did actually meet him once, though."

"You did? When?"

"In September of sixty-three. I went to meet with Bishop at a hotel in Dallas, and Oswald was with him."

There was silence in the little room while they all digested that. "Let's, uh, move on, Charlie. Okay, Mr. Veroa, here's a scene in broad daylight. Let's see what you make of this."

The man in the black shirt and ball cap appeared.

"Oswald again, right?" Karp asked.

Veroa shook his head. "No, I know who that is. That is Bill Caballo."

"A Cuban?"

"No, not Cuban. But he spoke Spanish, I think with a Central American accent. An American. Bishop gave him to us, for weapons training. He was an expert with small arms, and an armorer." They were all staring at him. Veroa glanced back at the screen. "He resembles Oswald, certainly, especially in the shape of the face and the coloring. But Caballo was thinner. He had many… what? Pecas-freckles on his arms and his hands. Also, he was shorter than me, and Oswald was perhaps a little taller than me."

"But it might have been possible to confuse one with the other, huh? If you had never seen both of them together?"

A slight nod. "Yes, in that case, perhaps. I knew Caballo more than I knew Oswald. I met Oswald only that one time, with Bishop. Really, I didn't even remember that he was on this exercise, on this film. So I would not have confused them."

They watched the film a few times more, with Veroa filling in as many details as he remembered on the recognizable people shown in it. Then they grilled him for some additional hours about his long association with the man he knew as Maurice Bishop: the initial contact while Veroa was still in Cuba, the conversion of an unassuming but patriotic Cuban accountant into an underground agent, the failed assassination attempt against Castro, the escape from Cuba, the foundation of Brigada 61, the raids, the additional attempt on Castro's life in Chile, in 1971. Bishop had been closely involved as a planner and financier throughout his clandestine career, purportedly as the representative of "anticommunist businessmen." The CIA had never been mentioned.

"And are you still in contact with Bishop?" Karp asked. Veroa confirmed that this, at least, was too much to hope for.

"No, in 1971, after the Chilean thing failed, we… no longer trusted each other too much," said Veroa. It seemed to sadden him.

"How did that happen?"

"I had set up an organization in Caracas to run the operation. We had, the Cuban resistance, I mean, many assets in Venezuela, in the police and so forth. And we had a good deal of money too. The plan was that after Castro was killed in Valparaiso, the Chilean army would arrest the two assassins and allow them to escape. But the assassins didn't trust that plan; they thought they would be killed instead." He paused. "Actually, it was because of Caballo."

"Caballo? The man in the film?"

"Yes, he was in charge of the escape, in Chile. The assassins, they didn't trust him, so they arranged their own getaway plan. Which they kept secret from me. But somehow this other plan was betrayed to the DGI-"

"That's the Cuban counterintelligence agency," said Ziller.

"Yes, and then the assassins refused to go through with it."

"Who betrayed the new plan, do you have any idea?"

Veroa shrugged. "It was-how can I say-a cloudy situation. The Cubans on both sides, the Venezuelans, the Chileans, all penetrating one another, and the CIA penetrating them all. I have heard, although I cannot vouch for the report, that it was Caballo himself who sold them to the DGI, and then let it be known to them that they were sold."

"Why would he do that? Why should he care how they escaped? Didn't he want Castro killed?"

Veroa shrugged again. "Fidel is still alive, yes? And many other people are dead."

Karp glanced at Fulton and Ziller, who both looked blank. "Mr. Veroa… ah… help me out here. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Are you trying to tell us that all these plots against Castro that you were involved in were in some way phony? That the CIA guys you were working with, Bishop and Caballo and the others, were running some other kind of game?"

Veroa spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness and shook his head slowly from side to side. "It would be hard for me to believe that. Bishop I worked with closely for over ten years. He made it possible for us, for the Brigada, to do much damage to the Fidelistas. On the other hand… there were times when he did things that I did not comprehend."

"Like what?"

"Oh, once we were asked to deliver a briefcase to a couple of men sitting in a bar in Caracas. As our man left the meeting he heard them talking in a language he did not know. Later we learned that these were both Russian agents. Another time we were on a raid at night on the Cuban coast. We were involved in a firefight with the militia. Many of our people were wounded and several were killed, but we drove them off. We destroyed a power plant and left. Later, back in Miami, I heard rumors that another Cuban anticommunist group had been in a raid that same night on the same part of the coast, and had been badly hurt. I thought it was possible that these were the people we had fought. When I asked Bishop about it, he laughed and told me not to worry. He said that all this was coordinated at a level above him and they would not make such a stupid mistake."

"Did he ever identify this level above him?" Karp asked.

"No. We never talked about it."

"And you never worked with any other CIA contact?"

Veroa looked at Karp quizzically. "No, and I am not entirely sure that Bishop was a CIA contact. He certainly never said so. He always presented himself as an agent of private business interests."

"What about Caballo? The same?"

Veroa shrugged dismissively. "Caballo I always thought was Bishop's dog. He was a man with no conversation, a blank, a technician. Bishop was very different, a man of a certain quality, a thinker. But he was certainly getting orders from someplace, you understand. We knew this because often, when we had planned an action, he would say he needed a go-ahead. Then there would be a delay, and we would either do it or not."

"Do you still have contact with him, with Bishop?"

A shake of the head, and Veroa answered in a slow, reflective voice, like that of a wife abandoned for no reason. "No. He began to distance himself from us, from me personally, after the failure in Chile. He contacted me in the summer of 1973. We met in Hialeah, at the racetrack parking lot. He told me that the people he worked for no longer wished him to continue his relationship with me. He was sorry but this is the way it had to be. Then he handed me a briefcase and drove off."

"What was in the briefcase?"

"About a quarter of a million dollars," said Veroa.

Twenty minutes later, Karp and Ziller were still talking in the file room, by the light of the small blank screen, when V.T. Newbury strode in, his cheeks bright pink from the brisk outdoors. He held up a thick manila envelope.

"Our stills. Want to take a look?"

V.T. spread two dozen or so eight-by-ten glossies across a table. Consulting the notes Ziller had made during the recent viewing of the film, they were able to put names to most of the portraits. V.T. examined the picture of Bill Caballo with interest and they filled him in on what Veroa had said.

"So it's not Oswald after all," said V.T. "Fascinating! So now we have a guy who looks like Oswald, who's an operative with the anti-Castro movement, connected to the infamous Bishop, and is apparently an expert shot. My stomach is tingling."

"Yeah, this is a break," agreed Ziller. "I'll tell you one thing I'd like to do with these pictures. Take them out to Miami and let Sylvia Odio look at them. It'd be interesting as hell if she was able to identify the guys who showed up at her place as one of them." He looked at Karp as he said this, expecting some response, but Karp was staring fixedly at one of the photographs.

He said to V.T., "A couple of weeks ago, when we were talking about getting testimony from Paul David, you showed me a picture of him that they took when he appeared before Warren. Could you get that for me?"

V.T. went to the filing cabinet and brought back a folder. Karp pulled out a yellowed clipping and placed it beside the photograph Veroa had identified as Bishop.

"What do you think? David is Bishop, right?"

V.T. and Ziller studied the two portraits. "It's hard to say," said Ziller. "The one from the paper is a full face and the one from the film is a side view, and it's dark and blurry too."

"But I saw the guy in the flesh today," replied Karp. "It's the same guy. It has to be." He took the folder V.T. had given him, shuffled through it, and drew out a sheet of paper. "Look at his record," he continued, excitement starting to show in his voice. "David was a major player in the Bay of Pigs. He was a covert agent in Havana at the same time that Bishop contacted Veroa. He spent his whole career, practically, doing covert work in Latin America, and, of course, he was in charge in Mexico City when the fuckup about the tapes of Oswald's supposed visit happened."

"Yeah, the only thing missing is a link between David and this guy Caballo. If it turned out Paul Ashton David just happened to have a faithful Indian companion who just happened to look like Lee Harvey Oswald…"

He didn't need to finish the thought. They all rolled their eyes and made other gestures indicative of astonishment.

"I think this is what the poet meant by looking at each other with a wild surmise," said V.T. "This could be the road out of the swamp. It seems to me that the next steps are, one, getting Veroa close to David in the flesh to see if he'll make a positive ID of him as Bishop, and, two, putting the hounds out on Caballo."

"And three," added Karp, "getting that fucker back in front of the committee with a contempt citation ready if he tries the trick he pulled today. Charlie, why don't you get that started with Flores and his people, and get Clay to set up the ID run with Veroa."

When Ziller was gone, V.T. said, "Something else interesting in this Depuy material from Georgetown. Let's go into my office."

"This is the last notebook that concerns David Ferrie," said V.T., bringing out a tattered steno pad from the recesses of his desk. "Depuy interviewed him on February 12, 1967, about two weeks before he was found dead, apparently of a drug overdose. Ferrie was drunk or doped up-he usually was, toward the end-but Depuy wrote down everything he said, whether it made sense or not. Ferrie was complaining about being broke and abandoned by all his friends. He says, 'I was supposed to get ten grand on that PXK thing. It wasn't my fault. I could've… what the hell, I could still get whatever I want out of those bastards.' Interesting sentence; what does it mean? In the margin Depuy wrote 'PXK? Check out.' He must have asked Ferrie right there, but Ferrie says, 'No, the time isn't right. I gotta think what to do.' Then he starts rambling again. A little later, Depuy must've brought up the subject again, because Ferrie says, 'I need to talk to Term on that first. Goddamn Term won't talk to me anymore, none of those PXK cocksuckers.' Then more drivel. Depuy's got a marginal note, 'Term who dat?' "

Karp thought for a moment, mentally shuffling through the hundreds of names associated with the case, concentrating on the New Orleans subdivision.

"Wasn't there a guy named Termine, a Marcello hood from New Orleans?"

"Yeah, actually Marcello's driver, Sam Termine," said V.T. "I thought of that too, but I doubt it's him. Depuy was a New Orleans police reporter and he would have checked that out, or asked Ferrie right there if he meant Sam. No, this is a new name: I'll start a folder on it."

"Okay, but why is this interesting, V.T.? The guy was obviously nuts. It could've been a business deal that went sour in 1958. PXK sounds like a company, like TRW or LTV."

"Yes, that's true," V.T. agreed. "On the other hand, Depuy obviously thought it was something to follow up on. One last thing. In Depuy's pocket diary there's a notation in mid-1967, way after Ferrie kicked off. It says, 'Term in N.O. 9-63' and there's a phone number. I had it checked out. In 1963 it was the number of Gary Becker's Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean. So there's a string of connections: Oswald with Bishop and Caballo and Veroa; Oswald and Becker; Oswald and Ferrie; and now Ferrie and Becker and whoever or whatever Term and PXK is."

Karp paced for a few moments, thinking. Then he shook his head irritably and said, "Yeah, but so what? It doesn't get us any further unless we get more on this PXK and Term. Have you got any ideas on how to do that? No? Plus, this Ferrie thing is a miasma-it sucks us down into Garrison territory: innuendo, he-said-I-heard, and all the rest of the conspiracy bullshit. It's just another pair of loose threads."

V.T. gave Karp an appraising look and replied in a sharper tone than he ordinarily used, "Yes, but at least they're new loose threads. You've been telling me all along that the minutiae of the assassination weren't going to advance the cause. So we're concentrating on Oswald and his merry friends, which now you're calling conspiracy bullshit. Fine! But if you don't mind, I'll keep pulling on whatever threads I turn up, in the hope that sooner or later something will unravel. I mean, what else can we do?"

Karp had no good answer, and almost as a punishment, spent the rest of the day buried in that minutiae. By four, the transient excitement occasioned by Veroa's story had quite faded.

Clay Fulton tapped on the doorframe and came in. "You look beat," he said. "You should be up behind this. I thought we just got a good break."

"Veroa? Yeah, the entrance to another set of blind alleys. Did you set up the ID on David yet?"

"Yeah. David's speaking at some national intelligence officers' association thing in a hotel out in the burbs day after tomorrow. I figure I'll drive Veroa out there and let him loose. Antonio should be right at home in an old spies' convention. Anything else happen today?"

"The usual. Crane is still talking to that damn caucus, so God knows what's going to happen. Bea's still getting grilled by the bureaucrats. Everybody else is tracing witnesses or farting around with experts. Speaking of which, one of the kids went out to Aberdeen and found a film archive of people getting shot. No, seriously! Apparently the army collected films from the Nazis or wherever, showing people getting executed, mostly with head shots. Wound research. We're having a showing tomorrow."

"Great!" said Fulton after a heavy sigh. "All right if I bring the kids?"

"No problem. There's a pool on how many times we'll see an actual human being getting shot in the head and flinging himself toward the gun like Kennedy did on Zapruder. All the shots came from the rear, says Warren, but after the guy's head explodes he goes flinging backward."

"The old grassy knoll."

"Right. Old grassy knoll's got me. How was Miami?"

"Warm, with a chance of Cubans." Fulton snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah! Speaking of Miami: I found our mobster."

"Which mobster?"

"Mosca, Guido. Jerry Legs. The Castro thing…?"

"Oh, right! God, this is really important now. The Mob…"

"They were in on it you mean?"

"No, but did you ever see the film from the first press conference? Henry Wade, the Dallas DA, held it the day after the assassination. No? Interesting. He made two factual errors, one about Oswald's middle name and the other about the name of his phony Cuba committee. In both cases he was accurately corrected by a man standing in the rear of the room. It was Jack Ruby, the guy who never met Oswald, but somehow knew the exact name of an obscure organization Oswald was running. Yeah, I'd like to talk to Mosca about that. So… he's down in Miami? I thought he was a New Orleans boy."

"Was. He was with the Marcello organization back in the sixties, like we heard, then I think he must've got traded to Miami, for an aging left-hander and two utility outfielders. Worked for Trafficante and then ended up with the Buonafacci organization in South Florida. He still keeps his hand in a little but he's mostly retired now-he must be pushing seventy."

"You saw him?"

"Yeah, he's got a nice little place in Surfside, on the bay. Friendly guy, as a matter of fact. He made me some ice tea."

"What'd he tell you?"

"Not one fucking thing. He was very apologetic. So, unfortunately, unless he's been raping babies and we catch him at it, and put on the squeeze, the guy's a clam. Another dead end."

"Maybe not," said Karp.

"How so?"

"Mmm… it's a long shot, but when you said rape I thought of something I just heard about. Ray Guma may be in a position to do Tony Buonafacci a big favor. I think Mosca will talk to us if Tony Bones tells him to, don't you?"

"I feel like I'm back in college," said Maggie Dobbs happily. She was perched on a chair in front of her dressing table, a pile of blouses on her lap, watching pale bubbles rise in a flute of straw-colored wine. "Why is that?"

From her comfortable position on Maggie's bed, Marlene put down her own wineglass, now empty, stretched luxuriously, and answered, "Oh, I don't know. No kids whining. We're talking about men in a bedroom with clothes scattered all around. We're drunk. Feels collegiate to me."

She had known girls like Maggie at Smith, pale, arty creatures, inevitably engaged to embryo stock-and-bond men from Amherst, cashmere-sweatered, plaid-skirted, circle-pinned, who dashed blondly through the campus walks like flights of pallid doves. In the usual cliquishness of college life, she had not had a great deal to say to these creatures. Marlene wore black under army surplus, smoked a lot, scowled, talked dirty, and hung out with U Mass boys, or even (shudder) townies from Northampton.

That was, however, long ago, and the two women had both experienced an odd attraction to each other, as if catching up on some missed experience. Since meeting her at the big-shot party, Marlene had shamelessly parasited herself into Maggie's elegant and well-ordered life. Lucy was installed in a tony play group, hobnobbing with the Ashleys and Jennifers of McLean, under the eyes of perfect mommies or French nannies.

"No hitting," Marlene had said before dropping Lucy off. "You queer this deal and you'll go three rounds with me."

"But, Mommy," Lucy had complained, "what if they're mean?"

"They won't be mean. These are high-class kids; they already know how to kill with a look. In any case, if you have to slug somebody, body-punch. I absolutely don't want blood on the walls. Capisc'?"

Now the two women were lounging in Maggie's boudoir (and it was a boudoir, done in jonquil frillies) with a cold bottle of a nice Moselle nearly down the hatch, and a long afternoon of nothing much ahead.

"Are husbands the same as men?" Maggie asked musingly.

"Well, unlike in school," Marlene said, "the mystery is gone. It's like Christmas. You're in a delicious agony wondering what you're going to get, and then you tear the paper off and there it is-just what you always wanted. Or, not, as the case may be. Whatever, the thing is, the fascination after that is learning how to play with it. Or him. A different kind of agony, if you're into it. Which, as it turns out, I am. How about you? Where did you hook up with old Hank?"

"Oh, we met at a freshman mixer. I was at Connecticut and he was at Yale. We got engaged my junior year. Ho-hum. How about you?"

"Oh, Karp? We worked together in the old homicide bureau. No sparks or anything. Then we were at this party and he got plastered and I had to drag him home. I crashed on his bed. The next morning I was taking a shower, and he came stumbling in, hung over, and there and then, to the surprise of both of us, we fell on each other like animals and fucked our brains out. The rest is history."

"Oh, see, that's what I mean!" cried Maggie. "Nothing like that ever happens to me."

"Like what?"

"Oh, the unexpected. The dramatic. The exciting."

"Well, as to that, it's not all it's cracked up to be, the so-called exciting life. A lot of it is pissing in your panties. And besides, my life, ninety percent of it, is just like yours. Shopping, cleaning, taking care of the kid, working." She paused and looked at Maggie. "If you're bored you could get a job."

"Oh, right, that's what he always says. It's not being bored. Besides, I had a job, until Jeremy came. It's more like-I don't know-my life is in a, like a railroad siding, just waiting for an engine to pull me along the track again. And Hank is like some kind of express train roaring along the other track getting farther and farther away." She reached for the bottle and refilled her glass.

"What did you do, when you worked?" asked Marlene.

"Oh, some job in O'Neill's office. Hank got it for me, of course. Just, basically, your D.C. job: sitting around answering phones with other wife-ofs and the little hard chargers starting their Hill careers. Then when I quit, it was supposedly to start working on the files, getting the book ready, but I haven't honestly had the energy. And Hank hasn't said anything, but when I try to talk to him about the way I feel, he gives me this look, like I'm letting down the team."

"But you're still basically okay. You and him."

"Oh, like do we love each other. Oh, yeah." She twirled a lock of her shining hair, looked toward the heavens, and laughed. "Still madly in love!"

"What with? What do you like about him besides that he thinks you're letting down the team?"

"Oh, see, I didn't really mean that," explained Maggie in a nervous rush. "Actually, he's wonderful. The minute he looked at me, I went all squooshy."

"What was it? Body?"

"No, although that was all right-he was on the crew at Yale. No, it was something about his head, or his face. A look. You know, it was sort of intelligent, but not smart-alecky, and noble, and with depth. Like he was injured somewhere inside and hiding the wound. You know what he reminded me of? That central figure in Picasso's Saltimbanques, the one in profile?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean. It's one of my favorite paintings," said Marlene, thinking that guys who had that look probably got unbelievable amounts of pussy off little blond art lovers. Or Italian tough girls. Karp, of course, had it too.

"Oh, mine too!" said Maggie, delighted. "It's in the National. We have to go see it."

"Yes, two aging housewives standing rapt in front of a seventy-year-old painting, our knees trembling, our undies slowing getting damp…"

"Oh, stop it!" Maggie shrieked, and threw a blouse at Marlene.

Marlene caught it and glanced at the label. "Mmm… nice silk. From Bloomie's." She sat up and held the sleeves wide, framing Maggie's face over it. "It's not your color, really. What do you wear it with?"

"Nothing!" Maggie wailed. "I never wear it. I have cubic yards of clothes and I never have anything to wear."

"Drag 'em out," said Marlene, focusing her attention. "Let's see what we got."

An hour or so later, the two women stood looking at a gaudy pile of fabric three feet high, stacked on the bedroom floor.

"God, this is so embarrassing!" said Maggie with feeling. "I feel like such a jerk."

"I still don't understand it, really," said Marlene. "You know you can't wear all these saturated colors and wild prints with your coloring. And besides"-she lifted up a scarlet brocade jacket and a chrome yellow skirt- "none of this stuff makes outfits. Why on earth did you buy it all?"

"I don't know. I go into a store to shop and something happens-I become a zombie. I feel this pressure crushing down on me, and I guess I just buy the flashiest thing in sight and dash out. Or else, maybe I desperately want to be someone who can wear an acid green pantsuit."

"Well, at least you'll make Goodwill happy. I bet a lot of their customers can wear this stuff." Marlene held a red-white-and-blue bulky-knit sweater up to her chest, struck a Foreign Legion salute, and started to hum the "Marseillaise."

"Oh, stop!" laughed Maggie. "Actually, that'd look great on you. Why don't you pick out what you want and take it?"

Marlene dropped the sweater and gave Maggie a sharp glance.

Maggie blushed rosily and put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, God, I didn't mean…"

"No, I appreciate it, but the funny thing is I really have lots of clothes. I just didn't bring them with me into exile." She quickly related the story of her hasty departure from New York, leaving out the shameful proximate cause.

This, of course, was exactly what Maggie wanted to know. It struck her as astounding that someone with Marlene's extraordinary life, and moreover, one with impeccable Waffen-feminist credentials ("You ran a rape bureau?"), would dump it to go be a wife-of in Washington. She probed uncomfortably close to the real reason, and rather than snapping out that it was none of her business and perhaps adding that they were not actually schoolgirls pouring out their little hearts, Marlene changed the subject.

"What was that all about, what you said a minute ago-about files and a book?"

"Oh, that!" Maggie seemed to slump. A tiny, worried indentation appeared beneath the glossy bangs. "You don't want to hear it."

"Yeah, I do. It's something to do with your husband?"

"Oh, all right," Maggie sighed resignedly. "My husband, prince that he is, whom I love dearly, has this little obsession. I assume you're familiar with the Dobbs case?"

"No, what case?"

"See? Everybody in the known universe has forgotten about it but Hank Dobbs. Oh, yeah, and, of course the Widow Dobbs. Hank thinks it's on everybody's mind as soon as they meet him. Of course, he's been elected to Congress three times and nobody's so much as mentioned it, but there it is."

"What'd Hank do, anyway?"

"Hank? Nothing. This is about his father, Richard. Ewing. Dobbs." She said the name portentously, like a butler announcing a belted earl. She was fairly wasted by now, sitting tailor-fashion at the foot of the bed, with the second bottle of wine tucked in the cavity of her crossed legs. They had dispensed with glasses by this time. Maggie continued in the same exaggerated "Masterpiece Theatre" diction.

"Mr. Dobbs, as I never stop getting told by my husband, and the Widow, and all my in-laws, was… a prince. A perfect prince. Brilliant? Of course. Yale blah-blah, Harvard blah-blah. Brave? Of course! Decorated for bravery in the Pacific, Navy Cross blah-blah. Every little boy's dream of a daddy? Of course! Riding fishing boating skating baseball blah-blah-blah. I am not privy to the secrets of the marriage bed, but I have no reason to believe he would not have won the Distinguished Service Medal there too.

"Okay," she adopted a more normal tone, "after the war, Richard and Selma Hewlett Dobbs, that's the Widow, and little Hankie, go to Washington, to make a career. Richard gets a job with naval intelligence. Very important, hush-hush work. He rises, he has a brilliant career ahead of him-secretary of the navy, probably, and who knows? The sky's the limit. The family's wealthy and well connected in Connecticut politics, not the Kennedys quite, but in the same general zone. Richard, of course, knew Kennedy, knew him quite well, and didn't think all that much of him. According to report."

"Did you ever meet him? Richard, I mean," Marlene interrupted.

"Yes, a couple of times. He died in sixty-three. Right before Kennedy. Of course, by then he was totally destroyed by what happened. I remember a shy man with tinted glasses, who didn't say much. A sad, sad man, around whom everyone walked on eggs. Excruciatingly careful not to disturb him through word or deed."

"You know, now that you remind me, the name does ring a faint bell. Wasn't he involved in the Joe McCarthy business-some kind of communist accusation?"

"Oh, it was far, far more than an accusation, my dear. Richard Ewing Dobbs was tried for and nearly convicted of treason black as night."

"My God! This was what, during Korea?"

"Yes, indeed, and they'd just fried the Rosenbergs. It was a capital case. But what happened was that Harley Blaine stepped in and saved the day." Seeing Marlene's uncomprehending look, she added, "The lawyer. From Texas?"

The name stirred vaguely in Marlene's memory. One of the great defense lawyers of an earlier decade. She asked, "He was the defense."

"Yes, but there's more to it than that. Harley and Richard were biddies. Buddies. God, I have to lay off this wine. The kids will be back any minute. Well, they were friends from college. Went to Yale and then Harvard together and they were in the navy together. Started in Washington about the same time too. Anyway, what you have to understand is, when the thing happened to Richard, he became a pariah. That was how it was in the fifties. People he'd known for years cut him dead on the street. People wouldn't let their kids play with Hank anymore. Like that. Except for Harley. And apparently John Kennedy. Harley quit his government job in the Pentagon and took up Richard's defense. Kennedy didn't do that, but at least he didn't go out of his way to shun him. That was important."

"What had he done? I mean, why did they accuse him?"

"Well, that was the strange thing about it. Basically, the FBI had caught an employee of the Soviet embassy, a guy named Viktor Reltzin. Reltzin was an actual spy, no question about it. They caught him with top-secret technical data on the nuclear submarine-building program, which was getting started then. Reltzin claimed that he was just a courier. The way they worked it was, on a specific day each week, Reltzin would go out to Arlington Cemetery and check out a particular grave marker. There'd be a special arrangement of flags and flowers on the grave and that'd tell Reltzin where to pick up the secret stuff, a wastebasket or a hollow tree, whatever. And Reltzin would use the same method to communicate with his contact. 'Dead-drops' is the term, I think. You sure you don't remember this? It was a big scandal-using the graves of American heroes to commit treason and all. No? Well, believe me it was a big thing at the time. We have the clippings. Anyway, they put the screws on Reltzin and he gave them the name of his contact, who was a low-level Navy Department clerk named Jerome Weinberg. So the FBI set a trap… My God! Look at the time! The play group will be over by now."

"Uh-oh-don't tell me we have to drive over there and pick them up?"

"No," said Maggie, with a silly grin. "The Winstons have a driver. A drive-ah. Claude. Claude will deliver our little dears in the Caddy. Let's go downstairs so we can greet their smiling faces at the door. Or their shrieking faces, as the case may be."

The two women walked unsteadily down the stairway and into the kitchen, a big, cheery, light-filled room with built-in everything of the latest design, and divided by a long butcher-block counter. Maggie got coffee and hot chocolate efficiently started. Marlene was mildly surprised that Maggie could still function. Functionality while stoned was apparently a quality required in the wife-of business.

"So what happened then?" Marlene asked. "With Reltzin and what's his name? Weinstein."

"Weinberg. Oh, they nailed him delivering a package at Arlington. He cracked right away and said that he got the secrets from Richard Dobbs. That was it. They came and arrested him the day before Thanksgiving, 1952. No bail, of course. He was in jail for nineteen months while the trial went on. But Harley got him off in the end."

"How did he do that?"

"Well, all the government had was Weinberg's say-so, that and Richard's fingerprints on the documents. But they were his documents to begin with, so that didn't mean much. Then there was some secret stuff that I'm not really clear on. Harley Blaine found out that the CIA had this Russian defector, and that the defector claimed that Richard was innocent, that Weinberg had made the whole thing up to cover himself, to play that he was just the delivery boy. 'Agent Z' they called him, the defector. Very cloak-and-dagger. So the CIA said they couldn't let the agent testify because of national security, and Harley said he was going to subpoena him anyway, and they went eyeball to eyeball on it and the CIA said no go and that was it. The judge threw out the case. But that didn't help Richard much. He was 'accused traitor Richard Ewing Dobbs' for the rest of his life."

"That's some story," said Marlene. "So what does Hank want you to do with it after all this time? You said a book…"

"Yes, the book. He's collected boxes of stuff over the years. The trial transcripts, clippings, papers written about the case. It was quite a thing for a while among the liberals. Richard was what I think they called prematurely coexistent. He was opposed to the nuclear sub program. He thought it was a provocation, especially if the subs were going to have nukes in them. He thought it probably wasn't a good idea to have a navy captain who might be cut off from communications with the outside be responsible for pushing a button that might blow up the world. Richard didn't think much of most navy captains. There was a lot of talk about a dark conspiracy. Dreyfus Two."

"You're saying somebody set him up?"

Maggie shrugged. "What do I know? It's the family myth, anyway. Rickover and the hard-line cold warriors did him in. That's what the book's supposed to be about, but"-she shrugged again, helplessly-"I've made a start, an index of the material we have, and I've made a trip or two to archives, but Christ, Marlene, I did some research in college, but this needs a pro, a lawyer preferably, or a real investigative reporter."

"Why doesn't he hire one?"

"Control. He wants to keep total control. And I am apparently the only person he considers under total control, lucky me." She let out a bitter laugh. "Maybe when the kids are grown, if I still have a brain in my head…"

"Or…," said Marlene tentatively.

"Or what?"

"Well, my dear, not to blow my own horn, but beneath these colorful rags is a fairly hotshot criminal investigator. I could maybe take a look at your stuff-at least get you started."

Maggie's eyes went wide. "Oh, God, would you really? Oh, but Hank might, I don't know…" She stopped in confusion.

"Object?" offered Marlene, raising an eyebrow. "To a woman who made a total ass of herself at his party delving into the intimate family secrets? Well, you don't have to tell him unless you want to."

Maggie was pacing back and forth behind the counter, conflicting emotions playing over her small features. Finally, she whirled, jutted her sharp chin, brought her fist down on the counter, and said, "Yeah! Let's go for it!"

The women shook hands and laughed. Then a doubtful look appeared on Maggie's face. "But, Marlene, I mean you can't just do this, like, for nothing… your time…"

At that moment a heavy car door slammed and they heard shrill voices and the sound of footsteps on gravel. The back door flew open with a crash and the children dashed in, Laura dragging a sniveling Jeremy behind her. "Mommy!" she yelled. "Stupid Jeremy wet his pants!"

Marlene said, "Maggie, I tell you what. Just handle the three kids for half days. I'll take care of the investigation, and I'll owe you."

The thin man stood at the Eastern Airlines counter at Miami International and passed a stack of cash over the counter. The clerk printed out his ticket, and said, "Did you want to make your return flight arrangements now, Mr. Early?"

"No, I don't know how long I'll be staying there."

The machine whirred and spat out the ticket, which was snapped into a folder and handed over with a smile. "Boarding in fifteen minutes, Mr. Early, and thank you for flying Eastern."

The thin man walked toward the gate. He was tired. Bishop had mobilized him early in the morning, after a night spent at jai alai and drinking in Cuban after-hours places, noisy, garishly decorated rooms lit like supermarkets. He had recognized several people, from the old days, but nobody had recognized him.

James Early was just one of the four aliases he was able to adopt with the various ID papers he had stashed in his soft nylon carry-on bag. He hadn't used Bill Caballo in a dozen or more years, although people who knew him from those days usually called him Bill. It had been longer than that since he had used the name his parents had given him at birth. Had anyone shouted that name out now, as he moved slowly toward the gate, he wouldn't have looked up, or indicated by the slightest movement that he recognized it. It was not training that enabled him to do this, but a peculiarity of mind, a vagueness of the sense of identity. The thin man was like a boat. It didn't matter what name you painted on the stern; the important thing was that it floated and went where you wanted to go.

The thin man passed his ticket to the stewardess at the mouth of the jetway, and boarded flight 54 to National Airport in Washington, D.C.