"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (25 page)

After a long silence, during which he recovered, the gentle giant spoke: “There's something else I have to ask.”

“Mmmmm? I think I know.”

“You can tell me, Lee. You know I'd never rat you out.”

“I trust you, Gator.”

Hesitantly, Gator closed the remaining space between them so Lee could whisper. “Did you kill Sommers that night?”

Lee's smile turned laconic. “That, my friend,” he replied, “is one of those things you never will know, not for certain.”

“Make no mistake about it: espionage is a dirty business!

—Robert Maheu, 1963

 

An eye for an eye, the Mafia code of honor insisted, a tooth for a tooth. Hardly, though, in the Biblical sense, the phrase originally intended to keep capital punishment at a minimum. La Casa Nostra read those words less mercifully:

Vengeance is mine
, sayeth the Made Men.

Resulting in that final detail to be agreed on before Bob Maheu and Johnny Rosselli could cement their plan to assassinate Fidel Castro as a joint venture by the Mob and the CIA ...

Whenever Sam Giancana was not absorbed with his “family” business, Gold spent his hours banging the beautiful recording star Phyllis McGuire. With her older sisters Christine and Dorothy, she had created a sweet-spirited form of pop music back in the pre-rock ‘n' roll era of the early 1950s via songs like “Sugartime” and “Sincerely.” When the bright-eyed ladies would appear onstage or on television, they appeared to be the old-fashioned all-American girl next door, multiplied by three.

Pretty as they all were, Phyllis rated as ‘the looker.'

Why such a woman would allow a morally reprehensible man like Sam to be in her immediate presence, much less touch her, remained a mystery. The sisters had begun their careers by singing in rural Ohio church choirs and, when asked to play Vegas, refused to wear overtly sexy costumes.

Nope! This is who we are. Take us or leave us. Your call.

As to her adoration of Sam the Man, some speculated that Phyllis sold her soul, along with her body, to The Mob. This, in exchange for a high-finance recording contract which called for the most prominent of the sisters to ‘service' Giancana at his whim. As for Phyllis, throughout her life she consistently kept to a simple line: Giancana, while perhaps not the handsomest fellow, had been a true gentleman; she had no conception as to his ‘business' until years later; the relationship remained platonic, a series of delightful dinner dates.

Whoever, and whatever, one believed, this “relationship” continued into the early 1960s. Then Giancana found himself unable to spend as much time with Phyllis owing to pressing problems, most immediately the huge amounts of money Castro cost his Syndicate. Meanwhile, Giancana soon came to believe Phyllis to be cheating on him.

A deeply paranoid personality, he would rush into her apartment at odd hours, expecting to find the great love of his life in the arms of another man. Her
lover.

Who could it be? I'll know when I catch them in the act. Then ... Heaven help him. I'll castrate him first, then—

That never happened, no matter how carefully and often Sam re-adjusted the hours of his surprise visits. Some observers, around at the time, insisted no such competition ever existed, except in the hard, cold, threatened mind of Old Sam Gold. Others claimed McGuire, aware of Sam's jealous rages, used her brain. She never brought her boy-toy home (if he existed), fucking him in secret at his own place.

Six of one; a half dozen of the other. In time, the fear of her infidelity, initially a preoccupation, developed into full-blown all-encompassing obsession. Sam would smile at colleagues attending a top level/closed-doors meeting, nodding in agreement at suggestions about the Castro problem, secretly focusing on Phyllis: Those lips, those eyes; that hair, that
body
...

Like most cold-blooded ‘tough guys' when in the world of men, Gold was too terrified of the elegant beauty to broach the subject directly with her. Instead, he grew ever more moody, silent, sullen. Something was clearly wrong, but what? Phyllis wondered. When she asked, Sam glumly turned away. Eventually, he decided that the best way to
solve this problem would be to have her possibly non-existent lover whacked. But who was he?

*

Though ever-rising issues kept Sam hurrying back and forth between Chicago and Miami, Phyllis' career had her heading off once more to Vegas. Desperate for even a quick glimpse at her, Giancana learned that Phyllis would appear on a TV interview show from Sin City. He worked his schedule around the broadcast. As it happened, Phyllis shared airtime with a jovial, handsome, mustachioed comedian, Dan Rowan, of the Martin and Rowan team.

“And now, live from Las Vegas, here is ...”

In what may have been an innocent gesture, the most elegant if enigmatic McGuire sister, hoping to offer viewers a sense of the camaraderie among showbiz types, took hold of the hand of Rowan. They smiled and made small talk. Giancana, ever on the lookout for any sign or signal, interpreted this gesture as evidence.

“It's him. He's the one! I'll fuckin' kill him!”

Faithful attendants, fearful he'd suffered a stroke, rushed in to see if they might help. The crazed mob boss stomped his feet, pointing to the small black and white screen. The others stood there, with no idea what had set him off. Sam, like most paranoid personalities, never shared his conclusions with them, preferring to simmer until the proverbial pot boiled over.

Dan Rowan must die!

*

The timing of this epiphany struck Giancana as marvelously appropriate, considering the CIA's offer to join with The Mob in killing Castro.
Fine! But to do that job for you might make us vulnerable, particularly if anything goes wrong. That's why we need one of your guys, this ‘George' of whom you speak, to be the middle-man. And why we now ask you to honor our request for something totally unrelated to Fidel Castro ...

“See, right now, in Vegas,” Johnny Handsome explained to Dick Tracy, “there's this
bum
...”

Maheu's jaw literally dropped. He tried to control his body which had begun to shiver and shake. Initially, he had agreed to be part of the plot to destroy Castro just so
long as it didn't involve the leader's death. That had been reconfigured with the appearance of Jack Kennedy on the D.C. scene. Somehow Dick Tracy found a way to justify this additional moral conundrum which ran counter to his essential Jesuit values:
Thou shalt not
...

Now, the circle of guilt widened. He was asked to join in a conspiracy to whack an ordinary guy who had done nothing but sleep with some beautiful woman—if he had even done that.

God, almighty! Where do I draw the line? Or do we, in this new decade, the Sixties, inhabit a world in which there are no lines anymore, and anything goes?

Excusing himself abruptly, heading for a phone booth in the hallway, hands sweaty, Dick Tracy slipped in some coins. Maheu called Edwards; Edwards called Bissell; Bissell called Dulles (Allen); Dulles called Dulles (John F.); Dulles (John F.) called JFK: JFK gave the word to Dulles; Dulles passed the answer down to Dulles; Dulles to Bissell; Bissell whispered the decision to Edwards; Edwards told Maheu ... without anyone actually saying the precise words per se ... kill the fuckin' bastard.

My country,
Maheu repeated over and over again in his mind, right or wrong!
Heaven help me if it, and now I, fall into the latter category, for some day there will be a final reckoning ...

But I can't think of that now ... I must live in the moment ... and as always in my life do what I consider best for my country ... even if at the price of my immortal soul.

Maheu returned to the table. Barely able to speak, he at last muttered what Giancana and Rosselli were waiting to hear: the deal had been finalized. The CIA would become involved, if only “peripherally,” in the murder of a goofy, non-political stand-up comic. This, to prove to Sam Giancana, that the CIA was now aligned, and permanently so, with The Mob.

Who was it
, Dick Tracy tried to recall,
first pointed out that politics makes for strange bedfellows?

*

Hours after the Fountainbleau meeting, Maheu sent O'Connell packing back to Washington. He boarded a plane headed for Vegas in the company of Johnny Handsome. A luxury suite awaited Maheu at the Sands hotel and Casino. After a troubled night's sleep he joined Rosselli for breakfast in a private meeting room though Dick Tracy, ordinarily a big eater, couldn't swallow anything.

“To show your absolute loyalty,” Rosselli had explained en route, “Sam Gold would like you
personally
to ...”

The scheme would go down this way: while Rowan was out of his suite, Maheu would slip in, planting a small microphone. This would allow Rosselli to tape anything that occurred there and report to Giancana whether his beloved was or was not a slut. If the latter, no problem. Then, back to Castro.

If, on the other hand, Rowan and Phyllis were 'involved,' Rosselli must arrange for the entertainer to be whacked or do the job himself. The CIA need not dirty their hands further.

Shaking, Dick Tracy explained over his untouched plate of eggs and bacon that he had wrestled with the issue all through the night. Finally, he could not bring himself to do it. The wiretapping would be simple for someone with his experience to perform; he'd done this sort of stuff often during his days of government service and, more recently, for Howard Hughes as to business associates. In such cases any information collected would result in fortunes lost or made.

But with Hughes there had been no blood.
Thou shalt not—

“It's a deal-breaker,” Johnny reminded him.

“I understand. So, after realizing that I could not do it myself, here's what I came up with, God forgive me.”

To try and make things work, without sticking his own hands directly in the muck—
the thief knows he is not absolutely evil as he is not a killer; the killer knows he is not absolutely evil as—
Dick Tracy
would bring in someone more expert than himself. Arthur J. Balletti, now Maheu informed Johnny, was already on his way.

Balletti would do the microphone plant that night while Rowan performed. That was the best Bob Maheu could offer.

Johnny excused himself and made a call back east to Sam while Maheu glumly sat, sipping his coffee, half-hoping his compromise would be rejected. If that were the case, he could walk away and not have to suffer guilt, even by such remote association. The aging Cold Warrior felt sick to his stomach when Rosselli jauntily returned. Sam had agreed.

God, I hope for Dan Rowan's sake that he's not banging this bitch. And, of course, for the preservation of my own soul ...

Rosselli and Maheu shook hands. Minutes later, Maheu headed for the airport, on his way back to Washington even as the plane that carried Balletti touched down in Vegas.

*

At first all went according to plan. The small, ordinary, nondescript Balletti patiently relaxed in his own room, watching TV, eating a club sandwich from room service. When evening set in, shows opened all along the Strip. Balletti then drew the needed materials of his trade from his luggage and rode the elevator up to what Johnny had informed him was Rowan's suite.

An expert at lock-picking, Balletti entered seconds after his arrival, no one else in the hallway. A moment later he slipped into Rowan's bedroom-area. There Balletti inserted a miniature microphone into the telephone on an adjoining table.

His work completed in less than two minutes, Balletti then prepared to quickly disappear into the night.

End of story.

Only, it didn't turn out that way ...

As Balletti exited the room, after peering out to make certain no one happened to be in the hallway, a maid at that precise moment finished cleaning the room two doors down. Such an intrusion rare at this hour, but necessary as the occupants had remained inside all through the day. Balletti had calculated the likelihood of his running into anyone just now would be miniscule. Maybe a million to one.

However, as anyone who has ever played the odds knows, that unlikely number can come up when one least expects it. Balletti stepped into the hallway and came face to face with the maid.

“Oh!”

Trying to cover for himself but shocked by her presence, Balletti stammered something absurd on the order of “How are you?” and “Nice evening!” Had he simply kept his trap shut and refused to make eye-contact, Balletti likely would have escaped unnoticed. His awkward speech and nervous gestures did cause the maid to grow suspicious. Besides, she recalled that this room was occupied by the comic even now performing downstairs.

Why should a stranger be in there, and alone? Clearly, something wasn't quite right here.

The maid made some feeble excuses to remain in the hallway, assorting towels on her mobile rack to appear busy, until this possible interloper stepped into the elevator. The moment he was gone, she used her master key to enter Rowan's room. Though the phone wire had been planted so effectively she could not spot it, the woman felt vaguely uncomfortable with the situation. While no tangible evidence existed, she relied on her woman's instinct and decided to do something about this immediately.

She might have called hotel security. If that had been the case, nothing more would have come of the matter. For this was a Mob-owned casino-hotel and such employees would have known what to do. Instead, for reasons she was not able to later explain, the maid reached for the phone and dialed the sheriff's office.