Max Collins - Target Lancer

“That would be up to you. You would have whatever support you needed, understanding that this is what they’re calling a ‘black bag’ operation. Enlist anybody’s aid you like. But it’s got to be set up that Uncle Sam had no part of it. And the spooks get … ‘total deniability,’ is the phrase.”

He nodded, the gray-blue eyes moving fast, like a guy watching a Ping-Pong tournament. I could almost hear him thinking how he’d like to be the guy responsible for getting Havana back for the boys.

“This ever gets connected to the government,” I said, “understand that they will deny it. Just like I will deny any role. You say Nate Heller was your contact man, I’ll say you’re out of your gourd. That you’re a fucking liar trying to save his ass. I leave anything out?”

“I think you about covered it,” he said. His eyes had stopped moving. He looked vaguely shell-shocked now.

A red-jacketed waiter came and refilled our coffee cups.

I said, “I’m gonna guess you’ll need to talk to Mooney about this.”

Rosselli nodded and kept nodding for a while, like a bobblehead doll. “That’s right. This is not something I can decide. Sam’ll need to hear this from you.”

I shook my head. “This is my only contact. I’m just the matchmaker, I don’t go out on the dates. If you’re interested in pursuing this opportunity, I’ll give a number to call, and-”

He held up a stop hand. “ No . This ends here, goes no fucking further, unless you take the first meeting. I don’t carry something like this to Mooney secondhand.”

I thought about it, but not long. Didn’t see I had a choice.

“Okay,” I said.

He extended his hand across the table, and I shook it. I could say it was as clammy as death and gave me a chill, but it was just a handshake, firm and dry.

Before we left, he said, “Just so you know, Heller-the only reason why I’m doing this is because I am a good American.”

I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “Sure, John.”

“I’m an immigrant, and whatever hassle the G has dumped on me, I still got a great life, and I love my country. You can say I’m a corny wop son of a bitch, if you like…”

I probably wouldn’t.

“… but I am doing this out of patriotic impulse.”

“Cool,” I said.

So by early October, I found myself lapping up Miami Beach sunshine outside that sleekly curving giant wedding cake called the Fontainebleau Hotel. I was in swim trunks and Ray-Bans in a lounge-type deck chair next to an ugly gnome called Sam Giancana.

The top mob boss of Chicago had a tan so dark he was damn near black, the hair on his scrawny chest and little pot belly starkly white against that tan. He was in swim trunks, too, plaid ones, and sunglasses that hid his tiny dark eyes, with a narrow-brimmed straw Panama concealing his thinning gray hair. Nothing could be done to disguise the lumpy nose and the unhealed slash that was his mouth.

Giancana had flown down on a private plane with only one bodyguard, who was also the driver of his rental car. He had left the bodyguard behind in one of the five rooms of the top-floor suite where Giancana and Rosselli were staying, with one other guest. I had my own room, to give these peers their privacy and in hopes of exiting as soon as I’d played emissary, leaving them to talk and think about the Company’s request.

As for the “one other guest,” that was Santo Trafficante, who had brought along three bodyguards, plus a chauffeur/bodyguard, who had driven his boss down from Tampa in a Lincoln with bulletproof windows.

I was not thrilled that another top mobster had joined the party, but was in no position to protest. I assured myself that this Miami Beach meeting would end this mission where I was concerned. Maybe I even believed it.

At any rate, I understood, without being told, why Trafficante’s presence was necessary. The Florida mob boss still had the kind of connections in Cuba that would make getting to Castro possible. Also, Rosselli was really middle management, and could only approach a man of Trafficante’s stature through another don, like Giancana. Politics and respect made the world go round. The underworld, too.

Right now Giancana was pissing and moaning about Trafficante’s bodyguard contingent.

“What is he, a fuckin’ pussy? Who the fuck is gonna bother us down here? Anyway, nobody’s at war. We’re all one big happy fucking family.” His laugh was like the sound a guy makes when the doctor says turn your head and cough. “It’s all because they tried to take him out when he was cooped up down in Cuba. Ever since then, he’s … what’s that shrink term, Heller?”

“Crazy?”

“Naw! Paranoid. That’s what he is, Santo. A paranoid pussy!”

He cackled.

Giancana was on his third tropical drink. It was almost amusing to see a tough top hood like Sam sip at a straw stuck in a pineapple sprouting umbrellas and fruit and plastic.

Almost.

“I brought one man, Heller. One man ! All the way from Chicago. Listen, this hotel here, I love it, this fabulous fucking place … they got a small army of hotel dicks. Normally, hotel dicks might give me a pain in the ass. But these guys, they look after us. So what I’m sayin’ is, there are bodyguards on fuckin’ staff. Why bring a platoon down from Tampa? Look at that one!”

Giancana was not pointing out a hotel security staffer or one of Trafficante’s bodyguards, either. Rather he was pointing out-literally-the latest of dozens of good-looking girls in bathing suits, bikinis mostly, that had caught his attention, and caused him to comment loudly on their charms. In a dignified manner, of course, like, “The tits on that one!” and “I would eat breakfast off that ass!”

At a little table under an umbrella next to me was Johnny Rosselli. He was in a white hotel terry-cloth robe and sandals and his own Ray-Bans. I believe he felt he had enough of a tan. I could feel the uneasiness coming off him like heat shimmer.

Rosselli caught my glance and said, “Nate? Let’s get another round.”

His eyes said that what he wanted was a word away from Giancana, who was sipping his fruity drink, and seeing us go said, “Get me another of these Zombie fuckers!”

This kind of language was not generally heard in a public place, where children and families frolicked among the palms, even if the outdoor walls were adorned with sculptures of centaurs and bathing maidens. We got a lot of dirty looks, but Giancana either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

At the thatched bar, Rosselli and I ordered another round, and while we waited, he said, “We got a problem with Sam.”

“Oh, I think he’s delightful when he drinks too much. Takes the edge off his being a psychopath. That’s a shrink term, you know.”

“Heller, if he doesn’t go up and start talking to Santo, then Santo is gonna get pissed, and I don’t mean drunk. It’s disrespectful. This whole … enterprise , it’s gonna go belly-up.”

“I’m a trained detective, John. I already put that together. What the hell is going on?”

Rosselli sighed. “Momo got word that his Phyllis is, you know, being untrue.”

“Momo” was yet another Giancana nickname. “Phyllis” was Sam’s mistress, Phyllis McGuire of the singing sisters, and Rosselli referring to her “being untrue” in that ridiculous high-school sense meant that Sam (who was married, by the way) thought somebody else was fucking her.

“Okay,” I said. “And this is what’s putting him in a foul mood?”

“It is. She’s in Vegas right now, and word is, she’s banging Dan Rowan.”

“Of Rowan and Martin. The comedy team?”