Philip Kerr - The Shot

Zissen’s Bowery was the oldest club in Miami, but the Carioca or the Boom Boom Room, it was not. Big hotels, like the Americana or the Fontainebleu, might have succeeded in stealing most of Miami’s well-heeled night-club trade, but there were still a few joints that appealed to those who had to get by on a special agent’s salary. Places like Zissen’s, with sawdust on the floor, pretzels on the bar, and the kind of barman who had no more idea of how to mix a Manhattan than he had of making a Betty Crocker cake. The people who went to Zissen’s drank beer and hard liquor, and if they happened to be people like Alex Goldman, they drank them side by side.

Goldman was bigger than Tom with fists the size of bowling balls. His grey hair was crew-cut and he wore a dark cotton suit that was too tight for him and smelled strongly of sweat and pipe-tobacco. The money clip on the bartop in front of him, made out of a silver bullet, was the neatest thing about Goldman and seemed to indicate that he was making an evening of it. Originally from New Orleans, he had the up-tempo drawl of a well-educated if easy-going southerner.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said, eyeing Tom through a thick cumulus cloud of pipe smoke. ‘If it isn’t Paladin.’

Tom didn’t watch much TV but he knew Goldman was referring to a show on CBS called Have Gun, Will Travel that starred Richard Boone, an actor to whom Alex bore a certain resemblance. Tom wasn’t in the least bit concerned that a federal agent knew what he did for a living. Federal agents turned a blind eye to all kinds of things in Miami. Especially agents like Alex Goldman, whose own activities as a member of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division were in the main illegal.

‘How’s my favourite spy?’ asked Tom, clapping the big man on his Dakota-sized shoulder.

‘That fucking movie,’ sneered Goldman. ‘I hate Bob Hope. The Road to the Gas Chamber. Now that’s one movie I’d like to see him in.’

They ordered some beers and took them to a quiet table in the back.

‘What do you know about John Rosselli?’ asked Tom.

‘Johnny Rosselli,’ sneered Goldman. ‘Don Giovanni to his guinea friends. He’s the mob’s number one faggot.’

‘He is?’ Tom sounded surprised. Then he was surprised that he was surprised. Now that he thought some more about Rosselli — the cologne, the fastidious lips, the manicured fingernails, the Eldorado Brougham with the built-in vanity case, maybe even the fag at the Key Biscayne Hotel — it seemed a little more obvious than before. But he still was not wholly convinced. Sometimes Goldman just said things to provoke people, which was, after all, his main job function. Within the Intelligence Division he ran the FBI’s local COINTELPRO, a counter-intelligence programme devised by J. Edgar Hoover to flush out or screw up communists.

Goldman puffed his pipe furiously. ‘He was married for a while. To some movie actress broad. June Lang, I think her name was. But it didn’t take. Anyway, that’s why he likes it here in Miami. I’m told it can get quite hot in Vegas and L.A., so it isn’t the fucking sunshine that brings his guinea ass down here, you can be sure of that. Just don’t go to the can with the guy, that’s my advice.’ Goldman chuckled his way into a short fit of coughing.

‘Mob guy, huh? He told me he’s working for the government. For the Company.’

‘Now and then, mob and Company interests coincide and they share resources. Like in Guatemala. The Don’s been in and out of Guatemala since fifty-six, fixing things for Carlos Marcello. He runs most of the things down in G City. Anyway, fixing things for Marcello also fixed things for the Company. But it’s interesting that he actually said that. Give it to me again. Like his exact words, Paladin.’

‘He said he was working for the government,’ shrugged Tom. ‘Later on, when I referred to him working for the Company, he didn’t contradict me.’

Goldman nodded thoughtfully.

‘I guess it would figure. Rosselli’s one well-connected queer, I’ll say that much for him. He’s always been a kind of liaison man in Hollywood and Vegas. Between the big bosses: Meyer Lansky, Sam Giancana, Santos Trafficante and Marcello. Back in the thirties and forties he was Capone’s man. Then Ben Siegel’s sidekick.’

‘According to Rosselli, he was a Hollywood producer for a while.’

‘That’s one word for it. But he was always Chicago’s man out there. Him and Joe Kennedy. The Don and some other muscle took over the labour unions in Hollywood and started to put the squeeze on the big studios. Columbia. Warner Brothers. MGM. They paid up or there was a fucking strike. As simple as that. The amazing thing was that the Bureau managed to make a case against him. Rosselli and some of the other guineas involved. It doesn’t happen very often. Sometimes I think Hoover must be on the take himself. That or they’ve got something on him. Like he’s the same kind of fruit as Rosselli, for instance. Take the Bureau here in Miami. We’ve got two hundred agents handling the investigation of so-called communists in the city. And just three who are concerned with organised crime.

‘Anyway, back to the Don, fifteen, twenty years ago. There was this guy named Willie Bioff.’ Having pronounced the name ‘Buy-off,’ Goldman grinned. ‘Is that a good name for a chiselling rat who is helping to put the squeeze on you, or what? The mob had made him president of the biggest motion picture union out in Hollywood, and it was him the feds managed to put the squeeze on right back. Willie Bioff ratted on the Don and some other colourful friends of his, and then lived long enough to change his name, move to Phoenix, and get blown to pieces by a car bomb. Don Giovanni and those other movie fans, they went to jail. Not that the Don did much fucking time, you understand. Couple of years at most. Someone fixed it for him to have an early release. L.A.PD most likely. When Siegel got himself murdered it kind of left a vacuum for all the cops on the take. So Rosselli came out and cut himself a deal. Parker, the L.A. police chief, virtually fingered the Don’s only rival for the territory. A Jew named Mickey Cohen. See, Parker disliked Jews about as much as he disliked niggers, and felt more comfortable dealing with the guineas.’

Goldman relit his pipe and blew out a long cloud of smoke.

‘The don was quite a talent-spotter, too, let me tell you. Still is. He’s helped a lot of careers in Hollywood and Vegas. A part in a movie here, a season at the Sands there. A lot of big stars owe that guinea sonofabitch.’

‘What is his connection with Cuba?’ asked Tom.

‘Cuba is to the mob what Detroit is to General Motors. And Rosselli is to the mob what Christian Herter is to the White House. The Don’s kind of like a Secretary of State for the Mafia. The olive oil in the Cosa Nostra machine. Would that the Secretary of State was able to achieve so much. Christian Herter’s a fucking amateur next to the Don. Lansky and Trafficante have got a problem with Castro in Cuba? Let’s speak to our roving ambassador of organised crime. Maybe the Don can come up with a solution. A proposal. Some contacts. Pull in a few favours. Come up with a plan.’ Goldman toasted Tom with a bottle of beer. ‘I guess that’s where you come in, Paladin. Who do they want dropped from the team?’

‘Castro.’

‘Well good for you.’

‘And his brother.’

‘Wouldn’t that just suit everyone?’ said Goldman. ‘The mob, the CIA, the big corporations, the government. Everyone except the Cuban people, I guess. So the mob and the Company have cut a deal on this, have they? I guess it makes a lot of sense. If it can be done.’ He paused and inspected the cherrywood bowl of his pipe before relighting what tobacco remained in there.