There's a photograph of him in the takedown case. Plus an air ticket and your hotel reservation. You're going to love Acapulco, Tom. Cortes called the placed tierra caliente, the hot land, but after MC, the climate is actually quite pleasant.' Goldman clapped Tom on the back. Anyway, you can probably use the practice. It's been a while since you did a job for us, Paladin.'
Tom killed Zaitsev as easily as Alex Goldman had predicted he would. An excellent, graceful water-skier, Zaitsev presented a simple moving target. With the tow-handle coolly hooked in the crook of his arm, he had been in the act of waving confidently to the people up in the boat when Tom squeezed the trigger. Then Tom sat and waited for the boat to come around and begin the search, enjoying the sun on his face, the scent of sea air, pine groves, and cup-of-gold bushes, and the refreshing taste of some cold coconut milk. With the sky such a faultless shade of blue, it had hardly seemed possible that a life should just disappear between the waves as easily as a lobster pot.
In the boat it took them all of thirty minutes to find and recover Zaitsev's body. Through binoculars Tom watched them haul the body out of the water and saw that his shot had taken off the crown of Zaitsev's skull, like the top of a boiled egg. The boat was too far away for him to hear anything. There was just the bloody sight of a rubbery corpse and the two girls who had accompanied Zaitsev, screaming in silence.
Tom was back in Mexico City just after lunch, reflecting that he hadn't much cared for Acapulco. To him it was just another holiday resort, like Miami Beach but with better scenery. He preferred the city he was in now, once the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, and the centre of the cult of Huitzilpochtli.
The Aztecs were people of the sun chosen by Huitzilpochtli to provide him with nourishment. His sustenance was human blood, and lots of it. As Aztec power grew, prisoners from all over Mexico were sacrificed in Tenochtitlan so that the universe and man might survive. One conquistador estimated the number of human skulls hanging on show to be 136,000. Blood was treated like holy water, and spattered over the doors and pillars of Mexican temples and houses. Mercy was an alien concept, as alien to the ancient peoples of Mexico as it was to Tom himself. The Nehuatl Indian word for sacrifice, nextlaoalitzli, actually meant an act of payment. This was Tom's kind of language. It was no wonder he thought he felt so very much at home there.
Chapter 7
In a Boston Accent
The margin is narrow, but the responsibility is clearaEU| a margin of only one vote would still be a mandate.'
Thus spoke the thirty-fifth President-elect of the United States, having achieved a majority of less than one hundred and twenty thousand votes.
So now my wife and I prepare for a new administration and a new baby.'
But it was what John F. Kennedy had said not to a press conference in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, nor to the sixty-nine million Americans who had voted, but to just one American that interested Tom Jefferson more when, on the ninth day of November 1960, he left his home in Miami Shores and drove to the safe house at 6312 Riviera Drive in Coral Gables to meet Frank Sorges and to hear that much-vaunted tape. Just thinking about it was enough to give him an erection. He was actually going to hear the love goddess, the magnificent Marilyn, making love, and to no less a person than everyone's man of the moment, America's number one golden boy. It was the stuff of Confidential magazine and he wished Mary had been around so that he could have teased her.
These past few days he had spoken to her only on the telephone; what with the election, the anxiety of the count - Kennedy's early lead had shrunk steadily for much of the Tuesday, 8 November, until, at around four o'clock the following morning, victory had started to look a little more certain - and then the celebrations, which seemed likely to last through until Thursday, Tom hadn't actually seen her since Saturday night. By now he was used to her irregular hours, more or less. Back in the middle of October, when Kennedy had gone to Tampa to make a campaign speech about Latin America and an alliance for progress, Tom didn't see Mary or even speak to her on the telephone for forty-eight hours. But that was okay, too. She was just doing her job. The two of them were still a team with a common interest. To borrow Kennedy's phrase, Tom and Mary were una alianza para el progreso. Only it was their own idea of progress. And an unusual kind of alliance.
It had been strange to see Kennedy quoted speaking Spanish. Strange and, after Orlando Bosch's forecast of an early invasion of Cuba, just a little disturbing. Not that Castro himself seemed much inclined to care. On 25 October, the week after Kennedy's Tampa speech, Castro had signed a decree nationalising those few remaining enterprises that belonged to American companies. Speaking to a group of army cadets just a few days later, Castro had challenged America to invade his country. At the same time, the Ministry of Health launched a campaign to persuade Cuban citizens to give blood. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, another kind of launch -or at least the capacity for a launch - was being made manifest, with intent: on the day Americans went to the polls, missiles appeared for the first time at the annual parade in Red Square. A campaign speech and a rhetorical alliance was one thing; ICBMs were evidence of quite another kind of alliance, and one that Tom hoped the new President would pay attention to.
Tom was a little early for his five o'clock meeting with Sorges, so he stopped for a haircut at Johnny's Barber Shop on North West 27th Avenue. The place was air-conditioned and Johnny, a dark, balding man in his early forties, was reading the paper. We treat you like a friend' read a sign on the wall. That was fine with Tom, who had being going there often enough for Johnny to remember that this was one friend who didn't like to talk. In the twenty minutes it took to cfet Tom's hair, Johnny even managed not to mention the election.
Coming out of the shop, Tom paused in the doorway. A breeze from the west was carrying the sound of a brass band. Tom turned to Johnny and said, You hear that?'
Probably the local high school,' explained Johnny. They got a marching band. Pretty good one, too.'
The two men stood there for a moment or two, long enough for Johnny to be able to identify the tune. Hail to the Chief,' he said.
Kennedy's favourite tune,' said Tom, and started towards his car. Perhaps he's on his way.'
Yeah, maybe they know something we don't.'
From what I hear, Johnny, it's just the girls who know that much. Just the girls.'
Tom drove on, stopping again only once to pick up a bottle of Mary's favourite perfume, Lanvin's My Sin', at a beauty shop on Almeria, in Coral Gables. It seemed appropriate after all her hard work. Then he went to Riviera Drive.
Just south of the golf course of the same name, and overlooking Coral Gables Waterway, in an expensive palm-fringed street, the safe house was a two-storey affair with a high stone wall, a large iron gate, and a tiled roof with a little cupola. Tom pulled the bell on the gatepost, and after a few minutes Sorges, smoking a cigar and wearing a ribbed mohair V-neck and a pair of deck pants, came into the garden to let him in.
You're early.'
Occupational habit. Same way as when I go near a tall building I'm liable to start looking for cover.'
What did I tell you?' Sorges clapped Tom on the shoulder. The Chicago poll? It was just like Momo promised. Kennedy won it by four hundred and fifty-six thousand votes. You know, without Illinois, Kennedy would have had only seven electoral college votes more than Nixon. And then the whole election could have been wide open. Might even have gone to the House of Representatives to decide. Just think about that. Four hundred and fifty-six thousand votes. That's four times as much as his final tally in the whole fucking country. When Momo fixes something, he fixes it good.'
Sorges ushered Tom through the big wooden door. It was cool inside the house, but this was down to the record playing on the limed oak phonola as much as to the air-conditioning: a brooding, melancholic Spanish arrangement for a solo trumpet and jazz band. Liking it immediately, Tom picked up the LP and saw that it was Miles Davis playing Sketches of Spain'.
You like that, do you?' asked Sorges.
Tom thought the sound seemed to speak to him personally. And the last line on the sleeve note, from the Spanish writer Ferran, managed to characterise both the music and his own character: Alas for me! The more I seek my solitude, the less of it I find. Whenever I look for it, my shadow looks with me.' He nodded, and said, Yeah, it's nice.' Looking around, he added, Nice place, too. Yours?'
Hell, no. Belongs to the Company. Or maybe Howard Hughes. Or maybe Meyer Lansky. I'm not exactly sure which. I'm just the house-sitter today.'
Howard Hughes? What's his involvement in all this?'
Bob Maheu works for Hughes. Before that he was with the Bureau and probably the CIA, too, for all I know.
