Irritated, Sorges frowned back at Tom. I don't know who the hell it is. Just some broad Kennedy banged on the road. An actress, or a model, I think. Look, Johnny doesn't know I'm letting you hear this. I had to borrow it without his permission. So it was kind of pot luck I'm afraid. It was this one or nothing. The guy who was doing these recordings just got busted in Vegas. He was bugging Sam's girlfriend's room, to see if she was fucking some other guy. Anyway Johnny's kind of pissed about the whole thing. Blames it on Maheu for some reason. I think he's put the Marilyn tape in a safe, somewhere. So like I say, this is all there is.'
Tom gazed rudely at the ceiling and then impassively back at Sorges, as if he didn't believe a word of it.
Look, do you want to hear this goddamned tape, or not?'
Go ahead,' growled Tom. I'm all ears.'
Sorges twisted one of the knobs and the spools began to turn. There was a moment's silence, the sound of a door closing, followed by clothes rustling and some heavy breathing, and then a man's voice.
Do you like this place?'
I love it. I've never been to Lake Tahoe before.'
My brother-in-law, Peter, has a stake in the place with Sinatra. I come here a lot.'
I know, I read about the Cal-Neva in a magazine. But I never dreamed I'd be here, with you, Jack.'
Well, now that you are, what are you going to do about it?'
Kennedy's patrician Harvard accent was instantly recognisable with its curiously flat, almost European vowels and its mushed letter s', as if the President-elect had cultivated a lisp in an effort to sound more like Winston Churchill, who was reportedly his model in rhetoric.
In common with nearly everyone else, Tom thought Kennedy was an excellent orator. Clearly he was a man who believed in the power of words and who took considerable pride in his own real gift for eloquence. Even when, in the cold light of day, some of Kennedy's more idealistic messages seemed hopelessly unrealistic, there was still something about the way he delivered them that made people listen. So it came as something of a shock for Tom to hear Kennedy speaking not as a public figure, about the Cold War, or Indochina, or the Balance of Power, but as a private man, his relaxed, slightly intoxicated conversation studded with references to his lover's pussy, and her asshole, and what he was going to do to her pussy and her asshole just as soon as he got her panties off.
She was every bit as willing and candid as he was, her quiet voice breathless with lust and excitement as she assured Kennedy that he could do anything he wanted to her, that she would suck him, and let him come in her mouth, and up her ass, if that was what turned him on.
Do you like me to do this, Jack? Is that how you like it?'
I love that. Don't stop. Oh that's wonderfulaEU|'
The thrill of hearing the President-elect getting it on in a chalet at the Cal-Neva Lodge was as nothing beside the cold shock Tom felt on recognising the faint trace of the Caribbean in the woman's voice. Hers was a voice as familiar to him as Kennedy's own. More so. Tom swallowed hard as he tried to contain his horror and disgust. The woman on the tape was Mary. He was listening to his own wife being fucked by Jack Kennedy.
You have the most beautiful mouth, honey. Oh that's wonderful. Just keep doing that.'
What did I tell you?' laughed Sorges. Oh man, I'd love to meet this little lady. Listen to that. She's a fucking animal.'
Tom's first instinct was to tear the obscene tape off the spool and throw it in Sorges's grinning face, before strangling the man with his bare hands. But this lasted only a few seconds. Staying cool and playing a double game was second nature to Tom. And the more he thought about it the more he considered that nothing would have been served by revealing anything to the other man. He decided it was best to remain silent on the subject. So he grinned back and, steeling himself, decided to hear the tape to the end.
Chapter 8
The Monsignor
Death was never very far away from Tom's thoughts, least of all when he picked up the telephone receiver in his hotel room at La Casa Marina, in Key West. Tom knew straight away that she was dead, even before the Dade County cop told him what had happened. Dully, Tom said he would drive back to Miami immediately and then replaced the receiver.
He glanced at his watch. It was nine thirty in the morning and he was dog-tired after a night on the town with Sorges and Bosch. An hour earlier, Juanita, the maid, would have let herself into the house in Miami Shores, found Mary's body and then called the police. They would have found his hotel number right by the telephone. He lit a cigarette and then called Sorges.
Frank, it's Tom.'
Oh Jesus, what time is it?'
It's nine thirty-five. Listen Frank, I've got to go back to Miami. Right away.'
Miami? What the hell for? We just got here. And everything's set. The Flying Tiger's picking us up from the harbour front at eight o'clock.' The Flying Tiger was the name of a motor yacht that some millionaire had lent to the CIA for the purpose of ferrying Tom into Cuban waters, after which a rubber boat would land him close to Oriente City. The Company's even cleared us with the Coast Guard.'
Yeah, well this'll have to wait. The Dade County police just called.'
What the fuck did they want?'
There's been some kind of accident. Mary. My wife. She's dead.'
Jesus, Tom. Is there anything I can do?'
No. I'll handle it. Look, I'll call you when I get there. When I find out what's happened.'
Okay, all right. You do that.'
Tom packed a bag and went and found his car.
Once, Key West had been Florida's most populous city and probably the richest, too. Now, with more than a quarter of the local population Cuban, the place was shabbier and altogether more foreign-looking, like an ersatz version of Havana. Grass grew through the cracks in the flagstones on Roosevelt Boulevard, while cigar factories, shrimp boats, and bordellos were the principal sources of employment. Island time ran slower than on the mainland and, except at night, when the strip-joints on Duval Street got going, no conch, as the locals were known, was ever in a hurry. Even the non-Latins spoke Spanish, ate black beans, played knock rummy, and, sometimes, ran narcotics. Life was uncomplicated, with only the hurricanes to worry about. The last big one, in 1935, had killed more than four hundred people. But for anyone walking through streets lined with poinciana, allamanda, frangipani, and coconut palms, or along the most picturesque of waterfronts with its turtle tanks, pelicans, cormorants, and twenty-thousand-dollar boats, death would have seemed a very distant prospect. That is, for anyone but Tom.
He started the Chevy, picked up some gas, and then hit the blacktop.
The road up from Key West to the mainland on the Overseas Highway was one of the most beautiful drives in the world. Henry M. Flagler had built a railway across the Florida Keys, linking one to another with bridges, like a giant and extremely expensive necklace. Opened to trains in 1912, it had been destroyed by the hurricane of 1935, and rebuilt as the Overseas Highway. With the Atlantic Ocean immediately on one side of the road, and the Gulf of Mexico on the other, sometimes it seemed as though the road was all the land there was. And crossing the lengthy span of the Seven Mile Bridge, upheld by 544 piers sunk below the water line, a car felt like a small plane. It was 156 miles back to Miami and normally, with all the cars towing boats and trailers and rubbernecking tourists, the journey took the best part of four and a quarter hours. But for some reason the route was more or less free of traffic - at least going north - and Tom did the journey in less than three hours. It was the loneliest drive he had ever made.
When Tom arrived back at the house in Miami Shores, there were a couple of police cars parked outside and a small cluster of nosey-parker neighbours gathered on the street corner. A Country Squire station wagon was leaving the scene and it was only later, after Tom had persuaded the uniformed cop on duty outside his own front door to let him inside the house, that he realised the station wagon had been carrying Mary's dead body. He was met by a detective sergeant from the Dade County police who told him that Mary's body had been moved to the County Morgue, in the Miami Hall of Justice, where she was now the coroner's responsibility.
So far, Tom had said very little, but when the detective, whose name was Joe Czernin, offered his condolences, Tom fetched himself a drink from the bar and asked how Mary had died.
It's a little early to say for sure,' said Czernin. But it looks as though she may have taken an overdose of pills and alcohol. It'll be for the coroner's office to decide if that was accidental or if sheaEU|' Czernin hesitated for a second, his grey eyes moving quickly across Tom's face as if he was trying to judge Tom's capacity to take the
