elect.'
Nimmo did not hear him. But finally he seemed to break out of his thought process and, drawing a deep breath, he put aside his pipe and stood up. Excuse me,' he said quietly. I'll be back in just a few minutes.' And so saying he walked out of the suite.
Rosselli looked at Sorges and pulled a face, uncertain as to whether Nimmo had left because he was disgusted by what he had heard or not.
Sorges shrugged back and said, Search me.'
When Nimmo returned, some ten minutes later, he was carrying the cardboard box containing various items gathered in Jefferson's house that he had brought up from the trunk of his car.
Rosselli was watching TV again. Was it something we said?' He turned the set off. I did wonder if you were coming back at all.'
Nimmo threw Sorges one of the tapes from the box.
Play it,' he ordered.
Sorges placed the new tape on the spool and drew the green leader through the recording head. Then he hit the play button and returned to his seat.
The preconvention campaign is over. For the candidates, the hour of unity is at hand. We have all been friends for a long time. I know we always will. We have always supported our party's nominee. I know we will in nineteen sixty.'
Who's this, Jimmy?' asked Rosselli. Eleanor Roosevelt?'
Shut up and listen.'
For we are all Democrats - not northern or southern Democrats, not liberal or conservative DemocratsaEU|'
Nimmo searched their faces for some indication that they understood what they were listening to.
Can't you hear?' he yelled. Don't you get it?'
Hear what, for Chrissakes?'
It's her, God damn it. It's the broad on the tape. The one fucking Kennedy. You can do anything you want to me, Jack. You can fuck me up the ass, if you want, Jack. I'm your slave. Her. Jesus, haven't you morons guessed it yet? This is the same girl who was fucking Kennedy. This is Tom Jefferson's wife.'
An hour later Rosselli came off the phone to Nevada with the explanation.
A few months ago - this would have been late May, early June -Jefferson and his wife visited the Cal-Neva Lodge on Lake Tahoe at the invitation of a guy named Irving Davidson. Davidson was fronting some Jew organisation for Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz, and the Shin Bet. You know? Israeli intelligence. The same guys who got together to give Adolf Eichmann a long holiday in Jerusalem. Anyway, they wanted Jefferson to pick up the contract on another Nazi war criminal down in Argentina. Only Moe and Lansky couldn't get away from some other business in Vegas. So they asked Jefferson to drive down to Vegas and pick up the contract there. To leave his wife back in Tahoe for just one night and have a good time, all expenses paid, courtesy of Moe and the others. Which is pretty much what happens. Only guess who shows up at the Cal-Neva Lodge unexpectedly and looking for some R&R? Kennedy, Sinatra, the whole fucking rat-pack.
Skinny D'Amato, who's manager at the Lodge, is asked to fix up some broads for a party in Kennedy's chalet. And naturally he invites Mary Jefferson along. Well, who wouldn't? She's a beautiful broad. Kennedy thinks so, too. He and she hit it off big time. Next thing is they're alone in Kennedy's bedroom. Which is wired for sound, because Kennedy's partying there a lot, with all sorts of broads. Actresses, B-girls, you name it. All Skinny has to do is what he always does. Hit a few switches. Bernie Spindel, the sound man, doesn't even have to be on the scene. Well, you've heard the rest. From Here to Eternity with everything but the ocean and swimsuits.'
Nimmo nodded grimly. He said, So here's Tom Jefferson, turns up to hear a very diverting tape of our future President fucking Marilyn Monroe. Instead, what Jefferson hears, courtesy of the outfit's very own answer to Dick Clark's American Bandstand-'
Hey, how the fuck was I to know?' protested Sorges.
Is a recording of Kennedy giving it to his own wife, up the ass. Jesus Christ Frank, didn't he say anything?'
It's like I said. He went kind of quiet and acted, well, disappointed that it wasn't Marilyn. Or at least that's what I thought he was disappointed about.'
How much did he hear of it?'
The whole tape. All the way through. He just sat there drinking -quite a bit, actually - smoking a lot of cigarettes and listening real close.
I wonder why. And you? What did you do?'
Sorges looked sheepish. Had some drinks. Made a few jokes, I guess. Laughed a lot. He didn't laugh at all, like he was supposed to. But then he's a shooter. You don't expect shooters to have much of a sense of humour, you know? So he just sat there, and when the tape was finished he went home.'
This is November the ninth, right?' asked Nimmo. Sorges nodded. And then just two days later, you're in Key West, getting ready to go to Cuba. Which is where he more or less disappears on you.' Sorges kept on nodding. And then the wife is found dead.' Nimmo chuckled. Gentlemen, that's a chain of causation like an apple falling from a tree equals gravity.'
Are you saying Tom Jefferson killed his own wife?' asked Rosselli.
You've heard the tape. That kind of shit happens. Besides, it's not like this guy is Billy Graham. He kills people, all the time.'
Yeah, but how?' asked Rosselli. The autopsy surgeon's report says there was no sign of bruising on her face or mouth, so he couldn't have forced her to swallow all those pills.'
I dunno. A needle maybe.'
Besides,' added Sorges, he was with me the night she died. He would have had to drive all the way back to Miami, in the dead of night, killed her, then come straight back to Key West in time for the cops to find him in his hotel room when they called with the bad news.'
You said it,' shrugged Nimmo, enjoying their consternation. Maybe that's exactly what he did. Look, I don't know all the answers. Not yet. I'm not even sure she was murdered yet, and I won't know that until tomorrow.' Nimmo glanced at his watch. I'm going to try and get someone to go down to the morgue with me and take another look at the body. Someone qualified, but who'll keep his mouth shut. Maybe then I'll be able to answer some of these outstanding questions.'
Kill her, yeah, I can understand that,' mused Rosselli. Why not? Lots of guys kill their wives. Hell, it's not exactly un-American. It's not like he was a communist, or anything. But this thing with Castro. That was for the government. It was a matter of national security. He could have killed her, and nobody would have minded. We would even have helped him dispose of the body, if he'd wanted that. He should have known that. But not seeing through the job, that was a dereliction of duty.'
He's a mercenary, for Christ's sake,' argued Nimmo. What the hell does he care for duty? Look, I'll know more tomorrow morning.'
Yeah, thanks Jimmy. Call me, okay?'
Sure.'
Nimmo returned to his car and drove back across the Rickenbacker Causeway. Then he drove north, up Biscayne Boulevard, back to Jefferson's home in Miami Shores. Now that he had established a possible motive for a murder, he had realised there was something in the house he wanted to take another look at. It wasn't much more than a doodle on a magazine, and he wished he'd obeyed his first inclination, which had been to put the magazine in the box with the rest of the stuff he had taken. But then that was the nature of criminal investigation, he told himself: meaning was always changing, evolving in such a way that sometimes evidence seemed positively organic.
He had not locked the back door and it took only a couple of minutes to collect the magazine, which was a copy of Time, from 1957, before driving south again to the Luau, a Chinese restaurant on the 79th Street Causeway. Decorated like a Singapore movie set, the place was run by a couple of Jews, Joey Cohen and Jerry Brooks, who knew Nimmo as a regular patron. Even after two plates of linguine for lunch, Nimmo still had room for some sweet and sour pork. But mostly he was there to pick the brains of his Chinese waiter, Yat, as to the meaning of the doodle on the Time front cover.
