salesman for an oil company in Austria.'
Excuse me, ma'am,' said Nimmo. I wonder if I might interest you in getting rid of your neighbours. For only five dollars a month, we'll arrest them, torture them, and then shoot them. We'll even dispose of their bodies, at no extra charge.'
Rosselli was shaking his head, not much amused. Don't talk to me about arrests,' he said darkly. Some of our anti-Castro people have been picked up by G2 in Cuba. Alonzo Gonzales. Genevieve Suarez. One of our guys, Luis Balbuena, escaped to Guantanamo base by the skin of his teeth. But the arrest of Genevieve is especially unfortunate. When they arrested her, they found two secret rooms underneath her swimming pool. In one room were some Castro government defectors, and in the other a large weapons cache we've been building up for a while.'
That's too bad. Will they shoot her?
Very possibly. Frank and Orlando are devastated. Genevieve was a good friend of theirs. Comes to that, she was a good friend of mine, too.'
What happened?'
Rosselli shrugged. How do these things always happen? Poor security. Big mouths. You know, back in the twenties, when I made my bones, I took an oath of silence. Omerta, we called it. That's a blood oath, and when Sicilians take a blood oath, to keep their mouths shut, they mean it. I'm not sure if some of these fuckin' Cubans understand what it means to keep silent. If it comes to that, I'm not sure the people I've met from the CIA understand that either. Thanks to assholes like McCarthy, Kefauver, and McLellan, people no longer have respect for silence. If you refuse to answer, you're guilty. Silence is now a very underrated quality in a person, Jimmy. But you should never forget how important it is. Capisce?
It irritated Jimmy a lot that Rosselli had said that. He thought of himself as a man who was as mindful of his tongue as Prometheus had been about his liver.
One thing I've always been good at, Johnny, and that's keeping my fuckin' mouth shut. I don't even know a dentist. I can't sing, and I never learned to whistle. I might even still have a wife, if I'd ever licked her pussy. But that's something else you can't do if you keep your tongue in check. So don't tell me about keeping my mouth shut. I'm breathing through my fucking nose for you people. Nimmo slammed the steering wheel hard with the heel of his hand. 'Don't ever tell me that. My name is Helen fucking Keller for you guys. Jesus Christ, I won't stand to be compared to some blabber-mouthed fucking Cubans. Me, I'm Burt Lancaster's dumb friend, Nick Cravat. You got that? Don't ever mistake me for a fucking rat, Johnny. I've never squealed on anyone.
The rest of the drive was completed in silence.
Palm Beach is a narrow sandspit, thirteen miles long, and three quarters of a mile wide, and separated from the mainland by Lake Worth. The lake is well named, for there is a gulf of financial difference between the inhabitants of Palm Beach, secure in accumulated wealth and accustomed privilege, and those of its more plebeian neighbour to the west. Palm Beach is quiet and contemptuous, with the kind of declarative housing - mostly bogus French chateaux, ersatz Florentine palazzos and phoney Spanish haciendas - which, in the twenties and early thirties when most of them were built, cost several Lindbergh ransoms - small fortunes, even judged by the more obviously prosperous, you've-never-had-it-so-fucking-good standards of the Eisenhower years. Created to serve its beautiful but snooty millionaire sister to the east, West Palm Beach is bustling and friendly, but with lots of shops, high-rise office buildings, small factories, even a dog track, this is one Cinderella too ugly to merit anything but a wrecker's ball. One hundred yards apart, these two Palm Beaches are two side-by-side worlds as different as Manchester and Monaco.
The Breakers, on County Road, was Palm Beach's oldest and grandest hotel, a palatial Italian Renaissance structure surrounded by expansive lawns that looked as if someone trimmed them with nail scissors. Nimmo parked the car in front of the main entrance where, in a marble fountain, a gang of ill-advised cupids were wrestling a whole shoe factory's supply of alligators. It looked an unequal struggle of the kind that only the ageing reptiles who lived on the island, behind high, rust-free iron fences, among carefully tended jungles of tropical growth, might have enjoyed.
Inside the hotel's cool lobby there was more marble than a Medici mausoleum, with some frescoes thrown in for those few guests whose eyes were still keen enough to see as far as the ceiling vaults. Nimmo, Rosselli, and, seated on a chintz sofa by a Chinese porcelain table lamp, Nicky Mothballs' Mazarini and Bobby 'Sunshine Solegiatto made an incongruously robust foursome among the decrepit denizens of the Breakers Hotel.
Hey, Johnny,' brayed Mothballs. How ya doin'?
Both the men from West Palm Beach wore dove-grey Cricketeer Shirtweight suits, with white shirts and black ties. Despite their well-pressed clothes, the two of them looked as pugnacious as a pair of battered boxing gloves. Neither man was particularly tall, but what each lacked in height he made up for in breadth and front, displaying more attitude than a regiment of cavalry officers.
Rosselli made the introductions, and then they sat down in a quiet corner and ordered some coffee. He told them that a renegade associate of San Giancana's and Meyer Lansky's had gone nuts and was threatening to kill the President-elect, and that Sam saw it as his patriotic duty to make sure that this did not happen. To which end, he wished to enlist the help of his friends in West Palm Beach, for which he would be forever in their debt.
Anything to help Sam and Meyer,' Mothballs said after an expletive declaration of vicarious outrage. We're glad you thought of us.'
Thanks a lot, boys. I appreciate it a lot. And you know, I was wondering, is there something we can do for you?'
Mothballs and Sunshine exchanged a vacillating look, as if there really was some doubt as to what kind of favour they were about to ask. Then Mothballs, who seemed to do all the talking, looked at Rosselli, and said, You know us, Johnny. Generally we stick to what we know. Vice, gambling, narcotics - what the fuck else is there to do in Palm Beach, right? But we got this new thing going. A real sweet thing that we figure is going to make some real dough. Only we'd like your help, and Sam's help to get the thing off the ground. Let me tell you, Johnny, this scam is the future of the scam. This thing is gonna be universal in its use. It's a miraculous piece of cardboard. Show him, Bobby.'
Bobby Sunshine held up a wallet and let fall a ladder of square plastic holders each one of which contained a Diners Club credit card.
February twenty-eighth, nineteen fifty,' said Mothballs proudly. It's the day they killed cash. We got someone on the inside of Diners Club head office in New York. He can get any number of these we want, in whatever fuckin' names we like.
Rosselli took one of the oblongs of cardboard from its plastic holder and scrutinised it carefully. I've been thinking of getting one of these,' he said thoughtfully. I'm told you can charge up to a thousand dollars' worth of merchandise to one card, is that right?'
That's right.'
And this John Doe's name and address, they're a fake?'
All you have to do is sign it. This is the future of fraud, Johnny. We're certain of it. Only Louis can't see that. All he understands is dollar cash money. In God We Trust, he says, like what we was proposing was some kind of fuckin' blasphemy. But you and Sam and the Little Man, you're always thinking about the future of business.
This is a great fuckin' idea, grinned Rosselli. 'Can I keep this one?
Keep 'em all, said Mothballs. 'Show them to Sam and Meyer. We got a box load. Like fuckin Christmas cards. We figure you can sell 'em out for a hundred bucks apiece. Maybe more.
What's our cut?'
Forty per cent.'
Fair enough.' Rosselli shook his head at the simplicity of their scheme. Sam's gonna love this.'
Great,' said Mothballs, rubbing his gnarled, murderous-looking hands together. Okay, let's go and take the ten-cent tour.'
They paid their bill, in cash, and then left in Sunshine's car, a copper-coloured 1959 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe. In closer proximity to Mazarini, Nimmo easily understood how Mothballs had come by this nickname, for he smelled like a balloon-sized chunk of naphthalene. But his gloomy-looking associate's nickname was harder to understand as anything other than the crudest irony. So far he'd hardly spoken a word.
Nice car,' Nimmo told him.
Thanks,' grunted Sunshine.
