hell, I could still get whatever I want out of those bastards.' Interesting sentence; what does it mean? In the margin Depuy wrote 'PXK? Check out.' He must have asked Ferrie right there, but Ferrie says, 'No, the time isn't right. I gotta think what to do.' Then he starts rambling again. A little later, Depuy must've brought up the subject again, because Ferrie says, 'I need to talk to Term on that first. Goddamn Term won't talk to me anymore, none of those PXK cocksuckers.' Then more drivel. Depuy's got a marginal note, 'Term who dat?' '
Karp thought for a moment, mentally shuffling through the hundreds of names associated with the case, concentrating on the New Orleans subdivision.
'Wasn't there a guy named Termine, a Marcello hood from New Orleans?'
'Yeah, actually Marcello's driver, Sam Termine,' said V.T. 'I thought of that too, but I doubt it's him. Depuy was a New Orleans police reporter and he would have checked that out, or asked Ferrie right there if he meant Sam. No, this is a new name: I'll start a folder on it.'
'Okay, but why is this interesting, V.T.? The guy was obviously nuts. It could've been a business deal that went sour in 1958. PXK sounds like a company, like TRW or LTV.'
'Yes, that's true,' V.T. agreed. 'On the other hand, Depuy obviously thought it was something to follow up on. One last thing. In Depuy's pocket diary there's a notation in mid-1967, way after Ferrie kicked off. It says, 'Term in N.O. 9-63' and there's a phone number. I had it checked out. In 1963 it was the number of Gary Becker's Anti- Communist League of the Caribbean. So there's a string of connections: Oswald with Bishop and Caballo and Veroa; Oswald and Becker; Oswald and Ferrie; and now Ferrie and Becker and whoever or whatever Term and PXK is.'
Karp paced for a few moments, thinking. Then he shook his head irritably and said, 'Yeah, but so what? It doesn't get us any further unless we get more on this PXK and Term. Have you got any ideas on how to do that? No? Plus, this Ferrie thing is a miasma-it sucks us down into Garrison territory: innuendo, he-said-I-heard, and all the rest of the conspiracy bullshit. It's just another pair of loose threads.'
V.T. gave Karp an appraising look and replied in a sharper tone than he ordinarily used, 'Yes, but at least they're new loose threads. You've been telling me all along that the minutiae of the assassination weren't going to advance the cause. So we're concentrating on Oswald and his merry friends, which now you're calling conspiracy bullshit. Fine! But if you don't mind, I'll keep pulling on whatever threads I turn up, in the hope that sooner or later something will unravel. I mean, what else can we do?'
Karp had no good answer, and almost as a punishment, spent the rest of the day buried in that minutiae. By four, the transient excitement occasioned by Veroa's story had quite faded.
Clay Fulton tapped on the doorframe and came in. 'You look beat,' he said. 'You should be up behind this. I thought we just got a good break.'
'Veroa? Yeah, the entrance to another set of blind alleys. Did you set up the ID on David yet?'
'Yeah. David's speaking at some national intelligence officers' association thing in a hotel out in the burbs day after tomorrow. I figure I'll drive Veroa out there and let him loose. Antonio should be right at home in an old spies' convention. Anything else happen today?'
'The usual. Crane is still talking to that damn caucus, so God knows what's going to happen. Bea's still getting grilled by the bureaucrats. Everybody else is tracing witnesses or farting around with experts. Speaking of which, one of the kids went out to Aberdeen and found a film archive of people getting shot. No, seriously! Apparently the army collected films from the Nazis or wherever, showing people getting executed, mostly with head shots. Wound research. We're having a showing tomorrow.'
'Great!' said Fulton after a heavy sigh. 'All right if I bring the kids?'
'No problem. There's a pool on how many times we'll see an actual human being getting shot in the head and flinging himself toward the gun like Kennedy did on Zapruder. All the shots came from the rear, says Warren, but after the guy's head explodes he goes flinging backward.'
'The old grassy knoll.'
'Right. Old grassy knoll's got me. How was Miami?'
'Warm, with a chance of Cubans.' Fulton snapped his fingers. 'Oh, yeah! Speaking of Miami: I found our mobster.'
'Which mobster?'
'Mosca, Guido. Jerry Legs. The Castro thing…?'
'Oh, right! God, this is really important now. The Mob…'
'They were in on it you mean?'
'No, but did you ever see the film from the first press conference? Henry Wade, the Dallas DA, held it the day after the assassination. No? Interesting. He made two factual errors, one about Oswald's middle name and the other about the name of his phony Cuba committee. In both cases he was accurately corrected by a man standing in the rear of the room. It was Jack Ruby, the guy who never met Oswald, but somehow knew the exact name of an obscure organization Oswald was running. Yeah, I'd like to talk to Mosca about that. So… he's down in Miami? I thought he was a New Orleans boy.'
'Was. He was with the Marcello organization back in the sixties, like we heard, then I think he must've got traded to Miami, for an aging left-hander and two utility outfielders. Worked for Trafficante and then ended up with the Buonafacci organization in South Florida. He still keeps his hand in a little but he's mostly retired now-he must be pushing seventy.'
'You saw him?'
'Yeah, he's got a nice little place in Surfside, on the bay. Friendly guy, as a matter of fact. He made me some ice tea.'
'What'd he tell you?'
'Not one fucking thing. He was very apologetic. So, unfortunately, unless he's been raping babies and we catch him at it, and put on the squeeze, the guy's a clam. Another dead end.'
'Maybe not,' said Karp.
'How so?'
'Mmm… it's a long shot, but when you said rape I thought of something I just heard about. Ray Guma may be in a position to do Tony Buonafacci a big favor. I think Mosca will talk to us if Tony Bones tells him to, don't you?'
'I feel like I'm back in college,' said Maggie Dobbs happily. She was perched on a chair in front of her dressing table, a pile of blouses on her lap, watching pale bubbles rise in a flute of straw-colored wine. 'Why is that?'
From her comfortable position on Maggie's bed, Marlene put down her own wineglass, now empty, stretched luxuriously, and answered, 'Oh, I don't know. No kids whining. We're talking about men in a bedroom with clothes scattered all around. We're drunk. Feels collegiate to me.'
She had known girls like Maggie at Smith, pale, arty creatures, inevitably engaged to embryo stock-and-bond men from Amherst, cashmere-sweatered, plaid-skirted, circle-pinned, who dashed blondly through the campus walks like flights of pallid doves. In the usual cliquishness of college life, she had not had a great deal to say to these creatures. Marlene wore black under army surplus, smoked a lot, scowled, talked dirty, and hung out with U Mass boys, or even (shudder) townies from Northampton.
That was, however, long ago, and the two women had both experienced an odd attraction to each other, as if catching up on some missed experience. Since meeting her at the big-shot party, Marlene had shamelessly parasited herself into Maggie's elegant and well-ordered life. Lucy was installed in a tony play group, hobnobbing with the Ashleys and Jennifers of McLean, under the eyes of perfect mommies or French nannies.
'No hitting,' Marlene had said before dropping Lucy off. 'You queer this deal and you'll go three rounds with me.'
'But, Mommy,' Lucy had complained, 'what if they're mean?'
'They won't be mean. These are high-class kids; they already know how to kill with a look. In any case, if you have to slug somebody, body-punch. I absolutely don't want blood on the walls. Capisc'?'
Now the two women were lounging in Maggie's boudoir (and it was a boudoir, done in jonquil frillies) with a cold bottle of a nice Moselle nearly down the hatch, and a long afternoon of nothing much ahead.
'Are husbands the same as men?' Maggie asked musingly.
'Well, unlike in school,' Marlene said, 'the mystery is gone. It's like Christmas. You're in a delicious agony wondering what you're going to get, and then you tear the paper off and there it is-just what you always wanted. Or, not, as the case may be. Whatever, the thing is, the fascination after that is learning how to play with it. Or
