'We're here to see Guido Mosca,' Karp announced.
The woman cupped her hand around her mouth and shouted, at surprising volume, 'Hey, Jerry, you got visitors!' Her vowels were from south Jersey. She gestured to a pair of white-painted steel chairs with flowered cushions, and said, 'Have a seat.' They sat and she went back to reading The Racing Form and working on the tan.
In a few minutes, they saw a glass door at the back of the house slide open, and Guido Mosca walked out onto the flagged patio. He was a medium-sized man in his early seventies, with a deeply lined face, small, bright eyes set close together, and a wide lippy mouth. He was bald save for a fringe of silvery hair, and his skin was the same tanned-leather color as the woman's. They might have been sprayed out of the same can.
Mosca approached them and shook hands without smiling. His eyes flicked toward the woman, who ignored them, and he said, 'Come on, I'll show you around.'
They walked around the side of the house down a narrow path lined with crotons, and out onto a lawn facing a broad channel, a large island park with a golf course in it, and the bay. The property was small but well maintained: the lawn green and crisp under foot, the bordering shrubbery clipped square. There was a little dock with a white powerboat tied to it under a striped awning. It was the kind of modest setup that might have belonged to a small and successful businessman in his retirement. Which Mosca was, in a way.
A white wrought-iron umbrella table and four chairs sat on the lawn. When they were seated, Karp said, gesturing to the place, 'So, Jerry, you look like you landed on your feet-nice house, a boat. What's the secret of your success?'
'I kept my nose clean, my mouth shut, and I put a little money away. Look, what's the deal here? Tony says I got to talk to you guys and go testify.'
'Yeah, provided you have something we need,' said Karp. 'Why don't you start by telling us what you were doing in New Orleans in 1963?'
Mosca leaned back in his chair and played with his lower lip. 'Sixty-three, sixty-three… okay, sixty-three I was working in a crew with Jackie Colloso and Chick Fannetti. We had some money on the street, also some girls, punch cards, like that.'
'This is in Marcello's outfit?'
'Yeah, Marcello. He was the capo there.'
Fulton asked, 'Jerry, so how did a Philly boy get to be working for Carlos Marcello?'
'Out of Cuba. I used to go down there a lot when it was open, the fifties. I took care of some things for Trafficante, as a favor, you know? And he offered me a job, watch his interests in some of the casinos. And while I was there I met Sam Termine.'
'This is the one who worked for Marcello?' asked Karp.
'Worked for Marcello. Yeah, he was his driver and, like, his bodyguard.'
'You ever meet Termine's friend, Dutz Murret?'
'The bookie, right? Yeah, later he was a, like a client.'
'Meaning you collected for him.'
'Yeah, later, when I was with Marcello, him and the other bookies.'
'Did you know his nephew?'
Mosca nodded, slowly, as if realizing that this was the point of the whole thing, the nephew of an insignificant part-time bookie for the New Orleans Mob. 'Lee Oswald. No, that was before my time, when he was a kid, hanging around in New Orleans. Sam Termine knew him, though. Sam used to go with his mother.'
'So, you met Termine in Cuba,' said Karp, switching back. 'What happened then?'
'Well, Castro took Cuba, we had to get out. Trafficante asked me to stay. He couldn't leave because Castro wouldn't let him. They were gonna put him on trial or something. So some of his people got some big shit-load of money up, then Jack brought it in, and I gave it to some Castro guys, and we flew out that night. After that-'
'Wait a second,' Karp interrupted. 'This was Jack who? The bagman…'
'Jack Ruby,' said Mosca blandly. 'Worked for Carlos as a bagman at the time, and then he ran a nightclub in Dallas.'
'I know who Jack Ruby is, Jerry,' said Karp. 'I was just surprised that he was the guy who bailed out Trafficante. Okay, go ahead.'
'After that, I worked for Trafficante for a while, and then one day, must've been the summer of sixty-one, Termine calls me up and says there's something going down, they want to get some of the old Havana fellas together, could I come. So I ask the boss about it, and Trafficante says he heard about it too, and yeah, I should go. They're gonna whack Castro, they need muscle for the job. So I get to New Orleans, and I see Sam and he introduces me to a guy, Johnny Roselli, out of the Chicago outfit. He's setting the whole thing up. He's talking about how the CIA is behind the deal, which doesn't make me feel too fucking relieved, because look how they fucked up the invasion, you know? He asks me can I do a machine gun, can I do a bazooka. Right then I know this is gonna be fucked up, but what can I say? It's a contract. Okay, so Roselli says the CIA guys want to see us, we're supposed to go to such-and-such a bar at such-and-such a time and they'll pick me up. So Sam and me go out and we end up at this bar we were supposed to be at, I think it was Armand's on St. Charles. And we see Dutz Murret and we sit down at a table with him, just shooting the shit, waiting for this CIA guy.'
He stopped and looked at Karp, a faint smile on his face. 'You know, it's funny you asking me about Dutz just now, and Oswald, because what happened was, this guy walks in the front door and looks around, and Sam spots him and says something like, 'Holy shit, Dutz! There's your nephew.' And Dutz looks over and he kind of jumps and starts to get up and then when the guy gets a little closer he says like, 'Nah, it ain't him. Besides, he's in Russia, the little prick.' Then this character spots me and walks over and says his name's Caballo and I should come with him, and he notices Dutz is staring at him and he asks him if something's wrong, and Dutz says, 'No, but you're a ringer for my sister-in-law's kid,' and Dutz tells this guy how Lee had gone over to the commies in Russia. Okay, then we got up and-'
'Wait a second, Jerry,' said Karp, and brought out an eight-by-ten print made from the Depuy film. 'Is this him?'
Mosca studied the photo, holding it at a distance from his face in the manner of elderly men who need glasses.
'Yeah, that's the guy.'
'What was your take on him-then?' Fulton asked.
'Caballo? Just a guy. Hard kid, though. If I didn't know he was G, I'd've said he was one of ours, you know? Anyway, we left Armand's and he drives me to this motel out on Hayne by the old airport. There're some guys there in a room, Roselli, a couple guys I knew from the old days, Cuban muscle.'
'Names?' said Karp.
'Oh, one of them was Angelo Guel, used to work out of the Hotel Nacional, ran girls, the other one-I can't recall his name-Chico something. And then there was the government guy, Bishop.'
A quick look passed between Fulton and Karp. Karp pulled another photograph from his folder. 'Is this Bishop?'
'Yeah, that's him,' said Mosca after a quick look, and Karp felt a jolt of elation. Mosca had identified a photograph of Paul A. David. Karp spread out several other stills from the film. Mosca picked out Angelo Guel as one of the men who was riding in the jeep, confirming Veroa's ID.
'So anyhow,' Mosca continued, 'Bishop starts in with these charts and plans and shit, how we're gonna whack Fidel. He's got this tame Cuban to rent a place that's got a clear shot of this platform where Castro's gonna give a speech. The Cubans are supposed to go over in a boat at night and land the gear, and some other Cubans're supposed to take the stuff to Havana and set it up in the apartment. So while he's talking, I'm thinking, How come these guys need us, they got the whole thing figured. So I ask them.'
He paused dramatically, until Karp said, 'And…?'
'Deniability,' said Mosca, pronouncing the word carefully in a tone touched with sarcastic contempt. 'Deniability is they're using Cubanos we used as muscle around the casinos, they got Roselli to front it, which means Giancana and Chicago is in on it, and Santos is in on it, with me there, so whatever happens the government's in the clear. It's a revenge hit from the outfits, Castro flicked them so bad, you know? Horseshit, but that's the plan. So I say to Bishop, 'Yeah, but you're involved, you got people there in Cuba, the guy who rented the apartment for the hit, that's your guy. You're the CIA.' They all looked at me like I laid a fart or something. Bishop
