says, 'Who said I was CIA? I'm not CIA.' Then he gives me this line that he's representing some businessmen who want to see Castro whacked. Anticommunist types from Texas.'
'You didn't believe him?' asked Karp.
'Hey, the fuck I know! Roselli sure as shit thought he was working for the G. He was fucking proud of it. So we bullshit some more. They tell war stories. Roselli's got all these schemes he tried to get Castro. A poisoned cigar, stuff to make his beard fall out. Totally fucked up, it sounds like to me. The Cubans are saying all about being in on the Bay of Pigs deal, why it went wrong and fucking Kennedy, how he fucked it up, they would've taken over if he'd've let the bombers work over the commies. Bishop was on the Bay of Pigs too, he says, and they're all crying in their beer what a shame it was. I'm getting bored here, listening to all this crap, so I ask Roselli when we're gonna do him, Castro, and what'm I supposed to do. Sometime in October, he says. So, I say, that's two, three months from now, let me know when you're ready, and I get up to go. They say, wait, we gotta do a picture for your passport. So they take some Polaroids of me and Guel. Then Bishop says they'll be in touch and I shouldn't talk to anybody about it.' He smiled. 'Like I got a big mouth, you know?
'Anyway, I get back to my hotel, I right away call and leave a message for Santos at this phone booth we use and about an hour later, he gets back to me. I tell him, Santos, these people are fucked up. I say, hey, you want to whack Fidel, I'll get some people together, we'll go there and whack him, but these people, especially Roselli, they're a fuckin' joke. Santos, he laughs, he says, yeah, he knows that, nothing's gonna happen to Fidel, but we got to stay involved with these fuckheads because whatever goes down, we got a piece of the government's ass forever, they'll owe us to the next pope. So that makes sense, so I go back to Florida and wait. Next thing, the end of September, I get a call from Caballo, the thing's on, get my stuff and go down to the airport, the commercial terminal. They got this plane there, a little private jet, I never been on one of those things before. Guel's there, and Caballo. Caballo's not coming but he gives me this envelope. It's got money in it, American and Cuban, and tickets for a regular Cubana flight out of Mexico City and phony passports for me and Guel and for this other guy we're supposed to pick up in Mexico City. The passports were perfect, but, why not? These guys are the government, right? And we take off. You guys want a beer? No? Well. I'm gonna have one.'
Mosca got up and went to the house. Karp said to Fulton in a low voice, 'This is real, right? I'm not having a wet dream?'
'If you are, I'm in it too, son. This guy is from heaven. He IDs Bishop as David, he puts Paul David together with a guy who's a ringer for Oswald, and puts Guel with Bishop way before the film, before the assassination even, and they're all sitting around jiving about what a bad guy JFK is. I love it! All we need now…' He fell silent as Mosca returned, clutching a can of beer.
'So. No problems in Mexico City,' Mosca resumed after a long swallow. 'We fly to Havana and-'
Karp interrupted. 'Who was the guy you picked up in Mexico City?'
'I don't know. I never seen him before. He didn't give his name.'
'Okay, go ahead.'
'Havana. We make contact with Bishop's Cuban, the guy who's setting up the apartment we're gonna shoot from. Name's Tony something, Verana…'
'Veroa,' said Karp. He showed another photograph.
'Yeah, that's the guy, Veroa. Anyway, I check the setup and it's complete amateur hour. There's one escape route. One! We're gonna have to run down eight floors after we do the job. He got us two cars, but no switch cars, which means we're gonna have to race to this dinky port where there's a boat waiting for us, he says, with every cop and soldier in Cuba looking for us, in the same goddamn cars we left the apartment in. Plus, the jerkoff rented the fucking place in his mother-in-law's name, so of course he has to get her out of the country before the hit, only he finds out the Cuban cops are looking funny at the boat he's supposed to use and he gets nervous and, of course, Guel and the other Cuban get even more nervous, and they call the thing off the day before it's set to go. And that was it, the story of the great hit on Fidel. Assholes!'
He finished his beer and was silent for a moment, looking out at the water. 'Veroa takes off in the boat with his mother-in-law, Guel and the other guys disappear, and I fly back to Mexico and then Miami. Santos had a big laugh over it. I say to him again, like, Santos, you want Castro hit, I'll put some guys together, we'll do it. A bomb is what I would've used, none of this bazooka crap. But he says, I got to check with Giancana, it's his thing, the thing with Roselli and the G. Which is fucked, because Miami's open, it don't come under the Chicago outfit, why should Santos give a shit what Giancana thinks? But I figure, what the fuck, they got some kind of deal working on it, I don't need to know about it. It ain't my affair. Meanwhile, after that, Santos is telling everybody he's gonna get Castro, he's in on the hit, it was all horseshit as far as I could see, but you know Santos, he likes to blow smoke like that.'
Karp thought of something Veroa had said and asked, 'Jerry, tell me one thing. Did you ever get the feeling that the Castro thing was a scam, that Bishop and the other CIA people didn't really want to hit Castro?'
Mosca shrugged broadly. 'Hey, the fuck I know! Like I said, I didn't think it was a serious operation, from what I saw. And Fidel's still around.'
'Did you ever see any of these people again?' Fulton asked. 'Bishop, Caballo, the Cubans, or the other guy, the one in Mexico City on the plane?'
Mosca thought for a while, and then nodded, looking directly into Fulton's eyes, with a cynical smile on his wide mouth. 'JFK. That's what this is all about, right? Well, the fact is, I don't know squat about any of that. You guys are out of luck.'
With some effort, Fulton kept the confusion he felt from appearing on his face, and said casually, 'Yeah, we understand that, just tell us what you do know.'
'Okay, along about sixty-two, late, I got into a situation in Miami, we thought it would be good if I spent some time out of town. So Sam Termine arranged I could work with one of Marcello's crews for a while. I'm there a year or so. So, one night, this is like fall of sixty-three, me and Sam and a couple other of the fellas are standing around outside Gella's on Canal and a bunch of guys get out of the car and start walking down the other side of the street. Sam looks over at them and waves, and one of them walks across the street and comes over to us. First thing I think, it's this guy Caballo, but no, it turns out this is the real Oswald. He shakes with Sam and then Sam introduces him to me. So they bullshit for a while, how's your mom, like that and then Oswald goes back across the street. But while he's talking, I'm looking over at the guys he's with; they look, like, familiar, you know? And I see it's the bunch from the Castro thing, Guel, and another Cuban shooter we had in Havana, name of Carrera, and the other guy, the third guy from the plane. It stuck in my mind because here's three guys connected with a guy who's a ringer for Oswald, and here they are with the real Oswald. Funny, huh?'
'Yes, it's real funny,' said Karp through a drying throat. 'Um, this third guy. Can you describe him?'
'I don't know,' said Mosca with a shrug. 'Just a guy. Pretty well put together-looked like he could handle himself in a fight. Didn't say much. I remember he had thick, wavy hair like those old-time movie stars.'
'And you don't remember his name?'
'No, like I said, he didn't give it.'
'But you were with him on the plane ride and for most of the week planning the Castro assassination,' Karp persisted. 'You must've called him something.'
'Oh, yeah. When I gave him the phony passport, I said, That ain't your name, is it?' And he looks at the passport and says, 'It is now.' So we called him Frank.'
'Frank what?'
'Frank Turm.'
'Term? Like a prison term?'
'No, it sounds like that, but on the passport they spelled it T-U-R-M.'
Karp wrote this down on his pad, his hand shaking with excitement. 'Um… one other thing, Jerry. What was PXK?'
A puzzled frown passed over Mosca's face. 'What? What is that, like a company?'
'Maybe. We don't exactly know. It's come up in connection with what went down in New Orleans back then. Maybe this Turm guy was involved in it.'
Mosca shook his head. 'I never heard of it. Like I said, I just saw the guy twice.'
While Karp was writing, Fulton asked, 'In Havana, Jerry, what was this Turm guy supposed to do. He was one of the triggers?'
'Nah, he was like the organizer. Like I said, this Veroa character didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground
