Corruption of Blood (38 page)

She watched him as he fussed with something at a sideboard: a samovar, a tall brass one with a blue flame under it. He was not a large man, but he held himself erect. Marlene judged him to be about seventy. He had an egg-shaped head downed with sparse cropped grayish hair of the type blonds grow when old, and a blunt Russian nose. When he turned toward her, bearing a lacquered tray with two tall glasses on it, his eyes, the color of ancient blue jeans, gazed intermittently at her between the flashes from round wire spectacles.

The tea glasses were fitted with brass holders. Marlene sipped: blazing hot, bitter, smoky, strong.

“Do you like it?” asked Reltzin.

“It’s fine, Mr. Reltzin,” said Marlene. She took a cube of sugar from a small brass bowl and popped it into her mouth, slurping the tea past the sweet lump until it was dissolved. Reltzin smiled at her, showing a glimpse of bad Soviet dentistry, and did the same.

“So,” said Reltzin when they had slurped sufficiently and eaten a sandwich and talked a bit about beverage-drinking customs in various parts of the world, “you are writing a book about Richard Dobbs.”

“Not exactly. I’m doing research for one. Your name, of course, came up.”

“But I didn’t know Dobbs, except by reputation, of course.”

“True,” said Marlene. “But you knew Jerome Weinberg. And Armand Dimitrievitch Gaiilov.”

A tiny look of surprise at the mention of the latter name, a little hardness showing momentarily in the blue eyes. “Yes, Weinberg. A walk-in at the embassy. I was on duty that day and so I was designated as the contact. You understand that every Soviet embassy has standing orders on how to treat such walk-ins. Most are valueless, but occasionally we got a prize. Like Weinberg.”

“Just a minute: you’re saying you were a KGB officer?”

“NKVD, actually. This was in 1950. Yes, a very small NKVD officer. But Weinberg was a very big catch. He was a records clerk in the Navy Department and he had access to plans for nuclear submarines. At that time, the idea that you could build a submarine that would never have to surface, that could approach a hostile shore and fire nuclear missiles at an enemy city, this was just beginning to be discussed in military circles. So it was vital for us to understand how far the Americans had gone in both theory and practice. All of this Weinberg offered us.”

“He said he came from Dobbs?”

“Most assuredly! That was what convinced us to trust him. We knew who Dobbs was, of course. An important figure.”

“What proof did he have that he was working for Dobbs?” asked Marlene, scribbling notes.

“Well, proof!” answered Reltzin, with a dismissive and elegant gesture of his long-fingered hands. “He had the material, from the highest levels of naval planning, with Dobbs’s initials on them. We copied them and he brought them back the same day. A good communist, Weinberg,” he added reflectively. “This is why he did it.”

“And he said Dobbs was a communist too?”

Reltzin smiled, “Oh, no, Weinberg considered him to be what Lenin called a useful idiot. A man of, shall we say, somewhat foggy political beliefs. He thought the nuclear submarine program an idiocy. He thought if he gave away the secrets, the Soviet Union would of course develop its own program apace, and then, when the navy found this out, they would cancel their own program.” His lifted eyebrows and rolled eyes indicated what he thought of this absurdity.

“You must understand, Miss Ciampi, that at this date the Soviet Union had just completed one of the greatest coups in the history of espionage, the capture of the secret of the atomic bomb, from the most closely guarded place in North America. Fuchs and Greenglass passed the secrets out right under the noses of your security officers. Harry Gold made regular visits to the Soviet consulate in New York. No one suspected the operation until we, the USSR that is, exploded the bomb. So, you understand, we thought we were dealing with the same hopeless sort of amateurs.”

“Not quite; you got caught.”

Reltzin nodded agreeably. “Yes, indeed, red-handed, so to speak.” He waited for Marlene to appreciate his little joke. “It was a complete surprise, I may say. I had no indication from Weinberg or from our various sources in the U.S. government that anyone had any suspicion. A curious matter. In any case, I was captured. Ordinarily, when an embassy official is caught spying, he is declared persona non grata and shipped home. The country caught spying retaliates by expelling one of the other nation’s diplomats and that is the end of the matter. In my case, however …”

“Yes?”

“In my case, they wanted me to testify against Dobbs. I refused, naturally. And then they said that they would let the authorities in the Soviet Union know that I had revealed damaging material, that I, in fact, had betrayed Weinberg for what we used to call imperialist gold. This, of course, was in the Stalin years. I would have been shot immediately. So, I was allowed to defect. They pumped me, I told what I knew, which was not very much. I was a very small
apparatchik,
as I have said. And they gave me this life.” He gestured broadly to the apartment. “I am in the stamp business, by the way: specialty Eastern Europe and the Far East.”

“You did better than Weinberg, anyhow,” said Marlene.

“Oh, yes, Weinberg was given thirty years, the same as Harry Gold. But he was a traitor. The only reason they didn’t execute him was that he informed on Dobbs.”

“He lied about Dobbs, you mean. To save his own neck he threw them a bigger fish.”

A wintry smile. “Did he? Perhaps. I never had reason to believe that Weinberg was lying about Dobbs, but maybe you are correct. Who can tell? Weinberg was assassinated in prison two years after he began his term.”

“You say, ‘assassinated’?”

“Well, murdered at any rate. His throat was cut. I understand they never found the killer. Perhaps only a feeble attempt was made to find him.”

“What did you think when the case against Dobbs collapsed?”

“Well, at the time, I couldn’t understand it. But later things leaked out, and of course, there was the lawyer—Dobbs’s lawyer, Blaine—and gradually I was able to put together what must have happened.”

“Which was?”

“Oh, well, the papers were full of speculation about this mysterious Mr. X that Blaine was threatening to call as a witness that Dobbs was innocent. Of course, I knew that this had to be Gaiilov, because Gaiilov had been turned in Japan, then he doubled, and
then
he defected just as our counterintelligence people were about to grab him. Blaine was the CIA agent who turned him, there in Japan. So, of course he knew that the CIA would never let him testify in open court. Even his whereabouts were secret. Also there were many in the CIA who did not believe that Gaiilov was really a defector, so it would’ve been
doubly
embarrassing to the government. So to speak.” He smiled again.

Amusing man, Mr. Reltzin, thought Marlene, smiling back. Hard to remember he had been a functionary in one of the most horrendous organizations in human history.

“So he wasn’t exchanged either,” said Marlene. “He’s still in the U.S.?”

“I would think so, although I really have no idea. It’s over twenty-five years now. I doubt that he is high on the KGB’s list of targets. Higher than me, perhaps, but not very high. And as you see, I live comfortably, an American citizen, with a small business. I expect Gaiilov may be similarly situated. Or perhaps not.”

“How do you mean?” Marlene had caught an odd tone in his last remark.

Reltzin sipped some tea and then looked away, up at the ceiling, or perhaps into the past. “He had a reputation, in the service. A high liver—women, gambling, yes, but more—he was a … how can I say this … an adventurer; spying, conspiracy, this was his life’s blood. Intelligence services are wise to restrict their recruitment of such types, you understand, but each service must have some of them. Ah,
reckless,
that is the word I was looking for. Reckless. So. Perhaps he died, from this. Or he has become old and careful. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

“No, you’ve been more than helpful, Mr. Reltzin,” said Marlene.

“I am happy to,” said Reltzin. “Perhaps you could in return do me a small service.” He rose and went over to a bookcase and returned with a small portrait in a silver frame. A thin woman in early middle age peered out, squinting against the sun. With her was a younger woman, pretty in her dowdy clothes, and a little girl, in blond pigtails, holding her hand. “My family,” said Reltzin. “They were taken, of course. I tell myself, they would have been taken anyway, if I had returned, but … you perhaps have contacts, with the government? They must all be dead, but, if you could, I would like to know. If you could.”

“How did it go?” asked Bishop.

The man who called himself Caballo said, “Hold on,” walked over and turned down the television and picked up the phone again. He said, “No problem. So, there’s just Guel left here, right?”

“Right. But the situation with Guel is that he’s apt to have papers.”

“You’re thinking a fire?”

“Yes, that would be best,” said Bishop. “Make it a hot one.”

SIXTEEN

Tony Bones and his little entourage were easy to spot on the sun-sodden terrace of the Bal Harbour Inn. Karp watched them for a moment from the shaded entranceway. Occupying two tables of the twenty or so arranged around the curving terrace, they wore suits in pastel fruit colors, darker shirts opened down to the chest, considerable gold showing amid the hair there, bad shaves, and sharp razor cuts. Karp himself was wearing an inappropriate dark Washington-lawyer suit and tie.

There was a churning among the population of the two tables. Men rose and left in pairs and trios, other pairs and trios arrived. One man only was stationary amid this movement. Tony Bones was dressed in a pale tan suit and a dark red open shirt, and over this he wore a long, thin hatchet face, the mouth a lipless V like a shark’s, flat black eyes, same fish. A central casting Mafia don, thought Karp; with a face like that he should have gone into installing carpeting and let the guys who looked like the family grocer run the Mob.

Karp walked slowly toward the two tables. As he approached, all the button men stopped what they were doing and looked him unsmilingly over.

Then Tony spotted him. Big grin, a wave. He didn’t stand, he shook Karp’s hand sitting. He was very short; he didn’t want his people to see him standing next to Karp. Aside from that, the gangster seemed genuinely glad to meet him. As Karp had expected; this was an odd aspect of his long-standing relationship with the Honorable Society, in New York and, so it seemed, here in Miami. They always gave him a smile and a big hello, whether he had sent them to prison or not; maybe
especially
if he had sent them to prison. This confirmed Karp’s impression that wise guys were essentially insane people.

Now Karp was being introduced to a covey of Joeys, Jimmies, Jillies, and Johnnies with indistinguishable vowel-terminating names. Tony Bones gestured him to a chair. The others drifted away.

“How’s it goin’, Butch? You want something? Coffee? You eat yet? Sure?”

“Yeah, I just ate, Tony. I guess you heard already.”

“Yeah, yeah, hell of a thing. The girl called me in the morning. Fuckin’ Colombians!”

“Why do you think it was Colombians?” asked Karp.

“Hey, Colombians, Jamaicans, Cubans, whatever. The fuck I know! I’m gonna find out who and then they’re gonna wish they was still back in the fuckin’ jungle.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t an outfit?”

Tony looked insulted. “Nahh! What’re you talkin’, outfit? What, somebody wants to send me a message, send Santos a message, they whack
Jerry Legs?
Hey, why’nt they whack my dry cleaner, my liquor guy? It don’t make no sense, follow? You’re sending somebody a message, it don’t make no sense to send it in Chinese, you know? They want me to fuckin
read
it. They want to whack somebody, they go for somebody with some weight on him. Him, for instance.” Tony pointed out one of the Joeys.

“The other thing, it could be, maybe Jerry burned somebody. But I think, no, that wasn’t his thing. He wasn’t interested in business, he wasn’t a hustler. You wanna know, Jerry didn’t have much goin’ for him upstairs, tell the truth. So why whack him, except some fuckin’ jungle spic don’t know any better?”

“You know this guy?” Karp slid the photo of Angelo Guel across the table. Tony looked at it carefully.

“This the one you think did Jerry? What, a Colombian, right?”

“Cuban. And I’ve got no reason to believe he had anything to do with the murder. In fact, I happen to think that whoever hit Jerry is going to go after this guy. Angelo Guel his name is.”

“You know who he is? The shooter.”

Karp passed him another eight-by-ten. “I like this guy for it. He calls himself Bill Caballo.”

The capo stared at the photograph. “How come you like him for it?”

“Mostly gut feeling. This guy’s turned up in a lot of places, connected to the Kennedy thing in various ways. We were talking to Jerry about stuff that might pin down the connection between Cuba, the CIA, and the assassination. It turned out he knew a lot of good stuff. He got whacked for it, so I look at who benefits from having him killed, and who among all those people has a rep as a serious shooter, and I come up with Bill here. Of course, they could’ve hired some kid off the street too, but I doubt it. You wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t what?”

“If you wanted to kill somebody and you didn’t want it traced back to you. Would you hire some kid for a couple of grand or would you get Jilly over there to do it? I mean, what’s the best way of keeping it close?”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, right, I see what you’re saying. Not Jilly personally, to tell the truth, but let’s say I got a guy of that type.” He tapped the photo of Caballo. “So, you think this scumbag is the hitter for … for what? The people did Kennedy?” He looked at the photograph more carefully. “Yeah! This guy looks like what’s-his-name, the scumbag they framed, Oswald.” He compressed his lips thoughtfully and nodded several times. Tony Bones had dropped out of school in the tenth grade but he was a full professor with tenure in the Department of Comparative Conspiracy. It gave Karp a peculiar and disturbing sense of satisfaction to find that Tony Bones was not an adherent of Warren.