Winter Kills (27 page)

“She established herself overnight at the social center of the American government—the lobbyist and fixer for the American crime industry among all top criminal executives of the country. They came to Washington; she entertained them and explained the nature of the services she would offer among all the agencies and branches of the federal government. She was accepted by the greatest of these as a
capo dei capi
, and her father began his fifty-thousand-year term in Purgatory kissing her ass. If Tim had been allowed to serve out his two terms, the lobby would have been established
forever and would have been just as blandly self-righteous in its work as the farm or medical lobby. We might have seen federal price supports for heroin and evaluations of the lives of John Torrio, Alphonse Capone and Benjamin Siegel in history books printed under federal grants.

“It was Lola who handled the Mob’s campaign contribution of two million dollars toward Tim’s election. She knew what she was doing. She didn’t make the donation directly to Tim. She did it through your father, whose reaction seems to have been merely that Lola’s friends appreciated as much as he did that Tim was the man for the job.

“Until the basic deal could be set, the deal by which Tim would personally acknowledge the contribution of the two million from Lola’s establishment by favoring them whenever and wherever possible, which is the only reason for any private campaign contributions—after all, money’s use is to buy not to bless—Lola waited. This pulled her almost to the breaking point. She turned to the little doctor on Ninety-seventh Street for vitamin injections to keep her calm and happy. It was a miracle cure, but it eventually ruined her looks.

“Tim was elected President. What a wonderful day for so many different kinds of people, but particularly for your father. And his friends. In Washington, Lola began to cultivate, organize and re-establish her place among the powers. Then—at last—the time came to affirm the basic deal. The Fratellanza had decided it would be more dignified to wait until the President summoned Lola to him to acknowledge the precedent-smashing contribution they had made to his election. Eleven months went by and nothing happened for them. At the end of that time, her own nerves shot, pressed by her perplexed colleagues, Lola arranged to see Tim at his father’s house in Palm Springs, “the winter White House”—not knowing that your father records even the visits of house flies to any of his establishments. She presented her detailed bill for services
rendered, including her services as a fund raiser, emphasizing that the crime industry’s offering had been the largest single campaign contribution ever made.

“Lola really thought she had your brother. She was convinced he needed her as though he were some kind of a junkie about sex. She was ready for her great niche in the history of the Mafia. She handed your brother a sheaf of papers that she laughingly identified as the Treaty of Palm Springs. Here is the tape of their conversation.” Professor Cerutti touched a button on the console and Tim’s distinct, nasal, California voice came into the room:

TIM
: No papers, honey. Let’s talk about new broads. I’m sick of looking at papers.

LOLA
: Read it. It’s a big surprise.

TIM
: What is it?

LOLA
: I call it the Treaty of Palm Springs.

TIM
: Okay, but what is it?

LOLA
: Did you know I was a Sicilian?

TIM
: I knew you weren’t a Mexican.

LOLA
: Tim, do you remember the Sicilians contributed two million dollars to your campaign?

TIM
: Two million dollars? You’ve lost your mind.

LOLA
: We gave it through your father. He handled it. I gave him a check for two million dollars so he would know it was sincere, then he told me to have it made into hundred-dollar bills and put into suitcases. Gucci made the suitcases.

TIM
: Is that right? Who are the Sicilians? That’s a pretty rich ethnic group.

LOLA
: Maybe you better ask your father. [
There is a telephone sound
.]

TIM
: Pa? Lola is here. She says some Sicilian organization contributed two million dollars to the campaign and that you took it in hundred-dollar bills. [
There is a long silence on the tape
.] All right. We’ll talk about it later. [
There is a sound of a telephone console button being pressed
.] Henry? Get John Donnelly
out here from Washington. Tell him to bring me the record of every campaign contribution, legitimate or otherwise. Thanks. [
Sound of telephone being hung up
.] It’s getting clearer anyway. At least I know who the Sicilians are. Now—what is this treaty?

LOLA
: Look—you sound upset. I mean, I thought you knew all about the contribution. Let’s sleep on it. There is absolutely no hurry.

TIM
: That’s good.

LOLA
: Tim—don’t read it now. Give it back and I’ll go home and we can start all over again.

TIM
: I’ll be damned. Why—it
is
a treaty!

LOLA
: Tim, please. Give it back.

TIM
: You will address me as Mr. President, please. Well! What stately language…. Listen to this. I’ll just skim it now, but I will read it through later. Let’s see—the treaty
seeks
the recall of one hundred and four federal indictments—you’d
like
seventeen presidential pardons—you respectfully
request
the elimination of the use of the word “Mafia” by all federal agencies—you
petition
for greater freedom for Sicilian importers dealing out of Mexico and Canada, and you
suggest
that the Treasury Department cease pressuring the Swiss government to allow them to examine anonymous bank accounts held in Switzerland.
   Lola, are you sure you don’t want Joe Bananas made ambassador to the Court of St. James’s?

LOLA
: I am very happy that you are taking it this way, Tim. I was beginning to get a little worried.

TIM
: For the last time—I am Mr. President to you, Lola.

LOLA
: Yes, Mr. President.

TIM
: You came here for an answer. This is the answer. You may never set foot in Washington again—unless, of course, you are under investigation. If you get my drift. Is that clear? And if I hear that you are
entertaining any member of my government from the Vice-President down to the U.S. Marshal in this county, I will see that you are investigated, and I think it will be quite possible that you will be arrested, tried and convicted. This conversation is being recorded, and copies of the tape will be delivered—courtesy of my father—to every one of any consequence in your Sicilian group so that they know where you stand and where they stand. NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!

[
The tape stopped
.]

“That was why Lola Camonte—and Frank Mayo, for that matter—were happy to cooperate with your brother’s assassins by finding Joe Diamond for whoever it was who paid for your brother’s murder,” Professor Cerutti said.

“But you don’t know who that is?”

“Not yet.”

“Can Miss Camonte be made to tell who it is?”

Cerutti shrugged. “Maybe. Your father could do it. He is friendly with everyone on the Council. The Council could certainly persuade her to tell who asked her to find Joe Diamond.”

“Why hasn’t he done that?”

“I would say he hasn’t—and I hesitate to conjecture about these things—because he knows they might decide to implicate him and Tim’s memory by leaking their version of the two million dollars.”

“I don’t think so,” Nick said. “That was fifteen years ago. Pa and Frank Mayo looked to me to be very good friends. But it could be that Pa is just too close to them to ask them for a favor like that.”

“It is not my place to conjecture.”

“What happened after the man Donnelly came out from Washington with the information Tim wanted and Tim and Pa had their ‘talk’ about the two million
dollars Pa had accepted in Tim’s name?”

Cerutti stared sadly into Nick’s eyes. “They met and then your brother never spoke to your father again. He never saw him again. They broke over that issue. It was a terrible blow to your father both personally and financially.”

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1974—NEW YORK

Nick didn’t play the organ while the
Wendebo
took him back to Ashland the next day. He sat in the main saloon, drank hot tea and felt proud of Tim. He understood all of it, not in its details or even in the inner meanings of politics, but he knew Tim had been waiting all his life for one black-and-white instance of Pa’s essential unreliability. He suddenly realized that Tim had lived with what he himself had run away from, and he began to understand what that signified. They had both lived in fear of Pa’s undependability in any single moment of time when the existing conditions forced a choice on Pa of either serving his sons’ best interests or serving Pa.

Nick sat and tried to imagine what had happened that night in Palm Springs after Tim dismissed Camonte and called his father in. It must have been a grisly scene.

Four times, in different places, Nick had read that, as estimated by historians, psychologists and anthropologists, Tim Kegan had wanted to be President of the United States more than any other man in the history of the Republic. To get to the White House he had had to pay the price of admission to Pa. Somehow his administration had survived Pa’s demands during the first eleven months of Tim’s office. Throughout that time Tim had tried to go forward, carrying the weight of Pa all alone, taking his cues from Pa on the directions in which the country was to go, trying to judge when it
would reach a point of no return, living in anguish that the break with Pa would never come.

Then the break came. Lola Camonte gave Tim his freedom. Sometime late that night or early the next morning the finance chairman of the campaign committee arrived at Palm Springs with the records. Tim would have turned everything inside out and would have discovered that two million dollars in hundred-dollar bills had never gone into the campaign fund. A free man, unchained from Pa, Tim would have kicked Pa’s door down and would have gone in to tell him that he was barred from the White House and from Washington together with his Sicilian friends, and that if he ever as much as showed his face there again Tim would wind up a Senate committee for an investigation into all of Pa’s affairs, including the disappearance of the two million dollars.

It had to have happened that way. In the time he had left, Tim became a different President. Instead of the go-along, frivolous, laissez-faire figure he had offered during his first year of office, he tried to become a strong, pace-setting President of all the people. Nick imagined he could hear Pa shouting that night, “What the hell do you think I made you President for, you little shit—to review the fucking fleet in New York harbor?”

Then Tim would say, cooler than cool, “You had a great ride, Pa. Now you either disappear or I’ll drag you at the end of a rope behind the bus.”

Nick felt exhilarated. By his own choice, Tim had broken with Pa and had banished him. He felt a wave of love for Tim wash over him. He had always wanted to love Tim. He was ashamed that he had treated Tim the way he had, because Nick knew Pa. He had fled Pa. He should have had understanding of the load Tim had carried within the sound of Pa’s voice.

As he was driven into New York, Nick saw all sides of his family clearly for the first time. He was exultant
for Tim but he was sorry for Pa. Pa had been Tim’s only dominant teacher, and he had conditioned Tim’s reflexes the way Pavlov had conditioned his dogs. Pa had bred and trained Tim to be President his way. Pa had inculcated all Tim’s attitudes and reactions. Pa had given Tim a religion that money was the only morality or salvation. For Pa (and Pa thought for Tim), if all the criminals and murderers and dope peddlers were on your side to help you make more money, they deserved your support and your country’s support. If a bunch of niggers and students and liberals ready to stool-pigeon for the press wanted to try to rock the boat, they had to be clobbered until they could find the carrot held out to get them back on their feet, pulling on the ropes, to keep Pa and his friends moving toward more money.

Pa had thought Tim really understood all that.

Nick called Yvette from Kennedy as soon as he got off the plane. He was self-conscious, spoke stiffly, unable to think of much else except the one big argument they had ever had in three years over a wonderful beef daube that he could still smell. Yvette spoke as if they had never had the argument. She was relaxed and gay.

“Where have you been?” he asked. “I have called you five times from two different cities and maybe five different phones.”

“I went to a wedding in Montreal. Best wedding I’ve ever been to.”

“Are you free for dinner?”

“When?”

“Tonight!”

“Yes, I’m free for dinner tonight. What’s on your mind?”

“I have to talk to you.”

“Have you pinned the killing on Dawson yet?”

“Listen—can’t we get whatever it is on your mind dragged out into the open and talk about it?”

“I’ve been thinking about that all the time.”

“Well?”

“I decided—yes—it should be out in the open. We can talk about it tonight.”

“That’s wonderful. Jesus—I mean, that’s great.”

“Maybe you better wait until you say it like that. Where shall we meet?”

“I’m at the airport. I have to go to the Walpole to change clothes, but if it’s all right with you I’ll send a car for you, then you and the car pick me up on the way downtown.”