Majic Man nh-10 Page 7

  I shook hands with him, warily; he looked like a very successful bookie. “Nate’s just fine, Teddy. Who the hell are you?”

  Kollek grinned and his eyes disappeared into pouchy slits. “Nate, you ain’t had time to absorb who Dick Lamm is, much less Teddy Kollek.” He gestured rather grandly. “They’re savin’ a back booth for us.”

  I followed him. An announcer was shooing the crowd off the dance floor; just as we were settling in our booth, a thin spotlight cut through the cigarette smoke to fix upon a small stage with a six-piece band. A drumroll and an announcer introduced Jack “Jive” Shaffer, the plump, bald, tomato-faced comedian/bandleader, who buck-and-winged his way to the microphone in a blur of pink and green apparel, rhinestone cuff links catching the light, both they and Jack winking at the applauding crowd.

  “Hey,” he said into the microphone, looking toward the rafters whence his spotlight came, “can’t you find a light with some hair on it?”

  That got a pretty good laugh, considering how lame it was, and Kollek said, “Kind of sad, what passes for entertainment in this town, ain’t it?”

  His speech had an educated, even cultured tone that told me the scattering of ain’ts were an affectation.

  “Of course, I’m spoiled,” Kollek said, lighting up a cigar with a hand laden with gold and diamond rings. “Till a few months ago, my office was over the Copa-in the Hotel Fourteen, off Fifth Avenue?”

  “I know where the Copacabana is.”

  “Yeah, I guess you do get around, but I figured you bein’ from Chicago and all-”

  “That where you know Frankie from?”

  “Yeah, matter of fact it is.” He blew a fat smoke ring, then frowned and said, “Hey, I don’t mean to be rude-you want a Cuban?”

  “No thanks. I don’t smoke.”

  “In this joint, you might as well.” Whenever Kollek smiled, which was often, it was a wiseguy, Leo Gorcey-style half-smirk. “Frank’s a nice fella. Hot-headed, impulsive, but heart of pure gold.”

  “I don’t know if his wife would agree with you.”

  “Yeah, this Ava Gardner thing is a pity; kid’s career is goin’ to hell in a handbasket.”

  At a postage-stamp table nearby, a young couple-who’d apparently had enough entertainment for one night-rose to leave and almost bumped into a husky young guy in a well-tailored blue suit, who was quickly taking their place, despite the empty glasses and tip awaiting a waitress’ attention.

  “I got that information about Dick Lamm pretty well absorbed by now, Teddy, if you’d like to tell me who the fuck you are.”

  He patted the air with a palm; cigar smoke swirled around him like the aftermath of a magician’s trick. “Don’t get testy, Nate-we’re gonna be great friends. Couple of Jewish joes like us.”

  “I’m not all that Jewish, Teddy.”

  Finally a grin showed some teeth: big white ones.

  “‘Heller’ sure as hell ain’t Scottish.”

  I leaned on an elbow and gestured with a thumb at my face. “Take a look at this Irish mug of mine; my mom was named Jeanette, she went to mass and she didn’t exactly keep kosher.”

  “Did you go to mass, Nate, or synagogue?”

  “I wasn’t raised in either church. If there’s a God, He keeps out of my way and I stay out of His.”

  Kollek shrugged. “I grew up in a religious home, but I never been a regular synagogue-goer myself. When someone tries to force me to behave a certain way, I don’t like it.”

  “I’m the same, Teddy. Which is why you have about twenty seconds to convince me to hang around.”

  “Hey,” the red-faced comic was saying, “how about these new government deductions, these new ‘pay as you go’ taxes, the President calls ’em? But after you pay, where can you go?”

  Polite laughter rippled; the crowd, denied dancing, were mostly talking among themselves, and drinking. Not far from where we sat, though, somebody was laughing a little too loud, I thought, trying a little too hard: the husky guy who’d taken that postage-stamp table. Like Kollek, he was blond, in his late twenties, with the blank, barely formed features of a fullridescholarship jock; hell, he was big enough to play tackle in the Big Ten….

  Kollek casually asked, “Ever hear of the Haganah, Nate? That’s not a word you necessarily have to go to synagogue to run into.”

  The Haganah, which had been around since after World War One, was an underground defense organization controlled by David Ben-Gurion’s Jewish Agency for Palestine and a high command of Palestine’s Jewish leaders. There were Zionist terrorist groups of course, but Haganah wasn’t one of them: their policy was havlagah, self-defense.

  “Is that still around, now that Israel’s a state?” I asked.

  Kollek just smiled and puffed his cigar. He was about to say something when a waitress came around to ask us if we wanted drinks. He ordered Jack Daniel’s on the rocks and I ordered rum and Coke.

  “What’s a poor young nation to do,” Kollek said, not exactly answering my question, “when a great patron like the U.S.A. decides to ration its goodwill the way it used to ration gas and meat?”

  “What you mean is,” I said, “the U.S. won’t ‘ration’ you any arms or military supplies.”

  An arms embargo was in effect: neither side of the Arab-Israeli war could have American weaponry-legally.

  Kollek shrugged and said, “I’m a fund-raiser, Nate, workin’ through the UJA.”

  United Jewish Appeal.

  “‘Just’ a fund-raiser, Teddy?”

  “Well, also I’m a recruiter. I look for influential American Jews who can give more than money-who can provide leverage-like Eddie Jacobsen, President Truman’s old business partner.”

  “I hear he doesn’t keep kosher either,” I muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You know, a big part of my job, Nate, is I’m always on the lookout for guys like you.”

  “What kind of guy would that be?”

  He gestured to me like I was a Cadillac on a showroom floor. “American Jewish war veterans, with combat experience, willing to volunteer for the Israeli army-over half our volunteers come from America, y’know.”

  “One war was plenty for me, thanks.”

  A waitress finally cleaned off the tackle’s tiny table; he ordered from her, without even looking at her, a good-looking little brunette, though on occasion he was still sneaking peeks at our booth.

  “Hey,” Kollek was saying, shrugging, “you were a long shot, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. Anyway, it’s not like we’re beggin’ for leads on ex-soldiers ripe for recruitment.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No … we’re supplied with names and personal details of potential recruits by our friends on the inside.”

  “The inside of what, Teddy?”

  He shrugged, exuding friendliness and cigar smoke, then dropped his bomb: “The Pentagon.”

  “… This is about Forrestal, isn’t it?”

  Kollek laughed, again ignoring my question. “You know, Nate, it’s the last thing I ever expected to be involved with…. I was one of the lucky Jews, you know, the lucky few the British allowed to move to Palestine in ’35, before Hitler started gobbling up Europe. I started a kibbutz on the shores of the Sea of Galilee-can you picture it?”

  I had to smile, hearing this from the Damon Runyon character seated across from me.

  “Galilee, that’s where they say Jesus walked on the water. Easier for him doing that than me being a farmer. Oy! They said, ‘Teddy, you’re a worldly man, you have charm, people meet you and they like you … we’ll send you to godless New York.’ … You know, these are people that admire the Soviet-style economy, socialists that view America as materialistic, superficial, pointless. Me, I took to New York immediately-Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, and those jazz musicians from Harlem, hot damn!”

  “What did you mean, Teddy? What was the last thing you’d ever expected to get involved with?”

  H
e rolled the cigar around in his mouth, giving me a sly look. “What do you think I’m talking about, Nate?”

  “Arms smuggling,” I said. “Intelligence gathering.”

  Up onstage, Jack “Jive” Shaffer was singing an effeminate version of “Nature Boy” in a pageboy wig, prancing, mincing, getting some laughs-though not from the tackle at the postage-stamp table.

  Kollek’s cigar had gone out; he relighted it. “Let’s just say I won’t deny I’ve developed contacts, informers, assistance of various kinds in the Pentagon.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I promised you the lowdown; Teddy Kollek delivers on his promises. Sure you won’t have a Cuban?”

  “No thanks.”

  “First Cuban I ever smoked, Ben Siegel gave me, after one of his Havana trips. Ben, God rest him, was one of our biggest contributors-better than fifty grand. Meyer Lanksy, Mickey Cohen-you know them, too, don’t you?”

  “Acquaintances, not friends.”

  “Well, they’re my friends, generous ones, and not just in terms of money, no. Jewish and Italian gangsters can be helpful in so many other ways.”

  “Like linkups with waterfront unions, if you’re trying to smuggle guns and money, you mean?”

  Again Kollek didn’t answer me directly, saying, “They’re crazy, those guys. Do you know Lanksy suggested I draw up a hit list of ‘enemies of the Jewish people’?”

  “Take him up on it?”

  “No, it was tempting, but I declined-respectfully.”

  Using the same tray, the cute brunette waitress brought us our drinks, then took the tackle his: a bottle of 7 UP and a glass of ice. Maybe he was in training.

  “Okay, Teddy. You got friends in the mob, you got friends in the Pentagon. What’s your point?”

  Kollek leaned forward, the eyes again disappearing into the slitted pouches. “Haven’t I made it? Your pal Forrestal thinks we’re trying to kill him. Why, to get information we’re already getting from sources all around him? Hell, a phone call to Meyer Lanksy, I could have that fat cat snuffed out like a candle. But that’s not how I operate-not that the son of a bitch wouldn’t deserve it.”

  “So, any American official that doesn’t back Israel deserves to die, Teddy?”

  He was shaking his head, cigar smoke swirling around him like a wreath. “That’s what I don’t get about you, Nate-you’re Jewish, you’re a combat veteran-how can you work for that Nazi bastard?”

  Up onstage, the drummer hit a rim shot, punctuating Jack “Jive” Shaffer’s latest joke-and Kollek’s.

  “Oh,” I said, “so now Forrestal’s a Nazi? I see-Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Navy, a Nazi, sure, that makes sense; Truman’s Secretary of Defense a Nazi. Teddy, this may come as a shock to you, but not everybody who opposes Israel is a fucking Nazi.”

  The quizzical eyebrows raised even higher. “You mean, maybe James Forrestal doesn’t have a corner on the paranoia market? Don’t you read Drew Pearson? Nate, your friend Forrestal’s company Dillon and Read helped finance Hitler!”

  I sipped my rum and Coke, refusing to get caught up in his hysteria. “A Wall Street firm doing business with Germany after World War One, before Hitler’s rise, doesn’t make Forrestal and the rest of Dillon, Read amp; Company a nest of Nazis.”

  “Bullshit! They loaned hundreds of millions to the German cartels that formed the backbone of Hitler’s war machine. Hell, Forrestal’s on the fuckin’ board of directors of General Aniline and Film, the American arm of I. G. Farben, the drug and industrial trust that created Auschwitz!”

  Kollek was getting really worked up; it was all the tackle at the postage-stamp table could do not to just pull up a chair at our booth.

  “You got a lot of passion, Teddy, but you’re as full of shit as a Christmas goose. Jim Forrestal’s a patriot.”

  “In his twisted view of it, I’m sure he is. And you’re right, I’m overstating, he’s no Nazi-he’s just one hell of a capitalist. I mean, Chase National Bank, General Motors, ITT, Ford Motors, Standard Oil, they’ve all been in bed with Germany since long before the war.”

  “Hey, this is all way over my head,” I said, but I had a sick feeling in my stomach and it wasn’t the lobster mingling with his cigar smoke.

  Kollek waved a blunt-fingered hand; the diamond and gold rings on it seemed at odds with his patronizing view of capitalism. “Yeah, what the hell, Nate-these guys were just protecting themselves-and their great country-to make sure that, after the war, the same fraternity of all-American business bigwigs still had their holdings.”

  I held up a palm: stop. “Teddy, I’m way out of my element, here…. I’m just a private eye with a client who thinks somebody wants to kill him. You say your group isn’t a likely suspect, then you give me hundreds of reasons why you oughta be on top of the goddamn list!”

  Kollek blew another fat smoke ring; raised his eyebrows, set them down. “Not the top, maybe. But why bother killing the bastard? Forrestal’s on his way out, isn’t he? And even if he was staying, he’d just be one of many.”

  I frowned, shook my head. “Many what? Nazis? If I believed what people were telling me lately, half the government’s Communist, and the other half is fascist. Back where I come from, we call them Democrats and Republicans.”

  Now he held up a palm; in fact, he held up two of them. “All right, okay-fine. Dismiss everything I say as biased, alarmist, Zionist bullshit. But know this: if your friend Forrestal is in danger, it’s more likely from his own people than mine.”

  This time it was Forrestal’s voice echoing in my head: I know too much.

  “Have you heard about these new brassieres?” the comic was asking the crowd. “The Salvation Army bra uplifts the fallen, the Communist bra supports the masses, and the Drew Pearson bra makes mountains out of molehills!”

  That one got some real laughter-not just titters-and Jack “Jive” Shaffer knew when to get off the stage, the six-piece band returning to dance music, starting with “Little White Lies”; the floor was soon flooded with couples. This left the well-groomed tackle all alone in a sea of empty tables, a shipwreck survivor on a desert island; the exposure didn’t stop him from occasionally stealing glances at our booth.

  Kollek swirled the remains of his drink in its glass and said, too casually, “Has Forrestal ever mentioned Operation Nachtigall to you, Nate? Operation Nightingale?”

  “No.”

  He sipped the drink, smiled his half-smile. “I’m not surprised. We have solid information that U.S. intelligence agencies-even while they were rounding up, shall we say, sacrificial wolves for the Nuremberg tribunals-were at the same time actively recruiting Nazis and Nazi collaborators for what Forrestal and others in your government see as the coming war on Communist Russia.”

  “Oh, please …”

  The smile evaporated and he leaned deep across the booth. “You can’t imagine how many scientists fresh from factories run by concentration-camp labor, and doctors right out of ‘research facilities’ where Jews were human guinea pigs, are on Uncle Sam’s payroll, now.”

  “That’s ludicrous. If that were true, and the public found out-”

  “Which is exactly why Forrestal is in more peril from his friends than his enemies. These efforts go beyond gathering up top Nazi minds, understand-Operation Nightingale, for example.”

  I sighed. “You seem to want me to ask, Teddy, so I’ll ask: what the hell is Operation Nightingale?”

  He sat back in the booth; his glass was empty, his arms folded, the cigar sending up smoke signals from an ashtray before him. He spoke very softly: “My sources indicate that the NSC … that’s the National Security Council, a body formed at Forrestal’s urging … is secretly financing and arming underground resistance movements in the USSR and its Eastern European satellites.”

  I thought about that, translating it for myself. “Funding the overthrow of Russia from within, you mean.”

  “Yes. Operation Nightingale is one of those efforts, a recruiting o
f right-wing Ukrainian militia members who during the war were among the Nazis’ most eager lapdogs, perpetrators of atrocities beyond comprehension. They not only rounded up thousands of Jews for the Nazis, they performed the mass executions themselves-after the women had been raped, of course. These barbarians, these purveyors of modern-day pogroms, your friend Forrestal enlisted in the service of anti-Communism. These monsters were even brought here, to your great country, and trained for their mission.”

  “If this is true-”

  “And not just Zionist propaganda? Then what, Nate?”

  “That’s my question-then what? Why tell me all this? So I’ll quit working for Forrestal?”

  The eyebrows flew up, the small eyes widened. “Hell, no! We want you to stay as close to him as possible. See what you can learn. If Forrestal is suffering from pangs of guilt, as our sources indicate, he might come forward with what he knows.”

  Now I gave him a smirk. “And think of how much money you could pry out of indignant rich American Jews, if he did-how pissed off they’d be over their country’s Nazi collaboration … oh, and how much money they’d cough up for your country’s cause.”

  Kollek shrugged with his eyebrows. “I won’t deny that’s one motive. Simple goddamn justice is another. Everything we know about Operation Nightingale, and other efforts to employ Nazis and Nazi collaborators, is hearsay; our sources won’t take the step of stealing or microfilming top-secret and classified materials.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to get shot by a firing squad for treason.”

  Kollek pointed his cigar at me. “I’ll tell you about treason and firing squads: if a man of Forrestal’s power and stature came forward with this ugly story, it would tear the dome off the Capitol. These goddamn Nazis would be flushed out of their lucrative new government positions and tried for their war crimes. And the traitors in government who hired them might see those firing squads, as well, or imprisonment, or at the very least disgrace.”

  I laughed softly, shook my head. “Teddy, you’re a very persuasive man, for a lunatic. But I already have a client.”

  Who was also a lunatic, but never mind.

  His expression had fallen. “I’m very disappointed in you, Nate.”