The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(103)

Castro was no part of this.

No. In the end as it turned out he wasnt. When he took over the island he threw Santo Trafficante in jail and told him that he was going to be shot as an enemy of the people. So of course Trafficante just said: How much? You hear different figures. Forty million. Twenty million. It was probably closer to ten. But Trafficante wasnt happy about it. The Mafia had a long history of running the casinos for Batista. Castro should have treated them better. The Mafia. He’s lucky to be alive. The odd thing is that Santo ran three casinos in Cuba for another eight or ten years after that. Language is important. People forget that Trafficante’s first language is Spanish. Anyway, he and Marcello have run the Southeast from Miami to Dallas for years. And the net worth of this enterprise is staggering. At its height over two billion a year. Bobby Kennedy wouldnt have deported Marcello without Jack’s okay, but by now the whole business was beyond disentanglement. The CIA hated the Kennedys and were working at cutting themselves loose from the administration altogether, but the notion that they killed Kennedy is stupid. And if Kennedy was going to take the CIA apart piece by piece as he promised to do he’d have had to start about two administrations sooner. By his time it was way too late. The CIA hated Hoover too and Hoover in turn hated the Kennedys and people just assumed that Hoover was in bed with the Mafia but the truth was the Mafia had endless files of Hoover as a transvestite—dressed in ladies’ underwear—so that was a Mexican standoff that had been in play for years. There’s more to it of course. But if you said that Bobby had gotten his brother—whom he adored—killed, I would have to say that was pretty much right. The CIA hauled Carlos off to the jungles of Guatemala and flew away waving back at him. Hard to imagine what they were thinking. They left him there—where he held a counterfeit passport—and his lawyer finally showed up and then the two of them were frogmarched off into the jungles of El Salvador and left to fashion new lives for themselves. Standing there in the heat and the mud and the mosquitoes. Dressed in wool suits. They hiked some twenty miles until they came to a village. And, God be praised, a telephone. When he got back to New Orleans he called a meeting at Churchill Farms—his country place—and he was foaming at the mouth over Bobby Kennedy. He looked at the people in the room—I think there were eight of them—and he said: I’m going to whack the little bastard. And it got very quiet. Everybody knew it was a serious meeting. There was nothing on the table to drink but water. And finally somebody said: Why dont we whack the big bastard? And that was that.

I’m not sure I understand.

If you killed Bobby then you had a really pissed off JFK to deal with. But if you killed JFK then his brother went pretty quickly from being the Attorney General of the United States to being an unemployed lawyer.

How do you know all this?

Right. The thing about the Kennedys was that they had no way to grasp the inappeasable war-ethic of the Sicilians. The Kennedys were Irish and they thought that you won by talking. They didnt really even understand that this other thing existed. They used abstractions to make political speeches. The people. Poverty. Ask not what your country blah blah blah. They didnt understand that there were still people alive who actually believed in things like honor. They’d never heard Joe Bonanno on the subject. That’s what makes Kennedy’s book so preposterous. Although in all fairness there’s some question as to whether or not he ever even read it. I’m having the chicken grande.

All right.

You want to pick the wine?

Sure.

Western tipped open the wine menu. I have to say that this is a pretty engaging story. But I suppose what I’d like to know is what does it have to do with my problem?

This country is your problem.

It is?

It’s not?

I’d have to think about it.

Well. That’s probably a problem too. You’ve already outstayed your welcome. But still you cant come to a decision.

You think I’m in danger.

You really shouldnt be looking over there you know.

Sorry. I have to say that he’s not all that prepossessing in appearance.

No. Five feet five and overweight. No telling how many people have died because that’s all that they beheld.

Beheld.

Yes.

Western ordered a bottle of Montepulciano. Kline nodded. Good choice. I was sitting at this table with a friend of mine a while back and Carlos was at his table there with two other men. Not his bodyguards. They always sit out front where they can see everybody. But there were three women at that table right over there and I noticed that the waiters were being old world deferential. Particularly to the older of the women. When Marcello and his friends left they stopped at the table and Carlos bent down and took the duenna’s hand and said something to her in Italian and then the other two men did the same. They paid no attention at all to the other two women. But Marcello’s friends when they made their little bow put their left hand over their heart, and after they left my friend wanted to know if that was a Sicilian thing. The hand over the heart. And I said that it was. In fact, a very Sicilian thing. It was to keep their .38s from sliding out into the woman’s soup.

What does he order?

I think usually some pasta dish. Puttanesca. He likes lobster. Things not necessarily on the menu.

Is he going to jail?

Barring divine intervention. He’s indicted for bribery in three States. I cant even imagine what his legal bills look like.