Better Dead (24 page)

“Naming names wasn't their sin,” he said with a shrug, his latest Camel bobbling. “Lying was. Selling your own family out, that's the crime.”

This coming from a guy who'd gone to jail rather than name names.

He read my expression.

“That surprises you, Nate?” Another of his eloquent shrugs. “Some people can take that kind of harassment, some can't. Hell, Nate, if I'd been tortured, I'd have talked. But a little jail time? I can do that standing on my head.”

*   *   *

Drew Pearson sat on the couch by the fireplace in the Waldorf suite, where two of Frank Costello's bully boys had been not long ago. In a gray pin-striped suit almost as nice as the Prime Minister of the Underworld's, he stretched his arms out along the back of the couch, potentate-style, and looked around the living room like a prospective buyer.

“So
this
is why my regular suite wasn't available,” he said, a sneering smile echoed by his well-waxed tie-her-to-the-train-tracks mustache.

As luck would have it—good or bad, I wasn't sure—Pearson was in town for an Associated Press luncheon. He'd called my room about two-thirty and invited himself over for an update.

I delivered him a Scotch on the rocks; I'd supplied myself with a few fingers of Bacardi, neat. I sat across from him.

“I knew you'd want me to be comfortable,” I said, and sipped a little rum. “Anyway, I'm almost out of here. You wanted an update, but I can give you a final briefing.”

He frowned. “You're wrapping it up?”

“I am. And I have an exclusive for you so big, you won't even whine about taking care of my expense account.”

I told him about the discovery of the console table, and Macy's confirming it as theirs (just as the Rosenbergs had claimed), plus the implications that all meant for a new trial. I also mentioned the David Greenglass handwriting exemplars and the possibility of perjury as another basis of appeal.

“There's plenty more,” I said, “and I can give you the gist, but there's nothing you can use. Everything I got was either off-the-record or from parties who will deny what they shared with me.”

“Understood. What did you learn, man?”

I shook a scolding finger at him. “You can get sued and lose, Drew, if you put any of it in your column. Don't make a confidential unnamed source out of me.”

He nodded once, curtly, and reached for his Scotch, which he sipped several times as I told him that Rosenberg had run a Soviet spy ring during the war; that Cohn had manufactured evidence, putting words in the mouths of David and Ruth Greenglass; and that while Julius was guilty of passing nonatomic secrets to the Soviets, the government had nothing on Ethel.

Swirling ice in what remained of his Scotch, Pearson asked, “Will Rosenberg talk, to save her?”

“No. He's a true believer. I think she is, too.”

“Well, we know they'll kill
him
if he stays mute. But will they kill her?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “I think they'll have to, Drew. The feds have backed themselves into a corner. Anyway, guys like Cohn don't give a damn. He just likes being famous for catching atomic bomb spies.”

“He's a shit,” Pearson said.

As rarely as this Quaker swore, that was an astonishing observation, despite being rather obvious.

“What,” he asked, “are you going to tell McCarthy?”

“Haven't got that far yet,” I said. “He thought I was going to sabotage the investigation. I have made a few highly selective reports along the way. This much I know—ol' Tail-Gunner Joe won't love me for finding that missing table.”

Pearson finished his Scotch. “Well, do your best to stay on his good side.”

“Why?”

His eyebrows rose. “McCarthy is as dangerous as his boy Roy Cohn is ruthless. And they're out there right now making America safe from Communists. That's a category that includes every Democrat in the country except the Southern ones, Nathan. So I'd like you to remain in his good graces. Perhaps he'll hire you on for something else.”

I grunted a laugh. “Why would I want to work for that loon again, assuming he even wants me to?”

His light blue eyes bore into me. “You're as close as I have to someone on the inside, Nathan. We need to take this man down.”

“Give it time. He'll probably do it himself.”

“Well, you might be needed to give him a push. So don't burn the bridge. Get something really damaging on him, and you'll learn that underneath it all, I'm generous at heart.”

I managed not to waste any rum on a spit-take. “If you say so, Drew. But in a day or two, I'll be back in Chicago, where the closest thing to political policy is the daily number.”

He rewarded that witticism with his ingratiating toothy smile, rose, and shook hands with me across the coffee table. I got him his hat and the London Fog raincoat he'd arrived in and gave them to him at the door.

Halfway out, he said, “I've got a flight to catch or I'd suggest we have supper. Next time. We'll make it the Empire Room.”

I'm still waiting.

*   *   *

Since Pearson would break the console table story in his column tomorrow, I needed to talk to McCarthy today. I didn't expect to get right through to him, but I did. Or almost—the first staffer I spoke to on the phone sent me over to Joe's lovely right-hand “man,” Jean Kerr.

“Nathan,” she said, in a lilting second soprano that seemed suited to both her red hair and Irish heritage, “I can put you through to Joe in just a few minutes. He's in his office visiting with Senator Taft.”

This was an example of the mountain going to Mohammed—Robert Taft was the Senate Majority leader and the papers whispered that he was trying to rein McCarthy in.

I said, “I can call back in half an hour, Jean.”

“No, it shouldn't be long. Gives me a chance to say how much we appreciate the work you're doing for us.”

That implied she knew of my undercover mission for McCarthy on the Hammett committee, which indicated just how trusted this woman was in the inner circle.

“Actually I'm just tying a bow on it,” I said. “This will be my final report, unless Joe asks me to come to D.C. for a really detailed briefing.”

“If he does,” she said, with that mild flirtatiousness that charmed every male with whom she came into contact, “you'll have to go out to dinner with us. You're married, aren't you, Nate?”

“No, that ship sailed. If you have a sister who looks like you, it's a date.”

She laughed musically. “Not an available sister at the moment, but a very attractive young staffer who likes older men.”

“Ouch.”

“Well, she's very young, Nate. I hope that isn't a problem.”

“I'll struggle past it.”

More musical laughter. “I thought you might.… Oh, there goes Senator Taft. Doesn't look terribly happy. I'll put you through.”

“Thanks, Jean.”

Then McCarthy's voice came roaring on, in hail-fellow-well-met mode. “Nate! Just getting worried about you, boy. What do you have for me?”

“My work for the Hammett committee is over,” I said. “I ran through their fee doing mostly a bunch of spinning-my-wheels interviews.”

“I have no trouble with you wasting the money of a bunch of goddamn pinkos.”

“Didn't think you would. But in the process of that, I did stumble onto a piece of new evidence. The one I warned you about.”

I told him about the console table.

I could almost hear his heavy dark eyebrows meet in conference. “You think that'll be enough to get the Rosenbergs a new trial?”

“Maybe. Your boy Cohn and his boss made a big damn deal about that table in the court, including saying that Macy's had no tables like it in the twenty-dollar price range. Claimed you had to give R. H. Macy at least eighty-five bucks for one. Shows possible prosecutorial misrepresentation, or as we say in Chicago, fuckin' lying. Certainly bad faith.”

His voice bristled with irritation. “Saypol was damn sloppy. That case was won by
Roy,
not his employer.”

“Is Roy with you there right now?”

“No, he's out of the office. Why?”

“Because I know for a fact that he fabricated evidence and suborned perjury. How much of that will make it into an appeal, I can't say. Quite a bit of what I heard came from federal sources talking off-the-record.”

“Traitors.”

“Or patriots. You say ‘tomato,' I say ‘tomahto.' Joe, I've walked the ends-justify-the-means line plenty of times. But that Howdy Doody you use for a majority counsel dances all over it. Friendly advice—don't go hitching your wagon to that star, 'cause one of these days it's gonna fall so fast you won't even get a wish.”

“He's very smart, Roy, and bold … but I do admit impulsive.”

I told him about the prick siccing Costello on me.

McCarthy's voice was uncharacteristically hushed. His words came quick: “I knew nothing of that. Hell, that's terrible. I will talk to him. Goddamnit, that's over the edge. I will fucking
talk
to him, Nate.”

“I'd rather you fire him. But if you're thinking about slapping his wrists, skip it. I'll get him alone one of these days and knock him on his ass. Then when he gets up, I'll knock him on his ass again, and that may go on for some while.”

His voice went weirdly pitiful. “I'm sorry. I really am. I consider you a friend, and that kind of thing just can't be condoned.”

“I appreciate that, Joe. I just hope you hear me when I say Cohn is a loose damn cannon. And I apologize to you, for finding that table.”

Of course I wasn't sorry about that at all.

Surprisingly, he wasn't upset or even a little concerned. “Oh, that's not gonna go anywhere. That Bloch character will never get an appeal through, no matter what they find or think they have.”

“Why?”

A casual confidence oozed from him. “Nate, they have to present their appeal to Judge Kaufman, who despises the Rosenbergs and would send them to the chair a thousand times if he could. Bloch and anyone else who tries won't get anywhere. And if they get to the Supreme Court with it, that'll be a dead end, too. The only court they have any chance with is the court of public opinion, and so far the government's winning that battle, too. A split decision, maybe, but winning it.”

“Well, Joe, we'll see if you're right. In the meantime, I'm going back to Chicago. Sorry if I was a disappointment.”

“No,” he said, “I'm very satisfied with your performance. And I may have something else for you, before too very long.”

“Oh?”

That odd, oddly compelling public cadence came into play. “We're gearing up for our
investigation
into the CIA. And we have tons of
documents
reflecting many months of preliminary
inquiry
. There's indications of KGB
agents
infiltrating that esteemed agency. Did you know that Acheson's son-in-law contributed four hundred
dollars
to the Alger Hiss
Defense
Fund?”

Dean Acheson had been Truman's secretary of state, and had been a foe of Joe's for years—the symbol of the hated State Department.

“No,” I said, “I missed that one somehow.”

Now a chummy, excited tone replaced the cadence. “Nate, you'll want to be involved in this one. I don't think an investigation has ever interested me more.”

I couldn't have been less interested, but I said, “You know where to find me.”

Sometimes being a capitalist isn't easy.

*   *   *

McCarthy had been right about Judge Kaufman, and the Supreme Court as well.

Kaufman rejected the console table appeal, saying the table had been a minor part of the prosecution's case, when of course the opposite was true. Over the weeks and finally months, he batted away several more appeals, pushing lawyer Bloch into switching his emphasis onto clemency, chiefly in the hope that President Eisenhower might change his mind and step in.

That didn't happen. What did happen was Ike making disparaging remarks about Ethel, declaring her (on the basis of absolutely nothing) a mastermind spy who had worn the pants in a despicable marriage of spies—an accurate statement, if he meant David and Ruth Greenglass.

Supreme Court justice Harold Burton—who as Cleveland mayor years ago had been my friend Eliot Ness's boss—had been swayed enough to ask for a three-week stay of execution, so that additional arguments might be heard. He was one of four justices who thought that way; five others didn't.

The Rosenbergs were scheduled to die on Friday, June 19, 1953—their wedding anniversary—at 11 p.m. Bloch's last-ditch effort was to try to milk another twenty-four hours out of Judge Kaufman by reminding him that the Rosenbergs were scheduled to die on the Jewish Sabbath.

In what at first seemed a rare act of compassion, Kaufman agreed that this was inappropriate. Hours later came the Jewish jurist's anniversary gift: He was moving the execution
up
to 8 p.m.—before sunset.

Still hoping for Julius to break down and cooperate, the FBI set up a command post at Sing Sing with two direct lines to the FBI's New York office. In the counsel room on the second floor of the death house—where I'd first met with Julius—FBI agents were prepared for an anticipated interrogation of one or both Rosenbergs. The ability to halt the executions at any moment had been painstakingly gone over with the warden—“even after they are strapped into the chair.” Maybe Hoover thought Ethel would be sitting on her husband's lap.

Julius Rosenberg had no change of heart. Following standard procedure, the warden signaled guards to fasten the leather helmet over the condemned's face—it was already rough enough on the observers. Why subject them to the nasty sight of death convulsions and ruptured eyes?