The Confession of Joe Cullen (30 page)

“No. But Ginny knows I was there and Timberman knows I was there.”

“They've both forgotten by now, and they will continue to forget. What did you do with the gun?”

“Dumped it out there. No prints, and no way of ever tracing the gun to me. It was a reserve gun, no papers, not legal.”

“You live dangerously, Lieutenant. The hell with it! Cullen and the murder of Father O'Healey are over. On the other hand, Tony Carlione saved your life.”

“Light a candle for him,” Freedman said.

That afternoon, Freedman went to the big newsstand on Forty-second Street and bought the
Los Angeles Times
and the
San Fernando News
. There was no word in either paper about the house on Custer Street. But when Freedmah returned the following day, the story was there in the
Los Angeles Times
.

When Freedman checked the
New York Times
, he found the story in the back pages of the first section, and both stories were essentially the same. The headline read
MOB KILLING IN SAN FERNANDO
in the New York paper; Los Angeles wrote,
MOB REVENGE IN SAN FERNANDO.
But while both stories made much of the fact that the highly touted federal relocation plan had failed, they also accepted the suggestion that the three big Mafia families in New York had somehow discovered Carlione's safe house and ordered his execution. In both stories, there were detailed descriptions of the interior of the bungalow on Custer Street, but neither of them mentioned Dumont Robertson.

“You're sure you hit him?” Ramos wondered.

“Below his eye and out the back of his skull.”

“That sounds final. They took him away.”

“Someone knew where he was going,” Freedman agreed. “They went to the house and hustled Monty off. It makes sense. They needed some explanation for a high-class gentleman like Robertson dead with a mob hit man and his wife, both done in by old Robertson's gun.”

“According to Cullen, he had friends. They won't sleep easy, Mel.”

“No, I suppose not. But then, neither will I.”

The following week, the
New York Times
ran an obituary for Dumont Robertson, who had taken off from Santa Barbara in a twenty-seven-foot power boat that he kept at the marina there. The Robertsons owned a winter home in Santa Barbara, where they had many friends, and Dumont Robertson frequently took his speedboat out alone. This time, he had mentioned Catalina Island as his destination. His speedboat was picked up by a coast guard cutter, about twelve miles southwest of Santa Barbara. Since a boarding ladder had been dropped over the side of the boat and since Robertson's clothes were in a heap in the boat, it was presumed that he had gone over the side for a swim. He was a strong swimmer, and since there was no evidence of a struggle or foul play, and since his wallet contained eleven hundred dollars in fifty-dollar bills, the only reasonable conclusion was that a shark had taken him. The obituary went on to say that Robertson left behind a wife and two children, both of them in college. His estate was valued at something over twenty million dollars, large for a man who had devoted so much of his life to public service.

Although Ginny put two and two together after reading the obituary, it did not come out precisely to four. She had cautiously refrained from getting in touch with Freedman, and indeed she was by no means sure that he had been to California. But now both the witness and the criminal were dead, and insofar as the New York City police and the Manhattan district attorney were concerned, the case was closed and would probably remain closed forever. There was much labor lost, for Ginny had put in many hours planning her likely prosecution of Monty. As she thought of her opening statement to the jury, it would have gone like this — of course with nourishes that she had entered in her thoughts but that would have had to be pared down or discarded:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she had planned to say, “this is no ordinary criminal case over which you will sit in judgment, any more than the cases tried in Nuremberg were ordinary criminal cases” — no, that would never be allowed, but nice to think about — “no, indeed. This is a case that cuts to the heart of whether a society, conceived as our nation is, can survive; for we have on trial here men highly placed in the administration of our government, men who set the law aside in the belief that they were above the law — not lawbreakers, as they saw themselves, not criminals, as they saw themselves, but men above and beyond law — men for whom words such as compassion, loyalty, and guilt were meaningless.

“In a society where greed has been turned into a virtue, these men betrayed their country and its laws again and again. As with the Mafia, they disposed of their opponents by murder, killing as casually as one would kill insects. They sold guns to wage a war that they had created and to arm a group of thugs who murdered women and small children with as little thought as the men who armed them, and in return for the guns, they received cocaine, which they brought into our country—”

Ah, well, it was an opening address that would never be spoken, and even if there had been a trial, she could hardly have approached it in those terms. Certainly, Harold Timberman would never have countenanced it.

Mr. Timberman, on the other hand, said to his wife, Sally, “I hate loose ends, but what can I do?”

“You could ask Freedman what happened.”

“Oh, no — no. He would have to lie to me. I don't for a moment believe that Freedman killed the Carliones. I've looked into his record. He's not a gun-crazy cop. As far as I could determine, he's never fired his revolver. On the other hand, it is possible that he shot Robertson,”

“Then you don't believe the story about the boat?” his wife said.

“Of course not. Men like Dumont Robertson don't fall off boats to be eaten by sharks or go swimming in midocean. No sensible man takes a power boat of that size out to sea and then swims off it without a line, and Dumont Robertson was not stupid. Other things, but not stupid.”

It always amazed Sally Timberman that, as many years as she had been married to Harold Timberman, there were things about him that she did not know.

“You knew him?”

“Slightly. I met him a few times.”

“What was he like?”

“Handsome, charming …”

“The same evil monster?”

“Many evil monsters are handsome and charming. We are a society that hates homeliness and is willing to forgive any horror so long as the perpetrator is beautiful.”

“And since you are so wise and philosophic about things, tell me who really did kill Dumont Robertson.”

“Freedman, I suppose.”

“Freedman. The same Lieutenant Freedman you took to lunch at the Harvard Club? Oh, come on, Harold.”

“He's much brighter than they give him credit for.”

“Then why this whole silly charade about the boat?”

“I would guess,” Timberman said thoughtfully, “that his body was in the wrong place and that it was full of bullet holes. It's very difficult, at times, to explain a thing to the press. They are nosy and difficult, and they always want to know why a body is where it is. A missing body makes a simpler story.”

“Oh.” She paused, and then she asked her husband whether he intended to take action against Freedman.

“No, no. Absolutely not. There's no corpus delicti, and Freedman is much too wise a cop to leave evidence around. And if I even started, the Feds would put their foot down. The last thing a great many powerful people want is for the case of Dumont Robertson to be aired in a courtroom.” Then he added, “It's a pity, though. I suppose Freedman had to do it. I think he wanted the trial more than anything. For that matter, so did I.”

Ramos, on the other hand, was convinced that Freedman had to do it. No doubts shook him. He had worked with Freedman for ten years; he had watched him on the firing range, and he had no doubt about Freedman getting off a shot at close range on target. Through the years, he had watched Freedman's cool, unflappable style, and had tried to pattern his own after it. He felt that the only way to be an effective policeman and not go crazy or blow out your brains was to abjure the macho image and play your hand quietly yet firmly. He had great regard for Freedman, yet he never really understood him. Freedman was the only Jew Ramos had ever gotten close to, and during this case of the murder of Father O'Healey, Freedman had become even more complex and more difficult to understand.

Yet in response to Freedman's request, Ramos went to the old Church of Saint Peter the Rock and lit a candle for the soul of Tony Carlione, thinking to himself, “Provided he has one.” The church was empty. Ramos looked around to make sure of that, and then he knelt and remained in that position for a few minutes. Father Paul White, standing in the shadows, saw him but did not disturb him or show himself.

At two o'clock in the morning, knowing from her breathing that Sheila was awake beside him, Freedman observed that it was all so damned pointless.

“Why don't you try to sleep?”

“Because every time I close my eyes, I'm standing in that miserable bungalow looking at Tony and his wife and into the silencer at the muzzle of Monty's gun. Monty wanted to live forever, just like Tony and his wife. I guess everyone wants to live forever so that they can go on eating and fucking forever, and then a time comes when you don't give a damn. It all adds up to shit.”

“That's beautiful,” Sheila said. “I don't want to hear any more. When you went to California, I knew you were going to get Monty, and I said to myself if anything happens to you, I'm through. I don't love anyone else, just you. That's real. That matters. The trouble with you is that when everything's said and done, you're one of those smartass Jews who have to know everything about everything, and they want everything to make sense. Well, it doesn't. It's just there.”

“And that's the way you see it? That's all there is?”

Minutes went by before she answered, and then she said, “No. That's not all there is. There are people. There's Father O'Healey. There's you.”

“And you think I'm like Father O'Healey?” Freedman said softly.

“More than you imagine,” she said.

A Biography of Howard Fast

Howard Fast (1914–2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's
The Iron Heel
, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel,
Two Valleys
(1933). His next novels, including
Conceived in Liberty
(1939) and
Citizen Tom Paine
(1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in
The American
(1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write
Spartacus
(1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release
Spartacus
. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including
Silas Timberman
(1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.

Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also,
Spartacus
was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of
Spartacus
inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published
April Morning
, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography
Being Red
(1990) and the
New York Times
bestseller
The Immigrants
(1977).