Kemper opened the envelope. The one page inside was neatly typed.
I have the books. They are fail-safed against my death or disappearance in a dozen different ways. I will release them only to Robert Kennedy, if I am given a Kennedy Administration appointment within the next three months. The books are safely hidden. Hidden with them is an 83-page deposition, detailing my knowledge of your McClellan Committee–Kennedy incursion. I will destroy that deposition only if I am given a Kennedy Administration appointment. I remain fond of you, and am grateful for the lessons you taught me. At times, you acted with uncharacteristic selflessness and risked exposure of your many duplicitous relationships in an effort to help me achieve what I must fatuously describe as my manhood. That said, I will also state that I do not trust your motives regarding the books. I still consider you a friend, but I do not trust you one iota.
Kemper jotted a note to Pete Bondurant.
Forget about the Teamster books. Littell finessed us, and I’m beginning to rue the day I taught him some things. I made some discreet queries with the Wisconsin State Police, who are franidy baffled. I’ll supply forensic details the next time we talk. I think you’ll be grudgingly impressed. Enough pissing and moaning. Let’s depose Fidel Castro.
57
(Chicago, 12/8/60)
Wind rocked the car. Littell turned up the heat and pushed his seat back to stretch out.
His stakeout was strictly cosmetic. He might join the party himself–Mal would get a huge kick out of it.
It was a Bust the Blacklist bash. The Chicago Board of Ed had hired Mal Chamales to teach remedial math.
Guests walked up to the house. Littell recognized leftists with Red Squad sheets half a mile long.
A few waved to him. Mal said he might send his wife out with coffee and cookies.
Littell watched the house. Mal turned his Christmas lights on– the tree by the porch bloomed all blue and yellow.
He’d stay until 9:30. He’d write the bash up as a routine holiday soiree. Leahy would accept his assessment pro forma–their stalemate precluded direct confrontations.
His door-kicking episode and Lake Geneva time went unquestioned. He had thirty-nine days to go until his retirement. The Bureau’s no-confrontation policy would hold and see him through to civilian life.
He had the Fund books stashed in a bank vault in Duluth. He had two dozen cryptography texts at home. He had seventeen days logged in without an ounce of liquor.
He could send the Fund books to Bobby on a moment’s notice. He could delete Joe Kennedy’s name with a few swipes of a pencil.
Dead leaves strafed the windshield. Littell got out of the car and stretched his legs.
He saw men running up Mal’s driveway. He heard metal-on-metal pump-shotgun-slide noise.
He heard footsteps behind him. Hands slammed him across the hood and ripped off his gunbelt.
He gouged his face on a sharp strip of chrome. He saw Chick Leahy and Court Meade kick Mal’s door down.
Big men in suits and overcoats swarmed him. His glasses fell off. Everything went claustrophobic and blurry.
Hands dragged him into the street. Hands cuffed and shackled him.
A midnight-blue limo pulled up.
Hands grappled him in. Hands shoved him face-to-face with J. Edgar Hoover.
Hands slapped tape across his mouth.
The limo pulled out. Hoover said, “Mal Chamales is being arrested for sedition and advocating the violent overthrow of the United States of America. Your FBI service is terminated as of this day, your pension has been revoked, and a detailed profile of you as a Communist sympathizer has been sent to the Justice Department, the bar associations of all fifty states and the deans of every university law school in the Continental U.S. Should you go public with information pertaining to Kemper Boyd’s clandestine activities, I will guarantee you that your daughter, Susan, and Helen Agee will never practice law, and guarantee that the interesting coincidence of your three-week absence and the destruction of Jules Schiffrin’s Lake Geneva estate will be mentioned to key organized-crime figures who might find that coincidence intriguing. In keeping with your leftist sympathies and bleeding-heart concern for the fmancially wretched and morally impaired, you will now be deposited into a venue where your instincts for selfabnegatiqn, self-flagellation and pinko vicissitudes will be fully appreciated. Driver, stop the car.”