"A hooker," said Lansky. "The guy must have been with a hooker."
Bat nodded. "Do you know who he is?"
Lansky crushed his cigarette. He closed his eyes. "I know who he is. Is he involved in something?"
"He met with Jimmy Hoffa and Morris Chandler a couple of weeks ago. Chandler, incidentally, is really Maurice Cohen."
"Right. A small-timer. But— " Lansky stopped and jabbed at the photographs with a finger. "This guy is not a small-timer."
"You know him?"
"I've met him. I don't like what he does, and I wouldn't want you to think he's a friend of mine."
"What does he do, Meyer?"
"He's a killer, what they call a hit man. I don't know his name. They call him Malditesta. You understand the reference?"
Bat thought for a moment, then nodded. "Shooting a man in the head is called giving him a major headache."
"I will trust you with some information the FBI would very much like to have," said Lansky. "Please don't think I speak from firsthand knowledge. What I tell you is hearsay. It was Malditesta who killed Albert Anastasia. I tell you so you'll know what kind of man you're dealing with."
"It's been called the perfect hit," said Bat.
"Right. He walked into the barbershop, emptied his gun into Anastasia, dropped the gun on the floor, and walked out. These pictures you got of him are probably the only pictures ever taken of him, that he didn't want taken. I bet the cops showed the barbers a thousand mug shots. None of them was Malditesta. He's never been arrested."
"Who is he?" Bat asked. "I mean, what's his cover?"
"I don't know who he is. I doubt six men in the country know his real name or how to get in touch with him."
"Suppose you wanted to get in touch with him," said Bat. "Could you?"
"I don't want to get in touch with him."
"Suppose you did."
"I'd have to talk to somebody. Carlo Gambino maybe. Vulcano ... The dons don't like killing anymore, and they try to avoid it. But when they decide they have to get rid of somebody, Malditesta is their man. He charges a heavy fee, but he never fails. Or so they say. I'd guess he's failed sometime."
"The secret of that might be that he only takes the jobs he knows he can do," Bat suggested.
"That's a thought."
"If he met Hoffa and Chandler, that means— "
"You or your father," said Meyer Lansky grimly.
5
Bat sat down in the living room of his father's suite atop The Seven Voyages. Having judged his father's mood, he poured himself a heavy drink of Scotch. Jonas was working on a fifth of bourbon.
"Exactly how many women do you think you have to fuck?" Jonas asked Bat. He was as furious as Margit had warned he would be. "I don't give a goddamn how many, but I'd think you could keep your fingers off mine!"
"Who's yours?" Bat asked coldly.
"You goddamned well know who's mine. I tell you this — you touch Angie, and you're out on your ass: fired, disinherited, and I won't ever want to see you again."
"Let's draw a line," said Bat, lifting his chin and half grinning. "Angie's yours, Toni's mine, and all the rest of them ... may the best man win."
"You saying I have to compete with you?" Jonas asked indignantly. He shook his head. "No way, boy. No way. If I tell you to leave Margit alone, you'll leave her alone. Because I say so!"
"Don't ... count ... on it."
"Oh? Well, maybe we'd just better call it quits right now and have done with it. I wish I understood just what the hell you think you are."
"I'm your son," said Bat. "Did you give up on Rina just because your father said to? That's not the story I've heard. He had to marry her himself to— "
"Quit talking about my father! You don't know anything about my father!"
"I'm told I'm like both of you," said Bat quietly.
"My father died in 1925. Who could have told you anything about my father? Only Nevada, and Nevada never had a chance to talk to you much."
"He talked to Jo-Ann, and Jo-Ann has talked to me."
Jonas nodded and sneered. "So. The two of you. A fine pair. Okay. To hell with you."
Bat stood and walked to the bar. He poured his Scotch into the sink. "Okay. To hell with me. But one thing ... I found out about the man who beat up the little hooker. He's a very bad fellow. Nobody knows his real name, but he's called Malditesta. The name means— "
"I know what it means. A hit man."
"Right. A hit man," said Bat. "The worst of them."
"For?"
"One of us. Or both."
Jonas stood up. He pointed at the place where Bat had been sitting. "Sit down, for Christ's sake." He went to the bar and refilled the glass Bat had poured into the sink. "Look," he said. "I don't like you. And you don't like me. And I don't know how the hell we could ever learn to stand each other. But this is a question of getting killed or not getting killed, and I think we'd better tolerate each other till we get past it."
"Assuming we're going to," said Bat.
6
Senator John McClellan presided over the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field — usually known as the McClellan Committee. He placed much confidence in his committee counsel, Robert Francis Kennedy, and allowed the young man a great deal of latitude in pursuing whatever lines of inquiry he thought proper. The senator knew that his young counsel had chosen the Teamsters Union as his bête noire, but he didn't care; the Teamsters was a Republican union. Anyway, Bobby Kennedy's dogged investigation of the Teamsters and now Jimmy Hoffa had won the committee a vast amount of admiring publicity.
Two men could hardly have been more unlike than John L. McClellan and Robert F. Kennedy. The senior senator from Arkansas was a courtly but competitive gentleman with a tall bald dome of a head and dark horn-rimmed glasses. The lawyer from Massachusetts was a sandy-haired Irishman with chipmunk teeth and a flat Boston accent. But they worked together to their mutual advantage.
In the cocky, sarcastic Jimmy Hoffa they had found themselves a whipping boy both of them could use. When he appeared before the committee, the news media covered every word.
"Mr. Hoffa, in previous testimony you have identified the Central States Pension Fund as a trust fund in which money collected from union members and employers is deposited in trust to provide members of the Teamsters Union their, uh, retirement benefits. Is that not correct?"
In order to sit with his legs crossed and yet be close enough to the microphone on his table, Hoffa sat with his chair turned to the left and spoke into the microphone over his shoulder. He grinned and nodded. "That's right, Counsel. You did hear me testify to that before."
"Yay-uss. And you are a trustee of that fund, are you not, Mr. Hoffa?"
"As I testified before," said Hoffa.
"How do you invest the pension fund?" asked Kennedy.
"In a variety of things. I testified about that before, too."
"Specifically, Mr. Hoffa, has the fund invested in a project to build a hotel and gambling casino in Las Vegas, Nevada?"
"Absolutely. There's a lot of profit in those hotels."
Bobby Kennedy's eyes shifted from Hoffa to the second row of chairs in the hearing room, where Toni Maxim sat. His glance met hers.
"In order for that investment to make a profit, though, you will have to get a license from the Nevada Gaming Commission," said Kennedy. "Isn't that so?"
Hoffa nodded. "That is so. But it's no problem."
"Well, let's see if it's a problem, Mr. Hoffa. You have already filed an application for the license, and in your application you list the officers and directors of the company you have formed to operate the casino."