The Black Stiletto: Stars & Stripes (28 page)

Betty excused herself. “Kids, I have to get to work. Talk to you later.”

“Have fun tonight!” I called after her. I turned back to Billy and asked, “Have you seen Alice or Mitch?”

“Yes, they're around.” He pointed to a box high on the right wall. “I've seen him up there. I don't know where Alice is. They'll be at one of the tables down here. They have tickets.”

“Why would he be up there?” I asked. “They didn't sell tickets to the balcony or box seats, it's a dinner.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know.”

“Thanks, Billy. I'm going to look for him.”

“See you later, Judy.”

Entrances to the boxes were on the fifth floor. The balcony level was the fourth floor. Either position would be an ideal place for a man with a
sniper rifle
to hide. I left the ballroom and took the elevator to the fifth, where bellhops and hotel staff were hustling about, but I didn't see Mitch or Alice. Just as a precaution, I looked in each of the boxes on that side of the ballroom. There were red velvet curtains on each one, for privacy, and a lovely small chandelier hung over four cushioned chairs that looked out over the floor.

As I turned to leave, I saw Mitch coming up the hallway along the box entrances. He was dressed in an elegant tuxedo.

“Judy!” He was obviously surprised to see me.

“Oh, hi, Mitch, I was looking for you.”

“What for?”

I led him into the box where we could speak quietly. “Mitch,” I said, “don't ask me how, but I have reason to believe that Michael— remember Michael?—and another man are Communist spies and they're going to be here tonight to hurt the senator.”

Mitch wrinkled his brow. “Judy, that's a pretty far-fetched story. Where did you hear this?”

“I can't say, Mitch, you just have to trust me.”

“I don't understand how you can know that.”

“It's true, Mitch, really. Are you going to help me? Or should I go to the police by myself?”

He shook his head and said, “No, come on, let's go talk to the Secret Service guys. I know them. You can tell them what you told me. They're probably going to think you're nuts, but I'll vouch for you.”

“Thanks, Mitch.”

So I followed him out of the box, into the hallway, and up a little red ramp and through a door. We were next to a stairway that went down to the fourth floor, so we descended, turned left, and then stood behind the scenes in the employees-only area. I recognized it from when Betty took me on the tour. We walked down a short hall to the staff elevator. Mitch pressed the button to call the car.

“We have to go up to the room they made their headquarters,” he explained.

“You sure know your way around the hotel,” I said. “Did Betty help you out?”

“Betty? Oh, yeah, sure, she did give Alice and me a tour.”

The elevator came, we stepped in, and he pressed the button for floor 27. At that point my instincts started to go haywire.
27th floor
?

“What were you doing on the fifth floor?” I asked Mitch.

“I was looking for Alice.”

I wondered,
why would Alice be on the fifth floor?—
and then the doors opened. Mitch stepped out. I remained.

“Come on,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“I told you. Room 2730. That's where my Secret Service contact is.”

It didn't feel right. Being near Mitch produced those pesky danger signals I get sometimes. Nevertheless, I followed him down the hall to the room in question. When he took out a key to unlock the door, I really knew something was definitely out of whack. Why would Mitch have a key to the Secret Service's room?

I backed away. Mitch asked, “Where are you going?”

“I, uh, think I left something downstairs,” I muttered and then I
ran
back to the elevator.

“Judy! Come back!”

The doors had closed and the car had already gone down. I had no idea where the stairs were. Mitch walked back toward me, calling my name. I pressed the call button a dozen times, as if that would speed it along.

“Judy, what's wrong?”

Come on
, I urged the elevator.

Mitch was nearly upon me when the doors finally opened and out stepped a bellboy. But
no, he wasn't a real bellboy
, he was the Russian, Michael's roommate! Wearing one of the uniforms I'd seen at the basement apartment! I reacted with a gasp, turned to run, but Mitch caught me in his arms.

“Ivan!” he spat.

The Russian moved in behind me and I felt the hard barrel of a gun in the small of my back.

“What's she doing here?” the man asked in a thick Russian accent.

“Snooping,” Mitch answered.

“Has she talked to the police?”

Mitch looked at me. “Have you, Judy? Have you told
anyone
what you told me?”

Mitch?
I couldn't believe it.
Mitch was one of them?

I left Betty out. “No,” I lied. “I swear.”

All sorts of scenarios went through my head. Should I use my Stiletto prowess and take on these two men in my street clothes? It would certainly give me away. On the other hand, I could play the helpless victim, Judy Cooper, and try to find out what the heck was going on.

“Let's go to the room,” Mitch said. He wagged a finger at me. “Not a sound, Judy, or Ivan will blow a hole in your spine.”

The pair walked me down to Room 2730. Mitch once again removed his key and unlocked the door. They shoved me inside a large suite consisting of a sitting room and a separate bedroom. While Mitch locked up, the man called Ivan gestured with the gun for me to stand still. At that moment,
Michael
entered from the bedroom. And
he
was dressed in the other bellhop uniform from their apartment.

“What the hell?” he said. Then he snapped questions in Russian at the other two. Both Ivan and
Mitch
answered in Russian as well, and then Mitch switched to English.

“Your old girlfriend was snooping. She knows something. We have to keep her here.”

“What does she know?”

“Enough. And it's all your fault.”

Ivan took my backpack but thankfully didn't look inside it, then he indicated with the gun and said, “Go in there.” Dear diary, I nervously walked in the bedroom, where they made me sit on the bed. Michael retrieved a roll of duct tape from an open suitcase. There was no way I could resort to a fight without Ivan shooting me at close range, so I had to submit to Michael taping first my wrists together in front of me, and then my ankles. Once that was done, Ivan threw my backpack in a corner, put away the handgun, and grabbed a
brown liquid-filled medicine bottle and a washcloth from the bathroom. I took a moment to take in the surroundings.

Ivan opened the bottle, and I immediately smelled something sweet. He poured a little on the washcloth, screwed the cap back on the bottle, and then approached me with the rag. Michael held me down as I struggled. Ivan placed the cloth over my mouth and nose, forcing me to hold my breath. I didn't want to inhale that stuff, for I realized what it was.
Chloroform
!

I kicked, I wrestled, I tried to scream—but it was no use. Eventually, my breath gave out. Those flowery fumes went into my lungs, and then everything faded like you were turning down the volume on the radio until it all went black.

O
CTOBER 19, 1960

I woke up groggy and disoriented. At first I didn't know where I was. My ears were ringing and sounds were muffled. I had blurry vision, but it slowly sharpened to reveal the elegantly furnished room. I was lying on a soft, large bed. Then I remembered—the hotel suite in the Waldorf. They had drugged me.

Dear diary, I felt nauseous and wanted to throw up. My hands and ankles were still taped together. When I turned my body to the side, the room spun and my stomach lurched. The chloroform or whatever it was Ivan used to put me to sleep did not agree with me at
all
.

A clock on the nightstand read 7:13. The dinner was about to begin in the Grand Ballroom.

My hearing eventually improved and muted sounds became a man's and woman's heated conversation in the other room. I was confused why I couldn't understand what they were saying, and then I realized they were speaking Spanish. But I recognized the voices. Mitch and Alice. And then I heard a door open and shut. A third voice spoke English in a heavy accent. It was Ivan, the Russian.

“Michael is in place. He takes the shot at exactly nine o'clock.”

Alice continued to speak in Spanish.

“Speak English, damn you!” Apparently, it was the only language that all three of them had in common.

“I was telling her we have to get to our table,” Mitch said. “Kennedy and Nixon have already been escorted into the ballroom, right?”

“Right. What were you arguing about?”

“Judy.”

“What about her?”

“What we're going to do with her.”

Alice spoke up. “We can't just kill her.”

“Why not?” Mitch asked. “She knows too much. She knows who we are. When all this is done, we have to get rid of her.”

“That's absolutely correct,” Ivan said. “Alice, you know it's what we have to do. We'll keep her asleep. She won't know a thing.”

“All right, I understand. It's just a pity, that's all.”

“The bigger concern is Michael,” Mitch said.

Ivan snarled, “He is a womanizer and a fool. His recklessness is what brought the girl into this. We have our orders.”

“What are you saying?” Alice asked.

Mitch answered. “Michael's a prima donna. He thinks too highly of himself and believes he has impunity. He wasn't supposed to fraternize with the population, but he couldn't help it. You've seen how difficult he is to control. He followed us to that party where he met Judy. His orders were to stay incognito, but he started a relationship with her.”

Ivan continued, “That was careless and unprofessional. He might have blown the operation.”

“But we ordered him to stop seeing her, and he did,” Alice said.

“It doesn't matter. What's done is done,” Ivan retorted.

So that was it, dear diary. It was Mitch who had been driving the Packard that day when I saw Michael on the street. Michael gave me the brush-off right after that. And when I saw the car again on Bayard Street, it was Mitch and Alice who picked up Michael and Ivan. They were all in it together.

“Come on, you two, get ready,” Ivan ordered. “I'm going to check on Michael.”

Mitch said something in Spanish to Alice, and then I heard the door open and shut. After a moment, Alice walked into the bedroom.

“You're awake,” she said.

I had to be Innocent Judy, so I asked, “Alice, what's going on? Why did they do this to me?”

“Judy, you stuck your nose where it didn't belong,” she answered sternly. This wasn't the Alice Graves I knew from HQ. Now she was quite cold and spoke as if she hated me. I could also sense she was scared. “Pardon me while I get ready for the dinner.”

She started to change her clothing to a fancy black formal gown.

“I feel sick.”

“That's the effects of the chloroform. It'll pass.”

“And then you'll kill me?” She didn't answer. Instead, she sat on the bed beside me. “Are you going to tell me anything? At least tell me
why
you're doing this. Who
are
you?”

“My real name is Alice Garcia. Mitch's real name is Perez. We're Cuban Americans working for the Soviet government. We joined the Kennedy campaign to keep track of the senator's movements. The Soviets needed someone on the inside, and that was us.”

“And Michael? And the other man?”

She stood, stripped to her underwear, went in the bathroom, and spoke to me from there as she worked on her makeup. “Ivan is a Soviet facilitator. He's the boss of the operation, you could say. Michael is a KGB assassin. He is one of the best snipers in the Soviet Union.”

Suddenly, the full impact of what she was saying hit me. They were going to kill Kennedy. Tears welled in my eyes.

“You can't kill the senator,” I whispered.

Alice came out of the bathroom and finished putting on the dress. “We can and we will.”

“Why? That's what Khrushchev wants?”

She laughed a little. “I don't know if Khrushchev even knows of the plan. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't.”

I winced when I heard her words. “But it makes no sense!”

“We don't question orders or fail them, otherwise we die. And who wants to? We get a sizable fee and transportation out of the country.”

I had to get out. I had to stop it. I struggled against the tape but I couldn't break it.

She sat on the bed again. “Stop it, Judy. It's useless.”

“You won't get away with it!”

“Yes we will. Michael's instructions are to kill Kennedy first, and then, if he can, shoot Nixon as well. They'll die at their tables during dinner. And even if they catch any of us, we are equipped with cyanide tablets, and we will use them. We'll be long gone when the hotel staff finds your body here in the room in the morning, along with—I'm sorry, Judy, this isn't my idea. It's already gone horribly wrong.”

They were going to kill Michael and leave him with me. There was no telling what kind of scenario the cops would think had occurred. As Alice finished getting dressed, I thought about what their motive could possibly be. Kennedy is very anti-Cuba. If he's elected president, the Soviet Union's plans for Cuba would be jeopardized. Were they trying to throw chaos into the presidential race? I didn't know for sure and I might never know. It was all so crazy.

There was a knock on the bedroom door. “Come in,” Alice said. Mitch entered.