Crossing The Rubicon

Las Vegas, June 7 1968

It was always a dame.

Porter Newhouse had always been willing to place a losing bet when it came to the women he fell in love with. His romantic entanglements were a testimonial to how the laws of attraction favored the bold. He was conservative when it came to business, but a liberal when it came to his restless heart. Even so, he couldn’t help feeling like a relic at the tender age of thirty-four. He didn’t fit this brazen new world where populism was sold in record stores and dissent was endemic. These days men were wearing their hair longer than most girls, standup comics had turned George Washington into a skit and the road to nowhere was paved with the ashes of dead leaders.

Convention had been lost to the hippies, with Congress serving as the last stand. These men were the only evidence of a bygone era, sandbagging the storm of revolution in their formulaic suits and service issued buzz cuts. Politics was going the way of Holy Hours and civil defense drills. Pop culture was the new currency, so it was only a matter of time before celebrities were running the halls of power. Hell of a world.

Newhouse yearned for a white picket fence existence, which ran counter to his job as a paid assassin. Mercenaries couldn’t afford such leisure and he was fairly certain this weakness would be his demise. But for a man whose only good habits were red meat and tobacco, mortality was the easiest bargain to reconcile.

As he nursed his Martini into a velvety landing, he got lost in the genius of Engelbert Humperdinck. The new stuff couldn’t touch the sound of this masterful balladeer. Such was the heft of his baritone that the singer famously held his microphone at half an arm’s length so as not to overwhelm his audience. Newhouse torched another Lucky Strike as he marveled at the acoustics inside the grand ballroom at the Las Vegas Hilton. His mellow was crushed when the next selection opined on love’s big price tag.

Judith Exner might have been the love of his life if he’d been born into privilege. The Fort Lee, New Jersey native was the daughter of immigrants and she had lived the retrofitted American dream. Breaking free from the staid and proper habitat of most women of the time, Judy’s marquee unspooled behind closed doors, in the company of powerful men. She had been mistress to a sitting president and she’d run with mob bosses by the time they met at the Brown Derby in the late spring of last year.

He spotted her alone at the bar and made book on her next round, slipping the barkeep a twenty to refashion her swim with some friendly muscle. She belonged to him inside an hour’s time, but she would own him from that first time to the last. Truth be told, she was slumming it with Porter and they both knew it. Their love affair lasted a year, which was just about a year longer than he’d figured on keeping her attention.

Once the show wrapped up, Newhouse got lost in his thoughts as he rode the elevator to his sixth floor hotel room. Thinking about Judy was bad news but it reminded him of the housekeeping he needed to attend to before his field trip went any further. It was time to dial up an old friend who was busy making a name for himself in Hollywood.

“Yannis, it’s Porter . . hey I’m sorry to be calling so late . .”

Porter was one of the few people who got to call John by his birthname. It was a brotherly endearment from their time working intel together in Panama in the early ’50’s.

“What happened to you yesterday?” John asked, trying to sound awake but failing.

“Yeah sorry about that, I had to skip town last minute. I’ll make it up to you next time I’m in LA, steaks at the Smoke House . . on me,”

“Did you hear the news? About Bobby?”

“Yeah,”

“Horrible, just horrible,” John’s voice was wavering as he stifled a cry.

“That’s why I had to get out of town,”

“Please tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this,”

“No, but I figured it wouldn’t look great if someone saw me hanging out in the same neighborhood where the future president was taken out. And there are a lot of someones in LA right now,”

“Where were you staying?”

“The Beverly Wilshire,”

“You certainly don’t keep a low profile,”

“Before Wednesday night, I didn’t feel the need, Yannis,”

“What can I do for you, my friend?”

“I’m going to give you the name of a young lady in West Hollywood who works for an apartment house that specializes in repairs for weary travelers and bored married men . .”

“In other words, a whorehouse . .”

“Marie doesn’t appreciate incivility and she accessorizes with a .38 Special so tread carefully with her official title,”

“Porter, we’ve got a baby on the way and my acting career is moving in the right direction so while I am weary, I am most certainly not bored,”

“You misunderstand. I’m simply providing you with her number in the event I were to disappear. Marie is in possession of some rather sensitive information regarding my connection to Dealey Plaza,”

“I’m afraid I am out of my depth on this one. I’d love to help but . .”

“Listen, I wouldn’t be asking if there was anyone else I could entrust with this. All you have to do is tuck it away somewhere. I’d say burn it but for all I know it might end up being the only evidence of my existence. And I’d like to think that maybe there’s a world coming where we let the truth matter again,”

“Why can’t this young lady just keep it then?”

“Because this young lady tends to my particulars above and below the waistline and for this very specific service, I keep her on retainer. Don’t worry, I always pay three months in advance . . just in case,”

“I don’t understand how this is relevant to me,”

“Well, the just in case of this matter means that Marie will honor our agreement until such time as payments cease. After which, that information might grow legs. It’s just my luck that I have nobody to protect in the event my name gets run through the trash compactor, except for . .”

“Your Aunt Irene,” John said, finishing the thought.

Porter’s aunt had raised him after his mother died during childbirth. A divorcee and women’s rights advocate inside a time when both were frowned upon, she became his expectations for every woman he ever met.

“She thinks I’m a successful car salesman because I’m always showing up in a new ride. It would kill her if she knew the truth about me. And we both know hell hath no fury like a government coverup,”

“So why trust this Marie girl in the first place?”

“Well, I’ve found that hookers are every bit as trustworthy as lawyers and accountants so long as they’re getting paid. And I prefer their bedside manner,”

“It’s always a woman with you Porter,”

“Story of my life,”

Engelbert Humperdinck- What Now My Love