“Maybe so, but his son didn’t. Sir, you don’t give anyone a chance to prove they’re nice. They may be nice people.”
“Are you a ‘nice person,’ Mr. Baker?”
“That’s for others to judge.”
Bob wore the kind of smile a snarling animal does. “I don’t want you to leave the stand leaving the impression of being just the Teamsters’ joker. You are associated with the scum of this country. And you are just like them.”
I tried not to groan. Bob had stepped over the line — he’d become a bully now, and a self-righteous one.
Barney sensed it and just grinned at the young counsel. He even summoned his own chuckle. “What can I say? I’m just a big ham at heart. I admit it. I talk big. I drop names. Just the way I am.”
After the lunch break, accompanied by high-profile defense attorney Edward Bennett Williams, James R. Hoffa took his position at the witness table. The Teamster president had a broad-shouldered, burly look that his lack of stature — five feet five — didn’t quite undermine. As usual, he wore an off-the-rack dark brown suit with highwater trousers exposing his trademark white socks, and a ready (if at times menacing) smile. The famous square face, rounded off by his chin, had a vaguely Asian cast, and his roughneck features were offset by an unlikely twinkle in the light brown eyes, his dark glossy hair brushed back, porcupine quills ready to fly at a moment’s notice.
Jimmy Hoffa’s father had been a coal miner and his mother had polished radiator caps in an auto plant. His first job had been fifteen bucks a week as a teenager unloading fruits and vegetables; by sixteen he’d organized his first wildcat strike. That had put him on the Teamster payroll. He still was.
Bob had something up his sleeve. I knew he did because an operative in my New York office had developed it. Sol Lippman, general counsel to the Retail Clerks International Association, said Hoffa had threatened to kill him for turning down a Teamsters merger. And complaining to the police or FBI about it would be useless, Hoffa said — “I have a special way with juries.”
Out of the gate, Bob blindsided the witness: “What did you say to Sol Lippman about having him killed?”
“Killed?” Hoffa asked. What cookie jar?
“Killed. Did you say that you could have him killed right there in your office and nobody would ever know?”
Hoffa’s chin jutted. “I did not.”
Bob’s words flew. “Did you say that Mr. Lippman could be walking down the street and be shot one day?”
Hoffa leaned against his folded arms on the table, his words as staccato as a telegram. “I... did... not.”
“Did you say anything to the effect that juries treated you very well?”
Tiny dismissive smile. “Now, that’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it, Mr. Kennedy?”
“Did you say anything generally on the subject of having Mr. Lippman killed, murdered, shot?”
Hoffa took a moment, shifting in his chair. “Mr. Kennedy, I know you want to make this dramatic, but the answer is no.”
“Nothing along those lines?”
Attorney Bennett cut in: “I don’t see that this repetition is doing any good.”
“Bring Lippman around here,” Hoffa demanded. “Have him say it to my face!”
That was the highlight of the afternoon’s sparring. Despite the fireworks, Bob’s frustration and even weariness was showing. Hoffa, however, wasn’t showing much of anything. But his cool didn’t fool me — I knew he was mentally dismembering his tormenter.
I slipped out mid-afternoon before the capacity crowd could turn into a human traffic jam and took a cab to the Mayflower, where in my room I called the A-1 in Chicago, just to check in. I had no further D.C. business with Bob Kennedy or Drew Pearson and was ready to get back. After I hung up, I was about to change my plane reservation from tomorrow morning to a red-eye tonight when the phone rang under my hand.
“Duke Zeibert, Mr. Heller.” I recognized the friendly, midrange voice and its Catskills lilt. “Just confirming you for tonight at five.”
All of that was odd. First, Duke Zeibert was the owner of a restaurant called, well, Duke Zeibert’s. He seemed always to be in attendance, usually at the door greeting his frequently famous guests — politicians, executives, sports figures, stars of Broadway and/or Hollywood. But even if you were one of those, Duke himself didn’t call to confirm your reservation.
Also, I hadn’t made one. And while I might be an unrefined Midwestern yokel, I nonetheless did not dine at restaurants at five.
“Don’t be late,” Duke said, and hung up before I had a chance to ask a question. I might have called the restaurant back, but I felt pretty sure Duke wouldn’t be handling reservations.
I took one precaution. I was still getting specially tailored suits from Richard Bennett, and my Browning in its shoulder holster was in my suitcase. So I took a quick shower and headed out, in my sharp suit with its tucked-away nine-millimeter accessory, and caught a cab to Seventeenth and L Street NW.
The restaurant with its looming white-on-black neon sign, fieldstone facade and red-and-white canopy served up Jewish cuisine inside. Nonetheless, Duke Zeibert’s was Washington’s equivalent of Switzerland — it had been Truman’s favorite restaurant and Nixon’s; the Kennedy brothers dined here and so did J. Edgar Hoover.
Duke met me just inside the door, and this host of hosts looked uncharacteristically uneasy; stout, bald with a trim mustache, he had been described as looking like a cross between Ben Franklin and a race-track tout. As always, he was in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie.
“He’s waiting in the kitchen,” Duke said, and I didn’t bother asking who. Not that I had any idea, but if Duke had wanted to give me more information than that, he would have.
He stayed behind as I passed by the glass trophy case of Redskins memorabilia and into the blue-and-brown-hued dining room. I headed down an aisle between tables toward the back, just a handful of early diners present, though the bar off to one side was doing the usual good business. No one paid notice — the restrooms were back here, after all.
So was the kitchen, and I went through the double doors into the steaming, clanging world of white-coated minions doing prep. The long-faced head chef, whose tall hat made him Alice-in-Wonderland absurd, directed me to the double wooden doors of their walk-in cooler. I paused and frowned and got an impatient look and a head bob to get in there.
I got in there.
Jimmy Hoffa did not smoke but his breath did — it must have been 35 degrees among the high racks of vegetables and low racks of butchered meat. Didn’t take long for my breath to make itself visible, too. He was in the same dark off-the-rack suit as at the Caucus Room.
We shook hands — his usual vise-like grip — and I grunted a laugh. “So you finally wound up in the cooler.”
He grinned, but his grins rarely showed many teeth and this was no exception — just a slice of white in that wide unhealed cut that served as a mouth in a well-tanned face. “That’s no joke, if those silver-spoon Kennedy pricks get their way.”
Right behind him were shelves of the kind of produce he loaded off trucks as a kid. That had been his sole connection to such vehicles — he’d never driven a truck in his life.
“Hope you haven’t been waiting long,” I said. “Freezer burn’s an embarrassing way to go.”
“There’s worse ways. And you and me, Nate, it’s not like we can be seen together. Not without riskin’ Booby gettin’ wise.”
That was how he referred to Robert Kennedy: “Booby.” Until fairly recently Hoffa had been paying me two grand a month, starting early last year, when I was working close to full-time as an investigator for Arkansas Senator John McClellan’s Rackets Committee.