Eisenhower's Spy

  EISENHOWER’S SPY

  By Noel Hynd

  © 2020 Noel Hynd

  “Eisenhower was a far more complex and devious man than most people realized.”

  - Richard Nixon

  Chapter 1

  New York City – January 16, 1961 – Before Dawn

  “We’ll take a final call this morning,” said Larry Goodnight, the man at the microphone.

  The radio host sat in a studio on the second floor of a Manhattan office building at 1212 Sixth Avenue on the east side of the block between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Streets. He glanced down onto a cold, windy Sixth Avenue. He saw that Nedick’s luncheonette and coffee shop across the avenue at the corner of Forty-eighth Street had its lights beckoning, the freezing windswept sidewalk in front of it empty. The Larry Goodnight Show was on the air on WMHT Radio, 1480 on the AM dial, and Larry was at the mike.

  Actually, The Larry Goodnight Show was almost off the air. Its scheduled time for the early morning, normally midnight to six AM, seven mornings a week, had almost played out for this date, January 16, 1961.

  The Larry Goodnight Show was the number one overnight radio show in the biggest city in North America. He had more than seven hundred thousand regular local listeners. But the reach of his show and his airwaves went even farther. WMHT's powerful signal assured that Mr. Goodnight’s show ranged far westward, particularly in the absence of competing signals during the early morning hours. The nightly broadcast was available to more than half of the population of the United States. There were no rating systems that covered an out of town audience. But walk into a bar in Philadelphia, New Haven or Pittsburgh, or even Detroit or St. Louis, and men and women knew who Larry Goodnight was. Better yet, they knew his show and who had been on.

  Larry’s topics were politics more often than not. His orientation was liberal-left but he loved to invite conservatives on the show and have a rip-roaring argument. He had many listeners who liked him but hated his politics. That was part of his shtick, and it was better than the other way around. He enjoyed being on the air: it took his mind off the back taxes he owed.

  Other stuff, non-political stuff, would normally come around almost every night, offbeat topics sometimes that piqued the curiosity of night-owls and early risers.

  “Okay. I’m taking your calls,” Larry would say at selected time slots during the night. The switchboard would light up and Larry Goodnight would navigate among the outright nut cases and the folks who had something interesting to say. It was about engaging the audience, after all. It may have been in the middle of most people’s nights, but it was still entertainment.

  Flying saucers were always popular, for example, because “they” – the aliens in the UFO’s - were really out there, weren’t they? One night the entire final two hours of the show were dedicated to a discussion of an alleged joint alien-US government “facility” in New Mexico that was actively providing the aliens a ”shopping” list of which Americans were to be abducted next. Conspiracy theories were always good – the Communists were poisoning American reservoirs with fluoride, after all. Elvis was on a lot of people’s minds, too. The former truck driver had finished his tour in the United States Army and was making hit records again. Listeners could not get enough of him.

  Then there was voodoo, which was never to be dismissed, plus witchcraft, parapsychology, hypnotism, and ghosts; all of which were grounded in reality, at least to many listeners. There were two compact studios at WMHT and Larry broadcast from Studio 2. There was a row of five pushbuttons on the host’s telephone. The buttons ran across the bottom beneath the rotary dial. The buttons winked at him like little demons. Listeners were still calling in. Larry’s gaze returned to the studio and the phone. He chose one specific winking demon - he had a special number for special calls - and pushed it, connecting to a caller.

  “This is Larry Goodnight. You’re on the air,” he said again. “Who am I speaking to?”

  A hesitation, then. “Priscilla from Long Island.”

  “What’s on your mind, Priscilla? We’ve only got a couple more minutes.”

  “James Dean is not dead. He’s in hiding in San Francisco,” she asserted.

  “Is that right?” Larry asked with just the right amount of manufactured incredulity. As he spoke, he again studied the sidewalk in front of Nedick’s. No foot traffic other than a pair of nurses from a midtown hospital. The nurses entered the coffee shop.

  No double-parked cars. No one lurking in shadows, as was sometimes the case. Lately, there had been a wave of early morning crime in the neighborhood, stragglers from the strip bars and red light operations farther west between Broadway and Eighth.

  Ugly stuff. Muggings. Stabbings. The neighborhood was getting dangerous in the pre-dawn hours. The previous week, a streetwalker got her throat cut and died in the middle of Forty-sixth Street.

  A noteworthy radio guy could never be too careful leaving work. Dawn would not break for another hour. Larry kept his eye on the coffee shop. Then he smiled. A female appeared in front of it as if she were waiting for someone. Him? She must have been shivering down there. Tex Antoine, the weather guy on WRAC-TV, Channel 4 in New York, had warned of a wind chill of ten. The woman Larry watched wore a small cap that looked like a beret. She had her coat pulled close to her with her arms. Larry guessed the wind chill might have been closer to five. He liked the looks of her, but he was more than a football field away.

  “That’s right,” said Priscilla. “In my heart of hearts, Mr. Goodnight, I know James Dean is still out there.”

  “Well, I hope he is!” the host exclaimed, one eye now on his watch, the other on Teddy, his sound engineer, sitting behind glass in a small control booth. Teddy was a radio geek who went to Fordham. The engineer held up four fingers: four more minutes, then a commercial, then out. Almost done for the night. “That would be great. Wouldn’t it, Priscilla?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And how do you know that Jimmy Dean is still alive?”

  “Everybody knows it. And I read it in the newspaper,” the caller said.

  Her voice was that of a young adult. Larry guessed she was between nineteen and twenty-one. He was surprisingly good about guessing the age of people on the phone. He had been doing it for a while.

  “Which newspaper?” he asked.

  “I forget.”

  “The Times? The Herald Tribune? Daily News? The Mirror?” A pause, then, traveling to Long Island, “Which ones do you read? Newsday?”

  Static on the phone. Two long seconds ticking. Larry nearly clicked off.

  Then, “No. None of those there ones. It was one of the ones at the checkout aisle at the Shop Rite in Hempstead. It was the front-page story.”

  “A milkman’s matinee,” Larry called his show, invoking a broadcaster’s general term for the all-night radio format that had become popular on WNEW in New York in the 1930s. All-night radio provided entertainment and companionship during the loneliest hours of the night for hundreds of thousands of night-shift workers in the New York metropolitan area and beyond.

  Larry Goodnight entertained charwomen, bakers, tugboat crews, newspaper people, cops, doormen, firefighters, beatniks, security guards, ambulance drivers, hospital workers, cab drivers, and others who worked through the early morning hours, plus assorted kooks, hop heads, street criminals, and oddballs who refused to sleep normal hours. Even milkmen, perhaps the most prosaic of the audience, listened in while making their morning pre-dawn rounds, sometimes with transistor radios taped to the dashboards of their trucks. It was, in short, a solid crowd and a surprisingly large one.

  “My people,” Larry liked to say. “Good working people. Men and women who perform honest work and carry union cards. The backbone of our city and our natio
n.”

  Nightbirds wanted to talk about just about anything and Larry Goodnight was ready to travel with them on any conversational path.

  The well of political topics – the staple of the show - was endless. Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, and the legacy of Joe McCarthy. The atomic bomb. Sputnik and the Space Race. Soviet spies. English traitors. The fall of French colonialism, as Paris fought rearguard guerrilla wars in Indochina and Algeria. The Rosenberg execution, Suez, ILGWU, and mob control of labor unions.

  Most recently, and with growing attention, there had also been a lot of edgy chatter about the civil war in Cuba. Here was another hot topic, in the headlines so much recently that it had often become the prime topic of conversation in the hours between three AM and sign off. There was a woman named Luisa who always called in. She was pro-Castro and didn’t mind telling the world about it.

  Every night Larry had scores of callers. He would take three dozen, give or take. Listeners felt they knew him personally. He said things they wanted to say to the callers.

  Larry could be brusque and even imperious on the phone, but he was always a sympathetic listener and compassionate host. Appropriately for an overnight show, one sponsor of The Larry Goodnight show was No-Doz caffeine pills. It all made sense. The other was Medaglia d’Oro coffee, the strongest and most savory blast of caffeine to be found in local supermarkets. No-Doz paid for the first three hours of people refusing to go to sleep. The coffee company covered the last three for people trying to wake up. His rivals, “Long” John Nebel on WOR and Barry Gray on WMCA, were always nipping at his heels but were usually safely back.

  Some New Yorkers listened to Larry Goodnight all night and some listened when he came on the air and some fell asleep listening to him. He had a mild Brooklyn accent, which made him ring with authenticity. He came across as a real person to the New Yorkers who tuned in. One never knew what to expect.

  Tonight for some reason there had been a lot of calls about the late actor James Dean. Dean had played a teenager at age twenty-three in Rebel Without A Cause. He had streaked like a nova across the Hollywood sky and died in his new Porsche Speedster in Southern California on the last day of September 1955 when a truck had turned in front of him.

  Or maybe he was still alive.

  “Well, it must be true, then,” Larry said, continuing with his caller. “Why would it be front-page stuff if it weren’t true, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dean had connected with the alienated youth of America. He was revered in public by millions of disaffected teens and early twenty-somethings. Privately, Dean was celebrated for his unwashed, Midwestern coarseness. Studio execs could barely stand to be around him. He was so ill-mannered that he belched and picked his nose at public events. Nonetheless, he had become an icon for America at mid-century. Many of Dean’s fans said he was still out there somewhere, hiding. They were just waiting for a sign.

  Larry Goodnight nursed the call along. Only two more minutes of air time remained. He glanced down to the street again. The lady in front of Nedick’s was starting to pace. He did not know if this was good or bad. It was now five fifty-eight AM on an icy winter morning. A little activity was a good thing; chances were that everything was okay.

  “Grand. James Dean is much in my thoughts, also, Priscilla. What a tragedy if such a fine actor has really left us.”

  “He hasn’t!” she said quickly. “It’s not true!”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Larry answered. Then he concluded the call, gave his sponsor a final mention, and glided into his signature sign off.

  “So tomorrow morning when I return, don’t say, ‘Good night,’ say ‘Hello, Larry,” he intoned in an engaging, mellow baritone. He watched the small control booth where Teddy counted down the seconds before leaving the air.

  The morning sound crew had already arrived. They would go to local news on the hour; WMHT had its team of reporters. Then in Studio 1 a married couple, Rebecca and Benjamin Katz, did the morning show from six to ten. On the air, they were known as Becky and Benny. They were the stars of The Becky and Benny Breakfast Club.

  Then there were eight seconds left and Teddy the engineer had two hands raised, folding down fingers from second to second.

  “I won’t say ‘good-bye’ I’ll say, ‘Good day’,” Larry said. “And we will meet again tomorrow when the bars close, when midnight shadows creep across our city, and when our heartbeats meet again to travel together through even the darkest hours before dawn. Until then, so long.”

  The engineer’s fingers were down. With one hand, Teddy signaled okay. With the other, he killed Larry Goodnight’s microphone, lest a stray vulgarity escape to shock the waking metropolis.

  Larry pushed back from the microphone and relaxed. Jack Friedman, the producer, appeared over the shoulder of the sound engineer and gave Larry a thumbs-up. He mouthed the words, “Good show.”

  Larry raised a hand to signal back in agreement. The other hand reached for a pack of Marlboros that lay next to his microphone. He lit one, stood, and stretched. Work was done for the day. It always felt good. It always gave him a sense of accomplishment. He gave a nod to Teddy, walked out of the studio, and grabbed his coat, which was on a rack where he had hung it at 11:30. He left the studio as its lights dimmed. He said good night or good morning to the skeletal staff. He gave a nod to Becky and Ben who were just revving up in Studio 1.

  Becky and Ben were good people and good friends. They smiled and waved back.

  “Home in twenty minutes?” asked the producer as Larry passed.

  “Nah. Not this morning. I’m meeting someone across the street for coffee.”

  “Is she good looking?”

  “I have no idea. Never met before. Plus it’s a man. Wealthy guy. It’s a bit of business.”

  “Good business? Bad business?”

  “I’ll find out soon enough.” Larry was about to let it go at that. Then he added. “The guy’s pissed because his wife calls so often. It’s my problem because he can’t control his home phone? Sheesh!”

  “You sure you want to meet a sorehead at six AM?”

  “Aaah,” Larry Goodnight said, waving it away. “What’s he gonna do? Shoot me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No one has yet.”

  “What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Kovacs.”

  “Hungarian?”

  “I guess. Grabbed his money and came to America after the war. You know how it works. I did some background checking. Wealthy guy. Those people don’t shoot you. They sue you but they don’t shoot you.”

  An eye roll from the boss. The producer let it drop.

  “Then don’t get mugged,” he said.

  Larry smiled. “I’ll try not to,” he said. He went out into the hall. He pressed the button for the elevator. There was no one else in it. As he traveled down ten flights, a strange assemblage of thoughts came together in his mind and merged in a flash, a weird kaleidoscope of coincidences.

  James Dean. Fidel Castro.

  Dean had connected with the alienated youth of America. Similarly, Castro had connected with the youth of Latin America, even many in the United States. For better or worse, both had become iconic figures.

  Weird, Larry thought. What a strange world.

  He arrived in the lobby of his building and headed toward the revolving door that would lead him out into the cold early morning.

  Chapter 2

  New York City – January 18, 1961 – Dawn

  Larry went through the revolving door and hit the street. The street hit back: an icy blast of avenue wind assaulted him as he looked at Nedick’s across the wide avenue. The woman in front of the coffee shop was facing him, but now she suddenly paced to the avenue. She held up a gloved hand and hailed a green cab.

  The taxi came to a quick halt for her. She scrambled in.

  “Damn!” he thought to himself.

  Even from a distance, even bundled up, he liked the way the lady moved. Trim body
, about five and a half feet tall. Dark hair. He would love to have brought her home to his place down in Greenwich Village, warmed her up, and unbundled her.

  Maybe some other day, he told himself.

  He held his coat to him and headed toward a peaceful cup of coffee. The wind was so cold that it burned his face. He had to clutch his hat and pull his coat tighter.

  He went to the near corner and waited as the wind continued to kill him. At street level, he eyeball-prowled. A sea of yellow cabs, most cruising with OFF DUTY signs and locked doors so they did not have to pick up undesirables. An armada of headlights. One NYPD sector car, green and white with a big 17 on its front doors, rolled by. It was from the Midtown North precinct. The cop in the shotgun seat was blowing a smoke ring out of a half mast window and giving him the eye. Most of the cops thought there was something wrong with anyone out at this hour except for them. Sometimes they were right.

  From within Nedick’s, green and yellow lights beckoned. Near the lights was the franchise trademark: a white sign with red lettering and a cartoon character of a man in a green uniform with the head of an orange, all enclosed in a circle.

  Always a Pleasure was the slogan.

  Well, usually a pleasure, Larry thought. Or maybe almost always. The company – they took their name from the two founders, Neeley and Dickson, who opened the first Nedick’s in the long gone Bartholdi Hotel at 23rd Street and Broadway in Manhattan – had been selling hot dogs and orange drinks since 1910. They also sold good coffee and doughnuts, especially at this hour.

  Larry Goodnight crossed the street and quickly stepped to the glass door on the avenue. There was a second door on the side street which was less frequently used. He came in out of the cold and felt himself relaxing as he thawed out.

  He quickly scoped the room. The tail end of the night crowd was there. They were seated around a U-shaped counter. A Murphy Man with a fedora and an overcoat with a fur collar. His cohort, a transvestite hooker, was on a stool next to him. There was a gap of two stools and a junkie, leaning unsteadily over his coffee, his eyes a pair of pinpoints. A couple of ladies of the night still in evening gowns were three seats away, smoking, waiting, hoping for a final trick. One was smearing on an extra layer of orange lipstick. Another was picking at her nail polish. A henna redhead, a blonde via a bottle. Many miles and too much make-up. One winked at Larry, who smiled politely and waved them off. The crowd from the demimonde was never allowed at the white Formica tables, but they were tolerated at the counter. Behind the counter was a red-haired kid who worked nights jerking sodas and serving coffee.