On the elevator on the way out of the museum a guy who must have been in his 70s joined us. He wore a dark overcoat and hat; he had those bushy hairs coming out of his ears, and he felt like talking. His accent told me he was from Chicago.
He said, “That Oswald-Marcello connection is buhllshit,” he said. “I don’t know why those idiots is spending their time on all that; it’s a fucken dead end, I tell ya. Ruby–he continued–wasn’t his real name: it was a Rub-en-stein and his people come out da Outfit in Chi-cha-go, they wasn’t from no place in New Orleans. Hey, in those days nobody knew nuthin ’bout the mob. They was so worried ’bout the damn commies that da Feds and da CIA starts talking to wise guys like Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, and Santo Trafficante down in Tampa to see if they can do a piece a work for the government and whack Castro.”
He continued, “Now that wasn’t such a bad idea. Trafficante, you see, has a real hard-on for Castro ever since that bearded son-of-a-bitch threw him in jail in ’59 and snatched up the casinos he set up with Lansky. So the wiseguys starts looking for somebody who can get close to Castro, cause he ain’t gunna let no wiseguy walk right in. And, this is where they runs into this Oswald guy. He’s gotta an uncle that’s mobbed up in New Orleans and he says, ‘Hey, I got a kid nephew that thinks he so some big rev-o-lution-ary, he even lived in Russia, until he found out they got it worse than us. Now he thinks that all politicians are full of bullshit. Maybe he’d go to Havana and put Castro in the ground?”
As the elevator passed the third floor, he continued, “so Oswald’s in Dallas and they send their ole friend Jack Ruby to talk to the guy. And that schumuck vouches for him, gives him some money, and he thinks Oswald is really gunna do Castro ’cause he’s running with these pinkos called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. It looks like it’s gunna work. So Giancana and Roselli figured it was in the bag.”
Right before the doors opened on the main floor to let us out of the elevator, he concluded, “nobody knowed that this Oswald guy was a nut case from the get go, he double crosses Ruby, Giancana and Roselli, shoots Kennedy and then starts telling the press he’s just a ‘patsy’ in the hit. So after it goes down, Giancana shits his pants, gets Ruby on the phone and reminds that slob that he vouched for Oswald. If he don’t keep Oswald from ratting them out, it’s gonna be him that gets whacked. And that, my friend was how it went down.”
He added, “Nobody knows nothing for twenty years until that patriot sack-a-shit Roselli starts running his mouth to some Committee on Assassinations in Washington. He tells them guys everything except what he knows about Oswald. Now, you know the mob don’t like no publicity. A few days later an oil drum floats up on a beach in Miami and they find what’s left of Roselli inside. Then Sam Giancana says he’s gunna to talk to the same committee. A few days later, he’s cooking up Italian sausage and peppers in his basement kitchen in Oak Park, and some friend comes over to talk to him. He turns his back to check the sausage and this guy pulls a gun and pops Giancana. Bada-Bing! And that, my friend, is how it’s done.”
Cross-posted at My Ongoing Struggle with Misanthropy: http://jimmygabacho.com/?p=636