CHAPTER

4

BRIAN MCKENNA

I’m the guest of honor at a bank robbery. Watching a reenactment of my glory days from behind the huge Mitchell camera on a movie set.

Three heavily armed gunmen wearing ski masks storm into the bank. They club the security guard and force the customers facedown onto the marble floor. The smallest of the robbers runs swiftly at the row of teller windows. The tellers are sheltered behind a bulletproof shield that almost reaches the ceiling. There’s a narrow space left above them. The runner springs off a nearby desk. Like a human cannonball he vaults high, angles his body, clears the barrier, and drops down behind the tellers. He levels his pistol at them as the director calls “Cut!”

I’m sitting in my canvas-backed folding chair with FBI AGENT MCKENNA stenciled on it as the director turns to me questioningly. “How was it for you?”

“Just the way the real robbers did it back in my Detroit days,” I say.

“Then that’s a print,” the director announces.

It’s the morning of the day after my visit with David Weaver. We’re on a jumbo-airplane-hangar-size soundstage at Warner Bros. studio in Burbank. A replica of the bank where I once foiled a daring robbery has been constructed for The FBI Files television series. As part of my Bureau duties, I’m the technical advisor on the series and this episode’s my baby. I gave them the story. One of the few real ones they’ve depicted this season. Mostly the producer and the writers make up any old bullshit, and I find some vaguely connected real case, and we slap that file number on the screen to boost the illusion that this is the real stuff. It’s just Hollywood hokum.

Besides monitoring the TV series for the Bureau, I also operate out of the Federal Building downtown as liaison with the Hollywood community when they want FBI cooperation on a film or TV project. It all adds up to a cushy, boring, PR backwater job.

J. Edgar Hoover first sent me to Los Angeles thirteen years ago in 1946 to run the Commie-chasing squad. It was a hard-hitting, headline-grabbing mission. A jubilant experience for me. I went after unfriendly witnesses for the House Un-American Activities Committee. We were taking action to curb the spread of International Communism, the same way the Bureau rooted out Nazi spies in America during World War II. At least that’s what I told myself at the time.

My powder-puff position now is titled “Special Assignments.” It was intended as a reward for a job well done in support of HUAC, but it feels like I’ve been put out to pasture. I’m forty-seven and worried I will spend the rest of my career with the Bureau stagnating in this velvet trap.

As usual, however, I follow orders. I’m a team player. Even on those occasions when the game gets a little tacky.

Like a few years ago in 1956 when Hoover became obsessively interested in the reported romance between Negro superstar entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. and platinum blond screen bombshell Kim Novak. He’d be on the phone every day pushing me to put aside Commie chasing for the moment and focus all my energies on digging up the latest dirt about this black-white relationship.

Hoover intimated he was doing a favor for Harry Cohn, who ran Columbia Pictures, where Novak was under contract. A bi-racial love affair could damage her value for Columbia at the box office. Hoover put me on the case. I felt like a garbage picker sifting through trash Dumpsters. Then we hit a development that made it official FBI business.

Gangleader Johnny Roselli reportedly kidnapped Sammy Davis. That’s a federal offense, so I pounced—jammed my way into the LAPD’s investigation, wound up tangling tails in an ugly fracas with their lead investigator, Ray Alcalay. I hung in there to Hoover’s delight. Then, abruptly, it was all over.

Sammy Davis was only missing a matter of hours and when he reappeared he denied being kidnapped. Johnny Roselli was the face of innocence when we questioned him. Word on the street was that during the snatch Sammy Davis had been threatened with death unless he stopped seeing Kim Novak. He dropped her and married a gorgeous Negro dancer very soon after.

Hoover felt the Bureau’s presence had been partially responsible for resolving what he called “a clear case of miscegenation,” still a crime in several Southern states, but not a federal crime. The experience left me feeling filthy, but sometimes the work went that way. Behind my back some of the other agents then began calling me “Hoover’s Hitman.”

Nowadays I occasionally overhear the younger agents calling me something even worse: “The Old Guy.”

*   *   *

While they reset the lights for the next shot, Chad Halloran sidles up to me. He’s the star of The FBI series, playing Inspector Stryker. A good-looking, square-jawed Fearless Fosdick type, he projects dignity and decency. The perfect image for the Bureau. Exactly what J. Edgar wanted. Halloran knows that the Bureau, which means yours truly, had to approve him for the role. So Halloran and I are buddies. Hollywood buddies.

Halloran kneels beside my chair, brow furrowed, asking me how the real case went down. When Detroit was Bank Robbery Central. Back when I was hitting on all cylinders, a genuine G-Man. “What went through your mind, Brian,” he wants to know, “when the robbers came out? Did you ever consider letting the bad guys go, because of the hostages?”

“Let ’em go?” I scoff. “My policy is—no one leaves. We settle it here.”

Halloran nods, his lips moving, sotto voce, savoring the words: “No one leaves—we settle it here.” I know he’s going to work those words into the script and say them when they’re out on the street shooting that scene tomorrow.

“Agent McKenna,” the production assistant interrupts, “phone call.”

It’s Tom Churillo, calling from Washington. He’s one of my long-ago Academy lecturers, who became a good pal. He’s up near the top executive ranks in the Bureau now. After we do the how-the-hell-are-you stuff, Churillo gets to the point. The Bureau is forming a special task force to deal with bank robberies on a national basis. “That’s how the crooks are operating now, hopscotching across state lines. Detroit this week, San Francisco or Dallas next week. We’re almost back to the Dillinger days.” Churillo is looking for the right guy to coordinate activities. “Like heading up a super posse,” he explains. It’s an executive berth with far-reaching powers. Based in D.C. but probably a lot of supervising field work, too. “I thought of you right away.”

It’s as if Santa Claus is coming down the chimney with the gift I thought would never come. This is the sort of spot I’ve been dreaming about. A far cry from hectoring deluded Hollywood writers on their way to the Blacklist. Or vetting jerky TV scripts. Back to utilizing the crime-fighting expertise I built in Detroit, and St. Louis before that.

Then Churillo hits me with a big qualifier. There’s a problem. “I’ve been floating your name and getting a lukewarm response. Good man, everybody says, but isn’t he kinda lightweight?”

“I can handle the job, Tom. You know I can.”

“Yeah, but I have to convince them. There are other guys bucking for the slot. They’re calling you ‘Mr. Hollywood.’ Mac, you have to come up with something flashy to punch up my recommendation. And you have to do it soon.”

So I hang up the phone with mixed feelings of elation at the possibility of being considered for a perfect assignment—combined with anxiety that I may not get it. That would be a heartbreaker. I’ve got to find a way to make this happen.