Late Train to Haguenau ((France, 1974)(Italian Mofia murder squad))
Late Train to Haguenau
((France, 1974) (Italian mafia murder squad))
Advance: In a Bar in Strasbourg I met a man, and he gave me his card it read “Gun for Hire,” and I almost laughed, until he said, “It’s for real, if you got the money.”
I would find out in time he was part of the Italian mafia murder squad, that had ties with the CIA, in the context of various assignations. Some of this activity was linked to the 1975, Rockefeller Commission cover-up; there was also during these trying days, something called the CIA’s Castro-capers, which involved three high ranking assassinations, along with miscellaneous murders,
In 1975 Charles Ashman was a Los Angeles-based late-night talk show host on syndicated television, and I watched him, but the shows were always old, because we got them in Germany, and they played the following day. I remember he had written many books; books to capture the topical interests of the masses of the day. If anything, they were more interesting than the newspapers I remember. He talked about the mafia, and to my recollection, was in fear for his life by the mafia, also I remember him showing pictures of gangsters of that day, I follower it half-hazardly.
Sam Giancana, a gangster by a few other nicknames, was shot dead, shot a half dozen times in the head and body, June 19, 1975, in Oak Park Illinois, he was the one time leader of the Chicago Outfit (for about 9-years in the 50s and 60s); he liked cigars. And had a long criminal career, and was going to spill the beans to the Senate Committee Investigation, going on at that time on Crime, that might expose the CIA and the Mafia, dealings with the assignations of the Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King. His offshore casinos (in Iran, South America and France) were seized, and taken over by another mafia boss. Around this time he moved into a lavish villa in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he lived for several years until the Mexican government forced him out, and shipped him back to America, but that is all known history, you are about to read what is unknown, on the train to Haguenau, in 1974.
The Story
He was the same man, I told myself, the one I met in Strasbourg, the one that sat at the bar on a stool, near me, not too near me, but near enough to talk to me and for me to hear him without difficulty. He was in his sixties I believe, but looked more in his late forties. He wore one of those panama hats, white with thick black trim. His suite was dark, pressed, and he had a thin light tie on. Dark glasses,
“Can I buy you a drink?” he said, friendly like.
“Sure,” I said, and smiled.
“Where you headed for?” he asked.
“Haguenau?” I said.
“Haguenau, what in heavens name is there?” he replied.
“Perhaps nothing, but I got mad at the waiter out on the pier where the outside cafes are, that area, and I got mad at a French waiter: are all French people so rude, they’d not let me sit at the table with my sandwich, told me to move, and I should have beat the day-lights out of him but, I didn’t.”
“You look like a soldier, American soldier, right?”
“Yes,” I replied, “on a long weekend with my twin boys, they’re sitting over there at the table drinking a coke.”
He turned about, took a look, “Twins you say, how old?”
“Four years old,” I answered.
“So you got real mad at that guy, haw?” said the stranger.
“I suppose so, why?” then the stranger lit a cigar, blew some smoke in my direction, smiled, pulled out a calling card, it read, “Sam the Cigar,” and in brackets, (gun for hire), I started to laugh, but held it back, and he said with a different tone of voice now,
“It’s for real, but I use it for a joke now and then, but if you could afford me, would you?”
I smiled didn’t really know what to say.
“Got to go,” I told Sam the Cigar, man, and he waived at my two boys as we walked out onto the platform where the trains was waiting. I had tickets to Haguenau, and we sat huddled on one side, inside of a cramped train car, it was more like a second or third class. Several women were about, it was 4:00 PM, we figured we’d get into Haguenau late, about eight or nine o’clock, depending on how many stops the train would make.
About halfway to Haguenau, a woman who was near us asked,
“I see you are going to Haguenau, an American soldier stationed in Germany, is that right?”
“Yes I said, and my two boys, Cody and Shawn, they’re going also.”
“We’ll, by the time you get to Haguenau, it will be late, and the hotels will be shut down, closed. They lock the doors early there. Incidental, I work for the museum there. Your children will be hungry, and so forth.”
“Yes,” I said, and then wondered why she said what she said, and she looked me in the face—somewhat sternly yet concerned for the boys I think, I was twenty-seven years old at the time.
“I know a hotel, my friends own it, and they’ll be glad to take care of you, I’ll bring you there when the train stops in Haguenau, if that is ok with you.”
“Oh yes,” I said in reply (trying not to show my apprehensiveness, but not wanting to lose the opportunity of her goodwill should I need it), “that’s more than ok…” I added to the comment, and I didn’t quite know what else to say, I was mad at all the French people because the waiter had the nerve to kick me and my boys out of the café area in Strasbourg, but I guess she was making up for his bad behaviour. I had told her point-blank, I had intentions of staying in Strasbourg, but was to angry to, so I simply bought tickets to wherever the train went in France, to be able to say, I was in France (it would be my first trip to France, in later years I’d come back four times, but never back to Haguenau), and they said next stop was Haguenau, that is, a city with a hotel in it (the township had perhaps some 20,000 to 25,000-inhabitants).
The train stopped, it was 8:30 PM, and the kind French lady, who spoke some English, slurred and broken, took me and my boys to the hotel. It was locked as she said it would be, and she knocked hard on the door, someone came and looked though the peephole of the door, they saw her, and opened the door,
“These are my friends,” she said to the owner in French, “and also friends of Sam the Cigar, if you know what I mean, take care of them, ok?”
“No problem,” said the owner, and we walked into main room, it was more likened a three story house, with a small dinning area on the first floor to the left in a room, several folks were drinking and looked at me at a round table in the main room, and a stairway was to my left,
”You can have room 202, if that’s fine with you,” said the man, the proprietor, and the lady said, in French,
“Make sure they get something to eat.” But I didn’t quite understand it then, but I would later on. And she left.
“I’d like dinner for me and my boys brought to the room, please,” I told the owner.
“No dinner” he said, “all closed.”
I insisted, “My boys have to eat?” And he looked at his fellow men sitting at the table,
“You want beer?” he asked me.
“No,” I said, I’m tired, just something to eat.”
Then he said,
“Go to room 202, see you soon.”
And we did, and I did have a beer with the fellows just to show them I was ok by them, and sociable, prior to going to the room. Then I went to our room, and to my surprise we had a fine bottle of wine in a silver bucket with ice, and three large sandwiches of ham and cheese, on dark bread. The note read in English,
“Compliment of your friends and this hotel!”
In the morning we went to the park, there the boys played in the fountain, and there was this kind of rotunda, with pillars, they ran around it like little gothic knights. And we caught a train back to Augsburg, Germany at 1:00 PM.
1-14-2009
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 8:16 PM
0 comments
