Target Lancer nh-14

by Max Allan Collins

Eben was on one side of Martineau, I was on the other.

  “… who will fill you in about the phone call he got yesterday afternoon.”

  The Negro agent gave his fellow officers the same rundown I’d received on the ride out to Glenview-the FBI agent passing along the warning of a possible assassination attempt on the President by a four-man team using high-powered rifles.

  Martineau picked up: “That phone call was confirmed by a lengthy telex from the FBI in D.C. You won’t be surprised that they’ve bounced this over to us. They would like nothing better than for us to screw the pooch, and give them an opening to snatch presidential protection away.”

  Half the agents nodded; the rest just stared at their boss in stoic agreement.

  “We have basically three days,” Martineau said, “to deal with this threat.”

  An agent asked, “Is it just a threat, Marty? Meaning no disrespect to our brothers at the FBI, but we deal with crank assassination calls every day.”

  “Not just a threat. Look in your folders.”

  They did, and each checked the photos. I had a folder, too, and unlike the photos from Kennedy, these were labeled: Gonzales (the younger Cuban), Rodriguez (the older), the white guys both tagged: Unknown Subject.

  “You now know everything available on these suspects,” Martineau said. “These photos are to be shown around but not copied. Not passed out. Understood?”

  Nods.

  “This morning I spoke with Chief Rowley, who had very specific instructions for me, and for you.”

  Rowley was the head of the Secret Service in Washington.

  “There are to be no written reports on this investigation,” Martineau said. “Any reports are to be given to me directly-orally. Nothing is to be sent to Chief Rowley-no interoffice teletext communication, either. Phone calls to me, or eyeball to eyeball, nothing else. And this case is to be given no file number.”

  These instructions seemed odd as hell, and even in this group-where questioning authority was not on the menu-I saw agents exchanging wary, confused glances. But nobody said anything.

  “Understand that there are political implications here,” Martineau said. “Last October, because of the missile crisis, the President had to stand Mayor Daley up. His Honor didn’t appreciate that.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “acted like it was the end of the world or something.”

  That got some smiles. Still, it was a tough room.

  “So it’s unlikely the President will cancel this trip,” Martineau said. “He has political fences to mend and next year’s election on his mind. We need to operate from the assumption that he is, in fact, coming.”

  Martineau got up and went to the wall map of the city. He indicated the various locations as he discussed them.

  “We have an eleven-mile parade route from O’Hare Airport to Soldier Field. Chief Rowley says this route gives him considerable misgivings, and I have to agree. Most of it is in relatively open areas, and we can guard overpasses on the Northwest Expressway, as we did last March-we have enough support from the Chicago PD and the sheriff’s department to pull that off.”

  An agent asked, “So where is the problem?”

  “Jackson Street,” Martineau said, tapping the map. “The President’s limo will have to lumber up the ramp and then make a difficult ninety-degree turn that will slow the vehicle to practically a stop.”

  “That’s a warehouse district,” I said. It was just half a dozen blocks from where we sat, actually.

  Eben said, “Any warehouse district is far more hazardous than a standard corridor of office buildings.”

  Martineau said, “No argument, Ebe. On top of that, we have no fewer than forty-five local school and civic organizations who’ll be on hand at that exit, eagerly awaiting a chance to see their president.”

  “And if shots are fired,” I said, “with a crowd like that? You’ll have panic that could easily cover the escape of the assassins.”

  “We won’t allow any shots to be fired,” Martineau said sternly.

  Another agent said, “We don’t begin to have enough men to cover that Jackson area. Marty, this is a nightmare.”

  Martineau raised his hands, palms out, in a calming gesture. “We will have more agents by Saturday morning. I don’t know how many, but Nate here isn’t our only support.”

  “Thank God,” I said.

  A few smiles.

  Eben asked, “So-where, when, and how do we start?”

  Martineau got up again, and resumed pointing to the map. He assigned groups of two agents to three heavily Latino neighborhoods: Pilsen on the Lower West Side, West Town northwest of the Loop, and South Lincoln Park.

  “I’m leaving Heller and Boldt free to run down leads you guys come up with,” Martineau said, “and to follow any other leads that may develop from tips. Questions?”

  There were a few, but nothing worth reporting here. That was still going on when the receptionist stuck her head in.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir,” she said, eyes worried behind her masculine glasses, “but you weren’t answering your phone.”

  “That’s because we’re in conference, Miss Kundel,” Martineau said rather stiffly.

  “I know, but there’s a Chicago police detective in the waiting area, and he says it’s important. It’s a Lieutenant Moyland…?”

  I said, “I know him. Want me to take it?”

  Martineau nodded, and the meeting resumed while I followed the receptionist back to her post. She was about thirty-five and her gray suit was as mannish as the glasses; she seemed to be working hard not to sway her very nice hips. But I am a trained detective and noticed them anyway.

  Lieutenant Berkeley Moyland was about thirty-five, a freckled-face, red-haired copper who might have been my cousin, though I took him for a strictly Irish heritage. Pacing a small patch of carpet, he was in a rumpled raincoat and was turning a brown fedora around in his hands like a bumper-car steering wheel. He looked anxious, but his frown disappeared when he saw me coming forward to shake hands with him.

  “Nate Heller?” he said, in his pleasant tenor. “What the hell are you doing at the Secret Service office?”

  “It was either this or pay up my back taxes.”

  “I can almost believe that.”

  “Actually, I’m doing a temporary tour of duty for this presidential trip Saturday.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” he said, the frown returning.

  So I showed him to my new office.

  He sat opposite me at my big empty desk and said, “How does the town’s most notorious private dick wind up with an office at the Secret Service?”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Don’t you remember I used to work for Bobby Kennedy?”

  “Oh, that’s right-the rackets committee.” He tossed his hat on my desk, sat forward on his brown-leather chair. “Listen, there’s a little cafeteria I grab breakfast at, over on Wilson Street-the Eat Rite. I go in about seven. I know the manager there pretty well. Today he pulls me over and points out this other customer, a regular he says, though I never noticed him. Kid called Vallee. Muscular little schlemiel with a butch haircut.”

  Maybe Berkeley had a little Hebrew in him, after all.

  I asked, “What about him?”

  “Well, my manager pal says this kid’s been talking about wanting to kill the President. Even saying this weekend would be a good time to do it.”

  “You have my attention.”

  “Yeah, it got my attention, too. So I went over and sat down and talked to the kid. I said I heard he was no Kennedy fan, and he starts in bad-mouthing the guy, saying how he’d like to do something about it. I cautioned him against that kind of talk. Told him I was a cop and that it could get him in trouble.”

  “How’d he take this advice?”

  “At first he said it was a free country and he had a right to his opinions. Then I told him that kind of talk had serious consequences, and that nothing good could come from it. And he quieted d
own. Just got quiet.”

  “How do you read him?”

  “I think he’s nuts. He had a USMC tattoo on his forearm, so he’s obviously one of these ex-service guys who can’t adjust. Kind of a shrimp, not physically, but short. Like, five five. How the hell he made the Marine minimum height requirement is a mystery beyond me.”

  “You make him as unstable?”

  “I do. If this guy doesn’t have a gun collection that would give Hemingway a hard-on, I’ll eat my fuckin’ badge. Nate, I been thinking about this all day. I probably shoulda called it in sooner. But I decided, as soon as my shift was over, to come tell the Secret Service about it, in person. I mean, it’s their job, right?”

  “Right.” The manila folder Kennedy had left with me was on the desk-about the only thing other than Moyland’s fedora. “Something I want you to look at, Berk.”

  I showed him the photos of the two white suspects, and asked, “Is either one of these guys your boy Vallee?”

  “No. Mine has a kind of prominent forehead, and a dimpled chin. Same kind of Marine base haircut, though.”

  “Okay.” I tucked the photos away.

  His eyes were earnest. This was a hard-bitten, seen-everything copper, but talk of killing presidents got him going. “Do I need to make a formal statement about this? You want to have it taken down by a secretary or something?”

  “No. I’ll follow it up myself.”

  “I don’t know where this kid lives or anything. I could snoop around for you.”

  “No. I’ll do the snooping. You’ve done plenty.”

  I walked him out, and along the way we chatted about family and so forth. Shook hands with him, thanked him, and sent him on his way, winked at the receptionist, who pretended not to like it, then reported the conversation to Martineau in his office.

  “Why don’t you let me take this,” I said. “I’ll grab some breakfast at the Eat Rite on my way in tomorrow morning.”

  Martineau nodded. “Doesn’t seem to be one of our assassination team, though.”

  “No, I figure them for imports, even the rednecks, and this guy is local. But somebody’s got to check. Not terribly far from where I live.”

  “Do it,” Martineau said. “Young ex-Marine, mentally unstable. Sounds like a dangerous type.”

  “Sounds like me in 1943,” I said, and went out.

  CHAPTER 12

  Wednesday, October 30, 1963

  The Eat Rite cafeteria on Wilson was just a couple of miles northwest of my Old Town town house. I took Clark Street through Uptown, its many cemeteries lending a general aura of death to yet another overcast day. This was about where Uptown turned into Ravenswood, or anyway started thinking about it, an area dominated by its tallest building, a looming Sears store. A lot of DPs-that is, displaced persons-lived around here, German and Greek refugees of the Second World War, well-assimilated by now, a very frugal, blue-collar, lower-middle-class bunch.

  The cafeteria, on the first floor of an apartment building, was no bigger than your average luncheonette, just a modest food-serving counter with a diner-style window on the kitchen and a cluster of Formica tables on its linoleum floor. A few white-collar workers were mixed in with the blue-collar, more men than women. A bouquet of scrambled eggs and syrup wafted, and the clatter of dishes, silverware, serving containers, and trays mingled with morning conversation to make nonmelodic, percussive music.

  I went to the skinny cashier in his white shirt and black bow tie and asked to see the manager, got a bald guy in a brown suit, whispered that I was following up on Lieutenant Moyland’s suspicious character, and got nodded toward a table for four where a pale, muscular little guy with a butch haircut sat solo.

  That’s who I’d figured for the role, but confirmation was always appreciated. I slid a tray along the counter, got some scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, and orange juice from unhappy women in hairnets, left a buck with the morticianish cashier, and threaded through the well-populated little place, heading for the butch haircut by the backward EAT RITE painted on the front window.

  As I pretended to move past the guy, I paused and noticed the USMC eagle-and-anchor tattoo on his left forearm, the sleeves of his tan work shirt rolled to the elbow.

  He was looking at his own plate of eggs and bacon and potatoes and toast, but I grinned at him as if I already had his attention and said, “Semper fi, Mac.”

  He glanced up into my waiting smile. His face was oval, but the butch gave it a squared-off look, his eyes big and blue and dull under a shelf of high forehead and cartoonish ink-slash eyebrows, his nose pug, his mouth small and pinched, chin dimpled, ears sticking out like an afterthought. His initially blank expression blossomed into a small smile-small because of the size of his mouth.

  “You an ex-Marine, too?” His voice was high-pitched, his words rushed, tumbling onto each other.

  “Are you ever really an ex-Marine?” I asked. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all! Sit right down. Always up for jawin’ with a fellow jarhead.”

  I set my tray down opposite and sat, then extended my hand across our breakfasts. “My name’s Heller. Nate Heller.”

  He clasped it. Firm. “Thomas Vallee. Friends call me Tommy. You must be local-I can hear the Chicago in your voice.”

  “There’s some in yours, too.”

  He shrugged, picked up a piece of bacon, snapped it in two, munched. “I grew up northwest of here. Just moved back from New York after a couple years away.”

  “Work in Uptown or maybe Ravenswood?”

  “Naw. Downtown, in the Loop. Printing plant. I’m a lithographer. You?”

  “I’m in sales.” I nibbled a corner of burnt toast. “So where did you serve?”

  Some pride came into his expression. “Korea,” he said, and shoveled some eggs in.

  “You don’t look old enough.”

  “I’m almost thirty.”

  “That’s still not old enough for that war.”

  He got a goofy little grin going. “So I lied about my age. I said I was eighteen but I was only fifteen.”

  I laughed, sipped some juice. “I lied, too-but I had to shave some years off, to get in. I was in the big one.”

  The dullness had left the blue eyes; they glittered with interest now. “Yeah? Where did you serve?”

  “The Pacific. Guadalcanal.”

  “No shit. You must have seen some real action.”

  “Some,” I said, as casual as Audie Murphy trying to impress a starlet. I had a bite of eggs, then added, “I’d be lying if I said I had an easy time of it.”

  “Nobody does. You get wounded?”

  “Nothing serious, but, uh … they sent me home on a Section Eight. I went a little Asiatic.”

  All of that was true, by the way. I’d gone home due to what they used to call shell shock and later termed battle fatigue, but was really just good old-fashioned crazy.

  He was nodding. “Yeah, I got discharged, too. Didn’t get a Section Eight, but I talked to my share of Marine Corps shrinks, I’ll tell ya.”

  My frankness had opened him up.

  He was saying, “See, a mortar went off, right by me, and I got a concussion.” He tapped his head. “Got myself a steel plate in my scalp.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “You think that’s rough? Right after I get out, I manage to get myself into a damn car crash … not sayin’ I wasn’t partly to blame. I’d knocked back a few, and was out of sorts, ’cause I’d just been in, well, a kind of bar fight. Anyway, I wound up in a coma for three months.”

  “You’re kidding. That is rough.”

  “Tellin’ me? Hell, I came out of it like a baby. Had to learn to walk, talk…” He held up his knife. “… even how to use a knife and fork. My old man had to teach me every basic skill of livin’, all over again. And you know what? It … it killed him.”

  His eyes were moist.

  “How do you mean, Tommy?”

  “Hard to talk about. Day, very damn
day, that I felt like I was myself again, like I could go out in the world and be a real man … he falls down dead with a goddamn heart attack. It just ain’t fair. Ain’t fuckin’ fair … excuse the French.”

  A busboy stopped to collect our trays. Vallee exchanged smiles with the kid.

  “That’s a lousy break, Tommy. What did you do?”

  “I’ll tell you what I did. In ’55, I re-upped, is what I did. Got myself a second hitch.”

  “After a medical discharge?” And a plate in the head?

  He shrugged. “I must’ve healed up, at least enough to suit them. Not to say I didn’t hit my share of potholes, and, like I said, those shrinks made a hobby out of my ass.… Only served another year and a half or so before I got discharged, once and for all.”

  “Any medals for your trouble?”

  His chin raised a little, propelled by pride. “Purple Heart and oak-leaf cluster. How about you, Nate?”

  “Purple Heart. Silver Star.” Also true. Not a card I like to play, but perfect for this game.

  His eyes popped. “Silver Star! You’re the genuine article, man! That is goddamn impressive. I have to shake your hand.”

  We already had, hadn’t we? But we did it again.

  “Tommy, what made you enlist so young?”

  “Oh, I always wanted to be Marine, long as I can remember. My older cousin, Mike, he was a Marine. He was a great guy. And I guess I was like every kid who watched Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers on TV–I loved to play guns.”

  “Still like guns?”

  “Oh yeah. I still go shooting. I, even, uh … well, I own a few. How about you?”

  “I do a little shooting now and then.” I finished the orange juice. Breakfast hadn’t been bad, for cafeteria food. “Good to hear you have a trade, Tommy. Some military guys can’t seem to readjust to civilian life. They just can’t let go.”

  He shrugged, his eyes twinkling. Yes, twinkling. “I keep my hand in.”

  “Yeah? How is that possible?”

  He leaned in, conspiratorially. “In New York … just between us gyrenes?… Would you believe I trained anti-Castro guerrillas?”

  “This was before the Bay of Pigs?”