Opened too many embarrassing doors on all sides.
I said to the stocky little man, “I’m not sure what the hell it’s about, Jack. I accompany my client to a money drop at a club like this one. Well, not this nice, but a strip club, and two nights later, he’s stabbed to death in his hotel room. You and I have both, in our time, run in some rough circles. Sometimes the same circles. If you know something, anything, about Ellison’s murder, you tell me, and I’ll give you a free pass. Just like the FBI.”
His face got red. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“Where were you Sunday night, Jack?”
He threw a punch. He was that kind of guy, an impulsive hothead. But because he was that kind of guy, I was half expecting it, and ducked it.
Good thing, too, because he was a bull-thick-necked, a lot of muscle in that upper torso, enough to almost pop the seams on that Bobby Darin sharkskin suit of his.
But if I hit him back, we’d have had a brawl right there in the Silver Frolics lobby, giving the police commissioner another excuse to shut the joint down, and that wouldn’t be fair to Ben Orloff.
So instead of slugging him, I slapped him. Twice. Once per cheek. Like I was his date and he got fresh with me.
This surprised him. Stopped him, both his hands coming up to cheeks flaming with pain now, not flushed with anger. His eyes were moist.
Though no one had seen it, I’d humiliated him.
“Throw another punch at me, Jack, and see what happens. I’m not some drunk at the Carousel you can rough up to impress the customers. I’m not some stripper’s lowlife leech husband you can pummel to show the girls who’s boss. Get tough with me again and I will make your life miserable, or maybe just end it. Understood?”
He swallowed. His eyes weren’t angry-they were frightened.
Good.
“Let’s hear it, Jack.”
“Understood,” he muttered. His chin was quivering.
“Okay. Before we go back in and enjoy the show, is there anything else you know about this situation that I should know? That I would like to know? Because if you’re holding out on me…”
I didn’t have to finish it.
He shook his head. He was almost crying. He seemed hurt-not hurting … hurt.
“I thought we was friends,” he said, and swallowed and I followed him in where the little orchestra was starting up a bump-and-grind symphony.
I was shaking my head, grinning, but kind of pissed off, too.
How I hate a fucking hothead.
CHAPTER 14
Thursday, October 31, 1963
Just after nine A.M., at the Secret Service office, the two Pickpocket Detail cops recommended by SIU chief Dick Cain arrived for a meeting with Chief Martineau.
I knew Lieutenant Dan Gross and Sergeant Pete Shoppa, but not well. They had reputations as smart, tough detectives, both in their late thirties, with the vaguely bored yet somehow alert eyes all seasoned cops seemed to possess.
Shoppa was a blocky, pockmarked and balding cigar smoker, and his blue suit was something J.C. Penney sold him several seasons ago, the blue and white paisley tie probably a Christmas present from around ’59. Horse-faced, sandy-haired Gross was tall, or at least taller, and better dressed-his brown J.C. Penney suit was this year’s model, his tie properly narrow and a darker brown. No law required that Chicago detective teams always be Mutt and Jeff pairs, but if there had been, Gross and Shoppa didn’t break it.
Theirs were the kind of unremarkable faces in the crowd just perfect for pickpocket work … and surveillance.
Gross was a friendly type, the first to offer his hand as we stood in the no-man’s-land of Martineau’s office between the chief’s desk area and the conference table. Martineau had stepped out to check on some telex info he was expecting, and we three Pickpocket Detail veterans had his big office momentarily to ourselves.
“You know, Nate,” Gross said with a grin, “they still talk about you over on the Detail.”
“They talk about me lots of places,” I said, returning his smile.
Shoppa said, “Of course nobody over there ever really worked with you, Heller. I figure everybody you ever worked with on the PD is dead by now.”
He offered his hand, too, and there was just enough of a smile on that stogie-pierced, pockmarked pan to tell me this was his version of friendliness, too.
I said to him, “Pete, most of the guys I busted are dead, too. Kind of makes the whole exercise seem a little irrelevant.”
Shoppa frowned at that. A little too philosophical for his speed, I guess.
Martineau came in, the formidable chief moving with considerable energy, and in his shirtsleeves for a change-like most of the agents in the SS office, he wore a short-sleeve white shirt under his suit coat, despite the time of year. The office tended to be warm, the old steam heat in these soon-to-be former headquarters apparently having one setting: inferno.
Eben Boldt trailed in after his boss, quietly spiffy in a charcoal suit and black necktie. Introductions between Martineau and the two police detectives had already been made, but Boldt was a new addition. There was an awkward moment, then I introduced Eben as both an agent and my partner on the current investigation. Polite smiles, nods, and handshakes were traded, but no remarks, friendly or otherwise.
That didn’t make the two cops bigots necessarily-more Negro cops were coming onto the Chicago force all the time, another part of Commissioner Wilson’s revamping of the department, and the white cops hadn’t figured out yet how to behave around these dusky interlopers.
Martineau, however, knew just what Eben’s role was.
“Ebe,” he said, “get us some coffee, would you?”
There was the slightest tightening around the agent’s eyes, then a nod, and he went out.
Martineau had a manila folder with him, and he rested it in front of him as he took the head seat at the conference-room table, gesturing for us to find chairs.
We did.
“Has Chief Cain or Captain Linsky filled you fellows in at all?” Martineau asked.
The two cops were at Martineau’s right, and I was opposite them. They both shrugged, Shoppa knocking some ashes off his stubby cigar into a glass ashtray with the Secret Service emblem in the bottom.
“The captain just said that you were shorthanded,” Gross said, “what with the President coming to town Saturday.”
“Said you might need some surveillance help,” Shoppa said. “Implied it might have something to do with JFK’s visit. But that’s all.”
“You’ll need a full briefing, then,” Martineau said.
He opened the manila folder and passed them a set of 5-by-7-inch photos of the suspects-the two Cubans and two white boys.
“We believe these men to be highly trained assassins with high-powered rifles. A hit squad. And their target is Lancer.”
“Lancer?” Gross asked.
“That’s Secret Service code,” I said, “for President Kennedy.”
I’d picked up around here quick.
Shoppa, looking over the photos, wore a smirk with a cigar stuck in it. “Jeez, a couple of spics called Gonzales and Rodriguez. That narrows the friggin’ field. What are the white guys’ names? Smith and Jones?”
Martineau’s expression barely registered his displeasure with Shoppa’s manner, but I caught it. I doubt Shoppa did, but if he had, he probably wouldn’t give a shit.
The SS chief said, “This is not your direct assignment, gentlemen, other than to be on the alert if your surveillance subject should come in contact with any of these individuals.”
“This,” Gross said, tapping the picture in front him, “is why you’re shorthanded. You’re focusing on this threat, and need us to cover for you on some other bozo who’s made a crank call or something.”
Martineau said, “That’s not wrong, but we have new background on this ‘bozo’ that makes it vital we take him seriously. First, however, I’ll have Nate brief you on how we got where we are w
ith Mr. Thomas Arthur Vallee.”
That middle name was news to me-Martineau really did have info he hadn’t yet shared.
Eben came in with a tray of cardboard cups and a pitcher of coffee, and everybody helped themselves as I told them how Lieutenant Berkeley Moyland of the Chicago PD had alerted us to Vallee’s spouting off about Kennedy, and laid out in some detail the conversation I’d had with the subject at the Eat Rite yesterday, winding up with the discovery of the two M-1’s, the.22 revolver, and the several thousand rounds of ammunition at his rooming house.
No wisecracks from Shoppa and no remark from Gross, either-they just exchanged dark glances at the mention of all that firepower.
And now Martineau dipped into his manila folder for a picture I hadn’t seen before: a Marine Corps photo of my breakfast club buddy, Vallee, looking very young but otherwise much the same-prominent forehead, glazed eyes, tiny pinched anus of a mouth.
“Not who I want dating my sister,” Shoppa said.
Gross grunted. “Looks like the kind of nut who’d want to take a potshot at the President.”
“We know a lot more about him today,” Martineau said. “This is all fresh intel that even Nate and Ebe are hearing for the first time.”
I glanced at Ebe, seated beside me, and he shrugged. Apparently he didn’t know any more than I did.
Martineau glanced at various papers that he’d extracted from the manila folder, but did not read from them, rather summarized. His ability to do so from material he’d only recently received was impressive.
“Thomas Arthur Vallee joined the Marines at age fifteen,” he said. “That’s right, gentlemen-he lied about his age. He’s thirty now. During the Korean War, he suffered a head injury, thanks to a mortar round exploding nearby, which got him discharged from the Marines in 1952. Traumatic brain injury. Complete VA disability. This jibes with what Mr. Vallee shared with Nate in casual conversation.”
I asked, “What about his claim that he re-enlisted? How does a guy with a brain injury and complete disability get back in uniform?”
“I have no idea,” Martineau admitted. “But it’s true that, after two G.I. Bill years at a community college, he was able to re-enlist, in 1955. He was honorably discharged in ’56.”
Gross frowned. “After one year?”
Martineau nodded. “It was a physical disability discharge again. Military doctors classified him…” And now he did read from a document. “… ‘an extreme paranoid schizophrenic.’”
“Which is medical jargon,” Shoppa said, “for screwier than a shithouse rat.”
The chief did not disagree, and again referred to a sheet. “Vallee’s mental condition, the psychiatric evaluation says, is ‘manifested by preoccupations with homosexuality.’”
“So the kid’s a queer,” Shoppa said, sucking on his cigar, “as well as a nutcase.”
“His landlady mentioned male guests,” I said, “and he had some reading material that fits that notion. But since when does a homosexual get an honorable discharge from the Marines?”
Martineau had an answer: “His psychiatric evaluation further finds indications of ‘organic difficulty’ that may relate to that mortar-shell incident in Korea.”
Shoppa said, “So a shell exploded and turned him homo? That’s a new one.”
“I’m out of my depth there,” Martineau said. “But there’s worse on his record than just perversion-his psychiatric evaluation also notes ‘homicidal threats’ and ‘chronic brain syndrome associated with brain trauma.’”
“This is just peachy,” Shoppa said.
“So,” I said, “he gets his honorable discharge because the Marines blame themselves for his mental condition.”
Gross asked, “What else do we have on this character?”
Martineau shrugged. “We know that Vallee is, or was, a member of the John Birch Society. We also know he drives a Ford Falcon with New York plates-he moved back to Chicago from Hicksville, Long Island, in March-and of course we know his home address. We don’t have his work address as yet.”
Eben said, “His place of employment is a printing facility of some kind in the Loop. We’re checking out every possibility by phone, emphasizing any plants on the parade route. There’s an agent working that angle right now.”
Martineau said to the two cops, “We would like you men to get right on this. Get over to that rooming house and once Vallee shows up, stake him out, and don’t let loose of him. If you can find a way to get him off the street, do it.”
“You want him off the street,” Shoppa said, rolling his cigar around his mouth, “he’s off the street.”
Martineau raised a calming hand. “Keep in mind Mr. Vallee hasn’t committed a crime.”
“Yet,” I said.
Martineau lifted his eyebrows, then continued: “One of the saddest and most frustrating situations a Secret Service agent faces is knowing that someone threatening a president’s life has not committed an illegal act. Nor is it illegal for Mr. Vallee to have those rifles, that handgun, and that ammunition. He’s protected under the Second Amendment like the rest of us.”
A knock at the door got our attention.
Martineau called, “Yes?”
One of the anonymous crew-cut, dark-rim-glasses-wearing agents stuck his head in. “We have Vallee’s workplace, Marty. It’s the IPP Litho-Plate Company.”
“Good,” Martineau said. “Tell me you didn’t tip our hand. I don’t want this getting back to Vallee.…”
“No,” the agent said, crisply. “Nothing was given away. This was just a routine check, as far as IPP is concerned. Vallee works on the third floor as a lithographer, which apparently means he changes the paper in a big machine.”
“Nice job, Fred. What’s the address?”
“West Jackson Boulevard. 625 West Jackson.”
Martineau whitened.
Ebe groaned, and I said, “Well, fuck a duck.”
The agent in the doorway frowned and said, “That’s on the motorcade route, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Martineau said rather numbly. “Thank you, Fred. That’ll be all.”
The door shut, and the two cops didn’t seem to be getting it. The motorcade route was eleven miles long, after all.
I said, “That address, if I know my Loop geography at all-and we can walk right over there, gents, if you like-is a perfect place to watch the President’s limo make its slow turn from the expressway off-ramp onto Jackson.”
“Ideal for a sniper,” Eben said.
Martineau was on his feet, looking at the map. But he wasn’t saying anything.
“Any of you fellas ex-military?” I asked.
Neither Martineau nor Boldt responded, but both Gross and Shoppa nodded.
“Then maybe you already know this,” I said. “But the way a sniper plans to hit a moving target is by knowing in advance where that target-in this case Lancer-is going to be. The exact point past which the target will stroll by, or maybe drive by in a car. The sniper aims his rifle at a chosen spot and just waits in his nest till the target walks or drives into the crosshairs. That way, a sniper can keep his rifle still as hell, with his only movement the squeezing of the trigger. Saves him from having to move himself and his rifle in sync with that moving target.”
Eben asked, “Does this make Vallee a bigger threat than our team of four assassins?”
Martineau, his back half turned to us as he studied that map, said, “He may be part of that team.”
Shoppa said, “He ain’t Smith or Jones, and he sure as hell ain’t Gonzales or Rodriguez. Listen, we are happy to take Vallee off your hands, Chief Martineau, but are you sure you don’t want your own people on this?”
Martineau was thinking.
Then he wheeled and said, “The AG says our primary suspects are those four: Gonzales, Rodriguez, and-as you put it, Sergeant Shoppa-Smith and Jones. So, yes, take over the Vallee investigation, Lieutenant Gross, which is chiefly a surveillance job at this point. But the moment you
see Vallee making contact with any one of those four … call us immediately. Call us right fucking now.”
That was the first time I’d heard Martineau use that kind of language.
Gross glanced at Shoppa, and Shoppa glanced back.
“All right,” Gross said. He was the ranking officer, so it was his decision. “We are on it. Where on Paulina is that rooming house again?”
We gave them the address and they were off.
The cops were barely out of the door, the smell of Shoppa’s cigar still lingering, when another of those crew cuts leaned in and said, “We just got an interesting tip, Marty, courtesy of the Chicago FBI.”
“Yeah?”
“Seems there’s a landlady on the North Side complaining about some ‘spics’ renting a flat from her. She says they have four rifles with telescopic sights in there.”
“Where would we be today,” I said, already on my feet, “without suspicious landladies?”
“Ebe, you and Nate follow this up,” Martineau said.
But Ebe was right behind me, as we trailed the agent out and to his desk, to get that address, grab our raincoats, and go.
The rooming house, oddly enough, was just four blocks south and a couple of blocks east of my town house. The compact nature of the geography of this case was starting to feel weird.
The light-yellow Victorian wood-frame, peak-roofed structure dated to the teens. The landlady lived in the basement apartment of the old three-story, whose outer walls almost touched the newer brick buildings on either side-a twenties-era terra-cotta-trimmed number with offices over a Walgreens drugstore and a nondescript fifties-vintage four-story with apartments over a “New and Used” record shop. Three decades represented by three side-by-side buildings-not unusual in this part of the city.
She met us up the handful of steps on the small porch, a squat woman in her fifties wearing a floral tent and nurse’s shoes, another DP but of Greek extraction. Her features were coarse in a squashed circle face, her hair gray and netted, her eyebrows thick and black with a facial mole perfect for today-Halloween.
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