by Robert Greer
“Fine. Rollie knows that if he sends the cops or the FBI, or whoever it is that deals with four-decade-old assassinations, sniffin’ my way, they likely won’t sniff near as hard in his direction. Besides, everybody knows that when all the Kennedy shit happened, I was in charge of things out here, not Rollie. I don’t have one damn thing to prove that I sent Rollie back East as my emissary, then washed my hands of the deal. And I sure as hell don’t have anything to prove that after Rollie got to Chicago, he acted on his own. Bottom line is, I’ve got nothin’ to prove that I wasn’t in on the Kennedy assassination full-bore from the start.”
“So? Where’s Rollie’s proof that you were involved?”
“Come on, Calvin. He was just some spoiled-brat kid tryin’ his best to get into law school back then. How the hell could he have worked his way up to makin’ decisions about pullin’ the trigger on a president? Besides, all the people who were likely pullin’ his strings are long since dead. They can’t tell us shit. If you were the cops or the feds, who would you roll on? Me, or somebody who was a wet-behind-the-ears twentysomethin’ back then? Anybody with a badge and half a brain would have to think I would’ve known more about the assassination plot than Rollie. Truth is, all I knew, plain and simple, was that most of my counterparts were sick and tired of Kennedy’s shit.” Mario crossed his heart. “And as God is my witness, that’s it. But, guess when you come right down to it, like it or not, I’m pretty much the last man standin’. Somebody could sure enough make themselves headlines if they could somehow pin JFK’s killin’ on me.”
“There’s no need to convince me you weren’t involved, Mario. But then, I’m not some congressman looking for headlines, the FBI, or a cop. Sooner or later, if you don’t want fingers pointing your way, you’re gonna be forced to name names. We’ll just have to see what Julie has to say.”
“I understand,” Mario said haltingly. “But there’s one last thing you should know.”
“Might as well air it out now.”
“I won’t call off Pinkie. Can’t afford to.”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
“No, we won’t,” Mario shot back. “Rollie’s already sicced that junkyard dog of his, Randall Maxie, on me. Son of a bitch called me at three-thirty this morning with a warnin’ and instructions on how I should behave when and if the cops or the feds come callin’. Truth is, it wasn’t as much a warnin’ as it was a threat. You can be sure Rollie’s already given Maxie the okay to dispense with me if need be. So Pinkie’s in on this, like it or not. He’s the only person I’ve got who can handle Maxie.”
CJ took two steps toward the man who had extracted him from the clutches of bankruptcy, and guaranteed him, by virtue of the coin CJ still clutched in his hand, a lifetime of exclusion from harm at the hands of the Colorado mafia. Looking Mario squarely in the eye, he said, “You’re wrong, Mario. You’ve got me.”
The frail-looking former don smiled, rose, and draped an arm over CJ’s shoulders. “Sorry, Calvin, but I’d never let you get your hands that dirty. Now, how about us findin’ out when we can all hook up with Julie?”
Chapter 13
The letter announcing to Willette Ducane that the remains of her son, Antoine, had been found appeared not in the form of an e-mail or fax, or even as an impersonal telegram in the gut-wrenching form reminiscent of World War II: Dear Mrs. Ducane, We are sorry to inform you.… Instead the announcement came in a Federal Express envelope that contained a clipping from the Denver Post detailing the fact that an earthquake in the mountains of Colorado had unearthed her son’s remains. An accompanying note printed on a piece of paper torn from a tablet with a Holiday Inn logo read, Dear Mrs. Ducane, The enclosed represents my last obligation to your son, Antoine. I am so sorry.
Seated in the same rocker on the same back porch of the same New Iberia, Louisiana, house she had lived in nearly all her life, Willette read the clipping one final time before glancing out toward the bog that she still thought of as Antoine’s, folding the note and the newspaper clipping neatly back into thirds, and slipping them back into the Federal Express envelope.
She had always thought that when this day finally came she would jump to her feet and scream obscenities into the air. She would thrust her arms skyward, take the Lord’s name in vain, and shout over and over again until she was hoarse. She’d once thought that she’d do all those things and more the day she learned for certain that her dear Sugar Sweet was dead. But she hadn’t—to some extent she couldn’t. She was now eighty-eight years old with failing vision and painful arthritis, and on far too many days she simply sat in her rocker, the same chair her grandmother had been sitting in when news that her husband had been killed in World War I had arrived, and rocked. Rocked and thought and silently pleaded with the Lord to take her and walk her up the stairs, away from her past and the prison that had been her life for the past thirty-five years.
The fact that news of Antoine’s death had come to her in the form of an impersonal missive in a Federal Express envelope plastered with a badly smudged Federal Express label and a barely readable account number only served to enhance her pain. Her eyes still fixed on the bog, she sighed. It was a sorrowful, oppressed sigh that seemed to go hand in hand with the already stifling heat of the New Iberia morning.
Long ago she’d come to grips with the fact that Antoine had been lost to her forever, and for years she’d tried to subdue her sleepless nights and tormented days with alcohol. Eventually she’d simply outlasted her liquor habit, but she’d never been able to overcome or outrun her simmering guilt, which had robbed her of her robust beauty and turned her sullen. On many days this feeling still caused her to drive slowly around the parish, negotiating Louisiana’s lonely back roads in her forty-five-year-old Cadillac, searching for an elixir for her mental suffering. Long ago, at Antoine’s urging, she had largely turned her back on her only son. Rocking faster, she tried to push the memories to the back of her mind but couldn’t. As always, she found herself looking back.
After the Kennedy killing, Antoine had rushed off to Colorado and stayed there for two months. Long ago she’d come to realize that she never should have let him go. He had come back home to New Iberia a different man—an acquiescent, joyless, pitiful man who seemed to be sidestepping his way through life, hoping to avoid land mines that were visible only to him. After less than a month at home, Antoine had returned to Colorado until 1969. That year he had come home for a two-week stay in the summer, never to return again.
Adjusting herself in her seat and gritting her teeth, Willette tried to keep the rush of memories at bay, but she couldn’t. As they flooded her conscience, her stomach turned sour. She’d done all she possibly could have, given the circumstances back then. She’d sent Antoine letters and wires and warnings, but she’d never traveled to Colorado to try to talk to him personally. Instead, Antoine had insisted on always traveling to see her. There’d been reasons for her reluctance to head for the Rockies. Fear and an unending list of excuses that had kept her at home. And now there was lingering guilt that had hollowed her out inside, rendered her less than whole. As she rocked, her left eye, the one the doctors said would soon succumb to blindness, fogged over and began to twitch. Accustomed to the twitching and momentary darkness, she waited for both to pass and in those brief seconds of darkness thought about what she should’ve done all those years ago.
Massaging her eyelid with her finger, she told herself that there was nothing left for her in life but to rock and stare out at Antoine’s bog. She moaned, toying with the envelope in her lap, stroking it and caressing it as if it were the soft, tender skin of her long-dead son, until her eyelid stopped twitching. Then she rose from her rocker and walked down the porch toward her back door. She would put the envelope with the rest of Antoine’s things, lock it away forever in the trunk in his room among all his other belongings that even now remained so precious to her. It was all she could do for him now. As she stepped into the house, she glanced back at the bog a f
inal time. It seemed to her that the ever-present thin layer of ground-level fog had lifted, if no more than a hair’s breadth, but she couldn’t be certain. Judging the rise and fall of the fog had always been something she had left to her precious Sugar Sweet.
There was a look of consternation on Julie Madrid’s face as she shook her head and said, “I can’t represent him, CJ. I’m sorry.”
“But Mario’s gonna need help. High-powered legal help. Your kind of help.”
Continuing to shake her head, Julie sat back in her seat and scanned the sea of predominantly black faces that filled Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen, the landmark Five Points eatery that Mavis Sundee’s family had opened more than seventy-five years earlier. A line of people stood at the entry, patiently waiting for a table and their chance to savor a catfish luncheon special or a bowl of red beans and rice, hush puppies, and fried okra.
Julie’s fair-skinned, aristocratic Latina looks didn’t trigger a second glance from the restaurant’s other patrons, and for good reason. She was seated with the owner’s fiancé, CJ Floyd, a sure sign that she belonged—and perhaps more importantly, at one time or another she had served as legal counsel for probably a quarter of the people in the place.
Regaining her composure, Julie broke off a piece of sweet-potato pie with her fork and mouthed No way to CJ as an elderly black man dressed in coveralls and a dust-covered chambray shirt walked by. Nodding a silent greeting at CJ, the man smiled at Julie and said, “Afternoon, Ms. Madrid.”
Julie smiled back. “Afternoon, Homer,” she called as two teenagers followed the man to a nearby table.
“Didn’t Homer have a heart attack a couple of months ago?” Julie whispered to CJ. “Should he be eating the stuff they serve here at Mae’s?”
“Old habits die hard for some folks, Julie. You’d have to kill Homer to get him to quit his ham hocks and butter beans.”
Julie shook her head. “Guess so. At least he’s out of prison.” Julie flashed CJ a gotcha kind of grin. “The same could be said for some people when it comes to giving up smoking.”
“Not today, Julie. I’ve already had my daily sermon from Mavis. I’m working at it—just give me some time.”
“Hope so.”
CJ polished off the last of his sweet-potato pie, the restaurant’s signature dessert, set his fork aside, and dusted off his hands. “Now, can we get back to Mario?”
“We can,” said Julie. “As long as we’re clear on the fact that I won’t represent him, but let’s go back over what you told me so you can see just how bizarre it sounds. First off, you tell me that Mario’s somehow connected to the crime of the century. You follow that up with the fact that Rollie Ornasetti, or at least one of his flunkies, is ready to turn out Mario’s lights. And finally, for toppers, you let me in on the fact that Mario’s got Pinkie Niedemeyer, the region’s top-ranking hit man, covering one of his flanks while you’re covering the other.”
CJ toyed with his fork. “I owe Mario.”
“I understand, CJ, but you want me to stick my head into this oven? We’re talking about the John F. Kennedy assassination here. Do you know the kind of trouble nosing around in that can of worms could buy? Besides, the case is closed. In case you haven’t heard, a guy named Lee Harvey Oswald did it.”
“Mario says that maybe he didn’t.”
Julie eyed CJ sympathetically. “I know all about Ike and Mario and that twenty-dollar gold piece you carry around, CJ. You’re talking to Julie, remember? But the way I see it, you and Mario are pretty much even-Steven in life. Maybe both of you need to start thinking more about today’s world and a little less about sixty-year-old debts.”
“Could be. But Mario’s gonna need a lawyer. Might as well have the best.”
“Mario’s people have attorneys by the boatload.”
“Not like you. Besides, he’s been out of that loop for decades.”
“Can’t do it, CJ. Besides, if what you’ve said is true, Mario will need a dream team of lawyers. I can do this, though—when I get back to the office, I’ll make a call to LA and see if I can get somebody I know out there to help Mario out. Where is he, anyway, in case my contact wants to get in touch with him?”
“When he left my office this morning, he was headed back home to help Damion finish putting the last of our store inventory up on the Internet.”
Looking guilty, Julie said, “Damion certainly likes him.”
“He’s a likable man.”
“I know that. I’m just saying …”
“There’s no need to explain. You’re helping out with that LA call. It’s just that Mario trusts you. That’s all.”
Julie eyed the tabletop, unwilling to admit to CJ just why she was reluctant to—no, wouldn’t—help Mario. She swallowed hard, still not looking up. In all the years they’d known one another, she had never told CJ that she’d fled the close-knit Puerto Rican Jersey City neighborhood where she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life and migrated west because of the mafia. She’d never mentioned to him that the mob had run her father, a small businessman and short-haul trucking company owner, out of business. She had never admitted to CJ that her father had walked off a New York Port Authority wharf to his death after his business had collapsed, or that her mother, until her death three years later, had never recovered from his death or the family’s loss of face. Julie’s eyes glazed over whenever she talked about her father, so she didn’t. But her eyes were glazed over now—not because of her father but because she was thinking about Damion, and the fact that she’d been lucky enough to whisk him away from Jersey City, where he would have likely grown up to be just another wharf rat.
Recognizing that he’d tapped a raw nerve, CJ eyed Julie sympathetically. “We about done here?” He pushed his chair back and stood.
“Yes,” Julie said weakly.
“Got one last question for you. Think it would be kosher for me to go talk to that couple over in Bonnie Brae who ended up with the dead man sprawled on their lawn last night? The folks the Denver Post ran the story about? I don’t want to push the legal envelope too far out of shape, and I sure as hell don’t want the cops coming back at me or Mario. Need your take.”
“Do you think Mario’s connected to that?”
“Nope. But the dead guy’s the same man who found that arm in the Eisenhower Tunnel last week in the aftermath of that earthquake, and Mario thinks Rollie and the arm’s owner were somehow tied to the JFK assassination.”
Julie eyed CJ thoughtfully. “It’s not against the law to ask questions.”
CJ nodded as his eyes widened in anticipation. Julie recognized the look that he always flashed when he was on the scent of a case. “But harassment and intimidation are. I’d tread lightly if I were you,” she added quickly.
CJ nodded again as Julie rose, scooted in front of him, and made a beeline for Mavis, who was standing near the restaurant’s entry, greeting customers. A troubled, uneasy look spread across CJ’s face as he watched her walk away. Although Julie had never told him about her family’s problems with the mafia, locking that information somewhere in the deep reaches of her psyche forever on the day that she buried her mother, Damion had never been party to any binding oath of silence. A few years earlier, after he and Damion had finished an intense game of twenty-one, Damion had told CJ the story of his family’s suffering at the hands of the Jersey City mob. Damion had spotted CJ seven points that day, and, like a man on a holy mission, forced by circumstance to absolve a loved one of sin, he’d never missed a shot, soundly thrashing CJ 21 to 7.
Working feverishly to finish inputting Mario and CJ’s store inventory data on their website so he could get out of Mario’s basement and hit the basketball court, Damion glanced up from his computer screen to watch Mario, down on one knee and sweating a few feet away, finish labeling CJ’s collection of 1930s and ’40s Colorado and Wyoming license plates with price stickers.
Damion asked, mopping his own moist brow, “Are you ever gonna get any ventilation
down here, Mario?” He suspected that the basement, with its blackout enamel-lacquered windows, depressingly low ceilings, heat-generating track lights, and lack of cross-ventilation, was at least 10 degrees warmer than the mid-eighties temperature outside.
Mario barely looked up from what he was doing. “Nobody cares what a virtual store looks or feels like, son. The proof of the puddin’s in movin’ the merchandise. You’re the Internet guru; you should know that. But I’ll cool it down for you in a little bit and go get a fan from upstairs as soon as I finish up with this.”
“Thanks,” said Damion, knowing after having worked for Mario and CJ most of the summer that oppressive heat and poor ventilation weren’t about to slow down the former don. Relieved that Mario hadn’t asked whether he’d spoken to his mother about helping out with the minor legal problem Mario had mentioned to him earlier, Damion continued working, hoping that if he quickly finished all his entries and cleaned up a couple of spreadsheets, he’d be able to avoid any discussion of the subject. He felt bad for Mario but even worse for his long-suffering mother, who’d told him when he’d asked her about lending a hand that she couldn’t help Mario—ever.
Lost in their tasks, they continued quietly working until a noise that sounded to Damion like the clicking of a burned-out automobile starter echoed off the walls at the top of the basement stairwell.
Mario jumped to his feet, suddenly on full alert. Glancing at Damion, he brought a finger to his lips. “It’s the alarm system,” he whispered. “Somethin’ in the backyard’s tripped one of my sensors. Think I’d better go have a look,” he added, knowing that Pinkie Niedemeyer, the only person besides CJ who should have been anywhere near his backyard, would likely have avoided the Rube Goldberg-style alarm sensors.
Damion looked unperturbed. “Maybe it’s the meter reader or some animal.”
Mario shook his head in protest. “No way. Just stay put. I’ll go upstairs and have a look.”
Suspecting that the makeshift alarm system had probably been triggered by a stray dog or cat, Damion was about to shrug off the whole incident when Mario stepped across the room, teased his long-barreled .44 out of Angie’s Saks Fifth Avenue hatbox, and slipped it under his belt.