Ask Not

by Max Allan Collins

  The booth they shared was big enough for four or maybe six, but Rosselli rated the real estate—he had long been a mob conduit for Hollywood. Around sixty but fit, the Silver Fox was handsome enough to be an actor with that flashing smile, immaculately cut and combed silver-gray hair, and blue-gray eyes set off by the kind of tan you could get shuttling between Vegas and Hollywood. Patrons not in the know might even have taken him for a motion-picture industry bigwig, a producer maybe, with his sleek gray suit with black lapels (Pierre Cardin?) and darker gray tie with matching silk breast-pocket hanky.

  Rosselli hadn’t noticed me yet. Like him, I usually didn’t have any trouble getting into Chasen’s, but my partner Fred Rubinski of the A-1 LA branch had made a call just in case. This was after Fred called around to the mobster’s half dozen favorite restaurants to see which one he was taking his latest starlet to on Saturday night.

  My son, my ex-wife, and I rarely dined together as a family, if that’s what we were, but I had insisted. Both were intrigued that I’d flown out to their corner of the USA at such short notice, particularly since Sam had just spent a month in mine.

  We were ensconced in our own lushly padded leather booth, just like such regulars as Alfred Hitchcock and Gregory Peck, neither of whom were here tonight, though we didn’t rate a name plaque like they did. A few celebrities could be spotted—Sinatra’s pal Don Rickles at the bar, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in separate booths with their individual wives, neither party acknowledging the other. Otherwise, star-gazers seemed out of luck, though you could bet this crowd included talent scouts, publicity agents, and studio execs, and you never knew who would enter next under the famous canopy out front.

  The Hollywood A-list restaurant, at the corner of Doheny Drive and Beverly Boulevard, had a slightly cluttered, men’s-club feel—a model TWA plane courtesy of onetime regular Howard Hughes flew over the bar, and autographed celebrity photos rode the knotty-pine walls. Waiters in tuxes played chummy with the patrons, famous or not, and would grill the famous “Hobo” steak table-side—three salt-encrusted slices of New York strip on buttered toast. Drinks were notably strong and the atmosphere borderline raucous. This was, after all, where midgets had once jumped out of a big cake for Jimmy Stewart’s birthday.

  The noise level was a plus for my purposes.

  “All right,” my ex-wife said. “I’ll bite. What’s the occasion?”

  My ex-wife in her mid-forties looked fantastic. She was small, almost petite, and had dark-brown hair and violet eyes. She’d retained her figure over the years, and she’d once been a model for calendar artists, so it was a nice figure. As Margaret Hogan, she had been in a few movies, and even in a town where women over forty were considered ancient, she could still turn heads.

  Sam was between us in the curve of the booth. He was in the Maxwell Street knockoff Beatle suit, while his mother wore a white wool suit threaded with black and a black silk cowl-necked blouse, not a knockoff. Givenchy, probably, knowing her expensive tastes. I was in a green worsted by Cricketeer, pretty hot stuff in Chicago, nothing special out here.

  “Peggy,” I said, “why don’t we order first? Anything you like.”

  “Please don’t call me that. You know it irritates me.”

  I insisted on calling her Peggy because that was the name I’d known her by. Out here everybody called her Maggie, including her husband, who was out of town on a shoot, not that I’d have invited him.

  “Order,” I instructed her. “Pretend you’re trying to get an extra child support check out of me, which on this menu won’t be hard.”

  She gave me a dirty look—she didn’t like me saying things like that in front of Sam, who was oblivious to them. Right now he was sneaking a look at Jerry Lewis.

  We ordered. My ex and I both got the Maude’s salad and Hitchcock sole—she hated that we still liked the same foods—and Sam ordered the famous chili. How famous? Not so long ago, that other violet-eyed beauty, Liz Taylor, had servings sent to the set of Cleopatra. In Rome.

  “I’m going to ask you to excuse me,” I said, sliding out of the booth. “I’ll be back before the food gets here.”

  “Nathan,” Peggy snapped. “What is going on?”

  “If I told you,” I said cheerfully, “it would spoil your meal.”

  “Goddamnit, Nathan!”

  But I was already halfway to Rosselli’s booth, which was when he recognized me. A moment of surprise—what, that I was still breathing?—was replaced by a big smile. It seemed genuine, but this was Hollywood, remember.

  “Nate Heller!” he said, extending his hands with palms up, as if to prove neither held a weapon. He turned to his date. “Sweetie, this is Nate Heller, an old Chicago pal of mine.”

  The little blonde smiled weakly and nodded. He did not introduce her by name. If, in years to come, she ever graduated from starlet to movie star, I didn’t recognize her.

  “Hope I’m not intruding, Johnny,” I said. “I’m here with my family.”

  I gestured over to the booth, where Peggy was frowning a little and Sam was rubbernecking. Dean Martin’s direction, this time.

  “Aren’t you divorced?” he asked, rather delicately for a hood. “If I’m not speaking out of school.”

  “Yes, that’s my ex-wife, but we’re still friendly. You know, just because you divorce a woman, it doesn’t mean she isn’t still the mother of your kid.”

  Rosselli nodded several times at this sage observation, while the blonde was frowning, trying to work it out.

  I leaned in, resting a hand on the linen cloth of the booth’s table. “Could I impose on you, John, for just a few minutes? Just a few words?”

  His eyebrows went up. “Certainly, Nate. Be a pleasure to catch up.”

  “I’m not really here just to socialize, John.”

  Now the eyebrows came down, frowning just a little, in thought, nothing sinister, really. “Is it business? Is it personal?”

  “Both.” I smiled at the blonde. “Miss, would you mind powdering your nose for five minutes?”

  She was thinking about that when Johnny nudged her, saying, “Go on, sweetie. Boy talk.”

  So the blonde slid out, swayed off, and I slipped into the booth. They hadn’t been served anything but rolls yet, plus Rosselli was working on a glass of what was almost certainly Smirnoff on the rocks. I never knew him to drink anything else.

  There was also what I would bet a hundred bucks was a Shirley Temple that the blonde had been drinking. What the hell—Chasen’s was where they invented it.

  “Nate, I admit you have my attention. And I’m a little concerned. What is it, man?”

  Without any preamble at all, I told him what had happened after that Beatles concert, including that the hit-and-run driver had been one of the two Cubans I’d picked up for the Secret Service when that first assassination attempt on JFK had been squelched.

  “What do you make of that?” Rosselli asked cagily.

  “When somebody swings out of one lane to run me down in the other, I figure he has a grudge. Or anyway a goal.”

  “One would think,” Rosselli allowed.

  I leaned toward him and he leaned toward me.

  I said softly, “The Warren Commission will be hanging the JFK hit on that Oswald character, any day now. Somebody doesn’t want me to spoil things. Somebody thinks I might talk.”

  “About what, Nate?”

  “About Operation Mongoose, John. About Cubans and spooks and Outfit guys thinking the Kennedy boys ought to be taken down a big goddamn peg. About the attempted Chicago hit three weeks before Dallas that the Secret Service has kept mum about.”

  He backed away a little, frowning again, and now something sinister had found its way in. “Are these really things that should be discussed in a public place?”

  “I might get killed in a private place, John.”

  The frown melted into a sad smile, the blue eyes in the tan face hooded. “Nate, Nate, what you are you saying? You know you’re a friend.”<
br />
  He meant not just to him, but to the Outfit, and the other crime families around the country with which they were aligned.

  “I’m a friend to your friends,” I said, my voice even, “and the CIA considers me an asset. My guess, though, is that the Cubans feel otherwise.”

  He drew in air and sighed it out. His expression was sympathetic. “Can I help?”

  “You can level with me, John. You can answer the big question.”

  “Ask it.”

  Across the way, an ancient waiter was serving Chasen’s signature desert, the Coupe Snowball—a scoop of vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with shredded coconut and drizzled with chocolate sauce—to an attractive young couple who were about to share it.

  I asked, “Have all my good friends decided that the world would be a safer, better place without Nate Heller in it?”

  He waved that off with a diamond-ring-laden hand. “Oh, that’s an outlandish suggestion! How can you even say that, Nate?”

  “Yeah, it’s crazy. Friends don’t kill friends. But Johnny, as a friend, I’m going to ask you to pass along to any of your friends who might be interested that I am nobody to be worried about. I keep things to myself. I have a long reputation of keeping things to myself that goes back to Frank Nitti. More recently, two years ago? Carlos Marcello told me who he was planning to kill, and I kept quiet about it.”

  In this instance, not true: I had conveyed Marcello’s message to Bobby, and he had pooh-poohed it. It was all Mafia braggadocio, Bobby said. It was all that Scotch talking.

  The jovial gangster’s expression was solemn now.

  “That’s right, Nate,” Rosselli said, nodding just a little. “You’re absolutely right. Your reputation for discretion is widely known.”

  My smile was amiable. “On the other hand, it’s also widely known that I am somebody to worry about if fucked with. I brought my family along tonight to make a point, Johnny. My son might have been hit by that car. And my ex-wife, don’t tell her, but there’s still a part of me that loves her. Call me a romantic.”

  The jeweled hand held up a traffic-cop palm. “Nate. This ain’t necessary.…”

  “Tell your friends that if my boy or my ex is touched, I will become extremely unfriendly. That if they try to kill me, that’s one thing. I can handle myself, and even take what’s coming to me, if necessary.”

  “Nate … Nathan…”

  “But if your friends try to get to me through my family, they won’t like what happens next.”

  He was shaking his head now, firmly, though his voice was subdued. “Nate … threats … please. That’s no way to talk.”

  “I don’t threaten. I do warn. John, I’m too tangled up in this to go public. It’s that simple. Tell anyone you think might benefit from a warning that I am not a loose end that needs tying off. But I can be a loose cannon if crossed.”

  He was nodding. Smiling, too, though it was on the forced side. “I understand. I see your point. And I respect you for this. I really do.”

  I slid out of the booth. “Good. Enjoy your meal, John. Attractive girl.”

  She was on her way back, navigating the waiters in the aisle with grace, getting looks from men in various booths. Five minutes almost on the dot. I wondered if she’d really powdered her nose all that time.

  Teeth blossomed in the brown face. “I’m gonna get her a screen test, Nate.”

  “I bet you are.”

  I went back to our booth.

  “Who is that?” Peggy asked. “Somebody important?”

  “Very,” I said.

  Our food came and we didn’t talk much. I was busy thinking.

  Thinking about how I was going to break it to Peg that our son and for that matter her lovely self were going to be guarded day and night by A-1 operatives until further notice.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Feeling half asleep, I got to the Monadnock Building just after nine A.M. on Monday, a sunny fall day that was doing my bloodshot eyes no favors. I’d spent yesterday in Hollywood with my son, taking in Topkapi at Grauman’s Chinese, dining at Musso & Frank, and goofing off poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Then after Sam’s mom picked him up, I caught the red-eye back to Chicago. Hence my red eyes.

  In its day the largest office building in the world, the Monadnock was a towered-over, sixteen-story, gray-brick relic now. But as the home base of a nationally prominent private detective agency, the Monadnock couldn’t be beat for class or mood or history. Going in the main entrance on West Jackson, I passed the rear display windows of stores facing Dearborn and Federal, moved past the open winding stairwells, and caught the elevator to seven.

  We maintained the corner suite of this floor. The frosted glass-and-wood exterior hadn’t changed since we moved in, although I now did give billing to a partner:

  A-1 Detective Agency

  Criminal and Civil Investigations

  Nathan S. Heller

  President

  and smaller,

  Louis K. Sapperstein

  Vice President

  My Hollywood partner, Fred Rubinski, got similar billing out there, only with the same size lettering as me—always a tough town to negotiate billing in.

  In the reception area, with its blond Heywood-Wakefield furnishings and framed Century of Progress posters, sat a slim woman in her early thirties, reading Redbook. She looked prim and crisp in a tailored gingham plaid dress, her blonde hair flipping up at the chin, a style maybe a little young for her, but she had pretty enough features to overcome it. She glanced up at me with big blue eyes and a tiny, hopeful smile touched with pale red lipstick.

  I gave her a nod and a smile and moved on.

  More likely a girl looking for a job than a prospective client. Well, we could use another swimmer in the secretarial pool. Not much chance she was after investigative work—she just didn’t have the seasoned look of the ex-policewomen we hired.

  I paused briefly to acknowledge our receptionist, who wanted to be called Millie now—she felt this was an improvement over Mildred, and maybe it was.

  Millie, a dark-haired doll in her late twenties, had a pleasant manner and was sharp as hell. She had shifted from her Jackie Kennedy fixation in favor of Mary Tyler Moore from The Dick Van Dyke Show. It was working okay, though she and office manager Gladys Sapperstein had recently gotten into it over the issue of wearing slacks to work. Today Millie wore a navy blue dress with a V neck and no sleeves.

  “Good morning, Mr. Heller,” she said, chipper. She was on her feet, taking my Burberry to hang it up for me. “How was Hollywood?”

  “Great,” I said. “I got you Morey Amsterdam’s autograph.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  Sharp but gullible.

  She crinkled her chin and warbled, “Mr. Hel-ler…”

  She said that like Laura Petrie said “Rob” on Van Dyke, and I hadn’t decided yet whether it was cute or annoying.

  We had a regular Monday morning staff meeting at eleven, so the bullpen with its modern metal desks—I don’t like cubicles—was well-populated, only a handful of agents out on assignment. Age and sex and color varied—we had three Negroes now—and all our agents had police or military police backgrounds. A wall of windows looked out onto Jackson Street while another wall was home to a lineup of metal four-drawer files.

  Office manager Gladys Sapperstein was my partner Lou’s wife. They had no children, unless you counted me. Her office was between Lou’s and mine, and right now she was poised outside of it, her hands filled with paperwork.

  Her eyes narrowed as she saw me ambling in her direction. She met me halfway, still an attractive woman after all these years (I’d hired her in 1939)—a busty, pleasingly plump brunette about sixty. She looked like the kind of teacher whose lap a fifth-grade boy wanted to sit in, but didn’t know why.

  Right now her lap and much of the rest of her was in a green and yellow floral dress and, like Carlos Marcello’s secretary, she wore jeweled cat’
s-eye glasses, though I’m fairly sure she didn’t run a four-state call-girl ring.

  “Can I bring you coffee?” she asked.

  “No thanks, Gladys. I had plenty at home, trying to get my engine started.”

  “Car trouble?”

  “No. My engine.”

  “You noticed the girl in our reception area.” This was delivered in an I’m-stating-the-obvious fashion.

  “Why, because she’s a looker? Is that how you think my mind works?”

  “Yes,” she said. It was two questions that deserved only one answer. “She’s a prospective client. She has an appointment.”

  “When?”

  “Nine-thirty. She’s a little early.”

  “Well, there is a staff meeting.…”

  “Really, and you were going to attend that, were you?”

  “Gladys, you know I never miss a staff meeting when I’m in town.”

  An eyebrow arched. “Never?”

  “Seldom.” I checked my watch. “Well, I guess I do have time, at that.”

  “Almost an hour.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes, then send her in. Good morning, by the way.”

  This rather typical conversation should have been over, but she was still blocking my path. “Actually, Lou would like to talk to you about the client first. That young woman is a family friend of his. Could I send him in?”

  “You’re asking my permission?”

  “You’re in charge around here, aren’t you?”

  “Could I have that in writing?”

  She just looked at me.

  “In triplicate,” I added.

  And now she granted me a smile. She said, “Oh you,” and slapped my arm and walked away, putting some wiggle in her fanny. She did both of those things, in that order, about once a day, if I was lucky.

  Soon I was behind the old scarred desk in my inner sanctum, the desk (like me) a dinosaur dating back to a one-room office over the Dill Pickle in Barney Ross’s building on Van Buren. Throughout the early years of the A-1, I had lived in that office, which had a Murphy bed and bathroom. Deluxe stuff.

  I’d come a distance. This inner office was as big as its whole Van Buren Street predecessor. No Murphy bed, but a comfy leather couch, padded leather client chairs, a row of wooden filing cabinets, and walls where faces from my past stared at me—celebrity clients, celebrity friends, in a few cases celebrity lovers, from Sally Rand to Marilyn Monroe.