Ask Not

by Max Allan Collins

  “Well, look who’s on my doorstep,” our hostess said, in a lazy, Scarlett O’Hara–ish way. She looked primly festive in a brown-and-orange flower-print cotton dress with flounce sleeves and a full skirt. “Why, when I heard Flo Kilgore wanted to chat with me, I was simply flabbergasted. Come in, come in.”

  We did, into a living room arrayed with Early American antiques. Only a few framed family photos on one wall—our hostess with two young boys at various ages—were indicative of this century. She had apparently cleaned the room to perfection, knowing a TV star was coming by.

  Flo, looking chic in a royal-blue crepe dress with A-line skirt, gestured toward me with a white-gloved hand. “Mrs. West, this is my investigator, Nathan Heller, from Chicago.”

  Mrs. West nodded with a smile that had turned forced as she said, “Mr. Heller, welcome to my home,” and I wondered if I’d somehow already managed to get off on the wrong foot with her. Probably she hadn’t expected Flo to bring anyone along.

  “Miss Kilgore,” she said, her hands fig-leafed before her, “I would much prefer you call me Madeleine, or if you favor the formality, make it Mrs. Brown—my name by my late, first husband. I do not live with my present husband.”

  “Certainly, Madeleine,” Flo said. “And call me Flo, please.”

  “And I’m Nate,” I said with a smile that she returned without anything forced about it this time.

  “I generally don’t indulge in alcohol in the afternoon,” she said, “but I can get you something, if you like. Or iced tea, perhaps?”

  Flo said iced tea would be fine and I agreed.

  “Shall we sit on the patio?” Madeleine asked, and led us through a modern kitchen to a sun-dappled cement slab on a backyard given over to flowers, vines, shrubs, and small trees. Flo and I were directed to black wrought-iron chairs with all-weather floral cushions at a matching round table under an umbrella. We sat as Madeleine returned to the kitchen to fetch glasses of iced tea.

  When all three of us were settled, Flo removed the recording gizmo from her purse and Madeleine shook her finger in a gently scolding fashion. “I’m sorry, Miss Kilgore … Flo … but I won’t be recorded. You will, I’m afraid, have to take notes.”

  “Well, that will be fine,” Flo said, and her smile was as forced as Madeleine’s earlier one had been.

  As Flo dug in her purse, Madeleine said, businesslike, “Now, perhaps Mr. Lane didn’t make it clear, but I cannot at this time be quoted. Perhaps in the future. But not at this time.”

  Flo, settling in with her spiral pad and ballpoint, said, “I understand. For the present, you’ll be an unnamed source, close to President Johnson.”

  “That will be fine,” she said, and sipped at a straw as long as her tall narrow glass. “That will be fine.”

  Since 1948, Madeleine West, or Brown, had been the mistress of Lyndon Baines Johnson. They had a son together, one who closely resembled his father (that had been clear in my glance at those family portraits). Senator Johnson had bought her this house in 1950, and seemed to support her well if not quite lavishly. Apparently she had married a man named Brown for cover purposes. Flo knew all of this going in, and knew as well that Mrs. Brown was irritated with her lover/provider, for spending so little time with her since assuming the presidency. Whether Mrs. Brown knew of another LBJ relationship with a White House secretary—which had also resulted in a child—was unknown.

  I had already cautioned Flo that Mrs. Brown’s current irritation with her longtime benefactor might color what she shared with us this afternoon. Or—and this was more likely—that her sharing it with us was at once a blackmail threat and a life-insurance policy.

  Flo asked, “When did you meet Lyndon Johnson?”

  “Right after the Box 13 scandal, in the election of ’48—perhaps you’ll recall the ballot-box stuffing accusations that dogged Lyndon?”

  “So they were just accusations, then?”

  “Oh, my no, Lyndon and his people did that, all right. Well, they were celebrating, and I must say that night is engraved in my memory. When that tall Texan walked into that ballroom, so charismatic and handsome … why, everyone there gravitated towards him, including this little girl. I was seduced by the very sight of him.”

  I sipped my iced tea and managed not to make a face, either at the sugared Southern style of the drink or at Madeleine Brown’s True Romance magazine twaddle.

  “At the time,” she was saying, “a girl just starting out, I was working for the Glenn Advertising agency, only a few steps away from the Adolphus Hotel, where the party was held … in the Crystal Ballroom?”

  Was she asking me? I wasn’t there.

  “He was just a typical Texan—both feet on the ground, smiling, warm, just terribly sexy. We were introduced by someone who did business with the agency, and I danced with the man of the hour, and it was so overwhelming, just to be in his arms.”

  Looked like it was going to be a long afternoon.

  “Lyndon invited me to another party that night. This was next week at the Driskill Hotel in Austin. I said yes, and he had someone fly me there and I waited for him in his suite, but the only party was the two of us. I became his second wife that night.”

  Confused, I asked, “You were married?”

  “No, my dear. But ‘mistress’ is a word with such unpleasant connotations. And when Steven was born, we became Lyndon’s other family, though I never had the privilege of being called First Lady.”

  My hunch was that Johnson had his first lady when he was about thirteen.

  Flo said, “Having a relationship with a married man must have been difficult for you.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m a good Catholic girl, you know. My parents raised me that way, and after every time I was with Lyndon, in those first years, I would go to church and confess. But then I would just turn right around and sin again. Anyway, our relationship was hidden to the outside world. No one but Lyndon’s insiders ever knew.”

  “And God,” I pointed out.

  Flo shot me a flash of irritation.

  But Madeleine merely nodded, saying, “And God, yes. A client at the agency was our cover-up man—he would alert me of Lyndon’s arrival in town, or arrange travel to Austin or elsewhere, and the hotel room where I was to be, and tell my boss I was needed on business.” She leaned toward Flo, woman-to-woman. “These are precious moments to me, fleeting moments to share with the man I loved.”

  Flo asked, “You knew he would never be yours?”

  “That’s right. There was plenty of romance—perfume, flowers, and material things, like this house and a new car every year. But there was also … do you embarrass easily, Mr. Heller?”

  “I blush at card tricks,” I said.

  Flo gave me another quick look.

  “Well, then hold on to your hat,” she said (I was wearing the Panama by Stetson again), “because I intend to be frank, sir. While we certainly talked and enjoyed each other’s company, these stolen moments were primarily sexual. We both enjoyed each other that way. He was a wonderful lover. A stallion between the sheets.”

  The thought of this cute dish in bed with LBJ was cringe-inducing.

  Flo asked, “And when he found out you were expecting?”

  “He was furious at first … then worried for us both. He was so terribly ambitious and already had his eye on the presidency. He feared the Mafia or somebody would find out about us and use it against him.”

  Kind of like she was doing now.

  Madeleine gestured with an open hand, as if introducing a debutante. “You see, Lyndon was created by two millionaires from here, H. L. Hunt and Sid Richardson. I know them both well. You look skeptical, Mr. Heller. Well, Dallas is a small city, and it was smaller still in the ’50s. Keep in mind, I was an account executive at the most important ad agency in town. I would figure and analyze budgets, direct client marketing, purchase media time, and travel to radio and TV stations all around the state. I rubbed shoulders with the high and the mighty. Take Hunt, for inst
ance. I saw him every weekday morning—we parked our cars side by side in the same lot.”

  I asked, “Why was Hunt backing Johnson? LBJ’s a liberal in many ways, and even a guy from Chicago knows that H. L. Hunt is just slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.”

  Her smile was wide and those dimples were something. “Oh, yes, Hunt’s a John Birch Society boy. He’s the one that backed that ‘treason’ ad in the paper the day Kennedy came to town, and passed out circulars calling the President a traitor. But H.L. believed in Lyndon, and in the power of money. Funny thing is, he dressed like some poor old man. Richest man in America, in near rags.”

  Flo asked, “What did Hunt think of John Kennedy?”

  “Oh, hated him like poison, of course. But H.L. was practical, and patient.”

  I asked, “Patient how?”

  “Well, when Lyndon was going to lose the nomination for President, back at the ’60 convention? Hunt got together with old Joe Kennedy and worked out a deal for Lyndon to get on the ticket. That’s how he became VP, even though JFK couldn’t stand him. And Hunt said to me, ‘We may have lost a battle, honey, but we’ll win the war.’”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, Mr. Heller. Nate. I will say that after the assassination, H.L. told me, ‘Well, we won the war!’”

  “You’re saying Hunt was behind the assassination.”

  “I’d call him the … linchpin of the oilmen around here. Some say Lyndon was behind it, and I asked him, point-blank, right next to me in bed, and he said that was bullshit, that it was Texas oil and those … pardon my French … ‘fucking renegade intelligence bastards.’”

  “For what reason?”

  “Kennedy was calling for big cuts in the oil depletion allowance. He was stopping mergers under antitrust. The market dropped, steel fell. And he was gonna close a bushel of military bases here and overseas, and was gonna pull out of Vietnam. And he was talking about dismantling the CIA. I mean, he did fire that Allen Dulles and his second in command, our mayor’s brother. Mayor Cabell changed the motorcade route that day, you know.… More iced tea, Nate?”

  “No. No, I’m fine.”

  She smiled impishly. “Here’s something nobody outside of Dallas knows. H. L. Hunt and Jack Ruby are pals. Jack used to set up these great poker games for Hunt—old boy’s an avid poker player.”

  “You know Jack Ruby?”

  “Everybody around here does. You do know the Carousel was right across from the Adolphus? If you passed Jack on the street, and you didn’t know him, he would stop you and give you his Carousel Club card. Jack was everywhere in those days. He knew everybody in the Dallas Police Department. He hated Kennedy, too.”

  I gave her half a smile. “Madeleine, you don’t seem like the type to hang out at a strip joint.”

  “Oh, I’m not. I don’t know if I was ever there during regular hours. They opened at seven-thirty P.M., I believe. No, Jack liked to be around important people—said they were ‘classy.’ He’d open up in the afternoon, or any time, really, for fellas like Hunt or anybody in politics or business to duck in for a little privacy or fun. Fix ’em up with gambling or girls. I heard Jack Ruby could have somebody beat up for fifteen bucks and killed for a hundred. No, Jack was a buddy.”

  She seemed awfully cavalier about murder, for a nice Catholic girl serving up too-sweet tea on a patio surrounded by flowers.

  Flo asked, “What was your reaction when Ruby killed Oswald?”

  Madeleine paused. For once, the free-flowing words stopped and she chose them carefully. “I thought he was at the police station because somebody asked him to do that, and he had no other choice than to do it.”

  Flo leaned forward. “I understand you saw Lyndon the night before the assassination.”

  The dark eyes flashed and so did a smile. “Yes, he surprised me that night. I didn’t know he would be there. I was asked to attend a party at Clint Murchinson’s residence—he’s another of those oilmen behind Lyndon. His son John was living there at the time, because Clint had a stroke—like old Joe Kennedy—and was moved to more accommodating quarters … although he was there that night, all right.”

  I asked, “What was the occasion of the party?”

  “It was in honor of Edgar Hoover. He was a big pal of Clint’s and of Lyndon’s. Then, of course you know, Edgar was a lifelong bachelor, and had his friend Clyde Tolson with him to … you know, several of those oilmen were life-long bachelors, too. They all loved horse-racing and gambling, and they would go off on these holidays together, and, well that’s neither here nor there. Where was I?”

  “The party,” Flo said.

  “The party! Well, the guest list couldn’t have been more impressive. For example, Richard Nixon was there…”

  I said, “Nixon was in Dallas during the assassination? Does he have an alibi?”

  That last had been kidding on the square.

  Flo said to me, “Nixon was in town for Pepsi Cola. They were a client of his legal firm.” She nodded to our hostess. “Please continue.”

  “Well, Hunt was there, Sid Richardson, George Brown … George brought Hoover in on his private plane. All the oilmen, who I call the Great White Fathers. Bankers like John McCloy, who’s on the Warren Commission. And all kinds of society people from Dallas. But Lyndon didn’t get there till the party was breaking up, at eleven or even midnight. And he and Hunt and a few others, including Nixon and Hoover, went into the library and locked themselves in for, oh, maybe ten minutes.”

  She paused to sip her iced tea.

  “When Lyndon came out of there, he saw me and came up and he was red in the face. Like he’d got himself an instant sunburn in there. He had this just … dreadful look. I asked what was wrong, and he whispered, in this terrible grating voice, ‘After tomorrow, those damn Kennedys will never stand in my way again. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.’ I’ll never forget that. How could I?”

  Flo said, “Do you realize what you’re implying?”

  “I do. But I don’t know what happened in that room. I don’t know what was discussed. Maybe somebody shared inside news that Lyndon was being dropped from the ticket, and he intended to tell Jack Kennedy off.”

  Or perhaps he’d been told of the imminent assassination and had worked himself up some righteous outrage over previous Kennedy humiliations to help rationalize his role in the crime, even if that role was simply foreknowledge.

  Flo said, “Forgive me, Madeleine, but my tracking of the whereabouts of the major figures in the case puts Johnson at his hotel at the time. He was seen.”

  She waved that off. “Lyndon had a look-alike cousin who filled in for him, if he was slipping out. Somebody who could pass for him, if it wasn’t up close or in conversation.”

  I guess his mistress would know.

  “Now, not everybody still at the party went into that private conference,” she was saying. “For example, Mac Wallace didn’t.”

  I about fell out of the chair. Flo, who knew of Wallace through me, glanced my way, knowing I’d react.

  I said, “You know Mac Wallace?”

  “Sure do, bless his heart. He’s Lyndon’s number one hatchet man, and that’s not exactly a figure of speech. Mac made seventeen, eighteen people disappear that I know of, or anyway strongly suspect. You know, he was a man with a future, smart as a whip, but then he got mixed up in that love triangle with Lyndon’s no-good sister, and lost his head and shot that poor golfer. Lyndon bought his friend out of that jam, but you know, that was the end of any kind of normal life for Mac.”

  “You don’t hold it against him, being a murderer?”

  “Oh, I kind of feel sorry for him. He’s certainly a terrible man now, but once he was so promising.” Her eyes tightened as something occurred to her. “You know, we had this wonderful colored girl who all but raised my two boys when I went back to work at the ad agency. She was with us for many years. She traveled with us, and one time on a trip to San Antonio, I believe
it was, she accidentally came in on Lyndon and me at a most inopportune moment. She scurried out, and Lyndon said, ‘Say good-bye to her.’ I thought he was joshing, but she disappeared the next day. No one has seen her since. I asked an attorney who’s been my go-between with Lyndon if he knew what became of her. And he said, ‘What do you think? Mac Wallace.’ … Now, Mr. Heller, you look dry as a bone. I simply have to refresh your tea.”

  She took the glass from my hand and went off to do that while Flo and I looked at each other in blank amazement.

  Then Madeleine was handing me back my tall glass and I said, “Doesn’t it bother you, these killings?”

  She sat. “Killings bother any Christian, Mr. Heller. Why, I would mourn the untimely demise of any person. But these were political decisions. They were deemed necessary. We’re not talking about just any man. We’re talking about a powerhouse of a man who became the President of the United States. A man I love very much. He did what he had to do, to do the very good things that he has done. For Negroes. For the poor.”

  I could think of one “poor” Negro he hadn’t done anything good for—the nanny who raised her boys.

  Madeleine’s expression was grave now, her brown eyes boring in on me—no pixie in them at all. “Had the assassination not happened the day it did, Lyndon would probably have gone to prison—or at least the Kennedys would have shuffled him out of public life in some way. All because of his involvement with two good friends, two wonderful men, Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. Funny how some of the people who were going to testify against Lyndon found themselves in the middle of homosexual scandals, or like that Marshall fella, who shot himself five times.”