“Mac Wallace,” I said.
“Yes, Nate,” she said pleasantly. “Without a doubt. And Flo? Can you understand why it is that you can’t use my name? Next time Mac Wallace is in town, I don’t want him dropping by.”
CHAPTER
13
The twenty-two story building at 3525 Turtle Creek Boulevard, of tinted, reinforced concrete and Mexican brick, was the most prestigious apartment house in Dallas.
Built in 1957, 3525 (as it was known) was home to such famous residents as Greer Garson, Jimmy Dean, Senator John Tower, Fabian, and assorted oilmen and wealthy widows. The restaurant off the spacious, modern lobby, the Turtle Room—with its continental cuisine and seventeen-foot, floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, looking onto magnificent landscaping—was open to the public. The on-site nightspot, Club 3525, however, was for private members only, though of course Flo Kilgore was an honored guest, on the off chance she might mention the place in her nationally syndicated column.
3525 had made the papers before—a while back, a socialite’s body had been found floating in the swimming pool; then department-store widow Minnie Marcus had been relieved of seventy grand in jewelry in a daring robbery; and, not long ago, the club had been raided by the city vice squad for after-hours drinking (the more elderly residents had complained about the noise).
Detective Nathan Heller of Chicago was investigating none of these crimes. Instead I was spending a quiet evening at 3525, first dining on French fare at the Turtle Room in a setting rich with teak and polished crystal, and then in the club, listening to the Bill Black Combo play jazz with a saxy flare that wouldn’t have been wrong for the Colony. Eat your heart out, Bill Peck and his Peckers.
The crowd here was young, at least for 3525—couples in their thirties and forties, Twisting and Frugging on a small dance floor by the modest stage, pretending they were in their twenties. The room was black booths and mirrored walls with red-and-blue stripper lighting on the stage and dance floor.
Needless to say, I didn’t spot Greer Garson.
Flo had spoken to a number of fans, but signed few autographs, as this was too hip a room for that. She looked very mod in a yellow white-polka-dotted miniskirted dress, with a matching bow in her indestructible bouffant, as seen on TV. She was trying too hard to look young, but the lighting helped.
“Bill Black isn’t in the combo anymore,” she said when they went on break. “Ailing.”
We were sitting close in a booth for four, a martini for her, a vodka gimlet for me.
“Used to be Elvis’s backup band,” I said, showing off.
“That’s old news. Early this year, they opened for the Beatles—at the Beatles’ request—on their first American tour.”
“They’re going to be here next week.”
“Bill Black?”
“The Beatles.”
She smiled a little. “Surely not at Club 3525.”
“Only after hours. They’re going to be at Memorial Auditorium a week from tonight.”
This was Friday. Since Monday, we had interviewed fifteen witnesses, and Flo had plenty of material for an assassination exposé, perfect to appear right after the Warren Commission announced its results, at the end of the month.
But she remained disappointed that I hadn’t been able to arrange an interview with Jack Ruby. That seemed out of the question, for this trip anyway, because we were both set to fly out tomorrow, her to New York and What’s My Line?, and me to Chicago and the A-1 Detective Agency.
I had talked to Barney Ross on the phone several times, in his office at the Milton Blackstone ad agency in Manhattan. Though we had all grown up on the West Side, Barney was much closer to Ruby than I was.
“Belli’s not going to be involved in the appeal,” Barney said, meaning Ruby’s famous defense lawyer. “His new defense team is led by a guy named Clinton. Sam Houston Clinton.”
It would be.
“I got feelers out,” Barney said, “to find somebody I know who knows this guy. If I can get the new man to pass my message along to Sparky, you’ll get in.”
Sparky was Ruby.
I said, “They may want you as a character witness again.”
Barney, as a famous ex–boxing champ, had testified for Ruby at the Oswald murder trial. Ruby had been convicted in March. Justice moved fast in Texas. Or anyway something moved fast.
“Maybe not,” Barney said, and sounded embarrassed. “Some people say my testimony worked against Jack. Because of my drug habit.”
Barney, who’d been a Marine and served with me in the Pacific, had come back from Guadalcanal addicted to morphine, whereas I’d come back mildly nuts enough to rate a Section Eight. Checking himself into a VA hospital for help, Barney had famously kicked the monkey on his back.
But the prosecution had used Barney’s addiction—and that as kids, he and Ruby ran errands for Al Capone—to suggest Barney was some kind of mobbed-up lowlife. In the scheme of things, his testimony hadn’t mattered, but it had been an embarrassment for the ex-champ.
“You know,” Barney was saying, “I helped raise money for the defense, on the first trial, and I’ll offer to do the same on the next one.”
“That should get a lawyer’s attention.”
“They say money talks.”
“And whispers and screams. Just see what you can do.”
I told him I’d be in Dallas through Saturday.
I’d also been on the phone with Captain Clint Peoples in Waco, calling him about checking on Rose Cheramie’s seemingly absurd story. Just yesterday the Ranger had called me back, confirming it.
“Everything the Cheramie girl told you lines up with what the trooper, Frank Fruge, says,” Peoples reported.
“So what?” I said. “It could still all just be a wild story she told Fruge.”
“Well, keep in mind Fruge did find her along the roadside where she’d been dumped. And because of the Kennedy angle, he checked up on the details of her story.”
“Yeah? Such as?”
“Seems the girl mentioned names in the drug scheme—of the boat, of the sailor, and the hotel in Houston where she had a reservation under an alias, which she also gave the trooper.”
“And it all checked out?”
“To a tee. Fruge even took her to Houston to work with the Customs people, for her to help them take the drug ring down. But apparently word got to her accomplices and the thing fell apart.”
“I didn’t know about that. She didn’t mention it.”
“Well, Nate, the key thing is, the Customs folks say the names she gave ’em were all known for criminal narcotics activity. And that Rose’s story remained consistent with no discrepancies.”
“Thank you, Clint. I appreciate this.”
“It might be a good lead into the Kennedy killing.”
“Yeah, if anybody was investigating it.”
“Aren’t you, Nate?”
“Don’t spread it around. Listen, Clint, you said the Rangers keep tabs on Mac Wallace.”
“Well, this Ranger does.”
“He’s checked out of the Adolphus, you know.”
“I do know. Early this week. What you may not know is he’s back in California, at his day job for Ling in Anaheim. Home of Disneyland?”
I had a sudden flash of following Wallace into the “It’s a Small World” boat ride and drowning him.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll have my A-1 people out there confirm that.”
Right now the Bill Black Combo was playing their big hit, “White Silver Sands,” inspiring Flo to drag me out on the little dance floor to Twist to it. The crowd was old enough that in the subdued club lighting I could get away with it. You might consider it just plain sad that a man zeroing in sixty would make a fool out of himself that way, but it made my spine pop and saved me a trip to the chiropractor.
We were on the dance floor when Janet AKA Jada came in—I’d asked her to join us after her last set at the Colony. She had left her stage makeup on and
wore a lime-green fringed go-go dress that barely covered what Jack Ruby used to turn the lights down to conceal.
Seeing me doing the Twist made her laugh giddily, and who could blame her? She joined us on the dance floor (to “Don’t Be Cruel”) and we were a threesome, if not exactly like the one Rose Cheramie made with those two Cubans. Whether any of this crowd knew she was the famous/infamous Jada of the Carousel, I couldn’t tell you.
But when she started to go to town, smiling big, eyes flashing, unleashing tendrils from the tower of red hair, the rippling fringe going a hundred miles an hour, the other dancers (including Flo and me) simply gave up and gathered around, clapping to the band’s infectious beat and smiling just as big as Janet.
When the combo started in on “Harlem Nocturne,” nice and easy and jazzy, Janet latched on to me for a slow dance, and Flo—with a funny little smile—graciously capitulated, heading back to the booth.
With her curvy body plastered to me, Janet buried her face in my neck. “Why don’t you come home with me tonight?”
“It’d be rude.”
“I can’t believe you’d rather fuck that skinny bitch than me.” She ground herself into my groin. Soon she murmured into my ear, “Hello there. I remember you.…”
“First of all,” I whispered, “she’s not a bitch. She’s a lovely woman, and she isn’t skinny. She’s got a nice figure.”
“As nice as mine?”
“And second, I’m not fucking her. I’m working for her as an investigator. You know that.”
“You’ve fucked her before, though, right?”
“This is a pretty swanky club for that kind of talk.”
“I thought so.”
We moved in a little circle on the crowded dance floor, smoke floating like fog, or was that steam?
“Anyway,” I managed, “we aren’t an item, you and me. You can’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous in general, Heller.”
“Oh?”
“I’m just jealous tonight.…”
Adjusting my trousers as I came down off the slightly elevated dance floor, glad for the subdued lighting, I let Janet lead me by one hand to the booth, where I slid in beside Flo, and Janet slid in after me. In four decades as a private eye, I’d never been so pleasantly surrounded.
We chatted. The band was loud but not deafening, and we were toward the rear. Janet asked how the investigation was going, we said fine, Flo thanked her for her help lining up the other Carousel girls, that kind of thing. Janet reported a good house this evening for both shows at the Colony and that Beverly Oliver, back on the bill, got a nice reception.
But we were having to raise our voices somewhat to be heard, and I suggested we go outside and find a quiet place to talk.
The pool—where I was pleased to see no corpse floating—was a circular affair that fed a little waterfall that emptied into a smaller pool, the two levels nestling in an angle of the building adjacent to a natural ravine. The terraced area overlooked a city park; the night was warm with no humidity, the sky a Maxfield Parrish blue with a scattering of stars, as if Mrs. Marcus’s stolen jewels had been cast there carelessly. The muffled sound of Bill Black playing their hit “Smokie” provided background music, and somewhere in the night a dog barked, but not keeping time. We found a trio of white deck-style chairs and had this little patch of Texas heaven to ourselves.
Flo seemed somewhat confused, having no idea why I’d want to talk to Janet about anything, while Janet just seemed pleased by the attention.
“Something occurred to me just the other day,” I said to the exotic dancer, “that should have much sooner.”
“Oh?”
“Mac Wallace’s presence all those evenings at the Colony Club may not have been innocent.”
Janet laughed once. “Nothing is innocent about Mac Wallace.”
“That’s good to keep in mind. When I arrived in Dallas, I was looking at Wallace in terms of suspicious deaths related to the Billie Sol Estes scandal.”
Janet nodded. “Helping suicides along.”
“Right. But as you know, Flo and I have been looking at the assassination, looking hard. And it’s a crime littered with dead witnesses. Many of them have died the same kind of suspicious deaths as those tied to the Billie Sol Estes case.”
Flo, getting it just a beat before Janet, said, “Wallace may be responsible.”
“I doubt there’s one person responsible. I believe it’s a kind of a cleanup crew.” I turned to Janet. “And it’s possible that Wallace was at the Colony Club to watch you.”
Her small sneer was big with self-confidence. “All the men who come to the Colony Club are there to watch me.”
“Not that kind of watch. The keeping tabs kind. He may have been stalking you. Getting your patterns down.”
The smile disappeared. “Am I in danger, Nate?”
“You may be. Wallace isn’t in Dallas right now, but again … others on this cleanup crew may well be. Do you own a gun?”
She nodded. “A little .22. Should I carry it?”
“You should. Don’t leave the club at night alone. Don’t put yourself at risk. What’s your upcoming schedule?”
“Tomorrow night I’m wrapping up the engagement at the Colony. I’m off to New Orleans for two weeks.”
“The Sho-Bar?”
She nodded.
“That’s a Marcello place,” I said, more to myself than them.
“One of them,” Janet said. “Carlos isn’t there a lot, but I know him.”
“Are you friendly?”
“As far as it goes.”
“If you see him, make nice.”
“How nice? Sex nice?”
“That’s up to you and your conscience, but I would suggest you let him know, without saying anything directly, that you can be trusted. That you are discreet.”
Janet’s eyes flashed wide. “Discreet? What about talking to you and Miss Kilgore the other day?”
Flo, picking right up, said, “Your name won’t be used. You’ll be a reliable source close to the Dallas club scene. That’s a very common journalistic practice.”
“Okay,” Janet said. She sighed. Nodded. “Okay.… Listen, Nate, suddenly I’m not in the mood for drinking and dancing. Walk me out to my car, would you? I’d feel safer.”
“Sure,” I said. I turned to Flo. “See if you can reclaim our booth, or find a new one.”
Flo nodded and went back inside.
Janet took my hand and walked me around the building, skirting cabanas curved around one side of the pool, and across manicured grounds overlooking the wooded view of the nearby park. The parking lot was filled with luxury vehicles, including her white Caddy convertible, which awaited, its top up. I opened the driver-side door for her and she got behind the wheel.
“You really do care about me, don’t you?” she said, looking up at me, the paleness of her pretty face emphasized by moon- and starlight. Her blue eyes, with their oriental cast, seemed to stroke my face.
“I do,” I admitted.
She reached over and unzipped me and fished out the part of me that was most interested. I glanced around. The parking lot was empty but for a couple on the other side, drunkenly stumbling toward their car. I was still looking in that direction when her mouth slowly, moist and warm, slid down the shaft, about halfway, and then began an increasing tempo, as she went deeper and faster.
I was almost there when she grinned up at me and asked, “Would you like to get in back of the Caddy? Nice and roomy.”
What did she think I was, some high-school kid?
She slipped off the shoulder straps of her fringed go-go dress and tugged the thing to her waist and her small, pert breasts, thrust toward me by her prominent rib cage, met the cool air with a sharpening of their points, which were almost as red as her lipsticked mouth.
“I wouldn’t mind,” I said.
* * *
I wasn’t gone long enough to be suspicious—fifteen minutes maybe, and it wasn�
�t like Flo and I were having a thing. It was strictly a working relationship, although admittedly with a certain intimacy suggestive of what we had once been to each other.
We didn’t dance again and conversation slowed. I’d risked a third gimlet, and she was on maybe her fifth martini, when I suggested we head back to the Statler. The first half of the drive back was silent, until she stopped pouting about whatever she imagined had happened (even if it had) and apparently started thinking about her story again.
She said, “Could somebody have been impersonating Oswald, at some of these sightings?”
She was referring to a handful of stories we’d heard from witnesses, in which the supposed assassin appeared to be purposefully attracting attention prior to the killing.
Albert Bogard, car salesman at Downtown Lincoln-Mercury, said that on November 9, Oswald test-drove a vehicle, Bogard riding along, as was customary. Oswald zoomed around the freeway at seventy MPH in a new Mercury Comet, as if trying to make an impression. Back at the showroom, Oswald—he wrote “Lee Oswald” on the back of a business card of Bogard’s—said he was interested but didn’t have the money right now. But a job coming up soon would make him flush, and he’d be back. (On the other hand, Oswald’s widow, Marina, had told the authorities that her late husband did not know how to drive.)
Wednesday morning, November 20, a heavyset young man and a young woman entered the office of American Aviation Company at Red Bird Air Field, on the Dallas outskirts; waiting in their car, in the passenger seat, was a man in his early twenties. They approached American Aviation’s owner, Wayne January, wanting to rent a small plane for Friday afternoon. They would be flying to southeast Mexico, near Cuba, and asked detailed questions about the available Cessna—how far could it go without refueling, what was its speed, how did it perform in certain wind conditions? It sounded like a recipe more for hijacking than rental, and January refused their business. He watched the irritated couple join the man in the car, January’s suspicions (perhaps purposefully) aroused. He took a good hard look at the sullen young man who hadn’t come in. Later he recognized that man as Lee Harvey Oswald, or someone who closely resembled him.
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