Ask Not

by Max Allan Collins

  “I went to that press conference Friday night,” Ruby said hollowly. “I wanted him to see me. To understand he should keep quiet. But he kept saying over and over he was innocent, he was a ‘patsy.’ I tried to give him a pass.”

  “But it was the old, old problem.”

  “What?”

  “He knew too much.”

  Ruby nodded. Sighed. “I guess … I guess that kid and I have that in common.”

  I heard footsteps. Tonahill was walking toward us. He paused halfway, looking massive and apologetic, and said, “That’s all the time they’ll give us.”

  It had been enough.

  Ruby walked us to the gate. Our white-jumpsuited host stayed at Flo’s side, as if he were walking her to the door after the prom and was hoping against hope for a kiss.

  “I know you’ll do right by me, Miss Kilgore,” he said. “The sooner you get this out there, the better are my chances. They wouldn’t fool with a famous person like you. Not a journalist.”

  That was a naive thing for him to say—not just because Kennedy’s fame hadn’t stopped anybody, but Ruby was an old Chicago boy. He surely remembered the Tribune’s man Jake Lingle getting it in that subway tunnel back in Capone days.

  We bid Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer good-bye. We did not discuss anything on our way back to the hotel. I guess we were both trying to absorb it all. The tape was in her purse, and that was what I referred to first: “Get copies of that made when you get back to New York.”

  I was dropping her at the Statler. She nodded and went in, while I went and parked.

  Shortly thereafter, up in her room, perched side by side on her couch/bed, I said, “Ruby is right—don’t sit on this. Get it written and out there. Once the genie’s out of the bottle, we’ll all be safer.”

  She was having a gin and tonic and I sipped at a bottle of Coke.

  “I don’t know, Nate,” she said, frowning in thought, looking as cute as she was famous. “I owe Bennett a book. That’s much bigger than a story.”

  “Doesn’t it take a year or more for one to come out?”

  “Not with a hot topic like this. They’ll rush it—three months maybe, no more than five.”

  “That’s a long time in Dallas. What about the Johnson stuff?”

  “Think I should hold that back?”

  “Probably. It’s beyond the pale, Ruby’s just speculating, and anyway that might get the whole project spiked. Remember what happened with the Marilyn story.”

  “I’ll use my head.” She took my hand and squeezed. “This isn’t over, Nate.”

  “Sure it is. Go home. Write your story or your book, whichever suits you. And go back to covering Liz and Dick, and what does and doesn’t flop on Broadway this season.”

  She touched my chest with a gloved finger. “We’re going to New Orleans next.”

  “No we aren’t.”

  She nodded firmly, and her big blue eyes locked onto me. “Yes we are. Unless you want to send me there by myself.”

  Fuck.

  “Fuck,” I said. “All right. When?”

  “I want to get my thoughts down in chapter form. Or maybe it’ll be an article, but anyway written. I’ll send you a copy, plus a dupe of the tape, and arrange for an interview with that Ferrie character. And maybe a few others in the ol’ Big Easy. Make it … two weeks from next Monday. I’ll book us a suite at the Roosevelt near the French Quarter. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, we’ll talk on the phone, before then, but … when’s your plane?”

  “Three hours.”

  “Mine’s in two.” She gave me her sexiest smile, which was fairly sexy. “Did you know that there’s nothing more erotic to a girl reporter than a scoop?”

  “I’ll take two scoops,” I said, and put my hands on her breasts.

  CHAPTER

  15

  On Monday morning, back in Chicago, when I rolled into the A-1’s suite of offices around ten A.M., everyone was happy to see me, or at least pretended to be—I was, after all, the boss. Millie asked me how Dallas was and I told her great, and that I’d gotten her John Wayne’s autograph, but she merely informed me that John Wayne didn’t live in Texas. She was learning. Gladys dug down deep and found a smile for me and said she was pleased to have me back, and I chose to believe her, though mostly she just wanted to remind me about the eleven A.M. staff meeting, as if we hadn’t been doing that for decades.

  I took my office manager up on her standard offer of coffee, and I was drinking it at my desk when Lou Sapperstein knocked shave-and-a-haircut, then leaned in without waiting for a response. His eyebrows were climbing his endless forehead, the dark eyes glittering behind the wire-frame bifocals.

  I waved him in, and this big man in his seventies settled his still-brawny frame into the black leather client’s chair, his own cup of coffee in hand. He wore a pink button-down shirt, red necktie with matching suspenders, and navy-blue slacks, proof that Pop Art was injecting way too much color into the world.

  He asked, “How about filling me in on your summer vacation?”

  “It’s September, Lou.”

  “Your skills of observation remain keenly honed. What the hell happened down on the Panhandle?”

  “Dallas isn’t in the Panhandle.”

  “Too bad, because it’s one of the few Texas terms I know. What gives?”

  After our client, Mrs. Joseph Plett, had her double-indemnity claim belatedly honored, I’d been scheduled to come right back. All Lou knew was that I’d decided to extend my stay in Big D, having run into Flo Kilgore.

  “I was just helping Flo out with a little investigative work,” I said, probably too casually.

  “In Dallas,” he said, well aware Flo was an old flame of mine. “Covering a way-off-Broadway play, was she?”

  “Not important.”

  His jaw tightened. “It’s Kennedy, isn’t it? You took a left turn into that, out of the Billie Sol Estes thing. Or is that a right-wing turn?”

  His skills of observation remained keenly honed, too.

  “You talked to Bill Queen in the Manhattan office,” I said.

  “I did. Also, over recent months, Miss Kilgore has received a lot of attention for her columns on the assassination. Thanks to her celebrity, she’s the most credible of those conspiracy kooks.”

  “She’s not a kook,” I said, but didn’t add that it was a conspiracy.

  “Is getting into that area wise, you think, after what happened?”

  “After what happened?”

  He sat forward, on the verge of losing a usually kept cool. “After you and your son almost got run down! Tell me you weren’t looking into other loose ends down there that got conveniently clipped off.”

  The image of a once-pretty dishwater blonde floated across my mind—Rose Cheramie.

  “I don’t keep much from you, Lou, but this time it might be better all around if—”

  “Nate,” he said, shifting in his chair, “we just landed a huge insurance paycheck for a client by sniffing at a suspicious suicide tied to a bunch of suspicious suicides in Texas. We still have your friend Mac Wallace under surveillance in Anaheim, and—”

  “Keep him that way.”

  “How long?”

  “Indefinitely. It’s okay, Lou. I get a good rate. I have an in.”

  “Nate, it’s just … what are you getting yourself into? What are you getting the agency into?”

  I raised a hand in a gesture that was half stop and half peace. “Lou, I have been encouraging Flo to shut down her investigation. She has more than enough to write a hard-hitting piece of journalism that will get her the respect she craves, and maybe make some useful waves.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “Potentially it is, but it’s also potentially very high profile, and our role in it won’t hurt business one little bit.”

  He sighed, nodded, leaned back. “You said you were encouraging her to shut it down, though?”

  “Right.
I’m meeting her in New Orleans two weeks from today for a few follow-up interviews, and then I promise you I will either convince her to write ‘thirty’ to this thing, or walk away.”

  He was shaking his head. “Nate, I’m just an old Pickpocket Detail dick.”

  “Right. You’re an old dick. I get that.”

  “I feel like I should give you some fatherly advice right now, but you’re a little old for that, and I’ll be damned if I know what it is. What’s in New Orleans, anyway?”

  “Besides Carlos Marcello, you mean? Possibly some of the people who killed Kennedy, or who helped kill him.”

  “Jesus.” He shook his head again. “Jesus H. Christ. You’re going to get us all killed.”

  “No. Honestly, Lou. I’m on top of this. Really.”

  “Okay,” he said. He reached over and collected my empty coffee cup, just helping out his wife. “Okay.… Uh, listen. It may not mean anything, but Mac Wallace isn’t in California.”

  “What?”

  “He flew out Saturday morning to Dallas. Does that matter? Your family is in LA, you’re in Chicago, your friend Flo is in New York. Who does that leave in Dallas?”

  Fourteen or fifteen witnesses we’d interviewed.

  From the doorway, Lou said, “We don’t have anybody in Dallas to watch the guy. There are agencies in those parts we could contact. What do you say?”

  “No, I’ll make a call myself. Have one of our LA men determine when Wallace is due back in California and pick him up then.”

  “You’re the boss.” He pointed at me and then at himself. “Now, if you get killed, then I’m the boss, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay then,” Lou said.

  And he left me there with my apprehensions.

  Coming into the office this morning, settling behind my desk in my inner sanctum, had given me a nice feeling of normalcy. As if everything that happened in Texas had been an episode, like a show on TV, and the show was over, the set clicked off.

  But one of the witnesses, Rose Cheramie, was dead, just three days after we talked to her. Rose was a junkie and the kind of woman who could get herself killed lots of ways. But had we gotten her killed? Had I?

  Clint Peoples wasn’t in, but he called me back after lunch.

  “Nate,” the familiar mellow, folksy voice said, “I got some additional information for you, on the Cheramie woman’s death, if you’re interested.”

  “That’s one reason I called.”

  “Driver in question, a Mr. Jerry Don Moore, from Tyler, was heading home. Comin’ up level with a roadside parking area, he noticed three or four suitcases strewn on the highway, spillin’ over the yellow line. He swerved right, to miss them, and then there in front of him was a woman lyin’ prone on the shoulder, at ninety degrees to the road, head on the road, like the pavement’s her pillow. He braked, says he doesn’t know for sure if he hit her or not.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “Moore says there was a sound, but it mighta been a shoe brake hitting on his old beater—it’s got bald tires and a single headlight. The fella admits to speeding, and drinking, by the by. Some colored folks stopped and helped him, moving the suitcases, putting Rose in his backseat. Moore took her to a doctor he knew in Big Sandy, who got her to Gladewater Hospital, where she was DOA. Cause of death … let me give it to you exact … ‘traumatic head wound with subdural and subarachnoid and petechial hemorrhage to the brain caused by being struck by an auto.’”

  “Hardly a surprising diagnosis.”

  “Maybe so, but Nate—there was also a ‘deep punctuate stellate wound above her right forehead.’ Now, this type of injury—”

  “I know what type of injury that is, Clint.”

  The result of a contact gunshot wound, the star-shaped wound from the bursting, tearing effect on skin of gasses trapped against flesh.

  “Other odd thing is, Highway 155, where she was found? That’s a farm-to-market road, runnin’ parallel to US Highways 271 and 80. She’d have had a much better chance of hitchin’ a ride on either of those.”

  “She was killed elsewhere and dumped.”

  “Not much doubt about that—for one thing, she had tire tread tracks on her damn head … and that junker’s tires are bald, remember. Also, her estimated time of death was nine hours before she was admitted to Gladewater.”

  “What now?”

  “Well, despite these anomalies, I’m afraid my sister organization, the Texas Highway Patrol, has already closed the case.”

  “Shit, that’s a little fast, isn’t it?”

  “The officer in charge couldn’t establish a connection between the driver and victim, and Rose’s relatives do not wish to pursue the matter. If I may be blunt, Rose was a junkie prostitute, and those girls find imaginative ways to die each and every day. Wish I could say Mac Wallace doesn’t have an alibi, but he’s got one, all right—he flew from sunny Cal into Dallas on Saturday, and Rose died Friday.”

  “That was the other reason I called, Clint—to make sure you knew Wallace was back on your turf.”

  “As I mentioned the other day, we do keep track of the boy.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, because I don’t have an A-1 office in them there parts to keep an eye on the bastard. I think I may have mentioned we’ve been maintaining surveillance on him in Anaheim.”

  “Well,” he sighed, “can’t promise the Rangers are watching him as close as all that, but I have made a sort of hobby out of Mr. Wallace. You have any particular concerns?”

  “Miss Kilgore and I talked to a number of assassination witnesses, who seem to be a vanishing breed, to put it in Texas terms.”

  “You mean, more than a few folks are comin’ down with a bad case of suicide?”

  “Or a terminal dose of getting their skulls crushed by a car after getting shot in the head. Would you like a list of the people we talked to? Other than Rose Cheramie?”

  He wrote the names down, then said apologetically, “There is no way or manner I can offer all these individuals protection … but if I see any incidents involving them, I will get right on it.”

  “And inform me, please. By the way, I’ll be in New Orleans for a few days, starting two weeks from today. I’ll be at the Roosevelt if you need me, or come up with anything.”

  “Got it. Take care now, in Louisiana. That’s a foreign country, pardner.”

  “Pardner, huh? Havin’ a little fun with me, Clint?”

  “A mite.”

  When I’d hung up the phone, I sat there staring at it as if it might be able to give me the advice that Lou said he couldn’t. Starting on the plane trip back, I’d been brooding over whether to fill RFK in on what I’d learned about his brother’s murder. On some level, I’d been working for him in Dallas—on the investigating side, sure, but also keeping tabs on Flo and what she discovered.

  But if I reported everything we’d learned to Bobby before Flo had a chance to get her story or book out there, Jack Kennedy’s sibling might reach out with his considerable clout and squelch her efforts, even while plundering them for information. Still vivid in my memory was Flo’s bitter disappointment—and mine—when the work we’d done uncovering the truth of Marilyn’s murder had been spiked by her editor due to Kennedy family influence. It had created a rift between Bobby and me that had only recently sealed over.

  I was still looking at the phone when it rang, which for just a second gave me a start, as if I had willed that to happen.

  Millie was on the line: “Mr. Heller, I have a call here from New York, a gentleman who is not on our list. He sounds very upset, and is insistent on talking to you, but I can follow procedure and refer him to Mrs. Sapperstein if you prefer.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Frank Felton.”

  I sat up. “Put him through.”

  Flo’s husband. He’d been an actor once upon a time, and if Millie were ten years older, she might have recognized the name. Might.

  “Nate, this Fra
nk. Flo’s Frank.”

  Though we’d only met a few times, his warm baritone, a trifle slurry, was immediately recognizable: he’d played Johnny Dollar on the radio for a while.

  “Yes, Frank. Is everything all right? I watched the show last night, so I know Flo got back safely.”

  “She did, but I have … Nate, I have…” Damn, was he crying? “We lost her, Nate … she’s gone.”

  “Gone?” My stomach tightened, as a sick feeling flowed through me. “She’s … dead, Frank?”

  “The damn booze mixed with pills. Damn booze and pills. How many times did I tell her … Listen, I can’t really talk … I have a number of calls to make, but I know you were close. That you were just with her. She thought the world of you, Nate.”

  “Jesus. Frank, I’m sorry. So sorry. Hell. Was there any sign of foul play?”

  “Foul play? No! Why would you…?”

  “Sorry to bring it up. You do know what story she and I were working on in Dallas, right?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Well, then I don’t have to tell you she was exploring very dangerous territory. Very.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “When is the funeral?”

  “Not till later in the week. To give her friends from around the country … around the world … a chance to get here, if they … they choose.”

  “Frank—was there anything disturbed? Anything missing, any signs of struggle or possibly anything indicating a search of her things?”

  “No! Nate … she died in her sleep last night, just hours after What’s My Line? She guessed two of the occupations, how … how about that? My little Florrie Mae.” His pet name for her. He was crying again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “These are inappropriate questions right now. Forgive me.”

  “I … I understand. She’s an investigator, too. Her mind works like that.”

  She was still in the present tense for him. Me, too.

  “Frank, would you approve my coming out there tomorrow? Talking to me, and giving me a chance to kind of look things over?”