Ask Not

by Max Allan Collins

  “I don’t know, Nate.… There are so many arrangements to make … people to talk to … and…”

  “Just let me come out there and give me even half an hour.”

  “I … I suppose that would be all right.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon then?”

  “Yes. All right. Fine.”

  “Frank, do you know what happened to the tapes she made on our trip? The interviews?”

  “No, but I can check where she keeps such things.”

  “Do you have anywhere secure to keep whatever you find? A wall safe, locking file cabinet, something?”

  “Well, yes, probably. Why?”

  “Take whatever you can find from the Dallas trip, tapes, notes, and hide them away. Please. Do that one thing for me.”

  “All right, Nate. I’ll … I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  We said our good-byes. He had stopped crying.

  My turn to start.

  * * *

  West Side Ford New and Used on West Cermak Road in Riverside was indistinguishable from scores of other such dealerships in the Greater Chicago area. Its best shot at standing out from the rest of the pack would have been advertising a certain probable off-the-books custom job.

  Back in May of 1962, the cops checked out a parked ’62 Ford sedan where two individuals were spotted ducked down on the floor of the backseat. The two individuals turned out to be notorious mob hit man Charles “Chuckie” Nicoletti and his frequent backup, Felix Alderisio. The officers discovered switches under the dash, one enabling the driver to disconnect the taillights (aiding in avoiding pursuit), the other opening a compartment in the center front-seat armrest fitted to hold shotguns and rifles. Reporters dubbed the vehicle the “hitmobile.” Asked to explain why he and Alderisio were crouching in the backseat, Nicoletti said, “We were waiting for a friend.”

  Nicoletti grew up in poverty, his first killing (at twelve) that of his abusive father, then dropped out of school to join the slum delinquents known as the 42 Gang, whose members included “Mad Sam” DeStefano and Chuckie’s current boss, Sam Giancana. In Outfit circles, Nicoletti was perhaps best known for cold-bloodedly eating his spaghetti while Anthony “the Ant” Spilotro squeezed Billy McCarthy’s head in a vise till an eye popped out of its socket.

  As to why I’d assume West Side Ford New and Used had done the hitmobile customizing: Chuckie Nicoletti was a co-owner and assistant manager there. This was essentially a cover story for the cops and FBI, of course, but Nicoletti was a charming guy for a psychopathic Mafia murderer, and got a kick out of selling cars.

  And there he was on the lot, tall, affable, handsome for a hood, talking to a young couple in their early twenties about a shiny new red Mustang convertible. Several other salesmen in the brightly lighted lot—it was approaching closing time, eight o’clock—were similarly occupied. When I walked into the showroom, nobody was there but a busty brunette secretary on the phone at her desk, talking to her boyfriend. I walked past the various empty offices, found the central one labeled CHARLES NICOLETTI, ASSISTANT MANAGER, then went over to the brunette at her desk up front between showroom windows.

  Smiling, I raised a finger, indicating I just wanted a brief word. She told her boyfriend to hold a second, covered the mouthpiece, and looked up at me with very big brown eyes, her lipstick a startling pink. She had a bouffant hairdo you could have bounced bullets off of, which considering who her boss was might come in handy.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I whispered. “Just tell Mr. Nicoletti that a satisfied customer is waiting in his office to thank him.”

  She nodded, managed a smile, then went back to her important conversation, which seemed to be about selecting a discotheque.

  Inside the glorified cubbyhole of Nicoletti’s office, leaving the door slightly ajar, I checked the desk—there was no filing cabinet, just walls with a few sales awards and framed color photos of current model cars—and found a Browning .22 automatic among the paperclips in the center drawer. Despite the seemingly small caliber, a .22 was typical for a hard-core hit man, being a weapon that silenced effectively. I removed the clip, thumbed each shell into the wastebasket, replaced the now-empty clip, and returned the gun to its drawer.

  Sitting in one of two customer chairs across from the desk, I unbuttoned the jacket of my suit coat to give me access to my shoulder-holstered nine-millimeter Browning—which did not silence well at all. I scooted the chair into a sideways position to see Nicoletti as he entered.

  It was possible that he might be armed, but I doubted it. Similarly, he might be escorting that couple into his office to write up a deal, but I doubted that, too. Those kids were window-shopping or whatever the car lot equivalent was. This late in the evening, a deal would not likely go down.

  I sat for maybe fifteen minutes, about ten minutes into which the lights dimmed in the showroom, followed by the sound of the secretary and various sales personnel gathering their things, saying good nights and going. If the secretary told Nicoletti about my presence, I didn’t hear her do it.

  He would return to this office, though, because a hat and raincoat were waiting on a metal tree in the corner. No weapon in any raincoat pocket, by the way.

  When he came in, Nicoletti was already friendly and saying, “Susie said you were wanting to—”

  And then Chuckie’s smile froze and his words stopped.

  Even pushing fifty, Chuckie Nicoletti cut an intimidating figure—broad-shouldered, six two, big hands with frying-pan palms and fingers like swollen sausages. His handsome features had a vaguely swollen look, too, and the white infiltrating his ridge of dark, carefully cut-and-combed hair stood out starkly against his Miami tan. His suit was charcoal black and tailored, his tie white and black and silk, wider than current fashion and with a knot like a fist.

  “Hi Chuckie,” I said as he stood in the doorway, the dark showroom behind him, neon signage giving him a halo of color. “Why don’t you shut that?”

  I wasn’t holding a gun on him. Nothing so melodramatic. But my suit coat was open enough to make the butt of the nine millimeter apparent in its rig. So just melodramatic enough.

  “Heller,” he said with a smile that hid its uneasiness. “I thought you drove Jags. Decide to try a good old-fashioned American ride like Ford for a change?”

  “Sit down, Chuck. I just need a couple of minutes. Not to talk cars, though.”

  He moved slowly behind the desk and eased down as if fearing I’d rigged the seat of his swivel chair to explode. “What subject?”

  I moved my chair around to face him directly.

  “I’m going to kind of build up to that.” My words were calm but I couldn’t keep the edge out of my voice. Since hearing about Flo earlier today, I had not been myself. Or maybe I was too much myself. “You were part of Mongoose, right?”

  His dark eyes flared. He placed his hands on the edge of the metal desk, thick fingers on artificial-wood top, giving himself easy access to that .22.

  “It’s okay to say so,” I said with a smile. “You can check with Rosselli about that. Didn’t John ever mention my role? He can confirm I set up the first meet between him, Mooney, and Santo.”

  “Okay,” he said, with the expression of a man adjusting his shower temperature. “I was part of that. Not that we never got nowhere with it. That prick Castro is still smoking Havanas.”

  “Yeah, and the poisoned ones never worked out, right? There was one plan I heard about, though, that might’ve come in handy—something about hitting Castro on his way to the airport from a high building. Using highly trained snipers. That’s plural, because triangulation was involved.”

  Traffic on West Cermak was providing a discordant muffled soundtrack, an occasional horn honk stabbing the night.

  His dark eyes were hooded now. “We’re all CIA assets, Heller. You and me and John and … plenty of other people. If you’re just trying to figure out who’s on what side, that would put us on the same side. Same team.”

  “Oka
y.” He didn’t seem to be lying. On the other hand, he was a car salesman. “Chuckie, did John mention to you that earlier this month a Cuban tried to run me down? And that my son was almost a hit-and-run victim, too?”

  “He did not mention that, no.”

  “I spoke to John, and he assured me that if somebody was out there tying off loose ends, he was not involved.”

  “I’m sure he isn’t. He likes you, Nate.”

  Now I was Nate. Well, that was only fair. I was calling him Chuckie.

  I said, “But the question is, are you involved?”

  “In … tyin’ off loose ends? Hell, no.”

  “You’ve tied off your share, Chuckie.”

  “I suppose I have.”

  “The estimate around town is twenty hits.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “That’s about half the Japs I killed in the Pacific, but not bad for local work.”

  Big white smiling teeth, caps or choppers, collided with his dark tan. “You done all right yourself, back in the States, ain’t you, Nate?”

  “I don’t like to brag. Have we established that neither of us scares easy?”

  He went for the gun and then I was just sitting there with him aiming its long snout at my chest. A head shot would have been messy here at the office. I waited to see if he’d fire or was just one-upping me.

  “Why don’t you tell me what this is about, Nate?”

  “Does that feel a little light, Chuckie? It might.”

  He frowned.

  “Because I removed all the bullets.”

  Then I got out the nine-millimeter and he clicked on an empty chamber, twice, then sighed. Set the gun down with a little clunk.

  “Okay,” he said. “So you’re right. Neither of us assholes scares easy.”

  I kept the gun in my hand, but draped casually in my lap. As casually as a nine millimeter can be draped, anyway.

  “I just got back from Dallas,” I said conversationally. “A little bodyguard work for a reporter who was looking into the aftermath of the assassination.”

  “JFK.”

  “Not Lincoln. I could have said McKinley, but at a Ford dealership, Lincoln seems more politic.”

  “You are a fucking laugh riot, Heller.”

  “Coming from a guy as uneasily amused as you, Chuckie, I take that as a compliment. So when Billy McCarthy’s eyeball popped out, did you even miss a beat scarfing down that spaghetti?”

  “That story you heard is inaccurate.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was ziti.”

  We smiled at each other. We were both laugh riots who were not easily scared. And yet we were both good and goddamned scared, and I was fine with that.

  I said, “The reporter was Flo Kilgore.”

  He frowned a little; it made white lines in his tan. “That skinny dame from TV? I heard on the radio she died. Accidental overdose, they said.”

  I ignored that. “We were interviewing witnesses to the assassination, plus some peripheral figures.”

  “What does that mean? Per what?”

  “Fringe. Sidelines, but still in the game. They’re dropping like flies, Chuckie. Accidental deaths like Flo. Sudden suicides. Car accidents. Some people are just getting threatened or maimed, but one way or the other, they’re getting shut up.”

  “And this is a bad thing?”

  I gave him half a smile. “I’m aware you were there, Chuckie. I know you were part of it. Maybe even a shooter.”

  His eyes narrowed. He was wondering if he could throw that .22 at me hard enough to buy him time to come around the desk and kill me with my own gun. Anyway, that’s what I’d have been thinking.

  I raised a “stop” hand and said, “That’s between you and your maker. I’m not trying to solve the Kennedy assassination.”

  “No?”

  “No. I already knew it was a conspiracy before it went down—I was in the middle of the Chicago plot early November last year, remember? And I know who the big boys are. Oh, not necessarily all of them by name, but it’s oilmen and other right-wing wackos, and spook pals of ours from Mongoose and the Bay of Pigs, and their Cuban buddies, and of course, obviously, what we’ll quaintly call the Mafia.”

  His eyes had disappeared into puffy slits. “If you know everything, Heller, what the fuck can I tell you?”

  “Tell me this. Can I … can you … trust John Rosselli?”

  “Huh?”

  “When he says there is no Outfit cleanup crew dispatched to tie off loose ends, is he telling the truth?”

  “On the grave of my kids,” he said, holding up both big palms, “I don’t know of any.”

  “I think you mean on the life of your kids, but their graves might be more apt at that, Chuckie. As I said, my boy Sam was almost run down, and that pisses me off.”

  He shrugged. “Sure. That’s over the line.”

  “Good. It’s nice to talk to a fucking professional for a change. I don’t think it’s the Company. I have a contact there who I trust, as far it goes. And I don’t think those Cubans could organize a fart in the bathtub.”

  “You’re tellin’ me?”

  “Then who is tying off the loose ends, Chuckie? And be careful how you answer, because I ask you as one loose end to another.”

  That got his attention.

  “Only one possibility,” he said, shaking his head as if saying no, which he wasn’t. “That fucking Uncle Carlos. He’s a law unto himself. We do business with him, we have a kind of … understanding with him. But he stands apart. He doesn’t view this Thing of Ours as a club he’s in.”

  “Most of the deaths are in Texas. Some that I haven’t looked into yet are in Louisiana.”

  Chuckie nodded. “Marcello controls all of Texas and Louisiana, and he and Santo got Florida, too. So if I was to suggest something to you, Heller … as one pro to another … as one … loose end to another … if you want to shut this thing down, you already know where you have to go.”

  “New Orleans,” I said.

  “New Orleans,” he said, nodding.

  Where in two weeks Flo and I would have continued our investigation, before this latest convenient tragedy had come along. I’d be taking that Big Easy trip all right, but my next stop would be Manhattan.

  I got to my feet and slipped the nine millimeter into its leather womb. “You’ll find your slugs in that wastebasket, Chuck. If you reload your clip and come running after me, I’ll know I misjudged you.”

  “You didn’t, Nate.”

  He held out his big hand and I shook it.

  Shook the hand of one of the likely assassins of John F. Kennedy.

  CHAPTER

  16

  The brown-brick facade of the five-story town house on East Sixty-eighth Street, squeezed between similar nondescript buildings, concealed a glittering twenty-two-room world as imagined and executed by Flo Kilgore.

  I had never set foot in the place before. Despite her fame and fashion, Flo had always struck me as a scrappy small-town kid who made it big. But this decadently elegant display—French doors, chandeliers, gilt-framed landscapes, rosewood furnishings—made sense only if Flo had seen Gone With the Wind at an impressionable age and grew up determined to replicate Tara in Manhattan. Hell, she even had black servants, although I didn’t see any that looked like Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben.

  Of course, the blackest thing in this otherwise opulent town house was the unique room on the third floor, its four walls and ceiling black, as if painted overnight to mourn the town house’s late hostess. It was filled with bizarre bric-a-brac—shelves of sculpted and wooden hands, toy banks, music boxes, and numerous variations on the American eagle. A big antique Revolutionary War–style snare drum had been converted to a coffee table with two red child-sized chairs. A gigantic oil painting of General Custer and his men chasing Indians (wishful thinking?) dominated the room, hanging over a low-slung sofa with black cushions and an intricately carved wooden frame painted an iridescent blue. Cigar
-store Indians, positioned here and there, seemed to be viewing Custer with understandable skepticism.

  Still, it was a lived-in space. Black throw pillows were on the dark-green carpet near a 21-inch TV (its cabinet painted black, of course) in one corner. Those kid-sized chairs by the drum table indicated this wasn’t a living room so much as a family room, a rec room.

  I’d worn a black Botany 500 suit with a black tie, out of respect, but I felt like I was disappearing into the stygian surroundings as I sat beside Frank Felton on the sofa. He was in a black suit, as well, with a black necktie, and we might have been two undertakers waiting to talk to the family, when of course he was the family.

  “I’m afraid this room represents something of a practical joke,” he said with forced cheer.

  “Joke?” I said. I felt like I’d walked into a Charles Addams cartoon, in search of the punch line.

  Felton was in his mid-fifties but looked ten years older. You could just barely see, in that reddish, puffy, vein-shot face, the handsome young comic actor he’d once been. His dark eyes had the seldom-blinking, slightly widened look of a man on a bridge admiring a sunrise as he contemplated jumping off. Only his voice retained its radio youth—Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.…

  “Well, Florrie Mae was so determined to make a gleaming showplace out of these digs,” he said, “I suggested we have one fun room.”

  “Ah,” I said, noticing on a nearby shelf a rustic wooden hand with candle-speared spikes rising out of the fingertips.

  “Just a space where we could let our notions of the bizarre run wild.” He grinned, displaying yellowed, questionable teeth. “A lot of times, we’d play ‘Count the Eagles.’”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded. His eyes were staring past me into a memory. “We’d ask guests to close their eyes and test their powers of observation—how many eagles had they noticed in the Black Room? That’s what we call it, the Black Room.”

  “Catchy,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t believe the parties this space has seen,” Felton said. “I loved to plan the things, stage them like a film or Broadway production.”