Ask Not

by Max Allan Collins

  With the Galaxie’s engine still running (they’d hot-wired it), I was able to take off right after him, blinking away the half-blindness those headlights had caused. He didn’t have much of a head start.

  I tossed the nine millimeter temporarily on the rider’s seat, steered with my left hand as I reached across to roll down the window with my right, then passed the nine millimeter to myself, from my right hand to my left, and half-leaned out of the vehicle Wild West–style as I ripped a shot off into the night. The sound was thunderous, echoing off the nearby river, filling the dark cathedral of the outdoors with reverberations.

  After my shot, which missed both him and the vehicle, he began to weave, making a target that though big was erratic, and even with my thirteen-shot magazine, I didn’t want to waste any more bullets. I would ram the son of a bitch. There, under a full moon that made spectral figures out of bordering cypress trees in their cloaks of Spanish moss, two vehicles sped down a narrow country road with the Mississippi an unseen but felt presence at our right, and the looming Huey P. Long Bridge up ahead.

  I didn’t want him to make it to that bridge. I didn’t want him to make it back to New Orleans. I wanted him here, I wanted him now, in the swampy primeval darkness.

  I was going a grinding one-hundred when I bumped his rear bumper and he tried to pick up speed but there wasn’t anything left in the Corvair, and he looked back at me, his handsome bespectacled face turned hideous with hysteria, as if to beg for mercy, and this time when I rammed him, he lost control and I immediately took my foot off the pedal and watched him take off over the left shoulder and crash into the cement pillar of the bridge approach, the right front of the vehicle crumpling like a paper cup in a fist, with a tinkling of headlight glass adding delicate high notes to the discordant low-pitched music of crunching metal.

  I pulled over, left it running, got out with the gun in my right hand, and walked slowly over to the Corvair, which had its right wheels off the ground, spinning, the exhaust puffing mightily into the night on the car’s ride to nowhere. Night sounds were kicking back in, frogs, owls, nighthawks, crickets, a melancholy yet disinterested Greek chorus. I approached cautiously, though I could see him slumped behind the wheel, his head back, physics again, the windshield spiderwebbed where his skull had hit it, one lens of his black-framed glasses similarly veined.

  He was breathing. Not quite unconscious. His face was smeared with blood and his forehead had a rip in it, showing bone. He looked at me with pain in his eyes. Somebody should do something to help him out.

  I went back to the Galaxie and got the length of hose and the bath towel.

  When I was rolling his window nearly (but not all) the way up, I noticed he had a package of Chesterfields in the breast pocket of his sport shirt. I relieved him of those. Then I rigged up the fake suicide. He seemed to be awake during the procedure, though he said nothing. I tried not to smile at him, but I just couldn’t help myself.

  I went back to the Galaxie and used the dashboard lighter to fire up a Chesterfield. I burned through three waiting for him to die. In the dankness near the river, though the night itself was cool and dry, with the ghostly trees and bushes gathered round, I might have been back on Guadalcanal, waiting for the Japs to make another banzai attack. Certainly I was in some kind of fucking jungle.

  I pitched the last of the Chesties down the gravel-and-shell road. It would have been reckless to toss it into the brush. Funny thing, my first thought as I pulled out was to wonder if I had time to get back to the Roosevelt, clean up, and still meet Janet for beignets and café au lait. My wristwatch, easily visible in the moonlight, said it wasn’t even midnight.

  What was I going to do with all that time?

  Then something came to me.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Heading along US Highway 90 East, I almost missed the turnoff to Churchill Farms. I hadn’t been the driver the one time I’d been there before. But my previous visit to the 6,400-acre swampland domain of Carlos Marcello had been nothing short of memorable, and my only real problem was spotting the turn at night. The moonlight helped.

  For all of Marcello’s visionary talk two years ago, about developing this property, nothing had changed. It still surprised me there was no gate, that this was not a private road. The lane remained a narrow strip of dust-generating rutted dirt, with barely enough shoulder on either side to allow cars going in opposite directions to make room for each other—not that I met any.

  As I glided by in the Galaxie, the lights were on in the small, rustic-looking shrimp-packing plant with its Negro workers, one of Marcello’s legitimate businesses. Otherwise, the full moon was providing all the illumination, lending an otherworldly beauty to the marshy landscape on my either side, untamed foliage shimmering in a gentle breeze, washed ivory. Dead cypress and living willows seemed to keep a watchful eye, like overseers in slave days.

  The clearing came sooner than I remembered, the marshland making way as if Moses had parted it to take room for the barn-turned-farmhouse, its white paint job given a ghostly glow by the moon, several narrow downstairs windows burning yellow, the rest black (including those upstairs). It was almost one in the morning, after all. The red-painted shed off to the right had an abandoned look, no milling chickens and goats this time of night. Two cars were parked on the gravel apron beside the farmhouse—the familiar bronze Caddy and a sporty Dodge, a new model called Lancer, coincidentally also the Secret Service designation for President Kennedy. Had Carlos Marcello learned the meaning of irony after all?

  Almost as if he were still perched there from my previous visit, Jack—Marcello’s barber, chauffeur, and bodyguard, all in one tall, burly package—was sitting on the top step of the little cement porch, wearing a light-blue leisure suit, long legs angled in two directions as he smoked a cigarette, adding a little fog to an otherwise cloudless night. Well, anyway, he’d been sitting when I first entered the clearing. By the time I pulled up a few feet from the house, he was on his feet and approaching with a .38 revolver in his hand, calling, “Guys! Guys!”

  They were out of the house before I was out of the car, two thugs in the kind of hats and sport shirts and slacks you wear on a golf course, if you’re a fan of pastels, that is.

  Hands high in the air, I said, loud, in a rush of words, “Jack, it’s Nate Heller! Remember me? I have an emergency I need to talk to Uncle Carlos about.”

  The other two had slipped past Jack on their way toward me, also with guns in hand; but he told them, “Hold up!”

  Then he moved through them like a cop through a crowd and planted himself, facing me, perhaps four feet away. His revolver in hand, but pointing down, he looked at me skeptically.

  He wasn’t exactly threatening as he said, “I remember you, Mr. Heller. But it’s late and Mr. Marcello doesn’t appreciate drop-in guests.”

  “It’s an emergency, Jack. And I understand Uncle Carlos doesn’t have a phone out here.”

  “That’s right. This is where he gets away from it all. I will tell him you stopped by, and you can probably meet with him tomorrow at the Town and Country.”

  “It can’t wait. You check with him.”

  “You call at the motel in the morning. I’ll make sure you get an appointment.”

  “He’s not going to like it, Jack, if you don’t check with him. I said it was important.”

  He thought about that, but seemed about to say no, despite my insistence.

  So I insisted some more: “There are some freshly dead business associates of his that he’s going to want to know about. Right now.”

  Jack frowned. Then, very slowly, he nodded. “Okay. I’ll wake the boss. You stay put.”

  He turned to go back inside, but paused on the way to whisper orders to the pair of fellow bodyguards. Then he glanced over his shoulder at me and gave me an almost smile. “Mr. Heller, this is unusual enough that I’ve instructed my friends to keep you covered. No offense is meant.”

  “None taken,”
I said.

  One flunky, young and skinny in shades of green, including his wide-banded straw porkpie, stood facing me at my left, maybe six feet away; similarly positioned to my right was an older, beefier guy with pockmarks and a mustache and shades of yellow attire, including an Ivy League cap. Today’s male fashions were definitely not doing thugs any favors. On the other hand, the green porkpie’s Colt Python, a .357 Magnum, and his partner’s Smith and Wesson .44, went a long way toward making up for it.

  My nine-millimeter Browning was in its shoulder holster, by the way, a tight fit in a suit not cut for it. I also had a Colt Woodsman .22 stuck in my waistband, though concealed by my suit coat (one button buttoned), and a little Mauser .22 auto in my left-hand suit-coat pocket. These handguns had been retrieved from the late Rodriguez and the Oswald look-alike, when I’d returned to the scene to do a little of my own cleanup.

  Not much had been necessary. I just wanted some extra firepower, if I was going midnight-calling on Uncle Carlos. And I did need to spend some time at the scene of Mac Wallace’s tragic suicide, wiping off my fingerprints from a few surfaces—again, not many: the towel and garden hose, for example, were not conducive to prints. The window and its handle, however, were.

  “Leo,” the shades-of-green younger one said in a cornpone drawl, “I believe the old gent’s heavy. Don’t the old gent look heavy to you?”

  He had noticed the bulge under my left arm.

  “Good eye, Freddie boy,” Leo said. “Give the man a frisk. You’re gonna have to stand for a frisk, bud.”

  “No,” I said.

  They both looked at me like kids who just learned the truth about Santa Claus.

  “Those weren’t Jack’s orders,” I said, nothing confrontational in my tone. “Keep your distance and we’ll stay friendly.”

  This seemed to offend Leo, though his irritation would have carried more weight if he hadn’t been wearing that dumb cap. He growled, “What makes you think Jack’s the one gives the orders around here?”

  “Because I saw him give you orders. Don’t overstep.”

  Leo frowned. “Frisk him, Freddie.”

  I laughed.

  Freddie glared at me. “What’s so funny?”

  “It just sounded funny,” I said with a shrug. “‘Frisk him, Freddie.’ Sounds like a British Invasion tune.”

  Hurt, Freddie put his Colt away in his own shoulder holster and said, “You gonna stand for a frisk, smart-ass, like Leo says.”

  When he stepped toward me, I shoved Freddie into Leo, and they both went down. I kicked Leo in the wrist and his .44 popped out and landed in the gravel a foot or so away.

  By the time the door opened and Jack came back out, with Uncle Carlos right behind him—the five-foot criminal kingfish wearing a purple silk robe belted over white pajamas in his bare feet—they found me pointing the nine millimeter down at the two flunkies.

  “What de fuck is dis, Heller?” Marcello demanded. “What is dis shit?”

  The bullnecked, broad-shouldered little mob boss brushed past Jack and barreled down the steps in my direction. Walking on gravel in his bare feet caused him no more trouble than a Hindu fakir treading over hot coals.

  “They got frisky,” I said. “In the take-my-gun-off-me sense. Good evening, Uncle Carlos. Or is that good morning?”

  “Let’s hear it, Heller,” Marcello demanded. He was frowning, making his dark wide-set eyes disappear into slits. His receding hairline gave several veins plenty of room to stand out his forehead.

  “We shouldn’t discuss it,” I said, “in front of the children.”

  His nostrils flared. “Dis is funny, is it? You bargin’ in on me, middle of the night? Roustin’ my boys?”

  “Apologies. Stressful evening.” I gestured with my free hand, still training the nine millimeter on the two men down on the ground. “Jack, come over here, please.”

  Jack glanced at Marcello—he was at his boss’s side now—and the Little Man, though sneering, nodded his permission.

  With my free hand, I held my suit coat open, exposing the automatic in my waistband. “Take it,” I told the hulking barber. “And get the little one out of my left suit-coat pocket, too.”

  He did so, then backed away, and displayed the weapons to Marcello, who seemed more confused than angry now.

  I said, “I lifted that hardware off two dead men who tried to kill me tonight.”

  Again Jack glanced at his boss, looking for an explanation that Marcello didn’t (or maybe couldn’t) provide.

  I put my nine millimeter away and the two flunkies on the ground looked at each other and then at their boss and the barber, too, not knowing what to make of my action or what to do about it.

  “Go on, get up,” I said, not harshly. “Leo, you can collect your .44. Just both of you, back off.”

  They did.

  “This is a friendly call,” I said to one and all, “but I’m not going to give up my gun. Too much shit has gone down tonight for me to take that kind of chance.”

  “And comin’ out here like dis,” Marcello said, his curiosity getting the better of his rage, “ain’t takin’ a chance?”

  “Uncle Carlos, I am assuming,” I said, not exactly telling the truth, “that you had nothing to do with the attempt on my life tonight. But I thought you should have the opportunity to deal with the mess I made, since this is your turf, and the dead men had ties to you.”

  “What kinda fuckin’ ties, Heller?”

  “They were involved in … helping you remove a stone from your shoe.”

  Livarsi ‘na pietra di la scarpa!

  His dark inverted-V eyebrows rose so high, they formed straight lines momentarily; the dimpled chin jutted out over his second, fleshy one. His dark eyes were moving with thought.

  Then he summoned a somewhat convincing smile for me and gestured with his pudgy hands, saying, “Come have a chat wid me, Nate. You boys cool your heels, ya hear? Dis be a friendly chat.”

  Following his lead, I walked with Marcello over to where the clearing gave way to marsh. Where just two years before, he had painted pictures in the air of condominiums and shopping malls and theaters and stadiums. Right now the swamp stretched out in endless contradiction of that dream, the moonlight making silver highlights on the rippling water. Birds and bugs and frogs were singing their individual songs that somehow made a unified musical statement, as if to say they had been here before man and would be here after man.

  “So, Nate, my frien’ … what da fuck dis about, anyway?”

  “Uncle Carlos, ever hear of a guy named Mac Wallace?”

  He drew in some cool night air, then nodded as he let it out.

  I asked, “You’re aware that he was LBJ’s man?”

  The dark eyes squinted at me. “Was?”

  “I killed him tonight.”

  “Did you now.”

  I might have just told him the score of a game he had nothing bet on.

  But I elaborated: “Rigged up a suicide-and-car-crash combo that will have everybody guessing. On that crushed-shell lane under the Huey Long Bridge approach … Jefferson Parish side. It’s right by the bridge, so it’s gonna get noticed. But you may still have time to deal with the other two.”

  “What other two would dat be?”

  “A Cuban named Rodriguez. The other I don’t know by name … but he’s the look-alike who went around Dallas, last November, advertising Lee Harvey’s bad intentions.”

  He frowned and nodded and took me gently by the arm. We strolled back over to Leo and Freddie, to whom he had me give a more specific rundown on the corpses and their whereabouts. Then Marcello gave the pair quick but detailed instructions, getting a lot of nods in return, and soon they climbed in the Dodge Lancer and stirred gravel peeling out.

  “Let’s go in de house, Heller,” Marcello said, through a forced smile, then led the way up the porch steps, pausing to say to his all-purpose bodyguard, “You keep watch out here, Jackie boy, hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ja
ck said.

  We did not sit in the kitchen this time listening to Connie Francis records. We did share drinks again, although this time I asked for rum and got it, with Uncle Carlos giving himself a healthy slug of Scotch, as before. This was the second floor of the renovated barn, the handsomely appointed conference room, its wood-paneled walls arrayed with framed aerial photographs of Marcello properties.

  We sat at the long, polished-wood conference table, in two of ten executive-style black-leather chairs around it. My put-upon host was at the head of the table, which was only fitting. And for this one night, at least, I sat at his right hand.

  “What da fuck happen t’night, Nate?” he asked. “Don’t spare de damn details.”

  “It started at the Sho-Bar,” I said. “I met with your man David Ferrie there.”

  I gave him the same routine I had Ferrie—that I’d been helping Flo Kilgore, just to keep an eye on what she was up to, but discovered witnesses were dying and had no desire to be the next target of a post-assassination cleanup crew.

  “Dat homo ain’t my ‘man,’” Marcello said, meaning Ferrie, “but he sho nuff has his uses. Smart fella for a fourteen-karat queer—he’s workin’ on a cancer cure, can ya dig dat? Apartment’s fulla lab rats, can ya picture dat?”

  This struck me as an evasive response. He was talking about one thing while thinking about something else. I didn’t want to give him time to scheme.

  Pressing, I said, “Those three tonight, Uncle Carlos, who took me for a spin. We both know they were at Dealey Plaza.”

  “Lot of folks at de Plaza dat day.”

  “You weren’t. You were in New Orleans, in court, beating the case Bobby Kennedy had against you.”

  “True dat. And David Ferrie, he sittin’ next to me.”

  “Well, Wallace and the Cuban and ‘Oswald,’ they were in Dealey Plaza all right, each on a hit team, maybe the same one. Must have been at least three such teams, each with shooter, backup, wheelman.”

  Marcello just shrugged.

  I said, “I’m assuming this team took it upon themselves to start disposing of witnesses. To protect their own asses.”