Ask Not

by Max Allan Collins

  “Dat make sense, sho nuff.”

  “This Warren Commission is a whitewash job, but it still doesn’t hurt, discouraging citizens from sharing what they know. And you don’t get more discouraged than dead.”

  “Dat’s true.”

  “But with journalists like Flo Kilgore and Mark Lane and dozens of others digging into the case, Uncle Carlos, this thing is not going away. Killing the President of the United States is not just another contract kill.”

  “Nobody said dat it was.”

  “And this one had way too many players. Something this ambitious, it’s hard to contain.”

  “You ain’t wrong.”

  “I choose to believe that you didn’t send those men to kill me tonight, Uncle Carlos. Or, for that matter, to kill Rose Cheramie or Hank Killam or Guy Banister or any of the others.”

  “Banister, he die of a heart attack. Dem others I never hear of.”

  “Fine. Maybe you didn’t hear about that Rodriguez character, either, trying to run me down a few weeks ago. And almost killing my kid in the bargain? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  His upper lip curled back over feral teeth. “Ya know, Nate, I like you. I like you just fine. You got brains and nerve and I like dat. But you know what I don’t like? Is fuckin’ threats.”

  “We’re just having a friendly drink in the wee hours,” I said. “I figure it took about nine people, positioned around Dealey Plaza in high buildings and at that fence on that grassy slope, to help you and your powerful pals take that stone out of your shoe. Three of them died tonight, and some of the rest may already be dead. Frankly, I think maybe it would be helpful to you, to have all nine dead.”

  “Dere’s a case could be made.”

  “At least one, I figure, is European. Hot-shot sniper from Corsica, and with your overseas connections, he was probably one of your contributions. Trafficante kicked in the Cubans, Giancana pitched in on Nicoletti, and maybe John Rosselli, who I figure for an organizational role. The spooks surely provided some top talent, not to mention fake Secret Service IDs and other goodies.”

  “Seem like you figure a lot, Heller.”

  “I really don’t know all the details. All the players. I don’t want to know. I just want to go back to Chicago and forget about it. And particularly forget I ever heard the words Operation Mongoose.”

  The eyebrows hiked over the glasses, their inverted V’s flattening out again. “Den … dis thing is over for you, Nate, t’night? Dat right?”

  “It’s over if you let it be over. I don’t know if you sent out that cleanup crew, Uncle Carlos. I really don’t. But I respectfully ask that you approach all your high-powered friends, who backed those high-powered rifles, and let them know that I am on the sidelines now. That, yes, I took offense when that Cuban tried to run me and my son down, and so I took the bastard out. And Mac Wallace, well him I encountered on another matter—he killed a client’s husband—so I took him out, too.”

  “Pretty active ol’ boy, dis Nate Heller.”

  “Maybe so. But it ends there. Ends here. Okay?”

  That big puffy oval face had a friendly expression that I didn’t like at all. “Not sure I know what kinda of powerful folks you mean, Nate … but, far as it goes, why sure. I spread de word. Glad to do it.”

  “I’m not fucking around, Uncle Carlos. You send the message to everybody from H. L. Hunt to your assorted spook buddies to Trafficante and Mooney and these various demented Cubans all the way up to the Oval Office. Anybody comes near me or my son, and this whole goddamn thing will unravel like a cheap sweater.”

  “My, my, Nate. Such colorful talk. Like one of dem private eyes on TV or in de paperbacks. Kind dat never gets killed.”

  “No, I can be killed. Anybody can be killed, Carlos. If history has taught us anything at all, that’s it.”

  I reached under my arm and withdrew the nine millimeter and set it on the shiny wood next to my glass of rum.

  “Why, for example, right now I am sitting in a room with Carlos Marcello. I talked my way in, and I could shoot my way out—you only have that barber of yours downstairs at the moment. And you would be dead. Anybody can be dead, Carlos. Ask Jack Kennedy.”

  His expression was blank, but it was taking him a lot of effort to keep it that way. For instance, he did not allow his eyes to drift anywhere near the gun by my hand.

  “I know better than to get tough with a man like you, Uncle Carlos. I know not to threaten. Threats are such empty things. So here’s a promise.”

  He frowned.

  Time for the big lie.

  I said, “The tape that Flo Kilgore made of Jack Ruby spilling every detail about Dallas has been duplicated a dozen times. Right now, it’s in a dozen safety-deposit boxes all around the country. If anything happens to me, copies of that tape will go to Bobby Kennedy and the current attorney general and The New York Times and … well, you get the idea.”

  His eyes were wide and bulging, though his whole face frowned around them and veins were throbbing in his forehead again. “Dat’s bullshit, man. Dere ain’t no such tape.”

  Almost gently, I said, “There is. I might also mention that I have better than a hundred employees, coast to coast, most of whom are ex-cops, hard-asses who like their boss very much. Who would not respond well if he and/or his family were targeted again, and they will know, all of them, who to turn to for redress of their grievance.”

  He slammed a fist on the table and the glasses of Scotch and rum jumped, and so did the nine millimeter.

  And so did I.

  “Who da fuck you think you talkin’ to, you Yankee sum of a bitch?”

  “Not the cops or the FBI,” I said easily, meeting his gaze. “And I could have gone to them tonight, and told them I’d been kidnapped, and that I fought back in self-defense against my captors.”

  “Dat don’t fly! You kill Wallace t’night.”

  “No, he committed suicide after I chased him and he crashed into that abutment. He knew all his evil deeds had finally caught up with him, and took the coward’s way out.”

  “Dat’s what you say.”

  “That’s what I would say to the cops and FBI, yeah. Also, that I’d been assisting Flo Kilgore in researching the assassination and this attempt on my life was the result. I would share all of my suspicions and observations, including the threat to the President’s life you made to me in this house, two years ago.”

  Silence.

  All around us were the framed aerial photographs of his properties, his empire, images of what he had to lose.

  His face was stone but I could see his hands trembling. Had I frightened Carlos Marcello? Or was he about to explode in rage?

  Finally he said, “What you want, Heller?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Nothing but what I told you. Spread the word up and down the line—Nate Heller is out of this. If I die a natural death, those tapes are to be destroyed. Anything suspicious happens to me, the whole house of cards comes down … capeesh?”

  I picked up the nine millimeter, and he flinched, just barely; then I tucked it back under my arm.

  “Jack Ruby,” he said, “he a damn looney tune. Nobody gonna believe what dat fool say.”

  “Maybe not. You can factor that in. But they bought it when he said he killed Oswald to spare Jackie and Caroline, remember.”

  He was shaking his head, trying to convince himself. “Dat TV woman, she didn’t make no goddamn tape.”

  “No, she did.” But he seemed fuzzy where Flo Kilgore was concerned, and I didn’t think he was faking. I asked, “You didn’t have anything to do with her death?”

  “No. Hell no. I didn’t send no goddamn cleanup crew, neither. Who need dat kind of attention?”

  I was actually starting to believe him. “Okay, Uncle Carlos. I do apologize for the intrusion. Thanks for the drink.”

  He rose, puffing himself up some, making sure he still had his dignity, even if he was a squat little middle-aged wop in a silk pur
ple robe, white pajamas, and bare feet. “You my guest, Heller. I walk you out.”

  I allowed him to do so. I followed him down the stairs and through the blandly furnished house and back into the moon-swept night. Frogs, insects, and night birds were still singing. Dark shapes were loping across the sky, darker shapes moving in the murky waters.

  “You know, Nate,” he said, quiet, his gruff voice just one small sound in a night of sounds, “if dat tape you talk about really do exist … you could sell it to me for a whole lotta loot.”

  “Uncle Carlos, I have loot. What I can use is a life-insurance policy. And, you know, at my age? That’s not easy to get.”

  “You got dat right,” he admitted.

  “Anyway,” I said with a shrug, “you could never be sure I gave you all the copies.”

  “Dere are ways.”

  “Like taking me over to Willswood Tavern and working me over with a blowtorch? Wouldn’t do any good. I had other people salt those tapes around. I don’t know even know where they are.”

  Marcello shrugged. “Dat’s the neat thing about havin’ a big organization. You can isolate yo’ seff.”

  Maybe he meant “insulate,” but I didn’t correct him—I was his guest, after all.

  With his barber-cum-bodyguard at his side, Uncle Carlos stood there watching me, a squat creature who happened to be the chief bullfrog of this particular swamp. I was just a fly who had maybe managed to put some distance between me and his darting tongue.

  In the Galaxie, heading down the rutted road, I was shaking, something I could allow myself, now that I was out of Marcello’s presence. I checked my watch. Just enough time to get back to the Roosevelt, clean up, and catch Janet’s last set at the Sho-Bar. Beignets and café au lait were about all my jumpy stomach could stand right now.

  There was one thing to attend to—I would have to ditch the Galaxie in the French Quarter, somewhere at least as deserted as Royal. I had rammed Mac Wallace, at high speed, and any decent criminology lab would likely find paint-chip transfer from one vehicle to another. Wallace had crashed nose first into that abutment, and any officer with any smarts would raise the question of damage to the Corvair’s tail. Of course, that assumed cooperation between two parishes, Jefferson and Orleans, so maybe I didn’t need to bother.

  Still, after Janet and I returned, on foot, to the Roosevelt after the French Market, I best call the Galaxie in as stolen.

  About halfway to the highway, I had to pull over to let the Lancer get narrowly by. The frowning faces of Leo and Freddie looked over at me; they were returning to Churchill Farms, to their boss, the Little Man. Almost certainly their trunk was crammed with a dead Cuban and a mustached corpse bearing a striking resemblance to a certain famous lone-nut assassin.

  Maybe I was going to have fancy French doughnuts for breakfast, but I’d bet that swamp would be getting a heaping double helping of non-Yankee Louisiana Gumbo.

  CHAPTER

  19

  The district attorney of Orleans Parish sat at a surprisingly small, uncluttered desk, though a table behind him was piled with law books, notebooks, files, yellow pads, and assorted other evidence that work went on in this office of dark wood paneling opulent enough to date back to Huey Long’s era.

  Or perhaps the desk seemed small because the man behind it was so big: Jim Garrison (that was the name on the door—not James) had stood to shake my hand, and I’d got a good intimidating look at the man. Six foot six, somewhat heavy-set, he cut an almost dapper figure in a light-blue three-piece suit with a dark-blue-red-and-white striped tie. He had handsome if slightly cow-eyed features with a high forehead and short, dark, well-barbered hair.

  I was in one of several visitor’s chairs across from him as he leaned back in a high-backed swivel chair and puffed on a pipe, its smoke nicely fragrant.

  “Mr. Heller, I’m happy to report,” he said, in a sonorous baritone, the words coming slowly yet distinctly, with only the faintest Southern accent, “that we have found your stolen rental car.”

  “Well, that’s good news,” I said. “Of course, your two investigators could have just told me that at my hotel.”

  He shrugged, as if that were of no import, but his eyes were hard and he seemed to blink only when he had to. “Well, there’s some red tape to burn through. I hope to arrange it so you don’t have to stay in town any longer than necessary.”

  Was I being asked to leave by the morning stage?

  “Not sure I follow, Mr. Garrison.”

  Another shrug. “It’s just with a stolen vehicle, you might expect to be involved with various legal formalities. But the car wasn’t stolen from you, Mr. Heller—technically it was stolen from the rental company.”

  “Well, all right.”

  For this I’d been taken to the district attorney’s office? Had the unlikely happened, and Orleans and Jefferson Parishes linked that Galaxie to the Mac Wallace fatality?

  He swung halfway around to the table behind him and reached for an item, then swiveled back and tossed a Life magazine on the desktop. From 1958, it had Kim Novak on the cover posing as a pretty witch with a cat. I knew this issue well, because it also featured an article called “Chicago Private Eye Goes Hollywood.”

  “I had one of my people,” he said with a tight, sleepy smile, “go pick this up at the library this morning.”

  It was only ten-thirty now. What the hell?

  He laid the magazine out flat and flipped it to the article and the pictures of me, mostly with celebrity clients. “I was familiar with your name, Mr. Heller. Vaguely familiar, but familiar. This isn’t the only article covering your … exploits.”

  “I don’t really think of them as exploits.”

  He chuckled deep in his chest, but his eyes weren’t laughing at all. “This meeting isn’t really about your rental vehicle, Mr. Heller. That was in part a courtesy to you … to indeed tell you we’d found the car … but primarily as an excuse for you and me to have a friendly talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “One of my investigators spotted you last night at the Sho-Bar, talking to one of our more colorful citizens—Mr. David Ferrie. And in Nawlins, Mr. Heller, being one of its most colorful citizens is something of an accomplishment.”

  “I’ll bet.” I shifted in my chair, which was wood and not near as comfy as the DA’s padded leather number. “How is it a New Orleans cop would recognize me? That issue of Life hasn’t been on the stands for some time.”

  “Oh, he didn’t recognize you, Mr. Heller. And he wasn’t a cop—he was one of my staff investigators. We keep a close eye on the Bourbon Street establishments. Our city depends on tourism, and B-girls running badger games only breeds ill will.”

  “Bourbon Street sells sin. That brings tourists.”

  “Oh, I’m no prude, Mr. Heller. Gracious, no. I got myself in a jam not long ago when I refused to prosecute an exotic dancer who had stepped over the line.… The girls are not allowed to touch their vaginas, you see.”

  “I assume you mean onstage. And I bet the boys aren’t allowed to, either.”

  That got a genuine smile out of him and his eyes sparked. He rested his pipe in an ashtray, tenting his fingers on his vested belly as he rocked back. “I should explain how you caught my investigator’s attention.”

  “Please do.”

  “Mr. Ferrie is an individual who we keep something of an eye on. He’s a predatory pedophile, for one thing.”

  “Did your investigator think I was under eighteen?”

  He ignored that. “My investigator noted you were in a rather … intense discussion with Mr. Ferrie, and he inquired of the manager of the establishment, Frank Ferrara, and he knew who you were. That’s how your name came to my attention … that and this morning’s report of a stolen car.”

  “So I got on your radar twice. But there’s nothing to it.”

  “We brought Mr. Ferrie in,” Garrison said, relighting his pipe, puffing it till its bowl’s contents glowed orange, “just four days afte
r the President’s assassination.”

  The back of my neck prickled.

  “We had a tip from an ex–CIA man that Ferrie—he’s a pilot, you know, a disgraced one, fired by Eastern Airlines on moral grounds—had been hired to fly some of the assassins out of Dallas.”

  “Assassins?”

  “There are those, Mr. Heller, who don’t accept the government’s lone gunman assessment. You think a man with a bolt-action rifle, with a loose telescopic sight and a tree in the way, could have done that crime alone?”

  I shrugged. “Ferrie was in court in New Orleans on November twenty-second last year. With Carlos Marcello.”

  The DA of Orleans Parish surely knew all about Carlos Marcello. Hell, he was probably on Uncle Carlos’s payroll … which meant I needed to take care with what I said.

  “That was in the early afternoon,” Garrison said, “and we understand Ferrie left for Texas by car later in the day. Frankly, all we did was pick Ferrie up, question him some, and hand him over to the FBI … who promptly sprung him.”

  “Maybe they didn’t have anything on him.”

  “Well, we have since learned that Lee Harvey Oswald and Ferrie were in the Civil Air Patrol together … and Oswald was not yet eighteen, to pick up that thread again.”

  “What makes this your concern, Mr. Garrison?”

  “It’s my jurisdiction. Should I ignore the possibility that the men who planned the murder of the President did so right here in New Orleans? Understand, the extent to which Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in certain questionable activities locally is extremely interesting.”

  “I suppose so, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “What was your business with Ferrie at the Sho-Bar, Mr. Heller?”

  “It’s as you say, Mr. Garrison—it’s my business.”

  The prosecutor pressed. “You must have known the man Ferrie used to work for … Guy Banister? He headed up the Chicago FBI a decade ago, I understand.”

  “I knew him. He was a drunk and a bigot.”

  “That’s what got him fired as police chief down here. We understand also that he was active with the John Birch Society and collected and stored weapons at his address on Lafayette Street for anti-Castro Cuban exiles.”