Max Collins - Target Lancer

Theirs were the kind of unremarkable faces in the crowd just perfect for pickpocket work … and surveillance.

Gross was a friendly type, the first to offer his hand as we stood in the no-man’s-land of Martineau’s office between the chief’s desk area and the conference table. Martineau had stepped out to check on some telex info he was expecting, and we three Pickpocket Detail veterans had his big office momentarily to ourselves.

“You know, Nate,” Gross said with a grin, “they still talk about you over on the Detail.”

“They talk about me lots of places,” I said, returning his smile.

Shoppa said, “Of course nobody over there ever really worked with you, Heller. I figure everybody you ever worked with on the PD is dead by now.”

He offered his hand, too, and there was just enough of a smile on that stogie-pierced, pockmarked pan to tell me this was his version of friendliness, too.

I said to him, “Pete, most of the guys I busted are dead, too. Kind of makes the whole exercise seem a little irrelevant.”

Shoppa frowned at that. A little too philosophical for his speed, I guess.

Martineau came in, the formidable chief moving with considerable energy, and in his shirtsleeves for a change-like most of the agents in the SS office, he wore a short-sleeve white shirt under his suit coat, despite the time of year. The office tended to be warm, the old steam heat in these soon-to-be former headquarters apparently having one setting: inferno.

Eben Boldt trailed in after his boss, quietly spiffy in a charcoal suit and black necktie. Introductions between Martineau and the two police detectives had already been made, but Boldt was a new addition. There was an awkward moment, then I introduced Eben as both an agent and my partner on the current investigation. Polite smiles, nods, and handshakes were traded, but no remarks, friendly or otherwise.

That didn’t make the two cops bigots necessarily-more Negro cops were coming onto the Chicago force all the time, another part of Commissioner Wilson’s revamping of the department, and the white cops hadn’t figured out yet how to behave around these dusky interlopers.

Martineau, however, knew just what Eben’s role was.

“Ebe,” he said, “get us some coffee, would you?”

There was the slightest tightening around the agent’s eyes, then a nod, and he went out.

Martineau had a manila folder with him, and he rested it in front of him as he took the head seat at the conference-room table, gesturing for us to find chairs.

We did.

“Has Chief Cain or Captain Linsky filled you fellows in at all?” Martineau asked.

The two cops were at Martineau’s right, and I was opposite them. They both shrugged, Shoppa knocking some ashes off his stubby cigar into a glass ashtray with the Secret Service emblem in the bottom.

“The captain just said that you were shorthanded,” Gross said, “what with the President coming to town Saturday.”

“Said you might need some surveillance help,” Shoppa said. “Implied it might have something to do with JFK’s visit. But that’s all.”

“You’ll need a full briefing, then,” Martineau said.

He opened the manila folder and passed them a set of 5-by-7-inch photos of the suspects-the two Cubans and two white boys.

“We believe these men to be highly trained assassins with high-powered rifles. A hit squad. And their target is Lancer.”

“Lancer?” Gross asked.

“That’s Secret Service code,” I said, “for President Kennedy.”

I’d picked up around here quick.

Shoppa, looking over the photos, wore a smirk with a cigar stuck in it. “Jeez, a couple of spics called Gonzales and Rodriguez. That narrows the friggin’ field. What are the white guys’ names? Smith and Jones?”

Martineau’s expression barely registered his displeasure with Shoppa’s manner, but I caught it. I doubt Shoppa did, but if he had, he probably wouldn’t give a shit.

The SS chief said, “This is not your direct assignment, gentlemen, other than to be on the alert if your surveillance subject should come in contact with any of these individuals.”

“This,” Gross said, tapping the picture in front him, “is why you’re shorthanded. You’re focusing on this threat, and need us to cover for you on some other bozo who’s made a crank call or something.”

Martineau said, “That’s not wrong, but we have new background on this ‘bozo’ that makes it vital we take him seriously. First, however, I’ll have Nate brief you on how we got where we are with Mr. Thomas Arthur Vallee.”

That middle name was news to me-Martineau really did have info he hadn’t yet shared.

Eben came in with a tray of cardboard cups and a pitcher of coffee, and everybody helped themselves as I told them how Lieutenant Berkeley Moyland of the Chicago PD had alerted us to Vallee’s spouting off about Kennedy, and laid out in some detail the conversation I’d had with the subject at the Eat Rite yesterday, winding up with the discovery of the two M-1’s, the.22 revolver, and the several thousand rounds of ammunition at his rooming house.

No wisecracks from Shoppa and no remark from Gross, either-they just exchanged dark glances at the mention of all that firepower.

And now Martineau dipped into his manila folder for a picture I hadn’t seen before: a Marine Corps photo of my breakfast club buddy, Vallee, looking very young but otherwise much the same-prominent forehead, glazed eyes, tiny pinched anus of a mouth.

“Not who I want dating my sister,” Shoppa said.

Gross grunted. “ Looks like the kind of nut who’d want to take a potshot at the President.”

“We know a lot more about him today,” Martineau said. “This is all fresh intel that even Nate and Ebe are hearing for the first time.”

I glanced at Ebe, seated beside me, and he shrugged. Apparently he didn’t know any more than I did.

Martineau glanced at various papers that he’d extracted from the manila folder, but did not read from them, rather summarized. His ability to do so from material he’d only recently received was impressive.

“Thomas Arthur Vallee joined the Marines at age fifteen,” he said. “That’s right, gentlemen-he lied about his age. He’s thirty now. During the Korean War, he suffered a head injury, thanks to a mortar round exploding nearby, which got him discharged from the Marines in 1952. Traumatic brain injury. Complete VA disability. This jibes with what Mr. Vallee shared with Nate in casual conversation.”

I asked, “What about his claim that he re-enlisted? How does a guy with a brain injury and complete disability get back in uniform?”

“I have no idea,” Martineau admitted. “But it’s true that, after two G.I. Bill years at a community college, he was able to re-enlist, in 1955. He was honorably discharged in ’56.”

Gross frowned. “After one year?”

Martineau nodded. “It was a physical disability discharge again. Military doctors classified him…” And now he did read from a document. “… ‘an extreme paranoid schizophrenic.’”

“Which is medical jargon,” Shoppa said, “for screwier than a shithouse rat.”

The chief did not disagree, and again referred to a sheet. “Vallee’s mental condition, the psychiatric evaluation says, is ‘manifested by preoccupations with homosexuality.’”

“So the kid’s a queer,” Shoppa said, sucking on his cigar, “as well as a nutcase.”

“His landlady mentioned male guests,” I said, “and he had some reading material that fits that notion. But since when does a homosexual get an honorable discharge from the Marines?”

Martineau had an answer: “His psychiatric evaluation further finds indications of ‘organic difficulty’ that may relate to that mortar-shell incident in Korea.”