Max Collins - Target Lancer

“How’d it go down, exactly?”

Gross said, “We’d been tailing Vallee since around eight. We figured he was headed in to work, but then he was just, I don’t know, driving. We didn’t know what the hell he was up to. I’ll be seeing the ass end of that piece of shit white Ford in my sleep.”

Shoppa shrugged. “He was turning west onto Wilson from Damen, heading toward the expressway. Figured he was finally going to that printing plant.”

“They were closed today,” I said.

“Yeah,” Shoppa said, and exhaled cheap cigar smoke. “We didn’t hear about that till we hauled his ass in.”

“When was that?”

Shoppa shrugged. “Must’ve been ten after nine.” He looked at his partner. “Nine-fifteen?”

Gross shrugged, nodded. “He didn’t have any firearms on his person, but his trunk was a friggin’ arsenal. Seven hundred fifty rounds for that rifle of his.” He grinned and looked even more like a horse. “Think we’ll get a thank-you note from JFK?”

“Maybe not,” I said.

“Fuck it,” Shoppa said, and blew a smoke ring. “I was a Nixon man anyway.”

I gestured toward the interview room. “Martineau said I could take a crack at him.”

Shoppa farted with his lips. “Move in with him and pick out furniture, for all I care. I don’t wanna waste my time with that screwball.”

When I went in, the sight of Vallee gave me a little start-seated military straight on his side of the scarred table, wearing a white T-shirt with a blue and black plaid shirt over it, damn near identical to the ensemble worn by that blond assassin I’d shot right in the Ray-Bans. Identical, too, was the military-style butch haircut, and the hair color and general Nordic cast of the features.

Vallee was smaller than the late blond, whose face had been narrower; but the resemblance did shake me some.

Settling in opposite him, I said, “Good morning, Tommy. Remember me?”

He frowned, and the big blue eyes under the slightly Neanderthal shelf of forehead narrowed but didn’t blink. “We spoke at the Eat Rite. Were you undercover?”

“Guess you could say that. I was checking you out on a tip from a cop who heard you making threatening remarks about the President.”

A tiny sneer on the pinched little mouth accompanied a grunt of a laugh. “I’ve never made a secret of how I feel about Kennedy. We’ll be in serious trouble unless Goldwater is elected, you know. But I never really threatened him.”

“Sure you did.”

“Negative. That was all just figures of speech. Hyper boly.” He meant “hyperbole.”

“Okay.” I had photos of the Cubans and the two white snipers in my inside jacket pocket. I got them out and pushed them across to Vallee. “Know any of these fellas?”

“Negative.”

“Not either one of these white fellas? In the service, maybe?”

“No, sir.”

I tapped the photos of Gonzales and Rodriguez. “These other two are Cuban. And you trained Cuban exiles near Levittown, right? Maybe you met them there. Look again. Maybe you met just one of ’em.”

He looked. He did look. Shook his head. “Negative.”

“Where was it you served in Korea, Tom?”

“Mostly I was stationed in Japan.”

“Whereabouts in Japan?”

“Camp Otsu.”

That meant nothing to me.

I asked, “What did you do there?”

“That’s classified, sir.”

“Weren’t you just a private? With no special skills? Why would what you did in Japan be classified?”

“Well … Camp Otsu was a U-2 base, sir. Back in those days, that was top secret stuff.”

Goose bumps danced on my neck. Ruby’s friend Lee had bragged to me about service at a U-2 base in Japan.

I said, “U-2-wasn’t that program the CIA’s baby?”

“Affirmative.”

“Tommy … were you working for the CIA over there?”

“I’m sorry, but I was told that was classified.”

“Well, since you got out of the Marines … have you worked with the CIA?”

“That’s classified, too.” His eyebrows scrunched. “Were you really a Marine?”

“I was.”

“And your name really is Heller?”

“It is.”

“So not everything was lies when we talked.”

“Not at all.”

“Are you with the Company, too, Mr. Heller? Are you debriefing me?”

Christ. I didn’t like where this was heading. For example, if he’d been training Cuban exiles on Long Island, that likely made him some small part, at least, of Operation Mongoose.

“You could call it that, Tommy. Were you on your way to work when those Chicago cops stopped you today?”

“Negative. We were closed today.”

“Were you heading there, anyway? To IPP? Or maybe to some other building on West Jackson?”

“Negative.”

“Okay. What were you doing with all that ammunition and those guns in your trunk?”

“Could I see your ID?”

I showed him the Justice Department credentials. He frowned as he examined them-they weren’t Central Intelligence Agency, but they were official, all right. And not Secret Service.

He sat and mulled that for a good thirty seconds. Then he swallowed. He’d decided what he wanted to say.

“I wasn’t planning to shoot the President. I think somebody thinks I was. Because I work on West Jackson. And the motorcade would go right by, and getting off a shot wouldn’t be hard. But that was never my intention. I think … I think I’m being framed for this.”

“Really.”

He nodded. “I got a call from someone I trust. I don’t want to say more. I can’t say more. But it was an opportunity for me to make some money this morning.”

I was ahead of him. “When the cops stopped you, you were on your way somewhere to sell guns and ammunition. You had a buyer.”

He nodded. “The deal was to go down at a parking lot in the Loop. I was supposed to wait there. An unspecified time. As long as it took. But I never made it-around nine-fifteen, those cops pulled me over.” The big eyes grew wider. “Is he all right?”

“Is who all right?”

He seemed very earnest. Like he might cry. “The President. Did someone shoot him?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I think somebody knew about how I felt toward him. Somebody with special knowledge about me and my background and my beliefs. But I’m a good American and a former Marine and wouldn’t do that. I speak my dissatisfied mind under the Freedom of Speech. But I didn’t do it, Mr. Heller. I was framed.”

I raised a calming palm. “Nobody did anything, Tommy. The President canceled his trip.”

He blinked. Sat back. “Nobody told me.”

I rose. “You relax. I don’t think you’ll get anything out of this arrest except maybe a fine. Maybe an overnight stay in lockup. Okay?”

“Really?”

“Really.”

I went out and found Shoppa and Gross sitting at a vacant desk they’d commandeered, having coffee. Shoppa was lighting his latest noxious cigar.

I said, “Did you fellas know the President’s trip had been canceled when you pulled Vallee over?”

They looked blankly at me, and then the same way at each other, and then Shoppa shrugged and waved out his match and said, “Yeah, it came over the radio right around nine.”

Official word hadn’t gone out till around 9:15. Those cops in squad cars with bullhorns had been at maybe 9:20 or 9:25. But law enforcement involved in motorcade security would have been told first. At nine.

I asked perhaps too casually, “Why did you wait till after the trip had been canceled to pull Vallee off the street?”

Shoppa’s expression darkened. “We didn’t pull him over till he made that wrong turn! We couldn’t nab him for no fuckin’ reason, Heller!”