Max Collins - Ask Not

When the lights came up at midnight, there was no last call, because public imbibing, even the BYOB variety, was illegal past the witching hour. The Colony did serve sandwiches and coffee, and about a quarter of the audience stayed for that. But Wallace just sat there sipping bourbon on ice (he’d gone through several setups), and I overheard two waitresses arguing over who would tell him to stop.

“Not me,” my tuxedoed dark-haired doll from earlier whispered. “He’s got a bad temper, particularly when he’s tight.”

The other waitress, a blonde, whispered, “He doesn’t look tight.”

“He’s one of those gentleman drunks. You know, he says excuse me after he belts you one?”

I had spent the second half of the show trying to figure out what my move was with Wallace. If he hadn’t been drunk, or anyway tight, I might have just approached him, introduced myself, and said I wanted to talk to him. Like I would with any witness or potential suspect. But I decided to try a less direct approach.

I got up, and was walking past his booth in the direction of the men’s room when I stopped and pointed at him in friendly way, smiling tentatively, and with a little slur in my voice said, “I know you, don’t I?”

He was tipsy, so I was tipsy.

“I don’t think so,” he said in a mellow baritone touched with a tinge of Texas, his eyes half-lidded, dark and cold behind the lenses of the dark-rimmed glasses. His face was smudgy with beard — five o’clock shadow turned midnight blue. There was a slight plumpness to his cheeks and under his dimpled chin, adding a touch of baby-face to his slightly dissipated leading-man looks.

I didn’t overplay. No need for a full-on drunk act. The Colony Club already had enough corny comics.

“Maybe I don’t,” I admitted, then pretended to think. “Or did I see you in the paper? While back. Is that it?”

A small smile appeared under a Roman nose — just a curl at either corner of his rather full, sensual mouth, showing a slice of white teeth, startlingly so against the dark need-to-shave.

“I know you, though,” he said.

“Yeah? So where do we know each other from?”

The teeth disappeared but the slight smile otherwise remained. He nodded next to him in the booth, motioning me to join him.

What the hell — I slid in. Plenty of room.

He said, with an even slighter slur than the one I’d already abandoned, “You’re Nate Heller.”

Shit.

“So where do we know each other from?” I repeated, somewhat lamely.

“I know you from magazines,” he said. “ Life. Look. I even read about you when I was in college — true detective magazines.”

He was in his early forties and I was in my late fifties, so that was possible.

“That’s who I am all right,” I said pleasantly, as if we were still just a couple of guys striking up a conversation in a bar.

“‘Private Eye to the Stars,’” he said. “Isn’t that something? And you worked on Lindbergh, too. And the Harry Oakes case in Nassau.”

He really had read those true detective magazines. That slur had gone from his voice, but his talkativeness bore the fluidity and slight over-enunciation of somebody inebriated trying not to show it.

I snapped my fingers. “And that’s where I know you from! I read an article in one of those magazines, too — on that murder you committed. Five-year suspended sentence for first-degree murder. You must know people, Mr. Wallace.”

The smile disappeared. He didn’t frown, though — he had a soft-lipped, blank look that was much worse than a frown.

“Call me Mac,” he said, and offered his hand.

I shook it, and his grasp was rather limp, and clammy, like shaking hands with a corpse.

“And I’m Nate. A couple of guys who made it into the true detective mags, having a little impromptu reunion. Too bad they don’t serve liquor after midnight in this town.”

He shrugged. His tie was snugged up, giving him a formal look. What kind of guy sat drinking brown-bag bourbon all night and never loosened his damn tie?

“There’s a little joint down the street,” he said, “called the University Club that has a deal with the police. We could go down there.”

“Well, okay. I’m buyin’.”

“All right.”

On the way out, I asked the black-haired tuxedoed waitress to let Janet, that is, Jada, know that I had run into an old pal, and that I would catch up with her tomorrow night. I let Wallace lead the way out, since I was not anxious to get pushed down a flight stairs, maybe in a sudden fit of despondency.

On the street he paused to light up a cigarette in front of the closed liquor store. He asked me if I wanted one and I said no, that smoking was one bad habit I didn’t have. A group of four businessmen emerged from the Colony, sloshed, and staggered over to the Adolphus.

Then Wallace said, “I’m not stupid, Heller. Just be straight with me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll answer your questions.”

“Why not start with, where were you on May 22, 1962?”

He gave me a dead-eyed baby-face stare. “I should know that, should I? That’s just fixed in my memory, is it?”

“Here’s a hint — it’s the day after they dug up Henry Marshall.”

He turned toward the street, as if gazing at the fancy hotel across the way. His eyes had narrowed slightly. “So that’s what this is about? That Plett suicide?”

Jesus! Was he admitting it?

He saw my surprise and said, “I read about that in the papers... to continue a theme.”

“You remember reading about a killing in Chicago that happened over two years ago?”

He nodded, his expression smug. “I do. Got a lot of press here. It was part of the Billie Sol Estes scandal. That got lots of play in Texas, Nate... Shall we walk?”

We headed down the street, at an easy pace. Traffic was almost nonexistent and the sidewalks couldn’t have been more barren if the bomb had dropped.

“Let me guess,” he said, and the slight smile was back. “Captain Clint Peoples. He told you all about how I’m President Johnson’s assassin of choice. That’s what you meant by that crack — I must ‘know people.’”

Walking, side by side.

“You were a golden boy,” I said, “who Senator Johnson helped out. I mean, he did keep you out of the death house, right? Since you helped him with his sister.”

He stopped and I stopped. The night was cool, almost cold. The sky was a deep rich blue with pinpoint stars, like the fake ceiling of a strip joint. We faced each other.

His eyebrows, heavy and dark, tensed. “How exactly did I help him with his sister?”

“Well, probably one of two ways. Through intermediaries, like the Outfit guys back home do it, Johnson suggested you remove a mutual problem, namely that golf-course putz who was banging your wife and your girlfriend and his sister. That sounds like three people, doesn’t it, but it’s only two.”

His small smile turned sideways. “You take liberties, Nate, with new friends. I mean, we just met.”

“The other way would have been that you really did decide all on your lonesome that Doug Kinser needed killing... and LBJ and his crowd offered to help you stay out of jail, if you agreed not to testify and spread embarrassing sex stuff about his sister.”

“I choose none of the above.” His eyes managed to be cold and hard while seeming uninterested.

“In either case, Johnson and his cronies now knew they had a man who could kill in cold blood, and that might come in handy. For example, in the case of that Billie Sol Estes scandal you mentioned? A killer like that might be willing to stage a few suicides.”

He was shaking his head, just a little. “Do you know what kind of people you’re accusing?”