Max Collins - Ask Not

I’d have been surprised if she were past thirty, even if she did look near forty. Her slightly hooded eyes and her languid manner confirmed drug addict, but she wasn’t high at the moment, sitting across from Flo Kilgore and me.

The tape recorder was fine with our guest. She chain-smoked Parliaments as we talked. Maybe she thought filter-tip cigarettes were healthier. Well, she was right in a sense — they were healthier than shooting heroin, which is what Rose Cheramie (“That’s my stage name, I like it better than Melba Marcades”) had been on, last year, on the evening of November 20.

“I don’t mind talking,” she said in a husky, even ravaged, alto, “and I’m not afraid, hell, I talked to all sorts of cops about this and nobody seems to give a shit. So what’s the harm?”

“We appreciate your willingness to be interviewed,” Flo said, but the stripper didn’t need much interviewing. She launched right in, in a Texas drawl that managed to sound lazy and rapid-fire at once.

“I’m not as young as I used to be, and I never was no frisky firecracker like Jada. So stripping is just one way to make money for me. Sometimes, when gigs’re slow, I turn a trick or two. Guess I trick more than strip these days, and also, not often, when things get tough, y’know, I run dope sometimes. This particular time I was doing it for Jack Ruby, before he got himself famous. Years ago, I used to strip at his old club, the Pink Door. It’s closed now.”

Sitting forward, Flo asked, “You ran illegal drugs for Jack Ruby ?”

Rose laughed; it was like sandpaper rubbing against itself. “That makes it sound like he was the boss. He was no big shot. Just another goddamn go-between. They got layers, these bent-nose boys, like a cake. Anyway, Pinky — that was his nickname back in the Pink Door days, I never did call him Sparky like some do — he does what he’s told, like any small fish. The run I was making was from Miami to Houston, but we was stopping off in Dallas. To pick up the money...” She raised her black, mostly painted-on eyebrows. “... among other things, to say the least.”

I asked, “You had the dope with you, Rose?”

She shook her head, exhaling smoke. “No, we’re picking up the stuff, and I was only along so a girl could make the trade, money for smack. It’s less... conspicuous. I mean, the guys with me, these two were hard-core badasses and looked it. I figured them for Italians at first, but turned out they was Cuban. Shouldn’ta surprised me. Y’know, you can’t shake a stick in Miami without hitting one of them Cuban spics.”

“So I hear,” I said, watching her light up a fresh Parliament off a book of matches labeled GAEITY CLUB.

Waving out the flame, she said, “The plan was, pick up the money to pay for the stuff in Dallas, then go to Houston and check in to the Rice Hotel, meet up in a bar with this sailor comin’ into Galveston, give sailor boy the cash for the ten kilos, and then hightail it back to Dallas and trade the dope for my kid.”

I frowned at her and Flo was wincing in confusion.

“Trade for your kid, Rose?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “I was kinda bein’ forced into this thing. They was blackmailing me to do it. One of ’em was holding on to my baby boy for, you know, collateral. On the plus side, I was gettin’ eight grand.”

Gently, Flo said, “Rose, it’s the assassination we’re investigating. You do understand that?”

“You mean, what does running dope have to do with shit?” Nobody smiled at the unintentional pun. “Thing is, these Cuban pricks got to talkin’ loose in front of me. It was a long trip and we got friendly, had a couple three-ways at motels. Felt like a vacation to me, though they was making sure we was making good enough time to get to Dallas when they was expected. These guys, they seemed... really keyed up, ya ask me. They was laughin’ way too much.”

I asked, “Drunk?”

“Not that drunk. And not hopped up, neither. They just kept makin’ these weird, in-jokey comments — ‘Things to do,’ one of ’em says, like he’s reading off a list. ‘Go to Dallas. Pick up money. Kill the President. Go to Houston. Pick up dope.’”

Flo and I exchanged glances.

Rose blew out smoke. “When I was in the backseat, sleeping — they thought — they got really loose-lip about it. ‘We’re gonna kill that lying son of a bitch.’ ‘That bastard is gonna pay.’ And do you know who they was talkin’ about? John Kennedy is who! This was... the Wednesday night before it happened.”

I asked, “What did you think about that, Rose?”

“I thought it was fucked up. I thought maybe I should bug out, maybe find a cop or something and try to stop it. They had a fucking rifle with a scope in the trunk, you know. So when we stopped for an overnight, after the three-way and they got drunk and fell asleep, I kinda... well, I didn’t call the cops. See, everybody thought I was clean, I was straight, but really I was still using. I thought a taste might help make this Kennedy thing go away. I had two cardboard boxes of my crap in the trunk, next to that rifle? Clothes of mine and baby clothes and also down in there, hidden away, was my works.”

“Works?” Flo asked.

“Needle and so on,” I said quietly.

Flo mouthed, “Oh,” and nodded.

“So the next morning,” Rose went on, “they saw my works in the john and the geniuses figure out I wasn’t clean and had junk along, and yelled at me and slapped me around and I just kind of took it. I figured they needed me, so they’d get over it. I was the contact for the sailor, you know? We keep driving, and driving, and then we stop in this little shit bump, Eunice — we’re in Louisiana now — and it’s like maybe five thou pop, but they like to party in that little town, and we stopped at the Silver Slipper Lounge, a bar that Ruby had a piece of. Maybe the Cubans were contacting somebody, maybe they were just thirsty, I dunno. I knew the place a little, I tricked there before, they had little trailers out back. Manny was a nice man, Manny Manuel I mean, the manager?”

“Rose,” I said, “can we stay on the subject please?”

She gave me a flirtatious look. “I am on the subject, Handsome. I’m all over the subject.” Then her expression grew serious. She flicked ash into a tray.

“See, I’d been thinking about what they was saying about the President, just kind of getting in a real funk about it. I tried to make myself think they was kidding or something, but they were for real, man. They were part of... part of something bigger than they were, and it excited their asses. This sounds crazy, but it’s almost like they were doing the dope run so that if they got picked up, that would be what it was for.”

As opposed to killing the President.

“So we’re drinking and talking, and I say something like, ‘What do you wanna kill John Kennedy for? What did he ever do to you? He’s got a wife and kids, you know.’ And one of them Cubans says, ‘The Bay of Pigs is what,’ but the other one is already swinging on me. Right there in the damn nightclub. He cold-cocks me and I’m off the chair and on the floor, and when I wake up, Manny is pushing the Cubans through the door and outside, tellin’ ’em he doesn’t run that kind of joint. Manny helps me up and I thank him and I go back outside and they’re waiting, they grab me and they toss me in the backseat and one Cuban crawls in back after me and the other gets behind the wheel and peels out. They’re going maybe fifty and we’re out of town now with nobody around when the Cuban with me in the backseat opens his door and I get kicked out and go rolling. The car screeches to a stop, and then I see them both get out, and one opens the trunk. I try to get to my feet ’cause I think they’re going for that rifle, but they was just after my boxes of stuff, and they tossed them on the roadside and just took off.”