Max Collins - Ask Not

I sat next to her and plucked the silly bow from her hair and tossed it somewhere. “Water from the faucet is what I have to drink.”

“Very funny.”

“There’s a pop machine and ice down the hall. Glad to make the trip.”

“Call room service. Get some gin and tonic.”

“I don’t like gin.”

“I don’t care what you like. Order something for yourself, too. Herald Tribune will pay for it.”

“You’ve had enough to drink.”

“That’s your opinion. You work for me.”

“Not right now. I’m off the clock.”

She hit my chest with a little fist. “Gin and tonic. Right now!.. Please?” She looked like she was going to cry. “I’m scared. You scared me tonight.”

I didn’t think so. I didn’t think this little dame would scare unless maybe a goddamn bear was chasing her.

I asked, “What’s this really about?”

Her chin crinkled. “My guy... my guy hasn’t returned even one of my calls all week.”

She wasn’t talking about her husband.

“Sorry,” I said.

“And then you... you haven’t even had the decency of throwing me a pass. And tonight, you take that little slut out to her car, and what did you do? Fuck her in the backseat?”

She was a girl reporter, all right.

I said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Janet was just scared, like you are.”

“I said I could smell her on you! You think I would let you stick it in me after you stuck it in her? Christ knows what diseases she’s carrying. Maybe she’ll get pregnant! Think you’ll live long enough to go to Junior’s graduation?”

I took her by her spindly arms. “First, there already is a Nathan Heller, Jr. Second, it could be a girl. Third, no it couldn’t, because I used a Trojan. I was in the Boy Scouts, you know.”

Really I wasn’t, but my words were like a splash of cold water in her face, and then she started to laugh and hugged me.

“Nathan Heller,” she said, giggling, but it didn’t sound happy exactly. “You are a scamp.”

“Is that what I am?”

She pushed me away. “Now get me my gin and tonic.”

“Okay,” I said, and went over to the phone, but as I was reaching for it, it rang.

“Heller speaking,” I said.

“Nate, it’s Clint Peoples,” the receiver said, as if that voice needed any identifying. “I’m goddamn sorry to call you so late like this, but I thought you should know.”

“Know what, Clint?”

“The Cheramie girl is dead.”

I grabbed a nearby chair and sat. “Christ.”

“An auto-pedestrian accident near Big Sandy.”

“What’s Big Sandy?”

“A town in Texas, man, what do you think? Apparently Rose was just lyin’ in the roadway with her suitcases scattered around and a driver came along and tried to swerve and miss her. He didn’t. He struck her, just part of her, but... her skull was crushed.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s all I know. I mean, this thing just happened. Came in over the wire. I will make calls tomorrow and have more for you later. Sorry to be the bearer.”

“Thanks, Clint.”

We both hung up.

Then I called down for the gin and tonic.

She stayed with me that night. She was afraid, as well she should be, and she drank herself to sleep. We did not have sex, if your prurient interest must be satisfied. She stayed in her dress, I was down to my underwear, my nine millimeter naked on the nightstand. We talked very little, before she drifted off, although the sense that we had caused that poor woman’s death was there in the room with us, hogging the space.

Before the gin took her away, I said, “You’ll go home. I’ll go home. You’ll write your story, and maybe win a Pulitzer. But that’s all.”

“What do you mean... that’s all?”

“I mean the investigation ends here. You write your story, enjoy your accolades, and you can prime the pump for other investigators, whether cops or reporters, and let them follow your lead, and them take the heat. We don’t get anybody else killed, understand? Not you. Not me.”

She toasted her glass with mine. I’d sent down for some Captain Morgan.

“Okay, big boy,” she said.

Her tiny, curvy body snuggled next to me in the twin bed, and with her in my arms, I remembered how much fun we’d had together in years gone by, which is what years do.

An insistent ringing turned out to be the phone again. My eyes somehow came open and I realized sunlight was streaming in. Our respective plane reservations weren’t till the early afternoon, so we hadn’t overslept, at least not dangerously. There was no reason to get up, or hadn’t been till the phone started in.

She stirred, and I whispered, “Probably Captain Peoples again. Just go back to sleep.”

She did, and I got the phone. I had a brief conversation, hung up, and came back and shook her gently awake. Her eyes were wide in a face that was pretty despite the smeared makeup and weak chin.

“That was Barney,” I said.

“Who?”

“We got the Ruby interview.”

The Criminal Courts Building, overlooking Dealey Plaza, stood nine granite-trimmed brick-and-steel stories. The 1913-erected structure housed two Dallas county criminal courts, the offices of the sheriff and DA, and the county jail, which was a building within a building. Jailbreaks were impossible, it was said, until one occurred recently and embarrassed Dallas yet again.

Saturday morning, at ten o’clock, with Flo in the passenger seat, I pulled the rental Galaxie into the shallow basement of the Courts Building, eerily similar to the city jail basement where Ruby had shot Oswald. We got out and headed toward the elevator. We looked spiffy — I was in a gray Botany 500 ( not tailored for a shoulder-holstered weapon, which was tucked in the car trunk) and Flo in a pink suit with leopard top and white heels and her usual white gloves. I felt we projected the class with which Ruby was so obsessed.

Joe Tonahill was waiting at the elevator, the only attorney from the murder trial who remained on the current Ruby team. The Stetson-wearing Tonahill (I was bareheaded today) was an aptly named mountain of a man, six four and three hundred pounds easy, with a narrow skull, out-of-control John L. Lewis eyebrows, and a shelf of a second chin that seemed to engulf the almost boyish face.

Tonahill smiled and nodded to Flo, saying, “Always a pleasure, Miss Kilgore. You’re the only reporter Jack will talk to.”

“Well, I’m honored,” she said with a funny smile that added, I guess.

The small head on the huge body swiveled my way. “You’d be Nathan Heller,” he said affably, and we shook hands. “I read about you in the Enquirer. ”

“That puts the ‘any PR is good PR’ notion to the test,” I said, as we exchanged smiles. “What’s the drill?”

He gestured toward the elevator. “Jack, as you might expect, is kept separate from the general population. He doesn’t even have a cell of his own.”

“That doesn’t sound like he’s being kept separate.”

“Sorry. I didn’t phrase that as felicitously as I might. He’s camped out in a corridor on the mezzanine level between the sixth and seventh floors. By the chief jailor’s office. There is a little holding cell he can sleep in.”

Tonahill reached suddenly inside his tan suit coat and for a moment I flashed on Lee Harvey getting surprised. But all he withdrew was a folded sheet of paper.

“I’m accompanying you up, but Jack has made it clear I’m not welcome to sit in on the interview. How would you feel about signing a document that has you working for me as an investigator, Mr. Heller? Providing you with the rights of confidentiality that Miss Kilgore enjoys as a member of the Fourth Estate?”