Max Collins - Ask Not

I said, “But they refused.”

He gestured with open hands, eyes popping. “They refused! Why? Why ? I said if they would take me back to Washington, that very night, and let me talk to the President, then I could prove I’m not guilty, and maybe something could still be salvaged.”

Sitting forward, I said, “Jack, almost everybody in America was watching on that Sunday morning, and the rest have seen the instant replay — you killed Oswald. You can’t be saying you’re innocent of that.”

“No, no, I’m not talking about that. Nate, you’re a Jew — you know that there is no greater weapon you can use than to create this kind of falsehood about someone of the Jewish faith, especially of such a terrible heinous crime as the killing of President Kennedy.”

Flo glanced at me and I at her, and she said to him, gently, “You feel you are being accused of killing the President?”

He nodded vigorously. “Of being part of a conspiracy to kill our beloved President.”

I said, “Jack, you hated the Kennedys.”

He shrugged. “I hate Bobby. I never had a problem with Jack. But if I am eliminated, there won’t be any way of knowing what really happened. The Warren Commission, they muffed it, Nate, they eff you cee kayed it up, if you’ll pardon the crudity, Miss Kilgore. I want to talk to LBJ, who I think has been told, I am certain has been told, I was part of a plot to assassinate the President.”

“Why would Johnson have been told that?”

“Because... because he’s been told. I know he’s been told. By the people who plan to eliminate me.”

Shaking her head, as if to clear cobwebs, Flo asked, “Who is going to try to eliminate you, Jack?

“They won’t try, Miss Kilgore, they will. Maybe if you get out there with your story, I have a chance, but... you see, I have been used for a purpose, and there will be a tragic occurrence if you don’t take my story to the people and somehow vindicate me, so Jews like me don’t have to suffer because of what I have done.”

I said, “That’s what we’re here for, Jack. To get your story, and get it out there.”

“Good, because I may not be around for you to come and talk to again. You know, I told them I’d do a lie detector test, truth serum, anything. And then I could leave this world satisfied. I just don’t want my people to be blamed for something that is untrue, for something that some wrongly claim has happened.”

“Then your account of the Oswald shooting,” I said, “was fabricated for you?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“Then why do you keep repeating it?”

“Because the brave Jew killing the President’s murderer is a good story. And because I have family. I don’t want my brothers to die. I don’t want my sister to die. I don’t want my nieces and nephews to die. I do not want to die. But I am doomed just the same. And I am not insane. I was framed to kill Oswald.”

I held up a calming hand and said, “Okay, okay. But let’s back up. You hated Bobby, you said. You say you didn’t hate the President, but Jack, nobody in mob circles loves either Kennedy.”

He didn’t deny it.

I pressed on: “So why are there so many reports that you were devastated by the President’s death? That you were crying and weeping and wailing?”

“That’s an exaggeration, but...” He gave me a knowing little grin. “... you were always smart, Nate. We’ve come a long way from that union hall in Lawndale, haven’t we?”

Had we? That had involved a killing, too, of Leon Cooke, a former president of a junk-handler’s union. Maybe Ruby had come a long way at that.

Now the stocky little man’s focus was on me, perhaps because he knew I could follow him on the torturous journey ahead in a way that Flo Kilgore might not.

He said, “Maybe you don’t know this, Nate, but back in the fifties, I was big in the Cuban realm, both before and after Castro took over. I made trips for people, I moved some guns, I helped Santo get out of there when they had him locked up. I was valuable, making things happen. But then when Castro threw all the casinos out, my influence, it was gone with the wind and, well, at least I had a life and a business back here in Dallas. I concentrated on that. That became my life and world. I was happy. I am competitive by nature. But you mentioned deals with the devil, Nate, right? And I admit, I like to be important, it’s a weakness, but who doesn’t savor the attention of powerful people?”

I said, “Can you be more specific, Jack?”

“Well, powerful people, they never talk to you direct, do they? So if I said Carlos Marcello, I would be trying to make myself sound more important than I am, and the humbling thing about what I’ve been through, Nate, is that I know I was not important. Now I am important, and that’s the bittersweet taste, huh? Because now I wish I was not so important. I wish I was a small person again, a small successful person with his club and girls and his little dogs. I miss my little dogs, Nate.”

“Jack, you say somebody contacted you on Marcello’s behalf. Who? When?”

“A fella in New Orleans, smart guy, kind of on the weirdo side. We’ll call him the Ferret. He’s a pilot, in fact he and me, we go back a ways ourselves — we owned a plane together, in gunrunning days. I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of years, not since the Bay of Pigs went south and all of the Cuba stuff went circling down the porcelain exit. Anyway, the Ferret—”

“David Ferrie,” Flo said with a nod.

That startled Ruby, her knowing that name.

I asked, “What did Ferrie want?”

“He... he wanted some help with some projects the Cubans were working on.”

“Cuban exiles.”

“Yes. There’s a big variety of different groups, but this is a pretty militant bunch, and well, sometimes I work both ends against the middle, and that can be dangerous, but it can also be profitable, and it covers a person’s behind, you know.”

She said, “You were an FBI snitch.”

That startled him, too. And he seemed a little hurt.

“I guess you could state it like that, Miss Kilgore. That’s a terminology that makes me uncomfortable, I would say ‘informant’ is a bit better, but yes. So I figured my FBI contact would not mind knowing what the Cubans were up to, and since casino interests like Mr. Marcello and Mr. Trafficante seemed to think Cuba might be returned to its former profitable glory so to speak, I lent my services, and my club after hours, for meetings and so on.”

Flo asked, “You didn’t hesitate getting involved again with these mobsters?”

“I was having money problems, tax trouble in particular, and anyway, I had business in Cuba with certain of these individuals that... Nate, can we talk about this in front of Miss Kilgore?”

“If you mean Operation Mongoose,” I said, “yes.”

That failed joint effort between the CIA and the Mob to kill Castro. That ridiculous French farce involving exploding cigars and poisoned food and tampered-with wet suits.

I said to him, “Miss Kilgore knows we were both part of that, each in his own small, respective way.”

Dark eyebrows rose above eyes about as expressive as a shark’s. “Does she know that...?”

“That I ran into you in a bar in Chicago, in early November, last year? That you introduced me to your buddy ‘Lee Osborne’? Yes.”

Or, anyway, she did now.

This had taken some of the wind out of his sails, and I had to prompt him: “What mischief were the New Orleans mob and the Cubans up to? Or should I say, what did you think they were up to?”