Max Collins - Ask Not

“A call from David Ferrie?”

“A call, Miss Kilgore, and I had to.”

I said, “And that’s what you were broken up about. Not Jackie and Caroline.”

“I didn’t want to shoot that kid! He was in so far over his head. He’d have already been dead if...”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Acquila Clemmons was sitting on her porch when she saw Officer Tippit killed. She said two men were involved — the gunman was a “short guy and kind of heavy,” the other man taller and thin in khaki trousers and a white shirt. She had been reluctant to talk to Flo because a Dallas PD officer had warned her to stay quiet, saying she “might get killed on the way to work.”

“ You killed Tippit,” I said.

Ruby shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”

“When Kennedy really was shot, you knew both you and Lee Oswald were dupes in this thing — you even went to Parkland Hospital to see if Kennedy would pull through, and when he didn’t, you went looking for Oswald. Tippit died near your apartment, didn’t he? You tried to warn Oswald.”

“He was supposed to die that day,” he said ambiguously.

“Who?” Flo asked.

I said, “Oswald. Jack here screwed this up for everybody. Tippit was supposed to kill Oswald — he was combing Oak Cliff, supposedly for a suspect based on the description over the police radio. He got out of the car to come around and take Oswald out, only Jack here rescued his pal. Didn’t you, Jack?”

“I don’t think... I don’t think I should admit to a murder that maybe I didn’t do.”

I pressed: “Did Ferrie or Marcello suspect you? Is that why they sent you for the job? Or was it just a terrible coincidence? That you, the guy who could come and go as he pleased at the police station, were sent to do the deed.”

“I went to that press conference Friday night,” Ruby said hollowly. “I wanted him to see me. To understand he should keep quiet. But he kept saying over and over he was innocent, he was a ‘patsy.’ I tried to give him a pass.”

“But it was the old, old problem.”

“What?”

“He knew too much.”

Ruby nodded. Sighed. “I guess... I guess that kid and I have that in common.”

I heard footsteps. Tonahill was walking toward us. He paused halfway, looking massive and apologetic, and said, “That’s all the time they’ll give us.”

It had been enough.

Ruby walked us to the gate. Our white-jumpsuited host stayed at Flo’s side, as if he were walking her to the door after the prom and was hoping against hope for a kiss.

“I know you’ll do right by me, Miss Kilgore,” he said. “The sooner you get this out there, the better are my chances. They wouldn’t fool with a famous person like you. Not a journalist.”

That was a naive thing for him to say — not just because Kennedy’s fame hadn’t stopped anybody, but Ruby was an old Chicago boy. He surely remembered the Tribune ’s man Jake Lingle getting it in that subway tunnel back in Capone days.

We bid Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer good-bye. We did not discuss anything on our way back to the hotel. I guess we were both trying to absorb it all. The tape was in her purse, and that was what I referred to first: “Get copies of that made when you get back to New York.”

I was dropping her at the Statler. She nodded and went in, while I went and parked.

Shortly thereafter, up in her room, perched side by side on her couch/bed, I said, “Ruby is right — don’t sit on this. Get it written and out there. Once the genie’s out of the bottle, we’ll all be safer.”

She was having a gin and tonic and I sipped at a bottle of Coke.

“I don’t know, Nate,” she said, frowning in thought, looking as cute as she was famous. “I owe Bennett a book. That’s much bigger than a story.”

“Doesn’t it take a year or more for one to come out?”

“Not with a hot topic like this. They’ll rush it — three months maybe, no more than five.”

“That’s a long time in Dallas. What about the Johnson stuff?”

“Think I should hold that back?”

“Probably. It’s beyond the pale, Ruby’s just speculating, and anyway that might get the whole project spiked. Remember what happened with the Marilyn story.”

“I’ll use my head.” She took my hand and squeezed. “This isn’t over, Nate.”

“Sure it is. Go home. Write your story or your book, whichever suits you. And go back to covering Liz and Dick, and what does and doesn’t flop on Broadway this season.”

She touched my chest with a gloved finger. “We’re going to New Orleans next.”

“No we aren’t.”

She nodded firmly, and her big blue eyes locked onto me. “Yes we are. Unless you want to send me there by myself.”

Fuck.

“Fuck,” I said. “All right. When?”

“I want to get my thoughts down in chapter form. Or maybe it’ll be an article, but anyway written. I’ll send you a copy, plus a dupe of the tape, and arrange for an interview with that Ferrie character. And maybe a few others in the ol’ Big Easy. Make it... two weeks from next Monday. I’ll book us a suite at the Roosevelt near the French Quarter. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I mean, we’ll talk on the phone, before then, but... when’s your plane?”

“Three hours.”

“Mine’s in two.” She gave me her sexiest smile, which was fairly sexy. “Did you know that there’s nothing more erotic to a girl reporter than a scoop?”

“I’ll take two scoops,” I said, and put my hands on her breasts.

On Monday morning, back in Chicago, when I rolled into the A-1’s suite of offices around ten A.M., everyone was happy to see me, or at least pretended to be — I was, after all, the boss. Millie asked me how Dallas was and I told her great, and that I’d gotten her John Wayne’s autograph, but she merely informed me that John Wayne didn’t live in Texas. She was learning. Gladys dug down deep and found a smile for me and said she was pleased to have me back, and I chose to believe her, though mostly she just wanted to remind me about the eleven A.M. staff meeting, as if we hadn’t been doing that for decades.

I took my office manager up on her standard offer of coffee, and I was drinking it at my desk when Lou Sapperstein knocked shave-and-a-haircut, then leaned in without waiting for a response. His eyebrows were climbing his endless forehead, the dark eyes glittering behind the wire-frame bifocals.

I waved him in, and this big man in his seventies settled his still-brawny frame into the black leather client’s chair, his own cup of coffee in hand. He wore a pink button-down shirt, red necktie with matching suspenders, and navy-blue slacks, proof that Pop Art was injecting way too much color into the world.

He asked, “How about filling me in on your summer vacation?”

“It’s September, Lou.”

“Your skills of observation remain keenly honed. What the hell happened down on the Panhandle?”

“Dallas isn’t in the Panhandle.”

“Too bad, because it’s one of the few Texas terms I know. What gives?”

After our client, Mrs. Joseph Plett, had her double-indemnity claim belatedly honored, I’d been scheduled to come right back. All Lou knew was that I’d decided to extend my stay in Big D, having run into Flo Kilgore.

“I was just helping Flo out with a little investigative work,” I said, probably too casually.

“In Dallas,” he said, well aware Flo was an old flame of mine. “Covering a way-off-Broadway play, was she?”

“Not important.”

His jaw tightened. “It’s Kennedy, isn’t it? You took a left turn into that, out of the Billie Sol Estes thing. Or is that a right-wing turn?”