Max Collins - Ask Not

She reached across the table and clasped my hands with both of hers. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you, baby. I’ve missed you.”

“You look great. Doing all right? Any... problems?”

She shook her head and the tower of red hair bobbled just a little; her makeup was typically over the top, green eye shadow, heavy eyebrows, lipstick as red as a candied apple — she was everything a man could want, but would never admit.

“You’re carrying your little .22 in your purse?”

She nodded. “There hasn’t been anything like trouble, Nate. Uncle Carlos was in a few nights ago and he talked to me, so friendly and sweet. You know I’m staying upstairs, right? I probably shouldn’t. I mean, I’m sleeping with that little rod under my pillow.”

“Rod” was such a silly old term. Yet there was nothing at all silly about her concern.

Her lips smiled, her eyes begged. “Why don’t you bunk with me while you’re in town, Nate?”

“What, two rods can live safer than one?”

“Don’t make light.”

“Why don’t you come stay at the Roosevelt with me? That’s one joint Marcello doesn’t own.”

She looked past me. “When I think of poor Rose, her... her skull crushed like a fuckin’ melon. Jesus!” She shuddered.

Her hands were still clasping mine. I moved my hands around so I was clasping hers, and I squeezed. “Rose was a loose cannon, honey. She was a junkie and a flake. They know you have your head on your shoulders.”

Her chin crinkled. “Well, it could be on the shoulder of a road getting squished, you know. And Flo Kilgore, she was no junkie whore.”

“Not a whore, but maybe a... junkie of sorts.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was addicted to pills and she drank too much. It may have been accidental. And that was Manhattan — all the other deaths have been in Texas, and maybe a couple in Louisiana. I’m going to look into those.”

She gave me a smirk of a half smile. “You don’t think Uncle Carlos has friends in New York?”

I didn’t want to tell her that if Flo had been murdered, those responsible were likely CIA, not mob. That would spook her... so to speak.

“Flo may have been murdered,” I said with a nod. “But there’s no question that Rose was killed.”

She shivered. “And I set up that interview with her for you and Miss Kilgore. Nate, you gotta do something about this. You have got to stop these fuckers.”

I shifted subjects, slightly. “What about your friend Dave Ferrie? Is he coming tonight?”

She nodded. “I set it up for nine — it’s almost that now. Like I said on the phone the other day, he’s in here half the evenings anyway. Uncle Carlos lets him run a tab. And he can buy sailors drinks and try to get lucky. Rest of the time he’s over at Dixie’s Bar. That’s for the gay set.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Just that you were a friend of mine who asked to meet him. I told him you and Guy Banister were buddies back in Chicago, like you said.”

Ferrie had worked for Banister, according to a reporter friend of mine on the Times-Picayune. Truth was, I’d always despised Banister, a toad of a man who had been Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago FBI office through much of the ’40s and early ’50s. But he’d been a heavy drinker whose erratic behavior got him fired. He’d gone on to be the New Orleans chief of police till he got bounced for the same reasons five or six years ago. In recent years he’d been running a PI agency.

“Listen,” she said, pulling her hands gently free, “I have to get backstage to get ready. I’ll spend a night or two with you at the Roosevelt, if you like. They got room service and my dump upstairs don’t.”

I smiled. “I’d like that. When do you get off? I’ll take you out for something to eat.”

“In this wacky town? Anyway, I got sets damn near all night. If you’re an early riser in your old age, you could pick me up at five A.M. We could go to the poor boy stand on St. Claude — they’re open twenty-four hours — or maybe beignets and café au lait at Café Du Monde?”

“That’s worth a wake-up call. When’s your last set?”

“Four.”

“I’ll come watch and then we’ll go have poor boys or doughnuts or some damn thing. Then I’ll take you back to the Roosevelt and sleep all day.”

“Well,” she said with a wicked glistening red smile, “we’ll stay in bed all day, anyway... There he is. There’s your man.”

She slid out of the booth and headed quickly off into the smoky darkness of the club, her bottom in those jeans more provocative than Nikki Corvette’s bare one.

I glanced toward the customer who’d just entered, and was making a beeline toward me displaying a friendly smile, hand outstretched.

At first, in the dim lighting, he looked normal enough, a fairly big guy, around six feet, maybe two hundred pounds, his wide oval face home to large dark eyes, an anteater nose, a rather small thin-lipped mouth, and a pointed chin. He wore a rather jaunty golf cap and a long-sleeve white shirt with narrow dark tie and dark slacks.

Still seated in the booth, I looked up at him while we shook hands, his grip firm but clammy. This close, I could well understand why his appearance had been described more than once as bizarre — the cap rested on what appeared to be a red mohair wig, and Groucho-ish eyebrows had been fashioned out of strips of matching carpet. The effect was clownish.

“Nathan Heller, you are a famous man,” he said, in a voice whose nasal quality was offset somewhat by an authoritative manner. No Southern accent, more Midwestern.

“Not really,” I said. “But that’s kind of you. Sit, please.”

On closer inspection, his clothing looked rumpled, slept-in, and he had the distinct bouquet of BO. What did this guy have against soap?

“I should be more clear,” he said. “You’re famous in the sense that you’ve been featured in some popular magazines. But in the circles I move in, you’re a kind of hero.”

“Really.” My God, this son of a bitch stunk.

“You’re the man who started it all.”

“I am?”

He got a pixie-ish smile going, and his red-mohair eyebrows wiggled. “You were the midwife to...” And his whisper was barely audible over “Basin Street Blues,” as Nikki Corvette bumped-and-ground. “... Mongoose.”

Jesus, did every Tom, Harry, and dick know that little piece of history?

Well, maybe I could make hay out of it.

“I understand you’ve really done your bit,” I said.

“Thank you, sir. That is much appreciated, sir.”

“What can I buy you to drink?”

“They make a surprisingly good Ramos gin fizz here, considering the lowbrow nature of the establishment.”

“Well, let’s get you one, Dave... or do you prefer David?”

“Oh, I don’t stand on ceremony. Make it David.”

I tried to figure that one out while I waved over a waitress and ordered him his fizz. I declined getting a refill on my rum-and-Coke. This kook would require all my brain cells.

“So you knew Guy? What a guy!” He laughed at this would-be witticism. “How far back did you two hombres go?”

Hombres?

“All the way to the Dillinger shooting,” I said. “He was there, you know. He was FBI, I was Chicago PD.”

“Yes, he told me all about that fateful night. How his bullet brought Mr. Big Cock down!”

Okay, that was wrong in so many ways, starting with Banister not being one of the shooters, plus it hadn’t really been Dillinger that night. But that’s another story, and as for the size of Johnny D’s dingus, I couldn’t confirm or deny.

“You know, it was a tragic loss,” he said, shaking his head, almost dislodging the cap. “For such a big man with a such a big heart to have that very heart attack him.”