Max Collins - Ask Not

“No, he committed suicide after I chased him and he crashed into that abutment. He knew all his evil deeds had finally caught up with him, and took the coward’s way out.”

“Dat’s what you say.”

“That’s what I would say to the cops and FBI, yeah. Also, that I’d been assisting Flo Kilgore in researching the assassination and this attempt on my life was the result. I would share all of my suspicions and observations, including the threat to the President’s life you made to me in this house, two years ago.”

Silence.

All around us were the framed aerial photographs of his properties, his empire, images of what he had to lose.

His face was stone but I could see his hands trembling. Had I frightened Carlos Marcello? Or was he about to explode in rage?

Finally he said, “What you want, Heller?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Nothing but what I told you. Spread the word up and down the line — Nate Heller is out of this. If I die a natural death, those tapes are to be destroyed. Anything suspicious happens to me, the whole house of cards comes down... capeesh ?”

I picked up the nine millimeter, and he flinched, just barely; then I tucked it back under my arm.

“Jack Ruby,” he said, “he a damn looney tune. Nobody gonna believe what dat fool say.”

“Maybe not. You can factor that in. But they bought it when he said he killed Oswald to spare Jackie and Caroline, remember.”

He was shaking his head, trying to convince himself. “Dat TV woman, she didn’t make no goddamn tape.”

“No, she did.” But he seemed fuzzy where Flo Kilgore was concerned, and I didn’t think he was faking. I asked, “You didn’t have anything to do with her death?”

“No. Hell no. I didn’t send no goddamn cleanup crew, neither. Who need dat kind of attention?”

I was actually starting to believe him. “Okay, Uncle Carlos. I do apologize for the intrusion. Thanks for the drink.”

He rose, puffing himself up some, making sure he still had his dignity, even if he was a squat little middle-aged wop in a silk purple robe, white pajamas, and bare feet. “You my guest, Heller. I walk you out.”

I allowed him to do so. I followed him down the stairs and through the blandly furnished house and back into the moon-swept night. Frogs, insects, and night birds were still singing. Dark shapes were loping across the sky, darker shapes moving in the murky waters.

“You know, Nate,” he said, quiet, his gruff voice just one small sound in a night of sounds, “if dat tape you talk about really do exist... you could sell it to me for a whole lotta loot.”

“Uncle Carlos, I have loot. What I can use is a life-insurance policy. And, you know, at my age? That’s not easy to get.”

“You got dat right,” he admitted.

“Anyway,” I said with a shrug, “you could never be sure I gave you all the copies.”

“Dere are ways.”

“Like taking me over to Willswood Tavern and working me over with a blowtorch? Wouldn’t do any good. I had other people salt those tapes around. I don’t know even know where they are.”

Marcello shrugged. “Dat’s the neat thing about havin’ a big organization. You can isolate yo’ seff.”

Maybe he meant “insulate,” but I didn’t correct him — I was his guest, after all.

With his barber-cum-bodyguard at his side, Uncle Carlos stood there watching me, a squat creature who happened to be the chief bullfrog of this particular swamp. I was just a fly who had maybe managed to put some distance between me and his darting tongue.

In the Galaxie, heading down the rutted road, I was shaking, something I could allow myself, now that I was out of Marcello’s presence. I checked my watch. Just enough time to get back to the Roosevelt, clean up, and catch Janet’s last set at the Sho-Bar. Beignets and café au lait were about all my jumpy stomach could stand right now.

There was one thing to attend to — I would have to ditch the Galaxie in the French Quarter, somewhere at least as deserted as Royal. I had rammed Mac Wallace, at high speed, and any decent criminology lab would likely find paint-chip transfer from one vehicle to another. Wallace had crashed nose first into that abutment, and any officer with any smarts would raise the question of damage to the Corvair’s tail. Of course, that assumed cooperation between two parishes, Jefferson and Orleans, so maybe I didn’t need to bother.

Still, after Janet and I returned, on foot, to the Roosevelt after the French Market, I best call the Galaxie in as stolen.

About halfway to the highway, I had to pull over to let the Lancer get narrowly by. The frowning faces of Leo and Freddie looked over at me; they were returning to Churchill Farms, to their boss, the Little Man. Almost certainly their trunk was crammed with a dead Cuban and a mustached corpse bearing a striking resemblance to a certain famous lone-nut assassin.

Maybe I was going to have fancy French doughnuts for breakfast, but I’d bet that swamp would be getting a heaping double helping of non-Yankee Louisiana Gumbo.

The district attorney of Orleans Parish sat at a surprisingly small, uncluttered desk, though a table behind him was piled with law books, notebooks, files, yellow pads, and assorted other evidence that work went on in this office of dark wood paneling opulent enough to date back to Huey Long’s era.

Or perhaps the desk seemed small because the man behind it was so big: Jim Garrison (that was the name on the door — not James) had stood to shake my hand, and I’d got a good intimidating look at the man. Six foot six, somewhat heavy-set, he cut an almost dapper figure in a light-blue three-piece suit with a dark-blue-red-and-white striped tie. He had handsome if slightly cow-eyed features with a high forehead and short, dark, well-barbered hair.

I was in one of several visitor’s chairs across from him as he leaned back in a high-backed swivel chair and puffed on a pipe, its smoke nicely fragrant.

“Mr. Heller, I’m happy to report,” he said, in a sonorous baritone, the words coming slowly yet distinctly, with only the faintest Southern accent, “that we have found your stolen rental car.”

“Well, that’s good news,” I said. “Of course, your two investigators could have just told me that at my hotel.”

He shrugged, as if that were of no import, but his eyes were hard and he seemed to blink only when he had to. “Well, there’s some red tape to burn through. I hope to arrange it so you don’t have to stay in town any longer than necessary.”

Was I being asked to leave by the morning stage?

“Not sure I follow, Mr. Garrison.”

Another shrug. “It’s just with a stolen vehicle, you might expect to be involved with various legal formalities. But the car wasn’t stolen from you, Mr. Heller — technically it was stolen from the rental company.”

“Well, all right.”

For this I’d been taken to the district attorney’s office? Had the unlikely happened, and Orleans and Jefferson Parishes linked that Galaxie to the Mac Wallace fatality?

He swung halfway around to the table behind him and reached for an item, then swiveled back and tossed a Life magazine on the desktop. From 1958, it had Kim Novak on the cover posing as a pretty witch with a cat. I knew this issue well, because it also featured an article called “Chicago Private Eye Goes Hollywood.”

“I had one of my people,” he said with a tight, sleepy smile, “go pick this up at the library this morning.”

It was only ten-thirty now. What the hell?

He laid the magazine out flat and flipped it to the article and the pictures of me, mostly with celebrity clients. “I was familiar with your name, Mr. Heller. Vaguely familiar, but familiar. This isn’t the only article covering your... exploits.”