Max Collins - Ask Not

Shep, who’d listened intently behind a furrowed-brow expression, asked, “Did you report this?”

“I’m reporting it to you.”

“So the police know nothing of it.”

“No.”

“What about Martineau, at the Secret Service?”

“No.”

“It was one of the Cubans, though.”

“I’m not absolutely sure. I was busy at the time, getting my ass sideswiped. Pretty damn sure, though.”

“ Which Cuban?”

“Ramon Rodriguez. According to the ID he had on him last year, anyway. I was in on the interrogation. He and his pal Victor Gonzales said they were Cuban exiles from Florida up to look at investing in real estate here in Chicago. According to them, their landlady must have been crazy, saying they had high-power rifles in their room, with the President’s motorcade route marked on maps and in a newspaper.”

Shep had stopped sipping his Gibson; he didn’t take things much more seriously than that. His hands were folded before him like a minister listening patiently to a parishioner’s problems.

“I understand the Secret Service elected not to hold them,” Shep said.

“And isn’t that odd?”

“Why, were any rifles found? Or that map and the newspaper?”

“No. But once the President canceled his trip to Chicago, the two suspects were released. Just flat-out fucking sprung.”

He fluttered his eyelashes like a modest Southern miss. “I don’t see what that has to do with me, and, uh... my resources.”

I leaned forward. Spoke very softly. “Shep, don’t shit a shitter. Consider who it is you’re talking to.”

I didn’t have to say it. The Company and Cuban exile factions had been in league long before the Bay of Pigs fiasco and well after. The exiles, like the Mob, were part of Operation Mongoose and the plot to assassinate Castro.

As was I, goddamnit.

“I helped you people out,” I said. My tone was casual, conversational, befitting the setting; but he could hear the edge. “I wish to hell I hadn’t, but I did. Now I am one of the handful outside of your rarefied circles who knows for a certainty that a conspiracy took down the President.”

“Jesus, Nate,” he whispered.

Bunny Vicki arrived with my gimlet and another Gibson for Shep. She did the classic Bunny dip as she served them; she was a lovely blonde of maybe twenty-three and for a night with her, you would gladly kick your grandmother’s teeth out. And yet right now I couldn’t have cared less.

When she was gone, I said, “But I haven’t done anything about it. I didn’t survive all these years in Chicago not knowing when to back off. If Uncle Sam wants the world to think a lone nut pulled off that hit, I can look the other way. Just don’t tell me it’s patriotism.”

Very quietly he said, “I’m sorry, Nate, but it is patriotism. Suppose this thing were traced back to Castro? You and I both know the Beard had a perfectly good motive for this terrible thing.”

Yes he did. Hadn’t the Kennedy administration tried repeatedly to kill him?

“And how,” Shep continued softly, “do you suppose the public would have reacted to their beloved President bein’ killed by a Commie dictator just ninety miles from our shore?”

I said nothing.

“President Johnson, he wasn’t about to risk nuclear war, nuclear annihilation. Director Hoover submitted evidence indicating this Oswald character was a pinko nut from way back, and from everything I understand, the Warren Commission will be reaching that same conclusion.”

Rubber-stamping it was more like it.

I sipped the gimlet. “Say, isn’t your old boss Allen Dulles on that ‘blue-ribbon’ commission? Who was fired by Jack Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs screwup? Where was he on November 22, 1963?”

“Careful, Nate...”

“I’m trying to be. I did my best to save Jack Kennedy’s life last November, and a hell of a lot of good it did him or me. I’m on to more important matters.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, are you people trying to kill me, Shep?”

“No!” He glanced around at the other diners, knowing his voice had jumped up over the jazz and the chatter. Much softer but with equal force, he said, “Hell no.”

“Why should I believe you?”

He frowned, and actually looked hurt. “Why ask me, if you’re not prepared to believe me? You think you’ve become a loose end, is that it? Well, I can assure you the Company doesn’t view you that way. We view you as an asset, and a valuable one.”

“Is this where I say, ‘Gee whiz, thanks’?”

“No. But I understand your... bitterness. Your boy might well have been killed by that car.”

“I won’t have my son put in harm’s way, Shep. I will not fucking have it. I can take care of myself, but he’s just a boy. Do I have to tell you? You’re a father. How far would you go if a child of yours was threatened or... worse?”

He drew in a breath, let it out slowly. “No, you don’t have to tell me. But I would ask you a favor.” He sat forward. “Should another attempt be made, don’t assume the worst about me and the Company. Report it to me. I will try to help.”

“Is that right?”

“I will, Nate. I swear to you. What more can I say?”

“Plenty.”

He took a quick sip of the Gibson, then his drawl disappeared into a more rushed, if hushed, cadence. “It’s possible rogue elements were involved in this awful thing. Don’t blame the Company itself, man. Christ, I would like to root those elements out myself.”

“My God, but I would like to believe you.”

He sighed. Actually fucking sighed. “The nature of the world, Nate, is that you can’t be sure. The business of spycraft is lying, and I could be lying to you right now.”

“Your brand of reassurance lands on the soft-sell side, I’d say.”

“Nate, I’m just asking you not to assume it’s us, if this should happen again. And if it should happen again, let me know. I will try to help. And frankly... and it pains me to say it...”

“Say it.”

He shrugged just a little. “If the Company wants you dead, Nate, you’re going to be dead. Hell, if they want me dead, so am I. So you might as well trust me, Nate. There really is no other option.”

The jazz combo was playing variations on “Once in a Lifetime.”

“Fine,” I said. “I get that. I’m a big boy. But, Shep?”

“Yes?”

“If I see that Cuban again, I’m going to kill him.”

Another little shrug. “Fair enough... Shall I wave that little cottontail over and order us dinner? I’m going to have red meat tonight, and screw my doctor and his damn cholesterol.”

What the hell. I let Uncle Sam buy me a decent meal.

That, and the words he’d given me, was the best I could hope for out of Shep tonight. For what it was worth, I believed him. He was as close to a decent man as I knew in that foul line of work.

And, anyway, the CIA wasn’t the only group that might have sent someone to tie off a loose end named Nathan Heller.

Chasen’s on a Saturday night could be tough to get into. But Johnny Rosselli wouldn’t have had any trouble getting a reservation at the venerable West Hollywood eatery.

Tonight he sat in a curved, tufted-leather-upholstered booth entertaining a beautiful blonde starlet in what was apparently a one-sided conversation. She didn’t have to talk, not in a black low-cut gown like that, with natural cleavage those Bunnies back home might envy.

The booth they shared was big enough for four or maybe six, but Rosselli rated the real estate — he had long been a mob conduit for Hollywood. Around sixty but fit, the Silver Fox was handsome enough to be an actor with that flashing smile, immaculately cut and combed silver-gray hair, and blue-gray eyes set off by the kind of tan you could get shuttling between Vegas and Hollywood. Patrons not in the know might even have taken him for a motion-picture industry bigwig, a producer maybe, with his sleek gray suit with black lapels (Pierre Cardin?) and darker gray tie with matching silk breast-pocket hanky.