Ask Not

Chapter 12

Over the next several days, Flo Kilgore and I interviewed a dozen witnesses. I had no part in lining any of them up, nor did she reveal to me how she had done so. I gathered it had been accomplished with the help of her friend Mark Lane and his people, but I didn’t ask. I wasn’t the lead investigator. In fact, I was just a glorified bodyguard.

Toward that end, and properly sobered by the interviews with Janet, Rose, and Beverly of the infamous Carousel Club, I was carrying the nine millimeter again, despite my lack of a concealed weapons permit. This meant, in rather warm Texas weather — did this state know it was goddamn fucking November? — I had to wear a suit, a lightweight tan number courtesy of a Maxwell Street tailor who knew how to allow for a clunky handgun in a shoulder holster under the left arm.

A number of the witnesses went over the same ground, chiefly people present that day in Dealey Plaza who had seen puffs of smoke and other suspicious activities around the picket fence on the grassy knoll.

Like Lee Bowers, a railroad towerman for the Union Terminal Company, who the morning of the murder saw three unauthorized cars enter the parking lot, drive around, and leave. One driver was using a walkie-talkie. Bowers also saw two strangers — one middle-aged and heavyset, in a white shirt and dark trousers, the other in his mid-twenties in a plaid shirt, standing ten or fifteen feet from each other — both near the picket fence around the time of the shooting. He also reported seeing “a flash of light or smoke or something” that caused him to feel that “something out of the ordinary happened by that fence.”

Like building engineer J. C. Price, who was standing on the roof of the Terminal Annex building at the south end of the plaza, opposite the Grassy Knoll, who saw a man running, fast, away from the fence toward the railroad yard, carrying something that looked like a rifle.

Like railroad supervisor S. M. Holland, who saw rising from the knoll “a puff of smoke about six or eight feet above the ground right from under the trees.”

Like Dallas Morning News reporter Mary Woodward, who was standing in front and to the left of the fence and heard a “horrible, ear-shattering noise coming from behind us and a little to the right.”

Two of the interviewees were of particular interest, and import. The first was Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, who met us at the Statler, where we sat midday at a corner table in the currently underpopulated Coffee House and Grill, an offshoot of the Empire Room.

The off-duty deputy arrived in a light-blue short-sleeve sport shirt and dark-blue slacks. He was tall, slender, dark-haired, probably about thirty. He could easily have played a cop on television, though his Texas near-drawl might have typecast him as the deputy he was. He was fine with being recorded.

Flo ordered a coffee and I had a Coke on ice, but our guest said water would be fine. He had that odd combination of assurance and shyness that you sometimes find in his profession.

“Here I come all the way to Dallas,” Flo said, mildly flirtatious (he was a handsome man), “and the first deputy I meet isn’t in uniform.”

“Well, Miss Kilgore, I’m off-duty for one, and for another, I’m a plainclothes man. A detective, like Mr. Heller here.”

Any civil-service detective who was like me should be watched carefully, but never mind.

“You know how this works, Deputy Craig,” I said. “Just tell us your story.”

He did.

“The morning of November twenty-second,” he said, his voice a warm baritone, “Sheriff Bill Decker called in all his plainclothes men, myself included, and informed us President Kennedy’s motorcade would be coming down Main Street. He wanted us to stand out in front of the courthouse, at 505 Main, to sort of represent the sheriff’s office.”

I said, “Not to aid in security for the President?”

“No. We were told the security had been arranged by the Secret Service and the boys in blue, the Dallas police. We were to take no part in it whatsoever.”

Flo said, “So you were all just standing in front of the courthouse when the assassination took place?”

“That’s right. A bunch of flat feet standing flat-footed.” He frowned and I read embarrassment in it. “There was a lot of stupid animosity toward the President among the sheriff’s men — hell, I may have been the only one who voted for him. I remember around quarter after twelve, just standing there stoked to think I’d be like four feet from the President of the United States, I said to Deputy Sheriff Jim Ramsey that the motorcade was late. And Ramsey said, ‘Maybe somebody shot the son of a bitch.’ That really brought home how all the other men around me resented being there, felt they’d been forced to acknowledge the presence of someone they hated.”

I asked, “Did you sense anything wrong, before the first shot?”

His eyes narrowed. “Well, something was bothering me — like any trained cop, I was just looking around, checking for anything that seemed out of place. That’s when it occurred to me — there weren’t any officers guarding the intersections, or controlling the crowd, either. Not that there was anything I could do about it.”

“This is before the motorcade approached.”

“Right, but then suddenly cheers started and there President Kennedy was, him and his beautiful wife, smiling and waving, and his smile was infectious. Right then, I wasn’t a deputy sheriff, I was just an American citizen getting caught up in the moment. Then the limo made its turn onto Elm Street, and it was only seconds before the first rifle shot.”

For several seconds, nobody said anything.

He swallowed and took a deep breath and let it out. “You know, I’ll take a Coke myself.”

I called the waitress over, ordered it, and when she was gone, said to him, “Once you heard the shot, what did you do?”

His eyebrows flicked up and down. “Well, I ran like hell toward Houston — I was maybe fifteen feet from the corner, but before I got there two more shots rang out. I couldn’t believe it, it couldn’t be happening, but of course it was, and I kept running, ran across Houston and beside that little pool, on the west side, that reflecting pool, and I knocked a guy out of my way and he splashed in. I ran across the grass between Main and Elm, people scattered on the ground like they were gunshot victims, too — I even stopped and checked a mother and child to see if they were okay. The President was long gone by now... in every sense I guess.”

His Coke arrived and he had a sip.

Flo said, “We’re told the immediate reaction of many was to head for the so-called Grassy Knoll.”

He nodded. “I saw a Dallas Police officer run up the there and go behind the picket fence near the railroad yards. I followed his lead, and, man, behind that fence, that was complete confusion, utter hysteria.”

“So,” I said, “people were behind the fence at this point, and in the parking lot?”

“Oh yeah. I began questioning witnesses, and pitched in to help the Dallas uniformed guys restore order. When things got calmed down some, I started in questioning people who were standing around at the top of the incline, asking if anyone had seen anything strange or unusual before or during the shooting.”

“Had they?”

“Well, a number of people thought the shots came from the area of the Grassy Knoll or from behind the picket fence. But the most interesting, and I think reliable, witness was a Mr. Arnold Rowland. He and his wife were standing toward the top of the knoll on the north side of Elm. Something had caught Mr. Rowland’s attention waiting for the President to arrive. Approximately fifteen minutes before the motorcade got to Dealey Plaza, something caught his eye — a white man standing by the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building in the southeast corner, holding a rifle equipped with a telescopic sight.”

“Did Mr. Rowland alert anyone?”

“No. He thought they were Secret Service agents — a natural enough assumption for a citizen.”

“‘They’?”

“He also saw a darker-complected male — colored, or Latin maybe — pacing back and forth, in the southwest corner window. I passed Mr. and Mrs. Rowland along to another deputy, and I understand the Warren Commission has talked to them, although the wife didn’t see anything.”

He sipped his Coke again, and I sipped mine, letting him take a moment to further gather his thoughts. I could sense Flo’s excitement, which I shared — this felt closer to being there than had our tour on foot the other day.

“Well,” he said, allowing himself a sigh, “traffic was heavy by this point — the patrolman assigned to Elm and Houston had left his post, probably dealing the crowd and the chaos. I made my way over to the south side of Elm, to look for any signs of bullets striking the curb or the street or anything. By now it had been established that the President had been shot... this must have been around twelve-forty... and that’s when I heard a shrill whistle.”

“What kind of whistle?”

He held two fingers near his mouth. “Like a kid whistling, to get your attention. Coming from across the street. I turned and saw a white male in his twenties running down the grass from the direction of the book depository. A light-green Rambler station wagon was coming slowly west on Elm. The driver was a husky-looking Latin, with dark wavy hair, wearing a tan Windbreaker. Driver was looking up and leaning over at the guy running down toward him. The station wagon pulled over and picked him up — guy was wearing a long-sleeve work shirt and faded blue trousers.”

He leaned forward and his eyes moved from Flo to me.

He said, “I didn’t know it at the time, but it was Oswald, or somebody who looked a hell of a lot like him. I tried to cross Elm Street to stop them — the two of ’em were obviously in a hurry, and were the only people not running to the scene. That’s human nature when there’s a shooting or an accident, you know, go check out the scene. But they were heading away, so I immediately tried to cross the street, to take the two into custody. Only traffic was too heavy by now, and I couldn’t get to them before they drove off, going west on Elm.”

“You reported this?”

“You bet. Right away I brought it to the attention of the authorities at the command post at Elm and Houston, in front of the book depository. I told a Secret Service agent, or at least that’s how he identified himself, what I’d seen. He didn’t seem too interested. Sheriff Decker himself heard this exchange, and yanked me to one side and told me the suspect had already left the scene. That’s when I got pulled in on what was the first real search of the depository.”

“Decker led that?”

“No. He left that to me and a couple of other deputies. We went up to the sixth floor, which was very dark and dusty. The south side of the building seemed the logical place to start. Immediately we found three spent rifle shells that struck me as arranged, deliberately placed there, in plain sight on the floor by the window. A small brown paper lunch bag with some chicken bones in it was on the floor, too. I called across the room for Dallas Police ID man, Lieutenant Day, to bring his camera over, which he did. Then we started searching the rest of the floor.”

“The rifle hadn’t been found yet?”

He shook his head. “No. We did find it, but that’s a... story in itself.”

“Oh?”

He was nodding as he sipped Coke again, and for the first time he smiled, a small odd smile that didn’t last. “We neared the northwest corner of the floor when a deputy called out, ‘Here it is.’ I went over. Two rows of boxes were stacked close, but when you looked down between them, there it was, on the floor — a rifle on a strap with a telescopic sight, with the bolt facing upward. Lieutenant Day came over and so did Captain Fritz of Homicide. Day retrieved the rifle, activated the bolt, ejected one live round of ammunition. Day inspected the rifle briefly, then handed it to Fritz, who held it up by the strap and asked if anybody knew what kind of rifle it was. Deputy Weitzman, who knew a lot about weapons, used to run a sporting goods store, gave it a close look and said it was a 7.65 German Mauser.”

“What?” I said, sitting up. “Not Oswald’s famous piece-of-shit Mannlicher-Carcano?”

He shook his head. “No. A Mauser.”

“You’re saying at some point a switch was made?”

“I’m saying a deputy who knew his stuff said it was a Mauser, and a bunch of other law-enforcement officers agreed with him. Right about then, word of Officer Tippit’s shooting came in, and it was chaos again.”

He sighed and the waitress came over and asked if he’d like a refill. He looked up at her, nodded and smiled, his second of the afternoon; she smiled back — yes, he was handsome, all right.

I said, “That’s a hell of a story, Deputy Craig.”

“Oh, there’s more. As the afternoon went on, and information came in, and Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theatre, I became convinced that I had seen the assassin and his driver making their getaway from the scene in that Rambler. They would only have to drive six blocks west on Elm and they’d have been on Beckley Avenue, with a straight shot to Oswald’s rooming house. That might have given Oswald time to kill Tippit, which the official story really doesn’t — him taking a bus, getting stuck in traffic, getting off, catching a cab, and so on.”

“Did you ID Oswald as the guy picked up by the station wagon?”

He nodded and another smile emerged, briefly. “I did. Later that afternoon, I called Captain Fritz at the PD and gave him the description of the guy I saw, who Fritz said sounded like their suspect. He asked me to come take a look at him. I got to Fritz’s office a little after 4:30, was given a peek through the door at Oswald, sitting there by Fritz’s desk.”

Flo was watching and listening with the rapt attention you might give a Hitchcock thriller.

Craig continued: “I made the ID, and Fritz and I went in together. He told Oswald, ‘This officer saw you leave the crime scene,’ and Oswald, real defensive and sullen, said that he’d already told them that. Fritz then said, ‘He saw a Latin fella pick you up in a station wagon,’ and Oswald replied, leaning forward on Fritz’s desk, forceful as hell, ‘That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine’... who was apparently a friend of his wife’s, and he didn’t want to see her ‘dragged into this.’ Oswald seemed disgusted, like he’d been let down or even betrayed, and Fritz was sort of playing ‘good cop,’ because he almost seemed like he was consoling Oswald, who said, real depressed, ‘Now everybody will know who I am.’”

That sounded to me like an undercover agent whose cover had been blown.

“Miss Kilgore,” he said, sitting forward, firm but pleasant, “I will be glad to cooperate with you any way I can. This has smelled like a cover-up to me since the day it happened, and because I have refused to be part of it, my career has hit a dead end. I expect any day to be fired over one trumped-up thing or another. Just four years ago, I was named Officer of the Year. I nailed an international jewel thief. Do you know that? Officer of the Year.”

His voice was steady, but his eyes were moist.

Beyond the Dealey Plaza underpass — through which an assassinated president had been whisked away into history books that would one day be boxed and stacked in the nearby depository — stretched the city-within-the-city known as Oak Cliff. The boardinghouse where Lee Harvey Oswald had roomed, and the street where he possibly shot J. D. Tippit, and the movie theater where he was arrested, were all in Oak Cliff.

Two hundred seventy-five thousand of Dallas’s citizens also lived there, in the small, older homes close to downtown, and newer houses and apartments farther out. Chiefly a blue-collar community, with considerable natural beauty — in particular the woods and hills of Kessler Park — Oak Cliff was convenient for those working downtown. Young men on their way up would have a home in Oak Cliff only temporarily, relocating their families to more status-friendly North Dallas when raises allowed.

On a quiet side street in Oak Cliff’s newer section lived a young woman who was not on her way up, having already realized her dreams. Most likely she owned the modern six-room bungalow. Unlike much of Texas, the oak tree in her modest front yard realized this was autumn and was spilling leaves. A knock at an antique oval front door quickly summoned the lady of the house, petite, curvy, in her thirties, with a pixie-ish reddish-brown hairdo. Her prettiness was on the pixie side, too, heart-shaped face, wide-set brown eyes, pert nose, and dimpling smile.

“Well, look who’s on my doorstep,” our hostess said, in a lazy, Scarlett O’Hara — ish way. She looked primly festive in a brown-and-orange flower-print cotton dress with flounce sleeves and a full skirt. “Why, when I heard Flo Kilgore wanted to chat with me, I was simply flabbergasted. Come in, come in.”

We did, into a living room arrayed with Early American antiques. Only a few framed family photos on one wall — our hostess with two young boys at various ages — were indicative of this century. She had apparently cleaned the room to perfection, knowing a TV star was coming by.

Flo, looking chic in a royal-blue crepe dress with A-line skirt, gestured toward me with a white-gloved hand. “Mrs. West, this is my investigator, Nathan Heller, from Chicago.”

Mrs. West nodded with a smile that had turned forced as she said, “Mr. Heller, welcome to my home,” and I wondered if I’d somehow already managed to get off on the wrong foot with her. Probably she hadn’t expected Flo to bring anyone along.

“Miss Kilgore,” she said, her hands fig-leafed before her, “I would much prefer you call me Madeleine, or if you favor the formality, make it Mrs. Brown — my name by my late, first husband. I do not live with my present husband.”

“Certainly, Madeleine,” Flo said. “And call me Flo, please.”

“And I’m Nate,” I said with a smile that she returned without anything forced about it this time.

“I generally don’t indulge in alcohol in the afternoon,” she said, “but I can get you something, if you like. Or iced tea, perhaps?”

Flo said iced tea would be fine and I agreed.

“Shall we sit on the patio?” Madeleine asked, and led us through a modern kitchen to a sun-dappled cement slab on a backyard given over to flowers, vines, shrubs, and small trees. Flo and I were directed to black wrought-iron chairs with all-weather floral cushions at a matching round table under an umbrella. We sat as Madeleine returned to the kitchen to fetch glasses of iced tea.

When all three of us were settled, Flo removed the recording gizmo from her purse and Madeleine shook her finger in a gently scolding fashion. “I’m sorry, Miss Kilgore... Flo... but I won’t be recorded. You will, I’m afraid, have to take notes.”

“Well, that will be fine,” Flo said, and her smile was as forced as Madeleine’s earlier one had been.

As Flo dug in her purse, Madeleine said, businesslike, “Now, perhaps Mr. Lane didn’t make it clear, but I cannot at this time be quoted. Perhaps in the future. But not at this time.”

Flo, settling in with her spiral pad and ballpoint, said, “I understand. For the present, you’ll be an unnamed source, close to President Johnson.”

“That will be fine,” she said, and sipped at a straw as long as her tall narrow glass. “That will be fine.”

Since 1948, Madeleine West, or Brown, had been the mistress of Lyndon Baines Johnson. They had a son together, one who closely resembled his father (that had been clear in my glance at those family portraits). Senator Johnson had bought her this house in 1950, and seemed to support her well if not quite lavishly. Apparently she had married a man named Brown for cover purposes. Flo knew all of this going in, and knew as well that Mrs. Brown was irritated with her lover/provider, for spending so little time with her since assuming the presidency. Whether Mrs. Brown knew of another LBJ relationship with a White House secretary — which had also resulted in a child — was unknown.

I had already cautioned Flo that Mrs. Brown’s current irritation with her longtime benefactor might color what she shared with us this afternoon. Or — and this was more likely — that her sharing it with us was at once a blackmail threat and a life-insurance policy.

Flo asked, “When did you meet Lyndon Johnson?”

“Right after the Box 13 scandal, in the election of ’48 — perhaps you’ll recall the ballot-box stuffing accusations that dogged Lyndon?”

“So they were just accusations, then?”

“Oh, my no, Lyndon and his people did that, all right. Well, they were celebrating, and I must say that night is engraved in my memory. When that tall Texan walked into that ballroom, so charismatic and handsome... why, everyone there gravitated towards him, including this little girl. I was seduced by the very sight of him.”

I sipped my iced tea and managed not to make a face, either at the sugared Southern style of the drink or at Madeleine Brown’s True Romance magazine twaddle.

“At the time,” she was saying, “a girl just starting out, I was working for the Glenn Advertising agency, only a few steps away from the Adolphus Hotel, where the party was held... in the Crystal Ballroom?”

Was she asking me? I wasn’t there.

“He was just a typical Texan — both feet on the ground, smiling, warm, just terribly sexy. We were introduced by someone who did business with the agency, and I danced with the man of the hour, and it was so overwhelming, just to be in his arms.”

Looked like it was going to be a long afternoon.

“Lyndon invited me to another party that night. This was next week at the Driskill Hotel in Austin. I said yes, and he had someone fly me there and I waited for him in his suite, but the only party was the two of us. I became his second wife that night.”

Confused, I asked, “You were married?”

“No, my dear. But ‘mistress’ is a word with such unpleasant connotations. And when Steven was born, we became Lyndon’s other family, though I never had the privilege of being called First Lady.”

My hunch was that Johnson had his first lady when he was about thirteen.

Flo said, “Having a relationship with a married man must have been difficult for you.”

“Oh, yes, I’m a good Catholic girl, you know. My parents raised me that way, and after every time I was with Lyndon, in those first years, I would go to church and confess. But then I would just turn right around and sin again. Anyway, our relationship was hidden to the outside world. No one but Lyndon’s insiders ever knew.”

“And God,” I pointed out.

Flo shot me a flash of irritation.

But Madeleine merely nodded, saying, “And God, yes. A client at the agency was our cover-up man — he would alert me of Lyndon’s arrival in town, or arrange travel to Austin or elsewhere, and the hotel room where I was to be, and tell my boss I was needed on business.” She leaned toward Flo, woman-to-woman. “These are precious moments to me, fleeting moments to share with the man I loved.”

Flo asked, “You knew he would never be yours?”

“That’s right. There was plenty of romance — perfume, flowers, and material things, like this house and a new car every year. But there was also... do you embarrass easily, Mr. Heller?”

“I blush at card tricks,” I said.

Flo gave me another quick look.

“Well, then hold on to your hat,” she said (I was wearing the Panama by Stetson again), “because I intend to be frank, sir. While we certainly talked and enjoyed each other’s company, these stolen moments were primarily sexual. We both enjoyed each other that way. He was a wonderful lover. A stallion between the sheets.”

The thought of this cute dish in bed with LBJ was cringe-inducing.

Flo asked, “And when he found out you were expecting?”

“He was furious at first... then worried for us both. He was so terribly ambitious and already had his eye on the presidency. He feared the Mafia or somebody would find out about us and use it against him.”

Kind of like she was doing now.

Madeleine gestured with an open hand, as if introducing a debutante. “You see, Lyndon was created by two millionaires from here, H. L. Hunt and Sid Richardson. I know them both well. You look skeptical, Mr. Heller. Well, Dallas is a small city, and it was smaller still in the ’50s. Keep in mind, I was an account executive at the most important ad agency in town. I would figure and analyze budgets, direct client marketing, purchase media time, and travel to radio and TV stations all around the state. I rubbed shoulders with the high and the mighty. Take Hunt, for instance. I saw him every weekday morning — we parked our cars side by side in the same lot.”

I asked, “Why was Hunt backing Johnson? LBJ’s a liberal in many ways, and even a guy from Chicago knows that H. L. Hunt is just slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.”

Her smile was wide and those dimples were something. “Oh, yes, Hunt’s a John Birch Society boy. He’s the one that backed that ‘treason’ ad in the paper the day Kennedy came to town, and passed out circulars calling the President a traitor. But H.L. believed in Lyndon, and in the power of money. Funny thing is, he dressed like some poor old man. Richest man in America, in near rags.”

Flo asked, “What did Hunt think of John Kennedy?”

“Oh, hated him like poison, of course. But H.L. was practical, and patient.”

I asked, “Patient how?”

“Well, when Lyndon was going to lose the nomination for President, back at the ’60 convention? Hunt got together with old Joe Kennedy and worked out a deal for Lyndon to get on the ticket. That’s how he became VP, even though JFK couldn’t stand him. And Hunt said to me, ‘We may have lost a battle, honey, but we’ll win the war.’”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, Mr. Heller. Nate. I will say that after the assassination, H.L. told me, ‘Well, we won the war!’”

“You’re saying Hunt was behind the assassination.”

“I’d call him the... linchpin of the oilmen around here. Some say Lyndon was behind it, and I asked him, point-blank, right next to me in bed, and he said that was bullshit, that it was Texas oil and those... pardon my French... ‘fucking renegade intelligence bastards.’”

“For what reason?”

“Kennedy was calling for big cuts in the oil depletion allowance. He was stopping mergers under antitrust. The market dropped, steel fell. And he was gonna close a bushel of military bases here and overseas, and was gonna pull out of Vietnam. And he was talking about dismantling the CIA. I mean, he did fire that Allen Dulles and his second in command, our mayor’s brother. Mayor Cabell changed the motorcade route that day, you know... More iced tea, Nate?”

“No. No, I’m fine.”

She smiled impishly. “Here’s something nobody outside of Dallas knows. H. L. Hunt and Jack Ruby are pals. Jack used to set up these great poker games for Hunt — old boy’s an avid poker player.”

“You know Jack Ruby?”

“Everybody around here does. You do know the Carousel was right across from the Adolphus? If you passed Jack on the street, and you didn’t know him, he would stop you and give you his Carousel Club card. Jack was everywhere in those days. He knew everybody in the Dallas Police Department. He hated Kennedy, too.”

I gave her half a smile. “Madeleine, you don’t seem like the type to hang out at a strip joint.”

“Oh, I’m not. I don’t know if I was ever there during regular hours. They opened at seven-thirty P.M., I believe. No, Jack liked to be around important people — said they were ‘classy.’ He’d open up in the afternoon, or any time, really, for fellas like Hunt or anybody in politics or business to duck in for a little privacy or fun. Fix ’em up with gambling or girls. I heard Jack Ruby could have somebody beat up for fifteen bucks and killed for a hundred. No, Jack was a buddy.”

She seemed awfully cavalier about murder, for a nice Catholic girl serving up too-sweet tea on a patio surrounded by flowers.

Flo asked, “What was your reaction when Ruby killed Oswald?”

Madeleine paused. For once, the free-flowing words stopped and she chose them carefully. “I thought he was at the police station because somebody asked him to do that, and he had no other choice than to do it.”

Flo leaned forward. “I understand you saw Lyndon the night before the assassination.”

The dark eyes flashed and so did a smile. “Yes, he surprised me that night. I didn’t know he would be there. I was asked to attend a party at Clint Murchinson’s residence — he’s another of those oilmen behind Lyndon. His son John was living there at the time, because Clint had a stroke — like old Joe Kennedy — and was moved to more accommodating quarters... although he was there that night, all right.”

I asked, “What was the occasion of the party?”

“It was in honor of Edgar Hoover. He was a big pal of Clint’s and of Lyndon’s. Then, of course you know, Edgar was a lifelong bachelor, and had his friend Clyde Tolson with him to... you know, several of those oilmen were life-long bachelors, too. They all loved horse-racing and gambling, and they would go off on these holidays together, and, well that’s neither here nor there. Where was I?”

“The party,” Flo said.

“The party! Well, the guest list couldn’t have been more impressive. For example, Richard Nixon was there...”

I said, “Nixon was in Dallas during the assassination? Does he have an alibi?”

That last had been kidding on the square.

Flo said to me, “Nixon was in town for Pepsi Cola. They were a client of his legal firm.” She nodded to our hostess. “Please continue.”

“Well, Hunt was there, Sid Richardson, George Brown... George brought Hoover in on his private plane. All the oilmen, who I call the Great White Fathers. Bankers like John McCloy, who’s on the Warren Commission. And all kinds of society people from Dallas. But Lyndon didn’t get there till the party was breaking up, at eleven or even midnight. And he and Hunt and a few others, including Nixon and Hoover, went into the library and locked themselves in for, oh, maybe ten minutes.”

She paused to sip her iced tea.

“When Lyndon came out of there, he saw me and came up and he was red in the face. Like he’d got himself an instant sunburn in there. He had this just... dreadful look. I asked what was wrong, and he whispered, in this terrible grating voice, ‘After tomorrow, those damn Kennedys will never stand in my way again. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.’ I’ll never forget that. How could I?”

Flo said, “Do you realize what you’re implying?”

“I do. But I don’t know what happened in that room. I don’t know what was discussed. Maybe somebody shared inside news that Lyndon was being dropped from the ticket, and he intended to tell Jack Kennedy off.”

Or perhaps he’d been told of the imminent assassination and had worked himself up some righteous outrage over previous Kennedy humiliations to help rationalize his role in the crime, even if that role was simply foreknowledge.

Flo said, “Forgive me, Madeleine, but my tracking of the whereabouts of the major figures in the case puts Johnson at his hotel at the time. He was seen.”

She waved that off. “Lyndon had a look-alike cousin who filled in for him, if he was slipping out. Somebody who could pass for him, if it wasn’t up close or in conversation.”

I guess his mistress would know.

“Now, not everybody still at the party went into that private conference,” she was saying. “For example, Mac Wallace didn’t.”

I about fell out of the chair. Flo, who knew of Wallace through me, glanced my way, knowing I’d react.

I said, “You know Mac Wallace?”

“Sure do, bless his heart. He’s Lyndon’s number one hatchet man, and that’s not exactly a figure of speech. Mac made seventeen, eighteen people disappear that I know of, or anyway strongly suspect. You know, he was a man with a future, smart as a whip, but then he got mixed up in that love triangle with Lyndon’s no-good sister, and lost his head and shot that poor golfer. Lyndon bought his friend out of that jam, but you know, that was the end of any kind of normal life for Mac.”

“You don’t hold it against him, being a murderer?”

“Oh, I kind of feel sorry for him. He’s certainly a terrible man now, but once he was so promising.” Her eyes tightened as something occurred to her. “You know, we had this wonderful colored girl who all but raised my two boys when I went back to work at the ad agency. She was with us for many years. She traveled with us, and one time on a trip to San Antonio, I believe it was, she accidentally came in on Lyndon and me at a most inopportune moment. She scurried out, and Lyndon said, ‘Say good-bye to her.’ I thought he was joshing, but she disappeared the next day. No one has seen her since. I asked an attorney who’s been my go-between with Lyndon if he knew what became of her. And he said, ‘What do you think? Mac Wallace’... Now, Mr. Heller, you look dry as a bone. I simply have to refresh your tea.”

She took the glass from my hand and went off to do that while Flo and I looked at each other in blank amazement.

Then Madeleine was handing me back my tall glass and I said, “Doesn’t it bother you, these killings?”

She sat. “Killings bother any Christian, Mr. Heller. Why, I would mourn the untimely demise of any person. But these were political decisions. They were deemed necessary. We’re not talking about just any man. We’re talking about a powerhouse of a man who became the President of the United States. A man I love very much. He did what he had to do, to do the very good things that he has done. For Negroes. For the poor.”

I could think of one “poor” Negro he hadn’t done anything good for — the nanny who raised her boys.

Madeleine’s expression was grave now, her brown eyes boring in on me — no pixie in them at all. “Had the assassination not happened the day it did, Lyndon would probably have gone to prison — or at least the Kennedys would have shuffled him out of public life in some way. All because of his involvement with two good friends, two wonderful men, Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. Funny how some of the people who were going to testify against Lyndon found themselves in the middle of homosexual scandals, or like that Marshall fella, who shot himself five times.”

“Mac Wallace,” I said.

“Yes, Nate,” she said pleasantly. “Without a doubt. And Flo? Can you understand why it is that you can’t use my name? Next time Mac Wallace is in town, I don’t want him dropping by.”