Ask Not

Chapter 18

Heading along US Highway 90 East, I almost missed the turnoff to Churchill Farms. I hadn’t been the driver the one time I’d been there before. But my previous visit to the 6,400-acre swampland domain of Carlos Marcello had been nothing short of memorable, and my only real problem was spotting the turn at night. The moonlight helped.

For all of Marcello’s visionary talk two years ago, about developing this property, nothing had changed. It still surprised me there was no gate, that this was not a private road. The lane remained a narrow strip of dust-generating rutted dirt, with barely enough shoulder on either side to allow cars going in opposite directions to make room for each other — not that I met any.

As I glided by in the Galaxie, the lights were on in the small, rustic-looking shrimp-packing plant with its Negro workers, one of Marcello’s legitimate businesses. Otherwise, the full moon was providing all the illumination, lending an otherworldly beauty to the marshy landscape on my either side, untamed foliage shimmering in a gentle breeze, washed ivory. Dead cypress and living willows seemed to keep a watchful eye, like overseers in slave days.

The clearing came sooner than I remembered, the marshland making way as if Moses had parted it to take room for the barn-turned-farmhouse, its white paint job given a ghostly glow by the moon, several narrow downstairs windows burning yellow, the rest black (including those upstairs). It was almost one in the morning, after all. The red-painted shed off to the right had an abandoned look, no milling chickens and goats this time of night. Two cars were parked on the gravel apron beside the farmhouse — the familiar bronze Caddy and a sporty Dodge, a new model called Lancer, coincidentally also the Secret Service designation for President Kennedy. Had Carlos Marcello learned the meaning of irony after all?

Almost as if he were still perched there from my previous visit, Jack — Marcello’s barber, chauffeur, and bodyguard, all in one tall, burly package — was sitting on the top step of the little cement porch, wearing a light-blue leisure suit, long legs angled in two directions as he smoked a cigarette, adding a little fog to an otherwise cloudless night. Well, anyway, he’d been sitting when I first entered the clearing. By the time I pulled up a few feet from the house, he was on his feet and approaching with a.38 revolver in his hand, calling, “Guys! Guys!”

They were out of the house before I was out of the car, two thugs in the kind of hats and sport shirts and slacks you wear on a golf course, if you’re a fan of pastels, that is.

Hands high in the air, I said, loud, in a rush of words, “Jack, it’s Nate Heller! Remember me? I have an emergency I need to talk to Uncle Carlos about.”

The other two had slipped past Jack on their way toward me, also with guns in hand; but he told them, “Hold up!”

Then he moved through them like a cop through a crowd and planted himself, facing me, perhaps four feet away. His revolver in hand, but pointing down, he looked at me skeptically.

He wasn’t exactly threatening as he said, “I remember you, Mr. Heller. But it’s late and Mr. Marcello doesn’t appreciate drop-in guests.”

“It’s an emergency, Jack. And I understand Uncle Carlos doesn’t have a phone out here.”

“That’s right. This is where he gets away from it all. I will tell him you stopped by, and you can probably meet with him tomorrow at the Town and Country.”

“It can’t wait. You check with him.”

“You call at the motel in the morning. I’ll make sure you get an appointment.”

“He’s not going to like it, Jack, if you don’t check with him. I said it was important.”

He thought about that, but seemed about to say no, despite my insistence.

So I insisted some more: “There are some freshly dead business associates of his that he’s going to want to know about. Right now.”

Jack frowned. Then, very slowly, he nodded. “Okay. I’ll wake the boss. You stay put.”

He turned to go back inside, but paused on the way to whisper orders to the pair of fellow bodyguards. Then he glanced over his shoulder at me and gave me an almost smile. “Mr. Heller, this is unusual enough that I’ve instructed my friends to keep you covered. No offense is meant.”

“None taken,” I said.

One flunky, young and skinny in shades of green, including his wide-banded straw porkpie, stood facing me at my left, maybe six feet away; similarly positioned to my right was an older, beefier guy with pockmarks and a mustache and shades of yellow attire, including an Ivy League cap. Today’s male fashions were definitely not doing thugs any favors. On the other hand, the green porkpie’s Colt Python, a.357 Magnum, and his partner’s Smith and Wesson.44, went a long way toward making up for it.

My nine-millimeter Browning was in its shoulder holster, by the way, a tight fit in a suit not cut for it. I also had a Colt Woodsman .22 stuck in my waistband, though concealed by my suit coat (one button buttoned), and a little Mauser .22 auto in my left-hand suit-coat pocket. These handguns had been retrieved from the late Rodriguez and the Oswald look-alike, when I’d returned to the scene to do a little of my own cleanup.

Not much had been necessary. I just wanted some extra firepower, if I was going midnight-calling on Uncle Carlos. And I did need to spend some time at the scene of Mac Wallace’s tragic suicide, wiping off my fingerprints from a few surfaces — again, not many: the towel and garden hose, for example, were not conducive to prints. The window and its handle, however, were.

“Leo,” the shades-of-green younger one said in a cornpone drawl, “I believe the old gent’s heavy. Don’t the old gent look heavy to you?”

He had noticed the bulge under my left arm.

“Good eye, Freddie boy,” Leo said. “Give the man a frisk. You’re gonna have to stand for a frisk, bud.”

“No,” I said.

They both looked at me like kids who just learned the truth about Santa Claus.

“Those weren’t Jack’s orders,” I said, nothing confrontational in my tone. “Keep your distance and we’ll stay friendly.”

This seemed to offend Leo, though his irritation would have carried more weight if he hadn’t been wearing that dumb cap. He growled, “What makes you think Jack’s the one gives the orders around here?”

“Because I saw him give you orders. Don’t overstep.”

Leo frowned. “Frisk him, Freddie.”

I laughed.

Freddie glared at me. “What’s so funny?”

“It just sounded funny,” I said with a shrug. “‘Frisk him, Freddie.’ Sounds like a British Invasion tune.”

Hurt, Freddie put his Colt away in his own shoulder holster and said, “You gonna stand for a frisk, smart-ass, like Leo says.”

When he stepped toward me, I shoved Freddie into Leo, and they both went down. I kicked Leo in the wrist and his.44 popped out and landed in the gravel a foot or so away.

By the time the door opened and Jack came back out, with Uncle Carlos right behind him — the five-foot criminal kingfish wearing a purple silk robe belted over white pajamas in his bare feet — they found me pointing the nine millimeter down at the two flunkies.

“What de fuck is dis, Heller?” Marcello demanded. “What is dis shit?”

The bullnecked, broad-shouldered little mob boss brushed past Jack and barreled down the steps in my direction. Walking on gravel in his bare feet caused him no more trouble than a Hindu fakir treading over hot coals.

“They got frisky,” I said. “In the take-my-gun-off-me sense. Good evening, Uncle Carlos. Or is that good morning?”

“Let’s hear it, Heller,” Marcello demanded. He was frowning, making his dark wide-set eyes disappear into slits. His receding hairline gave several veins plenty of room to stand out his forehead.

“We shouldn’t discuss it,” I said, “in front of the children.”

His nostrils flared. “Dis is funny, is it? You bargin’ in on me, middle of the night? Roustin’ my boys?”

“Apologies. Stressful evening.” I gestured with my free hand, still training the nine millimeter on the two men down on the ground. “Jack, come over here, please.”

Jack glanced at Marcello — he was at his boss’s side now — and the Little Man, though sneering, nodded his permission.

With my free hand, I held my suit coat open, exposing the automatic in my waistband. “Take it,” I told the hulking barber. “And get the little one out of my left suit-coat pocket, too.”

He did so, then backed away, and displayed the weapons to Marcello, who seemed more confused than angry now.

I said, “I lifted that hardware off two dead men who tried to kill me tonight.”

Again Jack glanced at his boss, looking for an explanation that Marcello didn’t (or maybe couldn’t) provide.

I put my nine millimeter away and the two flunkies on the ground looked at each other and then at their boss and the barber, too, not knowing what to make of my action or what to do about it.

“Go on, get up,” I said, not harshly. “Leo, you can collect your.44. Just both of you, back off.”

They did.

“This is a friendly call,” I said to one and all, “but I’m not going to give up my gun. Too much shit has gone down tonight for me to take that kind of chance.”

“And comin’ out here like dis,” Marcello said, his curiosity getting the better of his rage, “ain’t takin’ a chance?”

“Uncle Carlos, I am assuming,” I said, not exactly telling the truth, “that you had nothing to do with the attempt on my life tonight. But I thought you should have the opportunity to deal with the mess I made, since this is your turf, and the dead men had ties to you.”

“What kinda fuckin’ ties, Heller?”

“They were involved in... helping you remove a stone from your shoe.”

Livarsi ‘na pietra di la scarpa!

His dark inverted-V eyebrows rose so high, they formed straight lines momentarily; the dimpled chin jutted out over his second, fleshy one. His dark eyes were moving with thought.

Then he summoned a somewhat convincing smile for me and gestured with his pudgy hands, saying, “Come have a chat wid me, Nate. You boys cool your heels, ya hear? Dis be a friendly chat.”

Following his lead, I walked with Marcello over to where the clearing gave way to marsh. Where just two years before, he had painted pictures in the air of condominiums and shopping malls and theaters and stadiums. Right now the swamp stretched out in endless contradiction of that dream, the moonlight making silver highlights on the rippling water. Birds and bugs and frogs were singing their individual songs that somehow made a unified musical statement, as if to say they had been here before man and would be here after man.

“So, Nate, my frien’... what da fuck dis about, anyway?”

“Uncle Carlos, ever hear of a guy named Mac Wallace?”

He drew in some cool night air, then nodded as he let it out.

I asked, “You’re aware that he was LBJ’s man?”

The dark eyes squinted at me. “Was?”

“I killed him tonight.”

“Did you now.”

I might have just told him the score of a game he had nothing bet on.

But I elaborated: “Rigged up a suicide-and-car-crash combo that will have everybody guessing. On that crushed-shell lane under the Huey Long Bridge approach... Jefferson Parish side. It’s right by the bridge, so it’s gonna get noticed. But you may still have time to deal with the other two.”

“What other two would dat be?”

“A Cuban named Rodriguez. The other I don’t know by name... but he’s the look-alike who went around Dallas, last November, advertising Lee Harvey’s bad intentions.”

He frowned and nodded and took me gently by the arm. We strolled back over to Leo and Freddie, to whom he had me give a more specific rundown on the corpses and their whereabouts. Then Marcello gave the pair quick but detailed instructions, getting a lot of nods in return, and soon they climbed in the Dodge Lancer and stirred gravel peeling out.

“Let’s go in de house, Heller,” Marcello said, through a forced smile, then led the way up the porch steps, pausing to say to his all-purpose bodyguard, “You keep watch out here, Jackie boy, hear?”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said.

We did not sit in the kitchen this time listening to Connie Francis records. We did share drinks again, although this time I asked for rum and got it, with Uncle Carlos giving himself a healthy slug of Scotch, as before. This was the second floor of the renovated barn, the handsomely appointed conference room, its wood-paneled walls arrayed with framed aerial photographs of Marcello properties.

We sat at the long, polished-wood conference table, in two of ten executive-style black-leather chairs around it. My put-upon host was at the head of the table, which was only fitting. And for this one night, at least, I sat at his right hand.

“What da fuck happen t’night, Nate?” he asked. “Don’t spare de damn details.”

“It started at the Sho-Bar,” I said. “I met with your man David Ferrie there.”

I gave him the same routine I had Ferrie — that I’d been helping Flo Kilgore, just to keep an eye on what she was up to, but discovered witnesses were dying and had no desire to be the next target of a post-assassination cleanup crew.

“Dat homo ain’t my ‘man,’” Marcello said, meaning Ferrie, “but he sho nuff has his uses. Smart fella for a fourteen-karat queer — he’s workin’ on a cancer cure, can ya dig dat? Apartment’s fulla lab rats, can ya picture dat?”

This struck me as an evasive response. He was talking about one thing while thinking about something else. I didn’t want to give him time to scheme.

Pressing, I said, “Those three tonight, Uncle Carlos, who took me for a spin. We both know they were at Dealey Plaza.”

“Lot of folks at de Plaza dat day.”

“You weren’t. You were in New Orleans, in court, beating the case Bobby Kennedy had against you.”

“True dat. And David Ferrie, he sittin’ next to me.”

“Well, Wallace and the Cuban and ‘Oswald,’ they were in Dealey Plaza all right, each on a hit team, maybe the same one. Must have been at least three such teams, each with shooter, backup, wheelman.”

Marcello just shrugged.

I said, “I’m assuming this team took it upon themselves to start disposing of witnesses. To protect their own asses.”

“Dat make sense, sho nuff.”

“This Warren Commission is a whitewash job, but it still doesn’t hurt, discouraging citizens from sharing what they know. And you don’t get more discouraged than dead.”

“Dat’s true.”

“But with journalists like Flo Kilgore and Mark Lane and dozens of others digging into the case, Uncle Carlos, this thing is not going away. Killing the President of the United States is not just another contract kill.”

“Nobody said dat it was.”

“And this one had way too many players. Something this ambitious, it’s hard to contain.”

“You ain’t wrong.”

“I choose to believe that you didn’t send those men to kill me tonight, Uncle Carlos. Or, for that matter, to kill Rose Cheramie or Hank Killam or Guy Banister or any of the others.”

“Banister, he die of a heart attack. Dem others I never hear of.”

“Fine. Maybe you didn’t hear about that Rodriguez character, either, trying to run me down a few weeks ago. And almost killing my kid in the bargain? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

His upper lip curled back over feral teeth. “Ya know, Nate, I like you. I like you just fine. You got brains and nerve and I like dat. But you know what I don’t like? Is fuckin’ threats.”

“We’re just having a friendly drink in the wee hours,” I said. “I figure it took about nine people, positioned around Dealey Plaza in high buildings and at that fence on that grassy slope, to help you and your powerful pals take that stone out of your shoe. Three of them died tonight, and some of the rest may already be dead. Frankly, I think maybe it would be helpful to you, to have all nine dead.”

“Dere’s a case could be made.”

“At least one, I figure, is European. Hot-shot sniper from Corsica, and with your overseas connections, he was probably one of your contributions. Trafficante kicked in the Cubans, Giancana pitched in on Nicoletti, and maybe John Rosselli, who I figure for an organizational role. The spooks surely provided some top talent, not to mention fake Secret Service IDs and other goodies.”

“Seem like you figure a lot, Heller.”

“I really don’t know all the details. All the players. I don’t want to know. I just want to go back to Chicago and forget about it. And particularly forget I ever heard the words Operation Mongoose.”

The eyebrows hiked over the glasses, their inverted V’s flattening out again. “Den... dis thing is over for you, Nate, t’night? Dat right?”

“It’s over if you let it be over. I don’t know if you sent out that cleanup crew, Uncle Carlos. I really don’t. But I respectfully ask that you approach all your high-powered friends, who backed those high-powered rifles, and let them know that I am on the sidelines now. That, yes, I took offense when that Cuban tried to run me and my son down, and so I took the bastard out. And Mac Wallace, well him I encountered on another matter — he killed a client’s husband — so I took him out, too.”

“Pretty active ol’ boy, dis Nate Heller.”

“Maybe so. But it ends there. Ends here. Okay?”

That big puffy oval face had a friendly expression that I didn’t like at all. “Not sure I know what kinda of powerful folks you mean, Nate... but, far as it goes, why sure. I spread de word. Glad to do it.”

“I’m not fucking around, Uncle Carlos. You send the message to everybody from H. L. Hunt to your assorted spook buddies to Trafficante and Mooney and these various demented Cubans all the way up to the Oval Office. Anybody comes near me or my son, and this whole goddamn thing will unravel like a cheap sweater.”

“My, my, Nate. Such colorful talk. Like one of dem private eyes on TV or in de paperbacks. Kind dat never gets killed.”

“No, I can be killed. Anybody can be killed, Carlos. If history has taught us anything at all, that’s it.”

I reached under my arm and withdrew the nine millimeter and set it on the shiny wood next to my glass of rum.

“Why, for example, right now I am sitting in a room with Carlos Marcello. I talked my way in, and I could shoot my way out — you only have that barber of yours downstairs at the moment. And you would be dead. Anybody can be dead, Carlos. Ask Jack Kennedy.”

His expression was blank, but it was taking him a lot of effort to keep it that way. For instance, he did not allow his eyes to drift anywhere near the gun by my hand.

“I know better than to get tough with a man like you, Uncle Carlos. I know not to threaten. Threats are such empty things. So here’s a promise.”

He frowned.

Time for the big lie.

I said, “The tape that Flo Kilgore made of Jack Ruby spilling every detail about Dallas has been duplicated a dozen times. Right now, it’s in a dozen safety-deposit boxes all around the country. If anything happens to me, copies of that tape will go to Bobby Kennedy and the current attorney general and The New York Times and... well, you get the idea.”

His eyes were wide and bulging, though his whole face frowned around them and veins were throbbing in his forehead again. “Dat’s bullshit, man. Dere ain’t no such tape.”

Almost gently, I said, “There is. I might also mention that I have better than a hundred employees, coast to coast, most of whom are ex-cops, hard-asses who like their boss very much. Who would not respond well if he and/or his family were targeted again, and they will know, all of them, who to turn to for redress of their grievance.”

He slammed a fist on the table and the glasses of Scotch and rum jumped, and so did the nine millimeter.

And so did I.

“Who da fuck you think you talkin’ to, you Yankee sum of a bitch?”

“Not the cops or the FBI,” I said easily, meeting his gaze. “And I could have gone to them tonight, and told them I’d been kidnapped, and that I fought back in self-defense against my captors.”

“Dat don’t fly! You kill Wallace t’night.”

“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.