Ask Not

Chapter 3

September 1964

The well-dressed queue down Walton Street, laughing, chatting couples and little groups of affluent-looking men, extended half a block. Not unusual outside the Playboy Club at nine P.M., and had this been a Friday or Saturday, not Tuesday, they’d have been standing four abreast. Their goal was the colorful entryway that engulfed the sidewalk, a horizontal box of modern art — inspired yellow, blue, and green panels, and larger off-white ones with the familiar bunny-head-on-black symbol. The cool, slightly breezy evening was pleasant enough to wait out in, and the heady charge of being part of the In Crowd was palpable, as cigarette smoke trailed skyward like lazy, unimpressed ghosts.

I edged on by — I didn’t have to wait. As they say, I knew Hefner “when.” The A-1 had been on retainer with Playboy since 1955, investigating threats, scams, and lawsuits, and I’d long been part of Hef’s inner circle. So I had a free membership and a permanent reservation anywhere in the club.

The lobby at once established a subdued atmosphere of low-key lighting, dark paneling, and modern furnishings, like a bachelor pad got out of hand. Circulating, greeting club members and their guests, was a small battalion of Bunnies, as the waitresses in their skimpy, satiny costumes were called.

Bunny Teddi took my Burberry — no hat: this private eye swore off snap-brims when Jack Kennedy took office — and deposited it at the coat check counter. At the sign-in desk, I requested that Bunny Cheryl not add my name placard to the wall display of key holders in attendance. The name of the man I was meeting was absent, as well.

It would be.

From the lobby, abuzz with well-dressed patrons and helpful underdressed Bunnies, walk-ins were shuffled one flight down to the Playmate Bar. This pleasant purgatory, with its endless bar, countless black high-backed stools, and walls of backlit nude pinup photos, was overseen by half a dozen bartenders and as many Bunnies. Some of the latter worked 26 tables, the same dice game that B-girls in Chicago bars had played with suckers since the Fire.

Those who called ahead were sent one flight up to the Living Room, a dining room with piano bar, legendary for its remarkable buck-and-a-half buffet. For a more secluded atmosphere and dining that wasn’t a buck-fifty, the VIP Room was up another flight. Showrooms featuring the likes of Ella and Sammy took up the top two floors, but my stop was the VIP Room, where After Six apparently had the clothing concession, not counting those skimpy Bunny costumes. My dark-blue Hanover Hall herringbone would just have to do.

The VIP Room was the only place in the Playboy Club where you could find some privacy — a dimly lit, soundproofed space with flickery candles in orange glasses that made the LeRoy Neiman paintings on the walls seem even more expressionistic. A Negro jazz trio managed never to drown out the tinkle of ice cubes and the laughter-spiked conversation.

My friend Edward “Shep” Shepherd — if a high-level spook could be considered anybody’s friend — had managed somehow to put an empty booth on his either side, despite the crowd waiting down on Walton Street, not to mention those damned souls suffering the attention of Bunnies in the Playmate Bar.

Of course, most of those below weren’t VIPs, while Shep certainly looked the part in his navy Brooks Brothers with his silk tie of wide black stripes and narrow red ones. What did CIA security chiefs make a year, anyway? Or was that Top Secret?

Shep was studying the menu like it was a U-2 photograph of a Soviet missile installation. He reminded me of a middle-aged version of Robert Morse from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, sporting a similar sly, gap-toothed grin and twinkle in those dark-blue eyes. Those eyes were getting pouchy now, the blond of his hair getting lost in the gray. He was, as usual, drinking a Gibson, the pickled onion gone, always an immediate casualty with Shep.

Shep had done me a favor, a dozen years back, when I first butted heads with what they were now calling the Company. Two years ago he had done me no favors by enlisting my help in initiating Operation Mongoose, calling upon my patriotism. Whenever somebody tries to appeal to your patriotism, put one hand over your wallet and the other hand over your family jewels.

“Nate, what a singular pleasure,” he said, a fluid trace of the South in his lilting drawl. He gestured to the empty side of the booth. “I’m so very pleased about this coincidence.”

I slid in opposite him just as the jazz combo was starting up a swingy “Charade.” The coincidence he mentioned was that I had called him on Sunday hoping to come out to D.C. and see him. But he had said that “coincidentally” he was going to be in Chicago “the Tuesday after Labor Day.” We could get together then, if I pleased.

I pleased.

Like most detectives, I have an extremely low opinion of coincidences. I might have felt better about this one if I could have inquired about what non-Heller business brought him to town. But unless he were to offer up the information, a CIA agent like Shep is not someone you ask that kind of question. Nor could I ask him, Am I the reason you are in Chicago?

His eyes were sleepy as his smile split his face. “How the hell is that boy of yours? Sam? Is he a senior this year? My God, the time flies.”

“Actually he’s a junior. He spent most of August with me. Put him on a plane home on Sunday. He was back in school today.”

“Such a fine young man.”

I didn’t remember Shep ever meeting Sam, but I didn’t mention that.

“And your son?” I asked. “Your daughter? Still in college?”

“Bradley has another year, Susan graduated. She’s working at a Manhattan bank. She’s engaged to a fine boy in pre-law. Won’t hurt her to have a little real-world experience before providin’ me with some grandchildren.”

Bunny Vicki, as part of her real-world experience, took my order for a gimlet. Those damn satiny costumes were just ridiculous, bunny ears, bunny tail; and I knew from several Bunnies I’d dated that even the best endowed of them had to stuff their bras to create that cleavage. The effect of long legs was phony, too, just the high-on-the-hip cut of the skimpy garment. What a crock. Magnificent.

“Fitting we should talk about our kids,” I said.

Shep’s eyebrows raised as he sipped his current Gibson. “How is that, Nate?”

I told him about the hit-and-run incident after the Beatles concert, and that my glimpse of the driver convinced me I’d recognized him. This I did to a backdrop of the jazz combo noodling on “Call Me Irresponsible.”

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.

Rosselli hadn’t noticed me yet. Like him, I usually didn’t have any trouble getting into Chasen’s, but my partner Fred Rubinski of the A-1 LA branch had made a call just in case. This was after Fred called around to the mobster’s half dozen favorite restaurants to see which one he was taking his latest starlet to on Saturday night.

My son, my ex-wife, and I rarely dined together as a family, if that’s what we were, but I had insisted. Both were intrigued that I’d flown out to their corner of the USA at such short notice, particularly since Sam had just spent a month in mine.

We were ensconced in our own lushly padded leather booth, just like such regulars as Alfred Hitchcock and Gregory Peck, neither of whom were here tonight, though we didn’t rate a name plaque like they did. A few celebrities could be spotted — Sinatra’s pal Don Rickles at the bar, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in separate booths with their individual wives, neither party acknowledging the other. Otherwise, star-gazers seemed out of luck, though you could bet this crowd included talent scouts, publicity agents, and studio execs, and you never knew who would enter next under the famous canopy out front.

The Hollywood A-list restaurant, at the corner of Doheny Drive and Beverly Boulevard, had a slightly cluttered, men’s-club feel — a model TWA plane courtesy of onetime regular Howard Hughes flew over the bar, and autographed celebrity photos rode the knotty-pine walls. Waiters in tuxes played chummy with the patrons, famous or not, and would grill the famous “Hobo” steak table-side — three salt-encrusted slices of New York strip on buttered toast. Drinks were notably strong and the atmosphere borderline raucous. This was, after all, where midgets had once jumped out of a big cake for Jimmy Stewart’s birthday.

The noise level was a plus for my purposes.

“All right,” my ex-wife said. “I’ll bite. What’s the occasion?”

My ex-wife in her mid-forties looked fantastic. She was small, almost petite, and had dark-brown hair and violet eyes. She’d retained her figure over the years, and she’d once been a model for calendar artists, so it was a nice figure. As Margaret Hogan, she had been in a few movies, and even in a town where women over forty were considered ancient, she could still turn heads.

Sam was between us in the curve of the booth. He was in the Maxwell Street knockoff Beatle suit, while his mother wore a white wool suit threaded with black and a black silk cowl-necked blouse, not a knockoff. Givenchy, probably, knowing her expensive tastes. I was in a green worsted by Cricketeer, pretty hot stuff in Chicago, nothing special out here.

“Peggy,” I said, “why don’t we order first? Anything you like.”

“Please don’t call me that. You know it irritates me.”

I insisted on calling her Peggy because that was the name I’d known her by. Out here everybody called her Maggie, including her husband, who was out of town on a shoot, not that I’d have invited him.

“Order,” I instructed her. “Pretend you’re trying to get an extra child support check out of me, which on this menu won’t be hard.”

She gave me a dirty look — she didn’t like me saying things like that in front of Sam, who was oblivious to them. Right now he was sneaking a look at Jerry Lewis.

We ordered. My ex and I both got the Maude’s salad and Hitchcock sole — she hated that we still liked the same foods — and Sam ordered the famous chili. How famous? Not so long ago, that other violet-eyed beauty, Liz Taylor, had servings sent to the set of Cleopatra. In Rome.

“I’m going to ask you to excuse me,” I said, sliding out of the booth. “I’ll be back before the food gets here.”

“Nathan,” Peggy snapped. “What is going on?”

“If I told you,” I said cheerfully, “it would spoil your meal.”

“Goddamnit, Nathan!”

But I was already halfway to Rosselli’s booth, which was when he recognized me. A moment of surprise — what, that I was still breathing? — was replaced by a big smile. It seemed genuine, but this was Hollywood, remember.

“Nate Heller!” he said, extending his hands with palms up, as if to prove neither held a weapon. He turned to his date. “Sweetie, this is Nate Heller, an old Chicago pal of mine.”

The little blonde smiled weakly and nodded. He did not introduce her by name. If, in years to come, she ever graduated from starlet to movie star, I didn’t recognize her.

“Hope I’m not intruding, Johnny,” I said. “I’m here with my family.”

I gestured over to the booth, where Peggy was frowning a little and Sam was rubbernecking. Dean Martin’s direction, this time.

“Aren’t you divorced?” he asked, rather delicately for a hood. “If I’m not speaking out of school.”

“Yes, that’s my ex-wife, but we’re still friendly. You know, just because you divorce a woman, it doesn’t mean she isn’t still the mother of your kid.”

Rosselli nodded several times at this sage observation, while the blonde was frowning, trying to work it out.

I leaned in, resting a hand on the linen cloth of the booth’s table. “Could I impose on you, John, for just a few minutes? Just a few words?”

His eyebrows went up. “Certainly, Nate. Be a pleasure to catch up.”

“I’m not really here just to socialize, John.”

Now the eyebrows came down, frowning just a little, in thought, nothing sinister, really. “Is it business? Is it personal?”

“Both.” I smiled at the blonde. “Miss, would you mind powdering your nose for five minutes?”

She was thinking about that when Johnny nudged her, saying, “Go on, sweetie. Boy talk.”

So the blonde slid out, swayed off, and I slipped into the booth. They hadn’t been served anything but rolls yet, plus Rosselli was working on a glass of what was almost certainly Smirnoff on the rocks. I never knew him to drink anything else.

There was also what I would bet a hundred bucks was a Shirley Temple that the blonde had been drinking. What the hell — Chasen’s was where they invented it.

“Nate, I admit you have my attention. And I’m a little concerned. What is it, man?”

Without any preamble at all, I told him what had happened after that Beatles concert, including that the hit-and-run driver had been one of the two Cubans I’d picked up for the Secret Service when that first assassination attempt on JFK had been squelched.

“What do you make of that?” Rosselli asked cagily.

“When somebody swings out of one lane to run me down in the other, I figure he has a grudge. Or anyway a goal.”

“One would think,” Rosselli allowed.

I leaned toward him and he leaned toward me.

I said softly, “The Warren Commission will be hanging the JFK hit on that Oswald character, any day now. Somebody doesn’t want me to spoil things. Somebody thinks I might talk.”

“About what, Nate?”

“About Operation Mongoose, John. About Cubans and spooks and Outfit guys thinking the Kennedy boys ought to be taken down a big goddamn peg. About the attempted Chicago hit three weeks before Dallas that the Secret Service has kept mum about.”

He backed away a little, frowning again, and now something sinister had found its way in. “Are these really things that should be discussed in a public place?”

“I might get killed in a private place, John.”

The frown melted into a sad smile, the blue eyes in the tan face hooded. “Nate, Nate, what you are you saying? You know you’re a friend.”

He meant not just to him, but to the Outfit, and the other crime families around the country with which they were aligned.

“I’m a friend to your friends,” I said, my voice even, “and the CIA considers me an asset. My guess, though, is that the Cubans feel otherwise.”

He drew in air and sighed it out. His expression was sympathetic. “Can I help?”

“You can level with me, John. You can answer the big question.”

“Ask it.”

Across the way, an ancient waiter was serving Chasen’s signature desert, the Coupe Snowball — a scoop of vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with shredded coconut and drizzled with chocolate sauce — to an attractive young couple who were about to share it.

I asked, “Have all my good friends decided that the world would be a safer, better place without Nate Heller in it?”

He waved that off with a diamond-ring-laden hand. “Oh, that’s an outlandish suggestion! How can you even say that, Nate?”

“Yeah, it’s crazy. Friends don’t kill friends. But Johnny, as a friend, I’m going to ask you to pass along to any of your friends who might be interested that I am nobody to be worried about. I keep things to myself. I have a long reputation of keeping things to myself that goes back to Frank Nitti. More recently, two years ago? Carlos Marcello told me who he was planning to kill, and I kept quiet about it.”

In this instance, not true: I had conveyed Marcello’s message to Bobby, and he had pooh-poohed it. It was all Mafia braggadocio, Bobby said. It was all that Scotch talking.

The jovial gangster’s expression was solemn now.

“That’s right, Nate,” Rosselli said, nodding just a little. “You’re absolutely right. Your reputation for discretion is widely known.”

My smile was amiable. “On the other hand, it’s also widely known that I am somebody to worry about if fucked with. I brought my family along tonight to make a point, Johnny. My son might have been hit by that car. And my ex-wife, don’t tell her, but there’s still a part of me that loves her. Call me a romantic.”

The jeweled hand held up a traffic-cop palm. “Nate. This ain’t necessary...”

“Tell your friends that if my boy or my ex is touched, I will become extremely unfriendly. That if they try to kill me, that’s one thing. I can handle myself, and even take what’s coming to me, if necessary.”

“Nate... Nathan...”

“But if your friends try to get to me through my family, they won’t like what happens next.”

He was shaking his head now, firmly, though his voice was subdued. “Nate... threats... please. That’s no way to talk.”

“I don’t threaten. I do warn. John, I’m too tangled up in this to go public. It’s that simple. Tell anyone you think might benefit from a warning that I am not a loose end that needs tying off. But I can be a loose cannon if crossed.”

He was nodding. Smiling, too, though it was on the forced side. “I understand. I see your point. And I respect you for this. I really do.”

I slid out of the booth. “Good. Enjoy your meal, John. Attractive girl.”

She was on her way back, navigating the waiters in the aisle with grace, getting looks from men in various booths. Five minutes almost on the dot. I wondered if she’d really powdered her nose all that time.

Teeth blossomed in the brown face. “I’m gonna get her a screen test, Nate.”

“I bet you are.”

I went back to our booth.

“Who is that?” Peggy asked. “Somebody important?”

“Very,” I said.

Our food came and we didn’t talk much. I was busy thinking.

Thinking about how I was going to break it to Peg that our son and for that matter her lovely self were going to be guarded day and night by A-1 operatives until further notice.