Ask Not

Chapter 9

“You’d think I was the fucking Beatles,” Bobby Kennedy said, holding back a sheer curtain, looking out the hotel-room window at the mass of people on the street ten stories below, their murmur like an insistent surf on a reluctant shore. The jacket of his black suit was off, waiting neatly laid out on the bed, and he wore a black tie on a white shirt whose shirtsleeves were rolled up, in a perhaps misguided rich-kid attempt to connect with workingmen.

“And that’s a bad thing?” I was seated in a comfortable chair nearby, sipping the Coke I’d been provided by a staffer. “They love you, Bob. Yeah yeah yeah.”

He smiled humorlessly, shaking his head, the familiar tousle of dark-brown hair bouncing. “Don’t kid yourself, Nate. They’re here for him. They’re here for him.”

He let the curtain take the window, brightness still filtering into a gloomy bedroom with no lights on. He seemed to prefer the shadows.

In half an hour, the Democratic candidate for senator of New York would be addressing this crowd, supposedly getting them stirred up, but right now that was hard to imagine, as he dropped dejectedly into the chair opposite me, slumping there.

Days ago I had heard about the funk Bobby was in from Bill Queen, the ex-NYPD cop and current Manhattan branch A-1 agent who was Kennedy’s personal bodyguard. Senatorial candidates didn’t get Secret Service protection, even when the candidate’s brother was an assassinated president.

Bill was also how I was able to get in to see Bobby without any red tape, a phone call getting me right to Steve Smith, Bobby’s campaign manager (and brother-in-law). And now I was sitting in the bedroom of a suite at the Statler — the venerable and very non-Space Age Statler in Buffalo, New York, that is. Not Dallas, out of which I’d flown yesterday afternoon.

About fifteen minutes ago, after working my way up from the lobby showing my ID to half a dozen interested parties, I’d entered the suite, where a bustling bunch of aides were in the outer area, some sitting, some pacing, almost all smoking. Included in this group was my man Bill, but also Steve Smith, the only guy in the room with his suit coat on, though his narrow red-and-blue striped tie was loosened.

Smith was a dark-haired, athletic-looking guy in his thirties, a former hockey goalie with a wry sense of humor and an unflappable nature. Like the others in this mostly male clubhouse (a few “Kennedy Girls,” secretarial types, all young and pretty, were tagging along with clipboards and pencils here and there), he was in shirtsleeves and looked frazzled for a guy normally cool.

The air was blue from cigarettes, so I said by way of greeting, “This must be that smoke-filled room I’ve heard so much about.”

“Nate,” Smith said, grinning. “Welcome to the monkey house.”

He looked a little bit like the young Joseph Cotten, though with a wider face. He offered a hand and I shook it, then he curled a finger for me to join him in as quiet a corner as the campaign hubbub would allow.

“Maybe you can get Bob out of his funk,” he said. “He likes you.”

“Doesn’t he like you anymore, Steve?”

“Right now he doesn’t like anybody much, including himself. This campaign has hardly started and we’re already getting kicked in the ass.”

My forehead frowned and my mouth smiled. “I can’t believe that. I mean, that guy Keating is well-liked enough, I guess, but he’s basically the smiling uncle you dodge at Christmas.”

Smith was shaking his head. “Don’t count Keating out. He’s a Republican but he’s a liberal one, and that makes him credible in this state. Good voting record.”

I nodded toward the street. “There’s a mob scene going on out there. They’re crazy about our blushing boy. Took me half an hour to push my way through.”

And it had — out on Delaware Avenue at Niagara Square, old and young, men and women, blacks and whites, strained against the police lines.

“Don’t be fooled,” Smith said. “A good share just want to see a Kennedy in the flesh — that’s no guarantee they’ll vote for him.”

“It’s a start.”

“Yeah,” he said with a humorless smirk, “but they haven’t heard him talk yet.” He spoke in a barely audible whisper. “Nate, the little fella’s been stinking on ice. He’s flat, and when he isn’t flat, he’s screechy. He’s nervous and he mumbles. Oh, he’s loud enough when he’s snapping at reporters, and you can sure hear that he’s got nothing bad to say about his opponent.”

“Doesn’t he want to win?”

The campaign manager shrugged in exasperation. “I don’t know at this point, Nate. I really don’t know. Maybe you can reason with him. I just know he’s blowing it.”

“So why bust your ass for the guy, Steve?”

“Because Jean wants me to,” he said, referring to his wife, who was also Bobby’s sister, of course. “Anyway, it’s like I always say — ask not what the Kennedys can do for you, ask what you can do for the Kennedys... You can go on in, if you can get past your own man. Bobby knows you’re stopping by.”

Bill Queen was indeed sitting in a chair near the bedroom door, a bald mustached paunchy guy in his fifties in a brown suit and brown-and-yellow tie who was Central Casting’s idea of a cop, and Central Casting was right. He was reading Playboy magazine, or anyway looking at the busty blonde in the centerfold.

“Nice work if you can get it,” I said.

Unashamed, he refolded the Playmate and got to his feet. “I have a boss who can appreciate the finer things.”

I pointed to the magazine in his hand. “Those girls in there are young enough to be your daughter.”

“I don’t have a daughter, Nate.” He nodded toward the door and did Groucho with his eyebrows. “He’s in a mood. Hell, he’s always in a mood. You shoulda warned me about the guy.”

“What mood would you be in, doing rallies on streets with high windows all around, if you were him?”

“Oh, that doesn’t faze Mr. Kennedy. Hell, he sits up on the backseat of a convertible like a beauty queen, waving and giving the crowd that sad-puppy smile. Sometimes he stands on the roof of a parked car to see ’em better. It’s like he’s askin’ for it.”

That sounded like Bobby. “So are Hoover’s boys cooperating?”

The ex-cop nodded. “I call them every morning, like you arranged, and they give me the latest death threats. Steady stream of ’em, Nate. Or do you think Hoover’s just trying to look vigilant for his old boss?”

“I don’t think J. Edgar gives two shits about what his ‘old boss’ thinks.”

Bill jerked a thumb at the closed door nearby. “Well, you tell your friend, in future, to listen to me about security measures, would ya? Then maybe I’d have better things to do with my time on this assignment than pound my pud in the john to Miss October.”

Bobby heard me come in and met me at the door, shaking my hand and giving me his shy, almost bucktoothed smile, which with his rather high-pitched voice suggested an Ivy League Bugs Bunny. “It’s been too long, Nate. Too long. Can I, uh, get you something to drink?”

I asked for a Coke and he yelled out to a Kennedy Girl to get us both one. She swiftly returned with a warm smile and two chilled bottles. Then she was gone and we were shut inside the hotel bedroom, which was smoke-free — Bobby was not a smoker, actually was adamantly against it, though he clearly didn’t forbid his staff. He wasn’t much of a drinker, either, as the sodas indicated, though he was by no means a teetotaler.

We exchanged a few pleasantries as I tried to get used to how skinny he looked. I hadn’t seen him since late October ’63, though I’d talked to him on the phone a few times, post-assassination, and he’d seemed himself. But in the flesh, he appeared to have shrunk, all but swimming in the white shirt and black trousers. Almost a year later, and he was still wearing black. His face seemed sunken, gaunt.

“Tell me, Nate, do you really have something to talk over with me, or, uh, did Steve Smith just want you to come and give me a pep talk — get me off my duff and into this thing?”

“I really do have something to talk about. And I don’t think it’s going to boost your spirits any. Just don’t jump out that window, when you hear. Anyway, some college girls down there would just catch you and drag you off to have their way with you.”

That made him smile, although his eyes lacked their usual spark. “Doesn’t, uh, sound half-bad.”

I gestured toward the muffled roar. “If you’re not up for this race, why the hell did you get in it?”

Everything had happened so recently — he hadn’t even announced his candidacy until August 22, and only resigned as attorney general at the beginning of the month.

His face tried to remember how to summon a big smile. “Remember what Steve McQueen said in The Magnificent Seven, Nate?”

“Don’t believe I do.”

“About the man who jumped into the cactus? ‘It, uh, seemed like a good idea at the time.’”

That gave me a chuckle. “And now you find you have no taste for jumping into cactuses.”

“Or caucuses.” He sighed, gave up a tiny shrug, then sipped at his bottle of Coke. “They say I’m a carpetbagger, and, uh, well, they have a point — I did move out of New York in the sixth grade. The party bosses in New York hate my guts, and the Jews think I’m anti-Semitic, like my old man.”

I raised a finger. “Don’t forget the far left. They think you’re a ruthless McCarthyite.”

He nodded glumly. “That’s why I don’t want to go after that nice old man, Keating, and have the press hang that ‘ruthless’ sign around my neck again.”

“Hell, they’ll do that anyway.” Outside, the murmur seemed to be building, a low dull throbbing with occasional accents of shouts or laughter. “Maybe you owe it to that crowd out there to give it the ol’ college try. Tell ’em Keating is a Commie or a dog-fucker or something.”

He’d been sipping the Coke and almost choked on that as he laughed. He set the bottle on the little table next to him, on an issue of Newsweek with his sullen picture on the cover. “You’re still a pisser, Nate.”

I was loosening him up. Good.

I shrugged. “So who cares, if they’re here for Jack? You’re the one who’s here, man. Don’t disappoint ’em.”

He was studying me carefully, his smile still there, but having melted some. “Okay, uh, so that’s your pep talk, Coach Rockne. But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

“No.” I met his eyes, those bluer-than-Jack’s blue-green eyes. “You know the subject we haven’t discussed, the few times we’ve talked lately.”

“... I do.”

“You also know that I’m probably one of the few people who’s not in government, the Mob, the John Birch Society, or some Cuban exile group who knows that a conspiracy took your brother’s life.”

He said nothing. He wasn’t looking at me now. He was staring past me, into the past maybe or God knew where.

I kept my voice even, and didn’t push. I let the words do that. “What went down last year in Chicago, Bob, just twenty days before your brother was killed, involved the same sorry cast as Dallas. I even met Oswald, briefly.”

His eyes flashed to life. “What?”

I nodded. “And guess who introduced him to me? Jack Ruby.”

Now the eyes tightened. “The hell you say. Where?”

“Where else? A strip club. Not in Dallas or New Orleans, but on South Wabash, in Chicago, a little less than a month before the tragedy.”

“What was discussed?”

“It had to do with that Hoffa matter I told you about, which isn’t pertinent. What is pertinent is that Ruby, and Oswald, who were chummy as hell by the way, knew who I was, in the greater scheme of things.”

“Don’t be coy, Nate.”

“This room is secure?”

“Your man says it is.”

“Then it’s secure.” I sipped Coca-Cola. Rolled its sweetness around in my mouth, swallowed, and said, “Ruby knew I was instrumental in putting Operation Mongoose in motion. Bragged me up to Oswald, who’d been rabble-rousing at the University of Illinois, Urbana, pretending to be a Commie.”

Bobby’s hands had been on the arms of the chair like a king at his throne. But now those hands tightened into bony, veiny things. The darkness of the room dropped shadows into the hollows of his face and the skull beneath the skin was apparent. Seconds ticked by as he sat there brooding as the words Operation Mongoose hung in the air between us.

“In large measure, Nate,” Bobby finally said, “that’s why I haven’t come forward. Why I have in my own, uh, measured way gone along with this Warren Commission travesty.”

That made me sit up. “Don’t tell me you knew who Oswald was, before the assassination?”

His silence spoke volumes.

“Jesus! You... you knew that Oswald was part of Mongoose?”

A man in his thirties should not have been capable of so world-weary a sigh. “Well, I knew that Oswald was one of ours. A CIA asset, an FBI asset. You don’t just defect and trot off to Mother Russia like Oswald did, then a year or so later traipse back into the country and get a warm welcome from the State Department.”

“Why would you know about a small fry like Oswald?”

“One of our Cuban assets brought me a photo of Oswald passing out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans. I’d asked this Cuban individual to keep me informed on any, uh, alarming exile activity.”

“What was so alarming about passing out leaflets?”

“Well, Oswald was also tight with Carlos Bringuier, an anti-Castro exile who had a strong grudge against Jack and me. We’d cracked down on Cuba raids, post — Bay of Pigs, you know. I did a little checking, learned that Oswald was a FBI asset.”

“What a surprise.”

“I assume he was also CIA or his Russian adventure wouldn’t have been possible. At any rate, in New Orleans he was obviously playing both sides — one day pro-Castro, the next day against. So I told my Cuban asset to, uh, steer this Oswald character a wide path — they wanted to kill him, just to see who would take his place! These Cubans are crazy, Nate.”

“No shit,” I said, working to make my brain not explode.

From day one, Bobby had known Oswald was no lone nut!

“Damnit, Bob, you were still AG! Why didn’t you unleash the Justice Department on your brother’s murder, while you were still in a position to control things? And don’t tell me you were depressed, I’m sure you were, but I’m only half Irish and, Jesus, I would have stormed the gates of hell for revenge, in your place.”

That was a little purple, but it made the point.

Bobby had to take a few breaths not to rage back at me; but that funk of his was keeping the legendary temper in check.

“Nate, the minute Jack was killed, my official power began to evaporate. Lyndon ignored me, wouldn’t take my goddamn calls, and Hoover? He invented new ways to fuck me over, daily.”

“That’s not hard to believe,” I said.

Bobby was gesturing to the murmuring window, saying, “Why do you think I’m putting up with this horseshit dog-and-pony show? First I have to get into the White House, and then I can really get this goddamn crime solved. And this Senate seat is the stepping-stone, even if it, uh, does make a goddamn carpetbagger out of me.”

“No other reasons for waiting, Bob?”

He frowned in irritation. “Well, of course there are. You and I both suspect that this conspiracy involves government elements. If that became common knowledge, at this juncture, it would tear the country apart! And then... well, uh, you know the rest.”

I did know. Jack and Bobby had sanctioned Operation Mongoose, marrying the CIA to the Mob to fight a secret war against Castro, largely depending on assassinating the man code-named “The Beard.” Were that known to the public, the Kennedy legacy would not just be tarnished, but destroyed.

And since Bobby was far more accountable for Mongoose than Jack, who had rubber-stamped it on his brother’s say-so, that made RFK — in a convoluted but inevitable manner — responsible for JFK’s assassination.

Bobby Kennedy had been paralyzed with grief, yes... but also with guilt.

“Anyway, on a, uh, very basic level,” he said almost casually, “I didn’t trust the FBI to investigate Dallas.”

“I don’t blame you. But somebody should.”

“Somebody is. In a very low-key fashion, I’ve put some of my own best people, from the Get Hoffa squad, on the case. Walter Sheridan, for one.”

“Good choice,” I said, nodding.

His smile came out a little forced. “And I’ve thought about, uh, hiring you, too, Nate... but I would assume you aren’t doing much fieldwork now.”

“That’s a job I might consider,” I admitted, then sat forward. “But let me ask you something first, Bob. This Warren Commission farce is wrapping up soon — have you testified? Or, are you planning to?”

He shook his head. “Well, you’re right, it is a farce. My political enemies control it, I mean Dulles is an obvious CIA spy on the thing — did you know until recently Lyndon lived across the street from Hoover, and that, uh, Ladybird, Lyndon, Hoover, and Clyde Tolson would have regular Sunday dinner together?”

“Cozy. I can just picture them holding hands and saying grace. Norman Rockwell should paint it. Or Mad magazine.”

He smiled briefly but his expression immediately darkened and he shook his head slowly several times. “You would not believe what that fucking commission put Kenny O’Donnell through.”

O’Donnell was one of Bobby’s best friends and advisers.

His eyes unblinking and empty, Bobby was saying, in a voice so hushed I could hardly make out his words, “Kenny heard at least two shots fired from that grassy hillock... in front of the motorcade? So did Dave Powers — they were in the Secret Service backup car, right behind Jack. They saw and heard the whole horror, Nate. When Kenny reported what he’d witnessed to the FBI, he was informed that he was mistaken about the direction of the gunfire. He was told that the shots came from the book depository and that he should testify to that fact. They were both told that if they did not change their story, the results could be... damaging.”

“To whom?”

A little fatalistic shrug. “The country, I would suppose. Or possibly themselves. Still, Dave wouldn’t budge from his story, and, uh, was not then asked to testify. Kenny went along with them, though, and I asked him why he’d done that, why had he lied, and he told me he just didn’t want to stir up any more pain and trouble for my family.”

“Did you tell him to come forward?”

“Nate, he was under oath. He’d committed perjury. I wouldn’t ask him to do that, not when he’d been trying to do the right thing by the Kennedys. Anyway. Now is not the time for these... revelations.”

My laugh was hollow. “What, you want to wait till your friend can correct the record, and receive a presidential pardon, huh?”

He held up a hand like the cops outside, keeping back the crowd. “Suffice to say I have refused to testify. To avoid that, I agreed to give Warren a signed letter stating I didn’t believe there was a conspiracy behind Jack’s murder.”

Of course, unlike Powers, he hadn’t been under oath.

I said, “You’ve made similar statements in public.”

“It’s what is needed at this point. I mean, there would be blood in the streets, if right now the American people found out what really happened in Dallas. Oswald the lone killer, Ruby the sorrowful nut, it’s a myth that keeps the public reassured... while in the meantime, I authorize a sub-rosa investigation.”

“You want to know who to go after,” I said, “the day you hit the Oval Office.”

“Correct. Which is why Steve and everyone around me is right — I need to get my head in this game.” He had a tortured expression now, as he glanced at that window. “But, Nate, they look at me and they see Jack... and I know what a joke that is.”

“Cut that crap. Quit sniveling. And I’m not convinced you should wait till you’re President. That’s a little like me giving up sex till I can get next to Kim Novak.”

I’d made him smile again — not that easy a task under the best of conditions.

He said, “You, uh, are the Private Eye to the Stars, aren’t you, Nate? I would think, uh, a meeting with Miss Novak could be arranged.”

Sooner or later, when you were hanging out with the Kennedy boys, bedding beautiful movie stars came up in conversation.

I sat forward again. “Bob, a lot of the American people already aren’t buying the lone gunman theory. Maybe when the Warren Commission puts its report out that’ll change... but I don’t think so. People have questions.”

“Do they?”

“Sure! Like how can there be a lone gunman when the Parkland docs say one of the bullets entered the throat? Or how can a guy using a shitty twelve-buck mail-order bolt-action rifle squeeze off three expert shots in under six seconds?”

“You’ve seen the same tasteless articles I have,” Bobby said, with a derisive tone and a sneer to go with it. “These so-called assassination buffs, they’re creeps and kooks, even if they have asked some of the right questions.”

“Well, here’s one they missed — if Oswald was a pro-Castro pinko, why would he shoot a president who was trying to improve relations with Cuba? Of course, you and I know that Oswald was a CIA asset. So maybe his motive was the Bay of Pigs fiasco.”

Irritation was showing in his face again. “Nate, stop it.”

“This isn’t going away, Bob.”

“I know it isn’t. And when I’m in the White House, it’s going to be exposed.”

He meant it would be exposed when he had the power to manipulate the facts to whitewash himself and his brother in Operation Mongoose. And as the guy who had set up the first meeting between the players in that sad game, I was just fine with that.

“Then,” I said, sitting back comfortably, “I need to tell you what I’ve been doing in Dallas the last week or so.”

And he sat forward. Not slumping now.

I gave it all to him, including the Billie Sol Estes cleanup effort, though I wasn’t convinced it had anything to do with the dead witnesses in Dallas, similar though the approach might be.

“I don’t know,” he said, and shuddered. “Flo Kilgore? A gossipmonger? A silly game-show celebrity? That’s not my idea of a credible investigation.”

That rated a laugh. “You aren’t conducting a credible investigation, Bob. You are, in your own words, mounting a very timid, sub-rosa one. Why not let Flo be your stalking horse? She’s going to do it anyway.”

“And if you accept her job offer,” he said, thinking it through, “then you’ll know what she’s found, and you can control the situation.”

“To some degree,” I said, nodding. “And I can report back to you. Plus keep my eye on preserving the Kennedy legacy. But I didn’t want to take her money without you giving the okay.”

His expression remained thoughtful. “I appreciate that. But it’s not like I could stop you, Nate.”

“If you said walk away, Bob, I’d walk away.”

His smile was barely there, but it meant a lot. “Thank you, Nate.”

“And I may walk away, anyway.”

“Oh?”

I told him how this had begun, with what appeared to be an attempt on my life disguised as a hit-and-run accident. And I told him how, afterward, I’d approached both my CIA handler and my primary Mob contact, and had been assured they were not responsible.

“Thing is,” I said, “I promised them I’d stay out of any inquiry into the assassination, or anyway implied as much. I presented myself as a loose end not worth tying off.”

“But now you find yourself in Texas,” Bobby said, “in the midst of what looks like a concerted effort to, uh, tie off various loose ends.”

“Yes. A cleanup crew. Getting rid of pesky witnesses and annoying snoops. And you may have noticed that I fall into both categories.”

He was frowning in thought, his fingertips tented. “Who do you suspect in this?”

“Not CIA. As my handler said, if the CIA wanted me dead, I’d be dead by now. The Billie Sol aspect, if it ties in, might indicate Texas oil. But Ruby, and whether anybody can connect him to Oswald, pre-assassination, seems to be the focus.”

“Which means mob.”

I nodded. “Which means mob.”

He cocked his head. “And this began with a Cuban trying to run you down.”

“Yup.”

“And you’re someone else who saw Ruby and Oswald together.”

“Right.” I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe everybody’s trying to kill me.”

“Nate,” Bob said, some spark back in his blue eyes, “considering how long you’ve been around? Everybody’s got a reason.”

“Glad I finally cheered you up,” I said.

The sound from the window seemed to be intensifying. “You didn’t really know Jack well, did you, Nate?”

“No.”

“Half the days he spent on earth he was in intense physical pain — scarlet fever, terrible back pain, and just about every conceivable other ailment in between.”

Including VD, I thought.

“We used to joke that a mosquito took a hell of a risk biting him.” He was smiling with the memory. “On a trip around the world about ten, twelve years ago, he, uh, got so sick I thought we’d lose him. His Senate campaign? He spent it on crutches.”

“No kidding. Did he bitch?”

“Not once. I never heard him say anything resembling God had dealt him a bum hand. If you were close to him, you knew when he was having trouble, because his face got a little whiter, the lines around his eyes a little deeper... maybe his, uh, words a little sharper. Those who didn’t know him so well didn’t pick up on anything.”

“If you want to honor his memory, Bob, then do me a favor and let my guy Bill Queen tighten up your security.”

But he wasn’t hearing me. He was saying, “When that Jap destroyer sank his PT boat, Jack swam and swam, rescuing six of his crew, leading them to this small island, towing his badly burned engineer all the way. Then he went for help — he swam for two or three hours in the black cold of that water and that night, and then tread water and finally just drifted till dawn, his mind a hallucinating jumble, his only clear thought that he was going to die and then when he didn’t, it changed him. He told me so many times, ‘You’ve got to live every day like it’s your last day on earth.’”

That had been the nobility of Jack Kennedy, all right. Also his weakness — it had put him in bed with Marilyn Monroe and Judith Exner and so many other willing women.

But who was I to talk?

We spent another five minutes with family chitchat, shook hands, and then I left him there, with his brother and the waiting throng.

Chapter 10

This was the same kind of warm sunny fall day that had greeted John F. Kennedy last year when he and his wife Jacqueline and their entourage emerged from Air Force One at Love Field late on the morning of November 22. That had been a Friday. This was a Monday, just after two P.M. Traffic was medium, the tourists minimal, the citizens of Dallas at work or otherwise occupied. Meanwhile, a New Yorker named Flo Kilgore was giving a Chicagoan named Nathan Heller a tour of the most famous crime scene of the twentieth century.

On the edge of downtown Dallas, west of Houston Street, was the landscaped triangular city park called Dealey Plaza; there Elm, Main, and Commerce Streets converged at a triple underpass, Elm turning into Stemmons Freeway, while at the south, east, and north, like battlement walls, tall buildings loomed over this grassy oasis in a modern city. Where Main Street entered the Plaza, and at the outer edges of Commerce and Elm, decorative colonnades with fountains and basins stood on either side, dispassionate observers from another age. The grassy slope within the Plaza that had been above and to the President’s right was bounded by a seven-story turn-of-the-century rust-brick building — the Texas School Book Depository — on the corner of Elm and Houston. A sidewalk to the south, a parking lot to the north and east, and a railroad bridge over the triple bypass completed the crime-scene picture.

The President’s motorcade eased down Main, turning right at the Criminal Courts Building, going one block west past the Dallas County Records Building, just south of the Dal-Tex Building, finally turning left on Elm, heading toward the underpass on the way to Trade Mart, where Jack Kennedy’s next event awaited. Of course another event had intervened.

The President’s car had been second in line, making it only a third of the way to the underpass before the first shot came, one of at least three. Officially, all the gunfire had emanated from the east corner window of the sixth floor of the book depository, supposedly the work of a malcontent with a blurry grudge against society.

I parked my rental Galaxie in the lot behind what the press had dubbed the Grassy Knoll. Flush with the parking lot was a wooden picket fence; at our right, past the parking lot, were train tracks, and behind us the lot was bordered by the train-switching station, while at our left rose a scuffed-looking white WPA-era monument to the memory of newspaper publisher G. B. Dealey.

From the corner of the fence where its left side met its front, the view was blocked at far right by a tree, but otherwise provided a clear shot, so to speak, across the three lanes of Elm Street. At left two flights of cement steps rose from the sidewalk to that memorial that had provided citizens perches from which to watch the motorcade, and a path for police and brave bystanders to run up to try to spot and even stop the shooter they thought they’d heard, and seen by way of white puffs of smoke from his gun.

Flo stood at that picket-fence corner and pointed a pretend rifle toward Elm Street. “A sniper shot from here.”

“You sound sure of that.”

My girl reporter looked touristy and not immediately recognizable as the famous regular on What’s My Line?, dark wispy bangs hiding some of that high forehead, a ponytail utilizing the hair that usually made up a bouffant, her sunglasses large with white frames. She was in a light-pink blouse and dark-pink slacks with red shoes, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, only not glittery.

And there was no doubt we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Wonderland, maybe.

Me, I was a tourist type myself, in Ray-Bans and a black-banded straw Stetson (this Texas sun had me back in hats again), a white-and-shades-of-gray vertical-striped seersucker sport shirt, charcoal Leesure slacks, and Italian loafers. Stetson yes, cowboy boots never.

“I am sure,” Flo said, leaning an arm between pickets. “This is where any number of witnesses say they heard the shot coming from. One of those witnesses was an army man home from basic training, taking pictures of the President to show his buddies back at the base.”

“Is this somebody you talked to you, or was it your pal Lane and his bunch?”

She had been working, off and on, with a lawyer from New York, Mark Lane, who had associates investigating the assassination. He was writing a book, which made me skeptical. Of course, Flo was writing one, too. But she was paying me.

“I talked to the soldier,” she said. “His name is Gordon Arnold. He was standing right over there.”

She indicated the grassy incline, maybe three feet from where we stood.

She was saying, “Said he felt a bullet whiz past his ear, heard the crack of a rifle, and that it was like standing under the muzzle. He hit the dirt and another shot flew over him.”

“Okay. So where’s his film?”

“A Dallas uniformed police officer, or somebody dressed as one, came around from behind the fence and grabbed his camera and ripped out his film. Then the officer headed back here to the parking lot and was gone.”

“Well, it’s no surprise the Dallas police had a man posted in this lot.”

“Actually, it is, because they didn’t, according to their log. Nate, no uniformed man was assigned to this spot.”

“So you’re saying there was a fake cop back here? That maybe a shooter was dressed as a cop?”

“I can’t think of a benign reason for it,” she said. “There were fake Secret Service agents up here, too.”

“According to Arnold?”

“And four others, one of them a Dallas police officer. But Arnold won’t go on the record because of the witness deaths.”

Couldn’t blame him.

I asked, “How did he know they were fake Secret Service agents?”

“He didn’t,” Flo said. “I found that out myself — the Secret Service didn’t have anybody posted up here. They didn’t have anybody posted anywhere except in the motorcade.”

Sounded like Jack Kennedy could have used Bill Queen’s security advice, too.

She aimed her pretend rifle at Elm Street through the space between pickets. “Pow. That’s the shot that knocked Kennedy’s head back. Just like in the Zapruder film.”

Amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder had stood on a pillar of the retaining wall of the nearby Dealey monument and filmed the President’s motorcade with his little Bell & Howell Zoomatic as the limo rolled by into carnage and history. Life magazine had published grisly frames from the home movie, making Zapruder rich and the public sick. But they hadn’t seen the worst of it: Flo’s Warren Commission source told her the complete film graphically depicted Kennedy’s head being thrown back, indicating a shot from the front, not from behind the President, where Oswald would have been, in a book depository window.

She pointed to her red shoes and my Italian loafers. “Just here, by the fence, were footprints, and cigarette butts, like one or two people had been standing a long time.”

“This is according to the cops?”

“According to railroad workers on the overpass, who heard shots and saw puffs of smoke, and came running. Nate, the smell of cordite was in the air — Senator Yarborough said so, and any number of bystanders. People thought somebody was shooting at Kennedy from those bushes.”

“Then how did the book depository get the attention?”

“It didn’t at first. Cops right away focused on this parking lot. Dozens of police and bystanders rushed up here.”

We walked around the fence at left and past the monument, and started down the two flights of steps that led to the wide sidewalk along Elm. Pausing at the cement landing between flights, Flo pointed to the center lane where an X quite literally marked the spot, like the ones superimposed on crime scene photos in the old true detective magazines.

“That’s the head shot,” she said.

“That’s a hell of distance from the book depository,” I said.

“Something like eighty-five yards,” she said. She pointed down the street, toward the depository, to another X. “That’s the first shot, the neck shot. But it may have come from the Grassy Knoll, right where we were standing.”

I gestured farther down. “Why didn’t Oswald shoot when the limo made that slow turn at the intersection?”

“There are workers at the depository who say Oswald was downstairs in the second floor break room, so maybe he didn’t shoot at all.”

“Well, I presume the cops gave him a paraffin test.” That was the process by which gunshot residue on skin and clothing was determined.

She nodded. “They did, and it came out positive on his hands, and negative on his cheek.”

“Indicating he fired a handgun recently, but not a rifle. That suggests guilt in the Tippit shooting but not the assassination.”

“So it would seem, but I’m told the FBI considers the paraffin test unreliable.”

Then why had they been using it for decades?

I cast my eyes around. Tall buildings, fences, and sewers — carte blanche for snipers. “If you’re right about the Grassy Knoll shooter, that means there were multiple shooters... and this is a perfect spot for triangular fire. What’s that building there?”

“The Dal-Tex.”

“That rooftop would be ideal.”

“Prisoners in the jail, overlooking the Dal-Tex, saw a man on that roof... but I’m told they weren’t interviewed by the Commission.”

I pointed here and there and around. “We’re looking at a kill zone where multiple shooters could fire from all sides. And the least likely source of a fatal shot is that book depository.”

“Oswald claimed he was a patsy,” she said, smiling. “Maybe he was.”

She’d obviously already made up her mind about that, but I now knew that whatever Oswald had been, he was just a cog in the complex wheel of a military-style operation.

I said, “You’re sure you can get us in the book depository?”

“This will be my third trip. The office manager loves me, Nate. It’s all about serious journalistic credibility... That, and identifying the occasional ‘mystery guest’ on What’s My Line?” As she said that last bit, she was laughing.

Someone was sobbing.

We glanced toward the sound coming from the monument behind us and saw a young couple in their early twenties, the boy’s expression grave as he hugged the weeping girl to his chest. They were dressed like tourists, too. I hoped they would have more fun at the next attraction they took in.

“Am I terrible, Nate?” Flo whispered, grabbing my arm. “Making light of this?”

“You aren’t making light of this,” I said, patting her hand where it gripped me, “and I’m not, either. We’re just a pair of old pros at a crime scene. Anyway, there’s no ghosts here. It’s too goddamn sunny.”

That seemed the only haunting aspect of the place — that it was just a small, rather spare-looking sun-washed park with a handful of cold-looking monuments and a patch of green cut through by traffic lanes, a humdrum city scene that in no way said Texas, much less tragedy.

The Texas School Book Depository entrance on Elm was up six or seven steps to glass doors and a sign that said:

Those doors were unlocked, however, and took us into a very nondescript, wood-paneled reception area. We put our sunglasses away, and Flo checked in with the receptionist. Soon we were met by a manager — about forty, in horn-rimmed glasses and an off-the-rack brown suit — who was pleased and impressed to see his “friend” from TV stop by again. Flo introduced me, by name, as her assistant.

Chatting with Flo about last night’s show (Henry Fonda was the “mystery guest”), he walked us cheerfully through typical drop-ceiling office space where young women and a few young men sat at metal desks, making phone calls or pounding typewriters, the din not unlike that of a newsroom. The manager walked us up several flights of stairs at the rear of the building, past the lunchroom where Oswald had been controversially spotted immediately after the shooting.

On the ride up the service-type elevator, I asked the manager, “Is it true the original window in the sniper’s nest was taken out, as a sort of souvenir, by the building’s owner?”

“Yes, sir, it is. Colonel Byrd displays it in his home.”

“To what purpose?”

He shrugged, and no trace of opinion could be discerned from his tone. “As a conversation piece, I assume.”

With a grin, I asked, “This Colonel Byrd is one of your Texas oil tycoons?”

“You could say that. He’s a co-owner of Ling Electronics, among other things. Admiral Byrd’s nephew, you know.”

The elevator shuddered. We had reached the sixth floor, just as it was occurring to me that if this building had been controlled by a conspirator, that would provide an assassin (or assassins) easy access.

To America this floor was history, but to the book depository, just warehouse space still in use (though no one was around right now but us) with boxes of books piled high and making corridors among the open rafters and beams and brick walls. Arched windows let in plenty of dust-mote-streaming light to reveal that the place was a fairly disorganized-looking, messy affair, the building a dingy nonentity, particularly considering its celebrity status among other American edifices.

“Old building,” I said to the manager, as he led us toward the Elm Street side. “I assume the School Book Depository’s been here a good long while.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Heller. We only moved in last year. A few months before the tragedy, actually.”

Wasn’t that interesting?

The area near the window from which Oswald was said to have shot — the “sniper’s nest” — was literally roped off, with metal folding chairs as occasional hitching posts. Flo had told the manager we just wanted a brief look and he stood by patiently, a respectful distance away, while we stepped over the rope like gate-crashers.

There wasn’t much to the nest — just a wall of books blocking any view of someone standing, or crouching, at the window, plus a two-box stack by a box propped on the sill, an apparent arrangement for a sniper to steady a rifle against them. Nearby was another book box that could have been used as a seat by Oswald, as he waited for his target to roll by.

Flo was watching me; she’d seen all this before. “What do you think, Nate?”

“I think it’s a farce. The idea of trying to shoot out that window with those boxes in the way, plus that water pipe by the window? Nuts.” I jerked a thumb to the left. “Can we check out the next window over?”

“Of course.”

It was just as I’d thought. This window was a view onto Houston meeting Elm, where the President’s limo had slowed almost to a stop. I pointed my finger where the car would have made its slow curving turn, thirty-five yards below.

Bang.

Oswald wouldn’t have needed a second shot from this perch. Or at least, I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have needed a rifle with a scope, either — I could have used my goddamn nine-millimeter Browning automatic. If it hadn’t been tucked away in the trunk of the Galaxie, I might have used it for a little dramatic show-and-tell for Flo’s benefit, although the depository office manager might not have dug it.

“You may be right,” I told her, “about Oswald being a patsy. He sure as hell didn’t shoot Kennedy from that supposed nest — or if he did shoot, he sure as hell didn’t hit him.”

She frowned at me in thought. “So that sniper’s nest — it’s all theatrics? To cover what the real murderers were up to in the... kill zone, you called it?”

I nodded. “Oswald may have been a conspirator, and he may have been a nut, too, for all I know. But he was not a lone nut.”

She was nodding slowly.

Still at the window, I pointed down. “Anyone positioned in this building, intent on killing Kennedy, would have shot him when that limo made its left turn, with the target facing the shooter. You don’t wait till a target is going away from you, and nearly out of sight, before shooting.”

“Somebody was seen shooting from the other window, by a number of witnesses. One or two identified Oswald.”

“Well, I’m not saying Oswald or somebody didn’t shoot from that window. It only makes sense, though, one way.”

“Which is?”

“Multiple shooters. Your Grassy Knoll, for sure. Dal-Tex maybe, or some other tall-building rooftop... Let’s let your nice friend over there get back to work.”

We headed toward him, smiling. He smiled back.

Quietly, Flo asked, “What do you suggest we do next, Nate?”

I gave the sniper’s nest a dirty look as we passed it. “Something more worthwhile.”

“Such as?”

“Talk to some strippers.”

“Janet Mole Adams Bonney Cuffari Smallwood Conforto,” Janet said with a shrug, in response to Flo’s request for her full name. “What can I say? I been married a few times.”

She tapped her cigarette into a tray and released twin dragon fumes of smoke from her nostrils. The redhead, who — like her questioner — had her pile of hair pulled back in a ponytail, was sitting in a booth in the Colony Club, well before opening... just two closer to the restrooms than Mac Wallace’s booth had been.

Janet had agreed to talk to Flo and me, as well as to arrange for several other Carousel Club veterans to do the same, one of whom was due here later.

I was on the other side of the booth sitting next to Flo, across from the lovely if slightly ill at ease Janet, and between us on the tabletop was a silver-and-black Sanyo micro-pack portable tape recorder, with reel-loaded cassettes that recorded twenty minutes, then flipped over for another twenty. It was like something out of James Bond.

Janet was in a pale green blouse and darker green shorts, wearing minimal makeup. She looked good that way, but like the club around us, wasn’t done any favors by the lights being up. She was twenty-seven or — eight, and looked ten years older. She was smoking Salems.

Flo asked, “How long have you known Jack Ruby?”

“I never met Ruby before June of last year,” she said. “He came and caught my act at the Sho-Bar in New Orleans, and offered me a gig on the spot. Said he’d never seen a sexier act. Said he’d pay big money for me to headline for him, twice what he paid any other dancer.”

I asked, “Doesn’t Carlos Marcello own the Sho-Bar?”

“I don’t know who owns it,” she said, shrugging again. “But his brother Pete hired me, so maybe that tells you something. As for Ruby, he was a loon from word go, but headlining in a Dallas club appealed to me. My ex and me had a club go bust in the French Quarter not long before, and I was on my own again, so it was a chance for a new start.”

Flo asked, “How did it work out?”

“Well, the Carousel never did draw like the Colony. But me, personally, I did great with the audiences. Ask Nate — men go crazy over me. But that Ruby could be a horse’s ass. He hires me because I’m... uninhibited onstage, right? ‘The sexiest thing I ever saw,’ he says. Then I go to work for him and he shuts the lights off on me and docks my pay for being ‘raunchy,’ when all I did was flash a little gash... uh, what I mean to say, Miss Kilgore, is... give the occasional customer a little peek under the G.”

“He docked you for being too wild onstage?”

“Yeah, and I said if he didn’t pay up, I was gonna sue him and then he threatened me.”

I said, “With violence?”

“Oh yeah. I took him to court on a peace bond over it. He was a hothead, ask anybody. One of those guys with a ‘little man’ complex. If some a-hole was causing trouble in the club, he wouldn’t let his bouncer take care of it, no, he had to toss the bum down the stairs himself.”

“Did he ever hit you?”

“No, but I thought he might. And he carried guns around all the time, waved ’em around, and I mean, he was obviously a little unstable.”

Flo asked, “Unstable enough, hotheaded enough, to kill Lee Harvey Oswald out of love for Kennedy?”

“Oh, he didn’t love Kennedy,” she said with a snort of a laugh, a fresh cigarette in her mouth as she lit herself up with a little silver Zippo. “He hated the Kennedys, Bobby particularly. I don’t know where they get that garbage about how he was trying to prevent Jackie from...” She played it melodramatic. “... the heartache of a trial!”

“Did Oswald ever come into the Carousel? Did Ruby know him?”

Janet thought about that, the vaguely oriental eyes unblinking. Drew on the cigarette, held in the smoke, let it out in a big blue cloud. Then she gestured with a red-nailed finger. “Turn that gizmo off.”

Flo clicked it off.

“That’s a dangerous subject,” Janet said, sitting forward, with a smile devoid of humor. “Dying is getting contagious in this town, if you discuss that subject.”

Flo held up her hands, palms out. “Off the record, then.”

She sighed smoke. “They knew each other, okay? Oswald came in, half a dozen times, but I don’t think he cared about the girls. He might’ve been a homo. Never looked at the stage, anyway. I figure, if a guy would rather talk to Jack Ruby than watch me strut my stuff? That’s a homo.”

“He and Ruby were friendly?”

“They’d sit at a table and talk. That cop joined ’em once or twice. You know, just about every cop in town came in the Carousel, for free beer and food and girls.”

“What cop?”

“The one Oswald wound up shooting. Tippit. He was a pal of Ruby’s. Ruby’s best friend was that cop’s landlord.”

I saw Flo’s eyes tighten, and I had that familiar prickly sensation along the back of my neck myself.

“And don’t ask me what they were discussing,” Janet said, shaking an open palm at us, “because I don’t know. I noticed ’em from the stage — I never circulate in a club much. Listen, it’s a little-known fact, but Ruby swings both ways.”

Flo touched the switch on the recorder. “May I turn this back on?”

Janet nodded, exhaling smoke out her mouth.

Flo said, “Swung both ways. Go ahead.”

“He was with women sometimes, but it was more like he was proving a point. And he had this funny habit of, if he got one of his dancers to put out for him? She was on borrowed time. He lost respect for her. ‘Little cunt has no class,’ he would say. And she’d be gone.”

I asked, “Did he come on to you?”

She grinned. “That’s the one that takes the goddamn fuckin’ cake. He asked me to move in with him.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I know! He knew I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me, really. But he liked what I stood for.”

Flo asked, “What do you stand for?’

Her smile was enormously self-satisfied. She seemed to sense that Flo and I had the kind of rapport that might suggest sexual intimacy, and that was giving her just a little attitude mixed in with the apprehension.

“For being the kind of spectacular piece of ass,” she said, “that any red-blooded man would kill the Pope in the front window of Neiman’s to spend one night with.”

I said, “But what you’re known for is not what he wanted out of you?”

She shook her head, and the red ponytail swung. “No, he said I’d have my own bedroom and it would be strictly platonic. He just wanted to show me off to the neighbors, the world. To make people think he was the kind of man’s man who could rate, well...”

“A spectacular piece of ass,” Flo said pleasantly.

Now Janet liked her better. “Right. Listen, there’s, uh... one other thing.” She gestured for Flo to switch off the tape machine again.

When it had clicked off, Janet said, “The morning of the twenty-second of November, last year... you know what day that was, right?”

“Right,” Flo and I said.

“Well, that morning, I stopped by the club. He was there early, a lot, doing business-type things, and, anyway, he’d hired me clear through the start of this year, but stopped paying me even though I was still working. This was maybe a week before the assassination I mean, that I quit. Well, I went around to collect my costumes, which are very expensive, I’m known for my fancy costumes, and also to get what back pay he owed me. I was outside his little office and I heard him on the phone. He was talking to somebody and don’t ask me who it was. I might have an idea, but do not fucking ask, okay? Anyway, he was upset. He said he didn’t want to be part of ‘this thing.’”

Flo, sitting forward, asked, “What thing?”

“That wasn’t clear. You need to understand, that was not clear. But I gathered he was going to be involved in some kind of... something really bad, something really big. And also he said, ‘I never been party to killing anybody in my life,’ okay?”

I said, “But he couldn’t have been talking about Oswald — this was before Kennedy even hit town.”

“I don’t know, Nate,” Janet said, and her nerves were showing, her hands trembling, her eyes moist. “Maybe killing that rabbity little homo was already on the program, how should I know? Or maybe Ruby didn’t want to be part of killing Jack Kennedy. If you really want a dumb goddamn stripper’s opinion.”

I reached over and took one of her hands and smiled at her. “That’s ‘exotic dancer,’ okay?”

She nodded and smiled a little-girl smile; she’d been one a million years ago.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I was leaving, trying to just sneak out without being seen, and suddenly he’s back in the doorway of his rathole and saying, ‘Hey, Jada! You want something?’ And I said, oh, I could see you were busy and, you know, didn’t wanna bother. And he says, ‘I know I owe you some money, doll. Next week be okay?’ And I say sure. And he says, ‘Why don’t we bury the hatchet? Come back and work for your Uncle Jack.’ And I say, maybe, and he says, ‘But not tonight. We’re gonna be closed tonight.’ And I say fine, but I’m thinking, something big sure as hell is going down — closing the club on a Friday night? Was he kidding?”

Flo said, “And this was before there was news of the assassination?”

“It was before the goddamn assassination! Anyway, I went over to the Alamo Court, on Fort Worth Avenue, where I was staying, and threw everything I owned in a couple of suitcases and I jumped in my Caddy and I booked it. Jesus, people were already lined up on the street to see the President, happy as clams to be in Dallas. Me, I just wanted out. Oh-you-tee, out. I knew I could always get work in New Orleans, and then, fuck, I hit this guy.”

I said, “What?”

“I struck a goddamn pedestrian, okay? I was hauling ass, but luckily he wasn’t hurt bad, just kinda clipped him, the guy, Charles Something, and I tried to give him some money but he was real pissed and yelling, so I took him over to a clinic where he got examined and stuff, X-rayed and that, and I was trying to say, I’ll pay for everything, just let me give you my name and you got my license number, but I gotta get the hell out of Dallas, okay? And they finally did.”

“What did you do then?”

“What do you think? I got the hell out of Dallas. I was maybe half an hour out of town when the news came over the radio.” She looked past us. “Oh. Rose is here. You should talk to her, now.”