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.”
Chapter 11
You could see the pretty girl she once had been inside the puffy visage, before droopiness touched the big brown eyes that had witnessed too much. She had a pale indoor look rare in Texas but common to B-girls, her hair dishwater blonde with hints of gold, rising in a permanent wave over a heart-shaped face around which more blonde hair cascaded to the shoulders of a yellow blouse whose cheerfulness was offset by a frayed collar. All her features were nice, though the nose may have been missing some cartilage — men had knocked this female around; she carried abuse on her slightly hunched shoulders like the heavy load it was.
She may never have been a headliner, but even now she had a nice figure, making it easy to buy her as a credible act on a strip club bill, drenched in the forgiveness of red and blue stage lighting. Easier still to imagine her working the dingy mini-trailer-park bordellos behind bars and gas stations along scrubby strips of highway, and providing a lonely man a shabby fantasy that led to temporary relief.
I’d have been surprised if she were past thirty, even if she did look near forty. Her slightly hooded eyes and her languid manner confirmed drug addict, but she wasn’t high at the moment, sitting across from Flo Kilgore and me.
The tape recorder was fine with our guest. She chain-smoked Parliaments as we talked. Maybe she thought filter-tip cigarettes were healthier. Well, she was right in a sense — they were healthier than shooting heroin, which is what Rose Cheramie (“That’s my stage name, I like it better than Melba Marcades”) had been on, last year, on the evening of November 20.
“I don’t mind talking,” she said in a husky, even ravaged, alto, “and I’m not afraid, hell, I talked to all sorts of cops about this and nobody seems to give a shit. So what’s the harm?”
“We appreciate your willingness to be interviewed,” Flo said, but the stripper didn’t need much interviewing. She launched right in, in a Texas drawl that managed to sound lazy and rapid-fire at once.
“I’m not as young as I used to be, and I never was no frisky firecracker like Jada. So stripping is just one way to make money for me. Sometimes, when gigs’re slow, I turn a trick or two. Guess I trick more than strip these days, and also, not often, when things get tough, y’know, I run dope sometimes. This particular time I was doing it for Jack Ruby, before he got himself famous. Years ago, I used to strip at his old club, the Pink Door. It’s closed now.”
Sitting forward, Flo asked, “You ran illegal drugs for Jack Ruby?”
Rose laughed; it was like sandpaper rubbing against itself. “That makes it sound like he was the boss. He was no big shot. Just another goddamn go-between. They got layers, these bent-nose boys, like a cake. Anyway, Pinky — that was his nickname back in the Pink Door days, I never did call him Sparky like some do — he does what he’s told, like any small fish. The run I was making was from Miami to Houston, but we was stopping off in Dallas. To pick up the money...” She raised her black, mostly painted-on eyebrows. “... among other things, to say the least.”
I asked, “You had the dope with you, Rose?”
She shook her head, exhaling smoke. “No, we’re picking up the stuff, and I was only along so a girl could make the trade, money for smack. It’s less... conspicuous. I mean, the guys with me, these two were hard-core badasses and looked it. I figured them for Italians at first, but turned out they was Cuban. Shouldn’ta surprised me. Y’know, you can’t shake a stick in Miami without hitting one of them Cuban spics.”
“So I hear,” I said, watching her light up a fresh Parliament off a book of matches labeled GAEITY CLUB.
Waving out the flame, she said, “The plan was, pick up the money to pay for the stuff in Dallas, then go to Houston and check in to the Rice Hotel, meet up in a bar with this sailor comin’ into Galveston, give sailor boy the cash for the ten kilos, and then hightail it back to Dallas and trade the dope for my kid.”
I frowned at her and Flo was wincing in confusion.
“Trade for your kid, Rose?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “I was kinda bein’ forced into this thing. They was blackmailing me to do it. One of ’em was holding on to my baby boy for, you know, collateral. On the plus side, I was gettin’ eight grand.”
Gently, Flo said, “Rose, it’s the assassination we’re investigating. You do understand that?”
“You mean, what does running dope have to do with shit?” Nobody smiled at the unintentional pun. “Thing is, these Cuban pricks got to talkin’ loose in front of me. It was a long trip and we got friendly, had a couple three-ways at motels. Felt like a vacation to me, though they was making sure we was making good enough time to get to Dallas when they was expected. These guys, they seemed... really keyed up, ya ask me. They was laughin’ way too much.”
I asked, “Drunk?”
“Not that drunk. And not hopped up, neither. They just kept makin’ these weird, in-jokey comments — ‘Things to do,’ one of ’em says, like he’s reading off a list. ‘Go to Dallas. Pick up money. Kill the President. Go to Houston. Pick up dope.’”