Looked like it was going to be a long afternoon.
“Lyndon invited me to another party that night. This was next week at the Driskill Hotel in Austin. I said yes, and he had someone fly me there and I waited for him in his suite, but the only party was the two of us. I became his second wife that night.”
Confused, I asked, “You were married?”
“No, my dear. But ‘mistress’ is a word with such unpleasant connotations. And when Steven was born, we became Lyndon’s other family, though I never had the privilege of being called First Lady.”
My hunch was that Johnson had his first lady when he was about thirteen.
Flo said, “Having a relationship with a married man must have been difficult for you.”
“Oh, yes, I’m a good Catholic girl, you know. My parents raised me that way, and after every time I was with Lyndon, in those first years, I would go to church and confess. But then I would just turn right around and sin again. Anyway, our relationship was hidden to the outside world. No one but Lyndon’s insiders ever knew.”
“And God,” I pointed out.
Flo shot me a flash of irritation.
But Madeleine merely nodded, saying, “And God, yes. A client at the agency was our cover-up man — he would alert me of Lyndon’s arrival in town, or arrange travel to Austin or elsewhere, and the hotel room where I was to be, and tell my boss I was needed on business.” She leaned toward Flo, woman-to-woman. “These are precious moments to me, fleeting moments to share with the man I loved.”
Flo asked, “You knew he would never be yours?”
“That’s right. There was plenty of romance — perfume, flowers, and material things, like this house and a new car every year. But there was also... do you embarrass easily, Mr. Heller?”
“I blush at card tricks,” I said.
Flo gave me another quick look.
“Well, then hold on to your hat,” she said (I was wearing the Panama by Stetson again), “because I intend to be frank, sir. While we certainly talked and enjoyed each other’s company, these stolen moments were primarily sexual. We both enjoyed each other that way. He was a wonderful lover. A stallion between the sheets.”
The thought of this cute dish in bed with LBJ was cringe-inducing.
Flo asked, “And when he found out you were expecting?”
“He was furious at first... then worried for us both. He was so terribly ambitious and already had his eye on the presidency. He feared the Mafia or somebody would find out about us and use it against him.”
Kind of like she was doing now.
Madeleine gestured with an open hand, as if introducing a debutante. “You see, Lyndon was created by two millionaires from here, H. L. Hunt and Sid Richardson. I know them both well. You look skeptical, Mr. Heller. Well, Dallas is a small city, and it was smaller still in the ’50s. Keep in mind, I was an account executive at the most important ad agency in town. I would figure and analyze budgets, direct client marketing, purchase media time, and travel to radio and TV stations all around the state. I rubbed shoulders with the high and the mighty. Take Hunt, for instance. I saw him every weekday morning — we parked our cars side by side in the same lot.”
I asked, “Why was Hunt backing Johnson? LBJ’s a liberal in many ways, and even a guy from Chicago knows that H. L. Hunt is just slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.”
Her smile was wide and those dimples were something. “Oh, yes, Hunt’s a John Birch Society boy. He’s the one that backed that ‘treason’ ad in the paper the day Kennedy came to town, and passed out circulars calling the President a traitor. But H.L. believed in Lyndon, and in the power of money. Funny thing is, he dressed like some poor old man. Richest man in America, in near rags.”
Flo asked, “What did Hunt think of John Kennedy?”
“Oh, hated him like poison, of course. But H.L. was practical, and patient.”
I asked, “Patient how?”
“Well, when Lyndon was going to lose the nomination for President, back at the ’60 convention? Hunt got together with old Joe Kennedy and worked out a deal for Lyndon to get on the ticket. That’s how he became VP, even though JFK couldn’t stand him. And Hunt said to me, ‘We may have lost a battle, honey, but we’ll win the war.’”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, Mr. Heller. Nate. I will say that after the assassination, H.L. told me, ‘Well, we won the war!’”
“You’re saying Hunt was behind the assassination.”
“I’d call him the... linchpin of the oilmen around here. Some say Lyndon was behind it, and I asked him, point-blank, right next to me in bed, and he said that was bullshit, that it was Texas oil and those... pardon my French... ‘fucking renegade intelligence bastards.’”
“For what reason?”
“Kennedy was calling for big cuts in the oil depletion allowance. He was stopping mergers under antitrust. The market dropped, steel fell. And he was gonna close a bushel of military bases here and overseas, and was gonna pull out of Vietnam. And he was talking about dismantling the CIA. I mean, he did fire that Allen Dulles and his second in command, our mayor’s brother. Mayor Cabell changed the motorcade route that day, you know... More iced tea, Nate?”
“No. No, I’m fine.”
She smiled impishly. “Here’s something nobody outside of Dallas knows. H. L. Hunt and Jack Ruby are pals. Jack used to set up these great poker games for Hunt — old boy’s an avid poker player.”
“You know Jack Ruby?”
“Everybody around here does. You do know the Carousel was right across from the Adolphus? If you passed Jack on the street, and you didn’t know him, he would stop you and give you his Carousel Club card. Jack was everywhere in those days. He knew everybody in the Dallas Police Department. He hated Kennedy, too.”
I gave her half a smile. “Madeleine, you don’t seem like the type to hang out at a strip joint.”
“Oh, I’m not. I don’t know if I was ever there during regular hours. They opened at seven-thirty P.M., I believe. No, Jack liked to be around important people — said they were ‘classy.’ He’d open up in the afternoon, or any time, really, for fellas like Hunt or anybody in politics or business to duck in for a little privacy or fun. Fix ’em up with gambling or girls. I heard Jack Ruby could have somebody beat up for fifteen bucks and killed for a hundred. No, Jack was a buddy.”
She seemed awfully cavalier about murder, for a nice Catholic girl serving up too-sweet tea on a patio surrounded by flowers.
Flo asked, “What was your reaction when Ruby killed Oswald?”
Madeleine paused. For once, the free-flowing words stopped and she chose them carefully. “I thought he was at the police station because somebody asked him to do that, and he had no other choice than to do it.”
Flo leaned forward. “I understand you saw Lyndon the night before the assassination.”
The dark eyes flashed and so did a smile. “Yes, he surprised me that night. I didn’t know he would be there. I was asked to attend a party at Clint Murchinson’s residence — he’s another of those oilmen behind Lyndon. His son John was living there at the time, because Clint had a stroke — like old Joe Kennedy — and was moved to more accommodating quarters... although he was there that night, all right.”
I asked, “What was the occasion of the party?”
“It was in honor of Edgar Hoover. He was a big pal of Clint’s and of Lyndon’s. Then, of course you know, Edgar was a lifelong bachelor, and had his friend Clyde Tolson with him to... you know, several of those oilmen were life-long bachelors, too. They all loved horse-racing and gambling, and they would go off on these holidays together, and, well that’s neither here nor there. Where was I?”