From the doorway, Lou said, “We don’t have anybody in Dallas to watch the guy. There are agencies in those parts we could contact. What do you say?”
“No, I’ll make a call myself. Have one of our LA men determine when Wallace is due back in California and pick him up then.”
“You’re the boss.” He pointed at me and then at himself. “Now, if you get killed, then I’m the boss, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay then,” Lou said.
And he left me there with my apprehensions.
Coming into the office this morning, settling behind my desk in my inner sanctum, had given me a nice feeling of normalcy. As if everything that happened in Texas had been an episode, like a show on TV, and the show was over, the set clicked off.
But one of the witnesses, Rose Cheramie, was dead, just three days after we talked to her. Rose was a junkie and the kind of woman who could get herself killed lots of ways. But had we gotten her killed? Had I?
Clint Peoples wasn’t in, but he called me back after lunch.
“Nate,” the familiar mellow, folksy voice said, “I got some additional information for you, on the Cheramie woman’s death, if you’re interested.”
“That’s one reason I called.”
“Driver in question, a Mr. Jerry Don Moore, from Tyler, was heading home. Comin’ up level with a roadside parking area, he noticed three or four suitcases strewn on the highway, spillin’ over the yellow line. He swerved right, to miss them, and then there in front of him was a woman lyin’ prone on the shoulder, at ninety degrees to the road, head on the road, like the pavement’s her pillow. He braked, says he doesn’t know for sure if he hit her or not.”
“How’s that possible?”
“Moore says there was a sound, but it mighta been a shoe brake hitting on his old beater — it’s got bald tires and a single headlight. The fella admits to speeding, and drinking, by the by. Some colored folks stopped and helped him, moving the suitcases, putting Rose in his backseat. Moore took her to a doctor he knew in Big Sandy, who got her to Gladewater Hospital, where she was DOA. Cause of death... let me give it to you exact... ‘traumatic head wound with subdural and subarachnoid and petechial hemorrhage to the brain caused by being struck by an auto.’”
“Hardly a surprising diagnosis.”
“Maybe so, but Nate — there was also a ‘deep punctuate stellate wound above her right forehead.’ Now, this type of injury—”
“I know what type of injury that is, Clint.”
The result of a contact gunshot wound, the star-shaped wound from the bursting, tearing effect on skin of gasses trapped against flesh.
“Other odd thing is, Highway 155, where she was found? That’s a farm-to-market road, runnin’ parallel to US Highways 271 and 80. She’d have had a much better chance of hitchin’ a ride on either of those.”
“She was killed elsewhere and dumped.”
“Not much doubt about that — for one thing, she had tire tread tracks on her damn head... and that junker’s tires are bald, remember. Also, her estimated time of death was nine hours before she was admitted to Gladewater.”
“What now?”
“Well, despite these anomalies, I’m afraid my sister organization, the Texas Highway Patrol, has already closed the case.”
“Shit, that’s a little fast, isn’t it?”
“The officer in charge couldn’t establish a connection between the driver and victim, and Rose’s relatives do not wish to pursue the matter. If I may be blunt, Rose was a junkie prostitute, and those girls find imaginative ways to die each and every day. Wish I could say Mac Wallace doesn’t have an alibi, but he’s got one, all right — he flew from sunny Cal into Dallas on Saturday, and Rose died Friday.”
“That was the other reason I called, Clint — to make sure you knew Wallace was back on your turf.”
“As I mentioned the other day, we do keep track of the boy.”
“I’m glad to hear that, because I don’t have an A-1 office in them there parts to keep an eye on the bastard. I think I may have mentioned we’ve been maintaining surveillance on him in Anaheim.”
“Well,” he sighed, “can’t promise the Rangers are watching him as close as all that, but I have made a sort of hobby out of Mr. Wallace. You have any particular concerns?”
“Miss Kilgore and I talked to a number of assassination witnesses, who seem to be a vanishing breed, to put it in Texas terms.”
“You mean, more than a few folks are comin’ down with a bad case of suicide?”
“Or a terminal dose of getting their skulls crushed by a car after getting shot in the head. Would you like a list of the people we talked to? Other than Rose Cheramie?”
He wrote the names down, then said apologetically, “There is no way or manner I can offer all these individuals protection... but if I see any incidents involving them, I will get right on it.”
“And inform me, please. By the way, I’ll be in New Orleans for a few days, starting two weeks from today. I’ll be at the Roosevelt if you need me, or come up with anything.”
“Got it. Take care now, in Louisiana. That’s a foreign country, pardner.”
“Pardner, huh? Havin’ a little fun with me, Clint?”
“A mite.”
When I’d hung up the phone, I sat there staring at it as if it might be able to give me the advice that Lou said he couldn’t. Starting on the plane trip back, I’d been brooding over whether to fill RFK in on what I’d learned about his brother’s murder. On some level, I’d been working for him in Dallas — on the investigating side, sure, but also keeping tabs on Flo and what she discovered.
But if I reported everything we’d learned to Bobby before Flo had a chance to get her story or book out there, Jack Kennedy’s sibling might reach out with his considerable clout and squelch her efforts, even while plundering them for information. Still vivid in my memory was Flo’s bitter disappointment — and mine — when the work we’d done uncovering the truth of Marilyn’s murder had been spiked by her editor due to Kennedy family influence. It had created a rift between Bobby and me that had only recently sealed over.
I was still looking at the phone when it rang, which for just a second gave me a start, as if I had willed that to happen.
Millie was on the line: “Mr. Heller, I have a call here from New York, a gentleman who is not on our list. He sounds very upset, and is insistent on talking to you, but I can follow procedure and refer him to Mrs. Sapperstein if you prefer.”
“Who is he?”
“Frank Felton.”
I sat up. “Put him through.”
Flo’s husband. He’d been an actor once upon a time, and if Millie were ten years older, she might have recognized the name. Might.
“Nate, this Frank. Flo’s Frank.”
Though we’d only met a few times, his warm baritone, a trifle slurry, was immediately recognizable: he’d played Johnny Dollar on the radio for a while.
“Yes, Frank. Is everything all right? I watched the show last night, so I know Flo got back safely.”
“She did, but I have... Nate, I have...” Damn, was he crying? “We lost her, Nate... she’s gone.”
“Gone?” My stomach tightened, as a sick feeling flowed through me. “She’s... dead, Frank?”
“The damn booze mixed with pills. Damn booze and pills. How many times did I tell her... Listen, I can’t really talk... I have a number of calls to make, but I know you were close. That you were just with her. She thought the world of you, Nate.”
“Jesus. Frank, I’m sorry. So sorry. Hell. Was there any sign of foul play?”
“Foul play? No! Why would you...?”
“Sorry to bring it up. You do know what story she and I were working on in Dallas, right?”