“I’m going to kind of build up to that.” My words were calm but I couldn’t keep the edge out of my voice. Since hearing about Flo earlier today, I had not been myself. Or maybe I was too much myself. “You were part of Mongoose, right?”
His dark eyes flared. He placed his hands on the edge of the metal desk, thick fingers on artificial-wood top, giving himself easy access to that .22.
“It’s okay to say so,” I said with a smile. “You can check with Rosselli about that. Didn’t John ever mention my role? He can confirm I set up the first meet between him, Mooney, and Santo.”
“Okay,” he said, with the expression of a man adjusting his shower temperature. “I was part of that. Not that we never got nowhere with it. That prick Castro is still smoking Havanas.”
“Yeah, and the poisoned ones never worked out, right? There was one plan I heard about, though, that might’ve come in handy — something about hitting Castro on his way to the airport from a high building. Using highly trained snipers. That’s plural, because triangulation was involved.”
Traffic on West Cermak was providing a discordant muffled soundtrack, an occasional horn honk stabbing the night.
His dark eyes were hooded now. “We’re all CIA assets, Heller. You and me and John and... plenty of other people. If you’re just trying to figure out who’s on what side, that would put us on the same side. Same team.”
“Okay.” He didn’t seem to be lying. On the other hand, he was a car salesman. “Chuckie, did John mention to you that earlier this month a Cuban tried to run me down? And that my son was almost a hit-and-run victim, too?”
“He did not mention that, no.”
“I spoke to John, and he assured me that if somebody was out there tying off loose ends, he was not involved.”
“I’m sure he isn’t. He likes you, Nate.”
Now I was Nate. Well, that was only fair. I was calling him Chuckie.
I said, “But the question is, are you involved?”
“In... tyin’ off loose ends? Hell, no.”
“You’ve tied off your share, Chuckie.”
“I suppose I have.”
“The estimate around town is twenty hits.”
“That sounds about right.”
“That’s about half the Japs I killed in the Pacific, but not bad for local work.”
Big white smiling teeth, caps or choppers, collided with his dark tan. “You done all right yourself, back in the States, ain’t you, Nate?”
“I don’t like to brag. Have we established that neither of us scares easy?”
He went for the gun and then I was just sitting there with him aiming its long snout at my chest. A head shot would have been messy here at the office. I waited to see if he’d fire or was just one-upping me.
“Why don’t you tell me what this is about, Nate?”
“Does that feel a little light, Chuckie? It might.”
He frowned.
“Because I removed all the bullets.”
Then I got out the nine-millimeter and he clicked on an empty chamber, twice, then sighed. Set the gun down with a little clunk.
“Okay,” he said. “So you’re right. Neither of us assholes scares easy.”
I kept the gun in my hand, but draped casually in my lap. As casually as a nine millimeter can be draped, anyway.
“I just got back from Dallas,” I said conversationally. “A little bodyguard work for a reporter who was looking into the aftermath of the assassination.”
“JFK.”
“Not Lincoln. I could have said McKinley, but at a Ford dealership, Lincoln seems more politic.”
“You are a fucking laugh riot, Heller.”
“Coming from a guy as uneasily amused as you, Chuckie, I take that as a compliment. So when Billy McCarthy’s eyeball popped out, did you even miss a beat scarfing down that spaghetti?”
“That story you heard is inaccurate.”
“Oh?”
“It was ziti.”
We smiled at each other. We were both laugh riots who were not easily scared. And yet we were both good and goddamned scared, and I was fine with that.
I said, “The reporter was Flo Kilgore.”
He frowned a little; it made white lines in his tan. “That skinny dame from TV? I heard on the radio she died. Accidental overdose, they said.”
I ignored that. “We were interviewing witnesses to the assassination, plus some peripheral figures.”
“What does that mean? Per what?”
“Fringe. Sidelines, but still in the game. They’re dropping like flies, Chuckie. Accidental deaths like Flo. Sudden suicides. Car accidents. Some people are just getting threatened or maimed, but one way or the other, they’re getting shut up.”
“And this is a bad thing?”
I gave him half a smile. “I’m aware you were there, Chuckie. I know you were part of it. Maybe even a shooter.”
His eyes narrowed. He was wondering if he could throw that .22 at me hard enough to buy him time to come around the desk and kill me with my own gun. Anyway, that’s what I’d have been thinking.
I raised a “stop” hand and said, “That’s between you and your maker. I’m not trying to solve the Kennedy assassination.”
“No?”
“No. I already knew it was a conspiracy before it went down — I was in the middle of the Chicago plot early November last year, remember? And I know who the big boys are. Oh, not necessarily all of them by name, but it’s oilmen and other right-wing wackos, and spook pals of ours from Mongoose and the Bay of Pigs, and their Cuban buddies, and of course, obviously, what we’ll quaintly call the Mafia.”
His eyes had disappeared into puffy slits. “If you know everything, Heller, what the fuck can I tell you?”
“Tell me this. Can I... can you... trust John Rosselli?”
“Huh?”
“When he says there is no Outfit cleanup crew dispatched to tie off loose ends, is he telling the truth?”
“On the grave of my kids,” he said, holding up both big palms, “I don’t know of any.”
“I think you mean on the life of your kids, but their graves might be more apt at that, Chuckie. As I said, my boy Sam was almost run down, and that pisses me off.”
He shrugged. “Sure. That’s over the line.”
“Good. It’s nice to talk to a fucking professional for a change. I don’t think it’s the Company. I have a contact there who I trust, as far it goes. And I don’t think those Cubans could organize a fart in the bathtub.”
“You’re tellin’ me?”
“Then who is tying off the loose ends, Chuckie? And be careful how you answer, because I ask you as one loose end to another.”
That got his attention.
“Only one possibility,” he said, shaking his head as if saying no, which he wasn’t. “That fucking Uncle Carlos. He’s a law unto himself. We do business with him, we have a kind of... understanding with him. But he stands apart. He doesn’t view this Thing of Ours as a club he’s in.”
“Most of the deaths are in Texas. Some that I haven’t looked into yet are in Louisiana.”
Chuckie nodded. “Marcello controls all of Texas and Louisiana, and he and Santo got Florida, too. So if I was to suggest something to you, Heller... as one pro to another... as one... loose end to another... if you want to shut this thing down, you already know where you have to go.”
“New Orleans,” I said.
“New Orleans,” he said, nodding.
Where in two weeks Flo and I would have continued our investigation, before this latest convenient tragedy had come along. I’d be taking that Big Easy trip all right, but my next stop would be Manhattan.
I got to my feet and slipped the nine millimeter into its leather womb. “You’ll find your slugs in that wastebasket, Chuck. If you reload your clip and come running after me, I’ll know I misjudged you.”