I shifted subjects, slightly. “What about your friend Dave Ferrie? Is he coming tonight?”
She nodded. “I set it up for nine — it’s almost that now. Like I said on the phone the other day, he’s in here half the evenings anyway. Uncle Carlos lets him run a tab. And he can buy sailors drinks and try to get lucky. Rest of the time he’s over at Dixie’s Bar. That’s for the gay set.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Just that you were a friend of mine who asked to meet him. I told him you and Guy Banister were buddies back in Chicago, like you said.”
Ferrie had worked for Banister, according to a reporter friend of mine on the Times-Picayune. Truth was, I’d always despised Banister, a toad of a man who had been Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago FBI office through much of the ’40s and early ’50s. But he’d been a heavy drinker whose erratic behavior got him fired. He’d gone on to be the New Orleans chief of police till he got bounced for the same reasons five or six years ago. In recent years he’d been running a PI agency.
“Listen,” she said, pulling her hands gently free, “I have to get backstage to get ready. I’ll spend a night or two with you at the Roosevelt, if you like. They got room service and my dump upstairs don’t.”
I smiled. “I’d like that. When do you get off? I’ll take you out for something to eat.”
“In this wacky town? Anyway, I got sets damn near all night. If you’re an early riser in your old age, you could pick me up at five A.M. We could go to the poor boy stand on St. Claude — they’re open twenty-four hours — or maybe beignets and café au lait at Café Du Monde?”
“That’s worth a wake-up call. When’s your last set?”
“Four.”
“I’ll come watch and then we’ll go have poor boys or doughnuts or some damn thing. Then I’ll take you back to the Roosevelt and sleep all day.”
“Well,” she said with a wicked glistening red smile, “we’ll stay in bed all day, anyway... There he is. There’s your man.”
She slid out of the booth and headed quickly off into the smoky darkness of the club, her bottom in those jeans more provocative than Nikki Corvette’s bare one.
I glanced toward the customer who’d just entered, and was making a beeline toward me displaying a friendly smile, hand outstretched.
At first, in the dim lighting, he looked normal enough, a fairly big guy, around six feet, maybe two hundred pounds, his wide oval face home to large dark eyes, an anteater nose, a rather small thin-lipped mouth, and a pointed chin. He wore a rather jaunty golf cap and a long-sleeve white shirt with narrow dark tie and dark slacks.
Still seated in the booth, I looked up at him while we shook hands, his grip firm but clammy. This close, I could well understand why his appearance had been described more than once as bizarre — the cap rested on what appeared to be a red mohair wig, and Groucho-ish eyebrows had been fashioned out of strips of matching carpet. The effect was clownish.
“Nathan Heller, you are a famous man,” he said, in a voice whose nasal quality was offset somewhat by an authoritative manner. No Southern accent, more Midwestern.
“Not really,” I said. “But that’s kind of you. Sit, please.”
On closer inspection, his clothing looked rumpled, slept-in, and he had the distinct bouquet of BO. What did this guy have against soap?
“I should be more clear,” he said. “You’re famous in the sense that you’ve been featured in some popular magazines. But in the circles I move in, you’re a kind of hero.”
“Really.” My God, this son of a bitch stunk.
“You’re the man who started it all.”
“I am?”
He got a pixie-ish smile going, and his red-mohair eyebrows wiggled. “You were the midwife to...” And his whisper was barely audible over “Basin Street Blues,” as Nikki Corvette bumped-and-ground. “... Mongoose.”
Jesus, did every Tom, Harry, and dick know that little piece of history?
Well, maybe I could make hay out of it.
“I understand you’ve really done your bit,” I said.
“Thank you, sir. That is much appreciated, sir.”
“What can I buy you to drink?”
“They make a surprisingly good Ramos gin fizz here, considering the lowbrow nature of the establishment.”
“Well, let’s get you one, Dave... or do you prefer David?”
“Oh, I don’t stand on ceremony. Make it David.”
I tried to figure that one out while I waved over a waitress and ordered him his fizz. I declined getting a refill on my rum-and-Coke. This kook would require all my brain cells.
“So you knew Guy? What a guy!” He laughed at this would-be witticism. “How far back did you two hombres go?”
Hombres?
“All the way to the Dillinger shooting,” I said. “He was there, you know. He was FBI, I was Chicago PD.”
“Yes, he told me all about that fateful night. How his bullet brought Mr. Big Cock down!”
Okay, that was wrong in so many ways, starting with Banister not being one of the shooters, plus it hadn’t really been Dillinger that night. But that’s another story, and as for the size of Johnny D’s dingus, I couldn’t confirm or deny.
“You know, it was a tragic loss,” he said, shaking his head, almost dislodging the cap. “For such a big man with a such a big heart to have that very heart attack him.”
Banister was one of the as-yet-uninvestigated convenient assassination-related deaths that had occurred in Louisiana — in June of this year.
The waitress brought Ferrie his gin fizz and he thanked her, giving her a wink, getting a grimace in return.
“I admit I’m not aware,” I said, “of what Guy did for the cause.” Whatever the fuck the cause was. “You give me too much credit on Mongoose. As you say, I was just the midwife.”
“But what a baby you brought into the world!” he said, toasting me.
I lifted my empty rum-and-Coke glass to him in return. “But Castro is still with us, I’m afraid.”
“But someone else isn’t.”
Gosh, I wondered who he meant.
Then, leaning in conspiratorially, he made sure I knew: “Jack Kennedy was a nigger-loving traitor. Do you have any idea how many of our Cuban brothers he killed with his cowardice?”
So black people were niggers, but brown people were our brothers? I didn’t bother trying to navigate the logic of that.
I just said, “No, David. How many were killed?”
“Too goddamn many! You know, I’m honored you want to get together. I didn’t think a small fry like me would be on your radar.”
“You’re no small fry, David. You put a lot in motion. Ruby. Oswald.”
He swallowed. He’d felt free enough tossing Mongoose around, but maybe those names were different. “Come on now, Nate... or do you prefer Nathan?”
“Nate’s fine.”
“Nate. Good. But loose lips sink ships, Nate. Don’t forget that. Ships get sunk that way, yes they do.”
“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, David. I was in Dallas last week, accompanying Flo Kilgore to a number of interviews with Kennedy witnesses — witnesses this Warren Commission has ignored or overlooked.”
“She just died.”
“Yes.”
“In New York, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right, but she was in Dallas all last week.”
He was frowning in thought. Was he really unaware of what I’d just shared, or was he a better actor than he had any right to be? “Why would you do that? Help her in that way?”
“Well, first of all, she hired me. I’m a private eye, David, like you are. Your main client is Uncle Carlos, right?”
His smile was small because his mouth was small, but his beaming pride was big. “Yes. I do investigations for Mr. Marcello through his lawyer. But I’m also his private pilot. I was with Eastern Airlines, you know.”