“Yeah. Told him to go fuck himself, back in ’34. Before that kind of thing was fashionable.”
He liked that.
“Jack, I’m glad to help, but if I could put in my two cents…?”
“Throw in as much as you like, Nate. The, uh, campaign coffers can use it.”
“I hear you got some help in West Virginia.”
The story was that Giancana had pulled strings in that state and pumped in money, some of it from a Teamster pension fund. That made Jack beholden to both Giancana and Hoffa, two of his brother’s least favorite people.
“It was a, uh, tough primary.”
“Not as tough as the general election’ll be. And if it’s Illinois that puts you over the top? And Giancana is, or even just thinks he’s the one who made it happen? Well… those are dangerous waters, Jack.”
“ Those are dangerous waters,” he said, smiling at an underwater nymph ogling him and waving. Then he looked at me. “In politics, Nate, we make, uh, all sorts of promises. All sorts of strange bedfellows. We make deals with people who are, uh, also giving to the other side, covering their bases, because that’s, uh, how it works. They hope for a little consideration. Sometimes you give it to them. But it’s not a quid pro quo situation.”
“Just my two cents.”
“Well, uh, I appreciate that, I really do, Nate, and your willingness to help out… I’ll be in touch. If and, uh, when the time comes.”
We shook hands again.
I’d been dismissed. Lawford, who was at the bar, saw me departing, nodded, smiled, and slid back in across from his brother-in-law.
Upstairs, I had a brief nonpolitical conversation with Sinatra, who I’d done a few jobs for. I didn’t know Martin or Davis very well, but we exchanged pleasantries.
Hef-holding court back at his couch, surrounded by guests and girls-gave me a happy-kid look. Kennedy’s presence meant a lot to him, though no reporter would cover tonight-a direct link between Hef and JFK might be embarrassing, and the press boys liked and protected this candidate. They also liked getting asked back to Hef’s parties.
The next hour I spent in the pool, in a bathing suit, chatting up Krista, that twisting bikini brunette I’d spotted earlier, a twenty-year-old who’d recently quit her bank secretary job to be a Bunny. She was from Los Angeles and originally from Sweden and had been in the magazine early last year.
Odd to see her in that skimpy bathing suit and already know that her breasts would be a pale pink against the dark tan and her nipples dark as that tan and rather large and puffy. We flirted, and I used the private eye angle to impress her-she had big brown eyes and a very white, very fetching smile, and a ridiculously sexy accent. We’d been tangling tongues at the edge of the pool for maybe ten minutes when I suddenly realized the tent I was making would be visible from the window in the bar, and suggested we make use of that grotto behind the waterfall.
But when we got in there, somebody was already standing in the waist-high pool with his back to its edge, his body reflecting the shimmering lighted-from-below waters in the cave-like surroundings.
Bad back be damned, there was Jack Kennedy, his chest tan, a goofy smile going, his hands underwater, somebody splashing as he held that somebody’s head under. As if trying to drown whoever it was.
Krista gave me a look and I gave her one back.
“Well, uh, hello again, Nate,” Jack said. “Who’s your lovely friend?”
Hands kept pushing down. More splashing.
“This is Krista. Jack, you better let that-”
“Be damned,” he chuckled. More splashing. “Wouldn’ta taken you for a spoilsport, Nate.”
And he let the person up-not surprisingly a girl, a lovely Liz Taylor-ish brunette with a mouthful of something, probably not water, which she swallowed, and then shoved her hands at him, half playful, half angry.
She scolded, “I told you not to do that anymore, Jack!”
“Don’t you trust me, Judy?… Nate, do you know Judy?”
“Yeah. Yeah. We’ve met.”
I’d met Judith Campbell before.
She was Sam Giancana’s current squeeze, and most anybody who was anybody in Chicago mob circles would know that.
Dangerous waters was right.
It was a little unsettling. What did the golden boy need with me as go-between, with Judy in the picture? Still, it didn’t stop me from sneaking upstairs like a thief with Krista and finding an empty room among the forty.
CHAPTER 5
The Lawfords lived in what Hollywood types would call a beach house but anybody else would call a mansion. The rambling marble-and-stucco neo-Spanish dwelling on Palisades Beach Road had been Louis B. Mayer’s, once upon a time, visited by-and making an impression upon-young Peter Lawford, back when he was a contract player at MGM.
It could still make an impression, though from without it was just another (if large) Santa Monica beachfront property like those of the neighbors, doctors or lawyers or agents; usually not movie stars, who preferred Malibu or Beverly Hills. Like Marilyn, who lived barely ten minutes away, the Lawfords cared more about comfort than status. When you’re the president’s sister and brother-in-law, status isn’t an issue.
Despite the size of the place-taking up two lots-you could park right in front of it, pulling in like you were at a roadside restaurant. I stepped out into the cool ocean breeze of late afternoon, shadows just starting to go to work, the pound of surf making foamy music.
I’d come right over from my encounter with Roger Pryor and his TV repair van, and had spotted two similar vans (though not ones I recognized as Roger’s) parked within a quarter mile of the fenced-in Lawford estate.
Slipping my Ray-Bans in my sport-shirt pocket, I was about to knock at the front door when two guys in black suits and black ties and black sunglasses materialized and made bookends of themselves. The one on my right was a little older-thirty-five?-and took the lead: “May we help you, sir?”
This was with the warmth of a UNIVAC spitting out a punch card.
“My name’s Nathan Heller,” I said, and got my wallet out and let the windows flip down, displaying my array of investigator’s licenses: Illinois, Los Angeles, New York State. “I’m a friend of Mr. Lawford’s, and of the president and the attorney general.”
That got something that might have been a smile out of the older one. I wondered what branch they were. Was there a permanent fed detail attached to keep an eye on the presidential relatives who lived here?
The younger one, who hadn’t said anything, departed, heading to a black Ford Galaxie parked two down from my Jag.
“Black suit,” I said to the guy on my right, “black tie, black sedan? You guys really know how to blend in here in sunny Cal.”
“Who says we’re trying to blend in?”
“Well, the sunglasses are a start. What if I asked to see your credentials?”
“You could ask.”
I didn’t.
But it only took five minutes for me to be cleared, and I didn’t even have to knock again, as a smiling and slightly chagrined Patricia Kennedy Lawford opened the door on us.
“Mr. Heller,” she said pleasantly, offering a hand for me to take and shake. “Nate. Nice to see you again.”
Pat Lawford wasn’t beautiful-too much Kennedy in her face-but she was certainly striking, tall, slender, not yet forty, fetchingly casual in a blue-and-white striped top and matching blue capris with white Keds.
“Sorry to stop by without calling, Mrs. Lawford. It’s important I see Peter.”
“Certainly, and it’s Pat, of course.”
She opened the door for me, and nodded and smiled tightly at the men in black.
“See you at the company picnic,” I told them, and then the door was closed on them. “Are they always here?”
“Sometimes they’re here,” she said, with a smile that had just enough crinkles in it to say that was none of my business.
I had been inside this house before. I knew it had a dozen rooms and yet managed to have a nice lived-in, comfortable feel while reeking of money.