He twitched something that was neither a smile nor a frown. “The thing is, Nate… I already got more than one client, here. It’s one of those situations where the commodity in question has a lot of interested buyers, and why not keep them all happy, and me prosperous?”
“You wanna give me the ethics speech again, Roger, the conflict of interest thing? I think maybe I missed part of it.”
He moved a palm against the air as if he were polishing it. “Anyway, Nate, these are not the kind of clients you pull anything on.”
“What, are you worried? Is this van bugged? Are your clients listening in on us?”
“Really, Nate. These aren’t pleasant people.”
I let an edge into my voice. “Who wants to hear Marilyn’s bedroom talk, Roger?”
“Well, you wouldn’t know the intermediary’s name, probably. But it’s… Christ on a crutch, Nate, it’s for Hoffa.” He whispered as if afraid his own machines might pick it up: “Jimmy fucking Hoffa.”
I frowned. “Jimmy Hoffa wants to know who Marilyn is diddling? The head of the Teamsters cares who a Hollywood sex symbol takes to bed?”
He made a palms-up gesture with his free hand. “I’m in the surveillance business, Nate. Mine is not to reason why. Mine is but to make the recordings and gather same and ship ’em the hell off.”
Hoffa wasn’t just a name in the headlines to me. Everybody knew him as a controversial labor leader with obvious ties to organized crime. But I knew him personally. In 1957 Hoffa had hired me to infiltrate the so-called Rackets Committee run by Senator John L. McClellan. I had done this, but with the full knowledge of Robert Kennedy, chief counsel of the Rackets Committee.
As a double agent, I’d done Hoffa a good share of harm, but the president of the Teamsters Union didn’t know as much. Jimmy still thought I was a dirty ex-cop from Chicago. And maybe I was. But I’d never really been his dirty ex-cop from Chicago.
Nonetheless, I knew better than most the dangers of tangling asses with the affable, ruthless Teamster boss.
As reel-to-reel tape hummed on the rack nearby, Roger was saying, “And I’m pretty sure Hoffa is in this with another guy nobody oughta try to fuck with. Old friend of yours, Nate-Chicago friend?”
“I have a lot of Chicago friends.”
“So I hear. And one of ’em is Sam Giancana, right?”
Warm though it was in the enclosed space, I felt a chill, and it wasn’t the beer and it wasn’t the floor fan.
From Hoffa we’d gone in an instant to the current operating head of the Chicago mob. Called “Mooney” by friends and foes alike (it signified his craziness), Giancana had started out a street punk on the Near North Side’s Patch, worked his way up to the Capone Outfit, where he became Tony Accardo’s bodyguard. Once the top chair was his, Giancana wrested the numbers racket from the colored gangsters and expanded every other criminal enterprise in the Windy City.
Now he was a well-dressed psychopathic moneymaking machine with all kinds of show business pals, including Frank Sinatra-it was enough to make me wish I hadn’t introduced the two of them.
“ Is he a friend of yours, Nate-Giancana?”
“We get along. Never really had any trouble with him.”
“That friendship you had with Frank Nitti, back when you were starting out, it’s held you in good stead.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to talk about it. “So Hoffa’s your client, and you think Giancana is, too. Why do they care who Marilyn is entertaining?”
He blinked at me, then grinned-amused, amazed. “You’re kidding, right? Marilyn’s your client, and you don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?”
He had the goofy grin of a high schooler telling a pal about a girl who put out. “Her and the prez-that poon hound Jack Kennedy. You know the Kennedy boys, don’t you, Nate? More famous pals of yours. You bragged about your Rackets Committee days in the press enough.”
“I don’t brag. My press agent does.” I shrugged. “I’m aware Jack has a wandering eye.”
“Also a wandering dick.”
I grunted a laugh. Pawed the air. “But this is silly, Rodge. I mean, ridiculous. Marilyn and Jack Kennedy… the president… of the United States? They’re, what-having an affair?”
“You are a detective, Heller. Trust me on this one-I heard it with my own ears. Those aren’t tough voices to ID -unless maybe it was Vaughn Meader and Edie Adams havin’ fun with me.”
He was referring to a couple of well-known impressionists, the former a Kennedy mimic, the latter Ernie Kovacs’ sexy widow, who did a mean Marilyn.
I motioned with my half-empty beer can, the tapes whispering at me. Grinned at him. “Come on, Rodge. You’re saying the president of the United States himself just stops by Marilyn’s place, and partakes of a piece of ass, while the Secret Service waits on the front stoop? Don’t the neighbors mind?”
Pryor shrugged. “He doesn’t stop by her house.”
“Then how the hell do you know-”
“Tapes I heard are from… another place.”
“What other place?”
“Another place Hoffa’s guy asked me to cover.”
“Do I have to ask again?”
“Heller, honest to Christ, you don’t wanna know this.”
“Whose place, Rodge?”
“… Lawford’s place. That big beach mansion out Santa Monica way.”
“ Peter Lawford’s place.”
“What other Lawford is there?”
“Peter Lawford, the actor, who’s married to Pat Kennedy, the president’s sister… That Peter Lawford’s place.”
“I told you. A detective. There’s four bedrooms in that joint. All covered. Funny thing is, even with famous people? Listening to people screw? Bores the fuckin’ tears out of me, at this point in my jaded career.”
I finished the beer, then said, “Gimme another.”
He selected another Schlitz, like I gave a damn what brand, opened it with the church key. It foamed nicely. I drank.
And thought.
Roger and I didn’t have to discuss why Jimmy Hoffa and Sam Giancana might want incriminating tapes on JFK, although their real mutual enemy was brother Bobby, who had made a hobby out of targeting organized crime, and was an old, hated adversary of both men.
Finally, with a glance at the wall of recorders, I asked, “Why so many tapes rolling, Roger? One little blonde woman, one little bed, one little microphone?”
He looked mildly surprised that I’d figured out the significance of that. “Well, you know, with these electronics, you need a backup.”
“Right. What, six, eight backups? What’s this about, anyway?”
“Like I said, I… got a couple other clients.”
“Wanting the same… commodity?”
“Same sort of stuff, yeah.”
“Are they really good clients? The kind of clients who give you maybe half the work your agency does, that type client?”
“Nobody gives me more business than the A-1, Nate, you know that. You and Fred are good to me. You’re great.” He shook his head, his expression ominous. “But this is not shit that you need to know.”
Interesting-he’d already told me Hoffa and Giancana were involved. This was something or somebody more dangerous?
“Roger, I’ll just find out myself, other ways-you mentioned I was a detective, remember? But that will waste time and piss me off and, by the way, cost you your favorite meal ticket. Like we used to say downstairs at the PD in Chicago, when we got the goldfish out… the rubber hose? Spill.”
He spilled. One set of tapes, he said, was for the LAPD’s notorious Intelligence Division.
That was a surprise. “Don’t they have their own surveillance experts?”
“Yeah, but this they don’t want traced back to them. Frankly, I think it’s a job they’re doing for Fox. The movie studio?”
“I know what Fox is. Why wouldn’t Fox go directly to you?”
“Everybody’s got layers of protection, these days, Nate. Nobody wants anything coming back on them.”
“I’ll remember that. Who else?”
“Who else what?”
“Who else are you making goddamn tapes for?”
“You really don’t want-”