He nodded, and I left him-he had half a doughnut to go. I’d finished mine.
I crossed the bullpen-maybe half our agents were out in the field, which pleased me, because that meant income-and Gladys stopped me just outside my office. She was in a blue and white print dress and that body, even in her fifties, even with a few pounds on it, was worth hating Lou over.
“I took the liberty of making an appointment for you,” she said.
“Imagine that.” As if she hadn’t done that thousands of times.
“Two o’clock. It’s an old friend of ours-Eben Boldt.”
“Really. Did he say what about?”
“He asked if you had the entire afternoon clear, and I said yes.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Very closemouthed, our Eben. I always found him a little humorless. Didn’t you?”
That was like Jefferson on Mount Rushmore saying that Washington character seemed kind of stoic.
“Hadn’t noticed,” I said.
A few minutes later, Lou stepped into my private office, shut the door behind him, and settled into the client’s chair. I was already behind my desk.
“Where were we?” he asked.
With no further preamble, I gave him a straight report on the conversation with Hoffa.
Lou sat blank-faced throughout. When I’d wrapped it up, he said, “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t not believe him. That he didn’t deny the possibility one of his people did it, on their own initiative, says something.”
He considered that, then asked, “Are you satisfied that he’s satisfied?”
“That I’m not a loose end? Well, I don’t think I am to him. But if one of his guys did take it upon himself to remove Tom, it’s possible they might try the same with me.”
Behind the lenses, his eyes were almost gone, just cuts in his face. “Doesn’t have to be one of his guys, you know.”
“True. Could be the Outfit, on their own, or even…”
I didn’t say it, but Lou just nodded, slowly. The word we both skipped was CIA. Operation Mongoose cast a long fucking shadow.
I said, “Make a discreet call down to Dallas to see if Jack Ruby is back. His club’s called the Carousel. Nothing direct-if there’s some agency we work with down there who can check this out without getting Ruby’s attention, that would be perfect.”
“We do have a guy down there.”
“Good. If Ruby isn’t deep in the heart of Texas yet, check our local hotels and see if you come up with him. He might be staying under Jake Rubinstein.”
“Okay. Figure to have a chat with your old West Side compadre?”
“If he’s in town. If he’s back home … we’ll see.”
Neither of us said anything for a few seconds.
“If you are a loose end,” Lou said, “that means somebody’s weaving something goddamn serious. How the hell could a small-change payoff to a nobody like Jake Rubinstein get Tom Ellison killed? And put you on the spot?”
I laughed softly. “‘On the spot.’ There’s an old Chicago term for you. Going back to Capone days.…”
“What kind of steps can you take?”
“Well, I slept downstairs with Sally last night,” I said, shrugging one shoulder, “as a kind of half-ass precaution.”
Nobody called Sally “Helen” except me, and maybe her mother, so I stuck with the familiar.
“You got her moved in okay?” he asked, his turn to pose a question he knew the answer to but asked anyway.
I nodded. “I love having her around, but this is a lousy time. If I’m reading Hoffa wrong, I’m putting her at serious risk.”
“She’s a big girl, Nate.”
“Actually, she’s a little wisp of a tough-as-nails thing.”
Lou smiled a little. “She take those meetings you lined up at the Chez Paree and Empire Room?”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved to have the subject changed. “Nice response, some apparent interest, particularly from Mike Satariano. But no bookings yet. I set her up with meets with the managers at the Ivanhoe Club, this morning, and the Gaslight, this afternoon.”
“I wish her luck,” he said, crossing his arms, but his expression said he thought she had a rough road ahead of her. “Cabaret and theater aren’t what they used to be in this town. Sally’s probably going to have to go the strip club route. Even at her age, she’s a name in that world.”
“She doesn’t look her age,” I reminded him.
“No, and neither do I, and neither do you, but we are still old fuckers. Never forget that.”
“Where Sally has it over on us,” I said, “is nobody would pay a nickel to see us in our birthday suits.”
That made him chuckle, and he rose. “I hear Eben Boldt’s stopping by today. If you can make him smile, I’ll buy lunch two days running. Make him laugh, I’ll spot you, my missus, and Sally to supper at the Cafe de Paris.”
“Honor system?”
“Sure. You wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Only because you’d know.”
He shut the door-like all invaders of other people’s privacy, I prized my own-leaving me smiling, because he was right about Eben Boldt. What it took to make that guy laugh was a mystery this detective had never cracked.
Nice guy, though, and smart, and if I might be allowed, I was proud of him.
Eben Boldt was the only Negro Secret Service agent in the Chicago office, one of a handful in the nation, and had even spent a number of months on the White House detail, the first Secret Service agent of his race.
Boldt had grown up in East St. Louis, Illinois, his father a railroad worker, his mother a strict disciplinarian. He’d been raised around Dixieland and jazz music, which was the part of his personality I liked best, and he’d earned a college degree in music.
So in the summer of 1957, when he showed up on the A-1’s doorstep, saying he was interested in a career in criminal investigation, I said, “Hum a few bars and I’ll fake it.” That marked the first of many times I looked into the sharp-eyed chocolate oval of his face and got no reaction.
“I’m serious about this, Mr. Heller,” he said.
He’d been twenty-two years old, a handsome kid-not Sidney Poitier handsome maybe, but close enough, a slender, highly presentable exemplar of his people.
We ran a regular advertisement seeking investigators but had never had a Negro apply before. I thought a young colored operative would come in very handy in Chicago, and based on his professional if somber demeanor, and his impressive grade average at Lincoln University, I took him on.
Boldt was with us only a year, however, before he applied to the Illinois State Highway Police. It was clear the A-1 had just been a stepping-stone into what I’m sure he figured would be “real” police work, but I took no offense. He’d done an excellent job for us, mostly working undercover on gambling-related cases in Bronzeville, and I had been happy to give him a glowing letter of recommendation.
His work experience for the A-1 probably helped Eben move quickly out of traffic into the then brand-new Illinois Criminal Investigation Division. He’d been noticed there by the head of the Springfield office of the Secret Service, and encouraged to apply-which he did, passing the civil service test and entering the Secret Service in 1960.
Eben and I had not been friends exactly-I’d been his employer, and much older-but we encountered each other from time to time, when the A-1 had occasion to interact with the local Secret Service office.
And he had shared with me the story of how he got invited to be on the White House detail. He had a very somber, grandiose way of telling it, which on the several occasions I’d heard it had never failed to make me laugh. He took no apparent offense but never saw the humor.
Jack Kennedy had been in Chicago at McCormick Place for a banquet designed as a thank-you for Mayor Daley and his political machine, who’d helped put the Prez over the top in Illinois, through means that might best be described as imaginative. Boldt’s role had been to stand guard in the basement at a restroom set aside for the President’s personal use. When Kennedy and an entourage including the mayor, the governor, various congressional leaders, and local pols trooped past Boldt’s post, the President raised a hand like Ward Bond halting the wagon train. Seemed the leader of the free world needed to heed nature’s call.