“Jack gave me two dachshunds to get me started,” she said. “I like dogs. They’re better than people, don’t you think?”
“That’s kind of faint praise,” I said, and she actually smiled a little. “You and Jack traveling together?”
“No,” she said, “I’m opening Friday in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? at Pheasant Run.”
“Oh, that’s that new dinner theater in St. Charles.”
About an hour outside Chicago.
“It’s an easy part,” she said with her trademark lack of enthusiasm. “I did it before. Mostly I walk around half naked, but it’s not stripping so my parole officer said it was okay. Even let me travel out of state to do it.”
“So you’re doing more than just breeding.”
“Girl’s gotta make a living.”
Having no argument with that, I turned to Ruby and said, “I think the show’s about to start up again-are you staying for it?”
He nodded. “We came in late. Rumor is this place may shutter, and these girls will have to work somewhere-why not Dallas? People get tired of seeing the same old tail.”
Yes sir, Jack Ruby, class all the way.
I gestured with a hand that had all its fingertips. “Could we talk out in the lobby, Jack? Just for a few minutes? Would you excuse us, Miss Barr?”
“I wish you’d make your mind up,” she said to me.
“Huh?”
“Is it Candy or Miss Barr? One or the other.”
That was a little bitchy, but then she was a dog breeder.
In the meantime, Ruby had been thinking over my request. He would surely doubt my presence here could be coincidental, and likely assume I’d been trying to track him down. And I had been trying to track him down, through Sapperstein anyway; but our meeting tonight really was a coincidence-though in fairness to fate, the world of Chicago strip clubs was small these days, in part thanks to the police commissioner.
In the lobby, we took a position near the mouth of a hallway that led to restrooms, planting ourselves next to a big gaudy girl-arrayed poster under glass (Folies Bergere! Moulin Rouge!). We had decent privacy. Our only company was a bouncer in a tuxedo who was chatting up the hatcheck girl at her window, and they were blocked from view.
“What can I do for you, Nate?” The pudgy oval of his pasty face was smiling, except for the tiny black eyes, which were almost as shiny as his slicked-back, thinning hair. “I’m not really sure if we should be seen together.”
I kept my voice down but pulled no punches. “Why is that, Jack? Operation Mongoose?”
He blinked. “Well, sure, but … I have to tell you, Nate, I damn near cut out of this town, when I saw that squib in the paper. And to hell with business.”
“You mean about Tom Ellison getting murdered in his room at the Pick? That squib?”
He nodded nervously. “Is that why you come looking for me, Nate?”
“I didn’t come looking for you. I’m here with Sally Rand, trying to help her get a booking.”
“Maybe she’d like to work the Carousel!”
“I’ll relay the interest. What kind of business has you hanging around Chicago, Jack?”
“Checking out the local talent, like I said. Also selling a couple of items.”
“Such as?”
“I designed this Twist board.”
“This what?”
“It’s a board you stand on when you’re doing the Twist. It improves your dancing. You should try it. The chicks go wild. And then there’s my specially designed pizza ovens for restaurants.”
“You’re selling pizza ovens in Chicago.”
“Damn right. I sold two so far. How’s that for ice to Eskimos?”
“Not bad.” We were having a fine little chat. “Jack, what do you know about Tom Ellison’s murder?”
“Nothing! Not a damn thing. What do you know about it?”
“I know that somebody framed it, kind of shittily, to look like a pickup or hooker kill. It was a murder, all right. And I want to know if it had anything to do with that envelope of cash-you know, Jack … the one Tom handed off to you?”
He had started shaking his head halfway through my little speech. “Far as I know, didn’t have a thing to do with it. He wasn’t a made guy or anything, your pal. Wasn’t Outfit. He was a civilian.”
“Did that make him a loose end?”
“How should I know? You should check out his private life. Maybe something in his personal life or business got him whacked.”
“Or did he get to be a loose end because of me? Did I get him killed, by coming along with him? Did somebody think that Tom talking to me meant he couldn’t be trusted?”
His eyes were wide and round, like white marbles with a big black dot at each center. “You ask me this stuff like I know the answer! I don’t. If he’s a loose end, then maybe I’m a loose end. Should I be looking over my shoulder, Nate?”
“Should I?”
“He got it Sunday, right? Has anybody made a move on you, since then?”
“No.”
“Me neither. So maybe we ain’t loose ends. It’s been a few days, right?”
Either he was telling me the truth, or was a hell of a lot better an actor than I gave him credit for.
I played a tricky card. “That kid you introduced me to at the 606-Lee?”
“What about him?”
The FBI’s informant on the four Cubans had been called Lee.
“Is there any chance he’s an FBI informant?”
He laughed. “Well … define ‘FBI informant.’ Who hasn’t passed along a little worthless information to those sons of bitches, just to get a pass on something or other?”
“Okay. Let’s try this. You been doing any business with Cubans since you been in town?”
“Cubans? Why Cubans? I’m here looking for strippers for my club! I guess I could use a Cuban girl, if I called her exotic. Some of my patrons might just call her a nigger. I have to put up with some low-type people, you know, to make a living.”
“You used to visit Cuba, didn’t you, Jack? Passing messages to Santo? Not to mention a little gunrunning?”
“Ancient history.”
“And there’s Operation Mongoose. Lots of Cubans in that. Exile types. You got any Cuban friends, Jack? Maybe back in Dallas?”
“I don’t even have any Cuban cigars!”
I kept trying. “Did you know Jimmy Hoffa is in town? Or anyway, he was.”
Ruby held his palms up-What, me worry? “What does Jimmy Hoffa have to do with me? I never met the man. I admire him, sure, they say he’s a stand-up guy, but I never met him. We got mutual friends and acquaintances, but himself? Way out of my league. What the hell is this about, Heller?”
I didn’t know, really.
Seeing Ruby made me want to connect that money drop and Tom’s murder and Hoffa to those missing Cubans with their high-power rifles. Nobody on the planet hated the Kennedys more than Jimmy Hoffa. But the connections were too vague-I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell Martineau about them, let alone Bob Kennedy.
Opened too many embarrassing doors on all sides.
I said to the stocky little man, “I’m not sure what the hell it’s about, Jack. I accompany my client to a money drop at a club like this one. Well, not this nice, but a strip club, and two nights later, he’s stabbed to death in his hotel room. You and I have both, in our time, run in some rough circles. Sometimes the same circles. If you know something, anything, about Ellison’s murder, you tell me, and I’ll give you a free pass. Just like the FBI.”
His face got red. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“Where were you Sunday night, Jack?”
He threw a punch. He was that kind of guy, an impulsive hothead. But because he was that kind of guy, I was half expecting it, and ducked it.
Good thing, too, because he was a bull-thick-necked, a lot of muscle in that upper torso, enough to almost pop the seams on that Bobby Darin sharkskin suit of his.