But if I hit him back, we’d have had a brawl right there in the Silver Frolics lobby, giving the police commissioner another excuse to shut the joint down, and that wouldn’t be fair to Ben Orloff.
So instead of slugging him, I slapped him. Twice. Once per cheek. Like I was his date and he got fresh with me.
This surprised him. Stopped him, both his hands coming up to cheeks flaming with pain now, not flushed with anger. His eyes were moist.
Though no one had seen it, I’d humiliated him.
“Throw another punch at me, Jack, and see what happens. I’m not some drunk at the Carousel you can rough up to impress the customers. I’m not some stripper’s lowlife leech husband you can pummel to show the girls who’s boss. Get tough with me again and I will make your life miserable, or maybe just end it. Understood?”
He swallowed. His eyes weren’t angry-they were frightened.
Good.
“Let’s hear it, Jack.”
“Understood,” he muttered. His chin was quivering.
“Okay. Before we go back in and enjoy the show, is there anything else you know about this situation that I should know? That I would like to know? Because if you’re holding out on me…”
I didn’t have to finish it.
He shook his head. He was almost crying. He seemed hurt-not hurting … hurt.
“I thought we was friends,” he said, and swallowed and I followed him in where the little orchestra was starting up a bump-and-grind symphony.
I was shaking my head, grinning, but kind of pissed off, too.
How I hate a fucking hothead.
CHAPTER 14
Thursday, October 31, 1963
Just after nine A.M., at the Secret Service office, the two Pickpocket Detail cops recommended by SIU chief Dick Cain arrived for a meeting with Chief Martineau.
I knew Lieutenant Dan Gross and Sergeant Pete Shoppa, but not well. They had reputations as smart, tough detectives, both in their late thirties, with the vaguely bored yet somehow alert eyes all seasoned cops seemed to possess.
Shoppa was a blocky, pockmarked and balding cigar smoker, and his blue suit was something J.C. Penney sold him several seasons ago, the blue and white paisley tie probably a Christmas present from around ’59. Horse-faced, sandy-haired Gross was tall, or at least taller, and better dressed-his brown J.C. Penney suit was this year’s model, his tie properly narrow and a darker brown. No law required that Chicago detective teams always be Mutt and Jeff pairs, but if there had been, Gross and Shoppa didn’t break it.
Theirs were the kind of unremarkable faces in the crowd just perfect for pickpocket work … and surveillance.
Gross was a friendly type, the first to offer his hand as we stood in the no-man’s-land of Martineau’s office between the chief’s desk area and the conference table. Martineau had stepped out to check on some telex info he was expecting, and we three Pickpocket Detail veterans had his big office momentarily to ourselves.
“You know, Nate,” Gross said with a grin, “they still talk about you over on the Detail.”
“They talk about me lots of places,” I said, returning his smile.
Shoppa said, “Of course nobody over there ever really worked with you, Heller. I figure everybody you ever worked with on the PD is dead by now.”
He offered his hand, too, and there was just enough of a smile on that stogie-pierced, pockmarked pan to tell me this was his version of friendliness, too.
I said to him, “Pete, most of the guys I busted are dead, too. Kind of makes the whole exercise seem a little irrelevant.”
Shoppa frowned at that. A little too philosophical for his speed, I guess.
Martineau came in, the formidable chief moving with considerable energy, and in his shirtsleeves for a change-like most of the agents in the SS office, he wore a short-sleeve white shirt under his suit coat, despite the time of year. The office tended to be warm, the old steam heat in these soon-to-be former headquarters apparently having one setting: inferno.
Eben Boldt trailed in after his boss, quietly spiffy in a charcoal suit and black necktie. Introductions between Martineau and the two police detectives had already been made, but Boldt was a new addition. There was an awkward moment, then I introduced Eben as both an agent and my partner on the current investigation. Polite smiles, nods, and handshakes were traded, but no remarks, friendly or otherwise.
That didn’t make the two cops bigots necessarily-more Negro cops were coming onto the Chicago force all the time, another part of Commissioner Wilson’s revamping of the department, and the white cops hadn’t figured out yet how to behave around these dusky interlopers.
Martineau, however, knew just what Eben’s role was.
“Ebe,” he said, “get us some coffee, would you?”
There was the slightest tightening around the agent’s eyes, then a nod, and he went out.
Martineau had a manila folder with him, and he rested it in front of him as he took the head seat at the conference-room table, gesturing for us to find chairs.
We did.
“Has Chief Cain or Captain Linsky filled you fellows in at all?” Martineau asked.
The two cops were at Martineau’s right, and I was opposite them. They both shrugged, Shoppa knocking some ashes off his stubby cigar into a glass ashtray with the Secret Service emblem in the bottom.
“The captain just said that you were shorthanded,” Gross said, “what with the President coming to town Saturday.”
“Said you might need some surveillance help,” Shoppa said. “Implied it might have something to do with JFK’s visit. But that’s all.”
“You’ll need a full briefing, then,” Martineau said.
He opened the manila folder and passed them a set of 5-by-7-inch photos of the suspects-the two Cubans and two white boys.
“We believe these men to be highly trained assassins with high-powered rifles. A hit squad. And their target is Lancer.”
“Lancer?” Gross asked.
“That’s Secret Service code,” I said, “for President Kennedy.”
I’d picked up around here quick.
Shoppa, looking over the photos, wore a smirk with a cigar stuck in it. “Jeez, a couple of spics called Gonzales and Rodriguez. That narrows the friggin’ field. What are the white guys’ names? Smith and Jones?”
Martineau’s expression barely registered his displeasure with Shoppa’s manner, but I caught it. I doubt Shoppa did, but if he had, he probably wouldn’t give a shit.
The SS chief said, “This is not your direct assignment, gentlemen, other than to be on the alert if your surveillance subject should come in contact with any of these individuals.”
“This,” Gross said, tapping the picture in front him, “is why you’re shorthanded. You’re focusing on this threat, and need us to cover for you on some other bozo who’s made a crank call or something.”
Martineau said, “That’s not wrong, but we have new background on this ‘bozo’ that makes it vital we take him seriously. First, however, I’ll have Nate brief you on how we got where we are with Mr. Thomas Arthur Vallee.”
That middle name was news to me-Martineau really did have info he hadn’t yet shared.
Eben came in with a tray of cardboard cups and a pitcher of coffee, and everybody helped themselves as I told them how Lieutenant Berkeley Moyland of the Chicago PD had alerted us to Vallee’s spouting off about Kennedy, and laid out in some detail the conversation I’d had with the subject at the Eat Rite yesterday, winding up with the discovery of the two M-1’s, the.22 revolver, and the several thousand rounds of ammunition at his rooming house.
No wisecracks from Shoppa and no remark from Gross, either-they just exchanged dark glances at the mention of all that firepower.
And now Martineau dipped into his manila folder for a picture I hadn’t seen before: a Marine Corps photo of my breakfast club buddy, Vallee, looking very young but otherwise much the same-prominent forehead, glazed eyes, tiny pinched anus of a mouth.