“Liberals,” I said, “in the process of canonizing another slain Kennedy.”
A mustache twitch. “Precisely.”
“And here you sit with bloody hands.”
Sniff. “Overstated, but... yes. I may have been unduly harsh, writing about him. He was not my candidate, after all. His intrusion into the race, the factionalism he created, surely would have paved the way for Richard Nixon to sail into power. And that I couldn’t allow! I felt the young Kennedy had to be stopped.”
“This just wasn’t the way you had in mind.”
The air seemed to go out of him. His voice returned unusually soft, minus any energy. “Where other people were concerned, I knew young Kennedy to be exceedingly thoughtful, even... kind. His ruthlessness he brought only to his enemies.”
Anderson said, quietly, “But not to you, Drew. In that debate with McCarthy, he was asked about your story of him signing off on the King hotel wiretaps. He could have called you a liar but he didn’t. He appeared evasive, and it did him no favors.”
Pearson seemed to have genuine regret in his expression and voice as he said, “He was for the common man — you have to give him that.”
Anderson turned back to me. “We’re going to publish a memorial tribute by way of an open letter from Drew to his grandson, who was a McCarthy supporter.”
That resonated, of course.
Pearson said, “I’ll speak of Bobby Kennedy’s loyalty, his idealism, his courage. And my television broadcast this week will be devoted to the tragic loss of this true leader.”
I grinned and I’m sure it wasn’t pretty. “Swell. You have a plan. Won’t work on everybody, but your hands will look a little cleaner. What does any of it have to do with me?”
Anderson moved his chair a little and faced me more directly. “You were Bobby’s friend. And you are, let’s face it, among the most famous private investigators in America.”
“Which is like being the tallest midget,” I said. “So what?”
Leaning forward a little, Pearson said, “Jack has been looking into the Kennedy assassination.”
“Which one?”
“JFK,” Anderson said, not missing a beat. “Most of what’s surfaced to date has been courtesy of kooks on the one hand and wild-eyed leftists on the other. No responsible, credible journalist has taken it on. Someone should. Someone has.”
“You.”
“Me,” Anderson said, his smile barely there yet cocky as hell. “But it’s a slow go. I’m dividing my time between our regular D.C. beat and occasional trips to Dallas, New Orleans and elsewhere.”
I frowned at him. “What does that have to do with Bob’s murder? You’re not suggesting there’s a connection?”
“Anything is possible,” Anderson said. “Which is about the only sure bet in this game. But I can’t widen my inquiry to include your friend’s killing. Adding L.A. to the mix? And there’s no apparent link except that two brothers, two much-loved political figures...”
“And hated.”
“...and hated figures were struck down in their prime by what the likes of the Warren Commission would have us believe is a ‘lone nut’ assassin.”
“I did some of my own investigating into the JFK kill,” I said, “back in ’64. And we can sit down for an interview about it, Jack, one of these days.”
Though I wouldn’t be sharing some of what I did, since not all of it was strictly legal. Like removing one of the likely shooters, who wasn’t named Oswald.
“But dream on,” I continued, “if you think this is another Dallas... Sometimes a train going into a tunnel is just a train going into a tunnel. And sometimes it really is a lone nut with a gun.”
Anderson said, “Some of our stringers in L.A. say the official police investigation is not only incompetent, but reeks of a cover-up.”
My head rocked back, almost as if I’d been slapped. “A cover-up of what?”
With a one-shoulder shrug, Pearson said, “No idea. But it would appear there are too many bullets. The assassin’s gun only held eight rounds, but many of the witnesses report substantially more shots.”
“Eyewitness accounts are notoriously worthless.”
“Even yours, Nate?” Anderson asked. “You were there.”
At least he didn’t say that like the announcer on that old history re-enactment TV show.
“I heard a lot of shots,” I admitted. “I can’t tell you how many, but enough to nail five bystanders and the target. I am not shocked to hear that the LAPD is somewhat less efficient than television would have you believe.”
Then I sat forward. Any more so and I’d fallen out of the chair.
“But, yes,” I went on, “I was fucking there, and I saw the shooting go down. That bushy-haired little bastard blasted away and I saw it, heard it, smelled it.”
“Some witnesses talk of a second shooter.”
I pounded his desk and the lid on the Oreo jar jiggled and the cat looked up. “I wish there had been a second shooter and that it was me, putting at least one into Sirhan Sirhan, a murderer so guilty they named him twice.”
Anderson hung his head and shook it a little.
“All we’re asking,” Pearson said, “is that you look into it. Or even just assign one of your people to keep tabs on the LAPD.”
Anderson said, “An ex-LA cop, perhaps. With lines into the department.”
“I’ll pay double the daily rate,” Pearson said, “and start with a ten-thousand-dollar retainer. We’ll keep you on as long as the inquiry generates stories. I’ll give you a check here and now.”
My sigh sounded like somebody opened a furnace door. “Much as I would like your money, since no famous client of mine has ever been tighter with a dollar... but no. Gentlemen. I was fucking there. I saw Sirhan shooting. I saw Bob on that dirty kitchen floor in pain in a pool of blood. Clutching a god-damn rosary. I saw five others bleeding there, too. The creep called Bob a son of a bitch and then he shot him. What more do you want?”
“The truth,” Anderson said.
I stood. Got back into my jacket. “No. You’re looking for cover. You smeared a good man and you want me for damage control. No thanks.”
Nobody had to show me out.
I knew the way.
Part Two
The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress
February — April 1969
Six
The Hall of Justice in Los Angeles dated to the mid-’20s, a fourteen-story Beaux Arts box on Temple Street between Broadway and Spring. Pollution had tinged its classically decorated white granite a dingy gray, but tourists still took pictures of the massive structure they knew from TV — Dragnet, Perry Mason, Get Smart.
The celebrity defendants who had passed through the grand marble-walled lobby with its towering columns and high gilded ceiling might as well have been a reservations list at Chasen’s — Charlie Chaplin (paternity suit), Errol Flynn (statutory rape), Robert Mitchum (marijuana bust).
Today a current denizen of the ornate edifice’s 750-cell jail was being tried for murder in one of its seventeen courts, the defendant a nobody who’d become an instant if reviled celebrity himself. And the basement had hosted the autopsy of a famous paramour of the victim, whose own post-mortem examination took place at the hospital where he died.
Tucked away with a number of others in a waiting room for witnesses, I found myself sliding in on a bench next to a lovely brunette of about forty, slender but curvy in a blue navy suit and baby-blue silk blouse. Hair tucked back in a discreet bun, big brown eyes lightly made up, Nita Romaine wore pink lipstick, the only holdover from when I’d first seen her in the Royal Suite at the Ambassador Hotel, nine months ago.