“You’re worth looking at, but what guy?”
“Right behind us, past the columns and under a big umbrella at a little table. Unless you don’t think it’s suspicious, avoiding the sun after dark. But you’re the private eye.”
I glanced behind me. The man seated at the metal table saluted me with his drink — a Gibson, no doubt. He was at the far edge of middle-age, with a gap-toothed resemblance to actor Robert Morse of How to Succeed in Business. But the business Edward “Shep” Shepherd was in was spying.
Of course, in those orange Bermuda shorts and that Hawaiian short-sleeve sport shirt — not to mention the sandals without socks — he might have been on vacation. On the other hand, I would imagine he might turn up at many a vacation spot with business in mind. He was a man of medium height, medium build, medium in every way, his blond hair mostly gray now.
“Shit,” I said softly.
“Someone you know,” she said. Not a question.
“Old friend. The kind you hope never to run into.”
“Too late to duck him.”
“I wouldn’t bother trying. Swim a little. I’ll be back.” With any luck.
She nodded, flashed me a look of concern, then swam off.
I got out, went for my towel nearby, dried off a little and padded over to where Shep was sitting, waiting. I pulled up a deck chair.
“Nathan. Imagine running into you like this.”
“Imagine.”
“How’s that boy of yours doing? Sam? Still in school?”
“Still in school.”
“My two are grown and turning me into a grandfather.”
“And you’re in Vegas why?”
He sipped his drink. Yup, a Gibson, the onion long gone. “Helping out the Atomic Energy Commission on a few matters. Now I’m catching up with an old friend.”
“And here I thought we weren’t speaking.”
“Well,” he drawled, hauling out that Southern accent he leaned on when he was playing nice, “I was hopin’ I might make our past differences up to you by puttin’ you on the right track.”
“What track is that?”
His smile showed no teeth; in fact it was barely a smile at all. “Thought it might interest you to know that the same cabal behind Jack’s death? Is also responsible for Bobby’s. Smoke?”
He offered me a Chesterfield from the pack. He was talking about the two Kennedy brothers, in case you fell asleep in the second reel.
“No thanks,” I said. “I gave up smoking after Guadalcanal. But then you know that. You know everything, don’t you, Shep?”
He raised a palm. The smile widened to that gap-toothed Bobby Morse look. “I’m not here to tell you to stop doing what you’re doin’. In fact, I hope to point you in the right direction. What needs to be done is better comin’ from you than me, because I have certain waters I have to swim in. And you’re never sure in such waters who’s a minnow and who’s a piranha.”
Laughter from down a ways echoed across the pool.
“Colorful,” I said. “Mind spelling it out?”
He sipped the Gibson. “You care for somethin’ to drink, Nate? There’s a little gal in a toga around here somewhere.”
“No thanks. Tell me about minnows and piranha, Shep.”
“Certainly.” He spoke so softly I could barely hear him. “Now where was I? Ah, yes. So the same rogue elements in the Company who took JFK down are involved in the RFK kill. That simple. And that complex.”
The Company, of course, was Shep’s employer — the Central Intelligence Agency.
“Okay,” I said. Casual. Stomach clenched.
A toss of a hand. “Let’s start with a piece of information I don’t have. Are you still friendly with Bob Maheu?”
Robert Maheu had been, when I met him, a Washington DC private investigator, a former FBI man who counted the CIA among his clients. He had contacts within organized crime circles and I had reluctantly worked with him in lining up certain key mob figures in the misbegotten plan to take Fidel Castro out. Obviously that effort failed, and I now viewed Operation Mongoose as less than my finest hour.
“Maheu and I were never friends,” I said. “I was pleasant, I was professional, but he’s a reckless, dangerous son of a bitch.”
Shep’s eyebrows rose slowly, as if heading to his scalp to hide. “Do you know what your non-friend Maheu is up to now?”
I shrugged. “He’s right here in Vegas, isn’t he? Running casinos for Howard Hughes?”
For those who have been living beneath a rock: business magnate Howard Hughes was a record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, kazillionaire, and did I mention a crazy-ass eccentric recluse? In recent years he’d extended his financial empire to include Las Vegas real estate, hotels, casinos, and media outlets, moving in at the Desert Inn in ’66. In seclusion.
“Yes,” Shep said, “but Maheu looks after more than just casinos. You met with Thane Cesar, I understand?”
That Shep knew this didn’t surprise me. He’d known I was in Vegas, hadn’t he?
“Yes,” I said, “but what does a nonentity like Cesar have to do with Howard Hughes?”
A young woman’s laugh bounced across the water.
He leaned forward. Pointed a gentle forefinger. “Nate, I’m not going to connect the dots for you. But I am gonna provide you with a few extra dots. Let’s start with Thane Cesar making occasional trips to Vegas where he’s tight with a Hughes employee name of Hal Harper.”
I frowned. “Hal Harper? Former LAPD guy? Lost his job in that police brutality scandal?”
A nod, a smile. “That’s the one. These days he heads up Hughes’ personal security detail. Say, uh... didn’t you do some work for Howard Hughes yourself, years ago?”
I nodded. “Must have been ’47, ’48. Hughes hired me to deal with a starlet who was blackmailing him after their relationship went south.”
The eyebrows went up again. “Were you successful in that endeavor?”
I shrugged. “I paid her off. Warned her that I thought Hughes was capable of just about anything, and to cut her losses accordingly. Which is why I never did another job for him. We never had words or anything — just told him it wasn’t my kind of gig and he accepted that.”
Another gap-toothed smile, a shake of the head. “That explains something.”
“What?”
He gestured open-handedly. “Why Hughes has expressed respect for you. I think you should have a little talk with him, Nate.”
“Easier said than done.”
Shep cocked his head. “Maybe not for you.”
“And why would I want to talk to that screwball?”
“Maybe to see just what Thane Cesar is to the Hughes organization. Oh, and to ask him how it was that he came to hire damn near all of Bobby Kennedy’s staff after the assassination. You did know that, didn’t you?”
“...I did not.”
He raised the forefinger again, but in a teacherly fashion this time. “First talk to Maheu. He may be able to get you to Hughes. Insist that he try.”
I was confused, but I managed, “All right.”
He looked out at the pool. “That’s a nice looking gal you got there.”
Nita was swimming, her stroking arms graceful, her kicking feet rhythmic.
“I like her,” I said.
“You should show the little lady a good time. Take her out tonight.” Shep slipped his hand into the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and came back with two tickets. “My treat. Anthony Newley and David Frye at 9 P.M. Dinner show. Like the kids say, be there or be square.”
He handed them to me.
Who doesn’t like free tickets to a top Vegas show? But how much, I wondered, were these free tickets going to cost me?