A curvy blonde mini-toga-ed waitress delivered a Gibson and a rum and Coke. I hadn’t even seen Shep order them. He signed for it, gave her a wink, and she was gone. He shoved my rum and Coke over to me and plucked the onion from the Gibson and popped it in his mouth. Chewed lazily.
He flipped a hand toward my drink. “Go ahead and refresh yourself, Nate. Nothing in that but Coca Cola and Bacardi, I promise. I’ll even taste it, if you like.”
“I’ll take you at your word, Shep.” I took a sip. They weren’t scrimping on the Bacardi. “So let me guess. You want me to leave this to you. Let you clean house and cover up and then I don’t have to worry about having an unexpected aneurysm or a fall from a height or maybe get a sudden urge to turn the Jag’s motor on with the garage door down.”
“I won’t lie to you,” Shep said. “I believe this to be a rogue CIA operation, in which case consider who the assets involved might be — the LAPD, right-wing assholes, Cubans, the Hughes organization, the mob, just to scratch the surface. You need to be satisfied with what you’ve got, Nate — that you removed from the face of the earth the scum who killed Bobby in that Pantry.”
On the sound system Dino was singing, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.” Brittle laughter made a sophisticated laugh track.
“I won’t lie to you, Shep. As President, Bob planned to overhaul the Company but good, and he meant to uncover his brother’s assassins and the spooks and gangsters who sent them. So I don’t think this necessarily is a ‘rogue operation.’”
“You expect me to confirm that?”
I didn’t bother answering. “Here’s the thing, Shep — I’m not convinced your presence in the Atomic desert this morning wasn’t to guide me, and stage-manage me.”
That seemed to amuse him. “Really? To what purpose?”
“As you said, to satisfy me. That I’d wiped out the literal killers of my friend. Who just happened to be some highly questionable assets of the Company’s — cut-outs who could use cutting out. Two birds, one stone kinda thing. Besides... you’ve got the goods on me — I killed those three at Survival Town, and you hung onto the gun.”
He twitched a smile. “With your fingerprints on it, yes.”
I leaned on an elbow. “That’s what got me thinking, Shep. Why as tired as I was I didn’t get right to sleep, when we got back this morning. What really got me thinking. I handed you that .38 and somehow I never got it back.”
He tossed his head, opened a hand. “Let’s say you’re right. You’re not right, Nate. You are a trusted asset of mine and a valued friend, but... let’s say you’re right. What would you set out to do, at this juncture? Remove every player? Kill Thane Cesar and Elaine Nye and Bob Maheu and Dr. Hypno and Howard Fucking Hughes and whatever LAPD stooges and mobsters helped facilitate this plot you’ve cooked up in your imagination? How about CIA directors past and present? Allen Dulles is already dead, but you could settle up with Dick Helms. Where would it end?”
He sat forward suddenly.
Through his teeth, he answered his own question: “I will tell you where it would end. With you dead.”
“Maybe I’ve lived long enough.”
He smiled and it quickly turned into a sneer. “I don’t think that’s sincere, old chum. I think you enjoy your fame and your money and your Jag and your Beverly Hills bungalow and your Playboy pad back home and your precious coast-to-coast A-1 Agency. And I also think you value the lives of your son and maybe that little gal in the whirlpool over there... Take it easy!”
I was halfway out of my chair.
The dark-blue eyes narrowed at me. “Do you think I am personally threatening you, or am I merely letting you know what others might do? The things that might well happen beyond my control? All I can do is to advise you, as an old, dear friend, to be satisfied with what you have accomplished and move on with your life. Even Nate Heller can’t kill them all.”
“I could make a good start,” I said, looking right at him.
An unconcerned shrug. “Yes, you could probably manage that. I am better looked after than most, but you could. And my wife Sheila and my two grown children, Bradley and Susan, who you have known for years, with whom you’ve broken bread, would be terribly sad to lose me. Just as those you love would be devastated by your tragic demise. But neither of us, Nate, are young men. As you pointed out, we’ve lived plenty of life.”
I said nothing.
That gap-toothed grin returned. “What is the point, Nate? Do you know for a fact that Sirhan Sirhan was some kind of innocent victim in this, and is rotting unfairly away in his prison cell? Or is it just as likely he came on as a willing participant and any programming was designed to ensure his discretion and success? I mean, Jesus! This farce has already faded into history, Nate, not even a year later!”
He stood. Finished his Gibson. Put on his Ray-Bans.
“Let history be history, Nate,” Shep said. “Don’t go around rewriting it.”
He slipped into the night and I joined Nita in the whirlpool. The air was cool enough that the warmth of the water felt good.
Nita asked, “What was that about?”
I told her.
She said nothing as I gave her an only slightly condensed, censored version of my conversation with Shep, her eyes widening and narrowing as was appropriate, and toward the end — when various possible deaths came up, including mine and hers — her eyes filled with tears. None rolled down her cheek, however — she was, as they say, made of sterner stuff.
“We’ve gone as far with this as we can,” I said. “Sirhan Sirhan is on Death Row, whether he belongs there or not, and no matter how many people disappear in the desert, Bob Kennedy is gone forever.”
She thought about that, then said, “So... what now?”
“Well, we’re in Vegas,” I said with a shrug and the best smile I had left in me. “Why don’t we get married? I figure our odds are better in a wedding chapel than a casino.”
She shrugged too, smiled a little.
“I’m game,” she said.
Robert Kennedy had grown up hero-worshiping Herbert Hoover, was closer than any of his siblings to his ruthless business tycoon father, began his legal and political career supporting Joe McCarthy’s anti-Commie witch hunt, urged victory over Communism in Vietnam in the early ’60s, and participated in a plot called Operation Mongoose to assassinate Fidel Castro and overthrow the Cuban government.
Like Joe E. Brown said at the end of Some Like It Hot, nobody’s perfect.
But my friend Bob evolved perfectly into a crusader for the poor and a Vietnam dove, embracing the anti-war protest movement of the Younger Generation. Someone once said that he “felt the deepest, cared the most, and fought the hardest for humanity — crying out against America’s involvement in the Vietnam war, championing the causes of blacks, Hispanics, and Mexican-Americans, and crusading against the suffering of children, the elderly and anyone else hurt or bypassed by social and economic programs.”
And it got him killed.
Why were any of us surprised? He seemed to have been waiting for it to happen, daring Fate to repeat itself after the murder of his brother Jack.
But of course Fate didn’t kill Jack or Bob — men did, and some made it happen while others allowed it and covered it up and in other ways aided and abetted. Shep Shepherd was right. I couldn’t find and remove every co-conspirator in this evil morass any more than a surgeon, however skilled, could root out the cancer in a patient riddled with the stuff.
Over the years, from a distance, I kept track of many of those I’d encountered in my brief RFK murder inquiry. With a private investigative agency at my beck and call, it wasn’t difficult.