Jesus! Was he admitting it?
He saw my surprise and said, “I read about that in the papers... to continue a theme.”
“You remember reading about a killing in Chicago that happened over two years ago?”
He nodded, his expression smug. “I do. Got a lot of press here. It was part of the Billie Sol Estes scandal. That got lots of play in Texas, Nate... Shall we walk?”
We headed down the street, at an easy pace. Traffic was almost nonexistent and the sidewalks couldn’t have been more barren if the bomb had dropped.
“Let me guess,” he said, and the slight smile was back. “Captain Clint Peoples. He told you all about how I’m President Johnson’s assassin of choice. That’s what you meant by that crack — I must ‘know people.’”
Walking, side by side.
“You were a golden boy,” I said, “who Senator Johnson helped out. I mean, he did keep you out of the death house, right? Since you helped him with his sister.”
He stopped and I stopped. The night was cool, almost cold. The sky was a deep rich blue with pinpoint stars, like the fake ceiling of a strip joint. We faced each other.
His eyebrows, heavy and dark, tensed. “How exactly did I help him with his sister?”
“Well, probably one of two ways. Through intermediaries, like the Outfit guys back home do it, Johnson suggested you remove a mutual problem, namely that golf-course putz who was banging your wife and your girlfriend and his sister. That sounds like three people, doesn’t it, but it’s only two.”
His small smile turned sideways. “You take liberties, Nate, with new friends. I mean, we just met.”
“The other way would have been that you really did decide all on your lonesome that Doug Kinser needed killing... and LBJ and his crowd offered to help you stay out of jail, if you agreed not to testify and spread embarrassing sex stuff about his sister.”
“I choose none of the above.” His eyes managed to be cold and hard while seeming uninterested.
“In either case, Johnson and his cronies now knew they had a man who could kill in cold blood, and that might come in handy. For example, in the case of that Billie Sol Estes scandal you mentioned? A killer like that might be willing to stage a few suicides.”
He was shaking his head, just a little. “Do you know what kind of people you’re accusing?”
“Rich people? Powerful people? Corrupt people? That kind?”
“There’s no truth to any of this, Mr. Heller.”
“What happened to Nate?”
“If you harass me, I’ll get a court order. If you go public, I’ll sue you for slander or libel. Or maybe the people you’re accusing will do something else.”
“I’ll get depressed, you mean? Suck on a tailpipe?”
“What do you want from me?”
“Here’s an idea. Now, please don’t consider this blackmail, although that’s what it is. I don’t care to go toe-to-toe with you Texas boys. I might wind up with a branding iron up my ass or become a rare white lynching victim. But that Joseph Plett you mentioned, his wife and kids got screwed out of a $500,000 insurance settlement because the insurance company doesn’t pay out on suicide.”
“Do I look like I have half a million dollars in my pocket?”
“No, but Lyndon’s oil and arms buddies spill that kind of bread, not to mention that guy Edward Clark’s law firm. Pass that along as a compassionate request for the welfare of a family who became casualties in that situation comedy starring Billie Sol Estes. Why is he still alive, by the way?”
And now a barely perceptible sneer. “You think you’re very smart, don’t you, Mr. Heller?”
“Smart enough, generally.”
“Maybe not this time,” he said, and he punched me in the belly.
Fucking sucker punches, anyway.
I was doubled over, which made it convenient for me to jam my head in his gut, though because of his blow I didn’t have much power, just enough to make him stumble back a step. He swung and missed with his right and I swung my right and clipped him on the nose, just a glancing blow. His left came around and caught me under the right eye, though not with the power his other hand might have brought. But his back was to a building and I gripped him by the sport jacket and slammed him into the stone.
It jarred him, but he managed to shove back at me, and I lost my footing and went down on my ass. He came over and kicked me in the side, but when he tried to take a second helping, I caught him by the foot and shoved him backward, his arms windmilling.
He managed not to fall, but by the time he had regained his balance, I was facing him with the nine millimeter in my hand and about two feet between us.
The bad thing, the really nasty thing, is that he didn’t seem to give a shit. He smiled, really smiled big for the first time, seeing the gun. He flicked the fingers of both hands in his own direction.
“Go ahead, Heller. Shoot me. You’ll hate yourself in the morning if you don’t.”
Shoot him with a gun that wasn’t licensed in the state of Texas. Shoot him on a public street where several cars had already gone by and not slowed down to get involved. Shoot him and let thousands of answers die with him. Shoot him and maybe go to jail, and how had that worked out for Ruby? Or Oswald, for that matter?
He was laughing as he walked off somewhat unsteadily — from the booze or the fight or both — in the direction of that after-hours club.
I put my gun away and hobbled back to the Colony Club, my side hurting like hell, a rib busted maybe, and somehow got up the stairs and into the nightclub, where Jada, in a plaid cloth coat and very little makeup and looking like the Janet she really was, was coming from backstage.
She put her hands on her hips and said, “Well, look who’s here! I thought you were standing me up!”
“I changed my mind,” I said, and passed out.
Chapter 7
Someone once said that there was no excuse for Dallas even existing — that it sat in the midst of nothing and nowhere, the land around it dry and black and providing would-be farmers with no more than a crop of headaches and heartbreak. Calling the Trinity — alternately a trickle or a flood — a river was typical Texas bluster. No oil derricks towered in or near Dallas, nor was there gas or sulphur. Back in the 1870s, the railroad came only because some shady businessmen tricked and/or bribed the Houston and Texas Central Railway to build there.
Nothing here happened by accident, nature, or happenstance. Men made Dallas. Men made their city a leader of banking and insurance and manufacturing, and the Southwest’s center of fashion and culture, too. In 1964 it was home to half a million people, most of whom would gladly tell you that Big D did everything bigger and better — bigger steaks, fancier parties, more air-conditioning, taller buildings, better-dressed women, better-looking girls. Or anyway that was their attitude before Jack Kennedy made their town his last stop and their improbable city became a national disgrace.
I was staying with Janet Adams, aka Jada, stripper or (if you will) exotic dancer, in a high-rise luxury apartment house in an area once dominated by grand old homes as lovely as the trees lining the banks of Turtle Creek. Some of those lavishly landscaped residences were still there, but many had been pushed out by apartment complexes, filled with stewardesses, stenographers, salesgirls, models, and receptionists.
It was Thursday, early afternoon. In a lounge-style deck chair, I was stretched out wearing a bathing suit but also a short terry-cloth robe, to cover up my bandaged ribs and some nasty bruising. On the cement beside me, on a towel, Janet lay on her tummy, her red hair pinned up like a crazy turban, her bikini top unsnapped, so she could soak up sun and get even darker. Periodically I rubbed some suntan lotion on her. Otherwise, I was just living behind my Ray-Bans, watching girls in their twenties swim and sun — a relative handful at half a dozen, mostly stewardesses I would venture, since the other single girls living here were probably at work. They were ridiculously beautiful. How I wished rubbing suntan lotion on Janet and ogling bikini-clad young women paid a living wage.