Shoppa’s expression darkened. “We didn’t pull him over till he made that wrong turn! We couldn’t nab him for no fuckin’ reason, Heller!”
Like that had ever stopped the Chicago police.
Shoppa’s cigar jutted from a corner of his mouth. “What the hell are you implying?”
“Nothing. Just that you were asked to pull Vallee off the street because he’s a danger to the President, and it’s interesting you didn’t get around to that till the President wasn’t in danger anymore.”
Shoppa and Gross just laughed and waved me off, like I was a gnat too tiny to warrant swatting. Then, as if I had vanished in a cloud of pixie dust, they returned to their coffee and conversation, and one of the Secret Service crew cuts tapped me on the shoulder.
“Chief Cain of the SIU is in your office, Nate.” He pointed, as if I might have forgotten the way. “Waiting to talk to you.”
“Thanks.”
I wanted to talk to him, too.
CHAPTER 20
I shut myself in my office with Dick Cain, who was already settled in the visitor’s chair, his feet up on my desk, drinking a bottle of Coke he had wangled from somewhere. The reddish-brown-haired detective was in an olive Ivy League suit and his socks were dark green with black brogans.
“Make yourself at home, why don’t you?” I said, sitting across from him.
He removed his feet, grinned at me, set the Coke on a scrap of paper, then settled back in the chair. His green-eyed gaze behind the black-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses would have been reassuring had it not been for that milky left eye.
“Everything is copasetic,” he said, and gestured with two open palms. “You never shot anybody. Those two white kids never existed. You want the details?”
“Hell no.” I leaned back. “But I would like to know what the fuck is really going on.”
Dick just grinned at me. “What do you mean, what the fuck is really going on?”
“Like-what’s this about you being a Company guy?”
He shrugged. “I’m not a Company guy. You mean CIA? That’s bullshit.”
“Utter bullshit? Complete bullshit? Or just plain bullshit?”
He smirked and batted the air dismissively. “I did some electronic jobs for them when I had my office down in Mexico-during that little hiatus between my Chicago PD time and this sheriff’s office gig. So what? Lots of Chicago cops have done business with those spooks. Taken training, traded favors.”
“Cops like Shoppa and Gross out there?”
“Yeah. Sure. What of it?”
I was shaking my head. “I don’t know, Dick. I don’t know. But some things are starting to make sense to me. A kind of a theory is forming.”
He reached for the Coke, swigged it. “This oughta be good.”
“That kid Thomas Arthur Vallee, sitting in Interview One right now? What if he was supposed to be the patsy today? Put in position to take the fall for the real shooters-the ones that disappeared? Remember them?”
He snorted a laugh. “My understanding is that kid is a screwball. A fag screwball at that.”
“Right. And he’d have been the fag screwball ex-Marine who popped the President, all on his own. Crazy collage in his apartment, lots of big talk about killing JFK, ties to the John Birch Society, perfect.”
“Nate. Really. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Why, is it an accident Vallee and the real printing-plant shooter wore the same fucking shirt today? Is it just a coincidence that the two Chicago cops assigned to bring in the nut who threatened Kennedy waited till the President’s trip got canceled before doing it? I’m supposed to believe your handpicked dicks didn’t intend to follow Vallee to that parking lot, where he was heading to a nonexistent gun sale?”
“And do what?”
“What do you think? Wait for word that JFK had been shot, after which they would bring the schmuck in to fit some early suspect description. Or maybe just force or stage a shoot-out. Didn’t you leave the force ’cause they thought you’d staged a shoot-out, Dick?”
Cain’s expression darkened and he sat forward and clunked the now-empty Coke bottle hard on my desk. “Are you serious about this?”
“I always get serious after I kill a couple of nameless assholes. I’m sensitive that way. Were those soldier boys Company, too, Dick? How about the Cubans? Are they assets? Like Vallee is an asset, only smarter, and up a level or two?”
“You really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Has the CIA finally had it up to here with those skirt-chasing Kennedy boys? Or is this just rogue elements, still sulking over the Bay of Pigs? Gung ho to get rid of JFK, and set up some schmuck like the Vallee kid to take the fall?”
Now he laughed, or pretended to. He got out his pack of Dunhills-moving carefully, I noted-and lit one up. Sucked smoke in. Let it out.
“Quite a yarn, Nate. Why don’t you go next door and try peddling it to Martineau? Wait … I know! It’s because it’s a pile of unbelievable crap. Why are you telling me all this? You think I’m part of it, this James Bond coup you concocted? I didn’t know you smoked the same cigarettes as your musician pals.”
“I have no idea who the mastermind is,” I admitted. “Hoffa? Marcello? Giancana? Maybe Trafficante, or maybe take one from column A, two from column B. Probably not Johnny Rosselli. Certainly not you. You were a kind of point man, weren’t you?”
He seemed about to rise. “If you’re gonna keep this up, I’ve got better things to do.…”
“You know me, and you know me well. When I turned up as a bodyguard for Tom Ellison, at that money drop, that meant Ellison wasn’t following orders. In fact, he’d pulled in Nate Heller of all people, a guy already connected to some of the players and a snoop to boot. You figured it wise to do something about it. About Ellison, anyway, who was the kind of civilian who could prove to be a problem. Me, an insider with my own dirty laundry, different story. You stayed close to me, showing up at the hotel crime scene, to see if I could be handled, or at least sent off in the wrong direction.”
“I was there, Nate, because the victim had your card in his damn billfold.”
“No he didn’t. I never gave Ellison my card.”
He was leaning far forward now, a vein throbbing in his forehead. “You think I killed Tom Ellison?”
“Well, Mad Sam probably killed Tom. Ice pick. Right height, too. I’d almost pay to see Sam in a bellboy outfit, though, if that’s how he swung it. No, you ordered the hit, or Rosselli, or you two came to the mutual conclusion that Ellison was a loose end. What made him important enough a loose end to tie off, I still can’t figure. But in a plot to kill the President-”
“You really think I orchestrated a plot to kill the president?”
“You’re part of it. But it failed, didn’t it? It fucking failed.”
He flopped back in the chair and he was grinning, but it was forced. He did have a gun under his left shoulder-his tailor wasn’t as good as mine.
“Nate-you’re kidding, right? This is your idea of a Second City skit or some shit.”
“No, Dick, I think I’m right on the money. Not that there’s anything I can do about it. I could warn Bobby, but I don’t exactly think you’re gonna try again. Not with the scheme exposed. You fucked up. You failed. It’s over.”
He got to his feet, stubbed out the Dunhill in an ashtray on my desk. He was smiling, and it wasn’t pretty, not with that milky-eyed stare a part of it. “I’m not saying there’s anything to this, Nate. But keep a couple of things in mind. You shot two men today, and I covered it up for you. And do I have to whisper those two little words? The ones that guarantee you can’t go public?”
Operation Mongoose.
I said, “Why kill Ellison over Jack Ruby getting passed ten measly grand?”