Was that his way of reminding me that my life had once been in his hands? Or maybe that it still was?
Not that there was necessarily a point to this meeting. Shep had on occasion-maybe four or five times in ten years-called to let me know he was in town, and to suggest we dine somewhere, and catch up. Since he was a CIA security chief, the catching up was limited to what I’d been doing, of course. That and innocuous family talk.
Hearing from him always seemed friendly enough when he called. Or perhaps Shep thought he might need me someday for something, and even just staying in touch had a hidden agenda.
The phone call at my office this afternoon had seemed innocent, but I’d noticed Shep passing two twenties to the maitre d’ to help us avoid the standard half-hour wait at the bar, and that we’d been delivered to a booth way in back.
With the adjacent booth empty.
Small talk saw us through the salad-we were each served half a head of crisp, cold, crushed-crouton-coated lettuce, which I smothered in the three dressings from the carousel. It turned out both his son and daughter were in eastern schools, and his wife was up to her “pretty hips” in charity work. They lived in Alexandria, Virginia. Nobody really lived in D.C., he confided.
Shep ate his chicken slowly, dutifully, while watching me make an obscenely large, barbarically rare filet disappear. At one point, he said, “You are cruel man, Nathan Heller. A true villain.”
I thanked him, and we both passed on dessert. He was on his fourth Gibson, and I was on my second gimlet, taking it slow. Never paid to be high around a spy.
“Suppose,” Shep said, eyes squinty, smile gap-toothy, “you knew what bunker Hitler was hiding in-the very one-durin’ the war? Would you have hesitated to kill the sumbitch?”
“Hey, if I could climb on board a time machine, I’d push his baby buggy in front of a truck. So what?”
“Well, it’s the same with Castro.”
“He’s a little big for a baby buggy.”
Shep looked at that fourth, half-imbibed Gibson, as if noticing it for the first time. He pushed it aside, said, “Coffee?” I said sure, and he flagged a waiter down.
While we waited for the coffee to arrive, Shep withdrew about six inches of cigar from an inside coat pocket, and lighted it up with a match.
“Havana,” he said, waving out the flame, grinning around the cigar, letting out fragrant smoke, then Groucho-ing his eyebrows. “I still have my sources.”
“Do you? This is sort of like school, right? Demonstrating with objects so that the slower kids maybe can follow it?”
He twitched half of his upper lip. “Castro is a pain in the ass. Smuggling out our damn cigars ain’t the worst of it. He shut down the tourist trade, which is goddamn dumb. He’s a friggin’ liar who pretended to be anti-Commie when in fact he’s redder than the king of hearts.”
“If you had a playing card to hold up, right now? That might help me stay focused.”
He lowered his gaze and held the cigar between his fingers like a cornpone Churchill. “But it’s a lot worse than that, Nate. It’s war. And it’s a just war. Since that day in January, when that bearded bastard chased Batista out, he’s been goin’ back on his promises. Renegin’.”
“Watch your language, Shep. The chefs will hear.”
“No open elections, no sharin’ power, no civil liberties. Shit, this bad boy has got a direct line to the Kremlin, and that gives him all the military might he’d ever need.”
“Isn’t there a chart or a graph or something to go along with this?”
Shep ignored me. “Nate, Castro’s pushing his weight around the Caribbean and Central America. Aiding subversive activities in Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, out to undermine our interests anywhere and any way he can.”
“You convinced me. He’s a skunk. Right now I’m thinking maybe I should get the check.…”
He reached out and gripped my forearm. “Nathan, I need your help. We need your help. Your country needs your help.”
I skipped the Uncle Sam Needs You crack, because suddenly this seemed past clowning, what with that salad and steak curdling in my belly about now.
“You’ve decided, then,” I said, knowing.
Shep let go of my arm. Sat back. Sucked on the cigar. Let smoke out. Nodded. “Bastard has got to go.”
He didn’t exactly seem to be asking for my opinion. But I gave it to him, anyway.
“I’m not against it.” I shrugged. “In fact, I’d say I’m for it.”
“You have no religious reservations, no moral qualms, about…”
“Killing the prick? No. That doesn’t mean I want to be involved-not that I can see where a middle-aged Chicago private detective might fit into it.”
The coffee arrived. He put sugar and cream in his, I took mine black.
Shep was still stirring his coffee when he said, “We cannot be seen as the perpetrators of such a thing … not the Company, specifically, nor our country, generally. This is one of those … sensitive, covert operations in which we can’t have an Agency or government person get caught.”
I sipped coffee. Strong at George Diamond’s. “I get that. But I still don’t see where I come into this.”
The blue eyes were unblinking as they fixed themselves on me. “Don’t you, Nate? Who, outside of our government, could have the means and the motive to take out the Beard? And limit your speculation to those you might be able to … personally approach.”
And it came to me.
Before Life had tagged me “Private Eye to the Stars,” I’d been best known-in Chicagoland, anyway-as Private Eye to the Outfit. It was an exaggeration that flowed from a long-ago favor I had done Al Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti.
But the fact was, I’d always made sure to stay in the Outfit’s good graces. I had, from time to time, done them favors. And they me. They were unaware that I had, on occasion, been less than a friend to them, as when I worked undercover with Jimmy Hoffa for Bobby Kennedy’s rackets committee.
Still, to much of Chicago in the know, Nate Heller was “that mobbed-up private dick.” Not a badge of honor, exactly, though it had in several instances kept me breathing.
“We don’t want to approach these folks directly,” he said.
Yes, he said “folks,” Southern boy that he was.
He waved the cigar like a wand. “We need a, uh … an intermediary … to test the waters. We’re aware you are close to Sam Giancana, and to John Rosselli, here in Chicago.”
“You have an exaggerated notion of my status with the Knights of Columbus,” I said. “Anyway, Rosselli works out of Hollywood and Vegas, these days. And Mooney I generally steer clear of.”
Mooney was Sam Giancana, who currently ran the Chicago Outfit.
“Talk to Rosselli, then,” Shep said offhandedly. “We understand he has access to the highest levels of the Mafia, nationwide.”
That was true, though they didn’t use the term “Mafia” much. Rosselli was a kind of roving ambassador for the different national crime families.
“I think I better pass, old buddy,” I said.
“I am trying to appeal to your sense of patriotism, Nate.”
I gave him half a grin. “First of all, whenever somebody talks about patriotism, I put one hand over my wallet. Second, I vaguely remember already serving in the Pacific.”
“You’re the perfect person for this job, Nate.”
“The perfect patsy, if anything goes wrong. Caught in the middle between two armed camps who hate each other’s guts? And I got a son, Shep, remember? In junior high? He may want to go to college, too, someday, like your precious progeny. He can’t do that if I’m dead. Or, for that matter, if he’s dead.”
“I thought these people stayed away from family.”
“As a generality. I’m more attuned to specifics.”