He didn’t say anything, just stood there clenching his fists, looking at Jack, raising his eyebrows several times, and giving me a sideways glance, his manner accusatory.
Jack grinned up at the young man. “No, no, no, Lee—this is Nate Heller. He’s one of us. It’ll be fine. Here—take this chair.”
Lee sat next to Jack, gave me a nod. He wasn’t sure he wanted me to be “one of us.”
That much we had in common.
Jack gestured with an open palm. “Nate, this is Lee. Lee Os—”
“Osborne,” the young man said, his voice slightly high-pitched, about a second tenor. He extended his hand. I took it, for a quick, perfunctory shake. The hand was damp, maybe perspiration, maybe rain.
“Nate’s that famous private eye you probably read about,” Jack said.
I winced. You know how modest I am.
Lee shrugged, shook his head. Then he turned to Jack and said, “We should talk.”
“You can talk in front of Nate.” Ruby grinned. He was showing off. “Jesus, Lee—you really don’t know who this guy is!… This is the fixer who put Mongoose together.”
Jesus! How much did this screwy bastard know?
Lee turned his gaze on me now, the smirk gone, then smiled just a little and half nodded. “Pleasure, sir. Honor. Didn’t mean to be rude or anything.”
“Hey,” Jack said, “you two should get along famously! You’re both Marines.”
I gave the kid a reassuring little smile. “Semper fi, Mac.”
Now Lee grinned. Shyly, but he grinned. “Semper fi. Were you in the big one?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Where’d you serve?”
“Pacific Theater.”
Jack whispered, “Silver Star, kid. This character won the Silver Star.”
“Shut up, Jack,” I said pleasantly.
“Wow,” Lee said. His expression was somber now. “It’s a real honor, sir. I, uh, served in the Pacific, too, but nothing so … so perilous.”
“Where, son?”
“Japan.” He lowered his voice. “Radar operator. U-2 base.”
“Impressive.” That put this kid in the CIA’s lap. “So you’re, uh … involved in some of Jack’s anti-Castro activities?”
Suddenly Lee’s face blossomed into a smile so boyish, he might have been auditioning to play Henry Aldrich. “You might say that.”
Jack leaned over toward me, chummily conspiratorial. “Let me tell you what this kid is good at, Nate. He goes onto these colleges campuses—University of Illinois, today…”
“Urbana,” Lee put in.
“… and he puts on this big pro-Castro act. Gives out pamphlets, gets in with any pro-Castro student organizations, looks into any leftist student activities at all, and … well,
you
tell him, kid.”
The smug smile was back. “Let’s just say we come up with a lot of names.”
I frowned. “You care about which students lean left?”
Jack interceded. “It’s more … professors with those kind of leanings.”
“Guys, I hate to spoil the party, but I vote Democrat.”
Jack squinted at me, openly irritated. “This isn’t about Democrat and Republican, Nate. It’s about anti-Communist. Come on, Nate! You of all people.”
A waiter came over and Lee ordered a ginger ale. That was us—just three clean-cut American veterans avoiding liquor in a strip club.
Lee said, “Mr. Heller, I voted for JFK. I admire him. And his family. They’re interesting Americans.”
“I’m sure they’d be flattered.”
Jack said, “Hell, I voted for him, too. I see he’s coming to visit you, Nate.”
That threw me. I knew Jack Kennedy a little, though it was his brother I’d been close to, until we had a falling-out last year. I hardly expected a “visit” from either one of them.
I said, “What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s been in all the papers. Week from tomorrow, he’s coming to town. Gonna see Army beat the shit out of Navy, at Soldier Field. Be a big motorcade and everything.”
“Is that right?” I said, not really giving a damn. Standing on a crowded street waving at Jack Kennedy was not my idea of a good time.
I nodded at the kid. “Nice meeting you, Lee. Some free advice? I would try not to be led too far astray by this old racetrack hustler.”
“Nate, you never change,” Jack said, smiling, shaking his head.
I slid out of the booth, then paused next to them before heading out. “You gonna be in town long, fellas?”
Jack said, “Few days. Couple more clubs I wanna check out. Lee’s heading back tonight—friend of his has a private plane. Wish
I
rated. Hey!… Wish I could afford
her
.”
Up onstage, the headliner—Evelyn West, “the Girl with the Chest”—was parading around to “Buttons and Bows” in a cowboy hat, riding a kid’s stick horse with her trademarks hanging out.
“Yeah, Jack,” I said, heading to the door, putting on my own non–cowboy hat, giving the pair a little salute of a wave. “Just the kind of class act that’s perfect for you.”
CHAPTER
3
Fall 1960
My limited if key role in Operation Mongoose had, ironically enough, begun just a stone’s throw from the 606 Club on South Wabash, at George Diamond’s Steak House, where businessmen and families dined, with not a stripper in sight.
I was in a back booth with Edward “Shep” Shepherd, and we were studying menus with George Diamond’s mug on the cover, his chef’s hat diamond-shaped against a deep red that I suspected was CIA-style mind control to coerce customers into ordering their steaks rare. Much as I agreed with that philosophy, those means would never have occurred to me if my dinner companion hadn’t been the Agency’s top security chief.
Or I should say the Company’s. That’s what everybody was calling the CIA these days. Back when I’d tangled asses with them, about ten years ago, they were still the Agency. And I’d hated those fuckers, with the exception of Shepherd, who had probably talked his fellow spooks out of tossing me from a high window or poisoning my Ovaltine.
George Diamond’s was a masculine expanse of dark paneling, red carpet, and framed paintings of the sad big-eyed kid and harlequin variety, trying misguidedly for a taste of class. No matter, it was the taste of charbroiled steaks—cooked by colored chefs right in the midst of the place, providing a smoky ambiance where meat trumped tobacco—that made this the most popular steak house in the Loop.
“The filets here are the size of footballs,” I said by way of recommendation.
Shep made a face. He reminded me of Bobby Morse in
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,
only twenty or thirty years older, but with that same sly gap-toothed charm, his dark blond hair going gray, his dark-blue eyes getting pouchy. Well dressed—light-gray Brooks Brothers, dark-gray tie—he was already on his second Gibson. He always went straight for the pickled onion.
“I suggested George Diamond’s,” he said, a touch of the South in his lilting drawl, “for its vicarious pleasures. You will sympathetically note that I will be ordering the broiled chicken. You have
heard
of this cholesterol horse shit?”
And it
was
“horse shit,” as he spoke it—two words.
“I read something about it,” I admitted.
“Well, my doctor says I have it. So I’m off red meat. Least the ol’ pecker still works.”
“Very glad to hear it, Shep. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing.”
He gave me the gap-toothed grin. “If we weren’t in a public place, Heller, I’d suggest you go fuck yourself.”
That made me smile. “Well, prepare to get plenty of vicarious pleasure, Shep, because I’m having the king filet. You
can
eat salad, can’t you?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, can I have salad.”
“Well, you’ll want to mix the three homemade dressings they’ll bring.”
“Homemade? Why, do those colored cooks live in the kitchen?” He sighed. “Getting older is a bitch, ain’t it, Heller? But it does beat the alternative.”
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 any
where
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.