Ask Not Page 22

  His customary expression was that of a guy who just had water splashed in his face. “You got a point, Nate. I’m not sayin’ you don’t have a point. These people who have so much to gain and such an ulterior motive for … for putting me in the position I’m in, they’d do just about anything to keep the true facts from coming out to the world at large.”

  Flo finally jumped in. “Are these people in very high positions, Jack?”

  “Yes.” He unfolded his hands and, not hard, pounded a fist on the metal tabletop, making the deck of cards jump a little. “Yes!… You know, I tried to tell the truth to the Warren Commission.”

  She nodded. “Jack, I do know. I got an advance look at your testimony. But you told Justice Warren the same story you’ve been telling—about committing the crime for the sake of Jackie and Caroline Kennedy, to spare them the hardship of a trial.”

  A tiny smile flashed. “Don’t you think I would make a good actor?” Now the high forehead clenched and he leaned in. “That was a story, Miss Kilgore, that my first attorney instructed me to tell. From the start, I wanted to tell the truth, but I couldn’t, not here in Dallas. Not in this jail. I told Justice Warren, if they wanted to get the straight story out of me, they had to take me to Washington, D.C.”

  I said, “But they refused.”

  He gestured with open hands, eyes popping. “They refused! Why? Why? I said if they would take me back to Washington, that very night, and let me talk to the President, then I could prove I’m not guilty, and maybe something could still be salvaged.”

  Sitting forward, I said, “Jack, almost everybody in America was watching on that Sunday morning, and the rest have seen the instant replay—you killed Oswald. You can’t be saying you’re innocent of that.”

  “No, no, I’m not talking about that. Nate, you’re a Jew—you know that there is no greater weapon you can use than to create this kind of falsehood about someone of the Jewish faith, especially of such a terrible heinous crime as the killing of President Kennedy.”

  Flo glanced at me and I at her, and she said to him, gently, “You feel you are being accused of killing the President?”

  He nodded vigorously. “Of being part of a conspiracy to kill our beloved President.”

  I said, “Jack, you hated the Kennedys.”

  He shrugged. “I hate Bobby. I never had a problem with Jack. But if I am eliminated, there won’t be any way of knowing what really happened. The Warren Commission, they muffed it, Nate, they eff you cee kayed it up, if you’ll pardon the crudity, Miss Kilgore. I want to talk to LBJ, who I think has been told, I am certain has been told, I was part of a plot to assassinate the President.”

  “Why would Johnson have been told that?”

  “Because … because he’s been told. I know he’s been told. By the people who plan to eliminate me.”

  Shaking her head, as if to clear cobwebs, Flo asked, “Who is going to try to eliminate you, Jack?

  “They won’t try, Miss Kilgore, they will. Maybe if you get out there with your story, I have a chance, but … you see, I have been used for a purpose, and there will be a tragic occurrence if you don’t take my story to the people and somehow vindicate me, so Jews like me don’t have to suffer because of what I have done.”

  I said, “That’s what we’re here for, Jack. To get your story, and get it out there.”

  “Good, because I may not be around for you to come and talk to again. You know, I told them I’d do a lie detector test, truth serum, anything. And then I could leave this world satisfied. I just don’t want my people to be blamed for something that is untrue, for something that some wrongly claim has happened.”

  “Then your account of the Oswald shooting,” I said, “was fabricated for you?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  “Then why do you keep repeating it?”

  “Because the brave Jew killing the President’s murderer is a good story. And because I have family. I don’t want my brothers to die. I don’t want my sister to die. I don’t want my nieces and nephews to die. I do not want to die. But I am doomed just the same. And I am not insane. I was framed to kill Oswald.”

  I held up a calming hand and said, “Okay, okay. But let’s back up. You hated Bobby, you said. You say you didn’t hate the President, but Jack, nobody in mob circles loves either Kennedy.”

  He didn’t deny it.

  I pressed on: “So why are there so many reports that you were devastated by the President’s death? That you were crying and weeping and wailing?”

  “That’s an exaggeration, but…” He gave me a knowing little grin. “… you were always smart, Nate. We’ve come a long way from that union hall in Lawndale, haven’t we?”

  Had we? That had involved a killing, too, of Leon Cooke, a former president of a junk-handler’s union. Maybe Ruby had come a long way at that.

  Now the stocky little man’s focus was on me, perhaps because he knew I could follow him on the torturous journey ahead in a way that Flo Kilgore might not.

  He said, “Maybe you don’t know this, Nate, but back in the fifties, I was big in the Cuban realm, both before and after Castro took over. I made trips for people, I moved some guns, I helped Santo get out of there when they had him locked up. I was valuable, making things happen. But then when Castro threw all the casinos out, my influence, it was gone with the wind and, well, at least I had a life and a business back here in Dallas. I concentrated on that. That became my life and world. I was happy. I am competitive by nature. But you mentioned deals with the devil, Nate, right? And I admit, I like to be important, it’s a weakness, but who doesn’t savor the attention of powerful people?”

  I said, “Can you be more specific, Jack?”

  “Well, powerful people, they never talk to you direct, do they? So if I said Carlos Marcello, I would be trying to make myself sound more important than I am, and the humbling thing about what I’ve been through, Nate, is that I know I was not important. Now I am important, and that’s the bittersweet taste, huh? Because now I wish I was not so important. I wish I was a small person again, a small successful person with his club and girls and his little dogs. I miss my little dogs, Nate.”

  “Jack, you say somebody contacted you on Marcello’s behalf. Who? When?”

  “A fella in New Orleans, smart guy, kind of on the weirdo side. We’ll call him the Ferret. He’s a pilot, in fact he and me, we go back a ways ourselves—we owned a plane together, in gunrunning days. I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of years, not since the Bay of Pigs went south and all of the Cuba stuff went circling down the porcelain exit. Anyway, the Ferret—”

  “David Ferrie,” Flo said with a nod.

  That startled Ruby, her knowing that name.

  I asked, “What did Ferrie want?”

  “He … he wanted some help with some projects the Cubans were working on.”

  “Cuban exiles.”

  “Yes. There’s a big variety of different groups, but this is a pretty militant bunch, and well, sometimes I work both ends against the middle, and that can be dangerous, but it can also be profitable, and it covers a person’s behind, you know.”

  She said, “You were an FBI snitch.”

  That startled him, too. And he seemed a little hurt.

  “I guess you could state it like that, Miss Kilgore. That’s a terminology that makes me uncomfortable, I would say ‘informant’ is a bit better, but yes. So I figured my FBI contact would not mind knowing what the Cubans were up to, and since casino interests like Mr. Marcello and Mr. Trafficante seemed to think Cuba might be returned to its former profitable glory so to speak, I lent my services, and my club after hours, for meetings and so on.”

  Flo asked, “You didn’t hesitate getting involved again with these mobsters?”

  “I was having money problems, tax trouble in particular, and anyway, I had business in Cuba with certain of these individuals that … Nate, can we talk about this in front of Miss Kilgore?”

  “If you mean Operation Mon
goose,” I said, “yes.”

  That failed joint effort between the CIA and the Mob to kill Castro. That ridiculous French farce involving exploding cigars and poisoned food and tampered-with wet suits.

  I said to him, “Miss Kilgore knows we were both part of that, each in his own small, respective way.”

  Dark eyebrows rose above eyes about as expressive as a shark’s. “Does she know that…?”

  “That I ran into you in a bar in Chicago, in early November, last year? That you introduced me to your buddy ‘Lee Osborne’? Yes.”

  Or, anyway, she did now.

  This had taken some of the wind out of his sails, and I had to prompt him: “What mischief were the New Orleans mob and the Cubans up to? Or should I say, what did you think they were up to?”

  “… The idea was to embarrass the President,” he said. His hands were folded again and he was looking at them. He seemed smaller suddenly. “Embarrass Kennedy with a phony pro-Castro demonstration when he came to Dallas. I think those oil-money Birchers who were in bed with Marcello and the Cubans were afraid that Kennedy was cozying up to the Beard. But that’s just a small-time nightclub owner putting two and two together.”

  And he was getting four, all right: Bobby had told me that secret talks between a Kennedy administration rep and Castro himself were under way the day of the assassination.

  Flo asked, “Where did Oswald fit in?”

  “He was just a little foot soldier,” Ruby said, “like me. He was an FBI informant, too, you know. And maybe more, maybe a spook—they sent him to Russia, huh? And some of those spooks were really pissed off at Kennedy, because of the Bay of Pigs betrayal, and, well, that should have told me something.”

  “A phony pro-Castro demonstration,” I said. “Only it was a front for a presidential assassination.”

  Ruby nodded. “You’re right, Nate, only I didn’t know that at the time. The plan as presented was that a shooter would take a kind of potshot at the President, with Castroites catching the blame, which would then shut down any peace talk bull and maybe ignite the shooting war in Cuba that everybody wanted, the Birchers, the spooks, the hoods. Why else would Oswald, who was Marcello’s guy—and maybe a spook or both, too—go around pretending to be a pinko?”

  “Because he was being set up as a patsy,” I said.

  “I didn’t know that. Believe me, I didn’t try to put any pieces together, Nate, not up front. I just did what they asked, did whatever I was told.”

  “By Ferrie?”

  “He was one of several. But the day before, that Thursday before, some nasty customers started showing up in town, Nate, from all over, specialized talent, I mean it was a goddamn torpedo convention … and it did start feeling like something else was up. Something big.”

  “Who showed up, for instance?”

  “Well, for one, our old buddy Chuckie, from back home.”

  “Chuckie? You mean Nicoletti?”

  Charles “Chuckie” Nicoletti was Sam Giancana’s number one hit man.

  Ruby nodded. “Rosselli, too. You know Johnny.”

  I knew Johnny.

  “But,” Ruby was saying, “he left before the big day, I think—maybe he was just putting things in motion, finishing touches.”

  “Who else?”

  “Couple of Cuban hard-asses, don’t ask for names, I could never keep track of ’em. Oh, and that creepy guy, Johnson’s hatchet man, used to live here but is out on the West Coast now.”

  I exchanged glances with Flo.

  I asked, “You mean Mac Wallace?”

  Ruby nodded again, even more vigorously. “That freak would give Boris Karloff the heebie-jeebies. And there was this guy, maybe with some Cuban blood, who Oswald didn’t know about but coulda been his brother.”

  Flo asked, “A double?”

  “Not so close you’d call him an identical twin or anything, but easy enough to mistake for him. Also, some guy from Europe, a Corsican, I think. He was supposed to be a whiz with a rifle, and he was gonna be the one taking the potshot. Needed an expert for that, ’cause it wouldn’t do to accidentally really whack the President, right? So we were told, anyway.”

  I asked, “You heard this at a meeting at the Carousel?”

  He ignored that. “Why would they need three teams of shooters, Nate? That’s what made it start to smell. If this was just a potshot, if they were just gonna miss the guy and put Castro on the spot … why a military action like that?”

  “To guarantee a kill. Triangulation. Snipers from three sides.”

  As for the number of teams and the disparate players, that meant each faction within the conspiracy was providing a shooting team, two or three people each. To bind everybody together, to ensure silence by way of shared responsibility.

  Or blame.

  So you had Nicoletti and Rosselli for the Mob, who maybe also provided the Corsican specialist; the Cubans representing the exile group; Wallace as part of the Big Oil contingent; and other players as yet unnamed. Perhaps never to be named.

  “I was in the military like you, Nate. I recognize that kind of thing when I see it. I would never be part of an atrocity such as this. Kill a president? I don’t care if I didn’t vote for the son of a bitch, I don’t care if his brother is Bobby Kennedy and his father is a senile old bootlegger who betrayed us all, kill a president? I am not insane. Do I look insane?”

  Was that a trick question?

  I asked, “Oswald didn’t know?”

  Ruby shrugged. “He may have been putting things together like I did, as things came into play. Who can say?”

  In Chicago, in late October, the first warning the Secret Service got of a possible assassination attempt set for JFK’s November 2 visit came from an otherwise anonymous caller identifying himself only as “Lee.”

  Ruby sat forward. “But I think when that kid realized that Kennedy had been killed, he knew he was being set up. They’d sent him to work that day with a package of posters for the fake demonstration! That package was too small, but everybody uses it to say, Look! He brought a rifle to work! They told him to tell the guy who drove him there that they were curtain rods.”

  Curtain rods was what the hitchhiker told that truck driver was in his brown-paper package.

  Ruby’s upper lip curled back over his teeth. “Isn’t it strange that Oswald, who hasn’t worked a lick in most of his life, should be fortunate enough to get a job at the book depository two weeks before the President visits Dallas? Now where would a nebbish like Oswald get that information? Where could the people who put him in that building find out when and what the route would be? Only one person could get that information.”

  Flo said, “Who?”

  He shifted in his metal chair, his expression coy. “Let’s just say if Adlai Stevenson was vice president, there would never have been an assassination.”

  “Spell it out, Jack,” I said.

  “Well the answer is that that man is in office now.”

  “And that man is Lyndon Johnson?”

  He was raving, yet keeping his voice soft enough not to be heard across the room. “And that man is Johnson! Who knew weeks in advance what was going to happen, because he is the one who was going to arrange the trip for the President—this had been planned long before the President himself knew about it. The one who gained the most by the shooting of the President was Johnson, and he was in a car in the rear and safe when the shooting took place. What would the Russians, Castro, or anyone else have to gain by eliminating the President? If Johnson was so heartbroken over Kennedy, why didn’t he do something for Robert Kennedy? All he did was snub him.”

  I said, “Did you ever meet Madeleine Brown?”

  That slammed his brakes on. He blinked. He shrugged. “Uh, sure. Hot little number, in her day. Johnson has a good eye for talent, although that one was too smart for him. Got herself knocked up, milked him like a cow, money, cars, house. Why?”

  “Just wondering,” I said. “What did you mean, when you said Oswald
was Marcello’s man?”

  “The summer before the assassination, he was a runner for a Marcello bookmaker. His uncle Dutz Murret’s a longtime Marcello man. This is all well-known in New Orleans.”

  There it was: Oswald tied directly to the Marcello organization.

  Flo said, “That still leaves the big question, Jack. Why did you shoot Oswald?”

  He swallowed. “Because, Miss Kilgore, I had to. I got a call, and they told me I had to, and so I did, because I had to.”

  “A call from David Ferrie?”

  “A call, Miss Kilgore, and I had to.”

  I said, “And that’s what you were broken up about. Not Jackie and Caroline.”

  “I didn’t want to shoot that kid! He was in so far over his head. He’d have already been dead if…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Acquila Clemmons was sitting on her porch when she saw Officer Tippit killed. She said two men were involved—the gunman was a “short guy and kind of heavy,” the other man taller and thin in khaki trousers and a white shirt. She had been reluctant to talk to Flo because a Dallas PD officer had warned her to stay quiet, saying she “might get killed on the way to work.”

  “You killed Tippit,” I said.

  Ruby shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”

  “When Kennedy really was shot, you knew both you and Lee Oswald were dupes in this thing—you even went to Parkland Hospital to see if Kennedy would pull through, and when he didn’t, you went looking for Oswald. Tippit died near your apartment, didn’t he? You tried to warn Oswald.”

  “He was supposed to die that day,” he said ambiguously.

  “Who?” Flo asked.

  I said, “Oswald. Jack here screwed this up for everybody. Tippit was supposed to kill Oswald—he was combing Oak Cliff, supposedly for a suspect based on the description over the police radio. He got out of the car to come around and take Oswald out, only Jack here rescued his pal. Didn’t you, Jack?”

  “I don’t think … I don’t think I should admit to a murder that maybe I didn’t do.”

  I pressed: “Did Ferrie or Marcello suspect you? Is that why they sent you for the job? Or was it just a terrible coincidence? That you, the guy who could come and go as he pleased at the police station, were sent to do the deed.”