Santo Trafficante died by the knife in 1987—the surgeon’s scalpel, on an operating table at the end of a long battle with heart disease and other ailments. Carlos Marcello died in 1993, a hopeless imbecile thanks to Alzheimer’s; when still of sound mind, he confessed a major role in the JFK assassination to his attorney, Frank Ragano, and also implicated Hoffa.
Awaiting a new trial, Jack Ruby died of cancer at Parkland Hospital, where JFK had been pronounced dead. Ruby felt he’d been poisoned, and during his incarceration became increasingly bold about denying full culpability in the shooting of everybody’s favorite lone-nut assassin, saying shortly before his death, “I was framed to kill Oswald.”
Sally Rand had a very successful engagement at the Silver Frolics in January 1964, though shortly thereafter the place was indeed shut down, then torn down, in its place a parking ramp erected for employees of the nearby Chicago Sun-Times. Helen gained national prominence that same year when she was invited to perform for the astronauts at the Astrodome in Houston, with new President Lyndon Johnson hosting. The event was given a certain inaccurate permanence in the Academy Award–winning 1983 film The Right Stuff, whose soft-focus gaze implied a much younger fan dancer. She’d have loved that.
Helen and I remained close over the years, but never moved in together, much less married. Her only lasting marriage was to her career, and she managed to keep Sally Rand in front of the public, performing her fan dance as late as 1979, the year of her death.
Richard Cain, as time passed, was revealed as a cop who was also an Outfit member—a made man who had been not just a bagman but an assassin. Some think he was involved in the Dallas hit, that perhaps he was even one of the shooters, though with his lousy eyesight, I doubt it. Cain was, however, the guy who notified the FBI where and when Oswald’s infamous Mannlicher-Carcano had been purchased in Chicago.
In 1964, Cain was fired from the sheriff’s department for lying to a grand jury in a stolen drugs case, serving six months for perjury, and in 1968 went to prison as an accomplice in a bank robbery. When he got out in 1971, he became Sam Giancana’s right-hand man and chief courier, during Mooney’s Mexico days. Returning to Chicago in ’73, Cain began informing on other Outfit guys to FBI agent Bill Roemer, clearing a path for his own planned takeover.
A few days before Christmas 1973, I caught up with Dick Cain at Rose’s Sandwich Shop on West Grand on the West Side. I was in my sixties now, and he was in his forties, but he looked ten years older. Sitting at a table by himself, he wore a black suit with a conservative tie. Hair longer, some silver in it, even sideburns. Hell, I had them, too.
Rose’s was just a hole-in-the-wall diner, with maybe eight tables and a counter. Jelly Cozzo owned the joint, and Outfit guys were his regular clientele, probably because of his mother’s recipes for spaghetti, ravioli, and lasagna. Jelly, a fairly bad dude in his day, served red wine and Zinfandel, too, though he had no liquor license.
Dick was having some spaghetti. I knew now that his real last name was Scalzitti. But he was also drinking a Coke and had a Dunhill going in an ashtray. Some things never changed. Like the dark-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses.
And the milky left eye.
I sat down. He looked up and frowned—his eyesight really was lousy, plus I looked older—and then he smiled.
“Nate Heller,” he said. “What the hell.”
He put his fork down and extended his hand and we shook. The waitress (there was only one, a little Annette Funicello look-alike who needed her mustache waxed) came and took my order—I had a Coke, too, and she brought it right over.
“My God,” he said, “how long as it been?”
“Since the sixties, anyway. I hear you had a falling-out with Mooney.”
“Naw, everything’s fine there. I just decided to go my own way.”
“Dick, I wanted to warn you about something.”
“Really? What?”
“I still keep my hand in at the A-1. Not completely retired, you know.”
“I didn’t know, but … what’s happening?”
I leaned in confidentially. “One of my guys picked up on a very dangerous rumor. It just can’t be true. It’s crazy.”
“Try me, Nate.”
“Well, it’s a coup. Scheduled for New Year’s Eve. Word is you’ve reached out to various contract guys around the country, and plan to hit every single mob boss in town, here and in Vegas and all over the place. All at the same time. Midnight, to ring in the New Year.”
He laughed. “That does sound screwy. Naw, that’s not me, Nate. You know I’m a stand-up guy.”
“I know you been working with Marshall Caifano. Advising him what houses his burglary crew should hit. But that sounds frankly … small-time to me, Dick. I mean, when I heard this crazy story about an Outfit coup? On some weird level, it made sense. Just the kind of elaborate, Machiavellian kinda shit you might come up with.”
“Naw. No. You heard wrong.”
I finished my Coke, gave him a smile. “Well, I heard this from one of my guys, and I thought I better let you know. Wrong people hear this, you could have a problem.”
He was nodding. “I appreciate it, Nate. I do appreciate it. Old times’ sake, huh?”
“Well, I owe you from way back, Dick. Always like to pay my debts.”
I gave him a wave, paid for the Coke, and headed out to West Grand, where a beater Ford was pulled in at a meter just down the way. I gave the two guys in the car a nice slow nod, and they started pulling on the ski masks. As I cut across the street to where my Jag was parked, I heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie: “He’s in there.”
Over my motor starting up, I could hear screams, and yells from guys ordering patrons around, and then a blast that just had to be both barrels of a shotgun.
The papers didn’t give the details, but a cop pal who had hated Dick Cain, too, reported that indeed both barrels of a shotgun had been fired up under Dick’s chin, tearing away the right side of his face. The downside? That meant an instantaneous death.
I still had the building in Old Town, though several years earlier, I had converted it into three floors of living space. I’d remodeled some, but that’s not the point.
The point is that around nine that evening, I got Tom Ellison’s wife on the phone. We hadn’t talked in a while, and we had a very nice catching-up session. Her kids were grown and fine. She hadn’t remarried, and the sound of her voice was such that I thought I might one of these days drive to Milwaukee and take her out for a nice meal.
For now, though, it was time to wrap up the conversation.
“Nice talking to you, Jean. But the reason I called.”
“Yes, Nate?”
“Remember how I told you, sometimes it takes years to take care of certain matters?”
“… I do.”
“Well, I just wanted you to know, something happened today.”
“Oh?”
“I think Tom would be pleased.”
And I hung up.
I OWE THEM ONE
Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible—and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, mitigated by the limitations of conflicting source material.
Most of the characters in this novel are real and appear under their true names, although all depictions herein must be viewed as fictionalized. Available information on the various individuals ranges from voluminous to scant. In some instances, few or no photographs were available, and for narrative purposes a description was invented—a fair amount of information was available on Maurice Martineau, for example, but research turned up no photo. Secret Service agents tend not to advertise their appearances.
Nathan Heller is, of course, a fictional character, as are the people he works with at the A-1 Detective Agency. In some cases, I have chosen not to use real names as an indication that either a surfeit of research is available on some minor historical figure, or that enough f
ictionalization has occurred to make that prudent. The fictional Chicago PD detectives Gross and Shoppa, for instance, have real-life counterparts, one of whom was a key player in the Fred Hampton shooting. Probably the most unbelievable character in this novel, Richard Cain, actually existed.
Eben Boldt is based on Abraham Bolden, an American hero—the Jackie Robinson of the Secret Service—who appears to have been framed due to his efforts to expose Secret Service shortcomings. These include presidential protection, racism in the ranks, and the Chicago plot itself. This is a man who only wanted to play by the rules and become a top-flight professional in service of his country. His fate is a sad footnote in the grand tragedy of the Kennedy assassination.
As far back as the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective (1983), which also deals with a political assassination, I have intended that my detective would eventually delve into the Kennedy murder. Even before Heller, I had a strong interest in the case, and have a vivid memory of seeing on television Lee Harvey Oswald shuttled around the station house by Dallas cops. Oswald wore an expression any adult human being should immediately recognize, which might be described as: “Shit—I should have seen this coming.” My gut reaction as a teenager? When Oswald said he was a patsy, he wasn’t lying.
But it is my practice to come to Heller novels with an open mind. I didn’t go into Stolen Away (1991) assuming either Bruno Hauptmann’s guilt or innocence, and I wrote the Roswell novel, Majic Man (1999), fully prepared for Nate Heller to encounter aliens, if that’s where the research led. Where JFK is concerned, however, I admit that I formed my basic opinions about the case a long time ago, based upon what I had read—and I had read a lot. Still, I was ready to change my mind.
I didn’t. Both my longtime research associate George Hagenauer and I plowed through scores of books on the subject. In the last two years, the research has been intensive and intense. On no other historical fiction project have we tried to ingest and digest more material, and as the time approached for me to begin writing, my head was swimming. I had a game plan that would take Heller to Dallas shortly after the shooting and put him in the midst of everything. But it didn’t feel real, or right, and the massive nature of the evidence that needed presenting overwhelmed me.
I can only shake my head when I see intelligent, well-meaning commentators from Vincent Bugliosi to Chris Matthews ignore such basics as Oswald’s ties to the CIA and FBI, Jack Ruby’s mob affiliation, and the Kennedy administration sanctioning the assassination of foreign heads of state. Never mind the magic bullet, the ballistics test that proved Oswald hadn’t fired a rifle, the Grassy Knoll witnesses, and your own lying eyes watching the Zapruder film. Yet even at this late date, we are battered over the head with copies of the risible Warren Commission Report, and told that our screwball conspiracy theorizing means we simply can’t accept that a great man like John F. Kennedy could be struck down by a nobody like Lee Harvey Oswald. And we’re to forget that other official government report that came after the Warren Commission, the one from the House Select Committee on Assassinations that concluded conspiracy was probable.
Those of us who view the obvious facts and interpret them in a logical fashion can only reply to Bugliosi, Matthews, Gerald Posner, and all the rest: in the face of overwhelming evidence, you cannot accept that the Kennedy brothers, whether great men or not, were flawed and helped create the Shakespearean circumstances of their own tragedy.
That aside, my problem as a historical novelist was the potential size and shape of a Heller novel on this subject, and the possibility of bogging myself and the reader down in minutiae to prove a point that I feel is evident on its face. Add to that the many novels and films already based around the Dallas events, and I began to dread treading over such familiar ground. Finally, with Nathan Heller as my protagonist, there always has to be a Chicago door to go through. Where, other than the obvious mob aspect, was the Chicago doorway to Dallas?
I credit George Hagenauer for finding the Chicago plot—the hit-man squad, two of whom were Cuban, and the obvious patsy in Thomas Arthur Vallee. Well, I had noticed it, and made notes about it, but had not realized its full meaning or potential. George thought the book might open with the Chicago plot, which then would take us to Dallas.
But I came to realize that a new JFK assassination story was there, just waiting to be told. That the Chicago plot of November 2, 1963, was virtually unknown and yet its very outline, its stark parallels to Dallas, offered a fresh way to demonstrate the conspiracy behind JFK’s murder between the mob, CIA elements, Cuban exiles, and various right-wing players. To say to the doubters, if this happened on November 2 in Chicago, how can you look at November 22 in Dallas and say, “Lone nut gunman?”
Suddenly the mass of research fell away and only a handful of sources were available that focused on this ignored, virtually forgotten piece of potentially key history. Target Lancer is the first book-length treatment of the Chicago plot. While perhaps a dozen Kennedy books give a paragraph or at most a page to the case, only a handful of writers have really dug in.
Investigative journalist Edwin Black did the key, groundbreaking research for his article “The Plot to Kill JFK in Chicago Nov. 2, 1963.” Black, writing for the obscure Chicago Independent (November 1975), is a highly respected, credible reporter whose lengthy piece reflects in-depth, on-site research and remains the definitive treatment.
Perhaps the best recent Kennedy assassination book, JFK and the Unspeakable (2008) by James W. Douglass, takes a lengthy look at the Chicago case, weaving it into the greater fabric of the international crises then at hand, and bringing in fresh research and information that expand upon Black.
Ultimate Sacrifice (2005, 2006) by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann is a massive work, somewhat controversial but with its own well-researched take on the assassination. In their coverage of the Chicago plot, Waldron and Hartmann draw largely upon Black but present the longest nonfiction look at the plot to date. Legacy of Secrecy (2009), a similarly weighty follow-up by the same authors, also deals with the case, but in considerably less detail.
Web research revealed the work of Vincent M. Palamara, which proved very helpful, notably chapter 17, “The Chicago Connection,” from his Survivor’s Guilt (2006). Palamara has problems with Waldron and Hartmann’s handling of the Chicago plot, and goes to admirable lengths to present his research in a straightforward, unslanted manner.
Surprisingly, Abraham Bolden mentions the case only in passing in his autobiography, The Echo from Dealey Plaza (2008). Bolden has been far more forthcoming elsewhere, as in an ABC News article, “44 Years After JFK’s Death, New Assassination Plot Revealed” (November 22, 2007).
The Kennedy Detail (2010) by ex–Secret Service agent Gerald Blaine with Lisa McCubbin deals with the Chicago case in a dismissive manner that includes belittling Bolden, which is typical of this insider’s book designed to put the best spin on a very bad situation. The Vallee coverage, however, contained some interesting facts not found elsewhere.
The incident involving a press agent who did a favor for a Hoffa emissary—involving a ten-thousand-dollar payoff to Jack Ruby in Chicago, right down to the tickets to the Bears/Eagles game—is detailed in Ultimate Sacrifice (as is Lee Harvey Oswald’s presence in Chicago in that time frame). Further, numerous books report Jack Ruby in a Dallas bank on the afternoon of November 22 with a similar packet of cash. The real press agent, Jim Allison, was not murdered, although his Hoffa contact man died under suspicious circumstances within several months of the JFK assassination. On November 24, 1963, Allison was (like me) watching on TV the transfer of Oswald from the Dallas police station to the county jail when he recognized Ruby as the shooter.
The major liberty I have taken with this incident, for the sake of creating an entertaining mystery thriller, is turning Allison’s fictional stand-in—Tom Ellison—into the murder victim, essentially making a composite of Allison and the Hoffa contact. The other major liberty taken is Heller’s fictional disposal
of the two ex-soldier assassins on the morning of November 2.
But the spine of this story has a solid factual basis—from the four-man hit squad including two Cubans to the ex-Marine patsy Vallee (whose many parallels to Lee Harvey Oswald include the stunning information that both served at U-2 bases in Japan); from the very controlled Secret Service response to the threat (including the blown surveillance of the Cuban subjects because of a radio transmission from Chief Martineau) right up to the last-second cancelation of the President’s Chicago visit.
Heller’s role in the formation of Operation Mongoose is based upon the actual role played by Robert Maheu, as described in numerous sources but in particular his memoir, Next to Hughes (Robert Maheu and Richard Hack, 1992). Those who consider Nate Heller a character who strains credulity might check out the real-life career of Howard Hughes’s favorite private eye.
A number of biographies proved crucial. Holly Knox’s Sally Rand: From Film to Fans (1988) was most helpful, as was Michael J. Cain’s sympathetic but unflinching look at his half brother, The Tangled Web: The Life and Death of Richard Cain—Chicago Cop and Mafia Hitman (2007).
My portrait of Jack Ruby was influenced by any number of books, but in particular The Ruby Cover-Up (1978) by Seth Kantor; Jack Ruby (1967, 1968) by Gary Wills and Ovid Demaris; and Jack Ruby’s Girls (1970) by Diana Hunter and Alice Anderson.
The major Jimmy Hoffa source here is Mob Lawyer (1994) by Frank Ragano and Selwyn Raab. A key mob reference was All-American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story (1991) by Charles Rappleye and Ed Becker. Also helpful were Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1989), John H. Davis; The Trafficantes: Godfathers from Tampa, Florida (2010), Ron Chepesiuk; and The Mafia Encyclopedia: From Accardo to Zwillman (1987), Carl Sifakis.
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