The reason we hadn’t seen each other—or spoken—in over year grew out of the falling-out we’d had over the murder of Marilyn Monroe. Bobby hadn’t been responsible, nor had Jack, but people looking out for their best interests had been. Sound familiar?
And Bobby, the attorney general of this great land of ours, helped cover it up.
Which was why I’d told him, in no uncertain terms, that I was no longer available to the Camelot crowd for government work.
“I have to ask you,” he said, quietly, “to put that aside. I don’t expect your forgiveness, but I do request your forbearance.”
I said nothing.
He tried again. He touched my arm, a remarkable gesture coming from a guy about as demonstrative as a bust of Napoleon.
“Nate, I need your help. I understand your wish not to be involved with us, in any way, anymore. But you are in a unique position to help us out in a very tough situation.”
“Is it an opening in the Peace Corps? I always wanted to dig wells and teach in developing nations. Plus I hear it’s a good way to meet chicks.”
An aircraft was taking off—big enough to make the framed pictures nervous.
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you, Nate?”
I sipped the Coke. God it was awful. Too much syrup. Ice floating like glass chips, flat as Audrey Hepburn.
I asked, “What did you do about the German streusel?”
The slightest twinkle in those bloodshot blue eyes. “What do you think we did?”
“Deported her and paid her off.”
Another small smile. “Actually, ah, I understand she
has
come into money. I do know she was escorted overseas by LaVern Duffy.”
Another investigator from rackets committee days.
Bob was saying, “I think he, ah, got along quite
well
with Miss Rometsch.”
“For that gig, I might have made an exception.”
I twitched a smile at him, and he knew he had me.
With a relieved sigh, a business-like Bobby pushed the coffee away. I had already done that with the Coke.
“I trust Mr. Boldt has briefed you, at least in broad strokes. Very reliable man, Mr. Boldt. Jack misses having him on the White House detail.”
I frowned. “Is that what this is about? This planned attack on Jack next Saturday? Why don’t you just cancel the fucking trip?”
I already knew at least one answer: if every time a death threat came in before a public appearance by the President, the leader of the free world would never stick his head out of the Oval Office.
But, as Eben had indicated, most of those threats came from lunatics with a handgun and a grudge—not a trained assassination squad.
The latter might have been Bobby’s answer, but it wasn’t.
Instead, he said, “My brother is probably the most loved man in America. And possibly the most hated.”
“No,” I said, “
you’re
the most hated. But he’s probably second.”
That got a real smile out of him. His sense of humor was wry and dark, so I wasn’t surprised by that toothy display.
“This month, we’ve lined up several high-profile trips for Jack—motorcades preceding political events … not just this Chicago one, but to Florida and Texas.”
“The
South
?” I looked at him sideways. “That’s where they
really
hate you Kennedy boys. Remember what they used to say back in WW Two—is this trip really necessary?”
Though Bobby actually had a precarious relationship with Negro leaders—especially Martin Luther King—he was viewed in the Deep South as the “nigger-loving” attorney general who had forced Governor George Wallace to get out of that schoolhouse doorway and let the colored kids in.
“Florida and Texas are the only two Southern states we are likely to carry,” Bobby was saying. “And we
need
them. Much as he may sicken us, Lyndon being on the ticket again gives us a decent shot at Texas.”
“Isn’t Lyndon enough to swing it?”
“I wish he were. But the party down there is at war with itself—Governor Connally might as well be a Republican, and Senator Yarborough’s a liberal maverick. Jack has to go down there and spread the charm around.” He shook his head, smiled ruefully. “Shitty way to make a living, isn’t it?”
“Well, at least there’s plenty of retired Democrats living in Florida.”
“Can’t even take that for granted. Retirees are by nature conservative.” His eyebrows went up. “And, of course, we
really
need Illinois, and all those lovely electoral votes. Canceling is
not
an option, Nate.”
I sat forward. “It should be. Bob, your Secret Service contingent in the Loop numbers an underwhelming dozen or so. That would be a joke if it wasn’t so sad.”
His hands were folded on the table now, on top of the manila folder, almost prayerfully. “We have support from the Chicago PD and sheriff’s department, but your point is valid. We’ll be bringing in agents from Secret Service offices all over the country, on Saturday. But in the meantime, I would like to bolster the local bunch with some, ah, outside help.”
“What outside help are you thinking of?”
“You.”
I am fairly fast with my mouth, and my brain is usually only a second or two behind it. But I had nothing to say.
“I want you there, Nate, on the inside of this thing. First of all, you know this town better than, ah, any of these local agents. Only a handful of them grew up in Chicago. Mr. Boldt’s from St. Louis, I believe. That’s reason enough.”
I was starting to get it. Something was crawling up my spine on its way to my neck, where it would lay goose bumps.
“But that isn’t
the
reason,” I said.
“No.” He pushed the manila folder toward me. Turned out it wasn’t a place mat.
I opened it and shook out four 5-by-7-inch photos, blurry, grainy color surveillance-type photos, taken on the street at various indistinct locations.
Two were of Latin types, a trimly bearded guy maybe in his late twenties, the other a mustached old pro who was probably mid-thirties. Both were in sport shirts, the older man in sunglasses. Nothing distinctive about them, really—they could have been hacienda owners or members of a mariachi band, but somehow I didn’t think they were either.
The other photos were of pasty-looking white guys, both wearing crew cuts, both in their mid-twenties, both in sunglasses, one blond chewing a toothpick, the other black-haired with a cigarette frozen near his lips as the hidden camera snapped him. They had lean faces but what showed of their upper torsos appeared trimly muscular. One was in a T-shirt, the other in a blue plaid shirt.
“The white guys are either military or ex,” I said. “What’s the story on the Cubans?”
Bobby almost blinked. “Did I say they were Cubans?”
“No, but I don’t think I’d be sitting here if they weren’t. Two of these shooters are Cuban exiles who might have ties, vague or not so vague, back to Operation Mongoose. Which is why you want me sitting in on this.”
He just stared momentarily, then nodded.
“What the hell is going on, Bob?”
“We don’t know.” He tapped the bearded guy’s photo. “That’s Gonzales.” He tapped the older, mustached guy’s photo. “That’s Rodriguez.”
“No first names?”
“Not yet.”
“No background?”
“Nothing specific. FBI intel indicates the Cubans are dissidents.”
“Exiles, yeah. And the soldiers?”
“No names at all. FBI believes they are right-wing paramilitary fanatics. Southern boys.”
“Racist white trash I believe is the term. If the intel is coming from the FBI, why aren’t the fabled G-men who took down Dillinger on top of this thing?”
Bobby shrugged, gestured with an open hand. “Mr. Hoover says this is clearly a Secret Service matter. After all, it’s not a federal crime to attempt the murder of a President—not even a federal crime to succeed.”
“Just another run-of-the-mill murder,” I said dryly, over the muffled roar of yet another takeoff.
“It’s the Secret Service’s job to protect the President, and Mr. Hoover says it would be ‘inappropriate, even illegal’ for the FBI to participate in this investigation.”
As the attorney general, Bobby was Hoover’s boss, and he should have been able to tell him what to do in this, or any, instance. But that fat old fucker had too much on the Kennedy brothers in his legendary (but real) secret files to make that possible, or anyway advisable. As much as Jack and Bobby hated J. Edgar, they had to keep hiring him back on as head Bureau mucky-muck. Why didn’t they hire me to get a photo of that old queen getting buggered or blown?
Some of my best ideas are just too advanced.…
Bobby leaned back in the hard plastic-and-metal chair. “Nate, this has to be, ah, handled. There is so much at stake. We are close in Cuba,
very
close … we finally have someone next to Castro. Someone who can eliminate this problem without stooping to any of the more fanciful means our, uh, friends at the CIA have come up with.”
“Like using the mob?”
“Without using that kind of resource, yes. A lot of things have been set in motion in recent years, too many things, that seem, ah, in hindsight poorly judged.”
“Like exploding cigars? I always thought the CIA should try one of those trick lapel flowers. Squirt acid in the Beard’s kisser and see how he likes it.”
Bobby laughed lightly. “Well, I can top that. How about an exploding seashell? Or a poison-lined wet suit? The CIA says Castro enjoys skin-diving, you see. Well, we’re finally at the end of this comic-opera nonsense. But goddamnit, if we have to go the whole hog to take care of this thing, we’ll do that, too.”
I took that to mean mount or anyway fund a violent overthrow of Castro, of the sort the abortive Bay of Pigs represented; but I didn’t ask for clarification.
“You know that’s not my preference,” he clarified anyway, raising a hand as if being sworn in. “Jack and I much prefer to encourage counterinsurgency in these countries, and make use of spy operations.”
“You guys do know that Ian Fleming is a fiction writer, right?”
“Actually, he was a real-life spy before he became a fiction writer. Maybe you didn’t know that.”
Actually, I did.
Bobby was saying, “Subversion and sabotage, not all-out war,
that’s
our preference. I think you know that. You would be shocked, and I know you aren’t easily shocked, by the pressure Jack is getting to engage in a full-scale ground war in Vietnam. We want nothing to do with that kind of insanity. We’re going the other way.”
“Black operations.”
His shrug was a yes.
“Like Mongoose.”
He damn near winced. “Getting involved with … those
people
, I agree that was, ah, ill-advised. But Mongoose is still operational, Nate.”
“The curtain isn’t down yet on the comic opera?”
“Not quite. If all goes as planned, yes … but as of now, not quite. We still need options. We may yet need those … unpleasant resources.”
We had come to something that I had never understood, and could never get a good answer for. “Bob, these ‘unpleasant resources’ are your collaborators, on the one hand, and on the other, you’re trying to stick them in stir.”
“We made them no promises otherwise.” His eyes glittered and his bucktooth grin turned feral. “In addition to Hoffa, we’ve got Carlos Marcello in the crosshairs. We have him in a federal courtroom in New Orleans,
right now
. Finally, we will deport that slippery bastard.”
“That slippery bastard is part of Mongoose, too, Bob—through Trafficante.”
He was shaking his head. “We don’t need him. Doing something for his country doesn’t buy him a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. You don’t buy your way out of wholesale murder and dope-trafficking.”
Bobby had tried to deport Marcello before—notably when he had the FBI kidnap the don of New Orleans and dump his ass unceremoniously in a Guatemalan jungle.
“What I want from you, Nate, is to work with the Secret Service on tracking down these four suspects. Obviously, you have Saturday morning as a deadline—Jack arrives at O’Hare at eleven
A.M.
”
“That’s less than four days, Bob.”
“If I’m able to squeeze more information from Edgar on their identities, and the source of this intel, I will. And you’ll hear from me.”
“How will the Secret Service feel about taking on a slightly overage recruit?”
He reached into his suit-coat pocket and withdrew a small black wallet, skimming it over to me across the tabletop.
“These are your credentials. You’re a special investigator attached to the Justice Department on loan to the Treasury Department. I have spoken to Chief Martineau personally, and he’s been instructed to give you every courtesy.”
“Am I working for myself or Martineau?” I knew the guy a little, and wasn’t wild about the prospect of being under his thumb.
“You’re working for me,” Bobby said, “but give the chief his due respect. Work within the unit. Your job is to help find these four…” He pointed to the photos. “… but also to look after our interests.”
That “our” was vague as hell, but I understood it: his interests, his brother’s interests, and my interests … as collaborators in Operation Mongoose.
“We have made a lot of people unhappy, Nate, Jack and I. Sam Giancana, assorted Cubans, right-wing fanatics, certain elements within the CIA, and it’s possible—just possible—two or more of these groups are coming together on this … and taking some of the very tactics we developed to, ah, eliminate Castro, and turning them around on us.”
“Well, then tell Jack to stay away from cigars and seashells.”
Bobby was not amused. In fact, his expression turned grave.
He said, “There is a plan that includes taking Fidel out via high-power rifle with a scope from a high building while he rides in an open vehicle, a Jeep. That plan has never been attempted, never carried out, obviously … but it’s, ah, a scenario the various players in this little comedy did in fact develop.”
“Do you think the Cubans, if they’re captured, will spill about Mongoose? Will they use that knowledge to barter themselves out of captivity?”
The disaster that implied—not just politically but internationally—was staggering to contemplate.