Target Lancer nh-14

by Max Allan Collins

  Today NASG was a Navy Reserve training center, still bustling with men and aircraft, if nothing compared to the war years. Now the Navy Reserve units were joined by Marines, Army, and Seabees, as well as a Coast Guard search-and-rescue team.

  Eben Boldt parked near the control tower, which rose from lower-slung buildings still resembling a modest commercial airport, with its late twenties/early thirties art moderne touches. Eben led me down a corridor of military personnel going efficiently in every direction until we were through a door and moving across a bullpen of uniformed aides and civilian secretaries at their desks, typewriter clack providing urgency to a static tableau.

  We took a left down a bland hallway to where two men in dark suits were standing on either side of a nondescript door to a room whose outer wall was windows that venetian blinds concealed. The two government men-more Secret Service? FBI maybe? — had the expressionless watchfulness you would expect, hands at their sides, not tucked behind their backs, suit coats unbuttoned for fast, easy access to the.38s that would ride their hips.

  Eben’s nod to them was barely perceptible, as were theirs back to him-maybe these were local SS. If so, I didn’t recognize them. The Negro agent made a gesture toward the door, not opening it for me but indicating I was to go in. Then he positioned himself against the opposite wall.

  I went in.

  And was in another break room, twice the size of the A-1’s, with a fairly impressive facing wall of vending machines, including a sandwich dispenser and one that served up coffee. The side walls had framed photos-a World War II-era photo of fighter planes in formation, a not dissimilar shot of jets circa the Korean conflict, another of the control tower, another inside a busy hangar. Two tables that would each seat half a dozen office workers took up most of the space. The tables were between me and a slim male figure in a white shirt and navy-blue trousers with his back to me-he was getting himself a cup of the terrible coffee such machines served up for your dime and nickel, when they were in the mood.

  Bobby Kennedy looked over his shoulder at me and, with his rather shy, slightly bucktoothed grin adding to the Tom Sawyer effect, asked, “Coffee, Nate? It’s swill but it’s, ah, the best I can do.”

  “No thanks,” I said, in no mood to whitewash a fence.

  His suit coat was slung over a chair at the farthest table, a manila envelope positioned like a place mat, and I went over and sat next to where he’d be.

  I said, “But I will let you buy me a Coke.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, playing gracious host. He was actually pretty good at that, with all the wingdings he and wife Ethel threw at Hickory Hill, their home in McLean, Virginia.

  He deposited his cardboard cup of coffee at the table and I watched him selflessly dig change from his pocket and get me my very own Dixie cup of caffeinated swill from one of the machines. It was like when Jesus went around washing the feet of the poor.

  He delivered my beverage, sat, and extended his hand for a quick, perfunctory shake. His manner was vaguely embarrassed. I hadn’t seen him in over a year, but he had aged much more-he looked skinny to me, new, deeper lines carved into his boyish face, that sandy mop flecked with gray. His tie was red. So were the whites around his blue eyes.

  The muffled rumble of an aircraft taking off was like a roar so far off in the jungle, you couldn’t tell what beast it belonged to. Such sounds were fairly continual as we spoke, never loud enough to interfere with even the most soft-spoken segments of our conversation.

  Sitting next to me-with military craft taking the sky, just outside-was the President’s top legal adviser, chief political adviser, foreign affairs aide, most dogged protector, tireless campaign manager, and best friend. And they were all this one slight, not terribly experienced lawyer who wouldn’t be forty for several years.

  “Sorry about the cloak-and-dagger routine,” he said. He folded his arms. “I’m not, ah, officially in town. On my way to North Dakota to assure some Indians that their treatment by the federal government is a, uh, national disgrace.”

  “You expect this to be news to them?”

  “I expect to get a polite welcome and maybe a war bonnet to take home and impress my tribe.”

  “No Mayor Daley this trip?”

  He shook his head. “I made the, ah, political rounds not long ago, and talked to the local prosecutors and FBI. We have a Hoffa case coming up, you know.”

  “Really.”

  His smirk was humorless. “Would it surprise you that I don’t find Chicago a shining example of what America might hope to one day achieve?”

  “I’m about as surprised as those Indians.”

  He shook his head, sipped the coffee, made a face. I couldn’t tell whether that expression reflected the vending-machine coffee or my hometown.

  “On my prior trip here,” he said, “Daley arranged for a limo, courtesy of some Chicago captain of industry. I turned it down, had local FBI agents pick me up and give me a real tour, the kind the mayor, ah, wouldn’t have liked-slums, low-cost housing projects, a mental hospital where on a sunny day the inmates, and that’s what they were, ah, inmates, were inside staring at blank walls. A disgrace. And this from a Democratic administration.”

  “You sold me. I’ll vote straight-ticket Republican next time around.”

  That got a little smile out of him. He was easier to make laugh than Eben Boldt, but just barely.

  Then his smile turned sideways. He spoke softly, to imply both intimacy and confidentiality: “I could’ve used you lately, Nate, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ve seen this crap in the papers, about Bobby Baker and his call girls?”

  “Don’t tell me Jack has suddenly taken an interest in the fairer sex.”

  He smirked. “How about a German lass with connections to their Communist party?”

  The press boys had always kept hands-off where JFK’s sexual escapades were concerned, but in the wake of Great Britain’s headline-making Profumo Scandal, they might well have a change of heart. A German Mata Hari in bed with the President would make goddamn good copy.

  Plus, it was getting toward the end of JFK’s term, which encouraged a little good old-fashioned muckraking-outside the bedroom, the Kennedys were already considered fair game. Headlines in Chicago recently lambasted Bobby for going after Sam Giancana with tactics a federal judge had termed “Russian spy-type pursuit”; and nationally, stories embarrassingly revealed some of Bobby’s secret Cuban operations, specifically his anti-Castro guerrilla bases in Central America.

  “I hope she was a looker,” I said, referring to this German variation on Christine Keeler, knowing Bobby’s brother wasn’t always picky.

  “A ringer for Elizabeth Taylor.”

  “Hell, why not just go after Liz herself? Unless Marilyn has given him second thoughts.”

  Bobby didn’t get angry, which considering his hot temper said something; he didn’t even frown. His eyes were, if anything, sad suddenly.

  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.”