It was far more than he’d intended to say. He stopped before he told the boy the unforgivable thing: that in his dreams at night, he walked tirelessly for miles down a thousand sidewalks, the campaign crowds awed to silence.
Jack was looking at him intently, his mobile features arrested. He was thinking about what Roosevelt had said; Roosevelt, knew, suddenly, that he understood it in his gut and in his blood, where his illness lived.
“Sir,” Jack said carefully. “You still haven’t told me why I’m here.”
Franklin leaned toward him. “Can you keep a secret, Jack Kennedy?”
TWO. THE SPIDER
THE WOMAN PERCHED ON the black stool was perfectly dressed for the Stork Club, even if she was parked in the cloakroom instead of onstage. Silk draped the generous curves of her body, her platinum hair was swept high in a shining pouf, and her lips were painted crimson. Her name was Katie O’Donohue and she was twenty-six years old. She earned five dollars a week checking coats, and lived in a fourth-floor walkup somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen.
Her teeth were sharp and white as a cat’s, the man thought as he watched her from the curtained doorway. Her tongue darted over her painted red lips as though a drop of cream lingered there. The man read greed and lust in that tongue, Katie’s chief weaknesses; he planned to capitalize on them tonight. He glanced at his watch, then back at the girl. Nearly two a.m., the end of her shift. It was time.
His gloved fingers tightened on the handle of the plain black satchel he held close to his coat. He stepped out of the shadows.
Her eyes widened as she saw him; her lips parted in a false smile. “You’re making a late night of it, Mr. Saunders. Are you alone, or meeting someone?”
It was the prearranged code phrase and she had it down pat; but instead of answering her with the correct phrase—Unfortunately I’m alone, Miss O’Donohue—he moved swiftly round the coat-check counter and swept her into his arms. The satchel dropped at his feet.
She stiffened beneath him, but when he kissed her roughly on the painted mouth something in her relaxed; Katie understood men and sex. That was her other weakness.
“Aren’t we all hot and bothered tonight,” she murmured, as he eased away from her.
“I am,” he agreed. “Let us go. There is a back entrance, yes?”
“There is a back entrance, yes,” she repeated, mocking his foreign accent. “What about your bag?”
He placed the satchel on the cloakroom’s bottom shelf; it was empty, but Katie didn’t need to know that. Her friend Jimmy Riordan had been picking the satchel’s lock for the past three weeks, thinking nobody would notice. Jimmy was swimming in fifty feet of East River tonight, with a stone tied where his balls used to be.
Katie shrugged herself into a smart red coat.
“Don’t button it,” he said. “I want to be able to feel you.”
Her false smile again; the catlike teeth. The orchestra surged from the dining room, a triumphal blast before the break—and he wanted the cover of noise. He’d have to move fast.
He grasped her arm and propelled her toward the rear door.
“Ow,” she said irritably. “Hold your horses, Loverboy. What I’ve got’ll keep.”
The door gave out into darkness, a single streetlight shining where the alley met 53rd. He turned his back on it and stared down at Katie.
She slipped her arms around his neck, pressing against him. “Where were we?”
“You’ve been stealing from me,” he said gently. “Haven’t you?”
She stepped back, fear tightening her pretty face. “Never! I swear it!”
“Jimmy Riordan says otherwise.”
“Jimmy Riordan’s a stinking liar.”
He pulled her close, his fingers firm on her ribs, feeling the silk dress slither over her delectable body. She was caught between his hands. He kissed her cat’s mouth open and drank in the rush of surprised air as she gasped; tasted her moan of almost-pleasure as his knife slid wetly between her ribs.
She stiffened an instant, then collapsed to the street. She was dying at his feet, a stricken look on her face. He knelt down and peeled back one sleeve of her coat, one strap of her dress, exposing the creamy flesh of her breast. With the tip of his knife, he carved a crouching spider just above the nipple.
THREE. HATCHECK GIRL
THE BOOK TITLES displayed in the plate-glass window looked like tough times and February. The Fashion in Shrouds, by Margery Allingham. Anthem by Ayn Rand. And the latest Simon Templar novel, Prelude for War.
Jack studied the haloed stick drawing on the cover. The Saint wandered the world alone. He used his brains as much as his body. His charm was devastating to women. Jack was feeling a little like Simon Templar this morning, although sainthood had never been one of his ambitions.
I need an independent thinker.
He wandered down the aisle of the bookstore—Charles Scribner’s Sons, his favorite haunt in New York, with its wood paneling and iron scrollwork over the soaring windows. His father had bought the Billy Whiskers stories here when Jack was about five years old. Rose said they were vulgar and should be given away, but Jack loved Billy Whiskers. Like him, the goat was always in trouble, and always butted his way out of it. He hid the books and read them alone, when he was sick.
Can you keep a secret, Jack Kennedy?
He had no intention of telling Dad about the midnight conference with FDR. He was hugging his knowledge to himself, well aware of the family betrayal implicit in his silence. He was serving the President and his country; Dad would be proud enough when it was all over. And if he wasn’t . . . Jack shrugged slightly, his eyes roving among the stacked titles. He’d spent most of his life begging forgiveness instead of asking permission.
* * *
“YOU KNOW THAT IN THIS COUNTRY we’ve got no spies, Jack,” Roosevelt had said in the silence of the Pullman, the circle of lamplight focused on the manila file in front of him. “We tried to get a network started once, after the last war when the whole Bolshevik thing blew up, but a horse’s ass of the Grand Old School declared that Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail, and as a result the spies were sent packing. We’re heading into a hurricane now with our ears plugged and our eyes closed.”
“That can’t be good, Mr. President.” Jack flushed; he sounded idiotic and young. But Roosevelt didn’t notice.
“You’re a sailor, Jack,” he said. “Ever sail into a hurricane with your ears plugged and your eyes closed?”
“I hope I never have to, sir. But I understand you’re a blue-water skipper to reckon with.”
“That’s something else we have in common, then.”
“There are some tricky shoals off Hyannis,” Jack admitted, “but they’re nothing compared to Campobello.”
Roosevelt lit a cheroot, his hands large-knuckled and veined in the flare of the lighter. “I suppose I’ve beaten the odds once or twice in my day.”
Jack tried not to stare at the wheelchair. “Are you asking me to read someone else’s mail while I’m in Europe?”
Had that been too blunt? Too lacking in finesse?
“I’m suggesting you take this trip of yours and keep your ears and eyes open.” Smoke spiraled from Roosevelt’s nostrils, veiling his face for an instant. “Talk to anyone who’ll agree to see you, in London and Paris and Munich and Prague. Chat up Stalin himself and Hitler into the bargain, if you can pencil yourself onto their dance cards.”
Jack nodded, but his brows pulled together slightly. “Forgive me, sir—but aren’t dance cards my father’s job?”
There was a silence, the heavy kind that falls over a chessboard when a player considers checkmate. There were a number of questions within Jack’s question, a number of possible answers. The notion of loyalty—and of dividing it—hovered over their heads. Then Roosevelt smiled. It was,
Jack thought, his characteristic smile—sharp enough to slit throats.
“Your father is tied down in London. You’re a free agent. And to be honest, Jack . . . I can’t trust the State department with this. It’s a different kind of job.”
And then the President lowered his voice and stabbed the desk in front of him with one long forefinger and took Jack into his confidence—right into his breast pocket.
“I’ve decided to run for a third term,” he said.
Jack frowned. “Is that legal?”
“Of course. It’s just never been done before.”
“Bucking history, aren’t you, sir?”
“—Because George Washington thought eight years should be enough for any man? He never met Hitler, Jack.”
The conversation was increasingly unreal, as though his tiredness and the stale underground air of the Pullman were lulling him to sleep. He blinked at Roosevelt and tried to argue, but the President forestalled him.
“I’m afraid for this country. Afraid of what will happen if an isolationist gets his hands on power. Somebody who’ll wash his hands of Europe and hope the Germans never come calling. Somebody who’ll hide his head in the sand until it’s bombed out beneath him.”
“An isolationist would be right up Hitler’s alley,” Jack agreed.
“That’s why he’s trying to buy one. To install in the White House.”
He stared at Roosevelt. “What do you mean?”
“The Germans are flooding Democratic precincts all over the country with cold, hard, cash.” Roosevelt smiled thinly. “Money that people need, money that Regular Joes can give their wives and children. Money to pay for coal and bread and a new pair of shoes. Provided they vote the way they’re told. Which will certainly not be for me.”
“How much money are we talking about?” Jack asked.
Roosevelt adjusted his spectacles, well aware that price tags never shocked a Kennedy.
“Ed Hoover puts it at about a hundred and fifty million.”
“Marks?”
“Dollars.”
Jack whistled thoughtfully. “He actually thinks he can buy an American election?”
The President’s fingers fluttered. The cheroot’s tip described a glowing arc. “You think it hasn’t been done before?”
After that, Jack gave up questioning the strangeness of the night, his own exhaustion, the intimacy of the hidden train car, or the fact that several floors above him, people tossed restlessly in the Waldorf’s beds. He was talking conspiracy with Franklin Roosevelt. He recognized some of the names the President dropped like cooling ash on his Pullman floor: Democratic labor leaders, union people, local bosses, state senators. Isolationists to a man. All ready enough to take a Nazi buck and kick the one guy willing to fight them out of power.
“We know Hermann Göring proposed the plan,” Roosevelt was saying. “We know Hitler approved it. What we don’t know is how a hundred and fifty million is getting into all these men’s pockets, in Ohio and Pennsylvania and the coal mines of West Virginia. That’s a hell of a lot of money, Jack, to send over from Germany in a diplomatic pouch. We have to find who’s running the network—and how.”
“When you say you can’t trust the State department—”
“I mean I can’t trust anybody right now. Particularly over at State. Cordell Hull’s an excellent man, but those cookie-pushers of his think it’s their job to swap stories at every cocktail party in Europe. Too many of my private conversations are finding their way into Hitler’s office.”
A traitor? In the State department?
Jack opened his mouth to ask another question, but Roosevelt’s face had suddenly set in stone. There was a warning there; a limit, apparently, to what he would tell Jack.
Was Dad one of the people the President couldn’t trust?
The thought wormed its way through Jack’s tired brain but he dismissed it irritably. Roosevelt would hardly be talking to him if he had no confidence in his father.
“I’ve been turning it over in my mind, Jack—this trip of yours,” the President was saying. “To the Nazis, you’re just the American ambassador’s son. But to me, you’re a perfect spy. My independent thinker. Arriving in London with a fresh outlook and an unclouded mind. As far as the Nazis are concerned, you’re clean as the driven snow. They know your dad and I don’t always agree. They’ll never expect you to be my man in Europe.”
His man in Europe.
Despite his doubts and the lateness of the hour, or perhaps because of those things, Jack’s breath caught in his throat. Clean as the driven snow. Like a boy on his First Communion day. Like the Innocent Lamb his mother had always wanted him to be.
“You’ll have access to everybody,” Roosevelt persisted. “Your father will see to that. You’ll have a diplomatic passport and a hired car. Your own brand of guts. Your charm and your smile and your trick of making everybody underestimate you. You’ll find the German network we’re looking for, Jack—I know you will.”
He didn’t add that Jack had a body nobody could count on. Or that he would probably be sick more often than he was healthy.
And because infirmity and physical weakness meant nothing to Franklin Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy would have died for the man then and there if he’d asked.
* * *
HE CONCLUDED HIS BUSINESS with the Scribner’s clerk.
“There’s a book coming out in a few months. Poland—Key to Europe, by Raymond Leslie Buell.”
“Yes, sir. Publication is scheduled for April.”
“Soon as you’ve got a copy,” he said, “I’d like one sent to a Mr. Sam Schwartz. I’ll write out the address. Do you have a card I could enclose?”
I thought you might enjoy reading this, Mr. President, he wrote in his cramped, barely legible hand. Perhaps we could discuss it after I’ve been to Danzig.
Sincerely yours,
Jack Kennedy
P.S.: Please thank Mr. Casey for the use of his comb.
* * *
HE BOUGHT A COPY OF Prelude for War as a going-away present for his dad. Joe liked a good thriller; it would help kill the boredom of another Atlantic crossing. Even if he refused to admit war was coming.
They met for dinner that night at the Stork Club. Dad was boarding the Queen Mary in the morning and he wasn’t happy about it. London was perpetually dark and chill in February and Rose was traveling through the Middle East. He’d wanted two more weeks of Palm Beach sun and Jack’s company for the crossing. But Roosevelt had changed all that.
“Franklin’s little joke,” J.P. said with his tight smile. “I could buy and sell the bastard a hundred times over, so he reminds me every once in a while who runs the country. This year, at least.”
Jack eyed his father, the way his chest swelled slightly as he boasted; he was such an innocuous-looking man, neat and trim from his wire-rimmed spectacles to his handmade shoes. Only something about his mouth, the way it twisted when he thought he’d been insulted—or maybe the coldness of those eyes he tried to mask with his round schoolboy glasses—suggested Joe Kennedy’s ruthlessness. As long as he could remember, Jack had ached for his father’s approval. And watched him toss it casually to his older brother instead.
There were some who called Joe Kennedy a crook to Jack’s face, and others who hinted his dad’s luck was too good to be true. But they never said it twice. Jack was a scrappy fighter. He didn’t care if he nursed a shiner for a week; there were still such things in the world as honor. He had a pretty good idea how Dad had made his millions. But that was between Joe Kennedy and the Law—and the Law had caved.
He was realizing, however, that there were limits to his father’s canniness, and they began and ended with Wall Street. How was it possible, Jack wondered, for Joe Kennedy—the Bronxville Shark, the Croesus of Hyannis Port—to believe all
those reporters inflating his ego in Palm Beach? Did he seriously think he had a shot at the presidency? He dined with the King of England now, and his wife bought her clothes in Paris—but the rest of the world would never forget he was the son of a mick who’d owned a saloon. Nobody would be voting for Joe Kennedy, Jack thought—because FDR was running for president again, and apparently not even Joe Kennedy knew it.
He fingered his private knowledge like a smooth and shining pebble, hefting its weight. He was the Bearer of Secrets. He knew things his father did not know.
“Everything go okay out at Mayo?”
Mayo.
Jack’s stomach turned over, the acid of his wine mixing unhappily with beef and potato.
“Mayo was swell,” he said, scraping his fork through a pool of gravy. Dad would have read George Taylor’s notes already. That’s what Joe Kennedy paid the world for—advance notice of disaster.
“Does it hurt?” his father asked abruptly. “—cutting those pills into your leg?”
Jack glanced up. “No,” he said.
“Think they help?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
His father reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. “Attaboy. Can’t keep a Kennedy down.”
They lingered a moment in the club’s foyer while the girl got their coats. J.P. was holding out a folded dollar and smiling at her in a way that made Jack uncomfortable. Foscarello’s face rose suddenly in his mind. Your old man’s swell. Out dancing with a hatcheck girl.
“Where’s our Katie, then?”
The girl’s dark eyes dropped to the counter. Her thin white hands rested there, trembling slightly, the nails painted blood red. “I couldn’t say, sir.”
His dad’s smile grew more fixed. “Out on the town with some young man?”
“If you’ll excuse me, sir—”
The girl disappeared behind the curtain.
Jack 1939 Page 3