The White Ghost

by James R Benn

  “Yeah, I read Stars and Stripes,” I said. “And you need an ex-Boston cop for exactly what?”

  “Jack has been involved in the death of a native scout. Apparently losing his boat wasn’t bad enough; now he’s got himself mixed up in a murder,” Joe said. “Father wants you to help him out.”

  “In the South Pacific?” I said, not quite believing what I was hearing.

  “Sure,” Kennedy said, reaching into his flight jacket for a thick manila envelope. “Here are your orders, signed by General George C. Marshall himself. Also there’s a file on what we know about the incident. The native was part of the Coastwatchers operation. You know, those Australians who stayed behind on Jap-occupied islands?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, not giving a hoot about Aussie Coastwatchers. “Why send me? The Boyles and the Kennedys aren’t exactly a mutual admiration society.”

  “You’re right, Boyle, we aren’t. That’s why Father chose you.”

  “For what exactly? I’m not navy. Don’t you have the shore patrol or something like that?”

  “Let me lay out some facts for you,” Kennedy said. “First, the shore patrol is only whoever the master-at-arms can lay his hands on. They get a baton and are sent ashore when swabbies get their leave to make sure they don’t burn down the town. They’re a joke, unless you’re a drunken sailor wising off to one of them. The Office of Naval Intelligence investigates crimes against US Navy personnel. But as I said, the victim here was a native. Jurisdiction is murky. The Solomons are a British protectorate, administered by the British and Australians in peacetime. Now it’s mostly Japs and Americans up and down the islands.”

  “And the Melanesians,” Kaz said.

  “Yeah, the natives,” Kennedy said. “So there’s no one really in charge when it’s a crime against one of them. The Melanesians.”

  “Is Jack actually a suspect?” I asked. I wouldn’t admit it to Joe, but my curiosity was getting the better of me.

  “At least one of the local brass contacted ONI asking for direction,” Kennedy said. “The navy doesn’t want to turn one of their own over to the Australians without sufficient evidence. And since we’re the only thing standing between Australia and a Japanese invasion, the Aussies are being careful not to ruffle any feathers. Father wants the record set straight now so there are no future repercussions.”

  “You don’t mean he wants the truth?” I said.

  “Jack’s not a killer,” Joe said. “Your job is to find out exactly what happened and put this behind him. We don’t know yet if the navy is going to court-martial Jack for losing his boat or make him their latest hero. Either way, he doesn’t need a murder charge hanging over his head. It would embarrass the family.”

  “You still haven’t said why you want Billy on the case,” Kaz said. “I assume you are primarily interested in him.”

  “Two reasons,” Kennedy said. “And you’re right. Boyle is the man we want on the case, with your assistance, of course, Baron.” He gave a polite smile, flashing pearly white teeth like a shark before he takes off your leg. “Father thinks that if you clear Jack of any potential charges, no one will question your judgment.”

  “Because of our mutual past,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Kennedy said, nodding as if to encourage a slow pupil. “You’d be more apt to convict him, based on family history.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Although as an investigator I do have an interest in what the evidence tells me.”

  “Sure, sure,” Kennedy said with a wave of his hand. “Look for all the evidence you want.”

  “I take it the other reason is the reverse of the one you stated,” Kaz said, drumming his fingers on his knee, his eyes narrowing as he took the measure of the man seated across from us.

  “How do you mean?” Kennedy said.

  “That if Billy finds evidence which implicates your brother, it can be written off as a grudge.”

  “Baron, how can you say that? I might take that as an insult,” Kennedy said, his smile still stretched across his gums as his eyes darkened. “Besides, that isn’t the other reason.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You owe us,” Kennedy said in a whisper, leaning over the desk, pushing aside Kilpatrick’s paperwork with his elbows.

  “For what?” I said, anger rising inside me. “I don’t owe your family a damn thing.”

  “Your father never told you, did he?” Kennedy leaned back, glee rising in his voice. “How do you think it all happened? Your sudden appointment to the War Plans Department right out of Officer’s Candidate School? While the other second louies went off to get shot to pieces as platoon leaders, you got a soft posting with Eisenhower. Someone had to make that happen Boyle. Someone with clout.”

  “The Ambassador,” Kaz said. He knew my story. How my dad and uncle hated the idea of me dying in another war to save the British Empire, as their eldest brother Frank had in the last war. How they cooked up a scheme to get me appointed to the staff of a distant relative—on my mother’s side—who worked in an obscure office in Washington D.C. And how shocked we all were when Uncle Ike got sent off to Europe as head of all US Army forces, and took me with him.

  “Yeah,” Kennedy said, his eyes locked onto mine. “Father was the one who pulled the strings. Even after he came home from London in 1940, he still had his contacts in government, still had favors owed. Your father and that lunatic uncle of yours approached him to get you appointed to General Eisenhower’s staff. You’re here because the Kennedys put you here, Boyle. It’s time for payback.” He clasped his hands behind his head, the same pose as I’d so confidently presented a few minutes ago. I didn’t feel quite so sure of myself anymore.

  “I can see that,” I said, marshaling my thoughts as I tried not to show my dismay at being in thrall to the Kennedy clan. “Your old man could pull a few strings back home. But how did he pull this off? Getting General Marshall to order me halfway around the world for your kid brother?”

  “It doesn’t hurt that the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence used to be Father’s naval attaché in London,” Joe said with a smirk. He liked to brag about family connections, even when it would be best to keep his mouth shut. I decided to push further.

  “Come on, Joe,” I said. “Even ONI couldn’t make all this happen so fast. Somebody other than your old man must be calling the shots.”

  “Wake up and smell the coffee, Boyle. There’s an election coming up in ’44. FDR wants a fourth term, and there are plenty of people who think he never should have had a third. His health isn’t so good, either, although he does a good job of hiding it.”

  “Is your old man going to challenge him?” I asked. There had been rumors of Joe Senior wanting a shot at the presidency.

  “No, that’s not in the cards,” Kennedy said. “The country’s not ready for a Catholic president. Not yet. But millions of Catholics vote. Father can deliver a lot of that vote, especially the Irish Catholics.”

  “Or not,” I said. “If he sits on his hands next year.”

  “Jack always said you were a dumb bastard, Boyle. I think my little brother got that wrong.”

  Chapter Three

  “An unpleasant man,” Kaz said as Joe Junior went off in search of chow and a bunk.

  “Not all Boston Irish are the happy-go-lucky types,” I said as I leafed through the orders he’d left with us. Joe Kennedy was a loudmouth lout, as far as I was concerned. But his big mouth told me a few things that were interesting. ONI was not to be trusted in this investigation, and Joe Senior was ready to do anything to clear Jack’s name, guilty or not.

  I didn’t much care for the news that the former ambassador was behind my appointment to General Eisenhower’s staff. I’d always known the Boyle tribe traded political favors, and a few markers had been called in to get me my posting. What worried me was what the Kennedys wanted in
return. I stopped reading the orders and gazed out the window, wondering what it had cost Dad or Uncle Dan to approach Joe Senior. Not in terms of the quid pro quo, but rather in their own self-respect.

  “What is the nature of your past acquaintance?” Kaz said, breaking the silence. “It sounds like it must be an interesting story.”

  “Yeah, and a long one. Two stories, actually, but I’ll have to fill you in later. These orders say we need to depart immediately. It’s going to be a long trip, Kaz.”

  “Made twelve hundred miles longer by the summons to Morocco,” Kaz said as we left the room. “All to listen to insufferable Kennedy demands.”

  “You must have been prepared, having met him in London,” I said, quickstepping it to the flight office.

  “I had a low opinion of his father, having heard his comments favoring the appeasement of Hitler. Lady Astor and her friends were in the same camp, but I must admit I paid little attention to the son of the American ambassador. My only recollection is that he seemed obsequious around the titled British and brusque with everyone else.”

  “That must have been a fun weekend,” I said.

  “The high point was hearing Lady Astor lament that Hitler looked too much like Charlie Chaplin to be taken seriously,” Kaz said. “Jakie and I then retired to play billiards and drink a bottle of Blandy’s Bual Madeira to recover our equilibrium.”

  We showed General Marshall’s orders to our corporal pal who gasped and called in Major Kilpatrick, who cursed and hustled us down the runway where he pulled a war correspondent and a colonel off a packed C-47 transport about to take off. Once again, a couple of lieutenants trumped the bigwigs, making no friends in the process. Not that it mattered. So far I hadn’t run into many of the senior brass who cared a fig about second lieutenants, so I made sure to return the favor.

  The C-47 held twenty-eight passengers. Mainly officers above the rank of captain with one remaining war correspondent and a congressman on a fact-finding junket. Those last two were seated directly across from us. They told us that the reporter we’d replaced was from the congressman’s hometown and the colonel was with Army Public Relations and carried the liquor supply in his pack. The congressman asked who the hell we were to rate special treatment, in a southern drawl that told me I couldn’t sell either Kaz or myself as coming from his district. So I told him it was top secret, which wasn’t far from the truth. Close enough for a politician, and it shut him right up.

  “What does the report tell us?” Kaz said as soon as the C-47 had gained altitude and the ride smoothed out. I took out the paperwork from the envelope and leafed through it. No letterhead, nothing to indicate who had written it up or to whom it was sent. Meaning Ambassador Kennedy had his sources. The file also held a thick sheaf of official navy documents, including a service record.

  “The deceased is Daniel Tamana,” I said. “From Guadalcanal. He was originally a native scout with a detachment of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Defense Force. Apparently those are natives who work with the Australian Coastwatchers and as scouts for the marines. He’d recently become a full-fledged Coastwatcher.”

  “How was he killed?” Kaz asked, leaning closer and adjusting his glasses as he read along.

  “Head bashed in,” I said. “He was found on a beach at Tulagi, near the naval hospital.”

  “Found by whom?”

  “Kennedy,” I whispered. It wasn’t an uncommon name, but I didn’t want to arouse the curiosity of the reporter or politician seated across from us.

  “Didn’t Joe say his feet were badly cut up from the coral?” Kaz said. “That might make it difficult to get around, not to mention kill a man.”

  “That’s something to check out,” I said. “All it says here is that he was being treated for fatigue, abrasions, and lacerations. No way to know how incapacitated he was.”

  “Who was it that reported the incident to ONI?” Kaz asked. I flipped through the carbon copies, wondering who had possession of the original.

  “It’s not entirely clear. Maybe Lieutenant Commander Thomas Garfield, commanding PT Boat Squadron Two,” I said, finally finding the name. “Or someone above him. Squadron Two is Jack Kennedy’s squadron. He’s the skipper of PT-109. Or was. Says here a Japanese destroyer rammed his boat and cut it clean in two.”

  “One wonders how young Jack got into that predicament,” Kaz said. “His brother mentioned the navy might court-martial him.”

  “It’s possible, I guess. But that would be bad publicity. If the navy operates anything like the army, some admiral will pin a medal on Jack and send him on a war bond tour. Did you ever run into him in England? I know he spent some time in London when the old man was there.”

  “No,” Kaz said. “I heard about him chasing women and being seen at the best nightclubs every evening, but we didn’t travel in the same circles. I was rather surprised when he wrote a book and it became a bestseller. I didn’t peg him as the intellectual type.”

  “He’s a Harvard boy,” I said. “He had to write a thesis. And when you’ve got his family connections, it’d be a snap to get it published. Did you read it?”

  “I skimmed parts,” Kaz said. “Intriguing title. Why England Slept. He argued that appeasement was the logical course to follow, since Great Britain was not well prepared for war. I had to admit there was some logic to that. At least he did not support appeasement for its own sake, as did his father.”

  “The rumor was dear old dad bought thousands of copies and stored them in the basement of their place on Cape Cod.”

  “The path to success is always easier for the rich,” Kaz said.

  Not always, I wanted to say, but bit my tongue. Kaz was rich, but had little success to show for it. He’d been a student at Oxford when the war broke out and Germany invaded Poland. His entire family had been murdered by the Nazis, not long after the Germans and the Russians carved up Poland between them. Kaz’s father had seen bad times coming, and was readying his family to leave the country. He’d transferred his bank accounts to Switzerland before hostilities, but was too late in getting himself and his family out. That left Kaz alone in the world, stranded in England with a small fortune to remind him of all he’d lost.

  “We have to be careful,” I said, leaning closer to Kaz and keeping my voice low. “If Jack is involved, his old man will come down hard on us. On me, to be precise.”

  “Do you think he still has the influence?” Kaz said.

  “He’s got deep pockets and connections everywhere,” I said. “What Joe said about the next election is true enough. It may be the old man’s last card, but he’ll play it for all it’s worth.”

  “Then I hope we find that the younger Kennedy is guilty of nothing more than bad seamanship,” Kaz said.

  “He’s been sailing small craft off Cape Cod since he was a kid. If he got into a jam out on the water, I’ll bet it wasn’t due to faulty seamanship,” I said. “If he’s innocent, our problem is going to be how to find out who killed Daniel Tamana. The Solomon Islands are not exactly my home turf.”

  “You have managed to work things out in England and Algeria,” Kaz said. “Therefore you must use the same techniques in the Solomon Islands.”

  “Think the luck of the Irish will hold on the other side of the world?”

  “Jack Kennedy’s Irish luck held,” Kaz said. “He’s a living example.”

  “If you call luck getting your PT boat sawed in half and losing two crewmen,” I said. “My dad had a saying about luck like that. If he’d been really lucky, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

  We were interrupted by turbulence, a gentle bumping as the C-47 flew into a cloud bank, grey mist enveloping the wings. The congressman across from me turned white and then went a pale shade of green, as I prayed for the ride to smooth out or for someone to bring him a bucket. The bumps turned to crashes as heavy winds slammed into t
he aircraft. Every loose item on board took on a life of its own, hitting the ceiling and sides of the fuselage as we tossed about. I felt the plane gain altitude and the turbulence calm as patches of blue sky showed outside the windows.

  Nervous laughter broke out among the passengers, and the congressman began to assume his regular shade of blustery pink. I leaned forward to pick up papers that had slipped from the thick file I’d been holding. It was Jack Kennedy’s service record, complete with a photograph of him in his dress blues, a newly minted naval lieutenant.

  “Hey, isn’t that Joe Kennedy’s son?” bellowed the congressman, squinting his eyes to study the photograph. “The younger kid, not the good-looking one.”

  “Joe who?” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the roar of the engines as I gathered up papers and stowed them in the heavy manila envelope.

  “Joseph P. Kennedy,” he said. “His kid wrote a book, and that’s him, I’d swear to it.”

  “I don’t read much,” I said, looking to Kaz to come to the rescue. He shrugged, seeming to enjoy my predicament. I tended to provide Kaz with a good deal of amusement.

  “Don’t tell me you never heard of Ambassador Kennedy,” the congressman said, poking the reporter in the ribs to get his attention. “He almost ran for president last time around. What are you doing with a picture of his kid? John, I think his name is.”

  “Did you read the book?” I asked.

  “Of course I did,” he said, in an indignant tone of voice that suggested he hadn’t cracked the spine yet. “The ambassador himself sent me a copy.” I wasn’t surprised. He probably sent every congressman in Washington a copy. Nothing like greasing the skids for the next generation. “What business do you have with the Kennedys?”

  “Listen,” I said, leaning forward and stifling a desire to smack this guy. “It’s—”

  “It is all part of a joint public relations effort,” Kaz said, his hand on my shoulder gently pulling me back into my seat. “We are developing a series of stories on where the children of famous politicians are serving. Of course Ambassador Kennedy’s sons are on the list. How about you sir? Do you have any sons in the service?”