Even though the question was rhetorical, someone tried to answer. Kennedy heard something about “your orders, sir.”
“Horse shit!” Then LBJ stood in the doorway. Two secret service agents flanked him. He motioned with one hand at the maintenance man. “I suggest you get out.”
The man didn’t have to be told twice. He scurried away, still carrying the doorknob. LBJ came inside alone, pushed the door closed, then grimaced as it popped back open. He grabbed a chair and set it in front of the door, then glared at Kennedy.
The glare was effective in that hang-dog face, despite LBJ’s attire. He wore a plaid silk pajama top stuffed into a pair of suitpants, finished with dress shoes and no socks. His hair—what remained of it—hadn’t been Brylcreemed down like usual, and stood up on the sides and the back.
“I get a phone call from some weasel underling of that Old Cocksucker, informing me that he’s dead, and you’re stealing from his tomb. I try to contact you, find out that you are indeed removing files from the Director’s office, and that you won’t take my calls. Now, I should’ve sent one of my boys over here, but I figured they’re still walking on tip-toe around you because you’re in fucking mourning, and this don’t require tip-toe. Especially since you got to be wondering about now what the hell you did to deserve all of this.”
“Deserve what?” Kennedy had expected LBJ’s anger, but he hadn’t expected it so soon. He also hadn’t expected it here, in his office, instead of in the Oval Office a day or so later.
“Well, there’s only two things that tie J. Edgar and your brother. The first is that someone was gunning for them and succeeded. The second is that they went after the mob on your bidding. There’s a lot of shit running around here that says your brother’s shooting was a mob hit, and I know personally that J. Edgar was doing his best to make it seem like that Oswald character acted alone. But now Edgar is dead and Jack is dead and the only tie they have is the way they kow-towed to your stupid prosecution of the men that got your brother elected.”
Kennedy felt lightheaded. He hadn’t even thought that the deaths of his brother and J. Edgar were connected. But LBJ had a point. Maybe there was a conspiracy to kill government officials. Maybe the mob was showing its power. He’d had warning.
Hell, he’d had suspicions. He hadn’t let himself look at any of the evidence in his brother’s assassination, not after he secured the body and prevented a disastrous autopsy in Texas. If those doctors at Parkland had done their job, they would’ve seen just how advanced Jack’s Addison’s disease was. The best kept secret of the Kennedy Administration—an administration full of secrets—was how close Jack was to incapacitation and death.
Kennedy clutched the file box. But LBJ knew that. He knew a lot of the secrets—had even promised to keep a few of them. And he wanted the files as badly as Kennedy did.
There had to be a lot in here on LBJ too. Not just the women, which was something he had in common with Jack, but other things, from his days in Congress.
“From what I heard,” Kennedy said, making certain his voice was calm even though he wasn’t, “all they know is someone shot Hoover. Did you get more details than that? Something that mentions organized crime in particular?”
“I’m sure it’ll come out,” LBJ said.
“You’re sure that saying such things would upset me,” Kennedy said. “You’re after the files.”
“Damn straight,” LBJ said. “I’m the head of this government. Those files are mine.”
“You’re the head of this government for another year. Next January, someone’ll take the oath of office and it might not be you. Do you really want to claim these in the name of the presidency? Because you might be handing them over to Goldwater come January.”
LBJ blanched.
Someone knocked on the door, and startled both men. Kennedy frowned. He couldn’t think of anyone who would have enough nerve to interrupt him when he was getting shouted at by LBJ. But someone had.
LBJ pulled the door open. Helen Gandy stood there.
“You boys can be heard in the hallway,” she said, sweeping in as if the leader of the free world wasn’t holding the door for her. “And it’s embarrassing. It was precisely this kind of thing the Director hoped to avoid.”
Then she nodded at LBJ. Kennedy watched her. The dragon lady. Jack, as usual, had been right with his jibes. Only the dragon lady would walk in here as if she were the most important person in the room.
“Mr. President,” she said, “these files are the Director’s personal business. He wanted me to take care of them, and get them out of the office, where they do not belong.”
“Personal files, Miss Gandy?” LBJ asked. “These are his secret files.”
“If they were secret, Mr. President, then you wouldn’t be here. Mr. Hoover kept his secrets.”
Mr. Hoover used his secrets, Kennedy thought, but didn’t say.
“These are just his confidential files,” Miss Gandy was saying. “Let me take care of them and they won’t be here to tempt anyone. That’s what the Director wanted.”
“These are government property,” LBJ said with a sly look at Kennedy. For the first time, Kennedy realized his Goldwater argument had gotten through. “They belong here. I do thank you for your time and concern, though, ma’am.”
Then he gave her a courtly little bow, put his hand on the small of her back, and propelled her out of the room.
Despite himself Kennedy was impressed. He’d never seen anyone handle the dragon lady that efficiently before.
LBJ grabbed one of the cabinets and slid it in front of the door he had just closed. Kennedy had forgotten how strong the man was. He had invited Kennedy down to his Texas ranch before the election, trying to find out what Kennedy was made of, and instead, Kennedy had realized just what LBJ was made of—strength, not bluster, brains and brawn.
He’d do well to remember that.
“All right,” LBJ said as he turned around. “Here’s what I’m gonna offer. You can have your family’s files. You can watch while we search for them and you can have everything. Just give me the rest.”
Kennedy raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t felt this alive since November. “No.”
“I can fire your ass in five minutes, put someone else in this fancy office, and then you can’t do a goddamn thing,” LBJ said. “I’m being kind.”
“There’s historical pre ce dent for a cabinet member barricading himself in his office after he got fired,” Kennedy said. “Seems to me it happened to a previous president named Johnson. While I’m barricaded in, I’ll just go through the files and find out everything I need to know.”
LBJ crossed his arms.
It was a stand-off and neither of them had a good play. They only had a guess as to what was in those files—not just theirs but all of the others as well. They did know that whatever was in those files had given Hoover enough power to last in the office for more than forty years.
The files had brought down presidents. They could bring down congressmen, supreme court justices, and maybe even the current president. In that way, Helen Gandy was right.
The best solution was to destroy everything.
Only Kennedy wouldn’t. Just like he knew LBJ wouldn’t. There was too much history here, too much knowledge.
And too much power.
“These are our files,” Kennedy said after a moment, although the word “our” galled him, “yours and mine. Right now we control them.”
LBJ nodded, almost imperceptibly. “What do you want?”
What did he want? To be left alone? To have his family left alone? At midnight, he might have said that. But now, his old self was reasserting itself. He felt like the man who had gone after the corrupt leaders of the Teamsters, not the man who had accidentally gotten his brother murdered.
Besides, there might be things in that file that could head off other problems in the future. Other murders. Other manipulations.
He needed a bullet-proof position. LBJ was
right: the Attorney General could be fired. But there was one position, constitutionally, that the President couldn’t touch.
“I want to be your Vice President,” Kennedy said. “And in 1972, when you can’t run again, I want your endorsement. I want you to back me for the nomination.”
LBJ swallowed hard. Color suffused his face and for a moment, Kennedy thought he was going to shout again.
But he didn’t.
Instead he said, “And what happens if we don’t win?”
“We move these to a location of our choosing. And we do it with trusted associates. We get this stuff out of here.”
LBJ glanced at the door. He was clearly thinking of what Helen Gandy had said, how it was better to be rid of all of this than it was to have it corrupting the office, endangering everyone.
But if LBJ and Kennedy controlled the entire cache, they also controlled their own files. LBJ could destroy his and Kennedy could preserve his family’s legacy.
If it weren’t for the fact that LBJ hated him almost as much as Kennedy hated LBJ, the decision would be easy.
“You’d trust me to a gentleman’s agreement?” LBJ asked, not disguising the sarcasm in his tone. He knew Kennedy thought he was too uncouth to ever be considered a gentleman.
“You know where your interests lie. Just like I do,” Kennedy said. “If we don’t let Miss Gandy have the files, then this is the only choice.”
LBJ sighed. “I hoped to be rid of the Kennedys by inauguration day.”
“And what if I planned to run against you?” Kennedy asked, even though he knew he wouldn’t. Already the party stalwarts had been approaching him about a 1964 presidential bid, and he had put them off. He had been too shaky, too emotionally fragile.
He didn’t feel fragile now.
LBJ didn’t answer that question. Instead, he said, “You can be an incautious asshole. Why should I trust you?”
“Because I saved Jack’s ass more times than you can count,” Kennedy said. “I’m saving yours too.”
“How do you figure?” LBJ asked.
“Your fear of those files brought you to me, Mr. President.” Kennedy put an emphasis on the title, which he usually avoided using around LBJ. “If I barricade myself in here, I’ll have the keys to the kingdom and no qualms about letting the information free when I go free. If you work with me, your secrets remain just secrets.”
“You’re a son of bitch, you know that?” LBJ asked.
Kennedy nodded. “The hell of it is you are too or you wouldn’t’ve brought up Jack’s death before we knew what really happened to Hoover. So let’s control the presidency for the next sixteen years. By then the information in these files will probably be worthless.”
LBJ stared at him. It took Kennedy a minute to realize that although he’d won the argument, he wouldn’t get an agreement from LBJ, not if Kennedy didn’t make the first move.
Kennedy held out his hand. “Deal?”
LBJ stared at Kennedy’s extended hand for a long moment before taking it in his own big clammy one.
“You goddamn son of a bitch,” LBJ said. “You’ve got a deal.”
It took Bryce only one phone call. The guy who ran the motorpool told him who checked out the sedan without asking why Bryce wanted to know. And Bryce, as he leaned in the cold telephone booth half a block from the first crime scene, instantly understood what had happened and why.
The agent who checked out the sedan was Walter Cain. He should’ve been on extended leave. Bryce had recommended it after he had told Cain that his ex-fiancée” had tried to commit suicide. On getting the news, Cain had just had that look, that blank, my-life-is-over look.
And it had scared Bryce. Scared him enough that he asked Cain be put on indefinite leave. How long ago had that been? Less than twelve hours.
More than enough time to get rid of the morals police—the one man who made all the rules at the FBI. The man who had no morals himself.
J. Edgar Hoover.
Bryce had spent the past week studying Cain’s file. Cain had had HooverWatch off and on throughout the past year. Cain knew the procedure, and he knew how to thwart it.
He’d killed five agents.
Because no one would listen to Bryce about that vacant look in Cain’s eye.
Bryce let himself out of the phone booth. He walked back to the coroner’s van. If he didn’t have back-up by now, he’d call for some all over again. They couldn’t leave him hanging on this. They had to let him know, if nothing else, what to do with the Director’s body.
But he needn’t’ve worried. When he got back to the alley, he saw five more sedans, all FBI issue. And as he stepped into the alley proper, the first person he saw was his boss, crouching over Hoover’s corpse.
“I thought I told you to secure the scene,” said the SAC for the District of New York, Eugene Hart. “In fact, I ordered you to do it.”
“The scene extends over six blocks. I’m just one guy,” Bryce said.
Hart walked over to him. He looked tired.
“I need to speak to you,” Bryce said. He walked Hart back to the two sedans, explained what he’d learned, and watched Hart’s face.
The man flinched, then, to Bryce’s surprise, put his hand on Bryce’s shoulder. “It’s good work.”
Bryce didn’t thank him. He was worried that Hart hadn’t asked any questions. “I’d heard Cain bitch more than once about Hoover setting the moral values for the office. And with what happened this week—”
“I know.” Hart squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll take care of it.”
Bryce turned so quickly that he made Hart lose his grip. “You’re going to cover it up.”
Hart closed his eyes.
“You weren’t hanging me out to dry. You were trying to figure out how to handle this. Son of a bitch. And you’re going to let Cain walk.”
“He won’t walk,” Hart said. “He’ll just . . . be guilty of something else.”
“You can’t cover this up. It’s too important. So soon after President Kennedy—”
“That’s precisely why we’re going to handle it,” Hart said. “We don’t want a panic.”
“And you don’t want anyone to know where Hoover and Tolson were found. What’re you going to say? That they died of natural causes in their beds? Their separate beds?”
“It’s not your concern,” Hart said. “You’ve done well for us. You’ll be rewarded.”
“If I keep my mouth shut.”
Hart sighed. He didn’t seem to have the energy to glare. “I don’t honestly care. I’m glad to have the old man gone. But I’m not in charge of this. We’ve got orders now, and everything’ll get taken care of at a much higher level than either you or me. You should be grateful for that.”
Bryce supposed he should be. It took the political pressure off him. It also took the personal pressure off.
But he couldn’t help feeling if someone had listened to him before, if someone had paid attention, then none of this would have happened.
No one cared that an FBI agent was going to marry a former prostitute. If the Bureau knew—and it did—then not even the KGB could use that as blackmail.
It was all about appearances. It would always be about appearances. Hoover had designed a damn booklet about appearances, and it hadn’t stopped him from getting shot in a back alley after a party he would never admit attending.
Hoover had been so worried about people using secrets against each other, he hadn’t even realized how his own secrets could be used against him.
Bryce looked at Hart. They were both tired. It had been a long night. And it would be an even longer few weeks for Hart. Bryce would get some don’t-tell promotion and he’d stay there for as long as he had to. He had to make sure that Cain got prosecuted for something, that he paid for five deaths.
Then Bryce would resign.
He didn’t need the Bureau, any more than he had needed Mary, his own pre-approved wife. Maybe he’d talk to O’Reilly, see if he could put in
a good word with the NYPD. At least the NYPD occasionally investigated cases.
If they happened in the right neighborhood.
To the right people.
Bryce shoved his hands in his pockets and walked back to his apartment. Hart didn’t try to stop him. They both knew Bryce’s work on this case was done. He wouldn’t even have to write a report.
In fact, he didn’t dare write a report, didn’t dare put any of this on paper where someone else might discover it. The wrong someone. Someone who didn’t care about handling and the proper information.
Someone who would use that information to his own benefit.
Like the Director had.
For more than forty-five years.
Bryce shook the thought off. It wasn’t his concern. He no longer had concerns. Except getting a good night’s sleep.
And somehow he knew that he wouldn’t get one of those for a long, long time.
The Erdmann Nexus
NANCY KRESS
Nancy Kress began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the midseven-ties, and she has since become a frequent contributor to Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Omni, SCI FICTION, and elsewhere. Her books include the novel version of her Hugo-and Nebula-awards-winning story, Beggars in Spain, and a sequel, Beggars and Choosers, as well as The Prince of Morning Bells, The Golden Grove, The White Pipes, An Alien Light, Brain Rose, Oaths & Miracles, Stinger, Maximum Light, Crossfire, Nothing Human, and the space opera trilogy Probability Moon, Probability Sun, and Probability Space. Her short work has been collected in Trinity and Other Stories, The Aliens of Earth, Beaker’s Dozen, and Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories. Her most recent books are the novels Crucible and Dogs; coming up is a new novel, Steal Across the Sky. In addition to the awards for “Beggars in Spain,” she has also won Nebula awards for her stories “Out of All Them Bright Stars” and “The Flowers of Aulit Prison.”
In the complex and powerful story that follows, she takes us to visit people waiting for death in an old folks’ home who discover unexpected new possibilities at the very edge of life.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Sixth Annual Page 87