"I don't care."
"You will when you play that tape."
They had a long row of booths to themselves. If it went bad, he could kill him and duck out the back door.
"You crossed the line, Pete. You knew the line was there, and you crossed it."
Pete shrugged. "We didn't hurt Jack, and Bobby's too smart to bring in the law. We can walk out of here and get back to business."
"And trust each other?"
"I don't see why not Jack's the only thing that ever got between us."
"Do you honestly think it's that simple?"
"I think you can make it that way."
Boyd unlatched the suitcase. Pete laid the machine on the table and hit Play.
His tape splice rolled. Pete turned the volume up to cover the jukebox.
Jack Kennedy said, "Kemper Boyd's probably the closest thing, but he makes me a tad uncomfortable."
Barb Jahelka said, "Who's Kemper Boyd?"
Jack: "He's a Justice Department lawyer."
Jack: "His one great regret is that he's not a Kennedy."
Jack: "He just went to Yale Law School, latched onto me, and--"
Boyd was shaking. Boyd was ungroomed working on unhinged.
Jack: "He threw over the woman he was engaged to to curry favor with me."
Jack: "He's living out some unsavory fantasy--"
Boyd hit the tape rig barefisted. The spools bent and cracked and shattered.
Pete let him beat his hands bloody.
84
(Meridian, 5/13/62)
T The plane fishtailed in and skidded to a halt Kemper braced himself against the seat in front of him.
His head throbbed. His hands throbbed. He hadn't slept in thirty-odd hours.
The co-pilot cut the engines and cranked the passenger door open. Sunshine and steamy air blasted in.
Kemper deplaned and walked to his car. His finger wraps seeped blood.
Pete talked him out of reprisals. Pete said Ward Littell built the shakedown from the ground up.
He drove to the motel. The road blurred behind thirty-odd hours of liquor and Dexedrine.
The lot was full. He double-parked beside Flash Elorde's Chevy.
The sun hit twice as hot as it should. Claire kept saying, "Dad, please."
He walked to his room. The door jerked open just as he touched it A man pulled him inside. A man kicked his legs out. A man threw him prone and cuffed him facedown on the floor.
A man said, "We found narcotics here."
A man said, "And illegal weapons."
A man said, "Lenny Sands killed himself in New York City last night He rented a cheap hotel room, slashed his wrists and wrote 'I am a homosexual' in blood on the wall above the bed. The sink and toilet were filled with burned-up tape fragments obviously taken off a bug installed in the Kennedy family's suite at the Carlyle Hotel."
Kemper thrashed. A man stepped on his face and held him still.
A man said, "Sands was spotted burglarizing the suite earlier in the day. The NYPD located a listening-post setup a few doors down. It was print-wiped and cleaned out, and obviously rented under a phony name, but the people running it left a large quantity of blank tape behind."
A man said, "You ran the shakedown."
A man said, "We've got your Cubans and that French guy Guery. They won't talk, but they're going down on weapons charges anyway."
A man said, "Enough."
The The Man: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Man: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
A man pulled him into a chair. A man uncuffed him and recuffed him to the post at the foot of the bed. The room was packed with Bobby's pet Feds--six or seven men in cheap summer suits.
The men walked out and shut the door behind them. Bobby sat on the edge of the bed.
"Goddamn you, Kemper. Goddamn you for what you tried to do to my brother."
Kemper coughed. His vision shimmied. He saw two beds and two Bobbys.
"I didn't do anything. I tried to break up the operation."
"I don't believe you. I don't believe that your outburst at Laura's apartment was anything but an admission of your guilt."
Kemper flinched. The cuffs gouged his wrists and drew blood.
"Believe what you like, you chaste little piece of dogshit. And tell your brother that nobody ever loved him more and got back less."
Bobby moved closer. "Your daughter Claire informed on you. She told me that you've been a CIA contract agent for over three years. She said the Agency specifically instructed you to disseminate anti-Castro propaganda to my brother. She said that Lenny Sands told her you were instrumental in suborning organized crime figures into participating in covert CIA activities. I've taken all this into consideration and concluded that some initial suspicions of mine were correct. I think Mr. Hoover sent you over to spy on my family, and I'm going to confront him on it the day my brother forces him to resign."
Kemper made fists. Dislocated bones splintered. Bobby got up inside spitting distance.
"I'm going to sever every Mafia-CIA tie. I'm going to prohibit organized crime participation in the Cuban project I'm going to expel you from the Justice Department and the CIA, I'm going to have you disbarred as a lawyer, and I'm going to prosecute you and your Franco-Cuban friends on weapons possession and narcotics possession charges."
Kemper wet his lips and spoke with a mouthful of spittle.
"If you fuck with my men or try to prosecute me, I'll go public. I'll spill everything I know about your filthy family. I'll smear the Kennedy name with enough verifiable filth to put a taint on it forever."
Bobby slapped him.
Kemper spat in his face.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 6/14/62. Verbatim FBI telephone call transcript: "TAPED AT THE DIRECTOR'S REQUEST"/"DIRECTOR'S EYES ONLY." Speaking: Director J. Edgar Hoover, Ward J. Littell.
WJL: Good morning, Sir.
JEH: Good morning. And you needn't ask me if I've heard, because I daresay I know more of the story than you do.
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: I hope Kemper has money saved. Disbarment can prove cost]y, and I doubt that a man of his tastes could live comfortably on an FBI pension.
WJL: I'm certain that Little Brother won't file criminal charges on him.
JEH: Of course he won't.
WJL: Kemper took the fall.
JEH: I will not comment on the attendant irony.
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: Have you spoken to him?
WJL: No, Sir.
JEH: I'd be curious to know what he's doing. The notion of Kemper C. Boyd without police agency sanction is quite startling.
WJL: I think Mr. Marcello will find him work.
JEH: Oh? As a Mafia back scratcher?
WJL: As a Cuban provocateur, Sir. Mr. Marcello has remained committed to the Cause.
JEH: Then he's a fool. Fidel Castro is here to stay. My sources tell me that the Dark King will most likely seek to normalize relations with him.
WJL: The Dark King is an appeaser, Sir.
JEH: Don't try to butter me, up. You may have undergone an apostasy regarding the brothers, but your political beliefs are still suspect.
WJL: Be that as it may, Sir, I'm still not giving up. I'm going to think of something else. I haven't given up on the King.
JEH: Bully for you. But please be advised that I do not wish to be informed of your plans.
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: Has Miss Jahelka resumed her normal life?
WJL: She's going to, Sir. At the moment she's on a Mexican vacation with a French-Canadian friend of ours.
JEH: I hope they don't procreate. They would produce morally deficient offspring.
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: Good day, Mr. Littell.
WJL: Good day, Sir.
DOCUMENT INSERTS: Consecutively dated FBI wiretap outtakes. Marked: "TOP SECRET! CONFIDENTIAL/DIRECTOR'S EYES ONLY" and and "NO DISCLOSURE TO OUTSIDE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT PERSONNEL "NO DISCLOSURE TO OUTSIDE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT PERSONNEL."
Chicago, 6/10/62. BL4-8869 (Celano's Tailor Shop) to AX8-9600 (home of John Rosselli John Rosselli) (THP File #902.6, Chicago Office). Speaking: John Rosse]ii, Sam "Mo," "Momo," "Mooney" Giancana (File #480.2). Conversation nine minutes in progress.
SG: So fucking Bobby found out on his own.
JR: Which frankly, did not surprise me.
SG: We were helping him out, Johnny. Sure, it was mostly cosmetic. But the basic fucking truth of the whole thing was that we were helping him and his brother out.
JR: We were good to them, Mo. We were nice. And they kept fucking us and fucking us and fucking us.
SG: Some sort of fucking shakedown pre-pre-pre--what's that word that means set up?
JR: Precipitated, Mo. That's the word you want.
SG: Right. Some cocksucking shakedown precipitated Bobby finding out. The word is Jimmy and Frenchman Pete were in on it. Somebody got careless, and Jewboy Lenny killed himself.
JR: You can't fault Jimmy and Pete for trying to fuck the Kennedys.
SG: No, you can't.