Max Collins - Target Lancer

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.”