Max Collins - Ask Not

Everything had happened so recently — he hadn’t even announced his candidacy until August 22, and only resigned as attorney general at the beginning of the month.

His face tried to remember how to summon a big smile. “Remember what Steve McQueen said in The Magnificent Seven, Nate?”

“Don’t believe I do.”

“About the man who jumped into the cactus? ‘It, uh, seemed like a good idea at the time.’”

That gave me a chuckle. “And now you find you have no taste for jumping into cactuses.”

“Or caucuses.” He sighed, gave up a tiny shrug, then sipped at his bottle of Coke. “They say I’m a carpetbagger, and, uh, well, they have a point — I did move out of New York in the sixth grade. The party bosses in New York hate my guts, and the Jews think I’m anti-Semitic, like my old man.”

I raised a finger. “Don’t forget the far left. They think you’re a ruthless McCarthyite.”

He nodded glumly. “That’s why I don’t want to go after that nice old man, Keating, and have the press hang that ‘ruthless’ sign around my neck again.”

“Hell, they’ll do that anyway.” Outside, the murmur seemed to be building, a low dull throbbing with occasional accents of shouts or laughter. “Maybe you owe it to that crowd out there to give it the ol’ college try. Tell ’em Keating is a Commie or a dog-fucker or something.”

He’d been sipping the Coke and almost choked on that as he laughed. He set the bottle on the little table next to him, on an issue of Newsweek with his sullen picture on the cover. “You’re still a pisser, Nate.”

I was loosening him up. Good.

I shrugged. “So who cares, if they’re here for Jack? You’re the one who’s here, man. Don’t disappoint ’em.”

He was studying me carefully, his smile still there, but having melted some. “Okay, uh, so that’s your pep talk, Coach Rockne. But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

“No.” I met his eyes, those bluer-than-Jack’s blue-green eyes. “You know the subject we haven’t discussed, the few times we’ve talked lately.”

“... I do.”

“You also know that I’m probably one of the few people who’s not in government, the Mob, the John Birch Society, or some Cuban exile group who knows that a conspiracy took your brother’s life.”

He said nothing. He wasn’t looking at me now. He was staring past me, into the past maybe or God knew where.

I kept my voice even, and didn’t push. I let the words do that. “What went down last year in Chicago, Bob, just twenty days before your brother was killed, involved the same sorry cast as Dallas. I even met Oswald, briefly.”

His eyes flashed to life. “What?”

I nodded. “And guess who introduced him to me? Jack Ruby.”

Now the eyes tightened. “The hell you say. Where?”

“Where else? A strip club. Not in Dallas or New Orleans, but on South Wabash, in Chicago, a little less than a month before the tragedy.”

“What was discussed?”

“It had to do with that Hoffa matter I told you about, which isn’t pertinent. What is pertinent is that Ruby, and Oswald, who were chummy as hell by the way, knew who I was, in the greater scheme of things.”

“Don’t be coy, Nate.”

“This room is secure?”

“Your man says it is.”

“Then it’s secure.” I sipped Coca-Cola. Rolled its sweetness around in my mouth, swallowed, and said, “Ruby knew I was instrumental in putting Operation Mongoose in motion. Bragged me up to Oswald, who’d been rabble-rousing at the University of Illinois, Urbana, pretending to be a Commie.”

Bobby’s hands had been on the arms of the chair like a king at his throne. But now those hands tightened into bony, veiny things. The darkness of the room dropped shadows into the hollows of his face and the skull beneath the skin was apparent. Seconds ticked by as he sat there brooding as the words Operation Mongoose hung in the air between us.

“In large measure, Nate,” Bobby finally said, “that’s why I haven’t come forward. Why I have in my own, uh, measured way gone along with this Warren Commission travesty.”

That made me sit up. “Don’t tell me you knew who Oswald was, before the assassination?”

His silence spoke volumes.

“Jesus! You... you knew that Oswald was part of Mongoose?”

A man in his thirties should not have been capable of so world-weary a sigh. “Well, I knew that Oswald was one of ours. A CIA asset, an FBI asset. You don’t just defect and trot off to Mother Russia like Oswald did, then a year or so later traipse back into the country and get a warm welcome from the State Department.”

“Why would you know about a small fry like Oswald?”

“One of our Cuban assets brought me a photo of Oswald passing out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans. I’d asked this Cuban individual to keep me informed on any, uh, alarming exile activity.”

“What was so alarming about passing out leaflets?”

“Well, Oswald was also tight with Carlos Bringuier, an anti-Castro exile who had a strong grudge against Jack and me. We’d cracked down on Cuba raids, post — Bay of Pigs, you know. I did a little checking, learned that Oswald was a FBI asset.”

“What a surprise.”

“I assume he was also CIA or his Russian adventure wouldn’t have been possible. At any rate, in New Orleans he was obviously playing both sides — one day pro-Castro, the next day against. So I told my Cuban asset to, uh, steer this Oswald character a wide path — they wanted to kill him, just to see who would take his place! These Cubans are crazy, Nate.”

“No shit,” I said, working to make my brain not explode.

From day one, Bobby had known Oswald was no lone nut!

“Damnit, Bob, you were still AG! Why didn’t you unleash the Justice Department on your brother’s murder, while you were still in a position to control things? And don’t tell me you were depressed, I’m sure you were, but I’m only half Irish and, Jesus, I would have stormed the gates of hell for revenge, in your place.”

That was a little purple, but it made the point.

Bobby had to take a few breaths not to rage back at me; but that funk of his was keeping the legendary temper in check.

“Nate, the minute Jack was killed, my official power began to evaporate. Lyndon ignored me, wouldn’t take my goddamn calls, and Hoover? He invented new ways to fuck me over, daily.”

“That’s not hard to believe,” I said.

Bobby was gesturing to the murmuring window, saying, “Why do you think I’m putting up with this horseshit dog-and-pony show? First I have to get into the White House, and then I can really get this goddamn crime solved. And this Senate seat is the stepping-stone, even if it, uh, does make a goddamn carpetbagger out of me.”

“No other reasons for waiting, Bob?”

He frowned in irritation. “Well, of course there are. You and I both suspect that this conspiracy involves government elements. If that became common knowledge, at this juncture, it would tear the country apart! And then... well, uh, you know the rest.”

I did know. Jack and Bobby had sanctioned Operation Mongoose, marrying the CIA to the Mob to fight a secret war against Castro, largely depending on assassinating the man code-named “The Beard.” Were that known to the public, the Kennedy legacy would not just be tarnished, but destroyed.

And since Bobby was far more accountable for Mongoose than Jack, who had rubber-stamped it on his brother’s say-so, that made RFK — in a convoluted but inevitable manner — responsible for JFK’s assassination.

Bobby Kennedy had been paralyzed with grief, yes... but also with guilt.