Jack 1939 (8 page)

TWELVE.
CONTEMPT

“THE POOR FELLOW WAS PICKED UP
in the Hudson?” Roosevelt asked.

“Bobbing around in the shipping lanes,” Hoover replied. “We figure he was dumped off a boat.” He handed the President a black-and-white photograph of a white pectoral muscle. “The mark’s somewhat faded after several days in the water, but you can make out the swastika if you look hard.”

Roosevelt reached for the magnifying lens he kept with his stamp collection and held it to his eye. There it was—Hitler’s juggernaut. A cartwheeling Black Widow. “You think there’s a link to the hatcheck girl.”

Hoover shrugged. “We kept the swastika
out
of the press accounts of Katie O’Donohue’s murder. Which means this is not a copycat crime. It’s the same killer. Same military thrust to the heart. Question is, who’s the victim—and how does he fit into the Nazi cash network?”

“You haven’t identified him?”

“No papers. Clean as a whistle. Even his tailor’s marks were cut out of his clothes.”

“And the quality of those clothes?” Roosevelt asked.

“Good. Wool suit, long-staple cotton shirt. Handmade leather shoes.”

Roosevelt lowered his magnifying lens and studied the middle distance. “He’d been in the water several days.”

“That’s right.”

“Transatlantic liners sail on Fridays and Saturdays.”

“And the New York Harbor police found the corpse Monday. It was Wednesday before the coroner saw the swastika on the chest and figured something funny was going on. He called us. That’s why I’m just talking to you now, on Thursday.”

Jack’s boat would have docked in Southampton today, Roosevelt thought. What had he cabled Schwartz?
Please advise background . . . one alias White Spider, believed Nazi agent.
White Spider. What if the cartwheeling mark Hoover called a swastika was in fact a
spider
? Not just a mark of German loyalty—but one particular killer’s calling card?

The President steepled his fingers and tapped them lightly beneath his nose. Hoover was talking rapidly about something but he wasn’t listening anymore, he was following a thread in his mind. A body with a possible spider cut into its flesh had been found in the shipping lanes. And Jack had said the White Spider made contact on the
Queen Mary
. Hoover’s Nazi killer had almost certainly crossed the Atlantic on Jack’s ship. They had missed the point of the swastika mark—but the boy knew better. The boy worked fast.

Roosevelt was disinclined to tell Hoover anything about Jack.

“Embarkation lists,” he suggested vaguely. “Cross-checked against disembarkation lists, at the French and English ports.”

“Beg pardon, Mr. President?”

Roosevelt sighed. “There are two possibilities, Ed. Either this corpse floating in the Hudson is one of the Nazis’ bagmen, or he was an innocent who got in the way. If the latter, it’s possible someone was meeting him in London. A business associate. A lover. But he hasn’t arrived. Check the Missing Persons reports. Your corpse may be among them.”

“I’ll get on the horn to Southampton and Cherbourg.”

Roosevelt turned his wheelchair, an implicit dismissal. Sam Schwartz had slipped noiselessly into the room. He was staring at Hoover with open contempt.

“Oh, and Ed,” Roosevelt tossed over his shoulder, “Sam here has learned that there’s a Nazi agent whose nom de guerre is the White Spider. It’s possible that mark cut into the bodies isn’t a swastika at all, but something more personal. One that could identify the killer.

Comprehension filled Hoover’s face. “A spider.”

“You might run the idea by Scotland Yard.” Roosevelt paused for satiric effect. “If you can spare a minute from spying on my friends.”

THIRTEEN.
KICK

THE GIRL AT THE HEAD OF THE STAIRS
was trying on a picture hat that tied under her ear with an enormous bow. She was frowning in the pier glass that hung between two marble pillars, obviously unhappy with what she saw—and Jack’s greeting died on his lips. Even at nineteen, Kick would never be a beauty; she was too Kennedy for that, with a freckled face, a snub nose, and a square jaw. But she was shrewd and funny and her smile lit up a room; half of London was in love with her.

So why this desolate look?

She must have felt him watching, because she turned and caught him, awkward and alone, in the middle of the sweeping staircase. She shrieked and held out her hands.

“Hey, kid,” she crowed. “What’s the
sto
-
ory
?”

It was what she always said when he showed up out of the blue. Jack lifted her off her feet and swung her around. He could feel her thin frame through the silk of her dress. The London season had honed her curves.
Sharpened
her. He hadn’t seen Kick since last September and it was this tightening of her bones that reminded him of how much time had passed. There was something painful about it. A childhood they’d lost.

“Gosh, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” she murmured. “I’ve
missed
you, Jack.”

“You’re looking snazzy, Kick. Where’re you going?”

“Billy’s taking me to a dress party.” She glanced down the stairs, despair flooding her face again. “He’ll be here soon.”

He lifted her chin, stared into her eyes. “What’s the
sto-ory
, kid?”

“It’s just—
Billy
.”

“Hartington?” He didn’t really need to ask; there was only one Billy worth mentioning, in London.

“Marquis of,” Kick added gloomily. She pulled off her hat and tossed it on the bench beneath the mirror, then sank down beside it. “Mother
hates
him, Jack. She’s perfectly
polite
, but—”

Rose Kennedy’s politeness was frigid enough to freeze the balls off a greater man than Billy, Marquis of Hartington. Who was heir to the Duke of Devonshire and his vast fortune, one of the most powerful men in England. Billy was the catch of the season, the Protestant Prince every British mother wanted. And Rose treated him like a chimney sweep. If she could have barred the ambassador’s residence to Billy Hartington, that aristocratic despoiler of innocent Catholic girls, she’d have done it in a heartbeat. But Billy’s family was too politically important to snub. So Rose settled for freezing off the poor guy’s balls.

For the past year, the London papers had been full of Billy and Kick. They were caught in the glare of flashbulbs at race meetings and cricket matches and debutante balls and the wicked 400 Club, where Kick was forbidden to go.

“Mother’s in Egypt,” Jack said bracingly. “Who gives a damn what she thinks?”

“God, apparently. She’s got a direct line to the Almighty, and He says I’m in mortal sin if I so much as
kiss
Billy.”

“You already have.”

Kick’s dimples flashed. “How was Mayo?”

“Swell. Turned me inside out and found nothing.”

“You look good.
Thin
—but . . . you’re always thin.”

“I like your hat.” He tried it on. “Frames the face.”

“You think so?” she asked anxiously. “You think Billy will like it? I never wore half so many hats in the States. I’m not used to it. I’m not very
good
at it, Jack. There’s so much to learn, here. About dress—and . . .
parties
, and . . . the right way to act at weekends in the country. Sticking your shoes outside your bedroom door to be polished, like in a hotel. Tipping the servants. I’m always doing or saying the wrong thing.”

“Which is why they love you, Kick. You’re
real
.”

“I’d better get going.” She grabbed her hat off his head and took one last look in the mirror.

“Is Dad here?” Jack asked quickly.

“Still at the embassy. Never home, really—always off holding Chamberlain’s hand. Or some showgirl’s tush.”

There were no flies on Kick, Jack thought. She’d always known what their father was.

“You don’t like Chamberlain?” he asked.

“Billy hates him,” she said simply. “Thinks he’s a coward. Flying off to see Hitler, with an umbrella in his hand and a bowler on his head, like something out of
Mary Poppins
. Billy says the Germans will never be satisfied with just the Sudetenland and it’s only a matter of time before they roll into Prague and seize all of Czechoslovakia. And it’ll be Chamberlain who gave them
permission
. As if they needed it. Billy says there’s going to be war—”

Billy says. If Kick quoted Hartington every third sentence, no wonder Rose was worried.

“And Joe?” he asked.

“He’s in Spain.” She rolled her eyes in profound boredom. “He got all lofty and superior and called it a
Fact-Finding Mission
, but I think he’s just sightseeing
.
Daddy was
furious
when he got off the boat and found out Joe had beat it for Madrid. He thinks he’ll get shot or something. But I guess Joe was just fed up. Hanging around the 400 Club, getting tight, isn’t terribly interesting when there’s a fight going on somewhere.”

That was Kick—offering up the Spanish Civil War as a cure for yesterday’s hangover.

A bell sounded in the octagonal hallway below; an elderly butler moved in stately procession across the marble tiles. Number 14, Prince’s Gate, was a whale of a house, with six storeys, thirty-six rooms, an elevator, and a staff of twenty-four. J. P. Morgan had owned it years ago; but J. P. Kennedy had spent a quarter of a million dollars redecorating it. Jack wondered which bedroom was his. The housekeeper would know.

He’d never really had a room of his own growing up, just temporary beds in a series of enormous houses. All the Kennedy kids lived like that—shuttled between boarding schools and whichever place their parents went next. Only Hyannis Port felt like
home
. Life was a suitcase.

“That’ll be Billy,” Kick said breathlessly. “I have to go. If Daddy asks, I’m out with
Debo Mitford
. Got it?”

“Sure I’ve got it.” He looked at her quizzically. “You lie to Dad, too?”

“Where Billy’s concerned, I’m lying about everything.” Kick was taking the stairs two at a time, her voice trailing behind her. “Meet us at 400 around midnight. There’s bound to be a girl you’ll like.”

A girl he’d like.
When his whole heart ached for a woman run wild in Paris.

He could just see the top of Billy Hartington’s head below; the British prince was dark and tall and was sure to have perfect manners. Kick ran to him, and his arm came around her waist.

Jack stared down at them. He’d never seen his little sister in love before.

* * *

HIS ROOM WAS THE SAME AS LAST SUMMER,
a high-ceilinged space on the third floor with no closets and a couple of armoires, an en suite bath with pipes that banged terrifyingly, wide windows overlooking Hyde Park where society still rode on horseback each day.

Jack threw open his window and leaned out, the Portland cement of the sill snagging the sleeves of his wool jacket. He sniffed the brown coal smell of London. Lights were coming on, faint and sulfurous; and as his gaze drifted over Hyde Park, a sudden movement caught his eye.

A broad and compact figure in a camel’s hair coat, a fedora pulled low on his brow. Impossible to see the hair or face, but something about the set of his shoulders screamed
thug
.

Jack leaned farther out, his gaze intent. The man was strolling along Kensington Road, which separated Prince’s Gate terrace from Hyde Park. He stopped and looked up at number 14.

Their eyes met.

And Jack knew.

Willi Dobler was having him followed.

I would like nothing better than to ride up to London with you, in your father’s car,
Dobler had said as they parted on the Southampton dock,
but I do not wish to provoke an international incident. Imagine the headlines, Jack. “Ambassador’s Son Befriends Hitler’s Man in London . . .”

Dobler had walked Jack to the waiting embassy car, tipped his hat in farewell, and watched as the driver pulled away. Jack had been grinning to himself, alone in the backseat, convinced he’d called the German’s bluff.

But he was beginning to realize that was tough to do.

He drew back from the window. Anger tightened in his chest. He would not let them
watch
him, like an animal in the zoo. He turned and raced from the room, down the broad flights of stairs to the entrance hall, and slid back the bolts of the heavy oak door.

Prince’s Gate was almost empty at this hour, the early northern dark falling on pitched roofs. He turned east and pelted down the paving to the point where the street bent north, toward the park, and stopped short in Kensington Road. He craned in both directions for a glimpse of the Spider. Was that a camel’s hair coat among the multitude of grays?

He began to run, his gait wavering from six days in rough seas, the hard surface of the sidewalk reeling up to meet his feet, his arms pumping and his breath tearing in his lungs. Years of sprinting down football fields and indoor pools could not compensate for weeks of lying at Mayo. The threat of sickness caught at his throat. The camel’s hair coat was within yards now. Well-bred Englishmen spun out of his path. He thrust between two women and clapped his hand on the Spider.

The man whirled to face him.

Jack dropped into a boxer’s crouch, fists clenched and mind turning over his coach’s half-remembered lessons.
No gloves.
He’d break his hand on the Spider’s jaw—

But it was not the Spider.

Of course it was not the Spider.

A middle-aged Englishman, with a look of terror on his face. He raised a furled umbrella against the coming annihilation.

Jack eased up. “Sorry,” he gasped, his breath still ragged. “I thought you were somebody else.”

“
Bloody
Americans,” the women seethed behind him.

FOURTEEN.
SINNERS AND SAINTS

JACK FOUND HIS LITTLE BROTHERS,
Bobby and Teddy, established at one end of the long dining-room table while a woman he assumed was Teddy’s latest nanny sat nearby, correcting the boy’s use of fork and knife. Teddy had learned, in the past year, to hold the fork backward and shovel peas with the knife—Continental manners that would be punched out of him in boarding school back home, Jack thought. His little brother had just turned seven and was the baby of the family—sturdy and cheerful and prone to sliding down the banisters at Prince’s Gate. Bobby was six years older, taciturn and nervy and often alone—a touchy kid, who lashed out bitterly when he was hurt, which seemed to be most of the time. Bobby hated his London school and had made no friends. Jack would have liked to have helped him somehow, but he barely knew either of the boys. They were a different generation, growing up behind his back.

Teddy prattled to the nanny as he ate and Bobby stewed in silence, his fork swirling aimlessly around his plate.

“Hey, brats.” Jack tossed his hat down the table. It came to rest between the two of them. “How’s tricks?”

“Jack!” Teddy ran to him, all draggled socks and scabby knees in his gray flannel shorts. “Daddy
said
you were coming today. I was going to wait up.”

“Indeed you were not, Master Teddy,” the nanny said.

“I was, too! There’s
hours
before bed yet.”

Jack lifted him a few inches off the floor in a hug. Teddy was as solid as a truck; Jack’s back spasmed.

“You missed my birthday,” the boy said accusingly.

“I was stuck on a ship. In the middle of the ocean.”

“You could’ve sent a telegram. Birthday wishes. Did you bring me a present?”

“I thought we’d pick something out here. Your choice,” Jack improvised.

“Take me to the zoo tomorrow! There’s a baby elephant.”

“
You’re
a baby elephant,” Bobby said scornfully. He’d risen from the table when Jack walked in and stood by his chair, the perfect diplomat’s son. “Tomorrow’s Friday. We’ve got school, and Jack’ll be going to morning mass with Father.”

Mass.
Jack felt something tighten in his gut. He wasn’t a bad Catholic but he wasn’t an ardent one, either—he lived in the gray area of life too much to believe in the black-and-white world Rome and his mother painted. Sinners and Saints, when most of us were somewhere in between. The idea of Eternal Damnation was never something he’d been able to swallow. But Bobby was different—he
needed
belief, Jack thought. If there were no reward in Heaven, life would be just so much hell. There was a certain satisfaction, too, in all those rules, in telling everybody where they’d screwed up. Jack eyed Bobby’s perfectly combed dark hair, the thin face that was too pale, the bitten fingernails. Bobby would probably end up a priest.

“Where’s Jean?” he asked.

“School.” Bobby shrugged slightly, as though he hadn’t been missing his favorite sister. “Roehampton. The convent there. She’s with Pat and Eunice.
You
know.”

“And Rosie?”

Bobby frowned, and glanced swiftly at Teddy; but the little boy had gone back to sawing his beef happily again. “Some place where she’s learning to be a teacher. Monty-something.”

“Montessori?”

“That’s it. I haven’t seen her since Christmas.”

Rosie fell between Jack and Kick in the family pecking order. She was the prettiest of the Kennedy girls—but slow. Very slow. Jack had once punched a kid on the playground for calling Rosie a moron and he dreaded the nights when his mother insisted her brothers take her to their parties. Jack would dance with Rosie and pass her off to Joe just to shield her from some guy who’d try to get her out into a car and lift up her dress. They all tried to shield Rosie. But it was getting tough. Kick had written to Jack a few months ago, worried sick. Rosie had taken to slipping out of Prince’s Gate, and walking the streets of London at night, when everyone thought she was safe in bed. Probably why she’d been shipped off to this Montessori place.

“Have you eaten, sir?” the nanny asked.

“No,” he admitted. He eyed the boys’ congealing beef, the grayish peas flattened into gravy, the lumps of potato. English cooking at its finest. His bowel twisted suddenly and he grasped a chair, knuckles whitening. “I’m dining out this evening.”

* * *

THE 400 CLUB WAS IN A BASEMENT
in Leicester Square. Along with the Café de Paris, it catered to the wealthy twenty-somethings of London. It had a minuscule dance floor and an eighteen-piece orchestra. You could get food if you needed it, but there was no menu; you simply ordered what you wanted and somehow the kitchen delivered. Drinks were sold by the bottle, not the glass, and if you didn’t finish the bottle the barman corked it and kept it until you returned the next night, or the next.

The practice was useless with champagne, and so a great deal was ordered and drunk to the dregs in the 400 Club.

Jack wasn’t a member—admittance was by subscription only—but everyone he knew in London belonged, and he’d spent most of last summer in the club’s perpetual gloom. Bert the Doorman, as he was affectionately called, would never turn a Kennedy away; Kick and Joe and Jack haunted the place. The dancing didn’t stop until four o’clock in the morning, and if you were still there at dawn, they gave you breakfast.

Jack carelessly handed Bert a pound note and walked in. Tim Clayton’s band was playing swing and half the room was dancing the big apple, one of the wildest things to cross the Atlantic in the past few years. The big apple was something like the Lindy and something like the jitterbug, and it was worth watching in Harlem or in a juke joint down Carolina way. But here in London? Jack stopped in the doorway, his eyes roving over the gilded youth of Mayfair as it kicked up its heels in a wavering circle. Trumpets squealed and a redheaded girl fell into somebody’s lap.

His mother considered the big apple
vulgar
, probably because it looked like something cannibals danced before eating their supper. Kick was brilliant at it, drunk or sober; she could snap her fingers and shift her hips and smack her neighbor’s ass with the best of them, her mouth open wide in a shriek of laughter.

Convinced he’d find his sister out on the floor instead of tucked into a corner with Billy Hartington, Jack searched among the dancers—and there she was, crying “Bumpsa-daisy!” as the big apple gyrated to a close. She swung her tush into the backside of the guy next to her.

But the guy was neither Billy nor his brother Andrew nor his friend David Ormsby-Gore, all men Jack would trust with Kick’s life, but an iron-chested Aryan with massive shoulders and a suit that might have graced Al Capone. He was turning toward Kick, his arm coming up to steady her. He smiled at her glowing face and muttered something she seemed unable to hear. She was leaning toward him, attentive and earnest.

The White Spider. With his hand gripping Kick’s arm.

Jesus.
Jack shoved his way through the milling crowd, a tea-kettle whistle singing in his ears and the words
get away get away get away
pounding in his head, frantic and accelerating. Not a knife in an alley for the ambassador’s son but a sacrificial lamb, a girl diabolically chosen, a strike at the Kennedy heart.

This was true fear and he felt it, now: fear not for himself but for the only thing he really loved, Kick with her monkey’s smile. The Spider jerked her toward the door and she began to look uncertain, as though the script had changed. Then, as Jack watched, she raised her hand and slapped the man’s cheek.

The Spider reared back and Jack swore aloud but the music started again and his obscenities were drowned in a swirl of sax. He shoved a middle-aged man aside. The Spider wasn’t even aware of Jack; he was looking at Kick. Not with rage or violence, but overwhelming hunger. Because Kick had resisted? Because she’d slapped him?

The guy gets off on pain,
Jack thought
.
And drove his fist into the Spider’s gut.

The man’s breath left his body in a whoosh as Jack connected. But he barely registered the punch; he smashed a right like an anvil into Jack’s left cheekbone. Jack’s head snapped back and he reeled, off balance, then put his shoulder down and executed a perfect Harvard tackle, bowling the Spider back against the wall. It didn’t matter that he was a flyweight or that the man could snap his neck with his bare hands, because Jack was suddenly surrounded by Kick’s friends—Billy and Andrew and David and even Bert the Doorman, whose refrain of
Now then, Gents, now then,
rattled in Jack’s ears.

He righted himself, skull aching and wind tearing in his throat, his eyes fixed on the Spider. It was clear from the way the man stood that he could toss all of them in the air like cricket balls; but he was being careful now. He did not want more attention. What Jack knew and no one else could suspect was that the Spider was a German and a killer. He would not want to talk to the British police.

“Jack,”
Kick said worriedly. “Jack, you’re bleeding.”

He felt her butterfly fingers against his cheek.

“Somebody call the cops. Fast, you hear?”

“That’s a little close to the knuckle, isn’t it?” she murmured. “The guy didn’t hurt me. He’s just fresh, is all. And he could have you up for assault, kid.”

Bert and Billy and Andrew hustled the German across the tiny dance floor.

“Call the police!” Jack yelled furiously. He thrust himself in front of them, blocking the way. The Spider’s face was inches from his own. The scar bisecting his lip; the utter lack of expression in his flat blue eyes—

“Now, now, Mr. Kennedy,” Bert said soothingly, “None of our young people want to talk to the bobbies tonight. I’m sure you’ll agree, once you’ve had a breather.”

They pulled the man away. Kick’s hand was on his arm. “Jack—do you
know
that guy?”

He shook her off and pushed through the crowd, already dancing again, already singing the latest tune, and tumbled out into the street.
He had to catch
him.

But the Spider was gone.