Palace Council (16 page)

CHAPTER
25

A New Deal

“I
THOUGHT YOU WANTED NOTHING ELSE
to do with us,” said Bernard Stilwell, grinning like a ghostly skull in the midnight fog. “We're the big bad racists of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and you're the sole possessor of righteousness and truth. You can't allow your purity to be polluted by hanging around with the likes of us. Or did I miss the conciliatory part of your teary farewell?”

“Previously you were blackmailing me on the basis of your own false reports. Now I am coming to you, my government, for assistance. I fail to see the analogy.”

Stilwell laughed, the same wicked tormentor's chuckle that had so chilled Eddie on the occasion of their first meeting. They were strolling east along the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the water flat and cold and black in the still night. Gray mist drifted over the surface like fading memory. The Mall was deserted, for this was the season of neither busloads of protesting children nor hordes of chattering tourists. “As a citizen of this fine republic, you naturally have the right to petition your government for redress of grievances whenever it strikes your fancy. The thing is, Dorothy had the right to petition the Wizard, too. And, just like Dorothy, if you have nothing to trade, the Wizard will tell you to come back tomorrow.”

“I don't think that's the way the story went,” Eddie said after a moment. For the tiniest instant the April fog parted. The sky was a crisp, endless purple, the stars were bright and solid, as eternal as hope, and as untouchable. Then the moment passed. “The Wizard tried to cheat her. She kept her end of the deal. He broke it.”

“Glad to hear it. Now, let me tell you the facts of life.” The mist curled around their legs. They had veered off into the thin screen of trees. “Two years ago, the Director gave you the opportunity to be of service to your country, to file a report now and then, help us make sure that the leadership of your people is not being infiltrated by agitators and Communists. You never filed a single report. You hired yourself a fancy lawyer and got out of the deal. You didn't want to help. Fine. Now you come and you want to ask me a whole bunch of questions about your sister.” Stilwell was much the larger man, and carried his bulk with the sure authority of the licensed bully. A growing tension in his posture suggested that he was working himself into a froth, but his voice remained as low-key and casual as ever: the tone Eddie remembered from the morning the FBI man had choked him half to death on a Harlem side street. “You want to know if we're looking into her disappearance. You want to know if this photograph”—shaking the envelope—“is real or doctored. You want to know where she is.” He shook his head. “Come on, Eddie. Can you give me a single reason we should help you? When you won't help us?”

“All I want to know is whether my sister is alive.”

“That's very noble,” said Stilwell. They were through the trees and off in the broad parkland north of the Monument, heading toward the White House, where lights glistened smearily beyond the haze. “But, Eddie, we're grown-ups here. You understand the way this kind of thing—”

He stopped.

“The reason I'm asking might actually be relevant to the Director's concern, and, in that sense, I might be able to help after all,” Eddie began, having rehearsed this part already, but the agent waved him silent. He was looking back toward the shrouded trees.

“Did you bring a friend, Eddie?”

“A friend?” Eddie wheeled around, too, but could see nothing in the fog.

“To keep an eye on you just in case those wacky feds decided to get up to their usual mean old tricks. What we call a minder.” He had smoothly insinuated himself between Eddie and the tree line. His left hand was unbuttoning his overcoat. “Did you bring a minder, Eddie? Because somebody's been following us since the Memorial.”

“I wouldn't know where to get a minder even if I wanted one.” Eddie's eyes strained into the darkness. “I don't see anybody.”

“He's out there.”

“You're imagining things.”

“Maybe.”

“Why would anybody be following us?”

“You never know with the Reds. They can be pretty bold these days.”

Stilwell took a last look behind them, then shrugged, turned his back, and walked on. Eddie tagged uneasily along, wondering who might be back there, as perhaps he was meant to.

“So what's your offer?” the agent asked after a moment.

“I'm sorry?”

“You're an intelligent man. You didn't come here empty-handed.”

Eddie watched his own breath dance, then vanish. He was about to cross the line he had avoided two years ago. But abstract principle was one thing. Junie was another. “Suppose I were willing—on an occasional basis—to furnish the Bureau with reports, along the line of what the Director asked two years ago.”

The fog thickened suddenly, and the park became dreamlike, trees soft and dreary, the slick grass an invisible carpet beneath their feet. Eddie turned to look behind them, but Stilwell seemed at ease. “What kind of reports?”

“There's a group called the Twenty,” he began.

Stilwell shut him down much too fast. “Never heard of it.”

“Fine.” Eddie tapped the envelope. “Say, for instance, if I could find out more about this group the Director asked me about, Agony.” The agent waited. “A reporter told me that they might have been involved in what happened in Maxton.”

“We are not asking you to do anything.” The tone was virtuous. “You are a volunteer. You do understand the distinction?”

Taking the inquiry as rhetorical, Eddie said nothing. They cut back toward Fifteenth Street and, as the haze parted once more, wound up on the sidewalk between the granite intimidation of the Treasury Department and the swank yet homey Washington Hotel. Stilwell said, “Wait here,” and stepped toward a phone booth near a shuttered newsstand. Another man was inside, talking away. Eddie thought the agent would flash his credentials to make him move, but the other man just stepped out, handing Stilwell the receiver. He had been holding the line open. While Stilwell talked, the other man stood near Eddie. He was scrawny and tow-headed and could have been the agent who held Eddie's wrists in Harlem while Stilwell choked him.

“Chilly this morning,” said Eddie.

The other man only stared.

“Nice little coup in Venezuela last week. Was that your people? Or did you prefer the dictator they already had?”

Silence.

Stilwell was back. He spoke in a murmur, very low, very fast. “The Director sends his regards. He says he was very sorry to hear about your sister. We don't know where she is, but we will certainly do some digging.” The other man had climbed into the car, and Stilwell, about to follow, folded his hands atop the open door and leaned across. It occurred to Eddie that the agent was choosing his words with unusual care. “The Director says, if you want to look into Jewel Agony, on your own, it's up to you. If you turn anything up, give me a call. He also says you owe us now, and he is sure you will reciprocate when asked.”

Eddie stared. They had known, he realized. Somehow the Bureau had known from the start that he would be back. He remembered Gary Fatek's warning that Hoover's interest was really about something else; and how doggedly Junie had tried to get her brother out of the Bureau's clutches.

Then he saw the whole trick.

“Hoover was never interested in atomic secrets. That's not why you picked me up that first time. That was a smokescreen. It was never atomic secrets, and it was never the civil-rights leaders.” He tapped the photograph. “It was this. All along, it was this. All that talk about how Jewel Agony recruits only the well educated. The Director wasn't talking about me. He was talking about Junie. From the start. He knew she would be running off to join them, and he wanted me to spy on my own sister. My God. What kind of people are you?”

The agent, expressionless, continued to deliver instructions. “I'll expect monthly updates on your progress. You can reach me at the number you have, until you get close to them. Then we'll change the contact procedures. We'll keep an occasional eye on you, of course, but if you get into trouble we won't be charging in like the cavalry to pull you out. Like I said, you're a volunteer.”

“Are you even listening to me?”

Stilwell continued to lean on the car door. “I wouldn't go telling my family just yet, if I were you. The individual in the photograph may or may not be your sister. Your sister may or may not be alive. I would wait for confirmation before burdening my parents, my older sister, or my ten best friends.”

“Just tell me if the photograph is genuine.”

“The most important thing we need to know is membership,” said Stilwell. “Next along is funding. Every organization of any kind can be reduced to those two fundamentals. Membership and money.” He seemed to be reciting from the manual. “If you give us membership and money, we can do the rest.”

“Why would I even consider—”

“You came to us, Eddie. We didn't come to you. You are in no position to bargain.” He let this sink in. “Aside from that, let me warn you. Your sister may or may not be a part of Jewel Agony. I don't know. You don't know. The Director doesn't know. But whether she is or not, they are dangerous people. Don't let them charm you.”

“Dangerous to whom?”

The agent climbed into the car, not bothering to answer. The door clanged. The car drove off.

Eddie stood on the sidewalk, watching the taillights glimmer and vanish in the fog. Reading between the lines, he could put together the message. The Bureau did not know where Junie was. But Stilwell wanted him to know they were already looking. He pondered. The mysterious leader of Jewel Agony, the signer of their various missives, was known as Commander M. There was not a single “m” in “June Cranch Wesley,” but her favorite Shakespearean character, years ago on the Vineyard, had been Miranda from
The Tempest.

Yet it was impossible to imagine Junie as head of a violent terror gang.

Walking back to his hotel, he remembered what Stilwell had said about the tail, and often turned to look, until it occurred to him that he had no idea what to look for. Still, once or twice, in the enveloping mist, he thought he glimpsed a figure, slim and dark and furtive, moving with a tragic plodding determination, but whenever the figure drew close, the fog would close down again.

PART III

Washington/New York/Mount Vernon
1960–1965

CHAPTER
26

A New Frontier

(I)

E
DDIE STOOD
at the back of the overflowing Senate Caucus Room, watching Senator John Kennedy field questions from reporters with his usual adroit mix of sobriety and humor. He used a couple of Eddie's answers—including a subtle dig at one of his primary opponents, without naming any names—and another aide, grinning, poked Eddie's ribs after another clever sally minutes later and said, “That was mine.” One of Kennedy's endearing qualities was his ability, despite his patrician hauteur and the close-knit “Irish Mafia” surrounding him, to make even low-level staffers feel excited, and part of the team. You never felt you were Jack's friend, Eddie explained in a letter to his mother, but you felt you were needed. It was Saturday, January 2, 1960, and Kennedy was in the process of announcing officially his candidacy for President. Eddie, once his third novel was published in six weeks, would take a leave of absence from his writing and join the campaign full-time. Eddie would help write speeches and would also serve as liaison to the literary community, because the Kennedys were determined to line up endorsements from noted authors, to counter the charge, widely whispered in Washington, that the candidate was an intellectual lightweight. Eddie would have a pitiful salary, an inexperienced staff, and a fancy title. It had been in the papers. His Harlem buddies were impressed.

His mother wrote to say that his father was proud.

Aurelia and Gary Fatek, for their different reasons, thought him insane.

“Number one,” said Aurelia, when they met secretly for coffee in the Bronx, “you're just starting to make money. You're gaining readers. You need to keep that engine going.” She stifled his reply with a gentle kick in the shin. “And, number two, taking this job means you'll hardly be in Harlem any more. You'll be running around the country, sleeping with overenthusiastic coed volunteers.”

“As opposed to sitting in my apartment, not sleeping with you.”

“Well, I'm not sleeping with you, either, my dear, so if that's the measure of happiness, I'd say we're both suffering.”

“You don't look to me like you're suffering.”

“Good. Because I'm not.”

“I can't just sit around on Convent Avenue,” said Eddie after a moment. “The world is bigger than Harlem.” This was the advice Adam Clayton Powell had given him years ago. Eddie quoted it often. Probably Aurelia believed much the same. She had risen high in Harlem society, but had also moved beyond it. She had taken Mona's advice and was back in school, pursuing a doctorate in literature at Columbia. She had her house in the suburbs. From his lonely literary perch, Eddie continued to love her but, at the same time, felt he scarcely knew her. He realized that she was waiting for him to speak; and that he was staring at those lovely eyes. “Things are starting to change out there,” he said, a little desperately. His hand shot out at random, pointing, he hoped, southward. “The whole country's going to be different. Jim Crow is going down for the count, Aurie. And Kennedy—well, you have to meet the man. He's so young and energetic. He'll be the first President born in the twentieth century. Don't you want to be a part of that?”

No, said Aurelia. She really did not. She was just back from a trip to the Midwest, where she had seen Mona and visited old St. Louis haunts. “And I realized,” said Aurie, “that all I want to be a part of is raising my children, and finishing my degree. The world can take care of itself.”

Eddie didn't believe her.

“Did Kevin find what he was looking for?” he asked as he handed her into a taxi. “The testament?”

“Is that all you care about? I shouldn't have mentioned it.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, it's not all I care about.”

“I'm starting to worry about you, moping around,” said Aurelia through the lowered window. “Aren't you ever going to get married?”

Eddie smiled but said nothing. He kissed her coolly proffered cheek, watched the taillights fade.

“That's not up to me,” he said.

(II)

G
ARY TOOK HIM SAILING
on Long Island Sound. Apart from wading in the surf on Martha's Vineyard, Eddie had no real experience of the water. He had never sailed. He dressed in a blazer, expecting a party on a rich man's yacht. Instead, they went out in Gary's sloop. Eddie could not tell a jib from a broad reach. All he knew of sailing was what he had read in Jack London's essay about how the real sailor gets the salt in his bones and it never gets out again. That did not sound to Eddie like fun. But here he was riding low in the water, crashing over waves, and scampering around the deck following orders, ducking constantly as the boom swept past, and, once, not ducking fast enough.

“Your man doesn't stand a snowball's chance,” shouted Gary, who considered himself an oracle on politics because his great-great-uncle had been a mediocre President. “Nixon would mop the floor with him. But it won't get that far, and we both know it. Your man won't get the nomination. It'll be Johnson or Humphrey, maybe even Stevenson. This is a vanity campaign, Eddie. This is trying to win with Daddy's money. You know that joke your man likes to tell? The fake telegram from his father? ‘Don't buy a single vote more than necessary, I'm damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide'? It's true, Eddie. Without the money, your man is nothing.”

Eddie ducked again. Actually, he had helped write the joke, which played wonderfully well on the stump, but he had already learned that part of the role of political speechwriter was never admitting to having authored a single word that emerged from the candidate's mouth.

“He has a good chance,” said Eddie, who had looked at the numbers just days ago. The spray caught him face-on, and for a moment he spluttered while Gary laughed. “Among Democrats, he's tied nationwide with Stevenson—”

“Right. Your man is spending money hand over fist, and the best he can manage is a tie with a fellow who isn't even in the race. If you're looking for a job in Washington, Eddie, this isn't the way to get it. It's quicker to ask Aunt Erebeth. She adores you. I don't know why.”

Eddie was still coughing. As a child, he had nearly drowned on Martha's Vineyard, and had never entirely conquered his fear. “That's not what this is about.”

“Well, whatever it's about, it's a mistake. You're wasting your time.”

But it was not a mistake. Eddie liked Jack Kennedy, and despised Dick Nixon. Like most of the campaign's early supporters, he was enthusiastic about the changes a Kennedy candidacy would work. Yet that enthusiasm was not his principal reason for signing on. He was here because of Junie.

(III)

W
HEN FIRST APPROACHED
by Kennedy's people, Eddie had dithered—partly for Aurelia's reasons, and partly because he feared, as the whole darker nation did, being fooled again. Over and over they had fallen for charm and promises, first from one side of the aisle, then from the other. The fear in the Harlem salons was that this Kennedy would prove another in the long line of hucksters—fine talk, no action. The man the Negro leadership wanted was Humphrey, adored all through black America for his daring speech at the 1948 Democratic Convention, challenging the party to rise above the Southerners who dragged it down: “To those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late.” Kennedy was an unknown quantity.

Eddie consulted Langston Hughes, who had made clear to intimates that he would back nobody in the 1960 election. Hughes reminded him despairingly of how the Democratic-controlled Congress had never been able to pass an anti-lynching law, a priority of the civil-rights groups for decades now. Hughes's close friend Adam Clayton Powell had bolted the party in 1956 over the issue, supporting Eisenhower instead of Stevenson.

“Not that I expect the Republicans would be any better,” said Hughes.

“I like Kennedy,” Eddie insisted. “I think he could do big things.”

The great man's smile was indulgent. “I was young once, too.”

In early summer of 1959, still unsure, Eddie had attended a conference at the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport. The idea was to gather a few dozen potential supporters and advisers, explain the strategy should the campaign indeed materialize, and persuade them that Kennedy could actually win. Eddie saw a couple of people he knew. One was Lanning Frost, Margot's husband. The presence of the first-term Midwestern Congressman came as no surprise, because, from the little Eddie had heard, it was plain that Lanning was betting heavily on Kennedy. He was astonished, however, to find himself seated at the outdoor lunch directly across the long wooden picnic table from none other than Benjamin Mellor, the Harvard professor who had confessed to fathering Junie's child. Eddie could not stop staring. When the senior staffers went around making introductions, Eddie could only grit his teeth and offer the group a ghastly smile. Mellor ignored him. As the plans were laid out, conversation grew spirited, but Eddie said almost nothing. In fact, he said even less than Lanning Frost, who seemed to be on firm orders to speak as little as possible, lest he live up to his reputation as rather a dim bulb.

After lunch, Mellor vanished, caucusing with three or four other legal experts. The foreign-policy people went to one room, the economists to another. Bobby Kennedy, the unofficial campaign manager, took Eddie for a walk. They made a circuit around the vast lawn.

“Are you sure your heart is in this?”

“I'm sorry?”

“You seemed a little subdued.”

Eddie's jaw jutted out just a bit. “I have a lot on my mind.”

Bobby shook his head. “That's not good enough. Dad thinks the world of you, and you've been a great help to us so far. But we need people who are with us a hundred percent. A hundred and ten, Eddie. This is going to be a high-energy campaign. We can't have any distractions. Now, I don't know what the problem is between you and Ben Mellor, but we need you both. Don't give me that look. It was obvious to everybody in the room. We don't have time for any personal nonsense. You're grown-ups. Work it out.”

Eddie almost left. Probably he would have, but for a single thought: only by staying could he keep the ambitious professor from attaining whatever it was he hoped, through this service, to achieve. He did not know precisely how he would ruin Benjamin Mellor's chances without disclosing his sister's secrets, but he would figure something out.

And so he sat down with Mellor at one of the picnic tables and said he preferred to let bygones be bygones, and Mellor just stared at him and stared at him and finally said, “You don't have any idea what's going on, do you?”

Eddie had a nice stare of his own. “Why don't you enlighten me?”

“I'm talking about this whole business with your sister—”

Had they been anywhere but Hyannisport, Eddie would have grabbed a handful of Mellor's creamy oxford shirt. As it was, he smacked a hand on the table so hard that his palm would ache for days. “It's not a business. It's a baby.” The professor shut up. “Your baby,” Eddie added, keeping his voice down despite his fury. Still Mellor said nothing. He seemed to be waiting. Eddie paused, trying to work out what he should be reading in the wide, fearful eyes. He tossed out a guess: “You know where the baby is.”

Mellor drew himself up. “I most certainly do not.”

“Then it's Junie. You know where she is.”

“No.”

Another shot: “You've heard from her, though.”

A long silence. Then Mellor slipped a hand into his tweeds and drew out a handwritten note. “This was left in my mailbox at Langdell.”

Dear Professor M—

Thanks for everything. You're a good man.

—J

Eddie studied the single page, the handful of words in the script he knew so well, shaky, as if written in a vehicle, on plain white notebook filler paper. And his first, odd impulse was jealousy, that his sister, from wherever she was hiding, had written this man, and not her big brother. His second was a flood of relief at this hard evidence, the first since that photo of the battle in Maxton, that his sister was still alive. His third was confusion over why Junie would risk this delivery, by whatever means, to thank the man who had seduced, impregnated, and abandoned her. And his fourth was—

The Junie you thought you knew was not the only Junie.
Perry Mount.

“When did she leave this?” Eddie demanded, waving the paper around. “Did you see her?”

Mellor shook his head. “I haven't seen her, Mr. Wesley. I haven't spoken with her. She left the note three or four months ago. I came back from class, and there it was. And, no, Mr. Wesley, nobody noticed whoever dropped it off.”

Eddie looked away, across the sloping lawn down to the water. A year and a half ago, his sister was in Maxton. Before that, Nashville. This past spring, Cambridge. She relied on others, and broke cover at least once, to risk leaving a cryptic note. But not for her brother.

“Why are you showing this to me?” Eddie asked. He felt his anger dulling. “Why did you bring it here? Why didn't you burn it? Or give it to the FBI?”

“You're welcome to keep it,” said the professor, coldly.

“Me?”

“I don't want it. I can't have it on my person, obviously. Not with my…career plans.”

My career plans.
Eddie's bewilderment grew. The Justice Department. The federal bench. Eddie could imagine the world ten or twelve years on, if the professor realized his dreams: Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Mellor. “I still don't understand. All this trouble to get the note to me? It doesn't make sense. Given your career plans, as you call them—well, I still don't understand why you didn't burn it.”