Jack 1939 (5 page)

SIX.
THE MARK

WHEN JACK LEFT CAMBRIDGE,
he took Hopper’s advice. He spent the last thirty-six hours before he boarded the
Queen Mary
chasing Frances Ann Cannon.

She was a peach of a girl, and it wasn’t just her looks, which were fabulous and head-turning, or her money, which came from the Cannon family mills in North Carolina. Jack had always had money and he could whistle up good looks any night for a song. What he loved about Frances Ann was the way she talked, tilting her head to one side and letting the soft Southern words roll out like sheathed daggers. The things she said were intelligent and acute and detached and funny, and they enslaved him. When Frances Ann spoke, Jack listened, and he’d never really listened to any girl before, except his sister Kick, who was so much like himself it didn’t count.

Frances Ann staved off the curtain that hovered just beyond Jack’s sight, a kind of fog he thought of as Boredom or Death. He spent his days striding away from it, hands shoved in his pockets, jingling loose change. When Frances Ann tilted her head and opened her mouth the curtain lifted. He wanted her the way broken men wanted strong drink or sleep.

He flew to meet her in New Orleans and the two of them danced a conga line through Mardi Gras. She refused to go to bed with him; she was that kind of girl. Frances Ann understood something fundamental about Jack: It wasn’t sex he really wanted, it was the chase—and because she was no dummy, she kept the chase alive. She mocked him and toyed with him and then, desolate at the airport, waved frantically through the terminal window, a red sweep of lipstick smearing her cheek, unshed tears in her eyes.

He had asked her to marry him. And she’d refused.

It was partly, Jack guessed, because he was an Irish Catholic and she was a WASP. And it was partly because he was Joe Kennedy’s son. There was something not quite right about Joe Kennedy, in respectable American eyes; Frances Ann’s parents did not approve.

It was just possible, Jack knew, that in her heart of hearts, Frances Ann did not approve, either. Jack was good enough for a few laughs and a swell time—but not good enough to marry.

He was sick at heart and angry as he flew back to New York. And ready to show the world he was good enough for anyone.

* * *

HE WAS STANDING ALONE
in the rain now on the Promenade Deck
,
watching other people wave good-bye to figures on the pier. There were stevedores and there were umbrellas. There were excited women chattering idiotically, handbags suspended from gloved hands. Some of the well-wishers had come on board for a last drink, thousands of people, in fact, pushing past each other from First Class to Third, popping champagne corks and delivering baskets of fruit and flowers, getting drunk in the middle of the day because a friend was crossing to Europe.
Bon voyage.

Jack crossed his arms and leaned on the rail, shoulders hunched, no particular party to attend. There was a telegram in his pocket from Frances Ann, deliberately gay; she’d signed it
Good-bye darling I love you
, but the words were meaningless now. She’d be relieved to put the Atlantic between them.

He’d brought a fedora but he wasn’t wearing it. The rain settled in his hair, turning the careful pompadour to corkscrewed Irish. He debated the idea of the First Class lounge and a glass of Bourbon, which would wreak havoc with the ulcerated duodenum Taylor thought he had, but what the hell. The DOCA seemed to be working. He was able to keep some food down now and he thought he might have gained a pound or two. A shot of Bourbon wouldn’t hurt. He was lonely and the curtain that was either Boredom or Death was hovering just off the port side.

And then she materialized beside him: cool and porcelain-faced, knees bound in a pencil skirt. Her fur was high-collared and ended abruptly at the waist. Her hat swept like a dove’s wing over one cheek. It made her seem sly and seductive and unreachable as she stared thoughtfully at the pier. Where was her farewell party? Like Jack, she did not bother to wave. Like Jack, she crossed her arms and leaned on the rail, one shoulder grazing his. Her mouth was painted crimson. An unlit cigarette dangled from her lip.

He reached in his pocket. “Need a light?”

She bent toward the flame. As the cigarette caught, her chin lifted and she stared over his head, exhaling through the perfectly stained mouth. He could see that her hair was jet black and chin length, with a heavy fringe on the forehead; her black eyes had not the slightest bit of expression in them.
French
, he thought. His pulse quickened and the lit match burned his fingertips. He tossed it over the rail.

Only then did her gaze drift for an instant to his face.

“I’m Jack,” he said, offering his hand.

He thought perhaps her lips quirked. Then she moved past him without a word, her hips swinging in the pencil skirt.

His head craned sideways to follow her.

* * *

THE MAN WHO HAD STUCK
a knife into Katie O’Donohue’s heart was several decks below, eyeing the people who jostled one another in Tourist Class. A glass of rye whiskey had been pressed into his hand by a whirling party girl already three sheets to the wind, and he’d accepted it gratefully as a God-given prop that suggested he had a reason to be there. He was almost out of time.

His gaze moved indifferently over the passing women. They had nothing he needed. He was searching for a man: one who looked like himself, one who was
not
going ashore when the shore whistle blew. He knew to the second when that whistle would sound, and what he must do under cover of its noise. But first he needed the mark.

“Hey, handsome,” a girl crooned at his elbow. She rocked against him as though overbalanced by the motion of the boat. A redhead. She smelled unpleasantly of cigarettes and whiskey. “There’s a swell party going on in D-13. That’s my friend Darlene’s cabin. It’s got the sweetest little bunk imaginable.”

“Excuse me.” He could utter those two words without the slightest trace of accent. He disengaged his arm and edged past the girl. The drunken throng closed around him.

The first shore whistle blew.

Panic rose in his throat. He
must find
somebody. Five foot ten, blond, and hovering on the edge of thirty—

He raced through the crowd to the Tourist gangway, searching for one man who could be his savior.

And there, unbelievably, he was: a mild-faced fellow gripping a briefcase, with a good felt hat pushed back on his head, a wool scarf tucked into the collar of his somewhat shabby camel’s hair coat.

The man with the knife surged forward, a smile of welcome on his face. Smiling made the scar on his upper lip sting.

“Here you are at last!” he cried. “I’d given up, my friend! Where is your berth? Allow me to help you. I
insist.
”

He seized the bewildered traveler’s bag. The man led him, protesting but polite, to his cabin. It was easy to thrust open the door, drop the bag inside, and shut the chaos behind them.

“I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” his mark said, but he wasn’t listening. He clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder and muttered a few banal words. He had only seconds before the last shore whistle blew.

When the blast came, he slid his knife quickly between the fellow’s ribs. A gasp of disbelief, a hand clutching at his sleeve—the eyes rolled backward. The face blanched. There was very little blood; he knew how to stop a heart.

Later, when it was dark, he would slip the body over the side. But first he needed the man’s papers.

He pulled his knife from the body and wiped it clean. Then he turned back the lapels of the worn suit jacket, and slipped his hand into the breast pocket. The American passport was there, along with a wallet. He leafed through its contents. He had dollars and pounds. His name was now Charles Atwater. He was thirty-four years old and had a surprisingly pretty wife. His cabin was Tourist Class. Number D-15, next to . . . Darlene, wasn’t it? With the sweetest little bunk imaginable?

He repeated the phrase; he liked to work on his English.

He felt a sharp need to touch the dead man’s skin—to feel the muscle and bone beneath the starched white shirt. His fingers were trembling with sudden, overwhelming desire, and despite the sound of voices in the passage beyond the closed cabin door, despite the steward’s knock and the shouted warning of
All ashore that’s going ashore
, he slit the fabric roughly with the tip of his knife.

A pale white pectoral gleamed in the cabin light. With five deft strokes, he cut a crouching spider into the skin.

There were those in New York some days later who would insist that the mark was a swastika.

* * *

THE WHISTLE BLAST TORE
like a shock wave through Jack’s thin body as he leaned on the Promenade Deck’s rail. The unwanted visitors were flying across the gangways, and the ship would soon be his own for six days. The unknown French woman—the unknown French woman had nothing to do with New York; she would certainly stay on board, and be traveling First Class.

He lifted his head into the rain as the tugs did their duty. The piers began to slide away. The grime of New York slipped to the stern. He breathed in the dusk’s wetness.

Forget Death and Boredom and Frances Ann Cannon.

He was alone on the Atlantic. He was sailing to Europe with a beautiful girl. He had a president’s secrets to keep.

He tossed his fedora over the rail and watched it vanish in the waves.

SEVEN.
FELLOW TRAVELERS

IT WAS A STEWARD NAMED
Robbie who told Jack the woman was anything but French, as he unpacked his luggage that evening.

The two of them became acquainted over a battered trunk and a five-dollar bill. Robbie had met J. P. Kennedy two weeks before on the same ship, and for the ambassador’s son he ran through the passenger list as he moved about the cabin.

“Lord and Lady Kemsley—he’s our British press baron, owns everything what old Beaverbrook didn’t snap up first. Then there’s Mrs. Sloan Colt and her daughter, Catherine—a very
nice
young lady, no more than eighteen, and quite under her mother’s thumb.”

Jack had met Cathy Colt at a deb ball or two—old New York railroad money. She was a shy girl with ballerina arms, prone to blushing; not his type.

“You might want to steer clear of Mrs. George Minart,” Robbie persisted. “
And
her daughter. They’ve been hunting you the better part of a week, Mr. Jack—calling the Cunard offices to be sure you were on the passenger list, offering
insulting
sums to every steward in First Class so’s to get a deck chair either side of you. Fortune hunting, the old bitch is.”

“June Minart,” Jack mused. She was in her last term at Radcliffe. “Who’s The Looker, Robbie? Tall, black-haired, drop-dead gorgeous. Sable coat and a Robin Hood hat. Don’t tell me she slipped off the boat before we put to sea.”

Robbie closed his eyes, a priest in pain. “You
would
, Mr. Jack. You
would
.”

Jack grinned. “Is she that bad? What’s her name?”

“Diana Playfair. A mannequin, as I heard, or maybe an actress.
Or
something worse,” the steward added darkly. “Not quite respectable, if you take my meaning, until the Honorable Denys Playfair went and married her.”

“Ah. Didn’t see the husband.”

Robbie shook his head. “The Honorable Denys isn’t aboard. Some say they’re
estranged
.”

“You lift my heart, Robbie, you really do.” Jack held out a twenty-dollar bill. “Get me a deck chair near her. Please.”

Robbie palmed the money with a dubious air. “Awfully cold in the North Atlantic, in Febr’y. Can’t tell as there might not be
ice
. Captain says as how it’s goin’ ter be a filthy run. Storms, he says, off the coast of Greenland.”

Jack offered him another twenty. “I’ve got to work on my tan, Robbie.”

The steward sighed. “I’ll do my best, sir. She’s a looker, all right, our Diana. Though there’s some,” he added as an afterthought, “as don’t hold with her politics.”

“Why?”

“She’s one of them
Fascists
,” the steward said.

* * *

DIANA PLAYFAIR WAS NOT
to be found among the paneled columns and deep armchairs of the First Class lounge, and she scorned the Captain’s table that evening, where her seat was reserved among the select. This was a measure of her importance to the Cunard Line—Jack, as the British ambassador’s son, had a place at the table along with Lord and Lady Kemsley. Mrs. Sloan Colt and her blushing daughter were there, too—Catherine seated conveniently next to Jack—but June Minart and her mother remained in exile. Presumably Mrs. Minart had failed to bribe the
Queen Mary
’s captain.

Jack tried to talk to Cathy Colt while keeping one eye on the empty chair reserved for Diana Playfair. Maybe she was just chronically late. Dramatic entrances would suit her.

“I hear you’re going to Sarah Lawrence in the fall,” he said to the ballerina arms.

“Yes. I am.”

“That should be swell. A girl I know had a great time at Sarah Lawrence. Frances Ann Cannon. You know Frances Ann?”

“No. I don’t.”

“My sister Kathleen is thinking about Sarah Lawrence. Ever met Kick? That’s what we call my sister—Kick.”

“No. I haven’t.”

Jack got the distinct impression that Catherine Colt found him as repulsive as a slug. She’d edged her chair away, and kept her eyes firmly on her plate. In different circumstances the girl’s undisguised dislike might have piqued his interest—but not tonight. He had other game to hunt. He was hoping for what Robbie called Something Worse. He craned his head around the vast dining room, but Something Worse was not to be found.

When Catherine scurried off before dessert, pleading a headache, the man to her left—a German in his thirties—caught Jack’s eye.

“You won’t see the Fair Diana tonight,” he said. “Seasickness. She’s a martyr to it. Probably lying in her cabin with a compress on her head and her maid at her feet.”

The Fair Diana. It was a deliberate play on her last name, one the German probably hadn’t invented; but his English was good enough to halt Jack’s darting mind.

“You know the lady,” he said.

“Very well indeed.”

There’s some as don’t hold with her politics. She’s one of them Fascists.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.” Jack held out his hand.

“Willi Dobler.” The German was dark and anything but Teutonic; a poor representative of the Aryan ideal. His clothes, however, had obviously been tailored in London; and he held his cigarette like a work of art. “You’re the second son.
Jack
Kennedy.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Again, the faint smile that failed to reach Dobler’s eyes. “We met at an embassy party last summer, but you wouldn’t remember. I am with the German delegation in London, and your father . . . is so good as to meet with us, from time to time. I am also a little acquainted with your brother Joe.”

Of course, Joe. He was done with Harvard, footloose and fancy-free, and he’d been working as Father’s secretary in London for the past few months.

“He is . . . an uncomplicated young man, yes?”

Jack glanced at Dobler. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

The diplomat shrugged. “The quintessential American. That is to say . . . not very complex in his observations or ideas. A black-and-white thinker, in fact.”

“Joe would think
quintessential American
is a compliment.” A waiter set a cup of coffee before him; Jack reached for a spoon. “But that’s not how you intended it, is it?”

The hand holding the cigarette waved dismissively; a faint trail of smoke arabesqued in the candlelight. “You must forgive my appalling habit of summing up every dazzling star I meet. It’s a habit acquired on the job.”

“Which is?”

“Third political secretary.”

Jack took a sip of coffee, bitter and dark. He unwrapped a cube of sugar and watched it float for an instant on the surface before sinking endwise, like the
Titanic
. Dobler was a diplomat; he’d just been to the United States. What if he’d carried a trunkful of deutschmarks with him?—And distributed them quietly in exchange for the right votes?

“I suppose you’re a member of the Nazi Party,” he said.

Dobler inclined his head. “It would be difficult—or should I say impossible?—to be anything else at the moment.”

“If you want to work for the government. There must be other things you could do.”

“But I quite like government work!” Dobler protested. “I was bred to it; my father was a diplomat before me. I joined the Party, yes. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything they say.”

“No,” Jack mused. “You just have to push the Aryan Ideal. Look earnest and apologetic when somebody mentions the nasty Jew-bashing that’s going on back home. And say ‘Hiya Hitler’ whenever you walk through your boss’s door. That seems a fair trade for a few years in London.”

“Have you been to Germany?” Dobler inhaled deeply, and allowed a thin trail of smoke to drift from his nostrils.

“Yes,” Jack said drily. “Two summers ago. Before you gentlemen wandered into other people’s backyards and claimed them for the Fatherland. I’ll admit that your economy’s thriving—jackboot production is way up—but I found the average Fritz less than welcoming. Apparently you regard the Irish as a mongrel race. I took it a little personally.”

Dobler’s lips compressed. “You have no idea how I regard much of anything, Herr Kennedy,” he said. “I haven’t told you.”

There was a brief silence; Jack’s eyes dropped to his cup. “Fair enough.”

“It’s not easy being German right now.” Dobler stubbed out his Dunhill with precise and elegant fingers. “One is forced to choose one’s battles. To live in the gray area of life. Unlike, for example, your brother.”

“Joe again.” Jack eased back in his chair. “My brother certainly seems to have seized your fancy.”

He was deliberately insulting, as though to suggest that Dobler would like to bugger a big, healthy American boy now and then. He waited for the German to react.

The long fingers ground the cigarette to dust. “Your brother is universally admired in London—he treats the exclusive clubs as his playground, and the daughters of the best families as his private stable—but so far as quality of
mind
is concerned . . . I understand that you, Jack, are a very different sort of person from Joe.”

This snare was allowed to drop neatly on the table between them.

Dobler dusted tobacco from his fingertips.

Jack turned the saucer of his coffee cup. It bought an instant of time.

He could stand up now, throw down his napkin, and avoid the German for the rest of the crossing. He could hotly declare that he was Joe Jr.’s twin, thank you very much, and thought and acted as he did in everything. Christ knew he’d spent enough time pretending as much.

But he could not expose his brother, or the multitude of things that divided them—had always divided them. He could not talk about the punches he’d taken in the gut, the blame he’d shouldered, the scalding misery of being judged less admirable, less successful, less
valuable
than Joe.

Or his brother’s corrosive envy: That it was always Jack other people loved.

So instead he said softly, “Now who in the world would sell you a line of crap like that?”

“Our mutual friend.” Dobler gave his stillborn smile and rose from the table. “Franklin Roosevelt.”