The Fourth K (23 page)

Now she had to clear her mind. The declaration, the
petition, had already been signed by most of the Cabinet, the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury and others. CIA was missing, that clever, unscrupulous bastard Tappey. And of course, Christian Klee, a man she detested. But she had to make up her mind according to her judgment and her conscience. She had to act for the public good, not out of her own ambition.

Could she sign, commit an act of personal betrayal and keep her self-respect? But what was personal was extraneous. Consider only the facts.

Like Christian Klee and many others, she had noted the change in Kennedy after his wife died just before his election to the presidency. The loss of energy. Helen Du Pray knew, as everyone knew, that to make the presidency work you could lead only by building a consensus with the legislative branch. You had to court and cajole and maybe give a few kicks. You had to outflank, infiltrate and seduce the bureaucracy. You had to have the Cabinet under your thumb, and your personal senior staff had to be a band of Attilas and a gaggle of Solomons. You had to haggle, you had to reward and you had to throw a few thunderbolts. In some way you had to make everyone say, “Yes, for the good of the country and the good of me.”

Not doing these things had been a fault in Kennedy as President; also he was too far ahead of his time. His staff should have known better. A man as intelligent as Kennedy should have known better. And yet she sensed in Kennedy’s moves a kind of moral desperation, an all-out gamble on good against evil.

She believed, and hoped, she was not regressing into an outmoded female sentimentality, that the death of Kennedy’s wife was the root of the drift of his administration. But did extraordinary men like Kennedy fall apart
merely because of some personal tragedy? The answer to that was yes.

She herself had been born to politics but she had always thought that Kennedy himself had not the temperament. He was more a scholar, scientist, teacher. He had too much idealism; he was, in the best sense of the word, naïve. That is, he was trusting.

The Congress, both houses, had waged brutal war against the executive branch, and usually won the war. Well, it would not happen to her.

Now she picked up the declaration from her desk and analyzed it. The case presented was that Francis Xavier Kennedy was no longer capable of exercising the duties of President because of a temporary mental breakdown. Caused by the murder of his daughter. Which now affected his judgment, so that his decision to destroy the city of Dak and threaten to destroy a sovereign nation became an irrational act, far out of proportion to the degree of provocation, a dangerous precedent that must turn world opinion against the United States.

But then there was Kennedy’s argument, which he had presented at the staff and Cabinet conference: This was an international conspiracy in which the Pope of the Catholic Church had been assassinated and the daughter of the President of the United States murdered. A number of hostages were still being held and the conspiracy could spin out the situation for weeks or even months. And the United States would have to set the killer of the Pope free. What an enormous loss of authority to the most powerful nation on earth, the leader of democracy and, of course, democratic capitalism.

So who was to say that the Draconian answer proposed by the President was not the correct answer? Certainly, if
Kennedy was not bluffing, his measures would succeed. The Sultan of Sherhaben must go down on his knees. What were the real values here?

Point: Kennedy had made his decision without proper discussion with his Cabinet, his staff, the leaders of Congress. That was very grave. That indicated danger. A gang leader ordering a vendetta.

He had known they would all be against him. He was convinced he was right. Time was short. This was the decisiveness Francis Kennedy had shown even in the years before he became President.

Point: He had acted within the powers of the chief executive. His decision was legal. The declaration to impeach Kennedy had not been signed by any member of his personal staff, those people closest to him. Therefore the charge of unfitness and mental instability was a matter of opinion that rested on the decision he had made. Therefore, this declaration to impeach was an illegal attempt to circumvent the power resting in the executive branch of the government. The Congress disagreed with the presidential decision and therefore was attempting to reverse his decision by removing him. Clearly in violation of the Constitution.

Those were the moral and legal issues. Now she had to decide what was in her own best interests. That was not unreasonable in a politician.

She knew the mechanics. The Cabinet had signed, so now if she signed this declaration she would be the President of the United States. Then Kennedy would sign his declaration and she would be Vice President again. Then Congress would meet and in a two-thirds vote impeach Kennedy and she would be the President for at least thirty days, until the crisis was over.

The plus factor: She would be the first woman President
of the United States for a few moments, at the very least. Maybe for the rest of Kennedy’s term, which would end the following January. But she should have no illusions. She would never get the nomination after the term ran out.

She would achieve the presidency by what some would see as an act of betrayal—by a woman. It was enough that the literature of civilization had always portrayed women as causing the downfall of great men, that there was the ever-present myth that men could never trust women. She would be regarded as “unfaithful”: that great sin of womankind which men never forgave. And she would be betraying the great national myth of the Kennedys. She would be another Modred.

Then it struck her. She smiled as she realized that she was in a “no lose” situation. Just by refusing to sign the declaration.

Congress would not be denied.

Congress, possibly acting illegally without her signature, would impeach Kennedy, and the Constitution decreed that she would succeed to the presidency. But she would have proved her “faithfulness,” and if and when Francis Kennedy was restored after thirty days, she would still have his support. She would still have the Kennedy power group behind her nomination. As for the Congress, they were her enemies no matter what she did. So why be their political Jezebel? Their Delilah?

It became clearer and clearer to her. If she signed the declaration, the voting public would never forgive her and the politicians would hold her in contempt. And then, when and if she became President, they would most likely try to demean her also. They would, she thought, probably blame her deficiencies on her menstrual flow, the cruel male expression would be the inspiration for comics all over the country.

She made her decision. She would
not
sign the declaration. That would show she was not greedily ambitious, that she was loyal.

She started writing the statement she would give to her administrative aide to prepare. In it she simply wrote that she could not sign, with a clear conscience, a document that would elevate her to such high power. That she would remain neutral in this struggle. But even this could be dangerous. She crumpled up the paper. She would just refuse to sign; Congress would carry it forward from there. She placed a call to Senator Lambertino. After that she would call other legislators and explain her position. But nothing in writing.

Two days after David Jatney assassinated the cardboard effigy of Kennedy, he was kicked out of Brigham Young University. Jatney did not go back to his home, to his strict Mormon parents, who owned a string of dry-cleaning stores. He knew his fate there, he had suffered it before. His father believed in starting his son at the bottom, handling bundles of sweaty clothes, trousers, dresses, male suit jackets that seemed to weigh a ton. All that woolen cloth and cotton soaked with the warmth of human flesh was agonizing for him to touch.

And like many of the young, he’d had quite enough of his parents. They were good, hardworking people who enjoyed their friends, the business they had built up, and the comradeship of the Mormon Church. They were to him the two most boring people in the world.

And then too they lived a happy life, which irritated David. His parents had loved him when he was little, but grown he was so difficult that they joked that they had been given the wrong child in the hospital. They had home movies
of David at every stage: the small baby crawling on the floor, the toddler tottering around the room on holidays, the small boy left at school for the first time, his graduation from grammar school, his receiving a prize for English composition in high school, fishing with his father, hunting with his uncle.

After his fifteenth birthday he refused to let himself be photographed. He was horrified by the banalities of his life recorded on film; he felt like an insect programmed to live a life in an eternity of sameness. He was determined he would never be like his parents, never realizing that this too was another banality.

Physically he was at the opposite pole. Where they were tall and blond, and then massive by middle age, David was dark-skinned, thin and wiry. His parents joked about the difference, but predicted that with age he would grow to be more like them, which filled him with horror. By his fifteenth year he showed a coldness toward them that was impossible to ignore. Their own affection in no way lessened, but they were relieved when he went off to Brigham Young.

He grew handsome, with dark hair that glowed in its blackness. His features were all-American: the nose without a bump, the mouth strong but not too generous, the chin protruding but not intimidatingly so. In the beginning, if you knew him for only a short time, he seemed merely vivacious. His hands were busy when he spoke. Then at other times he would sink into a lassitude that froze him into a sort of sullenness.

In college, his vivaciousness and intelligence made him attractive to the other students. But he was just a little too bizarre in his reactions and was almost always condescending, and sometimes brutally insulting.

The truth was that David was in an agony of impatience to be famous, to be a hero, to have the world know he was special.

With women he had a shy confidence that won them over initially. They found him interesting and so he had his little love affairs. But they never lasted. He was off-putting, he was distant; after the first few weeks of vivacity and good humor he would sink into himself. Even in sex he seemed detached, as if he did not want to lose control of his body. His greatest failing in the area of love was that he refused to worship the beloved, even in the courtship phase, and when he did his best to fall deeply in love it had the aura of a valet exerting himself for a generous tip.

He had always been interested in politics and the social order. Like most young men, he had contempt for authority in any form; the study of history revealed to him that the story of humanity was simply endless warfare between the powerful elite and the helpless multitude. He desired fame to join the powerful.

It was natural that he was voted Chief Hunter in the assassination game played every year at Brigham Young. And it was his clever planning that resulted in victory. He had also supervised the making of the effigy that so resembled Kennedy.

With the shooting of that effigy and the victory banquet afterward, David Jatney experienced a revulsion for his student life. It was time to make a career. He had always written poetry, kept a diary in which he felt he could show his wit and intelligence. Since he was so sure he would be famous, this keeping of a diary with an eye on posterity was not necessarily immodest. And so he recorded, “I am leaving college, I have learned all that they can teach me. Tomorrow
I drive to California to see if I can make it in the movie world.”

When David Jatney arrived in Los Angeles, he did not know a single soul. That suited him, he liked the feeling. With no responsibilities, he could concentrate on his thoughts, he could figure out the world. The first night he slept in a small motel room and then found a one-room apartment in Santa Monica that was cheaper than he had expected. He found the apartment through the kindness of a matronly woman who was a waitress in a coffee shop where he took his first breakfast in California. David had eaten frugally—a glass of orange juice, toast and coffee—and the waitress had noticed him studying the rental section of the
Los Angeles Times
. She asked him if he was looking for a place to live and he said yes. She wrote down a phone number on a piece of paper and said it was just a one-room apartment but the rent was reasonable, because the people in Santa Monica had fought a long battle with the real estate interests and there was a tough rent control law. And Santa Monica was beautiful and he would be only a few minutes away from the Venice beach and its boardwalk and it was a lot of fun.

David at first had been suspicious. Why would this stranger be interested in his welfare? She looked motherly, but she had a sexy air about her. Of course she was very old—she must be forty at least. But she didn’t seem to be coming on to him. And she gave him a cheery good-bye when he left. He was to learn that people in California did things like this. The constant sunshine seemed to mellow them. Mellowing. That’s what it was. It cost her nothing to do him the favor.

David had driven from Utah in the car that his parents had given him for college. In it was his every worldly possession,
except for a guitar that he had once tried to learn to play and which was back in Utah. Most important was a portable typewriter, which he used to write his diary, poetry, short stories and novels. Now that he was in California he would try his first screenplay.

Everything fell into place easily. He got the apartment, a little place with a shower but no bath. It looked like a doll-house with frilly curtains over its one window and prints of famous paintings on the wall. The apartment was in a row of two-story houses behind Montana Avenue, and he could even park his car in the alley. He had been very lucky.

He spent the next fourteen days hanging around the Venice beach and boardwalk, and taking rides up to Malibu to see how the rich and famous lived. He leaned against the steel link fence that cut off the Malibu colony from the public beach and peered through. There was this long row of beach houses that stretched far to the north. Each worth three million dollars and more, and yet they looked like ordinary countrified shacks. They wouldn’t cost more than twenty thousand in Utah. But they had the sand, the purple ocean, the brilliant sky, the mountains behind them across the Pacific Coast Highway. Someday he would sit on the balcony of one of those houses and gaze over the Pacific.