Mortal Friends, page 59
She said, “Greater love hath no man . . .”
“Well, I certainly owe you one there, don’t I? I can’t imagine anything worse.” Kennedy smiled broadly at Janet, who only then realized what an extraordinary smile he had. “You don’t have a sister, do you?” he asked, disarming her and Collins both. It was impossible not to like him. There was something hardheaded and unillusioned about him, but he was utterly lacking in the sinister air that clung to his father the ambassador as the smell of the sea does to a fisherman.
“Jack, the truth is I’ve had it with the Hill. I don’t want to work up there anymore.”
“I thought that might be it. My father and I were just talking that over. Let us try something else on you then.”
“Work for me,” Joe Kennedy said.
“What?”
“I’m pulling together a team to draw up some priorities for Jack and to do some organizing outside the Senate for various constituencies to whom it’s important to be of service.”
A campaign organization, and Collins knew it. It was stunning to think Kennedy was already pulling one together. No wonder they didn’t want to talk in front of Janet.
“You come to work for me, son. You’ll have your head.” The ambassador shrugged, having said enough.
“A kind of supplementary office outside the Senate, eh?”
“On my payroll, not the taxpayers’.”
“To help me be the best goddamn senator down there.”
“And we could probably find something for you, too, young lady.”
“No thank you, Ambassador. In addition to being a retired Republican, I’m a new mother. We’ve just adopted a child, who will be my career for a while.”
“Congratulations,” Jack Kennedy said. “That’s terrific!” He had the capacity for leaving aside the unpleasant and plunging on into an expression of warmth that was earnest and touching. “A boy or a girl?”
“A boy,” Janet answered. “He’s seven.”
“That’s just great! You guys have real guts. No wonder you’re fed up with D.C. I’d feel the same way you do!”
“Jack,” Collins said, “I want you to know how honored I am that you would ask me. Ever since I was at the College I’ve admired you. You were still remembered fondly by a lot of people when I was there, including the old Irish maids at Dunster, who thought you should have been a priest.”
“Ha!” Kennedy barked. “You should have asked the young ones!”
“But anyway, I’m going to say ‘No’ for now. Maybe there will be another time when you think you can use me, and I hope you’ll ask again.”
“Say something to him, Colman,” the ambassador ordered.
“Joe, my son makes up his own mind. I learned that the hard way.” Colman’s hand rested easily on Collins’s shoulder as he said that, one of those perennial parents’ sentiments at whose falsehood the minds of their children never seem to balk.
Joe Kennedy left.
Jack Kennedy was not given to graceless gestures. “Collins, I think there will be a time like that, and I will ask you again.”
Colman noted the finesse of Kennedy’s statement. If he’d indulged his pique and huffed off, then Collins would have had the power that inheres in refusing all offers. By keeping the offer open, Kennedy had kept his power. Colman admired him more than ever. Kennedy was a comer.
“What do you think you’ll do?” Kennedy asked.
“I don’t know, Jack. I’d like to continue what I’ve been doing, to tell you the truth.”
“But you can’t.”
“Not with the committee, obviously. Since it’s defunct.” Collins shrugged. He was not going to say any more. “Anyway, Jack, thank you very much. And again, congratulations.” He offered his hand. Kennedy shook it warmly, kissed Janet’s cheek, shook with Colman, and then was back in the middle of the crowd dispensing his good humor.
“Let’s get out of here,” Collins said.
“Where shall we go?” Janet asked.
“We could all go see High Noon,” Collins said.
“No thanks, son. I just saw it.”
“Yup,” Janet said, basso profundo.
The three of them left the Parker House in a cab.
At Prescott Street Janet went immediately upstairs to look in on Tony.
Maeve and Maureen were already asleep.
Colman went into the living room and set about building a fire. Collins went to make them drinks. When he came in with them, the fire was ablaze. Colman was hunched on one knee staring into it.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something, Dad.”
“Oh?” Colman continued to stare into the fire. Collins thought him morose and displeased.
“Do you know any Sicilians?” Collins asked.
A hammer fell on an anvil.
A log fell in the fire.
Colman’s mind stopped purring for once. He turned on his knee to face his son. “I beg your pardon?”
“Do you know any Sicilians?” Collins sipped his drink.
Colman thought him very casual with it, shockingly so. “Why?”
“We need a girl to help us with Tony, someone who can talk to him. I do alright with the kid, and Janet’s learning. But the help are useless, and English is coming slow for him.”
Colman stared at Collins. He laughed abruptly, then cut his laugh short. “No. I know some Italians, of course. I don’t think they’re Sicilians, though. How can you tell, anyway?”
Collins made a gesture with his head that said, “You’d know.”
“I’ll ask around, though.”
“She’d have to be willing to move to Washington.”
Colman did not disguise his surprise at that. He stood, took his drink from the table, and sat in the blue wingback opposite Collins’s. “I thought you told Kennedy you were sick of Washington.”
“Not Washington. The Hill. Capitol Hill. We’re staying in D.C. In fact, we’re going to buy a house.”
Colman whistled. “I guess you are staying, buying a house, my God. That doesn’t sound like anyone who’s up in the air about his job.”
“I’m not.”
“But you said you were.”
“That was to them. I have a job.”
“I don’t understand you, son. What is all this cryptic meandering about? Why is a clear statement so difficult for you? You hate Washington, you’re buying a house. You’re looking for a job, you have a job? What gives?”
“I apologize, Dad. I’ve certainly not intended to be duplicitous with you. It’s only that I couldn’t know until the campaign was over what our strategy would be. And I absolutely could not discuss it in front of Kennedy; I mean the old man.”
“Joe Kennedy is a friend of mine, Micko.”
“Then you know about his associations.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He’s up to his ears in the booze trade. He gets a cut on every bottle of Scotch that comes into the country.”
“What’s illegal about that? Christ, you sound like a WCTU old biddy. You’re not a Calvinist, you know. Sometimes I wonder if you’re my son.”
“I am your son. That’s the point. I can’t take things any more lightly than you do. The point about Kennedy is that his business brings him into contact with some pretty unsavory people. He’s no stranger to the New York mob.”
“Then, indict him, goddamnit, if you’ve got something on him.”
“It’s not that sort of thing. I don’t mean to imply criminal activity.”
What an insane conversation to be having. Collins altered his demeanor and mood. “Strange, isn’t it, that Jack Kennedy should epitomize Beantown politics when they’ve all been in New York for years.”
Colman was shocked. He couldn’t believe his son was ignorant of the meaning of the peculiarities of Kennedy geography. For all his Harvard years, his son had a lousy education. Indeed, because of his Harvard years.
“Do you know why Kennedy’s money and power is New York, not Boston?”
“Has to do with FDR. The old man backed him early and was against Smith.”
“It was nothing to do with FDR, son.” Colman was being patient. “Joe Kennedy left Boston shortly after I got here after being shut out of his business by the goddamn WASP bankers, who controlled everything and wouldn’t let an Irishman within a mile of a boardroom except to empty the goddamn ashtrays. Boston isn’t New York. That’s right. I’m shocked that you’re just discovering that.”
“You’re talking about that ‘No Irish Need Apply’ crap. I know all about it.”
“No, you don’t. That was the tip of it, son. Every city in the country, Collins, is like a ladder. You get off the boat and on the ladder and climb your ass off. But not Boston. It’s different here. The only rungs on the ladder are up top, for them where they sit with their trust funds and their high interest. Have you tried to climb a ladder without rungs? You’ve been around. Why is it the Irish have it made in New York and Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Chicago and San Francisco? McDonalds, Coynes, Cuddihys, O’Mearas, Buckleys, Butlers, Dohenys—you name any Mick money you can think of. None of it is Boston. There’s no such thing as a Mick making it in this town.”
“There’s Brady.”
Colman did not reply to that.
“You’re a lousy exhibit for your own case, Dad. Kennedy could have stayed here and done what you did. He didn’t have to go to New York and be a rumrunner in the shadows thrown by Frank Costello and Al Capone.”
“Collins, as long as you’re in this house I will not have that kind of talk. Lest you forget, you spring from the same soil as him, even if you are married to an upper-rung. You wouldn’t be who you are or where you are if it wasn’t for the likes of Joe Kennedy. You even owe the luxury of your sensitive conscience to the likes of him.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“And you’ve at least two misconceptions I’d better disabuse you of.”
“About?”
“About me. First, ‘Brady money.’ The Brady money, laddo, is peanuts. By scrambling and building a system out from Boston—not in it, mind you—with city workers all over the country, I’ve made my share. But it’s a nickel and dime operation, son. Even taking all the slices of companies Municipal holds, I’d say the annual interest Joe Kennedy collects exceeds by twice our net worth, OK? Two: you are a fool if you think you run a business in this world, especially one like mine, which depends on contacts with unions and the party and city machines, without brushing up against what you call ‘unsavory characters.’ It’s your cousin Jack who spends his time with nuns and priests, not me. Don’t forget, Micko, your father was impeached once from public office.”
“That’s part of why I’m damn suspicious of the whole political arena. I won’t let them do to me what they did to you. Frankly, I’m not sure how different Kennedy is from Curley.”
“There is a difference, son. Kennedy is better at it than Curley was. And Curley was great.”
“He screwed you.”
“He was protecting himself. I’d have done the same to him.”
“No, you would not have. You’re talking to me as if I were a college kid. You seem to have forgotten what I’ve been doing for a living. It’s my business to know about men, to sniff around their heels and guess what they’ve been stepping on, or who. You like the pose of the cynical, world-weary Irishman who nurses his resentments. But you forget. I’ve spent a lifetime watching you with people. I remember Curley and I remember even as a kid knowing instinctively the great difference between you. And that same instinct sets you apart from the Kennedy sharpies. And I know how you are with Janet. She’s not a top-rung WASP to you, any more than Anna would have been a wop whore to you.”
“Collins, I think . . .”
“No, let me finish. The point is, you’re my touchstone. When I make my gut judgment about a man—and that’s all I do, really—you’re what I measure him against.”
Colman felt the enormous sadness of a man who had succeeded infinitely well in what he had set out to do. What he could not savor was the truth in what his son had said, nor therefore the irony of it. Colman Brady was different from Curley and from Joe Kennedy. “Well, no wonder you find something wrong with everybody. How’s your drink?”
“Needs help.”
Colman went to the bar to pour the whiskey, then to the kitchen for some ice. It seemed to him he understood his son. For some men—principally those who encountered the universe in books and ideas—only a certain affectedness of soul offered a way to distinguish themselves from the rest. And the need to be so distinguished is absolute. Collins’s idealism functioned as its own kind of power-seeking. He who took such solace in being different, even better, was just like all the rest. How to shake him from his lean pride? How to cut him from his purity without killing him? The cruelty of his profound regret at the defects of others! The tyranny of his refusal to admit the real character of his father’s life.
But then it occurred to Colman that his son could punish him most effectively for his corruption by refusing to see it. Most of the time Colman Brady felt alright about himself. He was who he was because his own best aspirations had been repeatedly derailed by unexpected and undeserved turns of fate. Had he begun the Irish Civil War? Had he refused Curley the honorary degree at Harvard? Had he murdered his grandson’s mother? Most of the time Colman Brady nurtured a careful resignation to the power of evil even as he thought of himself as an essentially good man over whom it had its sway. But in the presence of his son, Colman felt damned. His son’s innocence made him feel that he had made not only accommodations with evil but alliances with it. He was living off the blood that gangsters sucked out of defenseless people and without even the nerve to watch them do it. He was without principle, without honor, without respect for himself. He could hide these things from his own eyes except when he was with Collins, because then it took all he had to hide them from his.
“Here you go,” Colman said, handing him the drink.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me.” Colman raised his glass. “Thank Joe Kennedy.”
“Touché, you bastard.”
“To a death in Ireland.”
“Or wherever.”
“Where’s the house you’re buying?”
“I haven’t told you about the job yet.”
“You sure you can trust me?”
“If there’s a leak, I’ll know where it is. I’m going with the Bureau of Internal Revenue.”
“What? Say that again.”
“Taxes. It all comes down to taxes. Every mobster in the country has a moat around him, lawyers, silence, lackeys. They’re very careful. They rarely break the law themselves, the big shots. That’s what their punks are for. But every one of them falsifies his taxes. They have to. That’s the trouble with illegal income.”
“So, what, you’ll be an accountant?”
“No, a new approach. A Bureau assault on crime, using what the committee uncovered. There are thousands of cases just waiting for us. The data’s all there. We have to do something with it.”
“I had the impression the committee already did quite a lot.”
“Sure. Drew up a bunch of new laws that Congress killed. Cited forty-five big-shot hoodlums for contempt. Do you know what happened to those? Twenty-two acquittals, ten dismissals, five convictions reversed on appeal, three upheld, the rest indefinitely continued. Of seventy-nine aliens referred to Immigration for deportation, proceedings against fifty were dismissed, against twenty are pending indefinitely. Five were deported. After two years we got three for contempt, five deported. Terrific, eh?”
“Could be better, you’re right.”
“The Special Rackets Squad. Silly name, I know, but that’s us. We’d have made our move through Justice if Adlai’d won because it all has to end up there anyway, and we could have used the FBI. But it’ll work out this way. We’re keeping the lid on because we’d just as soon let the targets think the heat’s off.”
“Rackets Squad. Sounds like the radio, Eliot Ness.”
“I know. That’s Halley’s mania. He wants to get us all guns.”
“Guns, Good Christ!”
“Relax, never happen. Ironically enough, we will be accountants, just like you said.”
“And the Congress is?”
“Once they realize we’re talking about three hundred million dollars a year in recovered taxes and probable penalties, they’ll love us, even if we also throw some of their dollies in the hoosegow.”
“What’s your job?”
“Halley’s divided the country into regions. The full-court press is on Vegas, Chicago, and Miami. I drew the short stick. I’m heading up the section for the Northeast, but we’ll keep a base in D.C.”
“Northeast includes what?”
“Northern Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia are the red pins on the map. Most big-time crime action is out west now, but the roots are still in Newark and the East Side.”
“What about Boston?”
“Not much in Boston, small fry. Or so we think. The committee never got here. The action in New England is probably all in Providence. Ever hear of Balestrione?”
“No.”
“Not many people have. My hunch is that they’re either all two-bit operators up here, or they’re better at it than any of them. It’ll be a tough one to crack.”
“Why?”
“Because the whole Mass. system is rotten, from the flatfoot up to the federal bench. We could never trust the locals with anything, none of them.”
“That’s pretty sweeping, son. Some of those men are friends of mine. A lot of them were at the Parker House tonight.”
“You’d be shocked, Dad.”
“I doubt it. You just wish more of the State House crowd and the City Hall gang went to Harvard instead of B.C.”
