The Lacey Confession (13 page)

“It doesn't work that way, Mr. Levine. My name again is Albertson. Lawrence Albertson. My responsibility is to take the details of your communication and report them to the President's office and wait for a response. That response may be a written reply, which I will read to you, or it may be a message or other instruction for you, or there might be no response and, in that event, I will advise you to terminate this communication link.”

“What about the ‘response' that brings the President on the line?”

“Mr. Levine, in my experience I've never encountered that response. Although I'm sure anything's possible. If you will tell me what this is about we can get started.”

“I'll talk only to the President of the United States,” said Harry.

The President sat at his desk in the Oval Office in the midst of a tough decision. Pencil in hand, poised to mark the appropriate box, unconvinced which way to go, he pondered the question—can Georgetown cover eleven points against Temple? It was the only game he hadn't picked on the White House weekend college basketball pool. The games were starting in a few hours and his entry was already a day late.
They'll wait
, he thought, not to begin the games of course, but for his entry sheet.
I am, after all, the President of the United States.
These difficult deliberations were interrupted by his secretary's voice on the intercom.

“Mr. President, Lawrence Albertson is on ISCOM.” That meant the green phone in the upper right-hand portion of his desk, the one near the small lamp he brought with him from the Governor's mansion. It was the phone designated International Special Communication. Therefore, ISCOM.

“This is the President,” he said picking up the telephone. “Yes, Mr. Albertson?” There followed some head shaking up and down, and “un huh” three different times. “Is that all he said?” the President asked. Another “un huh,” and then, he laughed robustly, “‘None of your goddamn business.' He said that? Well, okay, okay Albertson. Let's do it.”

The next sound Harry heard was the well-known, high-pitched, raspy, half-hoarse voice of the President of the United States. “What is it?”

“Sir, my name is Har . . .”

“I know all that already, now why am I talking to you?” As he spoke, the President decided to take Georgetown and give the points.

“Mr. President, this deals with a matter . . .”

“You misunderstand me,” interrupted the President. “I want to know why I am talking to you and not the Ambassador.”

“He's not available,” replied Harry.

“It's a long way from McHenry Brown to Harry Levine. That doesn't answer my question.”

“I realize I'm not the Ambassador . . .”

“No kidding? So do I. Well you know, doesn't matter if you were, I don't get a lot of calls even from ambassadors on this line. This is a pretty important telephone hookup and I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing talking to a Deputy in the legal department of the Trade Section. Can you answer me that?” demanded the President of the United States.

“Look,” said Harry, trying not to breathe too fast or too hard into the phone. “This morning I was given a document detailing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and, at the same time, I was notified that this document will have to be made public this coming Monday.”

“Huh? You what?”

“I was given a document . . .”

“I heard that the first time. You were ‘given' a document which . . . Are you serious?”

“Earlier this morning, sir, I was called upon to meet with Sir Anthony Wells who showed me a document, a confession really, prepared by the man who planned and was responsible for carrying out the killing of . . .”

“I don't believe this,” the President said, his voice trailing away as if he had taken the phone and was holding it out away from his face. Harry envisioned the President reeling back holding the phone outstretched in his hand, looking at it, his brow all wrinkled, biting his lower lip, shaking his head in disbelief. “Look here, whatever this is about, you wait for your ambassador to make himself available, whenever that may be, and you talk to him about it. You just let Ambassador Brown handle everything. And as for you . . .”

“Mr. President, this morning I was instructed to meet with Sir Anthony Wells, the senior partner in the firm of Herndon, Sturgis, Wells & Nelson. He gave me a document, upon which I am at this moment resting my hand as I speak to you. He gave it to me to give to you. This document is, among other things, the handwritten, detailed confession of Lord Frederick Lacey that he killed President John F. Kennedy. What you also need to know is Lord Lacey was responsible for the death of Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. And, sir . . .” Harry tried to catch his breath, to calm his racing heart. “He killed Bobby Kennedy too.” Harry swore he could hear the President utter something, an involuntary, guttural, primal sound. He continued. “Shortly after meeting me, Sir Anthony was murdered. News reports said his office was torn apart. I believe whoever killed him was looking for this document. There are other things in it people would not want known. This is not a joke. I'm not a crackpot. Time is of the essence and this can't wait for McHenry Brown. I'm scared, sir.”

Years of training, often just pretending, had prepared this President to act in an emergency. Once he recognized it as such, he treated it accordingly. As if by command, his respiration and heartbeat slowed, the muscles in his shoulders, back and arms relaxed. His voice lowered and his bowels constricted. “Tell me everything that happened,” he said, “starting from when you received your instructions until you placed this call to me. Take your time, son. Leave nothing out.”

“Some of the greatest, they never retired,” said Billy. He looked to Helen, who was shuttling back and forth from the kitchen to the bar. For reasons unclear to him, Walter or Ike, she stopped and looked at Billy.

“Who?” she asked.

“Like Sinatra, right?” Billy waited for confirmation, some positive sign he felt he had every right to expect from the woman he lived with. “He never quit. ‘The Chairman of the Board' kept singing until the end, right?”

“That's true, Billy,” she said and waltzed back into the kitchen, showing little regard for, and even less interest in, whatever it was he was talking about.

“See,” Billy went on. “I told you guys. There's plenty of the best who never give it up.”

“What about Joe Louis?” asked Ike, belching smoke from his mouth and nose. An unforgiving breeze blew it straight back at him. He looked every bit a smoldering fire and showed not a wit of concern about it. “The man never should have come back.” He followed that with a cough. Ike was coughing more than ever, thought Walter, who made little effort to hide the concern he felt. The hacking sound coming from Ike inspired Billy to berate him for the millionth time.

“Damn! For the life of me I don't know why that shit hasn't killed you already.” Ike paid no attention to either one of them. He just took another long drag and this time exhaled quite smoothly. No grimace. No wheezing or coughing. Victory was his. A big smile crossed his wrinkled face while his mind spun in sweet circles drenched in nicotine, inspired by the sudden increase of carbon monoxide in his lungs and heart and brain and everywhere else.

“Joe Louis retired a champ,” he said. His chest back to normal, he picked up where he left off. “Top of his game. Then, when he came back, couldn't do it no more. Rocky whatshisname, beat up on him real bad. Beat up on his legend too. You hear that, Walter?”

“Willie Mays, too,” Billy added. “Quit and came back. Had nothing left. Punks who couldn't get guys out in the Texas League were striking him out. Should have stayed retired.”

“Willie Mays only retired one time,” said Helen, not looking up at all. None of them had noticed when she came back into the bar from the kitchen. “He never came back either,” she said.

“You sure?”

“Am I sure, Billy? I am sure. He never tried to come back.”

“Well, he should have quit sooner then, because he had nothing in the tank at the end. A real shame.” Billy went back to wiping down the counter next to the old cash register. He was careful to move the rimless chalkboard and put it back in its designated spot when he was done.

“Sinatra didn't have much left either,” said Ike. “Just a ghost of himself. But that didn't stop him. People kept paying to see him. That's why they call it show
business
, you know that. But it'll keep for another time. I'll go with the Brown Bomber. Quit. Came back. Shoulda stayed quit. Shoulda kept his money too, like Sinatra.”

“And I'm sticking with Willie Mays,” proclaimed Billy. “I don't give a shit if he retired or not.” He glanced at the kitchen door looking for Helen who wasn't there. “The Say Hey Kid was no kid anymore and all that ‘Say Hey' was say-gone. You know what I mean?” Billy was satisfied with that. They both waited on Walter. But he said nothing. He just sipped his Diet Coke and continued reading
The New York Times
. At least he looked like he was reading it. They knew he heard every word. Finally, without looking up from his paper at either of his friends, he said, “Winston Churchill. Retired. Came back. Retired. Came back again. Saved the world from the fucking Nazis. Not bad for an old man.”

“How old was he, Churchill?” asked Billy.

“Just a kid,” laughed Ike. “No more than—how old are you, Walter?” Walter laughed too. Ike knew Walter wasn't as old as Churchill. “‘Saved the world from the fucking Nazis,” said Ike. “That's good. That's very good. I like that. Had some help, though. I oughta know.”

“You want me to write it up?”

“Yes sir, Billy,” said Ike. “You write it. Walter? You see any Nazis around here? You want to check the men's room? Maybe they all at Caneel Bay.” Again the old man laughed and this time he began coughing again.

Billy looked to Walter for the go-ahead. Walter nodded, and the pale-skinned, stubble-jawed bartender grabbed the chunk of blue chalk and wrote—Louis/Mays/Churchill—on the blackboard.

Just then, Helen opened the kitchen door, directly across from Walter's seat at the bar. She emerged carrying a large plastic bottle filled with a pink liquid. She needed two hands to hold it. She put it down under the bar, near the small ice maker and cooler, looked up at Walter, like she knew something he'd overlooked, and said, “She's got a great ass, but she's no German.”

When the phone rang—even
The Phone
—he picked it up and answered with a simple, “Yes.”

“Hey Louis,” said the President of the United States. “I got to see you. Get over here right away.”

“I'll be there in twenty minutes,” Louis Devereaux replied, careful not to say anything more. At 54, he was a thirty-year veteran at the CIA. His current job title, Assistant Director for Regional Operations, was a bogus title. He'd had a dozen or more similar ones over the years. The Act that created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1949 exempted the agency from having to disclose its table of organization, job descriptions or even the number of people who worked there. Devereaux had begun with a real job, as an Analyst, but as he gained reputation and authority his job titles became less reflective of his real duties. It was doubtful more than one or two Senators would recognize the name and even they might scratch their heads and say something like “Devereaux. Devereaux . . . I know that name . . . just can't seem to place it exactly . . .” Not a one of his titles required their consent. Within a small group at the CIA—those who really know the speed and direction the wheel spins, those whose hands actually guide its progress and call its turns—Louis Devereaux eventually became a leader. By the time the President called him that day, he was the unquestioned top at CIA. Of course, he was not the Agency man who dutifully appeared to testify before committees of the Congress, or on the Sunday TV news shows, and surely not the bureaucrat who served as chief administrator. Louis Devereaux made policy, for the Agency, for the country, for the world.

The thirty-nine rich, white men who met privately in Philadelphia in 1787 to write the Constitution favored “Your Excellency” when referring to their new creation—the President of the United States. Perhaps George Washington's greatest contribution to the budding republic was his resolve to be called Mr. President. He saw that title as an indicator of common citizenship. Washington was well aware that in a representative government, a government of laws not of men, separating the man from the title was essential. He meant Mister to be the most simple of callings. Many of those men, gathered in Philadelphia, thought the office every bit the equal of an elected sovereign, a king minus only primogeniture. Few of the Founding Fathers would be surprised or disappointed by the pomp and circumstance that grew to surround the modern Imperial Presidency. Quite a few surely saw themselves occupying the position and the sound of Your Excellency must have been almost musical. General, then President, George Washington—like Hubert H. Humphrey two hundred years later, a man who would chide would-be President Richard Nixon by saying—“Being President just means free rent for four years!”—understood it was just a job.

Louis Devereaux was also a man who knew the power of titles and the force of names. The youngest child, the only brother to five sisters, he grew up being called Louis, never Lou, never Louie. He never had a nickname. His father, Zane Devereaux, was a small thin man with narrow lips and sharp features, the last surviving male in the family which originated modern banking and finance in the South after the Civil War or, as it was always called in the Devereaux house, the War Between The States. At the height of the Great Depression, Louis' father relocated the family enterprises from Biloxi, Mississippi, to New Orleans. From their base in investment banking, the family ventured into residential real estate development after World War II. In successive later decades, they branched out to include highway construction, electronic communications, office buildings and shopping malls, and eventually low-cost, no-frills regional air transport. Zane Devereaux expanded his family's fortune from millions to tens of millions and then oversaw its explosion into the hundreds of millions. While Zane guided it, the Devereaux Communications Group owned and operated fourteen radio and television stations in eight major cities in the Deep South, three recently acquired television stations in California, and an ever-increasing network of cellular telephone and data transmission frequencies. The company's asset value had surpassed the billion-dollar mark years ago. As a testament to Zane Devereaux's financial genius, all his companies were debt free. “You can be a lender,” he was heard to say more than once. “That's good business. But, if you want to sleep nights, don't borrow a goddamn dime!”

As a youngster Louis frequently witnessed grown men—important men, men he often recognized—shake uncontrollably in his father's presence. They respectfully addressed him as “Sir,” and “Mr. Devereaux,” all the while being called by their first names by him. Louis learned that addressing someone by their first name, especially when they were uncomfortable replying in kind, could nearly always establish a dominant position in personal communications. The added prestige he later acquired with his PhD as “Dr. Devereaux,” taught him the value of titles well applied. As with every lesson ever learned, Louis Devereaux steadfastly used his knowledge to further his self-interest.

He put
The Phone
down, the blue one sitting alone on top of the small, light-colored marble table under the window—the phone the President had just called him on. He picked up another phone, the one next to the toaster on the red-tiled kitchen island. He pushed a single button, listened for the ring and waited for an answer. “I'm going to miss the game,” he said. “Sorry, Mandy.”

“Well, I'll just have to tell you all about it later, won't I?” his sister said. She hung up without any goodbye. She knew who her little brother was. She didn't expect an explanation and she never asked questions. None of Louis's sisters did. And neither did his mother. Each of them took great pride in Louis. Zane Devereaux was a different story.

When Henrietta Devereaux, known throughout proper Mississippi society as Hattie, told her husband she was pregnant again in 1950, he was thrilled. Zane Devereaux had no brothers and quite reasonably saw himself as the last of the line. He was already the father of five girls. His own two sisters had six children between them including four boys, not one of which, of course, carried the Devereaux name. Like his sisters had, each of Zane's daughters would one day marry and surrender that cherished name too. Their sons, if they had any, would be family, but none would be a Devereaux. Not a day passed when Zane was not haunted and humiliated by his greatest fear—that when he died the Devereaux fortune would fall into the hands of strangers. When Louis was born in Louisiana in 1951, Zane's world was saved. He named his son after his adopted state and never worried again.

Confident now that the family enterprise would remain firmly in true Devereaux control, Zane discovered the freedom to delegate responsibility to others, to outsiders, to employees. What had been a tightly held, close-knit corporation in which Zane himself approved nearly every decision, now opened up to dynamic growth under the direction of skilled hired help. Zane knew banking and had been lucky in real estate after the war with Germany and Japan. In the buyer's market of the late forties it didn't hurt to own a bank or two. He knew investing in the construction of the interstate highway system was a smart move, but he would need to hire people to set it up and run it. He was also smart enough to take the millions thrown off by Devereaux National Construction and buy radio and television stations. But again he needed to hire the right people to operate them. And now that he had a son, an heir, he did. He hired the best in the industry, paid the most money but always resisted releasing equity, taking in partners or going public. More often perhaps than Hattie thought was good for him, Zane looked at his son and said, “Louis, someday it'll all be yours.”

By the time Louis entered Yale, at the incredible age of sixteen, his father was already preparing his future career. When Louis graduated from Yale, only three years later, Zane was pleased his son was going on to law school. There were already too many lawyers with too much influence making too much trouble for him every day. Zane was sure he would feel a lot more comfortable working side by side with his son—the attorney. But when Louis chose the University of Chicago Law School instead of LSU or Tulane, Zane Devereaux became concerned. At first, he kept it to himself. Louis was young—time was on his side.

Three years later, twenty-two-year-old Louis took his law degree and instead of going home, returned to Yale, this time to pursue a PhD in European History. His father was not happy. Still, he waited. When he was only twenty-four years old, Louis Devereaux—now both lawyer and doctorate—heir to the family fortune, broke his father's heart. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency. The strain between the two never healed. Zane Devereaux died carrying both his pain and anger to the grave.

He left everything to Louis. He was, in spite of everything, his son. His only son. Louis sold all the Devereaux holdings and split the proceeds evenly with his sisters and mother. By age thirty, Louis Devereaux was a man completely free of personal commitments as well as conflicting economic interests. While very much the ladies' man, he had not married, and never would. Every penny he had was in cash. He often thought of John Lennon's comment when the former Beatle was asked if he was afraid of Richard Nixon and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which harassed him and tried hard to have him deported. Lennon said he was not afraid at all. “I've got more money than they do.”

Fifteen minutes after their brief phone call, Devereaux entered the Oval Office to find the President alone. “Good morning,” he said.

“You need some coffee?” asked the President. “Something to eat? Help yourself, Louis.” He pointed to a tray loaded with breakfast cakes and doughnuts. Both coffee and tea were available in matching silver servers. The President's favorite mugs, featuring the particularly ugly mascot from his alma mater, were neatly stacked next to the milk and sugar and artificial sweetener. Devereaux could have anything he wanted. He knew that. Eggs, sausage, pancakes, steak, anything—all he had to do was pick up the phone and order it. He poured some coffee and sat down on a couch to the President's left. Presidents change, he thought, but the Oval Office remains pretty much the same. Same blue carpet, similar desks, a couple of small tables and side chairs and usually two couches. The unique shape of the room pretty much dictates the furnishings. He first came to the Oval Office in 1990 and by now he felt very much at home there.

“I got this call, from London, from a guy named Harry Levine. He's Foreign Service, a lawyer in the Trade Section. Well, he calls me on the ISCOM . . .” The President paused, lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. “Christ, Louis, this is goddamn unbelievable . . .”

“Just tell me what he said,” Devereaux suggested, hoping to get the President started in the right direction, calm him down a bit. The first George Bush was the only one, he thought, who didn't go nuts every time there was some kind of crisis. He'd much rather deal with a professional like that, but of course, he had no choice. You could pick your friends, but not your Presidents. “How did Harry Levine get access to ISCOM?”

“None of your goddamn business,” laughed the President.

“What?”

“That's what he said. ‘None of your goddamn business!' Can you believe that?” the President chuckled. “Geez, I shouldn't laugh. This is serious—if it's even true. The whole thing is so damned unreal.”

“Just tell me what he said,” Devereaux said again. The President, who had been standing all the while, moved toward his desk and sat down.

“Levine took a call this morning for Ambassador Brown, who's not there today. Goes to see a lawyer at Herndon, Sturgis, Wells & Nelson—top London firm, very prestigious—a Sir Anthony Wells. Wells is a real legend, must be well up in his nineties. He gives Levine a document, part of the estate papers of Frederick Lacey. You familiar with Frederick Lacey, Lord Lacey?”

“Yes,” replied Devereaux, a chill running down his back. Quickly, he adjusted his suit jacket, hoping the President would not notice the flush he felt in his cheeks. “He died earlier this week.”

“Yeah, Tuesday to be exact. Good memory, Louis. Well, he left this document with instructions to release it after he was dead. It says he killed President Kennedy.” Devereaux said nothing. He prayed his inner turmoil was not evident. The President continued. “You know anything about Lacey and Kennedy?”

He sat there, looked directly at the President, sipped his coffee and reported without benefit of either preparation or notes. “Frederick Lacey,” said Devereaux, “and Joseph P. Kennedy were running buddies in the twenties and thirties.”