The Lacey Confession (5 page)

“I was going to say, I'm not sure it was such a good idea to remove the body from the local jurisdiction. I understand, under the circumstances . . .”

“Under the circumstances!” Johnson bellowed. “I had no information to tell me who else was in danger. Maybe they were after Mrs. Kennedy too. The Governor, my friend John Connally, was hit pretty bad. I didn't know if I was a target. The thought more than crossed my mind, I can tell you that. You know, when Lincoln was killed they tried to get the Vice President at the same time. Another Johnson too. I had folks saying there was sharpshooters all over the place. Shots were coming from everywhere. Could have been a damn army of them. The Pentagon told me about threats from all over the world. You know, the Secretary of State was in the air over the Pacific Ocean while this was going on. Dallas was no place to be and I wasn't gonna leave him back there. There's her too,” he said, referring to the widowed First Lady. “She wouldn't go without him. No sirree, she wouldn't.”

“I understand,” Warren said. “This is not a matter you and I need to talk about at all. It's improper. I apologize. I shouldn't have mentioned it.” Then, he asked, “What did you mean ‘they'? Were there others with this fellow Oswald?”

“See, that's what I mean!” said Johnson. “We're all saying things we ought not to. We're asking questions that don't make a whole lot of sense and we're jumping to conclusions, conclusions that aren't true to the facts. The nation needs your leadership, your help, Mr. Chief Justice. Needs it badly.”

“I'm not sure what you have in mind, Mr. President. Are you thinking I can help in some way?”

The President outlined for Chief Justice Warren a plan to form a special temporary Commission to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy and have that Commission issue a complete report to the nation. The Commission would include Congressional leaders plus men of national and international reputation, trusted at home and abroad, learned in matters of law and experienced in foreign relations. The Commission members, said Johnson, must be men who were “beyond pressure and above suspicion.” A former director of the Central Intelligence Agency would be asked to serve, bringing his special expertise in the covert activities of other nations. Clearly his role would be to calm any fears about foreign involvement on the part of our communist enemies.

Staff and budget considerations would be no problem. A one-time authorization would give them what amounted to a blank check. Most important of all, the President told Warren, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would be the head of this Commission. He would chart its course and direct its efforts. He alone would determine procedure and he would issue the Commission's report to the American people. “I want that report as soon as possible, right away. I know Christmas is too soon. Only a month away. It's not the best time either, but I want it done no later than six to eight weeks, about the middle of January, first of February.”

Warren asked a few questions. Politics was out, said Johnson. No divisions were required for staffing. Neither of the American political parties would be entitled to staff quotas or other perks of that nature. “You pick 'em all. That simple,” said Johnson. To facilitate matters, the Court's regular docket could be delayed for a couple of months. “We know—you and me, we know—sitting right here this minute—the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the President—we know it was Lee Harvey Oswald who did this by himself, acting alone, not part of any group, not working for any nation. Did it, just simply by himself. We know that. We don't know why. We may never know why. We may never be sure. But we can be sure of this—our entire nation could come apart at the seams—the greatest and most powerful society in the history of human civilization—and it could all be destroyed unless we bring this to a proper end and put this matter to rest for good.”

Warren talked awhile about some of the specifics Johnson had mentioned, mainly procedural and technical areas—how the Commission would be chartered, the methods for keeping records and drawing funds, the jurisdictional problems which affect any enterprise involving more than one of the three branches of government. Finally, he added what he wanted to sound like an afterthought, no more than a casual personal reference, but what really constituted his reply to the President's request and the reason for this meeting. “I would have to rule out my own participation,” he said. “Serving on this type of a commission would, as I see it, constitute an inappropriate judicial role for a sitting Chief Justice.” Such an American thought.
The anger and frustration in Johnson's eyes,
Warren wrote in his journal,
were almost palpable.
“But,” Warren said to his President, “I can prepare a short list of retired Federal Judges, some quite well known . . .”

“You don't seem to follow me,” said Johnson, restraining himself as best he could. “The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of The United States of America—that's who's needed. The report of this Commission will be the most important document our government issues in this century. It must be beyond reproach. Its stamp of truth must be the stamp of—it must be your stamp! It has to be the Warren Commission!”

“I'm sorry, Mr. President. I cannot accept. I think I fully . . .”

“Mr. Chief Justice,” interrupted the President, like a man slamming on the brakes of a runaway truck. “I want you to think about it. Hold your answer. Think about the grave national crisis threatening to overwhelm us. Think about the brave young man we're gonna bury tomorrow, his family, your family, our national family. I won't take your final answer now. Just you think about it and we'll talk some more.” LBJ smiled broadly and shook the Chief Justice's hand as he would have had he been stumping for votes, gripping Warren's hand firmly with his own right hand while his left covered Warren's wrist.
It didn't hurt,
wrote Warren. Nevertheless, he went on,
I felt the President's handshake all the way home.

Neither Warren's wait nor his sleep lasted too long. At 5:50 am the doorbell rang. A tired and half-dressed housekeeper answered. She was greeted by two agents of the Secret Service. A limo, with the motor running, was parked at the curb. She woke the Chief Justice, told him the President wanted to see him immediately and then, as he dressed, she went to prepare some tea and hot oatmeal.

At 6:25 am, less than twelve hours since his last visit, Chief Justice Earl Warren walked into the Oval Office again. The beige couch was gone. The desk too. All the pictures on the wall had been changed. He couldn't recall if the lamps or the two round end tables had been there a few hours before. Johnson was already sitting behind a huge, wooden desk made of a lighter wood, more worn than the one Kennedy had. It must have been moved from the Vice President's office during the night. The President had been shot on Friday and the new President moved in before the weekend was over.
I suppose
, Warren later wrote,
that's the way it has to be
. Everything seemed in order. The phones were lined up across one end of the desk to the President's right—two white ones, each with six lines, a black phone with three rows of extra buttons, the kind of setup Warren had never seen before, and a plain, red one—a simple, unmarked red telephone with no dial and no buttons. Warren shuddered to think what use it had. All the personal items were there too, suitably arranged. Among the pens and paperweights Warren could see pictures of the Johnson daughters, another showing Lady Bird and LBJ in work clothes probably taken at the LBJ Ranch, somewhere in Texas, and near the only clock on the desk, off to the side, was an old black and white photograph in a brass 5x7 frame of the young Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson shaking hands with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. President Roosevelt was holding the Congressman's right hand firmly in his own while his left hand wrapped completely around Johnson's wrist. They were both smiling.

Two young men, neither of whom Warren recognized, stood talking by the window nearest the door leading to the garden. The President was giving instructions to one of his secretaries, a comely young woman. He was especially animated although Warren could not overhear what he said. A valet, an old Negro man, approached carrying a tray. “Coffee or tea, Mr. Chief Justice?” he asked. Warren indicated a certain tea and watched as the old man prepared it with one hand while still holding the tray with his other. “Why don't I just put it down over here,” he said. “And you can sit right down.”

“Morning, Mr. Chief Justice,” said the President. “Louise,” he added, waving away the woman he had been talking to, “get that done right now, hear.” Turning back to Warren, LBJ frowned and curled his lips like he was trying to dislodge something stuck between his teeth. “You give any more thought to what we talked about yesterday?”

“Well,” Warren answered, looking in the direction of the two younger men. “I'm not sure if . . .”

“Hey, Gene,” the President shouted across the room. “You and whatshisname want to find something useful to do?” He chuckled and they smiled as they left. “Thanks, boys,” he said as they shut the door behind them. It was hard to believe the funeral for the slain President was only hours away.

“Mr. President, I've been unable to change my thinking on this matter . . .”

“Look here, Earl,” said Johnson, his demeanor radically different from the day before. “I don't know who the fuck killed Jack Kennedy. I'd swear it was those goddamn Cuban sonsofbitches, if somebody could get me anything on it, any evidence at all. Kennedy tried to kill him—Castro, you know that? More than once as I hear it. Shit, too bad it didn't work. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that damn sonofabitch Castro just had enough of it. You know—fuck me? Fuck you! And just had him blown away, shot down. The President of the United States. And in Texas to boot, just to make me look bad!” President Johnson grumbled, something Warren couldn't make out, then he took a deep breath and appeared to gain control of himself once more. “Like I said, Earl, I just plain don't know. It could have been anybody, from anywhere, for any damn reason. Christ, ain't nobody knows who did it! I've asked. I've asked 'em all—FBI, CIA, Joint Chiefs. I'd ask the damn tooth fairy if I thought she could tell me something. No one's got an answer worth shit. I'll tell you what we do know. What we do know is that Lee Harvey Oswald is taking the fall on this and he's already put dead and gone. The American people will be reassured that the man who killed their President was caught and that he acted alone. You got that? I mean A-L-O-N-E, alone, by hisself! Maybe he was crazy, maybe not. I don't give a flying fuck. But he was alone! Do you hear me?” Earl Warren heard him. He heard him loud and clear. “I ain't taking the country down that road to ruin,” the President continued. He rose from his chair and walked around the desk and right over to where Warren sat. He stood directly above him, looking straight down into his face. “If people can't be told what happened—by their government—and damn well believe it, then how the fuck are we gonna make them believe anything else? Goddamnit, Earl, we run this country because people think we know what the fuck we're doing! And you're gonna help make sure it stays that way. Do you understand me?”

Earl Warren took a deep breath and agreed to head a Commission that would bear his name. He thought about Judge Sarah Hughes for just a moment. Maybe she didn't get such a bad deal after all.
My God!
read the entry in his diary.
Did Oswald act alone? As Johnson spoke to me, a chill ran up my back. My heart beat so fast I thought it would burst. Oswald may have had nothing to do with this!

In a private conversation eight and a half years later, preserved on a tape from May 1972, and never meant for public disclosure, President Johnson's successor, Richard M. Nixon, said of the Warren Commission report,
“It was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated.”

PART ONE

Well searching/Yeah I'm gonna searching/

Searching every which-a-way yeh yeh.

–Leiber & Stoller–

“It's my nephew,” she said.

Walter and Conchita Crystal had strolled to the end of the pier. No ferry was in dock. No crowd of tourists waited for their return trip to St. Thomas. They were alone. The sun was high in the sky, very hot. Walter wore a plain, brown baseball cap, one without writing or a logo. It was a soft cap. It hugged the contours of his head closely. The brim kept the sun from his eyes and his long hair covered his neck. Conchita looked at him. Sensitive as she already suspected him to be, she saw too a roughness about Walter Sherman, an appealing and attractive independence to his personality, a streak of unpredictability coinciding amicably enough with an obvious strength of character.

“Do you remember Charles Bronson?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“You remind me of him.” She smiled, this time almost as an afterthought, and sheepishly looked away, giggling. Had she known Bronson? Had she liked him? Walter didn't know if she meant it as a compliment or not. He wasn't sure himself. Charles Bronson?

“What about your nephew?” he asked.

“He's not safe. He's in great danger.”

“I thought you said this was a matter of your life and death, Ms. Crystal.”

“Please call me Chita.”

“I'm not sure I know you well enough, yet.”

“Well, whatever you prefer. It is a matter of life or death for me. I'd die if anything happened to him.”

“That doesn't exactly qualify, you know. But I'm already here, aren't I? Why don't you tell me what it is that's on your mind. Maybe you'll find a way after all to make it fit.”

She began at the beginning—her beginning. At first, Walter wasn't sure why. Conchita Crystal, she told him, was born Linda Morales, to a single mother in Puerto Rico. Her mother gave her up at birth. She had been a sickly baby. Particularly disturbing was a skin condition that looked awful and smelled worse. When she told him that, Walter was hard pressed not to blurt out how beautiful her skin was now, like creamy caramel or café latte, and how wonderful she smelled. He almost did, nearly started to, but caught himself just in time. Her skin, she said, did not begin to clear up until she was almost nine years old. Thus, the youngster Linda Morales was not an attractive product on the adoption market. She kicked around foster homes until landing in an orphanage, that passed for a Catholic Church school, near Ponce, Puerto Rico. Four years later, at fifteen, she ran away, somehow survived on the streets, and found her way into the music and club scene of San Juan. It went without saying—and she didn't say it to Walter—that Linda Morales must have been quite a beauty, easily able to look grown-up even at that tender age.

The rest Walter knew as well as anyone who ever read a paper, looked at a fashion magazine, saw a movie, watched TV or listened to the radio. By seventeen, the girl who had been Linda Morales had become Conchita Crystal, Latin pop singing idol. By twenty she was a leading model, admired by teenage girls and young women the world over and dreamed of by teenage boys and many men much older. The little girl no one wanted, the one who looked terrible and smelled bad, was now desired by everyone. She married twice, both times in her twenties, and over the years Conchita Crystal was publicly involved with at least a dozen movie and rock stars. She was a favorite of the show business tabloids. For three decades they proclaimed exclusive, inside information about her rumored affairs, broken marriages, secret marriages, and painful disappointments. If she had been pregnant half as many times as
they
said she was, it would have been a miracle, much of it immaculately conceived. Almost nothing written about her was true. The fact was she had never been pregnant and never had a child. Of the men she was publicly involved with, many were strictly business, all done for the publicity. Of course, some relationships were real. Telling the difference, in the press, was a task. Her most private attachments, including one that began in her late twenties and continued to this day, were just that—private. She worked hard and spent a lot of money to keep them that way. Walter assumed she had a private, personal social life and further assumed neither he nor the press knew anything about it. Whoever he was, lucky man, he thought.

The movies made her a superstar at barely twenty, and despite the remark she made to Walter back in Billy's, he knew her popularity was still extraordinary. Sure, she didn't work as often or as hard as she used to, but after all, he figured, she's no kid anymore. Plus, the stories of her wealth were legendary. And while the stories of her spending were also, surely she didn't have to work at the pace she once did.

“Very impressive,” said Walter, when it appeared she was finished. “And a story I'm not surprised to hear. Even from a distance you've always seemed like a strong woman. You must have been a strong girl too.”

“I looked for my mother,” Conchita Crystal said. “I searched everywhere. I hired people who combed records, anything, anything at all, to tell me about my mother. I should have known about you then.” Walter saw tears dripping from her right eye, sliding down the bridge of her nose. Another tear swelled up in the corner of her left eye. She sniffled, the back of her index finger rubbing across her upper lip. It brushed gently against her nostrils.

My God,
he said to himself, temporarily oblivious to the seriousness of the moment.
This is one beautiful woman.

She never found her mother, she said. Perhaps she died. Perhaps not. But Linda Morales did discover who her mother was and along with that revelation came the knowledge she had an older brother and two older sisters—all of whom had been abandoned as well. Chita spent years tracking them down. She found her brother first and then one sister. Both have been well taken care of and she remained close with each of them, she told Walter. The last one Conchita Crystal finally located was her oldest sister, Elana Morales.

“She died,” said Chita. “Actually, that's what made it possible for me to find her. That's how we found her. When she died one of the people helping me came to me with the information. I never got to see her, to meet her. And she was my sister.” Once more there were tears. This time Walter reached into his pocket and handed her one of Billy's bar napkins he had there.

“Thank you,” she said. “Elana never married, but she had a son. She took the father's name, for her son too, of course. Levine. Not easy for me to find. Levine. Lots of them and they're not supposed to be Puerto Rican, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Walter said.

“He's a nice young man, a wonderful person. He's my sister's boy and I love him as I would have loved her. Now, he needs my help. That's why I've come to you.”

Walter did not ask how she found him. They all found him the same way. Who she reached out to was of no interest to him.
They
knew he was here for them. Until he retired, that is. Conchita Crystal was not the richest, certainly not the most powerful person to ever seek him out. And, as well known as she was—worldwide—even she might have been surprised to learn, not the most famous either. But Walter was sure she was the most beautiful.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

With that most simple of invitations, Conchita Crystal proceeded to tell Walter a story so absurd and incomplete, so filled with holes he had to remind himself several times not to completely dismiss its credibility before she finished. Her nephew, Harry Levine, had the written confession, she said, of the man who killed John F. Kennedy.