The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [247]
Jack would not have been a Kennedy man if he had not wanted to carry on his line, and it had been painful that it was proving so difficult for him and Jackie to have a child. It was both a relief and a blessing when, on November 27, 1957, Jackie gave birth by cesarean section to a squalling baby girl who her father declared was “as robust as a sumo wrestler.”
“She’s easily the prettiest baby in the room, don’t you think,” the proud father asked the nurses. Jack took his friend Billings to the nursery at New York’s Lying-in Hospital and stood looking at the newborn through a glass window. “Now, Lem, which one of the babies is the prettiest?” he asked his friend, seeing no need to point out the obvious. Jack’s mother-in-law, Janet Auchincloss recalls that, when Lem made the mistake of pointing out another baby, Jack “didn’t speak to him for three days.”
Soon after the baptism of Caroline Bouvier Kennedy three weeks later at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Jack and his favorite carousing buddy, George Smathers, headed off to Havana for the first of two trips there. They were accompanied on one of their Cuban trips by Bill Thompson, who was often around Jack when pleasure was the aim.
The Cuban capital was a corrupt, lascivious place, the product in part of an unholy alliance among President Fulgencio Batista, American business interests, and American mobsters. Jack had seen that the deadly hand of colonialism and neocolonialism was losing its grip all over the world and that America should stand with the rising forces of nationalism. By that measure, Jack should have supported the students at the University of Havana who had been bludgeoned when they protested the increasingly totalitarian regime. Jack, however, joined the millions of Americans visiting Havana to gamble at the casinos, drink Cuba libres, and, by their presence, help to sustain the dictatorship.
Soon after his arrival, Jack met with Ambassador Earl Smith, a Palm Beach neighbor and the husband of one of his former lovers, Florence Pritchett. Smith was an apologist for Batista, full of tales of how the dictator was America’s stalwart friend and an implacable enemy of the leftist guerrillas in the hills. That conversation and a talk to the embassy staff were the sum total of Jack’s serious work in Cuba.
Jack was not much of a gambler, but Smathers recalled that his friend took great interest in the floor show at the Tropicana Nightclub with its parade of gorgeous showgirls and a statuesque French cabaret singer and actress, Denise Darcel, whom he managed to meet. At the Hotel Nacional’s casino, Jack had his picture taken with the manager, Thomas McGinty, who had once been his father’s bootlegging partner. A picture is evidence of nothing more than that Jack had stood next to a gangster running mob-controlled gambling, but Jack was appearing with distressing frequency among those whose hands he should not even have shaken. In February 1958, for instance, an FBI surveillance team noted that on a speaking engagement in Tucson, Jack had been accompanied to church by a man the FBI identified as a close friend of Joseph Bonnano, a top organized crime figure.
In Havana, Jack and Smathers went to visit Batista. Smathers had an amiable relationship with the Batista regime, but as a potential presidential candidate, Jack was foolish even to be there. Another of his father’s bootlegging partners, Owen Madden, had known Batista early in the dictator’s career in Cuba. Now, by his presence, Jack was giving added credibility to a dictator who kept his tenuous hold on power by a regime of increasing violence, threats, and brutal reprisals.
“Batista had a big uniform on,”