The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [481]
As Joe sat slouched in his wheelchair, even the expressions on his face appeared diminished. At times the seventy-five-year-old man seemed little more than an inert form to be hauled from bed to wheelchair and back again. Those who took care of him tiptoed around his diminished life, but in the minute circumference of his days there was little he did not see, and few nuances of life at Hyannis Port that he did not grasp.
Joe had fallen asleep for his afternoon nap when Ann Gargan awakened him. “Uncle Joe, there’s been a terrible accident,” Ann said. Joe had hardly begun contemplating these words when Rita Dallas, the nurse, took Ann’s arm and pushed her outside. A minute later she returned and stood beside her groggy charge. “Uncle Joe, it’s Wilbur,” she said, mentioning the head gardener. “He’s been hurt, but he’s all right, he’s all right.”
Joe went back to sleep. After Joe’s nap, Frank Saunders came rushing into the room, his voice charged with enthusiasm. “Hey, chief, it’s movie time!” the chauffeur exclaimed as he prepared to wheel Joe down to the private theater where he had once sat with mistresses and famous guests. Joe usually liked Elvis Presley movies, but after a few minutes of Kid Galahad, he became restless, and Saunders took him back to his room, where Joe was told his television set was not working.
As Joe lay there perusing a magazine, Eunice and Teddy burst into the room. Eunice moved toward her father, took his hand, and kissed him. “Daddy, Daddy, there’s been an accident,” she whispered, as if her words were a secret. “But Jack’s okay, Daddy. Jack was in an accident.”
Eunice did not want to say what had to be said, and then she said it. “Jack’s dead. He’s dead. But he’s in heaven. He’s in heaven. Oh God, Daddy.”
“Jack’s okay, isn’t he, Daddy?” Her father always made everything right. Teddy could no longer even pretend to pretend. He fell on his knees in front of his father’s bed and covered his stricken face with his hands. “Dad, Jack was shot,” Teddy said. “He’s dead, Daddy,” Eunice said. “He’s dead.”
Rose entered to see her husband lying there with a stony stare and a hand that beat against the sheet. “He was so angry, mad at the world for doing it again,” she later told her niece, Kerry McCarthy. “It worried me more that he was so angry. He took everyone to task, including God. I would rather have him be in pain, but his anger at the Almighty, you can’t deal with that. Only later came the pain.”
Bobby had been struck his own grievous wound, but the assailant had hit his heart, not his head, and he stumbled onward as if he had not been felled. He had always sought solace in action, and so he did now, moving to protect his brother in death as ultimately he could not protect him in life. Even before he knew that the president was dead, he called Bundy at the White House and ordered that his brother’s personal files be removed to the NSC offices in the Old Executive Office Building and kept under around-the-clock guard. He also ordered that the secret taping system be dismantled so that no one would know that the president had recorded their meetings.
Bobby set out to try to learn who had murdered his brother. His first instinct was not to seek out the assassin among America’s enemies or hidden somewhere on a list of psychopaths and the deranged. He turned toward his own government and the agency he had helped to hone into a murderous machine. He had ordered the CIA to do whatever was necessary to destroy Cuba, and the agency was ready to garrote a watchman in the night and to poison a head of state.
Bobby telephoned McCone and asked the CIA director to come over to Hickory Hill. When McCone arrived, Bobby asked him whether the CIA had killed the president. The director swore that the intelligence agency had nothing to do with the president’s death.
Next Bobby