him. I'm sorry, I didn't mean any harm.' But meaning a great deal of harm was exactly what he intended as he flattened the first agent's nose with a rock-breaker of a punch. The second man went for his gun, which was fastened securely in a holster underneath the elastically controlled waistband of his Goldenaire pants. By the time the agent had his hand on the .38, Nimmo's sap was on his skull.
Leaving both men sprawled on the rooftop in the darkness, Nimmo returned to the inside of the building, his question about a shot from the highest point in the airport answered. And out on the tarmac, he mingled with the two hundred people who, even near midnight, were gathered to applaud the man of the moment, and to wave their banners: Welcome to Palm Beach' and, rather prematurely, We Love you Mister President'. Nimmo glanced at his watch and concluded that the four-engined plane taxiing noisily towards the building could hardly be John Kennedy's Convair. According to the schedule his private plane left Washington at eight thirty p.m., on a flight that took four hours. The two men standing right in front of Nimmo were real convention types - liquored legionnaires - who knew all the answers. This was not the first time they had welcomed Jack Kennedy into Palm Beach airport.
That's the press plane,' explained the fatter, more sober, uglier of these two Democrats, whose asinine, stupid, stubborn faces reminded Nimmo why a jackass was the party's symbol. It left Washington around the same time as JFK, but s'got four engines, see? That makes it faster than The Caroline. Which is what JFK calls the two- engined plane he owns. After his beautiful, two-year-old daughter. Just like her mother, too. Matter of fact, they're all beautiful. Don't you think? We love Jack Kennedy. I think everyone does, don't you? Even the folks who didn't vote for him.'
During this explanation, Nimmo recoiled from the Floridian's florid breath. This one was a real Cracker. His conversation smelled of fish, grits, and humbug.
I guess so,' agreed Nimmo, pretending to blow his nose.
The plane began to disgorge the fourth estate and its baggage, and started refuelling. Twenty-five minutes passed with the two Crackers discussing some of Kennedy's cabinet appointments, and how a new dawn was on the horizon for the people of the United States. Nimmo listened patiently, hardly worrying about the two agents he had left insensible on the rooftop. It had been dark, and besides, Secret Service agents were usually coy about their mistakes. He wondered what the two Crackers might have said if he'd told them only half of what he had learned from Mothballs about Mattress Jack. But at last a plane was heard and, at twelve thirty a.m., with the crowd cheering enthusiastically, a smaller plane landed.
It was the first time Nimmo had seen Kennedy in the cupreous flesh. The policeman's eyes saw a six-foot Caucasian male, weighing around 170 pounds, with code six eyes (blue), code four hair (reddish brown), and in his early forties. He wore a blue-grey two-button suit, a dark-blue tie, and a white shirt with narrow grey stripes. Not wearing a hat helped to make the young Senator look even younger -too young to be the President-elect of the United States. Too young, the old cop would have said, to be the President's press secretary. But for the private plane, the European cut of the suit, the Palm Beach tan, and the shit-eating grin, Nimmo would have marked Kennedy down as the kind of B-movie actor you would get to play the DA in some gritty courtroom melodrama: Dana Andrews harassed by Lee J. Cobb. Except that for once the grin was gone. And something was clearly wrong. Senator Kennedy walked rapidly from his plane into the airport building, hardly slowing to acknowledge the applause of the crowd or to shake any of the supplicant hands.
The hell's the matter with him?' complained one of the Crackers. On a goddamn holiday, too. Might have stopped to say hello. Wish us a happy Thanksgiving. Who the hell does he think put him in the White House in the first place?'
You can bet he would have stopped if there'd been niggers waiting in line,' suggested the other. Gettin' his picture taken, shakin hands with a nigger. Too good an opportunity to miss.'
Too dark,' laughed the first. Picture wouldn't ever come out. Just be him shakin' hands with two eyes and a happy smile. Sides, if that's all he wants he just has to go down to Montgomery and get on a goddamn bus. I just can't get over his behaviour. On a goddamn Thanksgiving holiday, too.'
Nimmo paid little attention to their disappointment. Instead he wondered if the Senator's concerned demeanour might have had anything to do with the incident on the airport building rooftop. Maybe the Secret Service had advised Kennedy to get his ass indoors as quickly as possible, in case some nut with a gun was out there.
Nimmo was just starting to think of going home when Kennedy came out of the building again, and marched quickly back to his own plane where he spoke to one of the pilots for a moment. Then he walked fifty or sixty yards to the press plane, and climbed aboard.
Maybe Cronkite's on board that plane,' speculated once of the Crackers. And he wants an interview.'
But a few minutes later the press plane finished refuelling and started up its four engines. By one a.m. the President-elect was airborne again, leaving some very puzzled people back on the warm ground in West Palm Beach.
Nimmo drove back to Miami, went to bed, and got up late to learn that not long after Kennedy had flown out from Washington, the pregnant Jackie had started haemorrhaging. She had been taken to Georgetown hospital where she was delivered of a son, by Caesarean section. Kennedy had simply taken the faster plane back to Washington to be at his wife's side.
One thing was now obvious to Nimmo. Jack Kennedy would be spending a lot less time in Palm Beach and a lot more time in Washington than anyone had thought.
The next two weeks passed without any action, or leads. It was a difficult time for Jimmy Nimmo and everyone who was associated with the investigation. An increasingly anxious Sam Giancana flew to New York to square things with Carlo Gambino. As a result, outfit men were sent to keep an eye on all the places on Colt Maurensig's list, and a few others besides, just in case Tom Jefferson decided to reconnoitre these locations, too: the Carlyle Hotel, on Madison Avenue, where Jack Kennedy owned a penthouse apartment and where, sometimes, he met Marilyn; Joe Kennedy's apartment at 277 Park Avenue; and the building the Kennedy family owned at 230 Park Avenue where, in suite 953, old Joe had offices that had been the Kennedy campaign headquarters during the election. There was nothing on the schedule that showed Kennedy was planning even to visit New York before the New Year, but Giancana did not want to leave any possibility untried.
Besides,' he said, it'll be next year before you know it. After January second he's there for the best part of two whole weeks. Seems to me that New York's as good a place as anywhere to hit Jack Kennedy.'
The only light relief to be had for the Chicago gangster was a telephone call from a plainly terrified Joe Kennedy who, having noticed the muscle that had started hanging around his Park Avenue addresses, now concluded that Frank Costello still bore him a lethal-sized grudge. Giancana, an old friend and admirer of Costello's, tried to reassure Bootlegger Joe that Costello was more or less retired after the Genovese family had shot him in the head, some four years earlier. But Bootlegger Joe was not persuaded, and shortly afterwards flew to Palm Beach for the rest of the month.
There was some good news from another area, however, and for which the Chicago boss gave a loud thanks in the shape of a party in New Jersey for a couple of dozen wiseguys.
In November 1957, right in the middle of the McLellan Committee hearings, the mob had held the largest sit down in Cosa Nostra history, at the one-hundred-and-fifty-acre estate of Joe Barbara in Apalachin, New York. The sit down had been raided by New York State police and US Treasury officials. Many of the leading figures in organised crime were arrested, although quite a few, including Sam Giancana, escaped. Those arrested were subpoenaed to give evidence to a Grand Jury on the purpose of the meeting. This had been a peaceful one - to avoid a war in the wake of the attempt on Costello's life, and the murder of Albert Anastasia - but no one was talking. As Johnny Rosselli had told Jimmy Nimmo, omerta was more than just a word to these men. As a result of their refusal to do anything but take the Fifth, Russell Bufalino and nineteen others were indicted and convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice. They were sentenced to prison terms of three to five years, and each was fined $10,000. On bail, they appealed, and on 28 November 1960 the judgement came down from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, reversing the conspiracy conviction for want of sufficient evidence. Giancana was jubilant.
Meanwhile, the search for Tom Jefferson continued, slowly. Paul Ianucci and Nimmo found Tom Jefferson's Chevy Bel Air with Peter Rooney's Used Cars in Tampa, and then his mother at the Elderflower Home for Elder Citizens in Intercession City, near Orlando, in Osceola County. Mildred Jefferson was not yet seventy, but she did not know what month it was, or even who had won the election. Barbara Zioncheck, the nurse in receipt of Nimmo's ten dollars and who, on a promise of ten more, agreed to call if anyone came to visit the prematurely old woman,
