Killing Kennedy

for the president and First Lady to reciprocate by inviting Aristotle Onassis to the White House next time he’s in the United States.

Now, at the White House dinner table, the First Lady’s deep tan is the most obvious reminder of her husband’s political fragility. But she seems oblivious to the pain she’s causing. Jackie defends Onassis to her husband and the Bradlees, telling them that the Greek is an “alive and vital person”—which, of course, only makes the president angrier.

John Kennedy does not know everything that did, or did not, happen on board the Christina. He does know about the massages, caviar dinners, and shots of vodka. He also understands that his wife is drawn to the Christina’s opulence and to the vast wealth of Aristotle Onassis. What the president doesn’t know is whether his wife was unfaithful, though it’s most likely that she was not, especially accompanied as she was on board by her sister, who had designs on Onassis. But the president senses that something is troubling his wife, and he has already confided to Ben Bradlee about “Jackie’s guilt feelings.”

Now he uses that guilt to his advantage.

“Maybe now you’ll come to Texas with us next month,” the president says with a cautious smile. He is determined that Jackie make this journey. And not just to answer the charges that she has seen more of Europe than of America. The First Lady is far more popular in the South than he is, particularly among female voters. Jackie hasn’t made a campaign appearance since 1960, but her presence in Texas might deflect some of the animosity surrounding the president’s visit. “Jackie will show those Texas broads a thing or two about fashion,” JFK says.

The fact is that Jackie actually wants to be at his side—no matter what. She is tired of being away from her husband.

It was in this spirit that Jackie bared her soul to JFK in a handwritten letter on October 5, shortly after the Christina put out to sea.

“If I hadn’t married you my life would have been tragic, because the definition of tragic is a waste,” she wrote in the privacy of her personal stateroom, named for the Greek island Chios. As is her habit, Jackie substitutes dashes for normal punctuation. The First Lady goes on to admit that she’s actually sorry for their daughter, Caroline, because it will be impossible for her to marry a man as wonderful as her father.

The Kennedy marriage can be restrained at times; many things are left unsaid. But on other occasions the simmering passion is so palpable that the American people sense it just by watching JFK and Jackie stand side by side. The heat between the president and the First Lady is undeniable, and that sentiment flows through her written words. Jackie writes line after line on the Christina that day, until the simple love note stretches to seven pages long.

“I loved you from the first day I saw you,” Jackie’s letter confesses. Their ten-year anniversary had been September 12. “Ten years later, I love you so much more.”

Now, two weeks later, in the White House, this man whom she so adores wants to take her on a trip to Texas. How can she possibly say no?

“Sure, I will, Jack. We’ll just campaign,” the First Lady responds. Whatever happened on the Christina is in her past. Her future is gazing at her intently with those beautiful greenish-gray eyes of his.

“I’ll campaign with you anywhere you want.”

The First Lady then reaches for her red appointment book and pens the word Texas across November 21, 22, and 23.

PART III

Evil Wins

18

OCTOBER 24, 1963

DALLAS, TEXAS

EVENING

Jacqueline Kennedy has no clue. If she could see the hell her good friend Adlai Stevenson is enduring in Dallas this balmy evening, she might not be so optimistic about making the upcoming Texas trip with her husband.

Known as “Big D,” Dallas is a dusty, dry town, miserably hot in the summer and annoyingly cool in the winter. It is surrounded by some of the most unremarkable scenery in all America. It is a hard city, built on commerce and oil, and driven by just one thing: money. The television series Dallas will one day be seen as a caricature of this fixation on garish wealth, but the real Dallas is not that different.

Fifty years from now, Dallas will be a cosmopolitan metropolis, home to a diverse population and a wide range of multinational corporations. But in 1963 the population of 747,000 is overwhelmingly white, 97 percent Protestant, and growing larger and more conservative by the day, as newcomers flood in from rural Texas and Louisiana.

Dallas is a law-and-order town. Sort of. It’s the kind of city where heavy fines on sin have driven the prostitutes to nearby Fort Worth, but one where murders are on the rise. Dallas is full of Baptist and Methodist churches, but it’s also home to a place like the Carousel Club, a downtown strip joint owned by a fifty-two-year-old suspected mafioso named Jacob Rubinstein—aka Jack Ruby—where cops and newspapermen often drink side by side.

But most of all, Dallas is a city that does not trust outsiders or their political views—–particularly those of liberal Yankees. And the local citizens are not passive in their disdain. Jewish stores are sometimes defaced with swastikas.

On this particular night, Adlai Stevenson is experiencing what some have called Dallas’s “general atmosphere of hate” firsthand. He is a devoted Democrat who ran against, and was defeated twice by, Dwight Eisenhower. Texas is decidedly not Stevenson country, even though a big crowd is now seated at the Memorial Auditorium. The