“Known? Known about Lacey?”
“Yes. About his confession.” He watched for signs of stress in her manner, in her eyes, in the lines around her mouth, a change in her respiration. Nothing.
“Since 1968,” she said.
Walter shook his head, nodded to indicate-what? she wondered. Was he surprised? Was he impressed with such a revelation? She couldn’t tell. Almost forty years. He hadn’t expected that. Billy approached. Abby watched the two men as their eyes met. The look on Billy’s face asked if the lady was going to eat. This part of the place, the far end of the bar nearest the kitchen, appeared to be Walter’s private domain.
“Hungry?” Walter asked. “What do you like to eat?”
“Fish?” she answered, with a question of her own.
“Fish,” said Billy. “Fish is the specialty of the house. Red snapper in my own tangy mustard sauce? Seared tuna with capers on a bed of Yukon mashed potatoes? Grilled mahi-mahi served with pineapple rice and coconut shrimp? Or maybe something a little more casual, for the time of day. Grouper fingers-fish and chips?”
“That’s it,” she said. “Fish and chips and a bottle of beer.”
“Where you from?” Billy asked. It was clear to her he had only a professional’s interest in the information.
“Boston.”
“Sam Adams,” said Billy. “Good enough?”
“Perfect,” she said. Billy looked to Walter. Years of silent signals between them told the bartender to bring his friend another Diet Coke and put the lady’s order on his tab. Abby could not help but notice.
“That’s a long time,” Walter said after Billy left. “How did you find out?”
She started with Chicago. She told Walter about graduating from law school there, about her one-year tenure at Farmers Mutual Insurance Company. She came to the notice of the Attorney General, she said. That’s how she got to Washington. She put in a year on the Jimmy Hoffa Squad and then it happened-November 22, 1963. After that, all Robert Kennedy cared about was finding the one, or the ones, responsible for murdering his brother. Abby told Walter everything, unvarnished. It was really quite a treat talking to him. Walter Sherman was one person she could be sure-absolutely sure-would never breathe a word spoken between them. His own identity was so well shrouded, so carefully obscured, his history of discretion so solid. Many people, she thought, have told Walter Sherman things they would never want anyone to know. Famous and powerful people have actually told him the truth and benefited from the telling. She never considered doing otherwise.
She filled him in on her assignment to the Boston office of the Justice Department and later, when Bobby resigned from Johnson’s cabinet, her job placement as an investment banking attorney. “I had only one client,” she said. “And I never handled any investments. My job was to find out who killed President Kennedy. To help Bobby.” She stopped there. Billy brought out her fish and chips, asked if they wanted any more to drink, smiled and left.
Walter asked, “What did you discover?”
“Frederick Lacey,” she said. “A private matter.”
“Got a little out of hand, wouldn’t you say?” She didn’t. Instead, she was silent. And while she didn’t speak, Walter could see there was a lot she might have said. He saw movement in her eyes, a slight tightening in her temples, a blush in her cheeks. “Harry told me,” Walter assured her. “He told me why. He told me about Audrey Lacey.”
Abby reminded herself again, Walter Sherman was a free ride. For more than forty years she held it in, held it tight. She told no one, except Bobby. She never talked about her work, not with a single soul, not even her husband. Now, here she was, sitting in a bar in a dumpy little town on a tiny speck of an island in the American Virgin Islands. Here she was with a man who would not only listen but understand. In her life, Abby O’Malley, nee Anna Rothstein, had been nothing if not precise, specific, skilled in detail while also knowing how much was enough. For as long as she could remember, there had been few if any disparate facts she couldn’t make sense of. When she had it all together, especially in the early days with Bobby, her analysis was either conclusive or illuminating in a manner that held promise for the future. With Bobby, she loved the give and take, the teamwork, the endless gaming. Back then, she was sure she worked best working with him. And when she had, when she knew it was Lacey, it had been Bobby who told his mother. Abby couldn’t do it. He realized that and, besides, it was his job. No one else could tell her. She had lost two sons to the man. Only the third could tell a mother such a horror. Only Bobby. And soon, she would lose him too. Had she known that, she would have done anything-anything.
Then, with the Kennedy legend entrusted to Abby and Rose, both women agreed, Ted Kennedy should not know. When Rose died, the Kennedy flame was left to the care of a Jewish girl from Memphis. She was certain only four people ever learned the truth-she did, Bobby, Rose and Louis Devereaux-and a fifth, of course, if you included the killer himself, Frederick Lacey. When Bobby confronted him in London, Lacey said, quite clearly, that he had told no one. He had written it all down-his confession, his protection-but he never took anybody into his confidence. Neither Robert Kennedy nor Abby O’Malley doubted him.
And that was it, she told Walter. Since the death of Rose Kennedy, Abby and Devereaux were the only ones who knew the identity of the man who killed Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. It never occurred to Abby that Devereaux would share that information with anyone, with another woman, no matter how close he was to her.
As soon as the chunky man in the dark suit with his back to the camera shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Abby took the lead in investigating him. Every good investigator knows to start with the most obvious evidence. It’s basic. If something stares you in the face, follow it. When you have a killing, and you have a live suspect, start with him. If, as was the case with the Kennedy assassination, the suspect too is murdered, start then with his murderer. The assignment was hers before anyone heard the name Jack Ruby-before Oswald stopped breathing-almost before he hit the ground. They all saw it. Like the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in his Washington, D.C., home, and millions of Americans across the nation, Robert Kennedy’s special Organized Crime investigative team, including Abby O’Malley, watched it happen on television. She leaped from her seat, grabbed her coffee-which was old and cold, she recalled-and shouted, “I’ve got him!”
It didn’t take much to connect Ruby with the mob, she told Walter. He was tied in half a dozen ways. The biggest, of course, was his business. The nightclub in Dallas owed a lot of money to the Chicago family headed by Johnny Rosselli. Jack was behind in his payments. Not a good thing, for him. He was in over his head and to make matters worse, he had cancer. Anthony Rocco, a capo in the Chicago gang, known to his associates as T Rock, approached Jack Ruby. The deal he offered would wipe out Ruby’s debt and net him fifty thousand dollars on top of it. Abby reminded Walter that fifty thousand dollars in 1963 was like a half million today, maybe more. Jack Ruby had a short time to live and this was a way he could take care of his own. When he was told what was expected of him, he never hesitated. Everyone concerned figured Ruby to be a dead man over this. After all, he was supposed to kill someone in police custody. He would be going into Police Headquarters in Dallas, guns blazing. The necessary arrangements would be made to give Ruby access to his target-more than a few Dallas cops got paid for that one- but no one could protect him afterward. The cops would shoot back, wouldn’t they? Part of the deal even? He didn’t mind. The cancer was taking him out anyway. As soon as Oswald was captured, Jack Ruby got a call telling him where to be and when to be there. He was on time. He shot Oswald as planned and, fortunately or not, he was not killed in a hail of bullets from the Dallas Police. He was captured and he kept his end of the bargain until the end. Tracking Ruby’s movements were easy, Abby said, and the key was the timing. “You see,” she told Walter, “ T Rock met with Ruby the day before the assassination.”
Walter listened. He asked no questions, but his interest was evident, his attention riveted. Abby continued. She knew the mob had not ordered the hit on the President because they would never use a patsy like Oswald or a cutout like Jack Ruby to clean up at the end. That’s not the way they worked and Abby knew it. Had it been them, they would have left no loose ends, no errant strings to pull, and no civilians in their wake. Someone else had killed JFK, and somehow managed to get the Chicago organized crime family to eliminate the fall guy. Abby traced Anthony Rocco to a meeting, a full week before November 22, with a man named Angelo Francese. The aged Francese was well known to be capo de capo, answering only to the Don whose family ruled in Naples, Italy. The meeting in New York had been arranged, as a gesture, by the Costello family. Once she had the meeting confirmed, Abby told Robert Kennedy. Why, she wanted to know, would T Rock from the Chicago mafia meet with someone from Italy, someone from the old country, someone so high up? And why would they meet in New York?
Bobby leaned on his father’s contacts on the East coast, Abby told Walter. A face-to-face was arranged for
