The Kennedy Connection

Home > Other > The Kennedy Connection > Page 10
The Kennedy Connection Page 10

by R. G. Belsky


  This wasn’t working out the way I had hoped. I had thought about—eagerly anticipated, truth be told—Carrie’s reaction to my big scoop. I’d reveled in the fact that she would find out about it at the same time I told Staley and how much that would piss her off. I thought it would be an incredibly satisfying moment for me. But now it didn’t seem so satisfying at all.

  “Look, Carrie, I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right, I should have told you first. I owed you that much. If it helps you feel any better, we can put your name on the byline too. The same as we did before. And I promise to—”

  “You’re an asshole, Malloy!” she said in a loud voice.

  Loud enough that other people in the newsroom looked around at us.

  Then she stormed away from her desk and out of the newsroom. I waited a few minutes to see if she would come back. She didn’t. Eventually, I walked to my own desk. I picked up Oswald’s manuscript and started reading through portions of it again for my story. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened with Carrie Bratten.

  Because I didn’t like being called an asshole.

  Because I didn’t like that she’d done it in a public setting where other people in the newsroom heard it.

  And also because—well, the thing that really bothered me the most about it all, I guess—she was right.

  Dammit.

  I had acted like an asshole.

  Chapter 18

  ON THE NIGHT I wrote the Lee Harvey Oswald Jr. story, I waited around for the first editions of the Daily News to roll off the presses and arrive in the newsroom. I picked up a copy and looked at the front page. The headline said REVEALED: JFK ASSASSIN HAD SECRET SON. Underneath that, a subhead read LEE HARVEY OSWALD JR. EMERGES IN NYC AS MYSTERY DEEPENS OVER NEW KENNEDY KILLINGS. The picture was a split of Oswald Jr. taken in his Washington Heights apartment and a mug shot of Lee Harvey Oswald himself from the Dallas police files in 1963. In big bold letters on the front page, the byline said EXCUSIVE BY GIL MALLOY and CARRIE BRATTEN.

  I read the story from beginning to end. Then I grabbed a few extra papers from the stack, stuck them under my arm, and headed for home. On the way out, one of the guys at the copy desk looked up, smiled, and gave me a big thumbs-up. “Nice story, Gil,” he said. It had been a long time since anyone at the News had said that to me. I’d almost forgotten how good it felt.

  The next morning my desk was piled high with messages from people trying to reach me. Some of them were from TV shows and magazines and even a few other newspapers that were trying to follow up on Oswald Jr. and wanted to interview me about him and the book. Other messages were from people I’d known in the past who had disappeared from my life in recent times after my career went into a tailspin after the Houston mess. People who had not only not called me since then but also had never returned my phone messages or ignored me when I ran into them on the street or at events.

  A few of the other papers in town did point out my troubled past. Without actually coming out and saying so, they tried to imply that there could be some question about the validity of my reporting because of the Houston business. But this was different from Houston. This time I had a real flesh-and-blood person I was writing about in Lee Harvey Oswald Jr. and his book about his infamous father.

  The one person I had not heard from whom I expected to was Nikki Reynolds. I figured she must be ecstatic over the story on her author. So I finally called her.

  “Who loves ya, baby?” I said when she came on the line. “Did I come through for you? Huh?”

  “Thank you, Gil,” she said, but not with a lot of emotion.

  “That’s it?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I’m not feeling the love here, Nikki.”

  “Sorry, I guess I’m still a bit stunned that this all wound up on page one like this.”

  “That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?” I said. “Lots of publicity? This is great for you, Nikki. And for your client. Hey, I’ll tell you what. Let’s go out for dinner tonight. To celebrate.”

  “I’m pretty busy right now. Some other time.”

  Except she didn’t sound busy. Just tense. Maybe even a little scared.

  “When, then?”

  “I gotta go . . .”

  “What’s wrong with you, Nikki?”

  There was a long pause on the other end.

  “Look, I probably shouldn’t say anything. But be careful, Gil. Just watch out for yourself.”

  “Careful of what? Nikki, what the hell’s going on?”

  She hung up before I could say anything else.

  I didn’t go straight home that night. Instead, I stopped at an apartment house near Gramercy Park. It was a brownstone on 19th Street between Third Avenue and Irving Place. I looked through the names on the buzzer in the lobby until I found one for Susan Endicott. Who used to be Susan Malloy. My ex-wife. I pressed the buzzer.

  A few seconds later, I heard her voice over the intercom in the lobby.

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Gil.”

  There was silence.

  “Gil Malloy.”

  More silence.

  “Your husband.”

  Still nothing.

  “Ex-husband.”

  “What do you want, Gil?”

  “I wanted to apologize to you.”

  “What exactly are you apologizing for?”

  “The last time we talked.”

  “So you’re apologizing for calling me a bitch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Apologizing for saying I ruined your life?”

  “That too.”

  “Apologizing for—”

  “I’m apologizing for everything. Can I come up?”

  It was the first time I’d been in her new apartment. We’d both found new places after we split up. Me on the Upper East Side, her in Gramercy Park, the same neighborhood where we’d lived together when we were man and wife in another lifetime. I’d driven by her place a few times but never gotten up the courage to try to go in until now.

  Some of the furniture in the living room I recognized as stuff she’d taken from our old place. Other things were new. There was a picture on the coffee table of her and a dark-haired, good-looking guy that had been taken at some kind of formal event. She was dressed in an evening gown and he was in a tux. I figured that was her fiancé. I think his name was Dave. My replacement in her life.

  Next to it was a copy of the Daily News, open to my story from today.

  I wondered if she’d been reading it when I showed up.

  Susan sat down in a chair across from me. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and didn’t have any makeup on. She obviously wasn’t expecting visitors tonight. But she still looked good. I’d almost forgotten how good she looked. It had been awhile.

  “Is that the new boyfriend?” I said, looking over toward the picture on the coffee table in front of us.

  “That’s my fiancé.”

  “Dave, right?

  “Dale.”

  “Whatever.”

  I picked up the picture and looked at him again.

  “What does he do again?”

  “He’s a commodities trader.”

  “I don’t even know what that really is. I mean, is it legal?”

  She glared at me.

  “So you guys don’t live together?” I said, putting the picture back down on the table.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. We have separate apartments right now. We’re thinking about buying a place together on Second Avenue, near Stuyvesant Town, after the marriage. We’re getting married in December. The wedding will be at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. The reception afterward is at the National Arts Club. We’ve decided on chicken as the main menu course at the reception dinner, but we’
re still vacillating between strip steak, lamb chops, or some kind of seafood as the alternate. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

  “Will I be invited?”

  She actually laughed at that one. I remembered that laugh. It was a nice laugh.

  She’d laughed like that the first time I met her. She was a young law school student interning in the Manhattan DA’s office, and I was a young reporter doing a feature on summer internships in city government. I cracked some kind of a joke during the interview, and she laughed. God, I don’t even remember what the joke was anymore, but I remember the laugh. I think I probably fell in love with her at that moment. I guess I’m just a sucker for a good audience.

  I asked her out to lunch after the interview and told her more jokes, which she seemed to appreciate. I was so impressed that I asked her out for dinner that night too. Afterward, we went back to my apartment and she spent the night. She never really left. That weekend we moved all of her stuff in. Three months later, we got married. Maybe it was too much, too soon, but—back then, anyway—it all seemed great.

  Both of our careers skyrocketed. While I was making a name for myself with page-one exclusives at the Daily News, Susan was climbing the ladder as an ambitious young lawyer at the DA’s office. From intern to ADA to senior investigator. We were the perfect Manhattan power couple back then, Susan and me. The hotshot reporter and the superstar prosecutor. Until I went and screwed everything up.

  It didn’t stop Susan, though. She kept moving up the hierarchy at the DA’s office, and she was now the right-hand person for the district attorney himself. There was even talk of her possibly running for district attorney at some point in the future when her boss decided to step down.

  All of this caused changes in our relationship. I was angry at myself, jealous of Susan for all her success, and mostly acted like a jerk until she couldn’t take it anymore. And so now here I was sitting in her apartment, looking at a picture of the man she was going to marry after me, and talking about her new life.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m not here to argue with you or give you a hard time about anything. I just felt bad about the way things went down the last time we talked. The things I said. I guess I just want some kind of closure. You mean too much to me—and I hope I mean too much to you—to leave it like that. I know we’re not ­together anymore, but we had something pretty good for a while. Something pretty special. I just wanted you to know that, and to know that I’m okay with everything. That’s all.”

  She nodded. “Interesting that you just happened to pick this day to show up on my doorstep to tell me all this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She picked up the Daily News from the table and pointed to my byline on page one. “The same day you get a front-page exclusive.”

  “What does one thing have to do with the other?”

  “That fight we had happened weeks ago. You didn’t apologize then. Or in any of the days or weeks after that. No, you wait until you’re back on top at the Daily News to try for this ‘closure’ you say you want for us. You’ve got your self-confidence back. But do you really think it makes some kind of difference to me that you’re a big man at the paper again? That’s never been what it was about for me. Sure, I like the fact that you somehow seem to have resurrected your career. But I loved you before you were ever a big-shot reporter. Remember, Gil? But that was a long time ago. And you changed. You changed long before the bottom dropped out of your life with the Houston scandal. Well, I’ve moved on with my life since then. But you’re still stuck in the same old bullshit, just like you’ve always been. I know you too well, and I know that’s the truth. You know that too. You just don’t want to admit it.”

  I didn’t stay very long after that.

  I didn’t want to argue with her anymore.

  And there wasn’t much more to say.

  And so I mumbled a few perfunctory words about it being good to see her again, gave her my best wishes for the wedding, and got the hell out of there as soon as I could.

  As she walked me to the door, Susan glanced back at the Daily News on the table where we’d been sitting.

  “Hey,” she said, “it really was a good article.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re still a helluva reporter.”

  I tried to think of a snappy comeback for my farewell line.

  But it didn’t matter.

  She’d already shut the door behind me.

  Chapter 19

  WHAT DID YOU think was going to happen with your ex-wife?” Dr. Landis asked.

  “I hoped she’d realize what a terrible mistake she had made, she’d call off her engagement to the friggin’ stock trader—Dan or Dale or Dave or whatever his name is—we’d run off and get remarried that night, and then the two of us would live happily ever after.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No.”

  “What was your motivation, then?”

  “Sex. I wanted to have sex with her one last time. Bang her all night, give her the best sex she’d ever had so she’d remember it the rest of her life. Every time she’d have sex with her husband, she’d remember what she missed out on with me.”

  “Sex? That was the real reason you went there?”

  “I told you I haven’t been with a woman in a long time. I’m ready. I’m horny as hell, or at least I was that night. I’m also pretty good in bed, if I do say so myself. I remember one time when I . . .”

  “Mr. Malloy.”

  “Yes?”

  “You didn’t have sex with her.”

  “Uh, no.”

  “And you didn’t go there to have sex with her either, did you?”

  “Well, it would have been nice . . .”

  “So—one more time—why did you go there?”

  I sighed.

  “Look, I was just feeling very good about myself because I had a front-page story in the paper. I wanted to share that with someone. And I thought about Susan. I’d always felt bad about the way it ended for us. Especially that last conversation when she told me she was getting engaged. I was at my low point then, I wasn’t in very good shape and I reacted badly. I wanted to talk to her again when I felt better about myself. I wanted her to see the real me. Not that other guy I’ve been for a while now. That’s why I went to see her that night. That’s all. And that’s the truth.”

  Landis wrote that in her notebook.

  “Once again, everything revolves around your work as a reporter. That’s how you measure everything in your life. As I’ve said, I believe that’s why you began having the panic attacks. Once you could no longer be the reporter you wanted to be, you had nothing else in your life to fall back on. Being a reporter is a very good—at times a very noble—way to spend your life. But it can’t be your entire life. Except for you it is. And somehow you need to change that. You have to build a life that’s about something more than just being an ace reporter.”

  I sighed.

  “Being a reporter was always more than just a job for me. It gave me a purpose, a meaning to my life. I felt invulnerable, I felt indestructible, I felt there was nothing I couldn’t accomplish as a reporter. It was a feeling of invincibility that stayed with me for a long, long time. Right up until Houston. And so—get ready, here comes the answer to your question—I guess that’s what I was trying to do when I went to Susan’s apartment. For just a minute there, with my article on page one and everyone telling me again how good I was, I felt the way I used to feel. I wanted Susan to see me like that again.”

  Chapter 20

  AT SIX THE next morning, I was on a flight to Dallas. I tried to get a little sleep before we landed, but I couldn’t. Just as I finally started to drift off, the pilot announced that we were making our final landing approach to Dallas’s Love Field airport.

  A half hour later, I was in a rented car
driving into downtown Dallas. The air-conditioning was going full blast, but I was still covered in sweat just from the walk to the rental agency parking lot. I remembered from my reading that November 22, 1963, had been a really warm day in Dallas too. So I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that Dallas was sweltering hot in the summer. But this summer heat was definitely more brutal than the weather I’d left behind in New York City.

  As I approached Dealey Plaza, I saw all of the landmarks I’d read and heard about all my life. The grassy knoll, the foundation of so many conspiracy theories that had gunmen firing at the Kennedy motorcade from behind the fence at the top of the incline. The highway overpass ahead that would have given Kennedy protection from the gunshots if the motorcade had been going just a little faster. And, of course, my first destination: the Texas School Book Depository, where the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald fired all the shots that killed Kennedy from a sixth-floor window.

  The Texas School Book Depository Company that had been housed there was long gone by now. A few years after the assassination, the book company had moved out. The building sat empty for a long time. There was talk of converting it to other office or warehouse space, but that never happened. It was a reminder of the worst moment in Dallas history, and many people wanted them to just tear down the damn building. But eventually the decision was made to turn it into a John F. Kennedy Museum, devoted to the “life, death and legacy” of the president. Which is what it was now, with the name of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

  The museum itself was on the sixth floor, with stores and shops on the seventh floor. Walking around in the museum was like going in a time machine back to the early ’60s. I wasn’t even around then, but I’d read so much about it and heard so many things from my father that it was fascinating to see some of this stuff come alive again at the exact spot where the JFK dream died.

  As I wandered around, I found one area that had been devoted to the location where Oswald supposedly crouched with his rifle in wait for Kennedy and the motorcade to pass by. The museum had labeled that area of the sixth floor “The Sniper’s Perch.” Standing there and looking out at Elm Street and Dealey Plaza sent a shiver through me. If Oswald had been here that day, as the Warren Commission and so many others claimed, then I was standing in the same spot where he fired at Kennedy. Now, of course, there was just ordinary morning traffic on Elm Street. But in my mind, the Kennedy motorcade—with JFK waving to the crowd and Jackie in her pink suit and pillbox hat and carrying the flowers they’d been given as a welcoming gift when they arrived—came alive for me from all the old news clips I’d seen over the years.

 

‹ Prev