by James R Benn
That unleashed a torrent of parental pride. He had a daughter about to complete nursing school who’d already volunteered for the Army Nurse Corps. His son was in the navy, serving on the USS Little, a destroyer transport in the South Pacific. Kaz cautioned the congressman and the reporter that the whole thing was not yet for release, and dutifully wrote down the names of the politician’s two kids, Kennedy offspring long forgotten.
“Thanks,” I whispered, after the ride had smoothed out and the congressman was cutting ZZZs. “Good story.”
“I thought it preferable to you punching the gentleman,” Kaz said. “Now tell me, what is it with the Boyles and the Kennedys? What sort of feud do you have going?”
The congressman yawned and his eyes opened. I wondered if he’d heard the magic word.
“Later,” I said. “It’s a long story.” I closed my eyes and tried to forget I’d ever heard the Kennedy name.
Chapter Four
We parted ways with the congressman in Cairo where we were rushed aboard a Stirling transport aircraft, its four engines warming up as we boarded, holding onto our hats against the prop wash. The door shut tight behind us as the pilot began taxiing down the runway even before we could grab the last two seats, nowhere near each other. Conversation wasn’t in the cards, so I focused on ignoring the glares from a couple of British generals and a gold-braided admiral. Or he might have been the doorman from the Copley Square Hotel, it was hard to say. Cairo became Karachi, where we dined on Spam sandwiches and tea as the Stirling was refueled for the southerly hop along the coast of India to China Bay in Ceylon. Kaz chatted with a general whose son had attended the same college at Oxford as he had. Of course, Kaz knew the kid and that loosened the general up. A hip flask made an appearance, but before it could make it in my direction, we were off again. I slept the length of the Indian subcontinent.
The rains hit as soon as we landed in Ceylon. The China Bay airstrip was next to the harbor, and we were scheduled to take a Sunderland flying boat as soon as the weather cleared. We ran from the Stirling to the nearest Quonset hut, musette bags held over our heads against the downpour. It didn’t help.
“It is monsoon season,” Kaz said, shaking off the wet as we made for the tea kettle and tray of cheese sandwiches. We were the only passengers on the next leg of the journey. The Sunderland was flying reconnaissance, on the lookout for Japanese naval forces from Java or Sumatra making a run to the Indian Ocean. “We may as well settle in. I doubt they can take off in this weather.”
“It’s a flying boat, Kaz,” I said, dumping sugar into my tea and grabbing a couple of sandwiches. “A little rain shouldn’t bother a Sunderland.” It was actually a lot of rain, as if the earth had turned upside down and the oceans were being emptied on our heads. Kaz wasn’t fond of rough seas. “I’m sure we’ll have to wait for a while, if only so we won’t get swamped being ferried out to the Sunderland.”
“Let us talk about something else, Billy,” Kaz said as he sipped his tea. “Tell me about the Kennedys, now that we are away from prying ears. How did this enmity begin?”
“Okay,” I said, glancing at a couple Royal Air Force officers in the mess hall and the few stewards cleaning up. No one was paying us any mind. Plus the drumming rain kept a beat on the Quonset hut roof that made it impossible to hear a conversation two yards away. Perfect conditions for talk of Kennedys, Boyles, and bootlegging.
“It was 1929,” I began. “My dad had finally made detective. He’d been on the force for ten years and it was a big deal to make the grade to plainclothes detective. He said he’d never dreamed of a big Irish lug like himself dressing up in a suit and tie every day. I told you how he got into the department, didn’t I?”
“Yes, the great Boston Police Strike of 1919,” Kaz said.
“Yep. Over a thousand rank and file walked off the job,” I said. “A new recruit was still making only two bucks a day, the same wage as sixty years before.”
“It seems the strike was justified,” Kaz said. “Although it must have been illegal.”
“It was,” I said. “And the sad truth is they all lost their jobs when Governor Coolidge broke the strike with the National Guard. The police commissioner fired those who had gone off the job and hired fifteen hundred new cops.”
“Your father and uncle among them,” Kaz said. I guess I’d told him the story before. Maybe a few times, now that I think about it.
“Yeah. Them and hundreds of other veterans who’d just returned home from France. Most of them Irish, since it was hard to find work when you spoke with a brogue and had a moniker from the auld sod. Dad would have been glad to get work in a factory or digging ditches, anything to put food on the table. Instead, he and Uncle Frank wound up bluecoats, and worked hard at it. Frank had made detective the year before, working vice out of the downtown headquarters.”
“What was your father’s assignment?” Kaz asked. This was territory I hadn’t covered before.
“He was warming a chair in the commissioner’s office,” I said. “Awaiting a transfer, learning administration and procedures, that sort of thing.” Dad had alluded to a payoff in order to land a plumb assignment like homicide, but I could never get any details out of him. I never even knew if he’d been assigned to the commissioner because he’d paid up or had refused to.
“It is hard to imagine your father as a police bureaucrat,” Kaz said, “after all you have told me about him.”
“It didn’t last long, not after the prohis showed up.”
“Pro-hee? What is that?”
“No, Pro-heez. Short for Prohibition agents, from the US Treasury Department,” I explained.
Kaz smiled as he sipped his tea. “You Americans do not like your words overly long, do you?”
“We’re too busy for big words, Lieutenant Kazimierz,” I said, drawing out his last name for as long as I could manage. “But since we’re grounded here, I’ll take my time. You’ve heard of Eliot Ness?”
“Yes, of course,” Kaz said. “The Untouchables. Chicago, Al Capone.” Kaz loved American gangster movies and especially slang associated with mobsters. Otherwise he was pretty much of an egghead. An armed and deadly egghead, that is.
“Same bunch. The Bureau of Prohibition sent a squad to Boston with orders to cooperate with visiting agents from the Canadian Royal Commission on Customs and Excise. Taxmen, just like the US Treasury boys. Since they were on our turf, someone had to be assigned to them.”
“Your father,” Kaz said. “Because he was the least senior detective. No one else wanted to be associated with the prohis.” I could tell Kaz liked the new slang.
“Yep. Local cops used the Prohibition laws when it suited them. If it would help to nab a mobster, fine. But no one wanted to bust open barrels of beer and keep honest folks from a little relaxation. But the Treasury men from the Bureau of Prohibition, they had a calling, all right.”
“They were simply upholding the law, Billy,” Kaz said.
“A ridiculous law that made gangsters rich and politicians more crooked than ever. But you’re right, the law is the law, and Dad was told to help the Canadians and the prohis any way he could. Since it was his first assignment, he figured he had to do a decent job if he wanted to make a name for himself.”
“Without overdoing things,” Kaz said. We both turned to look outside as the rain drumming on the metal roof lessened. It was still coming down heavily, but a sliver of light gleamed at the horizon.
“Now you get the picture,” I said. “He had to walk a tightrope. Especially when the Canadians explained what brought them to Boston.”
“Let me guess,” Kaz said, lowering his voice. “Joseph Kennedy.”
“On the money,” I said. “They were after him for unpaid liquor export taxes. They had his name on a few shipping documents, but had no conclusive evidence. The prohis had their eye on him as well, but had even less evidence.�
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“But there was no Prohibition in Canada,” Kaz said. “Surely an American could be in the liquor business there.”
“Yeah, and he was. Kennedy owned a liquor distributor called the Silk Hat Cocktail Company out in Vancouver, British Columbia. They exported liquor overseas and paid the export tax. The excise agents said they suspected some of the ships never left port. Instead of steaming off to Mexico or Japan, the skipper would simply dock at another berth and unload directly onto trucks.”
“Which would then smuggle the alcohol across the border,” Kaz said, staying one step ahead.
“Right. Nice and clean. That way the books balanced. Then Kennedy got greedy, according to the Canadians. Their theory was that he’d set up operations on the East Coast, bringing in booze on small boats, skipping the fiction about legal exports.”
“What evidence did they have?” Kaz said.
“Not much at first. Kennedy did supply all the booze for his Harvard class’s tenth year reunion in 1922. Cases of the stuff. That brought him to the attention of the Treasury boys, but even they couldn’t go up against that kind of influence. Half the guys at that reunion had enough cash and clout to shut down any investigation. But when the Canadians came calling with a lead a few years later, it was a different story.”
“How so?”
“It was an open secret that toughs from Southie—the Gustin Gang—were bringing in booze from ships out in international waters.”
“Rumrunners, yes?” Kaz asked.
“That’s what they were called,” I said. “Small, fast boats that could be beached and unloaded easily. The Gustin Gang—named after the street where they hung out—distributed to speakeasies all over Boston. Then they decided there was an easier way to do business.”
“What?” Kaz asked.
I smiled, challenging him to figure it out.
“Easier than unloading from ships at sea,” he said, thinking out loud. “While still ending up with the liquor. Of course! Steal it from other gangs, yes?”
“I’ll make a cop of you yet, Kaz. Or a criminal. Hard to say which we are, in this business. Yeah, the Gustin boys started knocking off rival shipments. Worked great for a while, but then the other gangs began to fight back, and soon no one was getting their booze.”
“There must have been angry customers,” Kaz said.
“As well as angry mob bosses. The big guys, not street thugs like the Gustins.”
“Let me guess,” Kaz said. “Someone was eliminated.”
“Well, yeah, but how? The gangs had already been fighting, but no one had scored a knockout blow.”
“Hmmm,” Kaz said, drumming his fingers on the table. “I have it! A sit-down, yes? Is that not what a meeting among gangsters is called?”
“Yep. An Italian gang offered to arrange it. Frank Wallace and Dodo Walsh were offered safe passage to discuss a truce. They were gunned down as they walked in. That’s a Mafia truce. Hard to argue with it.”
“This is a fascinating story, Billy, but what does it have to do with the senior Boyle and Kennedy?”
I was about to get to that when an RAF officer came for us. The rain was pelting down, but the sky to the east was clearing, and that was where we were going. I was groggy from too much time in the air and not enough sleep, but I was aware enough to understand what that meant. The wide Pacific Ocean and a new enemy, one even more alien than the Germans. All of Europe could be swallowed up and vanish in the broad stretches of sea and sky conquered by the Japanese.
“To be continued,” I said.
Chapter Five
The Sunderland was like a flying house. It came equipped with bunk beds, a galley, and indoor plumbing. Even with all the creature comforts, Kaz was not feeling his best as the plane wallowed in the swells waiting for takeoff. When the four powerful engines finally started up, the hull slamming against waves as we built up speed, he crawled into the sack and groaned for the next hour when he wasn’t swearing in Polish. I don’t speak Polish, but I know a curse when I hear it.
The flight itself wouldn’t have been too bad if the pilot had climbed above the clouds. But we’d hitched a ride on a reconnaissance mission, which meant the Sunderland had to fly low enough to scan the ocean waters for Japanese ships or a submarine cruising on the surface. Winds buffeted the fuselage, rattling and shaking the aircraft, vibrating the metal hull until I thought the rivets might pop out. I followed Kaz’s lead and crawled into a bunk, keeping my curses to myself. Some were aimed at the weather, but mostly I cursed the fates that had brought the Kennedys back into my life.
I’d had enough of Jack back in Boston, and would’ve been happy if our paths had never crossed again. But now he needed me, so here I was, flying around most of the world to smooth things out for the skinny little bastard. Again. I’d begun the story of how the Boyles and the Kennedys first came into contact, and as soon as Kaz was back on solid ground, I’d finish it. But I wasn’t sure about my story. Jack’s story, I should say, since he always preferred to be center stage. Unless there was trouble, that is.
Truth was, I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to admit to playing the sap for a spoiled rich kid.
I awoke to a smooth ride and blue skies, the ocean dazzlingly bright beneath us. We landed in a lagoon at Keeling Island, a flyspeck in the Indian Ocean halfway between Ceylon and Australia. A barge motored out and refueled the Sunderland. As we took off, RAF crewmen watched us from the white sandy beach, palm trees swaying lazily in the breeze. What was it like to spend a war in a tropical paradise? Did they count themselves lucky, or dream of distant battles and pester their commanding officer for transfers?
“It must be teatime somewhere,” Kaz said through a yawn, startling me as I gazed out the window. He looked disheveled and even paler than usual. “I don’t think I even know what day it is.”
“Tuesday,” I said, with more certainty than I felt. We made our way to the galley and got the tea going. There are worse ways to travel.
“Finish your story,” Kaz said as he stirred milk into his tea. I dumped sugar into mine. “About your father and Joseph Kennedy. Entertain me. We still have hours to go until we land. Or whatever they call it when one of these things comes down in the water.”
“Okay,” I said, leaning back in my seat and thinking about the stories Dad and Uncle Dan had told around the dinner table. I’d been in school back then, getting my knuckles rapped by the nuns and struggling with geometry. “Dad tags along with the prohis and the Canadian excise men, getting the lay of the land. They have some decent inside dope about gangs active in hijacking trucks with both legal and illegal cargoes. So Dad figures he’ll show them where the gangs operate and maybe pick up a few leads to use after they’re gone.”
“I take it he was more interested in the hijacking of trucks belonging to legitimate businessmen?” Kaz said.
“Yes and no,” I said. As usual, explaining how things worked wasn’t as straightforward as you might expect, especially with Prohibition thrown into the mix. “A lot of the guys involved in rum-running were ordinary businessmen. Tavern owners, distributors, greengrocers. Their business had been hurt by Prohibition and they were only looking to keep their heads above water.”
“What about the rest?”
“That’s different,” I said. “The bosses at the top were the real crooks. Some were career criminals, others were rich bastards who didn’t think the rules applied to them. Rich men who didn’t think they were rich enough. They made the real money, while everyone else ran big risks for small rewards.”
“Joseph Kennedy the elder being one of those?” Kaz raised his eyebrow as he asked the question, a smile playing on his lips. I had to remind myself that Kaz himself was rich and might have heard people disparage his own family’s wealth, jealous of their comforts and prestige, back when it was possible for any Pole to be comfortable.
“Dad said the C
anadian evidence was interesting, but not enough to build a case on,” I said. “So they went to work on picking up the rest of the Gustin Gang. They were in hiding after the Mafia hit on Frank and Dodo. Frank’s brother, Stephen Wallace, was running the gang, such as it was. They were back to rum-running, bringing in bootleg booze from offshore.”
“But they had learned their lesson about stealing liquor from other gangs,” Kaz said.
“Yeah, and there were rumors the hit had been ordered from high up,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper.
“Higher than the Mafia?” Kaz asked.
I nodded.
“Kennedy?”
I shrugged. “It was a theory,” I said. “The Gustins had upset the natural order of things, drawing too much attention to what was going on. Nobody in that business likes attention.”
“Did your father ever find evidence?” Kaz said.
“He got close,” I said. “They picked up Wallace and brought him in. The prohis threatened to let him go very publicly and leak word that he’d cooperated with them. An old trick.”
“But a smart one,” Kaz said. “It must have frightened Mr. Wallace, following the Mafia hit on his brother.”
“Yes, but too smart, as it turned out. Wallace talked, and claimed he could implicate Joe Kennedy. Dad wasn’t too sure; he thought Wallace might have been trying to impress the Feds, and if Kennedy were actually involved, he wouldn’t be in contact with lowlifes like the Wallace brothers.”
“What happened then?”
“Governor Allen sent one of his men to intervene. It seems Dad and his pals were getting too close, either to Kennedy or someone else with political connections. Wallace was sprung and the whole thing was forgotten. By most people, that is.”
“Your father had threatened a powerful man,” Kaz said.
“Yep. And he paid the price. He got sent back down to the uniform division. A signal to the rest of the department: it doesn’t pay to cooperate with federal agents, not when they have their sights set on Joe Kennedy and his like.”
