CHAPTER 2: DUCK & COVER (Part 2)

    Duncan woke an hour before his alarm would have gone off on Sunday morning, giving him time to buy seven different papers at the corner news stand and go over them while he watched “Meet the Press.”  The NBC show featured Attorney General Robert Kennedy.  “We are keeping all lines of communication open between the various law enforcement jurisdictions,” he told moderator Ned Brooks.  “At the same time, the Justice Department, working with Mr. Hoover’s FBI, has begun its own internal investigation.”

    The highlight to the show was Brooks’s question, “What did you and the President discuss when you first talked?”

    Bobby Kennedy paused.  “My only concern was his safety,” he said to Brooks.  “And his was that the American people should pray for Governor Connally and Special Agent Hill.  And later, of course, Officer Tippit.”

    Duncan enjoyed the show even though he wished he knew what was going on behind the scenes.  But he needed to be at St. Matthew’s Cathedral on Rhode Island Avenue within the hour.  The Kennedy family worshiped there, and they would be out in force today.  Even in a city where skyscrapers were popping up like toadstools after a rain, the big, cross-shaped red-brick building with the weathered green copper dome was a conspicuous landmark.

    Duncan, a Methodist from Iowa, had grown up with clapboard and plain interiors in a house of worship, folding chairs as often as not--though he didn’t go to church much these days.  The mosaics, the marble, the incense, the Byzantine costumes of the priests and bishop . . . This wasn’t the Christianity he was used to. Lefkowitz probably would have wondered out loud why Bishop Hannan was wearing a yarmulke.  He’d made that crack about Catholic clergy often enough to get on Duncan’s nerves with it.

    The bishop celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving for the Kennedy family.  That was what Duncan heard it was, anyway.  The sonorous Latin also reminded him how out of place he was here.  And yet priests had been conducting this same ceremony since the days when Latin was a living language.  That was a lot of tradition.  By contrast, the simple rites he was used to felt new, homemade, American.

    When Hannan preached his sermon, he switched to a language Duncan could understand.  The reporter pulled a notebook and a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket.  “We thank God and His Son Jesus Christ and the glorious Virgin that John and Jacqueline Kennedy are preserved alive today and came unharmed through the danger they faced Friday in Dallas,” the bishop said.  “We rejoice for their sake and for the sake of the country the President leads.  While rejoicing, we do not forget the tragic loss of Governor Connally, of brave Special Agent Hill, and of Officer J.D. Tippit, gunned down while attempting to question the assassin.  Our hearts are heavy because of what they have suffered, yet also glad because, while the President and First Lady walked through the valley of the shadow of death, the Lord saw fit to spare them for further service.”

    He went on in that vein for some time.  After a bit, Duncan stopped taking notes.  He had what he needed.  The choir burst into song--in Latin, something with a lot of “Hallelujah”s in it.  When Duncan thought of a choir, he thought of a few people in rented shiny robes standing on risers.  This outfit’s shiny robes were a lot fancier than any he’d seen before.  The choir, which had to be of professional quality, was grouped to the left of the gleaming white altar.  The organ was there, too.  It was big enough to blow out the translucent windows if it ever cut loose full blast.

    John and Jackie Kennedy went up to take communion.  Bishop Hannan said something to them.  Whatever the President answered, it made the bishop smile.  JFK and his wife were also smiling as they accepted the wafers.

    Duncan was far from the only reporter in St. Matthew’s.  They all left the Kennedys alone while the President and First Lady were worshiping.  Once the Kennedys walked out, though, it was a different story.  There under the watery November sunshine, they became fair game.  Duncan wished that phrase hadn’t crossed his mind, not after what had happened--and what might have happened--in Dallas two days earlier.

    Not all the reporters came from the local papers and TV and radio stations.  A lot of them were in Washington to get everything they could on the assassination attempt--if it was one. Kennedy ignored the questions the johnny-come-latelies shouted at him. He answered some of the regular press corps, though.  The chief executive understood his relationship with the media better than any of his predecessors, even FDR.  He knew reporters wanted to be in his field of vision, literally and symbolically, and they would often slant stories to stay in favor at the White House.  JFK had created a club everyone wanted to join.

    “What did you say to the bishop?” Duncan called.

    Kennedy grinned at him.  “That I was glad to be there to listen to all the nice things he was saying about me.”

    “Do you think Oswald was trying to shoot you?”  Lucky once, Duncan waited to see if the President would answer twice.

    JFK’s grin slipped.  “Well, I don’t know what to think right now,” he said.  “Bad enough if he wasn’t, worse if he was--except for poor Governor Connally, of course.”  He crossed himself, a quick, almost automatic gesture.  “And for Agent Hill, as well.  My heart goes out to him and his loved ones.  We’ll just have to find out, that’s all.” 

    “Move back, boys!  Move back!  No more questions!  No more photos!”  The Secret Service agents around President and Mrs. Kennedy--clean-cut, faceless men in off-the-rack suits--were jumpy as a kettle of crabs.  They didn’t waste time waiting for reporters to move back.  They started shoving instead.  None of the reporters and photographers and cameramen said boo.  They knew why the men charged with protecting the President were so nervous.  Who could blame them?

    The President and First Lady got into a Lincoln limousine.  It was a closed car, not a convertible like the one in Dallas.  Never again would such an exposed vehicle be used by an American President.  Motorcycle cops fore and aft, it sped away. Watching it go, Duncan checked his watch, working out how much time he’d need to file and to pack for the flight to Austin.

        #

    Across town, just back from Dallas, Lefkowitz started his third day without more than twenty straight minutes of sleep.  Caffeine made his heart thump and stutter.  But the buzz he felt didn’t come from coffee.  The story consumed him--it would be his big break. 

    Covering the Vice President was usually a booby prize, but Lefkowitz didn’t feel that way today.  He knew FDR’s first Vice President, John Nance Garner, had declared that his office wasn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.  You were an insider if you knew that. The cleaned-up version, with spit substituting for the other bodily fluid, was in much wider circulation. 

    Getting to Johnson, Lefkowitz felt, put him right where he needed to be:  in the middle of a big story.  Yeah, he got this assignment because he was a second-stringer, but after his run-in with Oswald, he’d become part of things.  He knew that if he could get a couple of other breakers, he would solidify his jump from the city to the national desk.

    Lefkowitz needed to make some phone calls before he found out where Lyndon Johnson was likely to worship that Sunday. Everybody knew JFK was a Catholic.  Who knew--who cared--that LBJ belonged to the Disciples of Christ?  The National City Christian Church stood at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Massachusetts Avenue, across from the Luther Place Memorial Church.  It had an impressive limestone front, a tall spire, and windows of clear glass edged with stained-glass medallions.

    Looking around after he got inside, Lefkowitz saw a few other reporters.  He wasn’t totally buried by getting sent here. Other outfits thought this might be good, too.  Now all he had to do was get something they didn’t. 

    Seeing bareheaded people all around him reminded Lefkowitz he wasn’t in a synagogue.  So did hearing everything in English.  In a Catholic service, as in a Jewish one, there were parts ordinary people couldn’t follow.  To Lefkowitz, that made things more impressive, more mysterious, not less.

    The minister’s sermon was probably like every other sermon around the country that Sunday.  It thanked God for sparing John Kennedy and offered sorrow and prayers for Connally, Hill, and Tippit.  The minister didn’t try to explain why God let them die while keeping Kennedy alive.  That annoyed Lefkowitz less than he’d thought it would.  Nobody except God could answer the question, and He wasn’t talking.  Any preacher or other mortal who claimed to know was talking through his hat, as far as the reporter could see.

    Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird sat in one of the front pews.  The Vice President looked ravaged, and no wonder: Connally was one of his protégés.  Every so often, Lady Bird would touch his hand or pat him on the arm.  He kept shaking her off.  His outsized features showed outsized grief.

    As Lefkowitz studied the Vice President, he also studied how Johnson would leave when the service was over.  Where was that exit in relation to the parking lot?  The only others who seemed to be thinking like him were Secret Service agents.  About ten minutes before the service ended, Lefkowitz ducked out, telling the New York Times reporter next to him that he had to piss or explode.  He stationed himself in the corridor that led to the lot.

    A Secret Service agent told him he couldn’t stay there.  Lefkowitz held his hands high in the air, demanded to be patted down, and claimed First Amendment rights to be there.  He knew he had no right to stand in a church corridor, but the Secret Service man didn’t.  Lefkowitz won.   

    As the service ended, Lefkowitz wondered why LBJ, the most powerful man in the Senate, had wanted--by all accounts, been eager for--the number two slot on the ticket.  His main job now was waiting for a foreign dignitary to die so he could go to the funeral. Then Johnson came through.  Immediately, the Secret Service agents behind him closed the doors on the other reporters.

    “Mr. Vice President, do you have a moment?” Lefkowitz asked.

    Johnson stopped.  “Who’re you?” he growled--he hadn’t seen Lefkowitz around often enough to know him by sight.

    “Alan Lefkowitz, with the Ledger.  May I ask you a few questions, sir?”

    “Go ahead.”  LBJ’s head went up and down.  “Let’s get onto the sidewalk so we won’t block the door.”  He turned to his wife.  “You don’t mind, honey?”  Lady Bird Johnson shook her head with the resigned patience of a politician’s wife.  Talking to reporters was part of her husband’s job, even--maybe especially--at a time like this.

    Lefkowitz flipped open his notebook, poised a pencil, and asked, “How do you feel about the murder of Governor Connally, sir?”

    “I am sadder than I know how to tell you.” Johnson’s fleshy face twisted into a Texas mask of tragedy.  “He was a friend.  I’ve known him since he was a very young man, and liked him and admired him, too.  He worked for me for a spell--you’ll know that. And he made a wonderful, just a wonderful, governor of Texas.  I looked to see him on the national stage one day before too long.  I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him run for President, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him win.”

    Scribbling, Lefkowitz thought Johnson sounded like a father vicariously living through his son.  If LBJ was going to run for President, he’d have to wait till 1968.  He’d be sixty by then--not too old, but not young, either.  If he ran, he probably wouldn’t run unopposed.  Bobby Kennedy seemed unlikely to wait in line while somebody else succeeded his brother.  Bobby didn’t wait for anybody, except maybe Jack.  He was the kind of guy who got into a revolving door behind you and came out in front.

    All that was interesting, but not for today. Even the 1964 election lay almost a year away, and a politician’s year was longer than a dog’s.  Back to the business of the moment.  “His funeral is set for day after tomorrow.  I expect you’ll be there?” Lefkowitz said.

    It was not an innocent question.  His girlfriend’s friend at the White House had confirmed that the plan was for JFK to go back to Texas, and for LBJ to stay in Washington-–keeping the two men separate in case Friday’s attack was only the first.  The reporter aimed to incite the Vice President, and he did.  When LBJ said, “Well, no,” such raw, red rage filled the two words that Lefkowitz took half a step back before he could catch himself.

    “Why not, sir?”  He didn’t usually let the people he interviewed intimidate him.  Knowing Johnson had intimidated men much older and tougher than he was consoled him . . . a little.

    “President Kennedy is going down to Austin,” Johnson said heavily.  “I’ve know John Connally since 1939, and he’s going down to Austin.  Were you even born in 1939, Mr. Leibowitz?”

    “Yeah.”  Lefkowitz didn’t correct him on his name any more than he mentioned that he had his second birthday then. 

    “Okay.”  But it wasn’t okay, not to LBJ.  “‘I was there, so I’m going,’ Kennedy tells me.  I was there, too, goddammit. I’ve known John all these years, and he’s going.”  He looked ready to spit in somebody’s eye--probably Lefkowitz’s.

    “What will you be doing instead?” Lefkowitz asked.

    “They’re burying Clint Hill at Arlington Nation Cemetery--he’s an Army vet,” the Vice President answered.  “I’ll be there.  I’ve got nothing against Clint Hill.  He was a good man, a brave man.  But John Connally was my friend.  To take hind tit to that Boston son of a--”

    “Lyndon.”  Lady Bird Johnson set a warning hand on his arm.

    “I didn’t say it.  I won’t say it.”  LBJ took two deep breaths, looking for control and finally, barely, finding it.  “I sure as hell wish things could’ve worked out different, though.”

    What was it like, being an ambitious man in an administration dominated by two of the most ambitious men in modern memory?  It couldn’t be much fun, thought Lefkowitz.  Again, he wondered why LBJ wanted the job in the first place.  He almost asked--he might have got an honest, unguarded answer.  But he didn’t have the heart to push the Vice President any further.  Later, he wished he would have.  That was one mistake he wouldn’t make again.  If you were going to work in this business, you had to remember it was a business.

    All he said now, though, was, “Thank you, Mr. Vice President.”

    “It’s all right, Leibowitz,” Johnson answered, getting the name wrong one more time.  “Now run along, sonny.”  That was even worse.  His wife touched his arm again.  He turned toward her and away from Lefkowitz. 

    Lefkowitz trotted to the nearest phone booth and started dictating the highlights over the line to Callahan.  First Oswald; now Johnson.  He was on a roll. 

        #

    When Lefkowitz went back to the Ledger, Callahan met him and started dissecting what Johnson said and what he meant. “We have to be careful how he put things,” he told Lefkowitz, who knew that meant, Don’t piss off the Administration so bad that we never get back in their good graces.  Being in the doghouse with Pierre Salinger for a day or two was okay, but they still needed access.

    Duncan joined the conversation, fresh from St. Matthew’s.  This was, for all intents and purposes, the first time the two of them were together while writing under the dual byline.  Duncan felt he’d given up status in the arrangement; Lefkowitz felt he’d gained.  It colored things from the start, but both men stuck to the job at hand.  The story would be around for a few weeks, then they’d go back to their old routines.

    The writers and editor immediately agreed the story should say Johnson was disappointed at not going to Austin, but saying the Vice President was ready to punch his boss in the nose crossed the line.  Lefkowitz put in that Johnson had known Connally “since dirt,” so that had to sting.

    Duncan asked Lefkowitz if he could bum one of his Camels.  He lit it with a Zippo he’d had since the war.  He took a drag, then noted, “Even if they scheduled the funerals at different times so they could both attend, number one and number two won’t be in the same place at the same time.”

    Lefkowitz laughed:  “One of us better leave the building, Chuck.”  It didn’t get so much as a smile from either Duncan or Callahan.  Defensively, Lefkowitz said, “You go 82 hours without sleep and see how funny you are.”

    Callahan smiled.  “I have.  This is it.”  Even Duncan had to admit that the way the assignment editor said it was almost . . . funny.

    The question Duncan put to Lefkowitz brought them all up short:  “Where did you talk to him?”  Lefkowitz smugly described the hallway gambit.  Duncan nodded, but then spoke Callahan as if Lefkowitz had left the room.  “Our problem is, LBJ wanted to talk there.  His witnesses are his wife and a few Secret Service agents.  On our side, we got our man in city hall’s word on it.”

    Callahan was fast and decisive when he needed to be.  “I don’t care.  Write it up the way it was.  Leave out the bad language, but get the point across.  Blend your work together into a single piece of Sunday services.”   

    Lefkowitz wanted to be sure he was hearing straight.  “You want us to just lay it out?”
    “He knew you were a reporter, right?  He knew you were taking notes, right?  He didn’t say it was off the record, right?”  Duncan asked.  Lefkowitz nodded each time.  “Okay, then we run with it,” Duncan said.  “Let’s work at my desk.”    

     They finished in less than an hour.  Duncan looked at it through the bottoms of his bifocals.  He read fast, then nodded.  “White House will hate it, and Andy will love it.”

    Lefkowitz winced; he didn’t want Kennedy hating it.  But keeping LBJ away from his friend’s funeral felt like a nasty, petty trick.  Nobody could say anything different.  Guess JFK’s human, too.

    When Callahan got his crack at it, he read even faster than Duncan.  His pipe sent up some foul smoke signals.  “Son of a bitch,” he said.  “Now sit down and type up your exact notes.  I want ’em on my desk before you leave today.”  Callahan looked up.  “You do have good notes?”   

    “More or less,” answered Lefkowitz.  Seeing Callahan’s scowl, he shifted gears in a hurry.  “Definitely more.  It’s solid, Andy.  Every bit of it.  You’ll see.”

    Callahan reached for his blue pencil.  “Don’t write ‘at this time’ when you mean ‘now.’  Write ‘now,’ dammit.”  He cut fat like a butcher trimming a steak.  The story got better. Lefkowitz didn’t love being edited, either.  But Callahan knew what he was doing.

        #

Comments

[Terry Coleman]

Jackie would not have addressed her husband as 'John'. It would have been 'Jack' or by her pet name for him 'Bunny'. Also, how do we get the rest of the story? Thanks.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

That last note by Callahan definitely hits it on the head. I've had a few editors who were like that, and they tended to be better than the ones who tried to be your friend.