The Kennedys 28 results

A train pulls out of the station

Mob Rule: Part 26 With a cigar and a stiff drink, Jack boards the Kennedy campaign train with full knowledge the contest won't be won on merit   By John Armstrong They cheered and jumped up from their chairs. Someone stuck a cigar in my mouth, and several of them called out “Speech! Speech!” Someone else began filling the whiskey glasses and stuck one in my hand. Bobby held his hands up for order and got nowhere. Finally Joe stood up behind his desk. I didn’t know he actually could but then I saw he was using his arms only to support him. “Order – Order, goddamnit!” Joe was used to being listened to, and it worked both ways – people were used to listening to him.  They settled down but stayed standing, all smiles and backslapping and handshakes. You’d have thought I’d already been elected, I thought. Then I corrected myself – as far as the old man and his cronies were concerned, I had. I wasn’t to be elected; I was going to be installed. It ...

The Man Who Would Be King

Mob Rule: Part 25 After receiving an offer that could put him in the Oval Office, Jack takes a moment to reflect on the big picture, and the twisted route to power By John Armstrong Well, of course he is. Why not? My grandfather wants to drag the country back into the Dark Ages and he sends the daughter of the Prime Minister of England to seduce me so I can become president. Let’s not even mention this is the country we fought a war with to gain independence from in the first place, and now they’re the allies of the new revolution. You’ve heard the expression, “the mind reels”?  Let me assure you that it does, and “reel” is scarcely the word for it. Mine was doing the Lindy Hop, as demonstrated by spastics. “Your father is the prime Minister of England,” I said. “Yes, he is,” she replied. “Edmund Hilliard, the Progressive Conservative party.” “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? What’s a ‘progressive conservative’ believe in?” ...

Jack be nimble, or be dead

Mob Rule: Part 24 They’d been playing me, but why they bothered I didn’t understand. If they knew I was working both sides why all this subterfuge, pretending they wanted me in their conspiracy. President? The only thing I was going to have in common with Lincoln and Washington was being dead.   By John Armstrong Vanessa must have been waiting right outside the door. She came in and sat down, looking a little bit wary, or maybe cautious is the better word, like someone investigating noises in the basement. If she expected some kind of eruption from me she’d have to wait. I was still trying to find a way to grab hold of reality and climb back on as it went whirling past me. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach without warning. I couldn’t breathe and my sense of time went screwy, everything gone into a sort of dreamy, slow motion but at the same time my brain was racing, a hundred miles an hour. It was the exact same feeling I remembered from the only ...

The end game and the Oval Office

Mob Rule: Part 23 Jack sits down with Bobby and Joe and a clutch of white-haired power players to discuss the prospect of a Presidential bid By John Armstrong I would have been less shocked if I were at an audience with the Pope and he winked and said, ‘Will you look at the knockers on that one?’ I choked on my drink and spat a mouthful up onto my jacket. When I stopped coughing they were still sitting there, waiting for me to say something. I dabbed at myself with a hanky. No one was laughing. Neither was I. “What the hell are you talking about,” I said. It seemed to me a very reasonable question. Bobby looked at his father and Joe nodded at him to go on. “Jack, we’re not saying that the old government was a good one, but it was at least a democratically elected one and this country was founded on the principle of every man having a say in how he’s governed. One man, one vote. That’s something that everyone here feels very strongly about.” He put ...

Mob Rule: Part 22

The Noblesse Oblige Jack learns the financial details of the family business, but he can't shake the feeling he's being groomed for something bigger By John Armstrong We didn’t go boating the next day after all. Bobby wanted me to go over some things with him and by late morning we’d been through a forest’s worth of paper; reports, earnings sheets, cost analysis breakdowns and just about everything else you can use to give a man headache and eyestrain. It was more of what I’d gone over the day before and it all added up to what I already knew, but I said nothing. I needed to see what it led to and we’d get there when Bobby decided we would. When we finished with that he wanted me to come downtown with him and we ended up on a tour of developments the family already had underway and these were all of a kind, too; the family hadn’t kept all the loot they’d taken in, by any stretch. They’d done many good things with it and were doing more – hospitals and schools ...

Mob Rule: Part 21

A Special Appearance Just when he's trying to be icy, Jack returns to the Compound to find Ethel, Bobby and a familiar face that's making him flush with warm feelings By John Armstrong It was near dark when I pulled into the big circular drive in Hyannis and the outside lights were already on, flying bugs and spring moths clustered around them, elbowing each other out of the way in their rush to be burned alive. I put the Buick back in the garage and hung the keys up. There were voices from the back patio and I walked back to say hello. Vanessa was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs with a tall glass in her hand, talking to Ethel in the chair beside her. Then she looked up and saw me. She ran to me and I just stood there, dumb. Over her shoulder I saw Bobby laughing. “Close your mouth – you’ll swallow a fly.” I realized my mouth really was open. I’d been about to say something but nothing came out. I still couldn’t come up with anything better than, ...

Mob Rule: Part 19

Route 1 to the heart of darkness Jack settles back into the Kennedy cottage where he gets a warm welcome from Bobby and gets a good look at The Grandfather: Joseph P. Sr. By John Armstrong It was as quiet as New York ever gets on the way out of the city and traffic was light when we got onto US 1 headed south. The freeway runs over top of what was the original Boston Post Road, three hundred years old under its modern surface and ironically, that cement and tarmac was poured and paid for by the Kennedys at their end and the New York Families at ours, our respective crews meeting in the middle somewhere. I remember that because it was one of the illustrations of how a closed economic system works, back in college. We collect our tribute from the people and in return, we have to keep things working, such as roads. Plus, it’s a basic cost of business. Where would we be without transportation? Or sewers, or whatever. Say we have a contract to let for 100 miles of freeway ...

Mob Rule: Part 17

Old money and mirrors When the interrogation of hostile foot soldiers yields no information, Jack is asked to go undercover at the Kennedy compound in the hopes of getting actionable proof about who's behind the truce-breaking violence By John Armstrong It’s hard to believe that anyone actually enjoys torturing a man but by the time you reach manhood you learn that many things are true which you may not care to believe. Fortunately, we didn’t need to tie anyone to a chair and stick things under their fingernails to get what we wanted. The captured gunsels had no reason not to talk. The ones we’d brought in from Queens were all from the Lucchese Family. I sat in on one interrogation that was more like a friendly chat among guys waiting for their cars to be fixed at a muffler shop.  But why shouldn’t it have been, really? They’d done their job bravely, now it was over and we harbored no real animosity to each other. People say, “Oh, they’re so cold. They can ...