The Lacey Confession

PART ONE

“It’s my nephew,” she said.

Walter and Conchita Crystal had strolled to the end of the pier. No ferry was in dock. No crowd of tourists waited for their return trip to St. Thomas. They were alone. The sun was high in the sky, very hot. Walter wore a plain, brown baseball cap, one without writing or a logo. It was a soft cap. It hugged the contours of his head closely. The brim kept the sun from his eyes and his long hair covered his neck. Conchita looked at him. Sensitive as she already suspected him to be, she saw too a roughness about Walter Sherman, an appealing and attractive independence to his personality, a streak of unpredictability coinciding amicably enough with an obvious strength of character.

“Do you remember Charles Bronson?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“You remind me of him.” She smiled, this time almost as an afterthought, and sheepishly looked away, giggling. Had she known Bronson? Had she liked him? Walter didn’t know if she meant it as a compliment or not. He wasn’t sure himself. Charles Bronson?

“What about your nephew?” he asked.

“He’s not safe. He’s in great danger.”

“I thought you said this was a matter of your life and death, Ms. Crystal.”

“Please call me Chita.”

“I’m not sure I know you well enough, yet.”

“Well, whatever you prefer. It is a matter of life or death for me. I’d die if anything happened to him.”

“That doesn’t exactly qualify, you know. But I’m already here, aren’t I? Why don’t you tell me what it is that’s on your mind. Maybe you’ll find a way after all to make it fit.”

She began at the beginning-her beginning. At first, Walter wasn’t sure why. Conchita Crystal, she told him, was born Linda Morales, to a single mother in Puerto Rico. Her mother gave her up at birth. She had been a sickly baby. Particularly disturbing was a skin condition that looked awful and smelled worse. When she told him that, Walter was hard pressed not to blurt out how beautiful her skin was now, like creamy caramel or cafe latte, and how wonderful she smelled. He almost did, nearly started to, but caught himself just in time. Her skin, she said, did not begin to clear up until she was almost nine years old. Thus, the youngster Linda Morales was not an attractive product on the adoption market. She kicked around foster homes until landing in an orphanage, that passed for a Catholic Church school, near Ponce, Puerto Rico. Four years later, at fifteen, she ran away, somehow survived on the streets, and found her way into the music and club scene of San Juan. It went without saying-and she didn’t say it to Walter-that Linda Morales must have been quite a beauty, easily able to look grown-up even at that tender age.

The rest Walter knew as well as anyone who ever read a paper, looked at a fashion magazine, saw a movie, watched TV or listened to the radio. By seventeen, the girl who had been Linda Morales had become Conchita Crystal, Latin pop singing idol. By twenty she was a leading model, admired by teenage girls and young women the world over and dreamed of by teenage boys and many men much older. The little girl no one wanted, the one who looked terrible and smelled bad, was now desired by everyone. She married twice, both times in her twenties, and over the years Conchita Crystal was publicly involved with at least a dozen movie and rock stars. She was a favorite of the show business tabloids. For three decades they proclaimed exclusive, inside information about her rumored affairs, broken marriages, secret marriages, and painful disappointments. If she had been pregnant half as many times as they said she was, it would have been a miracle, much of it immaculately conceived. Almost nothing written about her was true. The fact was she had never been pregnant and never had a child. Of the men she was publicly involved with, many were strictly business, all done for the publicity. Of course, some relationships were real. Telling the difference, in the press, was a task. Her most private attachments, including one that began in her late twenties and continued to this day, were just that-private. She worked hard and spent a lot of money to keep them that way. Walter assumed she had a private, personal social life and further assumed neither he nor the press knew anything about it. Whoever he was, lucky man, he thought.

The movies made her a superstar at barely twenty, and despite the remark she made to Walter back in Billy’s, he knew her popularity was still extraordinary. Sure, she didn’t work as often or as hard as she used to, but after all, he figured, she’s no kid anymore. Plus, the stories of her wealth were legendary. And while the stories of her spending were also, surely she didn’t have to work at the pace she once did.

“Very impressive,” said Walter, when it appeared she was finished. “And a story I’m not surprised to hear. Even from a distance you’ve always seemed like a strong woman. You must have been a strong girl too.”

“I looked for my mother,” Conchita Crystal said. “I searched everywhere. I hired people who combed records, anything, anything at all, to tell me about my mother. I should have known about you then.” Walter saw tears dripping from her right eye, sliding down the bridge of her nose. Another tear swelled up in the corner of her left eye. She sniffled, the back of her index finger rubbing across her upper lip. It brushed gently against her nostrils.

My God, he said to himself, temporarily oblivious to the seriousness of the moment. This is one beautiful woman.

She never found her mother, she said. Perhaps she died. Perhaps not. But Linda Morales did discover who her mother was and along with that revelation came the knowledge she had an older brother and two older sisters-all of whom had been abandoned as well. Chita spent years tracking them down. She found her brother first and then one sister. Both have been well taken care of and she remained close with each of them, she told Walter. The last one Conchita Crystal finally located was her oldest sister, Elana Morales.

“She died,” said Chita. “Actually, that’s what made it possible for me to find her. That’s how we found her. When she died one of the people helping me came to me with the information. I never got to see her, to meet her. And she was my sister.” Once more there were tears. This time Walter reached into his pocket and handed her one of Billy’s bar napkins he had there.

“Thank you,” she said. “Elana never married, but she had a son. She took the father’s name, for her son too, of course. Levine. Not easy for me to find. Levine. Lots of them and they’re not supposed to be Puerto Rican, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Walter said.

“He’s a nice young man, a wonderful person. He’s my sister’s boy and I love him as I would have loved her. Now, he needs my help. That’s why I’ve come to you.”

Walter did not ask how she found him. They all found him the same way. Who she reached out to was of no interest to him. They knew he was here for them. Until he retired, that is. Conchita Crystal was not the richest, certainly not the most powerful person to ever seek him out. And, as well known as she was-worldwide-even she might have been surprised to learn, not the most famous either. But Walter was sure she was the most beautiful.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

With that most simple of invitations, Conchita Crystal proceeded to tell Walter a story so absurd and incomplete, so filled with holes he had to remind himself several times not to completely dismiss its credibility before she finished. Her nephew, Harry Levine, had the written confession, she said, of the man who killed John F. Kennedy.

Sadie Fagan had a moustache. Not a thick one, dark and heavy, but noticeable nonetheless. It didn’t bother Harry Levine, until he was a teenager. Then he found it kind of creepy. Later, as a grown man, keenly aware and eagerly appreciative of the intrigues a woman’s body offered, Harry no longer concerned himself with Aunt Sadie’s mildly hairy upper lip. She was his father’s older sister, a squat woman, a fireplug not much more than five feet in her shoes. She was fat, but not like a lot of middle-aged women Harry saw around town. Not like the ones who always seemed to smoke menthol cigarettes. Not like the obese ones with huge asses and truck-tire thighs. And not like the ones who drove ten-year-old Pontiacs, wore oversize t-shirts emblazoned with NASCAR logos, and inevitably blocked the aisles at Wal-Mart. Aunt Sadie was solid and carried her weight well distributed. She had a big head, big ankles and a big everything else in between.

From what Harry could see, his father and Sadie shared only the same dark complexion. All resemblance ended there. In the photographs, the ones his mother and Sadie loved to show him, she always smiled. His father never did, not in any of them. And all the while Aunt Sadie never had any expression on her face except a happy smile.

As a kid, Harry thought his aunt’s grin was permanently pasted on her face. She awoke smiling and went to sleep the same way. And it was there all the while in between, even when she was angry. When Harry was eleven he happened across a picture of the old Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella. Immediately, he recognized his aunt. Of course, she was neither black nor a man and hardly a ballplayer. She was, instead, very much a middle-class, suburban, New York Jewish woman, one who just happened to live in Roswell, Georgia.

Like so many southern white women, Jews and Christians alike, Sadie had what could only be politely called big hair. To Harry, the scent of hairspray meant his aunt was nearby. No matter what she wore-a bathrobe on a Sunday morning, Bermuda shorts and one of her husband Larry’s old shirts while she worked in the garden, or a shiny, gleaming, rhinestone-studded floor-length evening gown like the ones she always wore to wedding receptions and took with her on Caribbean cruises-Sadie’s hair was always perfect and very heavily lacquered. Stiff to the touch.

Harry was born in May 1974, six months after his father disappeared in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos or someplace else. Who really knew? His mother, Elana Morales, never believed the government’s story, but what could she do? She wasn’t his wife. The unfortunate David Levine drew a low number, got drafted in February, last saw Elana in August and disappeared, MIA, the second week of December 1973. He was never found.

Harry’s mom, Elana, was Puerto Rican, a real Puerto Rican, not a New York Puerto Rican. She was a law student in New York City when she met David Levine, fell in love and moved in with him. They talked about getting married, talked about it, that’s all. David fancied himself a poet. He worked at the Post Office and wrote long poems, that rarely rhymed, in small notebooks, sitting with Elana in coffeehouses and bars in Greenwich Village. Both of them were antiwar-who wasn’t? It was the seventies. He really got screwed by his draft board. By then it was too late to get married and when Elana turned up pregnant, the Army couldn’t care less.

Sadie and Larry Fagan moved from Brooklyn to Atlanta in 1966. Larry had made a business trip there a few months earlier-he sold medical equipment-loved it and worked himself into his company’s southeastern office. Sadie was reluctant to leave New York, her family and friends, but she kept her misgivings to herself. Soon after arriving in Georgia, she realized her fears were unfounded and was more than happy to admit it. Sadie made new friends. So did Larry. They both loved living in Atlanta. Larry found his way to a senior management job with a major manufacturer of cardiac surgical supplies and the two of them settled in for the long haul.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t have children. They never said exactly why not, but years later Harry discovered it was his uncle’s fault. A low sperm count can give many women second thoughts, but Sadie stayed, sacrificed and saved her motherly love for her nephew. When Elana gave birth she gave Harry his father’s name, Levine, and took it for herself too. She was alone in New York with a baby and another year of school before becoming an attorney. She needed money and she needed friends. Sadie and Larry invited her to come to Georgia, not for a visit but permanently. They implored her. “We’re family,” they said. Elana accepted. She transferred to Emory University Law School and brought herself and her baby son to live with the Fagans.

That’s the way Harry grew up. He and his mother lived downstairs on the lower level. They had two bedrooms, a living room, a small office for Elana and a bathroom. They had a separate entrance from the backyard, one that Elana never used. In high school, when Harry sneaked out after curfew and came home late, way late, he came and went via that special door. His mother knew. His aunt and uncle knew. It never crossed Harry’s mind they had any idea. He thought he’d pulled one over.

They had a wonderful life in that house, all four of them. After her graduation, Elana passed the Bar and took a position with one of Atlanta’s big, downtown law firms. Six years later, she realized she would never be made partner. Why? Although a Levine, she was Latino. While some Jews made partner, no such rewards awaited Latinos. She was unmarried. She was a mother. Who knew why? She quit. Elana Levine opened her own law office in Roswell, near home, all by herself. She did everything a lawyer could-wills; evictions; pre-nuptial agreements; divorce and custody; civil suits of all shapes and sizes; and minor criminal offences, DUIs and drug busts for rich suburban kids. As a Spanish speaker, she was sought out by Atlanta’s growing Mexican population, usually for matters pertaining to immigration. Her practice thrived. Very soon she earned more money than Larry Fagan did. She paid half the family’s expenses and could easily have afforded a home of her own but Elana never-not once, not ever-considered moving out. Sadie would not have allowed it anyway.

In the hot summer of 1991 Harry’s mother was retained to represent two Mexican men, both undocumented, each charged with rape and murder. It was a death penalty case, high profile considering the nature of the crime and the defendants. The victim was a white woman, a cute blonde in her twenties. Family photos showed her glowing good looks and beaming personality. They were plastered all over local TV and in the newspapers. The time-honored, southern tradition of demonizing the dark-skinned perpetrator prepared to roll like a roaring train, full-steam at these… Mexicans. Elana mounted a spirited defense. In so doing she became the darling of the Atlanta media. An attractive woman, in her early forties, she was a natural for local television. That, like the defendants, she was herself a Latino was the icing on the cake.

The judge failed to put a gag order on the lawyers and Elana trumpeted her client’s innocence. Television ate it up. The camera loved her: long hair, dark eyes, tan skin and ruby red lips. Both men were, in fact, completely innocent, falsely accused, indistinguishable by the local cops from any of a million Mexican men. They had absolutely nothing to do with the crime. There was no evidence and, after Elana’s closing argument, no doubt about the verdict. Both of them were found not guilty. Their rejoicing was short-lived. No sooner had the judge declared the men “free to go,” than agents of the federal government, INS, approached, arrested and carried them off. They were illegals, wet-backs, undocumented-call them what you will-they were ripe for deportation.

The young, impressionable Harry was so taken by the circumstances of the case, by the job his mother had done, and by what he saw as the gross injustice of a callous, unfeeling federal government, he made up his mind right then what he would do for his life’s work. He wanted to be a Foreign Service Officer. He wanted to represent his government with compassion and dignity, so people like his mother and her clients would no longer toil and suffer under the weight of a perfidious state. Of course, he was only seventeen years old.

After high school, Harry attended Tulane University in New Orleans, where he studied International Relations. He loved New Orleans yet always looked forward to coming home, to Roswell, for summer vacations, Thanksgiving and Christmas. He never went to Panama City or Ft. Lauderdale for Spring Break. He never drove across country for the summer, up to New England or west to California. Why would he? Why would anyone? he wondered. He went home. What could possibly be better than Roswell? When he graduated, Harry went north to the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He told his mother he needed a law degree from an Ivy League school. She was so proud. More than the education, the contacts he made and the imprimatur on his resume proved very helpful in the diplomatic corps. At twenty-five, Harry Levine took his top-list law degree and joined the Foreign Service.

The day he left the United States for his first assignment overseas was one of those spring days in Manhattan New Yorkers dream about all winter. A gentle, sweet-smelling, cool breeze mixed with a bright sun, high in a cloudless sky. Coats were unbuttoned. Jackets unzipped. People breathed deeply, smiled widely. Harry’s plane didn’t leave until late in the afternoon. He had all day to walk around and say goodbye to America. He was strolling on the sunny side of 23rd Street when he spotted the little record store with a big sign in the window: REAL RECORDS-VINYL LPs. Harry had always been a real record man. His father had quite a collection. His mother saved them-all of them-for Harry. He grew up with Jefferson Airplane, Marvin Gaye and The Mamas amp; The Papas. Sixties pop wasn’t the only music his father liked. David Levine left his son hundreds of records, including a wide variety of jazz-Oscar Peterson, Art Blakey, Count Basie and Joe Williams. Harry loved those records for many reasons, not the least of which was, they were his connection to the father he knew about, but never knew. Poor David and poor Harry. Most children who grow up without a father are constantly told by their mother, whether true or not, how much their father loved them. Harry, of course, was well aware his birth came after his father was killed. Might it be, he sometimes wondered, that the records were more important to him than they ought to be?

After Tulane, just before he left for law school in Philadelphia, Harry decided he needed a really good record player, a top quality turntable. He was surprised to find no one sold any. The vinyl LP, invented by the engineers at Columbia Records in 1948, was already a relic of the past. The compact disc, with its seductive clarity, had pushed the record to forgotten bins in old music stores. So too was the fate of the record player, the quality turntable. Harry had no use for the CD. They were surely more precise than pressed vinyl, more like how one might think the music ought to sound. But, for Harry, the CD was less than the real thing, the sum failing to equal its parts. It was cold, empty. He just wanted a turntable and was disappointed when he couldn’t find a store that sold good ones. Everywhere he looked, they either had none or the little, cheap, children’s record players. The manager of a discount electronics superstore near the Roswell Mall told Harry there might be someone who could help him. “Try Fat Jack’s,” he said. “He’s got a place down the block from the Historic District, around the corner-I forget the name of the street. Look for it. If Jack is still in business, he’ll get one for you.” Fat Jack’s Audio was in a small strip center, one of four storefronts. It shared space with a chiropractor, a dry cleaner and a travel agency. There was a small sign above the door, but nothing in the window. Inside, Harry found an old man sitting on a car seat ripped from a Chevy or a Ford or some other 30-year-old American car. The car seat was on the floor, in the middle of the store, surrounded by boxes and boxes of records. The old man looked to be dozing.

“I’m looking for a turntable,” Harry said.

“Miss your records?” the old man asked, looking up, wide awake.

“No. I play them. It’s just that…”

“Don’t sound good enough for you?”

“Yes. That’s right. So, I’m looking for a good turntable-at a reasonable price. Someone told me I could find Jack-Fat Jack-and he might have one I could buy.”

“I’m Jack,” the old guy said, standing up and offering his hand to Harry. “What do you like most about your records?” he asked. Harry stood there, surprised by the unexpected and somewhat personal question, thinking about an answer. When nothing came to mind, he repeated it back to Jack.

“What do I like most about my records?”

The old man, who was anything but fat-he looked average, quite normal in every way-smiled at Harry and walked slowly over to the counter beyond the boxes of records, toward the rear of the store. Harry noticed there was no overhead lighting. At least none that was turned on. Three floor lamps, one in the middle of the boxes, another by the counter where Jack was, and a third well behind him, visible through an open door leading to some sort of back room, illuminated the store. Harry wondered what kind of business this guy could do in a store this dark. He didn’t see any turntables. He didn’t see any equipment at all. Harry had no way of knowing Fat Jack made everything he sold, been doing it like that for decades.

“Take your time,” Jack said.

“You know the sound you hear just as the needle touches the first groove?” said Harry, finally. “It’s only a moment. Just an instant. It’s like the sound of someone tapping an open mike. That’s it,” he said. “That sound. That’s what I like most about my records.”

Fat Jack-who, it turned out, had weighed nearly 400 pounds some years earlier, and lost more than half of it supposedly by giving up fried chicken-ended up making Harry a turntable. Belt driven, speed calibrated with a light sensor checking device and a manual override adjustment, separate power switches for the motor and the turntable itself, a special stylus he said he got from a special source in “Brooklyn, New York City,” even a soft landing, anti-static, removable, double-sided table cover. And he did the whole job for under five hundred dollars. Along with many of David Levine’s LPs, Fat Jack’s turntable, lovingly and securely packed, was already on its way to Turkey.

Going through the stacks in the tiny, old record store, he came upon Erroll Garner’s Concert By The Sea. He owned it; it was not one of his father’s. Harry bought it in a shop in Little Five Points, in Atlanta, when he was in high school. He remembered how often he played it late at night while studying for his twelfth-grade chemistry final. He remembered closing all the downstairs doors to keep the noise, especially Garner’s trademark grunts, from waking his mother who slept just down the hall. He’d go upstairs to the kitchen, make a pot of coffee, set himself up with his books and his notes at the small table in their living room and stay up, way past the middle of the night, studying. Putting the record back in its place, he smiled and pictured himself, once again a teenager, sitting in Mr. Kimmelman’s classroom getting every question right while all the time hearing Erroll Garner playing in his private ear. That night, on his flight to Europe, in his sleep, he heard him again.

Just as he knew it would, a whole new life opened to Harry in the Foreign Service. From the crooked, cobblestone streets and smoky cafes of Ankara, his initial station, to the noisy marketplaces of Cairo, and amidst the grandeur of Paris, his search for himself blossomed like the dogwoods along Peachtree Road. He cut his hair shorter than most. He’d always wanted it so he could run his hands across his head as if they were a brush. His wardrobe grew more formal and more distinctive. Unlike so many Americans in the Foreign Service, Harry bought his suits, shirts and ties in Europe. He favored the English tailors and found their merchandise to be both readily available and affordable. His personality emerged as brighter and more lighthearted than it had been while in school. The ease and comfort of his demeanor complemented his dressy appearance. He was funny, and fun to be with, ironic at times, but rarely cynical. He was well liked by just about everyone.

In Europe, where sexual liberation was neither new nor limited by age and class, Harry did quite well with the ladies. His female companions were numerous and diverse. By the time he reached London he was a seasoned professional in his mid-thirties, a comfortable expatriate, without serious affectation, sensitive to the pleasures and comforts of his life and fully satisfied at how little effort was required to secure them.

A year after Harry’s arrival in London, his mother died of pancreatic cancer. Elana Levine had just celebrated her 54th birthday. It happened so quickly. The leftover birthday cake Sadie had put in the freezer was still there, uneaten. One day Elana complained about not feeling right and faster than anyone could map out a campaign to defeat it, the cancer killed her. Elana Morales Levine never knew she had a sister. She died at home, as she insisted, in her own bed. She was surrounded by loved ones-Harry, who had flown in from England when Sadie told him how bad things were, and Sadie and Larry. She closed her eyes thinking of David, the morphine unable to still the joy of her final memory.

Frederick Lacey, the eldest son of a bourgeois Liverpool family, was commissioned as a midshipman in His Majesty’s naval service in 1916, three days after turning eighteen years old. His father, William Lacey, had arranged it. William Lacey’s comfort resulted from the splendid success of his company, a firm that specialized in railroad parts and supplies. Lacey’s, as the business was known, had a well-earned reputation for timely delivery, plus an ability to get parts that were otherwise in short supply, parts others seemed at a loss to deliver in any time frame. He charged more than the much larger London firms with which he competed. But, unlike them, he was always true to his word. A month’s wait meant a month’s wait, not two or three or even a year’s, as others would have it. Smart businessmen will always pay more for that kind of reputation. William Lacey knew that and regarded reliability as his most precious asset. Almost a century before computers and wire transfers made money fly around the world at the speed of light, Frederick Lacey’s father showed a mastery of modern economics. His carefully chosen accounts, in banks across the wide span of the European continent, allowed him to make displays of gratitude, when called for, immediately. Men of business whose national heritage often included-nay, required-the presentation of special favors, plus the legions of Customs Agents and other governmental overseers, greedy and quick to accept any bribe, were often satisfied on the spot. William Lacey could conclude negotiations and close the deal without the delay associated with most international financial arrangements. His son took notice.

The railroads, like all English industries, were controlled by the most powerful men of their time and it was through such contacts as these that William Lacey was able to secure his son’s position in the Royal Navy. Despite the manner of his commission, Frederick Lacey’s social status, or more precisely the absence of any, affected his career from day one. A combat sea assignment was out of the question. There were hardly enough of them for the sons of England’s truly important. None would be available for the boy of a Liverpool merchant. Instead Lacey’s participation in The Great War was spent entirely in Naval Logistics. This exclusionary policy, determined by the social mores of the nineteenth century, proved crucial to Frederick Lacey’s future and would have a tremendous impact on the affairs of powerful men and great nations throughout the twentieth century. It was clear for anyone to read-Lacey anticipated, expected and planned for great power for himself from the beginning. He didn’t hope for it, dream of it, yearn for it. He knew it awaited him.

In Lacey’s writings about The Great War, entries he made in the years after it ended, he eventually began calling it simply World War One. Apparently, once the “war to end all wars” didn’t, a handy digit was tacked on and History moved, inexorably, toward successively higher numbers. That didn’t seem to bother Frederick Lacey. By education, experience and intuition, he understood that hostilities among men, as individuals and within the context of the social institutions they created, were the normal state of things. Those who understood and expected it, dealt with it best.

As the war raced across Europe, from the Balkans to Belgium, ravaging France, it was the English Navy that was entrusted with the mission to supply the largest fighting force assembled in modern times. These were not the ancient armies of Caesar, Napoleon or Hannibal, living off the land, stopping for weeks, even months at a time, to re-supply before moving on to the next battle. No one would cross the Alps with elephants in the twentieth century. No longer necessary. In the new and modern war Lacey fought, millions of men needed to be fed and clothed daily. Munitions of all types and sizes, machines of all nature and kind plus the various technical necessities required for mass destruction had to move quickly from one end of the European continent to the other and sometimes back again. No more wagons. No more horses. No more sailing ships slowly riding the prevailing winds. This war was fought with tanks, motorized vehicles, heavy artillery and huge, metal warships plowing the seas with steel blades turned by turbine engines burning oil. The trains had to run. Airplanes, the newest of all weapons, had to fly. Fuel had to flow.

Since the reign of the first Richard, the English had traditionally left their military logistics in the hands of idiots. It was, after all, they reckoned, clerk’s work. Too often these clerks proved more adept at lining their own pockets than anything remotely connected with supplying the needs of a massive army. Now they found themselves unprepared for the demands they faced. They looked everywhere for help including outside the chain of command. Frederick Lacey, aided in no small measure by the experience and observation gained at his father’s side, and acting with no regard for his youth, stepped into the chaotic breach and quickly assumed a leadership role far beyond his rank. His stunning accomplishments precipitated his rapid ascent to power and influence. Not only did he demonstrate an exceptional talent for organization, a capacity sorely absent among his superiors, he was uniquely successful at getting things done when failure seemed already a foregone conclusion. What couldn’t be done, what senior officers wished would disappear from their plates, soon became tasks for the youngster, Lacey. Let it be him who shoulders the blame, they all figured. They were exceedingly public in the assignment of his duties, making it impossible to deny him the credit when he accomplished the impossible.

Lacey would later describe, in his personal journals, how he painstakingly developed what would become lifetime relationships with heretofore untapped, nontraditional connections able to assist the movement of supplies and materials across Europe’s war zones. The establishment of such an extraordinary, seamless process was no surprise to Lacey. On a much smaller scale, it was just what he had seen his father do. In Italy and Sicily and throughout the Mediterranean, into the Middle East, extending even to North Africa, and stretching eastward to the Muslim mountain states in Central Asia and Russia, it was Frederick Lacey who forged partnerships and created alliances previously unknown to Western powers. To assuage British sensibilities, Lacey, a mere twenty years old, wrote how he was able to take actual command by always acting in the name of his superiors, senior officers clever enough to take credit for Lacey’s successes and smart enough to know they didn’t deserve it. Unless someone worked for him or dealt directly with him, Lacey was no more than an inconspicuous junior officer. For those who did encounter him, especially those with whom he met face to face, Frederick Lacey was unforgettable. His reputation, within the circles crucial to his success, soon developed to legendary scale. He was so young it was hard to believe the power and influence he wielded.

His written entries kept a detailed record of his health. At twenty, he stood six feet three inches and weighed hardly a hundred and sixty pounds. He had sandy hair, which he wore shorter than most Englishmen of the time, and a pleasant, attractive, clean-shaven face. His posture was especially straight, lending him a proper appearance of authority and adding a few years and inches to his overall look. He wore power like a well-fitted coat. And he never, ever fidgeted. At times he was known to keep his hands and feet perfectly still for what some said was forever. He showed a warm and genuine smile when it seemed appropriate, but strangely, never displayed anger or revealed distress. Never. Lacey wrote about how easily those qualities came to him. Others envied his temperament, his self-control, his self-confidence.

When putting together complicated arrangements for transport of goods through dangerous territory, under trying circumstances, he always acted with calm tranquility and spoke with an attitude that left no allowance for any outcome but a good one. Lacey never asked for more than he knew he could get and never accepted less. He would not haggle in the sense that merchants do. His first offer was always his last. The offer might of course be repeated, rephrased in different language, language more suitable to his proposed partner. But Lacey never bargained to his disadvantage. Whenever his personal approval was required to close a deal, it was both immediate and final. This fearless single-mindedness made him a formidable negotiator. He often talked about whatever it was he wanted a bit longer than other men might have. He showed no rush to make a deal, to close the sale. For him, the sale was made before the discussion even began. When he did make a specific offer, it was rock solid. It may have annoyed some, but in spite of this approach, wrote Lacey, he was rarely perceived as either confrontational or overly adversarial. Men accustomed to the exercise of great power among their own people, men of wisdom, maturity and experience were said to have seen something terrifying in Lacey’s eyes, a confidence and demeanor frightening in its serenity.

Lacey wrote in his journal of a time in Turkey when he attempted to make an arrangement with bandits who had been particularly bothersome. Through men of influence, a meeting was arranged. The cafe that was their meeting place was nearly empty when Lacey arrived, alone. The warlord he was to deal with came accompanied by a contingent of warriors. They must have numbered fifteen or more and they were a sight to behold. Either they were in costume or, thought Lacey, they came directly from the mountains. Most were laden with furs and still wore heavy boots more suitable to dirt than city streets. They had long hair, very long hair, and most had heavy, thick mustaches. The smell of sweat, whiskey and animals filled the room. When they sat, the fighters gathered in a circle, a tight circle with Lacey and their leader in the middle. Lacey found himself surrounded. The two men talked a while and shared a drink. Lacey praised the skill of the thief’s efforts and readily admitted the inconvenience to his own needs.

“That is why I am here,” he said. “To show proper respect and prevent future inconvenience.” Then he offered the warlord gold, twenty thousand English pounds.

“Twenty thousand pounds of gold-in weight? I will take that,” roared the Turk, with a lusty laugh. All those surrounding Lacey laughed too.

“No,” said Lacey. “You misunderstand my language. I apologize. Not in weight. Twenty thousand pounds in value of the British pound Sterling, in gold of course.”

“Not in weight?” the warlord laughed. “Yes, in weight! Then you can be sure your worries are over.”

Lacey waited for the raucous laughter to run its course, for the fighters to quiet. He had been sitting perfectly still all the while. When the cafe was silent, he spoke. “You do not worry me, sir. You only inconvenience me.”

“I inconvenience you!” the Turk shouted, jumping to his feet. “I can kill you here, right now as you sit at my feet. Is that not an inconvenience to make you worry? Why should I not do that?”

“Because,” said Lacey in a measured tone, displaying a calm demeanor so different from that of everyone around him that he could see it rattled some of the fighters closest to him, “then you would not have twenty thousand English pounds, in gold. You would have nothing. If you need time, I fully understand. My offer is good for an hour. I shall be returning to London in the morning. I’m confident we shall have reached an understanding gratifying to each of us.” If there was fear in the room, it was the Turk’s. Lacey rose and walked out the door, the band of warriors separating to let him through.

On a cold evening, at the end of the winter of 1917, Frederick Lacey wrote that he first saw the girl who would be his wife, the mother of his only child. He was in Lisbon confirming final agreements for certain items which were to travel by sea from Italy to France. The turmoil of war had significantly undermined the credibility of some European governments requiring the cooperation of special interests. Lacey found access to them in Portugal. He was dining with these new friends and business associates when she arrived at the same restaurant in the company of her father, Djemmal-Eddin Messadou, a leader of the anti-Bolshevik Transcaucasian Federation. It was said he was a direct descendant of Shamyl, the third and final Imam of Dagestan.

She was remarkably beautiful, standing every inch of six feet with slender limbs, long and perfectly shaped to her body. Her black hair flowed in waves all the way to the small of her back, thick and curly, stunning. It accented her neck, making her appear even taller than she was. When she passed by the table where Lacey sat, her smell sent shivers up his back, across his shoulders and deep into the cheeks of his face. He breathed slowly, feeling his heart pound quickly. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He watched her every movement. Lacey’s journal described in great detail how she placed the napkin on her lap, how she took the wine glass and switched its place from her right to her left hand, how she gently pushed her hair back letting it slide across her bare shoulder. Despite the dim light, Lacey saw her smooth, dark complexion; the graceful lines of her face; her long and high, sharply pointed nose; wide mouth; full lips; and coal black, oval-shaped eyes set beneath heavy brows, eyes that seemed to slant upward, just slightly, giving them a unique appearance, at once penetrating and vulnerable.

“She is quite lovely, is she not?” asked Lacey’s host with what Lacey described as a fatherly smile.

“Yes, she is,” Lacey replied. “Yes, she certainly is. Tell me, do you know her? Is she Turkish? Kurdish perhaps? Or maybe from the Caucuses. Georgia or Azerbaijan?”

“You’re quite amazing,” said the older man. “She is Georgian. Aminette Messadou is her name. She is the youngest daughter of Djemmal-Eddin. He’s the man with her, and to be sure, one to be reckoned with. A man of Muslim nobility, two generations a Christian, adored by his people, of both great faiths. You are a most remarkable young man, Mr. Lacey. By the way, just what is your actual rank? What should we know you by now that we’ve concluded our business with a true and honorable sense of mutual satisfaction? I’ve heard everything from Commander to Midshipman.” He laughed a friendly, respectful laugh. “Who can know about a man so young with so much… ability.”

“My rank is servant to my King,” said Lacey. “I would like to meet her. Can you help?”

“Of course,” the older man answered with a big smile, a generous chuckle and real admiration. “Your King is most fortunate.”

Ninety years later, these words, written in Frederick Lacey’s own hand, would so overcome Harry Levine as he read them, he would have no choice but to put the page down and stare at it. “My rank is servant to my King,” Lacey had written. Who could read that and not shake their head in wonder, in awe. What a man. What a man.

Lacey married Aminette Messadou in 1919 and, when his wife got pregnant in 1920, he resigned from the Navy. He started the first of his shipping companies, a legitimate, highly successful and never questioned cover for serious smuggling, the source of his real money. When he was only twenty-three years old, he was able to furnish things and move them in a way no one else on earth could duplicate. No longer a servant to his King, he served himself and those he loved.

Later that year, Aminette died giving birth to Audrey. Lacey was disconsolate, heartbroken. Page after page of his journal was filled with little more than Frederick Lacey’s misery written all over them. He raised his daughter by himself. Audrey was the light of his life, until she committed suicide in 1940. He was devastated by her loss as well as the unanswered questions she left behind. Thereafter, Frederick Lacey lived alone. He did not marry again until well into his sixties. His second wife, a mature and wealthy Englishwoman, widow of a close friend, died of natural causes after fourteen years of marriage. There were, of course, no children from this union. Clearly, he was fond of his second wife, but Aminette and Audrey were the women he loved. Lacey’s sense of personal despair, at the loss, first of his wife, then of his daughter was so great, reading about it seemed to Harry an unwarranted imposition on the man’s privacy.

During the 1920s Lacey met and allied himself with Joe Kennedy in a lucrative liquor-smuggling chain. Lacey was the European end. His ships delivered the stuff, mainly Irish whiskey, English gin and French wines, to Cuba, where Kennedy’s special friends picked them up. Lacey’s partners included what he referred to as “men of exalted position” in Sicily. Their counterparts in the United States participated also, not as his associates but as Kennedy’s. Taking a cue from his father, Lacey had money everywhere, in a multitude of currencies. Sometimes huge amounts. In London dinner party conversation, it was said, by more than a few who claimed to know, that Frederick Lacey could be stranded in any country of the world, cut off from his funds elsewhere, and still be a very wealthy man. Some stories had him with secret stashes of cash in Asia, Latin America and other faraway places. And of course, there were always the rumors about the Czar’s gold.

Joe Kennedy opened the United States to him. Millions of Lacey’s dollars went to Wall Street and when the market crashed in ’29, he bought while others sold. Impressed with Roosevelt’s New Deal, he continued buying. The war in Europe curtailed his taste for American equities, but when the war was over, Lacey doubled his Wall Street holdings and then doubled them again in the 1950s.

In the early years, his friendship with Joe Kennedy was especially close and enduring. Lacey was unattached and Kennedy lived as if he were too. They were young, rich and eager to cut a wide swath through European nightlife. A weekend in Paris, wrote Lacey, ended up being close to a month, with a side trip to Rome. Lacey was not a workaholic. He prized good work over hard work, quality over quantity. He never let work interfere with enjoyment, or enjoyment interfere with work. Joe Kennedy had an eye-more of a need, Lacey wrote-for beautiful women. The more of them the better. Lacey and Kennedy made a great pair. Together, the two of them raised more than their share of hell in London and on the continent.

In 1930, at age 32, Lacey met Anthony Wells-a fresh, young, ruling-class lawyer who was to be, in later years, knighted by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Anthony Wells became his friend and personal attorney. He handled all of Lacey’s private and family legal affairs, but never touched his business concerns in any way. Wells never inquired and Lacey never offered any information about the source of his fortune. Each man found the arrangement comfortable.

During the summer of 1940, while Joseph P. Kennedy was the American Ambassador to England, most of the Kennedy family visited London. Audrey Lacey spent much of her time that summer partying with the Kennedy boys-Joe Jr., the oldest of the four, and his brother Jack, two years younger. To her father’s keen eye, she seemed to be mostly with Joe Jr. When the summer ended, and the Kennedys returned to America, Audrey became depressed and withdrawn. Her father thought it would pass. It didn’t. On a chilly afternoon in September, three days before German planes dropped their first bombs on England, a brokenhearted and pregnant Audrey Lacey committed suicide. She left a note disclosing her condition, mentioning “J. J.” Her grieving father came to understand that to mean Joe Jr. With Audrey’s death, the friendship between Lacey and Joseph P. Kennedy was over. The two men never spoke or saw each other ever again. For Kennedy, who resigned his post and returned to America in disgrace two months later, there was some embarrassment. For Lacey there was only a burning need for revenge.

During WWII Lacey was given carte blanche by Winston Churchill. His “special help,” as Churchill used to call it, not only kept Allied supplies moving, it facilitated communication with underground movements across Nazi-occupied Europe. Many of the relationships Lacey developed in the First War were renewed. He worked tirelessly for a British victory over the Germans. He seemed to be everywhere at once. There were rumors again, and stories, fantastic stories. Churchill was not bothered. “I don’t care!” he shouted more than once at the mention of Frederick Lacey’s alleged excesses. “Even if it’s true, I do not care.” The official complaints stopped, but the talk never halted. It was said he used Allied shipping to move illegal cargo, even treasures of war, from place to place. Lacey’s name became attached to events, about which he later wrote he had nothing to do with. The old tales of Russian gold after World War One gave rise to new claims such as Lacey’s supposed involvement in the matter called the Quedlinburg Hoard. He was rarely asked, but when someone was rude enough to bring the subject up, Lacey calmly denied knowledge-of everything. Still people wondered. Did Lacey have anything to do with this or that? Did he?

All the while, Lacey never let Audrey slip too far back in his mind. He held Joe Kennedy Jr. responsible and secretly vowed not to rest until she was avenged. On August 8, 1944, Joe Kennedy Jr. left on a special, secret combat mission. Flying alone, over the English Channel, his aircraft exploded. In his journal, his confession, Lacey disclosed that it was he-Frederick Lacey-who used his position of influence to mastermind the sabotage of Joe Kennedy Jr.’s plane. Lacey wrote coldly of his satisfaction with young Kennedy’s death. “A debt has been paid,” he penned. “But no price can bring my Audrey back.”

By the end of the war, Lacey, not yet 50, was the wealthiest man in Europe. As reward for his wartime service he was given a peerage-Lord Frederick Lacey. It did not slow him one bit. The worldwide web of his connections continued to expand. His empire grew. Throughout the Cold War, he was the primary source of many items of Western luxury for the power elite of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations. Lacey could and did move anything, anywhere in the world. Lacey delivered almost anything someone wished, someone who could pay his price. Directly related to his shipments of arms, he became the only private individual in the world fully tied in to most of the world’s intelligence services. He knew things no one else did and never betrayed a client’s confidence.

In the prime of his life, he was utterly fearless in business. Totally cool, he never required time to cogitate. He acted, favorably or unfavorably, immediately, on the spot, with no apparent qualms of any sort. To those who did business with him, it appeared Lord Lacey never had regrets, never looked back, never second-guessed. He must have had his share of losses. Who hasn’t? And who hasn’t worried about it? Apparently, not Lord Frederick Lacey. And who hasn’t hesitated, wondering if only for a moment, if they were doing the right thing, making the correct decision? Apparently, not Lord Lacey. A major part of his great success was this singular ability to decide and act when others simply couldn’t. He became known as a man you only needed to see once. He inspired others to act as he did, or to try. Often times, those who thought themselves his equal, if not his superior, made or accepted offers they would have been best to consider more thoughtfully. There were those who wished to compete with Lacey, even in style, and they usually paid dearly for the indulgence.

In the spring of 1963 Audrey Lacey’s closest friend, Margaret Lansdowne, a young woman still in her forties, died of cancer. Kenneth Lansdowne, Margaret’s husband, sent Lord Lacey a collection of letters Audrey had sent to Margaret when they were teenagers. Margaret had saved them all as a treasure. Naturally, Lansdowne had not read them. He thought they would be comforting to Audrey’s father and felt Lord Lacey should have them. Among these letters was one clearly indicating that “J. J.” stood for John-John, not Joe Jr. The information inflamed Lacey. He made no mention in his journal of regret, nothing at all about Joe Jr. No indication of remorse. Lacey wrote only of how he immediately began planning to kill John F. Kennedy.

Luigi Pirandello came closer to getting it right than Yeats. Walter thought so, even though he hadn’t read Yeats since high school and his only experience with Pirandello was the time, in Chicago in 1983, when Gloria dragged him to a performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author. He didn’t need much of a push to understand that illusion frequently masqueraded as fact. Worse still, illusion was often the accepted truth. To Walter’s way of thinking, the truth is not always beautiful. If you thought it was, and if that was all ye knew, you were lacking some important information.

For openers, he didn’t believe in God-not the God -the one true God so many said they were privileged to have some sort of relationship with and practically demanded you to do likewise. So Walter discounted everything said to be done in the name of God, for the glory of God, and most of all, everything done by men who had the balls to claim they were actually doing the specific thing God Himself instructed them to do. He could do without athletes who thanked God, or his son, for their victory. Did they really believe God chose sides? In a prizefight? Had Jesus taken the under or over in the NFL? Walter had no use for what masqueraded as God’s will. He didn’t think about it often, but when he did, he couldn’t bring himself to accept things like the Twin Towers or the great tsunami of 2005. What god would allow that? He could never get his hands around the idea that any god would want disgruntled, displaced Europeans to slaughter all the Indians in North America so they could establish a place they called “ God’s best hope for mankind.” If there was such a God, He would be one to fear, especially if you were an Indian. And Walter had been in Vietnam. He’d seen and done things no god would tolerate.

He was comfortable with facts. There could be no fact for him without evidence. He didn’t believe aliens landed in New Mexico in 1947. He didn’t believe in demonic possession. He was confident Neil Armstrong really did walk on the Moon. Walter had no use for conspiracies. He told his friend Billy he’d believe in UFOs when they stopped being UFOs. Nevertheless, he understood why lots of people believed in lots of bullshit. They had faith, something anathema to Walter and his way of life. “Faith,” he told Billy, who lived in fear of the Catholic God every day of his life, “is believing in something for which you acknowledge there is no proof.” That’s why he said they had to be Identified Flying Objects before he would say they’re real.

“You don’t have any faith?” Billy asked. “Nothing?”

“You make it sound like I’m missing something.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s for sure,” said Billy, shaking his head like he just got a phone call with bad news. “I’ll pray for you, Walter.”

He remembered Billy’s pained comment, talking with Conchita Crystal. “What’s your nephew, Harry, going to do about this?” asked Walter. “You have any idea?”

She didn’t look up, not right away. She sat next to Walter on a bench near the ticket booth for the ferry that ran between St. John and St. Thomas. They were all by themselves. The ticket window was unattended. “I don’t know,” she said. “To both questions.”

“What is it then you want me to do?”

“I want you to find him. Before they do.”

“Before who does?”

“I don’t know.”

“And when I find him, do what?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you have to know. I can’t just walk up to him, wherever he is, put my hand on his shoulder and say, ‘Tag-you’re it.’ Once I find him I’ve got to do something. And, more important, he has to do something. He can’t carry this around with him. So…?”

“Hide him. I want you to hide him, somewhere safe.”

Walter’s hand lightly touched Conchita Crystal on her soft, brown shoulder. A small gust of cool air blew in off the water. The smell of her was enough to drive a man mad, he thought. How could she have been the child she said she was? She looked up into his eyes. He smiled at her, a fatherly gesture, he hoped.

“I have to tell you,” he said, “I don’t understand why this is so important, so dangerous. If what you say Harry has learned is true, sure, it’s astonishing. It will be something people everywhere will be interested in knowing. But why would anyone kill him to keep it quiet-to keep it a secret? Can it be that big a deal?”

Conchita said nothing.

“Tell me,” said Walter. “Who killed John F. Kennedy? The CIA? The Mafia? Who?”

“A man named Frederick Lacey.”

“You’re kidding me, right? A man named-”

“Frederick Lacey. An Englishman. Lord Frederick Lacey.”

“What happened to the Russians, the Cubans, the right-wing wackos?” Walter shook his head in amazement. “Frederick Lacey?” he asked. “Who the fuck is Frederick Lacey?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“But he did it? You’re sure of that?”

“Oh, yes,” Chita said. “I’m sure of that.”

“Why? And what makes you sure of that?”

Conchita didn’t reply and Walter continued. “If he’s hiding now, why would you want me to find him just so he can hide again?” Walter took a deep breath-almost a sigh-and looked at Chita with unanswered questions all over his face. “Frederick Lacey, you say?”

“That’s what Harry said. I’m no stranger to trouble, Walter. Or danger. I’ve been dealing with difficult situations all my life. There are people who would kill to keep this from coming out-kill to keep Lacey’s confession a secret, to get their hands on it, to learn what it says. Harry has good reason to worry. He’s disappeared all right, for now, but they’ll never stop looking for him. Never. And eventually they’ll find him. He’s not the kind of man you are. Wherever he is now, I know he can’t be safe. You see that, don’t you?”

“You think I will find him before they do? Whoever they are.”

“I’m familiar with your reputation,” she said. “This is not flattery, Walter. I don’t think you’ll find Harry first. I know it. You’ve found other people before, haven’t you? You’ve found people no one else could. You were not the only one looking for them, but you found them, first. Right?”

“I have,” he said.

“And you have been successful because you know everything there is to know about hiding. Am I right?”

“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but yes, I suppose you could say that, at least for the purposes of this conversation. But-”

“So, I’m asking you to reverse things. Walk on the other side of the street for a minute. Find Harry. Find him quickly, and take him somewhere no one else can find him, no matter how hard they look. You must know such a place.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sliding off her sunglasses so she could wipe her tears away.

My God! thought Walter. I’ve never seen eyes as beautiful as these, and where did these tears come from so suddenly? Can she do this on command?

“I’ll have to figure that out later,” she said, clearing her throat in an effort to regain her composure. “For now, I need you to find Harry and protect him until we can think of something, some way out of this for him. Do that, and when you’ve found someplace safe, and I know where he is and that he’s all right, I’ll think of something.”

Walter lowered his head, rested his hands on his knees, looked down at the wooden planks of the pier, watching the water reflect the light between the cracks in the boards. I must be crazy, he thought.

“Twenty-five thousand a week,” he said. “Two weeks minimum. Plus expenses. In advance. Cash.”

“You’re no Philip Marlowe,” she said.

“I’m no who?”

“You’re not an old movie buff either, are you?” Conchita was far more amused than Walter could make sense of. “Philip Marlowe was a private investigator, a PI. The Big Sleep? Humphrey Bogart?” She looked at him but he registered nothing. “Marlowe only charged twenty-five dollars a day,” she said. “You might as well be asking for the Czar’s gold.”

“Huh? What’s the Czar’s gold?”

“It’s just a saying,” she said. “You know, like all the tea in China.”

If she expected something from him, a reaction of some kind, she didn’t get it. Walter had nothing to say. Finally, Conchita Crystal flashed him one of her famous smiles and asked, “Cash?”

“Yes,” he said, acknowledging their agreement. A warm smile had already replaced his otherwise slightly bewildered gaze.

“I’ll have the money delivered to your home this afternoon. When will you begin?”

“I already have,” said Walter.