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?”