The Lacey Confession (8 page)

“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.