"Barry N Malzberg - In the Stone House" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

And so McCarthy gets back in at State, Joe said, so you'll reverse everything I've done here. I can't go along with that. You can take me down but I'll take you down too. Jack as well. You'll all go down, but McCarthy is never going to make a speech about preventive war again.
Okay, the Ambassador said. His glasses glinted, flashed in the light. No McCarthy. That's the deal. He won't be coming back. We'll keep him out.
And you say--
That's my word, the Ambassador said. You'll have to trust me just like I trusted you and got betrayed. Except that I won't betray you. McCarthy won't be Secretary of State.
Or Jenner, Joe said. Or Capehart. Or those swine McCarthy runs around with, I want them out too. That's the deal then. You make that pledge and I'll go quietly. Otherwise-
Otherwise you'll take us all down, the Ambassador said. Except you won't, you won't do that. Because you're a Kennedy, Joe, and that's part of the deal, the family first. He limped toward the door. I want an announcement within forty-eight hours, he said. You can go on television live or call the press or sneak it out to the UPI the way you did the firing. That's up to you. But I want that forty-eight-hour business and that's all there is to it, you hear me? That is very definite.
And if not--?
We've been through that, Joe, the Ambassador said. We don't have to go through it again, do we? He opened the door, nodded at the Secret Service.
I'm your son! Joe wanted to shout, I'm your first-born son, how can you do this to me? If the door had been closed, if the Ambassador had still been there, he might have done that. But of course the Ambassador was too clever, he was gone already and he knew that the President wasn't going to make that kind of a scene in front of the security. So Joe just sat there, the way the Ambassador had known he must and after a while Jack drifted back in again from the side room where he had heard everything and they just stared at each other. There was absolutely nothing to say. This was another of those times, and there had been plenty in their lives where there was just not one brotherly word that could be passed.
Oh, the Ambassador had been angry at him! Joe had thought that it was irreparable. But of course as the years passed things cooled off. McCarthy died of drink not much later, meaning that he wouldn't have been around much longer anyway, and JFK had turned out in the long run to be an even bigger betrayer in office than Joe had been, in the estimation of the old man. And Joe had come to see after this one great confrontation that the old man had probably been right after all, McCarthy was just red meat for the troops, and backed off China and the Soviet Union with terror so that deals could have been made. Joe in any case never took issue with the Ambassador again; one way or the other that confrontation had been the end for him.
And here in Dallas at last and at least he could come back all the way, perform this one great service for the stricken, nurse-fucking, raunchy, devoted old Ambassador who had in the end proven in this circumstance as in so many others to have been absolutely right.
Son of a bitch, JFK had said in the Oval Office that afternoon, son of a bitch, I'm going to be President. Not even a thought of protest or uncertainty, that was how thoroughly the Ambassador had controlled them all. The fucking President, oh my God, I'm the next President.
Well, you'll love it, Joe said, you'll love the perks anyway. There are lots of interesting possibilities in this job.
I wonder if I should get married after all, Jack said, maybe this isn't the time to do it with the campaign coming up and all. Maybe I should wait.
Jackie won't let you wait, Joe had said, she's going to be First Lady now and no one is going to give that up. Except Rhoda, he thought, but that was another wench in another time and so dead, so dead to me. You might as well go ahead and have a big wedding, Joe had said. The voters will love that.
They had, they did, and Jack stormed in over Nixon with 472 electoral votes and Kefauver clinging onto him on the inaugural stand, holding him even tighter than Jackie. Joe Jr.'s instincts had always been good, even if his luck hadn't. One way or the other, the Ambassador had made him a first-class political animal.
A humble one too, and eager to get back under the umbrella. The real betrayal then had been JFK. JFK had broken the line.

11/22/63 The sounds of the motorcade drifting to his high seat in the depository, the sound of the crowd seeming to envelop him, Joe lifts the stock, sets the sight, puts the scope to the curly, tousled head of his brother, seeing the faint pink of Jacqueline's suit refracting an aura, takes off the safety then. With a precision he had never known to be within him, Joe sets the sight, aims the rifle and fires. The first shot is in the throat, Jack falls back, Joe can imagine the look of terror and surprise on his face. Second shot ... he cocks it again. Jackie is starting to scramble, casting wistful, hopeless glances over the back of the limousine. Joe puts the killing shot in, the shot that will come through the Governor's knee, enter Jack's head at a high angle and windage and blow off the skull. Bobby will storm the citadel in a wave of national horror and sympathy which will utterly repudiate the crude, the untalented JFK. For every plan there is another plan. Joe knows this. The Ambassador after all was absolutely right, there was always that alternative.
Giggling, Joe Kennedy, Jr. puts down the rifle, lurches for the door, yanks open the door and speeds down the steps toward the open air, leaving the concerns of the motorcade to the Secret Service and to Parkland Hospital. Later that afternoon the ex-President will be found cowering in a movie theater and later yet he will be taken away in what must be the most sensational story in all of American politics, but he will never tell. He will never tell. He will never tell. Only the Ambassador, should the Ambassador come to see him, he will tell the Ambassador everything. Everything. But that is a part of the saga, Joe Jr., assassin of the thirty-fifth President knows, which will have to be told by other than him. His time is done.
He wonders what Rhoda might have known.
The policeman, curious, sees him running and comes toward him. The rifle is back on the sixth floor but Joe still has the .38-caliber Smith & Wesson.
Would Rhoda have made any difference?
Flatly, the policeman comes toward him, then shouting.
Joe reaches for the gun.