“Just hang on another year,” said Bobby. “We can’t lose Vietnam to the Communists now—my brother would be defeated in the presidential election next November. But as soon as he’s reelected, he’ll pull out faster than you can blink. You’ll see.”

• • •

A gloomy group of aides sat in the office next to Bobby’s one evening that November. Hoover’s intervention had worked, and the civil rights bill was in trouble. Congressmen who were ashamed to be racists were looking for a pretext to vote against the bill, and Hoover had given them one.

The bill had been routinely passed to the Committee on Rules, whose chair, Howard W. Smith, from Virginia, was one of the more rabid conservative Southern Democrats. Emboldened by the FBI’s accusations of Communism in the civil rights movement, Smith had announced that his committee would keep the bill bottled up indefinitely.

It made George furious. Could these men not see that their attitudes had led to the murder of the Sunday school girls? As long as respectable people said it was all right to treat Negroes as if they were not quite human, ignorant thugs would think they had permission to kill children.

And there was worse. With a year to go before the presidential election, Jack Kennedy was losing popularity. He and Bobby were especially worried about Texas. Kennedy had won Texas in 1960 because he had a popular Texan running mate, Lyndon Johnson. Unfortunately, three years of association with the liberal Kennedy administration had just about destroyed Johnson’s credibility with the conservative business elite.

“It’s not just civil rights,” George argued. “We’re proposing to abolish the oil depletion allowance. Texas oilmen haven’t paid the taxes they ought to for decades, and they hate us for wanting to scrap their privileges.”

“Whatever it is,” said Dennis Wilson, “thousands of Texas conservatives have left the Democrats and joined the Republicans. And they love Senator Goldwater.” Barry Goldwater was a right-wing Republican who wanted to scrap Social Security and drop nuclear bombs on Vietnam. “If Barry runs for president, he’s going to take Texas.”

Another aide said: “We need the president to go down there and romance those shitkickers.”

“He will,” said Dennis. “And Jackie’s going with him.”

“When?”

“They’re going to Houston on November twenty-first,” Dennis replied. “And then, the next day, they’ll go to Dallas.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Maria Summers was watching on TV, in the White House press office, as Air Force One touched down in brilliant sunshine at the Dallas airport called Love Field.

A ramp was maneuvered into place at the rear door. Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, took up their positions at the foot of the ramp, waiting to greet the president. A chain-link fence kept back a crowd of two thousand.

The aircraft door opened. There was a suspenseful pause, then Jackie Kennedy emerged, wearing a Chanel suit and a matching pillbox hat. Right behind her was her husband, Maria’s lover, President John F. Kennedy. Secretly, Maria thought of him as Johnny, the name his brothers occasionally used.