JFK: It’s a large debt, then?
BJ: Very large.
JFK: You’ve got my interest. Tell me more.
BJ: It’s just grief from Tunnel City, Wisconsin, circa 1948.
JFK: I like Wisconsin.
BJ: I know. You carried it.
JFK (laughing): You’re droll. Ask me a question.
BJ: Who’s the biggest fuckhead in American politics?
JFK (laughing): That closet queen J. Edgar Hoover, who’ll be retiring on January 1, 1965.
BJ: I hadn’t heard anything about that.
JFK: You will.
BJ: I get it. You have to be re-elected first.
JFK: You’re learning. Now, tell me more about Tunnel City, Wisconsin, in 1948.
BJ: Not now.
JFK: Why?
BJ: I’m tantalizing you, so we can prolong this thing of ours.
JFK (laughing): You know men.
BJ: Yes, I do.
JFK: Who taught you? Initially, I mean.
BJ: The entire adolescent male population of Tunnel City, Wisconsin. Don’t look so shocked. The total number of boys was eleven.
JFK: Go on.
BJ: No.
JFK: Why?
BJ: Two seconds after we made love you looked at your watch. I’m thinking that the way to keep you in bed is to string out my autobiography.
JFK (laughing): You can contribute to my memoirs. You can say John F. Kennedy wooed women with room service club sandwiches and quickies.
BJ: It was a great club sandwich.
JFK (laughing): You’re droll and cruel.
BJ: Ask me a question.
JFK: No. You ask me one.
BJ: Tell me about Bobby.
JFK: Why?
BJ: He seemed suspicious of me at Peter’s party.
JFK: He’s suspicious in general, because he’s crawling around in the legal gutter with Jimmy Hoffa and the Mafia, and it’s starting to get to him. It’s some sort of occupational policeman’s disease that he’s developed. One day it’s Jimmy Hoffa and land fraud in Florida. The next day it’s deporting Carlos Marcello. Now it’s Hoffa and the Test Fleet taxi case in Tennessee, and don’t ask me what it means, because I’m not a lawyer and don’t share Bobby’s need to pursue and eradate.
BJ: He’s tougher than you, isn’t he?
JFK: Yes, he is. And as I told a girl several years ago, he’s truly passionate and generous.
BJ: You’re looking at your watch again.
JFK: I have to go. I’m due at the U.N.
BJ: Good luck, then.
JFK: I won’t need it. The General Assembly is nothing but fuckheads. Let’s do this again, Barb. I had fun.
BJ: So did I. And thanks for the club sandwich.
JFK (laughing): There’s more where that came from.
Single door slam deactivates mike. Transcript close: 8:34 p.m., March 3rd, 1962.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/9/62. Carlyle Hotel bedroom microphone transcript. Transcribed by: Fred Turentine. Tape/written copies to: P. Bondurant, W. Littell.
BJ phoned the listening post at 4:20 p.m. She said she was meeting the target “for dinner” at 5:30. Active feed from 6:12 p.m. on. Initial log: BJ–Barb Jahelka. JFK–John F. Kennedy.
6:13–6:25: sexual activity. (See tape transcript. High sound quality. Voices discernable.)
6:14–6:32: conversation.
BJ: Oh, God.
JFK: Last time I said that.
BJ: This time was better.
JFK (laughing): I thought so, too. But I thought the club sandwich lacked pizzazz.
BJ: Ask me a question.
JFK: What happened in Tunnel City, Wisconsin, In 1948?
BJ: I’m amazed that you remembered.
JFK: It’s only been a month or so.
BJ: I know. But it was just a casual comment that I made.
JFK: It was a provocative one, though.
BJ: Thanks.
JFK: Barb.
BJ: All right. On May 9, I jilted Billy Kreuger. Billy got together with Tom McCandless, Fritzie Schott and Johnny Coates. They decided to teach me a lesson. I was out of town, though. My parents took me to a church fellowship convention in Racine. My sister Margaret stayed at home. She was rebellious, and she hadn’t figured out that church conventions were good places to meet boys.
JFK: Keep going.
BJ: To be continued.
JFK: Oh, God. I hate unresolved mysteries.
BJ: Next time.
JFK: How do you know there’ll be a next time?
BJ (laughing): I know what kind of interest I’m capable of sustaining.
JFK: You’re good, Barb. You’re damn good.
BJ: I want to see if it’s possible to know a man in one hour, once-a-month increments.