The Glitter and The Grit
I used to be the bodyguard for Robert F. Kennedy. I don’t like to brag about it, but it’s true. Amongst the twists and turns my life took over the years, I could always say to myself that I was half a step removed from Camelot. The glitter and the grit. Robert and I, we would talk Aeschylus all the time. We would talk about our favorite horses and all the times we’d saved people from drowning. But I never found myself falling down the subsequent path of pessimism outlined by writers like Norman Mailer or any of the other New York crew. ‘Our resolve was not to seem, but to be the best.’ That’s what Aeschylus once said, and it was true. It didn’t matter what happened. It didn’t matter who or what was in our way. The mission was clear.
Now I was a private investigator in Boston in the year of our glorious future, 1985. Or ‘86. It had been a minute since I’d last looked at a calendar — in no small part because of all the crime I had to deal with on a daily basis, to the point where it just felt existential, you know? There was Crime out there, capital C and all, and I was there to meet it. Not to shake its hand in greeting, of course, but to rather to shake its hand and say, “Guess what, Pal? You’re under arrest.”
That was me, Spenser Edmund, private eye. I didn’t normally like to think about myself in relation to the politics of it all, but I was driving by Hank’s Auto Body down in Southie the other day and I couldn’t help but notice that they’d put up a big honk of sign bellowing, ‘FINNEGAN FOR MAYOR’ to all who could see and it got me thinking about my life up until this point. It was one of those things where a man just couldn’t help himself. To think: I had David Finnegan to thank for that. Proust had a madeleine; I had a billboard.
Sometimes Luanne would ask me why I didn’t like to talk about politics. Luanne was passionate about that sort of thing. She worked as a research assistant to Dr. Deborah Stith down in Roxbury and said that politics were just an everyday fact of life. Whenever she said that, I would try and counter with something like, “But what about the finer things in life, Luanne?” I would pull her in close then, ready to turn wherever we were — Durgin Park Dining Room, Mug’N’Muffin, wherever — into some magisterial ballroom through nothing but the candlelight of my charm, but she was increasingly not having it, particularly last night. Words were exchanged — words neither of us meant — and now here I was, seeing if I could find a flower shop on my way to meet Falcon while thinking about the course of my life.
What’s more, I was being followed. I had been taking in the details of the city — two kids arcing a football back and forth over the road, over traffic, grinning every time they caught it before they leaned back, stepped into it, and launched again; a Navy cadet in his Navy whites leaning out the window of a second floor recruitment office, smoking like he was sitting on the world’s most invisible divan — when I realized that this was the third, fourth, and fifth time I had seen a teal blue 1960 Studebaker Lark Convertible trailing a few cars behind.
The thing about tailing someone or being tailed by someone that never seemed to come up in casual conversation was that it was always hard to see someone’s face through a windshield. If it was sunny out, the windshield would reflect the glare of the sun. If it was night, then you could only really rely on passing illumination. This is necessary information to convey, because — looking in the rear view mirror — I just didn’t believe it. A few more blocks passed and I found that I couldn’t believe the fact that I believed it.
I am not one to believe in conspiracies. I am not one to believe in the supernatural. I wake up every morning not only to be the best, but with the intention of running a tight ship.
So could someone please explain to me how it was that something that sure seemed to be the body of Robert Kennedy was in a car following me through the winter gray streetslush of Boston some eighteen years after his death?