\n<\/p>\n
She points to a grand mansion festooned with red, white, and blue bunting. \u201cThat\u2019s the house that everyone thinks is ours and it\u2019s actually John Wilson\u2019s from the college-admissions scandals,\u201d she says casually, referring to the chief executive of Hyannis Port Capital accused of bribing college administrators to help his kid get into the Ivy League.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That house is a false flag, I joke.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s funny, she laughs, because she works at an art gallery called False Flag.<\/p>\n
Kick surveys the surrounding property. \u201cGrandma\u2019s over there, and this was Jackie\u2019s house, and now it\u2019s Teddy Jr.\u2019s house, and our house is new, meaning we\u2019ve had it for 20 years,\u201d she says. \u201cThen over there, if you walk straight down, you\u2019ll see the famous field where the touch football games happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI give famously good tours,\u201d she adds. If I wasn\u2019t presently scheduled to meet her father, she says, \u201cI would have grabbed a golf cart and taken you to Squaw Island,\u201d a scenic marshland nearby.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave fun with whatever they\u2019re going to force you to do,\u201d she says and wanders back to the living room.<\/p>\n
I walk down the street toward the boat landing and soon see the unmistakable figure of Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., 69, barefoot in a T-shirt and faded neon-print swim trunks. I greet him and his entourage, which includes Maria Shriver and her brothers, Timothy and Mark. Everybody is jovial and relaxed, just back from a trip to Baxter\u2019s, the famous fried-seafood shack near the Hyannis ferry terminal. \u201cHe\u2019s going to do the first nice article about me,\u201d Kennedy says by way of introduction. \u201cThe first one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, thank God!\u201d says Maria, laughing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then Kennedy is informed he has to leave in 10 minutes to catch the 4:15 ferry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c4:15? Fuck.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yeah.<\/p>\n
He still has to tie up his sister Kerry\u2019s motorboat after their pleasure cruise and I join him as he jogs\u00a0to the dock and motors back into the harbor. His piercing blue eyes stare straight ahead, jaw firm, face stony, the classical profile of a Kennedy. I\u2019d recently read his memoir\u00a0American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family,<\/em> and I ask where his maternal great-grandfather, John Francis \u201cHoney Fitz\u201d Fitzgerald,\u00a0used to sunbathe nude. He gestures faintly to a beach along the southern shore but is distracted because he can\u2019t find the mooring.\u00a0<\/p>\n I spy one with \u201cKennedy\u201d printed on it and motion him toward it. There\u2019s a pink buoy with a long stick for hauling the line up.\u00a0\u201cGrab the whip!\u201d he yells hoarsely over the motor. \u201cHaul it aboard super fast, get the whole rope on board.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n I yank the wet rope on board and Kennedy ties up the boat. The motor is still running but Kennedy can\u2019t figure out how to turn it off. A dock worker who comes to fetch us says he\u2019ll do it for him and we race back to the house and jump into a black SUV with Kennedy\u2019s hired security guards. \u201cIf we go fast,\u201d says Kennedy, \u201cwe can make it in like seven minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n We gun it to the terminal and are fast-walking to the gangway, the last to board the ferry, when we\u2019re stopped by a guard in mirrored glasses. \u201cSir, you gotta put shoes on, please,\u201d he says, motioning to Kennedy\u2019s bare feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n An aide quickly digs his formal dress shoes out of a suitcase and Kennedy yanks them on, looking faintly ridiculous as he strides onto the ferry in neon trunks and black dress shoes. He heads to the upper deck, known as the Captain\u2019s View, and we sit side by side in bucket seats.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the whole mad scramble, we now have an hour to talk. My original plan scuttled, I turn to my notebook, which is full of questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Three days before my arrival, Peter Baker of\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0had published a story on the Kennedy family\u2019s unhappy feelings about Robert\u2019s campaign; his taking on their friend and ally Joe Biden; his claim that John, and possibly Bobby Kennedy, were assassinated by the CIA. \u201cThat\u2019s the third story the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0has done,\u201d Kennedy says grimly. \u201cThe same story, three times.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I have a big family,\u201d he says. \u201cSome of them agree with me, some of them don\u2019t agree with me. I think it\u2019s like everybody\u2019s family. People are entitled to their opinions. I can love people who disagree with me about the Ukraine war or about censorship, whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n