The Kennedy Boys' Night Out

By MARGARET CARLSON

For Palm Beach, where the average house costs nearly $1 million and mutts have been known to snack on biscuits shaped like Bentley sedans, this had been a quiet season. The Trumps have split but are now too poor by local standards to make much of a splash. There had been no divorce to equal that of Peter and Roxanne Pulitzer, which featured cocaine, a trumpet and a sexual threesome.

Then the Kennedy clan arrived for what Senator Teddy called a "traditional Easter weekend" at the white stucco oceanfront mansion his father bought from Rodman Wanamaker in 1933. This year the weekend included a Good Friday night outing for the Senator, his son Patrick and nephew William Kennedy Smith at Au Bar, the club of the moment, where a mixture of old money, European quasi- royalty, young model-waitresses and the occasional male in a leather miniskirt boogie to loud music. Ted Kennedy sipped his usual, Chivas Scotch, until closing time at 3:30 a.m., when the three men returned to the Kennedy compound. Two women they had met at the bar joined them.

The next thing anyone knows for sure is that one of those women, a 29-year- old single mother, went to the police Saturday afternoon and said she had been raped in the predawn hours at the estate. She was taken to nearby Humana Hospital and treated for injuries that may have included a broken rib.

The other thing known for sure is that the complaint turned Palm Beach into a media circus. In the greatest assemblage of journalists since Operation Desert Storm, reporters from as far away as Norway descended on the enclave, foraging for the most insignificant detail. One tabloid bid six figures for the alleged victim's story, and another handed his business card to a hospital employee with a note on the back promising "$500 for the name" of the woman who was treated.

The only inside account of the evening came from the other woman who went home with the Kennedys that night: Michele Cassone, a waitress. In one version, she says she, Patrick and the Senator sat and talked on the deck outside for a while. Later in the morning when she was alone with Patrick, the Senator walked into the room. "He was dressed in just an Oxford shirt as far as I could tell," Cassone recalls. "I couldn't see if he had shorts or what underneath, and I got nervous and decided to leave." Cassone says the investigator hired by the Kennedys seemed relieved by her recollection, however unflattering, since it distanced Kennedy from the alleged rape.

Cassone's statement comes as no surprise to those who have watched Edward Kennedy, a powerful and conscientious Senator, become ever more reckless about drinking and chasing women half his age. A long magazine profile last year documented several such occasions in uncontradicted detail. Rather than set an example for the third generation, the head of the family often looks to its members for companionship in his escapades.

On Friday the cops finally broke their silence, naming William Smith as a suspect. The son of Jean Kennedy and the late Stephen Smith, William is described as one of the least spoiled and least arrogant of the young Kennedys. Instead of entering a profession where family connections make a difference, he went to Georgetown University Medical School after graduating from Duke. He helped his mother in her arts program for the handicapped, and gave a eulogy so moving at his father's funeral earlier this year that he outshone Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

But after the story surfaced, Smith virtually disappeared, failing to show up for the second half of his medical-board exam on Wednesday. However, he did issue a statement through a family holding company, declaring, "Any suggestion that I was involved in any offense is erroneous." When the Senator was stopped by reporters outside a hearing in Boston on Wednesday, he said he was "obviously distressed" but to comment further would "not be appropriate." Patrick Kennedy claimed he did not learn of the woman's accusation until he read about it in the Florida papers as he was flying home Monday, but that was a day before the first news accounts were published. For days, although they pledged cooperation, no Kennedy stepped forward to provide the authorities with any information.

So far, police handling of the case brings to mind the botched investigation of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, when the Senator did not notify the police until 10 hours later that he had driven off the bridge. The first reports about the case were inaccurate, yet the police did not provide an accurate one. By the end of the week, police still had not questioned any of the Kennedys. Nor did they interrogate bartenders, parking-lot attendants or other potential witnesses until a week after the alleged crime. They delayed naming a suspect until Friday because, they said, they could not get a picture of Smith to show the victim for a definite identification -- even ) though his visage had been splashed across newspaper front pages for days.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Palm Beach