11/22/63 Part 56

1.

The Oswalds became my upstairs neighbors on March 2, 1963. They hand-carried their possessions, mostly in liquor store cartons, from the crumbling brick box on Elsbeth Street. Soon the wheels of the little j.a.panese tape recorder were turning on a regular basis, but mostly I listened in with the earphones. That way the conversations upstairs were normal instead of slowed down, but of course I couldn't understand much of it, anyway.

The week after the Oswalds moved into their new digs, I visited one of the p.a.w.nshops on Greenville Avenue to buy a gun. The first revolver the p.a.w.nbroker showed me was the same Colt .38 model I'd bought in Derry.

"This is excellent pertection against muggers n home-breakers," the p.a.w.nbroker said. "Dead accurate up to twenty yards."

"Fifteen," I said. "I heard fifteen."

The p.a.w.nie raised his eyebrows. "Okay, say fifteen. Anyone stupid enough-"

-to try mugging me out of my cash is going to be a lot closer than that, that's how the pitch goes.

"-to brace you is gonna be in at close quarters, so what do you say?"

My first impulse, just to break that sense of chiming but slightly discordant harmony was to tell him I wanted something else, maybe a .45, but breaking the harmony might be a bad idea. Who knew? What I did know was that the .38 I'd bought in Derry had done the job.

"How much?"

"Let you have it for twelve."

That was two dollars more than I'd paid in Derry, but of course that had been four and a half years ago. Adjusting for inflation, twelve seemed about right. I told him to add a box of bullets and he had a deal.

When the broker saw me putting the gun and the ammo in the briefcase I'd brought along for that purpose, he said, "Why don't you let me sell you a holster, son? You don't sound like you're from around here and you probably don't know, but you c'n carry legal in Texas, no permit needed if you don't have a felony record. You got a felony record?"

"No, but I don't expect to be mugged in broad daylight."

The broker offered a dark smile. "On Greenville Avenue you can never tell what's gonna happen. Man blew his own head off just a block and a half from here a few years ago."

"Really?"

"Yessir, outside a bar called the Desert Rose. Over a woman, accourse. Don't that figure?"

"I guess," I said. "Although sometimes it's politics."

"Nah, nah, at the bottom it's always a woman, son."

I'd found a parking s.p.a.ce four blocks west of the p.a.w.nshop, and in order to get back to my new (new to me, anyway) car, I had to pa.s.s Faith Financial, where I'd laid my bet on the Miracle Pirates in the fall of 1960. The sharpie who'd paid off my twelve hundred was standing out front, having a smoke. He was wearing his green eyeshade. His eyes pa.s.sed over me, but seemingly without interest or recognition.

2.

That was on a Friday afternoon, and I drove straight from Greenville Avenue to Kileen, where Sadie met me at the Candlewood Bungalows. We spent the night, as was our habit that winter. The next day she drove back to Jodie, where I joined her on Sunday for church. After the benediction, during the part where we shook hands with the people all around us, saying "Peace be with you," my thoughts turned-not comfortably-to the gun now stowed in the trunk of my car.

Over the Sunday noon meal, Sadie asked: "How much longer? Until you do what you have to do?"

"If everything goes the way I hope, not much more than a month."

"And if it doesn't?"

I scrubbed my hands through my hair and went to the window. "Then I don't know. Anything else on your mind?"

"Yes," she said calmly. "There's cherry cobbler for afters. Would you like whipped cream on yours?"

"Very much," I said. "I love you, honey."

"You better," she said, getting up to fetch dessert. "Because I'm kind of out on a limb here."

I stayed at the window. A car came rolling slowly down the street-an oldie but a goodie, as the jocks on K-Life said-and I felt that harmonic chime again. But I was always feeling it now, and sometimes it meant nothing. One of Christy's AA slogans came to my mind: FEAR, standing for false evidence appearing real.

This time a click of a.s.sociation came, though. The car was a white-over-red Plymouth Fury, like the one I'd seen in the parking lot of the Worumbo mill, not far from the drying shed where the rabbit-hole into 1958 came out. I remembered touching the trunk to make sure it was real. This one had an Arkansas plate instead of a Maine one, but still . . . that chime. That harmonic chime. Sometimes I felt that if I knew what that chime meant, I'd know everything. Probably stupid, but true.

The Yellow Card Man knew, I thought. He knew and it killed him.

My latest harmonic signaled left, turned at the stop sign, and disappeared toward Main Street.

"Come eat dessert, you," Sadie said from behind me, and I jumped.

The AAs say FEAR stands for something else, as well: f.u.c.k everything and run.

3.

When I got back to Neely Street that night, I put on the earphones and listened to the latest recording. I expected nothing but Russian, but this time I got English as well. And splas.h.i.+ng sounds.

Marina: (Speaks Russian.) Lee: "I can't, Mama, I'm in the tub with Junie!"

(More splas.h.i.+ng, and laughter-Lee's and the baby's high chortle.) Lee: "Mama, we got water on the floor! Junie splas.h.!.+ Bad girl!"

Marina: "Mop it up! I beezy! Beezy!" (But she is also laughing.) Lee: "I can't, you want the baby to . . ." (Russian.) Marina: (Speaks Russian-scolding and laughing at the same time.) (More splas.h.i.+ng. Marina is humming some pop song from KLIF. It sounds sweet.) Lee: "Mama, bring us our toys!"

Marina: "Da, da, always you must have the toys."

(Splas.h.i.+ng, loud. The door to the bathroom must be all the way open now.) Marina: (Speaks Russian.) Lee (pouty little boy's voice): "Mama, you forgot our rubber ball."

(Big splash-the baby screams with delight.) Marina: "There, all toys for preence and preencessa."

(Laughter from all three-their joy turns me cold.) Lee: "Mama, bring us a (Russian word). We have water on our ear."

Marina (laughing): "Oh my G.o.d, what next?"

I lay awake a long time that night, thinking of the three of them. Happy for once, and why not? 214 West Neely wasn't much, but it was still a step up. Maybe they were even sleeping in the same bed, June for once happy instead of scared to death.

And now a fourth in the bed, as well. The one growing in Marina's belly.

4.

Things began to move faster, as they had in Derry, only now time's arrow was flying toward April 10 instead of Halloween. Al's notes, which I had depended on to get me this far, became less helpful. Leading up to the attempt on Walker's life, they concentrated almost solely on Lee's actions and movements, and that winter there was a lot more to their lives, Marina's in particular.

For one thing, she had finally made a friend-not a sugar daddy wannabe like George Bouhe, but a woman friend. Her name was Ruth Paine, and she was a Quaker lady. Russian speaker, Al had noted in a laconic style not much like his earlier notes. Met at party, 2(??)/63. Marina separated from Lee and living with the Paine woman at the time of the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination. And then, as if it were no more than an afterthought: Lee stored M-C in Paine garage. Wrapped in blanket.

By M-C, he meant the mail-order Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with which Lee planned to kill General Walker.

I don't know who threw the party where Lee and Marina met the Paines. I don't know who introduced them. De Mohrenschildt? Bouhe? Probably one or the other, because by then the rest of the emigres were giving the Oswalds a wide berth. Hubby was a sneering know-it-all, wifey a punching bag who'd pa.s.sed up G.o.d knew how many chances to leave him for good.

What I do know is Marina Oswald's potential escape-hatch arrived behind the wheel of a Chevrolet station wagon-white over red-on a rainy day in the middle of March. She parked at the curb and looked around dubiously, as if not sure she had come to the right address. Ruth Paine was tall (although not as tall as Sadie) and painfully thin. Her brownish hair was banged over a huge expanse of forehead in front and flipped in back, a style that did not flatter her. She wore rimless gla.s.ses on a nose splashed with freckles. To me, peering through a crack in the curtains, she looked like the kind of woman who steered clear of meat and marched in Ban the Bomb demonstrations . . . and that was pretty much who Ruth Paine was, I think, a woman who was New Age before New Age was cool.

Marina must have been watching for her, because she came clattering down the outside stairs with the baby in her arms, a blanket flipped up over June's head to protect her from the drifting drizzle. Ruth Paine smiled tentatively and spoke carefully, putting a s.p.a.ce between each word. "h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Oswald, I'm Ruth Paine. Do you remember me?"

"Da," Marina said. "Yes." Then she added something in Russian. Ruth replied in the same language . . . although haltingly.

Marina invited her in. I waited until I heard the creak of their footsteps above me, then donned the earphones connected to the lamp bug. What I heard was a conversation in mixed English and Russian. Marina corrected Ruth several times, sometimes with laughter. I understood enough to figure out why Ruth Paine had come. Like Paul Gregory, she wanted Russian lessons. I understood something else from their frequent laughter and increasingly easy conversation: they liked each other.

I was glad for Marina. If I killed Oswald after his attempt on General Walker, the New Agey Ruth Paine might take her in. I could hope.

5.

Ruth only came twice to Neely Street for her lessons. After that, Marina and June got in the station wagon and Ruth drove them away. Probably to her home in the posh (at least by Oak Cliff standards) suburb of Irving. That address wasn't in Al's notes-he seemed to care little about Marina's relations.h.i.+p with Ruth, probably because he expected to finish Lee long before that rifle ended up in the Paines' garage-but I found it in the phone directory: 2515 West Fifth Street.

One overcast March afternoon, about two hours after Marina and Ruth had departed, Lee and George de Mohrenschildt showed up in de Mohrenschildt's car. Lee got out carrying a brown paper sack with a sombrero and PEPINO'S BEST MEXICAN printed on the side. De Mohrenschildt had a six-pack of Dos Equis. They went up the outside staircase, talking and laughing. I grabbed the earphones, heart pumping. At first there was nothing, but then one of them turned on the lamp. After that I might have been in the room with them, an unseen third.

Please don't conspire to kill Walker, I thought. Please don't make my job harder than it already is.

"Pardon the mess," Lee said. "She doesn't do anything much these days but sleep, watch TV, and talk about that woman she's giving lessons to."

De Mohrenschildt spoke for awhile about some oil leases he was trying to get hold of in Haiti, and spoke harshly of the repressive Duvalier regime. "At the end of the day, trucks drive through the marketplace and pick up the dead. Many of them are children who've starved to death."

"Castro and the Front will put an end to that," Lee said grimly.

"May providence hasten the day." There was the clink of bottles, probably to toast the idea of providence hastening the day. "How is work, Comrade? And how is it you're not there this afternoon?"

He wasn't there, Lee said, because he wanted to be here. Simple as that. He'd just punched out and walked away. "What can they do about it? I'm the best d.a.m.n photoprint technician ole Bobby Stovall's got, and he knows it. The foreman, his name is (I couldn't make it out-Graff? Grafe?) says 'Quit trying to play labor organizer, Lee.' You know what I do? I laugh and say 'Okay, svinoyeb,' and walk away. He's a pig's d.i.c.k, and ever'one knows it."

Still, it was clear Lee liked his job, although he complained about the paternalistic att.i.tude, and how seniority counted for more than talent. At one point he said, "You know, in Minsk, on a level playing field, I'd be running the place in a year."

"I know you would, my son-it's completely evident."

Playing him up. Winding him up. I was sure of it. I didn't like it.

"Did you see the paper this morning?" Lee asked.

"I saw nothing but telegrams and memos this morning. Why do you think I'm here, if not to get away from my desk?"

"Walker did it," Lee said. "He joined up with Hargis's crusade-or maybe it's Walker's crusade and Hargis joined up. I cain't tell. That f.u.c.king Midnight Ride thing, anyway. Those two ninnies are going to tour the whole South, telling people that the N-double-A-C-P's a communist front. They'll set integration and voting rights back twenty years."

"Sure! And fomenting hate. How long before the ma.s.sacres start?"

"Or until someone shoots Ralph Abernathy and Dr. King!"

"Of course King will be shot," de Mohrenschildt said, almost laughing. I was standing up, my hands pressing the earphones tight to the sides of my head, sweat trickling down my face. This was dangerous ground, indeed-the very edge of conspiracy. "It's only a matter of time."

One of them used the church key on another bottle of Mexican beer, and Lee said, "Someone should stop those two b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"You're wrong to call our General Walker a ninny," de Mohrenschildt said in a lecturely tone. "Hargis, yes, okay. Hargis is a joke. What I hear is that he is-like so many of his ilk-a man of twisted s.e.xual appet.i.tes, willing to diddle a little girl's c.u.n.t in the morning and a little boy's a.s.shole in the afternoon."

"Man, that's sick!" Lee's voice broke like an adolescent's on the last word. Then he laughed.

"But Walker, ah, there's a very different kettle of shrimp. He's high in the John Birch Society-"

"Those Jew-hating fascists!"

"-and I can see a day, not long hence, when he may run it. Once he has the confidence and approval of the other right-wing nut groups, he may even run for office again . . . but this time not for governor of Texas. I suspect he has his sights aimed higher. The Senate? Perhaps. Even the White House?"