11/22/63 Part 76

"Hard to say. Are you maybe thinking whoever scarred your young lady's face is going to come back and try to finish the job?"

"Something like that."

"Crazy fella." It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"Sane men will often take a hint," Mr. Kenopensky said. "Crazy men rarely do. Saw it often back in the sagebrush days, before electric lights and phones. Warn em off, they come back. Beat em up, they hit from ambush-first you, then the one they're really after. Jug em up in county, they sit and wait to get out. Safest thing to do with crazy men is put em in the penitentiary for a long stretch. Or kill em."

"That's what I think, too."

"Don't let him back to spoil the rest of her pretty, if that's what he aims to do. If you care for her as much as you seem to, you've got a responsibility."

I certainly did, although Clayton was no longer the problem. I went back to my little modular apartment, made strong black coffee, and sat down with a legal pad. My plan was a little clearer now, and I wanted to start fles.h.i.+ng in the details.

I doodled instead. Then fell asleep.

When I woke up it was almost midnight and my cheek ached where it had been pressed against the checked oilcloth covering the kitchen table. I looked at what was on my pad. I didn't know if I'd drawn it before going to sleep or if I had wakened long enough to do it and just couldn't remember.

It was a gun. Not a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, but a pistol. My pistol. The one I'd tossed beneath the porch steps at 214 West Neely. It was probably still there. I hoped it was still there.

I was going to need it.

11.

11/19/63 (Tuesday) Sadie called in the morning and said Deke was a little better, but she intended to make him stay home tomorrow, as well. "Otherwise he'll just try to come in, and have a setback. But I'll pack my bag before I leave for school tomorrow morning and head your way as soon as period six is over."

Period six ended at ten past one. That meant I'd have to be gone from Eden Fallows by four o'clock tomorrow afternoon at the latest. If only I knew where. "I look forward to seeing you."

"You sound all stiff and funny. Are you having one of your headaches?"

"A little one," I said. It was true.

"Go lie down with a damp cloth over your eyes."

"I'll do that." I had no intention of doing that.

"Have you thought of anything?"

I had, as a matter of fact. I'd thought that taking Lee's rifle wasn't enough. And shooting him at the Paine house was a bad option. Not just because I'd probably be caught, either. Counting Ruth's two, there were four kids in that house. I might still have tried it if Lee had been walking from a nearby bus stop, but he'd be riding with Buell Frazier, the neighbor who'd gotten him the job at Ruth Paine's request.

"No," I said. "Not yet."

"We'll think of something. You wait and see."

12.

I drove (still slowly, but with increasing confidence) across town to West Neely, wondering what I'd do if the ground-floor apartment was occupied. Buy a new gun, I supposed . . . but the .38 Police Special was the one I wanted, if only because I'd had one just like it in Derry, and that mission had been a success.

According to newscaster Frank Blair on the Today show, Kennedy had moved on to Miami, where he was greeted by a large crowd of cubanos. Some held up signs reading VIVA JFK while others carried a banner reading KENNEDY IS A TRAITOR TO OUR CAUSE. If nothing changed, he had seventy-two hours left. Oswald, who had only slightly longer, would be in the Book Depository, perhaps loading cartons into one of the freight elevators, maybe in the break room drinking coffee.

I might be able to get him there-just walk up to him and plug him-but I'd be collared and wrestled to the floor. After the killshot, if I was lucky. Before, if I wasn't. Either way, the next time I saw Sadie Dunhill it would be through gla.s.s reinforced with chickenwire. If I had to give myself up in order to stop Oswald-to sacrifice myself, in hero-speak-I thought I could do that. But I didn't want it to play out that way. I wanted Sadie and my poundcake, too.

There was a pot barbecue on the lawn at 214 West Neely, and a new rocking chair on the porch, but the shades were drawn and there was no car in the driveway. I parked in front, told myself that bold is beautiful, and mounted the steps. I stood where Marina had stood on April tenth when she came to visit me and knocked as she had knocked. If someone answered the door, I'd be Frank Anderson, canva.s.sing the neighborhood on behalf of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (I was too old for Grit). If the lady of the house expressed an interest, I'd promise to come back with my sample case tomorrow.

No one answered. Maybe the lady of the house also worked. Maybe she was down the block, visiting a neighbor. Maybe she was in the bedroom that had been mine not long ago, sleeping off a drunk. It was mix-nox to me, as we say in the Land of Ago. The place was quiet, that was the important thing, and the sidewalk was deserted. Even Mrs. Alberta Hitchinson, the walker-equipped neighborhood sentry, wasn't in evidence.

I descended from the porch in my limping sidesaddle fas.h.i.+on, started down the walk, turned as if I'd forgotten something, and peered under the steps. The .38 was there, half-buried in leaves with the short barrel poking out. I got down on my good knee, snagged it, and dropped it into the side pocket of my sport coat. I looked around and saw no one watching. I limped to my car, put the gun in the glove compartment, and drove away.

13.

Instead of going back to Eden Fallows, I drove into downtown Dallas, stopping at a sporting goods store on the way to buy a gun-cleaning kit and a box of fresh ammo. The last thing I wanted was to have the .38 misfire or blow up in my face.

My next stop was the Adolphus. There were no rooms available until next week, the doorman told me-every hotel in Dallas was full for the president's visit-but for a dollar tip, he was more than happy to park my car in the hotel lot. "Have to be gone by four, though. That's when the heavy check-ins start."

By then it was noon. It was only three or four blocks to Dealey Plaza, but I took my sweet time getting there. I was tired, and my headache was worse in spite of a Goody's Powder. Texans drive with their horns, and every blast dug into my brain. I rested often, leaning against the sides of buildings and standing on my good leg like a heron. An off-duty taxi driver asked if I was okay; I a.s.sured him that I was. It was a lie. I was distraught and miserable. A man with a b.u.m knee really shouldn't have to carry the future of the world on his back.

I dropped my grateful b.u.t.t onto the same bench where I'd sat in 1960, only days after arriving in Dallas. The elm that had shaded me then clattered bare branches today. I stretched out my aching knee, sighed with relief, then turned my attention to the ugly brick cube of the Book Depository. The windows overlooking Houston and Elm Streets glittered in the chilly afternoon sun. We know a secret, they said. We're going to be famous, especially the one on the southeast corner of the sixth floor. We're going to be famous, and you can't stop us. A sense of stupid menace surrounded the building. And was it just me who thought so? I watched several people cross Elm to pa.s.s the building on the other side and thought not. Lee was inside that cube right now, and I was sure he was thinking many of the things I was thinking. Can I do this? Will I do this? Is it my destiny?

Robert's not your brother anymore, I thought. Now I'm your brother, Lee, your brother of the gun. You just don't know it.

Behind the Depository, in the trainyard, an engine hooted. A flock of band-tailed pigeons took wing. They momentarily whirled above the Hertz sign on the roof of the Depository, then wheeled away toward Fort Worth.

If I killed him before the twenty-second, Kennedy would be saved but I'd almost certainly wind up in jail or a psychiatric hospital for twenty or thirty years. But if I killed him on the twenty-second? Perhaps as he a.s.sembled his rifle?

Waiting until so late in the game would be a terrible risk, and one I'd tried with all my might to avoid, but I thought it could be done and was now probably my best chance. It would be safer with a partner to help me run my game, but there was only Sadie, and I wouldn't involve her. Not even, I realized bleakly, if it meant that Kennedy had to die or I had to go to prison. She had been hurt enough.

I began making my slow way back to the hotel to get my car. I took one final glance back at the Book Depository over my shoulder. It was looking at me. I had no doubt of it. And of course it was going to end there, I'd been foolish to imagine anything else. I had been driven toward that brick hulk like a cow down a slaughterhouse chute.

14.

11/20/63 (Wednesday) I started awake at dawn from some unremembered dream, my heart beating hard.

She knows.

Knows what?

That you've been lying to her about all the things you claim not to remember.

"No," I said. My voice was rusty with sleep.

Yes. She was careful to say she was leaving after period six, because she doesn't want you to know she's planning to leave much sooner. She doesn't want you to know until she shows up. In fact, she might be on the road already. You'll be halfway through your morning therapy session, and in she'll breeze.

I didn't want to believe this, but it felt like a foregone conclusion.

So where was I going to go? As I sat there on the bed in that Wednesday morning's first light, that also seemed like a foregone conclusion. It was as if my subconscious mind had known all along. The past has resonance, it echoes.

But first I had one more ch.o.r.e to perform on my used typewriter. An unpleasant one.

15.

November 20, 1963 Dear Sadie, I have been lying to you. I think you've suspected that for quite some time now. I think you're planning to show up early today. That is why you won't see me again until after JFK visits Dallas the day after tomorrow.

If things go as I hope, we'll have a long and happy life together in a different place. It will be strange to you at first, but I think you'll get used to it. I'll help you. I love you, and that's why I can't let you be a part of this.

Please believe in me, please be patient, and please don't be surprised if you read my name and see my picture in the papers-if things go as I want them to, that will probably happen. Above all, do not try to find me.

All my love, Jake PS: You should burn this.

16.

I packed my life as George Amberson into the trunk of my gull-wing Chevy, tacked a note for the therapist on the door, and drove away feeling heavy and homesick. Sadie left Jodie even earlier than I'd thought she might-before dawn. I departed Eden Fallows at nine. She pulled her Beetle up to the curb at quarter past, read the note canceling the therapy session, and let herself in with the key I'd given her. Propped against the typewriter's roller-bar was an envelope with her name on it. She tore it open, read the letter, sat down on the sofa in front of the blank television, and cried. She was still crying when the therapist showed up . . . but she had burned the note, as I requested.

17.

Mercedes Street was mostly silent under an overcast sky. The jump-rope girls weren't in evidence-they'd be in school, perhaps listening raptly as their teacher told them all about the upcoming presidential visit-but the FOR RENT sign was once more tacked to the rickety porch railing, as I'd expected. There was a phone number. I drove down to the Montgomery Ward warehouse parking lot and called it from the booth near the loading dock. I had no doubt that the man who answered with a laconic "Yowp, this is Merritt" was the same guy who had rented 2703 to Lee and Marina. I could still see his Stetson hat and gaudy st.i.tched boots.

I told him what I wanted, and he laughed in disbelief. "I don't rent by the week. That's a fine home there, podna."

"It's a dump," I said. "I've been inside. I know."

"Now wait just a doggone-"

"Nosir, you wait. I'll give you fifty bucks to squat in that hole through the weekend. That's almost a full month's rent, and you can put your sign back in the window come Monday."

"Why would you-"

"Because Kennedy's coming and every hotel in DallasFort Worth is full. I drove a long way to see him, and I don't intend to camp out in Fair Park or on Dealey Plaza."

I heard the click and flare of a cigarette lighter as Merritt thought this over.

"Time's wasting," I said. "Tick-tock."

"What's your name, podna?"

"George Amberson." I sort of wished I'd moved in without calling at all. I almost had, but a visit from the Fort Worth PD was the last thing I needed. I doubted if the residents of a street where chickens were sometimes blown up to celebrate holidays gave much of a s.h.i.+t about squatters, but better safe than sorry. I was no longer just walking around the house of cards; I was living in it.

"I'll meet you out front in half an hour, forty-five minutes."

"I'll be inside," I said. "I have a key."

More silence. Then: "Where'd you get it?"