Marion Adams, gun expert and official lounge lizard to the monied collector set, had an insidious charm. It was easy to see that he was one of those gifted enablers who helps the big tall rich get what they think they want with a minimum of fuss. He was tall, fair, rather flitty, serious only about himself, hiding behind square black glasses and a suit so dowdy that it had to be expensive. He could have been an embalmer, and in a sense he was, masterminding the transfers of dead guns soaked in formaldehyde for a profit.
He insisted on high end all the way, no casual tamale and beer joint for him, and so the three men met in the French Room at the Adolphus, a Texas fantasy of high Louis XV dining, where every item on the menu boasted its own apostrophe and some two or three.
Marty, as he was called by all who knew and could afford him, held the floor, as he always did. It was the divine right of blowhards. It turned out he knew a great deal about apostrophes, French dishes, wines, art, politics, just about everything, and even Richard yielded to the torrent of knowledge; meanwhile, Swagger picked at the morsels of overprepared food, wished he’d ordered the chicken, and worked at keeping a look of polite interest on his face. Finally, Marty turned to business, over coffee.
“I am not a conspiracy ‘nut,’” he said. “In fact, like millions of others, I accepted without question the Warren Commission report and was willing to let it go at that. But I do make my living telling gun stories. I was born into the business, really at its high-water mark. My father was a manufacturer and his father before him. Connecticut gun people. I had the gene too, but from a slightly different angle. I had the hunger to know and chronicle, not manufacture, not shoot, not hunt. I’m the amanuensis of the American gun culture. I’ve written books on all the major manufacturers, I consult at the country’s finest auction houses, I am a registered appraiser in thirty-nine states, and I advise many of the nation’s most distinguished collectors on the guns they are about to purchase. I assume you have checked my background and found it satisfactory.”
“Nobody has a discouraging word about you, Mr. Adams,” said Swagger.
“Nor you, Mr. Brophy. I’ve checked too. You seem to be a man who’s handled crises all over the world.”
“I seem to have come out okay. I am a lucky son of a gun.”
“May I ask you, respectfully, for a brief account of your life?”
“Sure,” said Swagger, launching easily into a colorful spin on the mining engineer’s life, the risks, the near-misses, and the long nights alone with books.
He finished on Brophy’s fictional JFK obsession. “Some years ago, I got hooked on JFK’s death. More I read, more I questioned. Read some conspiracy crap and was not impressed. Read Warren, and it seemed ragged. Started thinking hard about it, using my engineer’s brain. Realized a couple of years ago, I had enough money to last several lifetimes and two or three more wives, so I decided I was tired of sleeping bags and would prefer to spend the rest of my life going into this thing in eighth gear and seeing where it would take me. Always loved guns, so that was a start, and I guess ’cause I’m mechanical by nature, my approach has always been through the guns. Interesting. Somehow I came up with some ideas that I don’t believe nobody has, and I’m trying to push forward from them. Not for money, not for fame, just because of a goddamned stubborn streak. If I dig a shaft, I like to have something to show for it. Is that enough for you, Mr. Adams?”
“Excellent account, Mr. Brophy. I’m going to make the first move here and divulge a portion of what I’ve found out. You see if it squares with what you know, and we’ll see where we are at the end.”
“Go to work, sir,” Swagger said.
“All right, here’s my story. I am always looking for subjects for the next book. Some months ago I got interested, quite innocently, in the life and career of a great but tragic American shooter named Lon Scott-”
Swagger’s eyes stayed modestly interested, his breathing smooth, his lips unlicked. He gave away nothing and made certain not to choose this moment to break off eye contact and take a sip of coffee.
“Lon Scott. Interesting fellow,” Adams continued. Then he went ahead to issue the specifics on Lon Scott, the bright youth, the safari heroics, the football stardom at New Haven, the extraordinary run of national match successes in the years after World War II, the tragic accident in ’55 at the hands of his father, his father’s suicide, his reemergence as a writer and experimenter in the late fifties, and then his own death in 1964.
“Sad story,” said Bob as at last Marty had to take a breath and left a gap in the noise. “I hate it when someone so talented gets cut down young. Fella had a lot more to contribute.”
“Yes, it does seem so,” Adams said. “Then I made another interesting discovery.”
He went on to tell how, in the early seventies, a fellow named John Thomas Albright emerged as a gun writer and ballistics authority and soon became a revered if mysterious figure in gun culture. He had an excellent career until he was killed in a hunting accident in 1993, at the age of sixty-eight. “I learned by accident that he was also disabled, wheelchair-bound. You’d never know it from his writing. I checked for pictures, and none existed that I could find. I went to Albright’s home in rural North Carolina and learned that he was a mystery there as well. I began to wonder: could Albright and Scott be the same fellow? If so, why would Lon contrive his own fraudulent death in 1964 and reemerge as John Thomas Albright? What was he hiding or hoping to distance himself from?”
The question hung unanswered for a moment or two, and Bob glanced at the grim countenance of Richard, the third member of the group, and then answered. “I suppose you’re referring to our point of common interest, a certain event in November 1963.”
Adams, versed in upping the dramatic ante on his tale, paused an artful second or so, then nodded. He waited another second.
“Of course. So I decided to look into the life of these two men more carefully. I discovered that while, obviously, Lon Scott never published an article after 1964, John Thomas Albright never published one before 1964. I acquired copies of all their articles and first by myself and then with the help of an academic who specializes in forensic reading, we made a line-by-line comparison and found deep organizational similarities as well as dozens of turns of phrase that were similar. I found three cases where Albright made reference to discoveries that Scott had made as if they were his own. I discovered that the documentation on Scott’s death was very, very thin, as if contrived by an amateur. I could go on with the irregularities, but the point is obvious: Lon became John. The question is, why?”
“You’re in areas I haven’t even gotten to yet,” said Swagger. “You’re coming at it from a different angle. See, I’m on the how. The way an engineer’s mind works, there’s no point in proceeding until the how is answered. But you’ve started on, or you’ve advanced to, the who.”
“You can see what I need,” said Adams. “I need that how. Just like you need the who. So what I’m looking for, basically, is a theory. It’s one thing to put together a biography full of mysterious elements that might circumspectly suggest that Lon Scott, a great rifleman and ballistic experimenter, was involved in the Kennedy assassination to some degree. But a lot of people, if the data is manipulated and selected carefully enough, could fit in a similar template. What I need is somebody of extreme capability to put together a coherent narrative, based on what I can uncover about Lon Scott in 1963, as to the how part of his engagement. Where would he shoot from? What would he use? How would he get in and out? Who helped him? Remember, he’s in a wheelchair, so he needed allies. Here’s a provocative fact: I learned that he had a first cousin named Hugh Meachum who was some kind of CIA star at the time. He too died in 1993. But the connection of Lon and Hugh in 1963, if it can be documented, is titillating. But see, it’s all meaningless without that first part. How did they do it?”
“You don’t have any idea?”
“Well,” said Marty smugly, “I can’t reveal how I know this yet, but there is some suggestion that another rifle is involved, and it was a Model 70 Winchester. It’s more than Lon’s engagement over the years with Winchester. I’m talking about a specific Model 70, caliber as yet unknown. I got to thinking: what could you do to either a Model 70 Winchester or a Mannlicher-Carcano to make them compatible? Somehow interchange parts? Take the barrel off one and-”
“Trust me,” said Bob, “you are now in my pea patch, and there is a way of doing just that. That’s where my thinking is taking me. I’m looking at some kind of deal where a.264-caliber bullet from a Carcano shell was fired from a.264-caliber casing, say.264 Win Mag, 6.5 Swede, maybe a wildcat like a.30–06/6.5, in order to get enough velocity so the brain-shot bullet self-destructed.”
“Excellent,” said Marty. “Oh, this is so exciting.”
“There’s an issue of timing, but the reloading angle is interesting. And you say you can link it to a Model 70? That would really tie the bow on it.”
“That’s it,” Adams said. “I’m hoping the answers are in sync with the Warren Commission, not crazily opposed to it. You have to know the hard facts of the Warren Commission. And it all has to fit in that time frame. Nobody has ever come close to that.”
Swagger went all engineer on him, hard and practical. “I can see this might work. But what’s your pitch?” he asked. “What is it you want from me?”
Adams said, “Well, I’d like to hear your ideas, though, please understand, I’m not forcing you. Your theory is your intellectual property. I am not trying to pry it from you. You decide if you care to share somewhere along the line. What I am suggesting is that we explore working together. I’d get a lawyer to draw up a contract so that each of us is protected. I know you’re a cautious man. When you’re satisfied, we should have a working session and a frank exchange of evidence. I should also tell you-I alluded to this earlier-I may have a piece of evidence that could nail this absolutely. I won’t tell you what it is or where I got it, but it could astound the world if it’s what I think it is.”
“Is it this mystery Model 70?”
“When I explain it to you, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I can’t say more until we’ve signed contractually. I should add that I have a very good agent in New York, and we are talking about a book as the end product, are we not? I will write it, you will vet it. We may have to bring in another, better writer at some point, properly vetted and legally obligated by contract to us. Is this satisfactory?”
Swagger squinted hard. “I never move fast on anything. You have your lawyer draw up that contract, I’ll have mine look at it, and we will see where we are then.”
“That works for me,” said Adams.
“If that happens, I will settle down and write-I ain’t no writer, so ‘scratch out’ is a better term-all the stuff that comes out when I have a late-night thinking session. I think that will do better than any yakkity-yak session. You’ll see that it’s taking you where you think it should. We’ll proceed from there.”
“Absolutely,” said Adams. “I don’t want to apply pressure, but I think we should have as our goal, going public, by either book or other media, by or on November 22, 2013. The fiftieth anniversary. There’s going to be a groundswell of attention then, so we might as well cash in on it. It never hurts to think about marketing.”
The next day, Swagger issued his report over expensive coffee, amid prosperous moms and boho kids and various cino-machines, to Memphis.
“Blew me away when he pulled Lon Scott out of the hat.”
“It is possible that he came up with Scott independently, without knowledge before of Hugh or 1993. I mean, Lon was real, he left tracks, traces, and that is the area in which Marty Adams is known to be an expert researcher.”
“It is. I ain’t saying it ain’t.”
“He seems to be clean. We’ve looked hard at him. I will direct Neal to look hard again.”
“Appreciated. Even a paranoid like me has to admit, though, there ain’t no signs of a game.”
“Before you go anywhere with Marty, I will have everything on him except his colon X-rays.”
“If you get them, I don’t want to see them.”
“I don’t want to see them either. I’ll have an intern go over them. That’s what interns are for. Meanwhile, where are you? Investigation-wise, I mean. Still having fun?”
“I’m tussling with Red Nine. It’s got me up nights. And then when I get real depressed over that, I think about the other riddle I have made no progress on, the deal on the timing. How they did it so fast, how they got Oswald into play when nobody knew until three days before that, by fluke, JFK was going to be driven under his window. Man, they were good.”
“Or lucky.”
“Or even worse: both.”
In this business, bad days are an occupational hazard. I spent several under intense artillery fire at a forward operating base in Vietnam when I was running Phoenix. An Israeli rocket buried me in rubble for six hours in Beirut, ruining a perfectly fine suit. I was detained in 1991 by some obnoxious Chinese border guards for what seemed like years but was only hours. I thought they were going to beat me up because I was Russian, although I wasn’t, and if I’d told them who I really was, they would have beaten me up twice as hard, plus allowed me to rot in their prison system for half a century. It was frightening, coming close to melting my phony sangfroid and tarnishing my Yalie style. Incroyable!
But no day of my life has been as bad as November 21, 1963. It seemed to last forever, and at the same time it seemed to be over in split seconds, and the next one, although we all had fierce doubts, was upon us so quickly, we couldn’t believe it.
We were a grim-faced bunch. I don’t think any of us had come to terms with what we were about to do. Some doubts you never put away, and those haunt you-all of us, I mean-for years and years. Now is not the time for the postmortem; I can say only that I plunged ahead on the faith that the change would be for the better, that it would save lives in the hundreds of thousands, white, yellow, north, south, theirs, ours, that it would forestall the anarchy and chaos that I quite rightly had predicted, that I was and we were reluctant assassins, that we believed ourselves to be moral assassins.
Nevertheless, the day was spent in a kind of existential dread, a clammy dryness of breath and persistent wetness of body. Food had no taste or appeal, liquor had too much taste and appeal (and was therefore avoided), and to quote a line from, I think, James Jones in The Thin Red Line, “numbly [we] did the necessary.” (I trust my posthumous editor will have the energy to run the quote down.)
Alek was out of my control, if he’d ever been in it. There was nothing that could be done at this point. He would do what was required of him well enough to enjoy the success that had eluded him in life, or he would not. I suppose it was possible, and I confess it never occurred to me, that he could have called his “friend” Agent Hotsy of the FBI and turned me in, as part of a scenario by which the red spy (he thought) was nabbed and JFK’s life was spared. He’d be a hero then, and money and fame would come of it. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t concern myself with such nonsense. In the first place, he didn’t have the imagination. In the second, truly, he didn’t have the disposition: he was a born Dostoyevskian or Conradian subversive, a hard-core assassin or mad bomber. In another century, he’d have carried a bowling-ball bomb with a fizzing fuse under his cape. He wanted to destroy; it was his destiny. He wanted to reach out and atomize the world that had relegated him to bug status, cursed him with reading difficulties, attention difficulties, a sluggish mind, an obsessive streak. It never occurred to me that such a figure would betray me. I was his only hope, his true believer.
My fears about Alek, instead, were practical. Would he remember the rifle? Could he sneak it out of Mrs. Paine’s house without either her or Marina seeing it? Could he sneak it into the Book Depository the next day without dropping it in the lunchroom with a clatter, sending its removed screws all over the place? Could he reassemble it, or reassemble it correctly? A black comic vision came to me of him having done everything perfectly, the sight exactly on the target, the perfect trigger squeeze achieved, and SNAP! nothing, because somehow he’d dropped the bolt and hadn’t noticed the firing pin fall out on the floor. Or maybe his ride into work on Friday morning would catch a glimpse of the front sight, and the fellow would say, “Lee, what the hell is that?” and Lee would panic and jump out of the car. With an idiot like him, any number of screwups were possible, and I have to agree with a number of anti-conspiracy commentators who, after the fact, said that no intelligence agency would trust such a moron for an important assignment. They were right, but for the fact that operational necessity sometimes compels gambling on a disreputable character.
I tried to put aside my doubts on poor Alek and proceed with business that I could control.
We met that morning after room-service breakfast in my room. Not a bunch of happy fellows, as I say. Jimmy had things to do: he had to get business cards printed, he had to figure out and fabricate some way to smuggle Lon’s silenced rifle into the building, which, among other things, would involve buying a voluminous overcoat whose sleeves would have to be tailored so they didn’t hang down ridiculously beyond his fingertips, like a clown’s. He wanted to go through the Dal-Tex Building again, to reaffirm his impressions, to memorize all the stairwells and floors and sequences of offices, to check out the locks, to conjure escape routes and hiding places, though if it came to hiding, the jig was already up. Basically, he wanted to apply his professional expertise and mind against the site of the crime again, so there’d be no surprises during the operation. I sensed he had to be alone for that, and also that he wanted to be alone. He was always the lone-wolf type, God bless him.
Off he went. Lon and I decided we should get a good look at Dealey Plaza. I pushed him over to Main, and we traced what would be the president’s route, turning right down Houston, flanking the plaza, then halting at Houston and Elm for a good look at Dal-Tex and its big windows with their excellent vantage over the plaza. We then crossed Houston and headed down the gentle slope and curve of Elm in front of the Book Depository. It was all pretty empty, for the plaza wasn’t a tourist attraction; why would it be? It offered no grace or beauty, as a Boston or Connecticut or Washington, D.C., park would, no grand leafy trees, just a few stunted oaks, no brilliant gardens, no ponds with swans and ducks. It was basically banal, a greensward plopped absurdly into the middle of nowhere, a rough triangle of grass between three streets, with, for some bizarre reason, a little annex to the north where the civic fathers, in their infinite wisdom, had thrown up some mock Roman Coliseum-style pillars in a semicircle atop a little rise, as grotesque and misguided attempt as any I’d seen at classical grace. Sure, it was Texas, but why didn’t they hire an architect, for God’s sake, not the mayor’s wife’s drunken brother or whoever perpetrated Dealey upon the world. It was less a park or a plaza than an abandoned field.
We didn’t say much, and I didn’t want to linger. I was being careful; maybe someone would recall the strange Ivy League prince and his wheelchair-imprisoned pal and report that to the feds, and who knew where that would lead. Or maybe Alek himself, taking fantasy shots from the sixth floor, would catch a glimpse of me, though would he recognize me in a gnarly Brooks Brothers tweed jacket and dark slacks with a pipe in my mouth and my horn-rims firmly in place when all he knew was a fellow in a lumpy GUM suit with sleeves of mismatched length because Natasha had been asleep at her sewing machine in hour fifteen of her sixteen-hour shift back in ’55 when she sewed the suit parts together on a Soviet sewing machine the size of a Buick. Then I relaxed. Today Alek would be in Pretendville, riding down the Malecon in Havana in the rear of a well-waxed ’47 Caddy next to his god Fidel, waving at the adoring crowds.
I pushed Lon down the street.
We followed the Elm sidewalk down the slope, and I had to pull against the wheelchair to keep it from getting away in gravity’s grasp. Lon saw a chance for a joke. “Don’t let me slip away, James Bond, and get creamed in traffic. You’ll be one pathetic Danger Man tomorrow.”
I was glad to hear the humor in his voice, even if it was sardonic. “Pip-pip, old man, I shall do my duty, as Yale instructed me,” I said in priss-soprano, kidding the blueblood-agent stereotype of which I was almost a pitch-perfect example.
I didn’t get Lon killed, and we passed the Book Depository off on the right, got down the incline, and I stopped us about halfway to the overpass, just past the idiotic Roman folly on the right, and turned Lon 180 degrees back so that he could see Elm Street, the rise of the hill, the two buildings that commanded the angles, the depository and the one from which he’d be shooting-we hoped-the Dal-Tex Building a little behind it across Houston. We were alone on the sidewalk, with the traffic whizzing by us.
“I make it about a hundred yards,” I said.
“To which building?” Lon asked.
“The one in the rear. The one we’ll probably be in.”
From that angle, you couldn’t see all of Dal-Tex, only the wall along Elm, though at an extreme angle, and a stretch of the Houston Street facade. Another completely ugly, graceless building. I think it was trying to be “modern.” Ugh. It changed personalities after floor two and went to soaring archways encompassing the windows, a flourish that registered as completely idiotic to me. What did they think that did for them? These Texans!
“Suppose we don’t get in?” Lon said.
It was as yet unsettled, and it worried me too. I couldn’t let that show to Lon. Cousin or not, I had leadership responsibility and had to represent clear-voiced optimism.
“Oh, he’ll do it. Jimmy’s the best. He’s very clever. And if he doesn’t, you’ve had a nice trip to Dallas at government expense and gained a story so fascinating, it’s a shame you’ll never be able to tell it.”
“I can’t believe I’m here, looking at this, talking about this,” he said.
“I can’t believe it either. But here we are. Do you see any difficulties in making the shot?”
“No. At that range, with a velocity a little over three thousand feet per second, it won’t drop an inch. The downward angle won’t play because it isn’t far enough, and the buildings as well as the dip will cancel any wind effects. Fish in a barrel. It’s technically point-blank, except you don’t know what ‘point-blank’ really means, and I don’t have much interest in explaining it now. Trust me. The bullet will hit what it’s aimed at, and it will destroy what it’s aimed at, even as it destroys itself. And then we enter the Lyndon Johnston era, God help us.”
“Johnson. Not Johnston.”
“Is this a quiz?”
“No, I’m being a jerk because I’m nervous.”
“Let’s get out of here. I’ve seen enough. Can you push me up the hill, or shall we wait for a cab here?”
“I’m fine.”
I pushed him up the hill. November 21, 1963, sunny but breezy, in the fifties, two men in jackets and ties, one pushing the other up a slight hill in a wheelchair. And that was that for recon, planning, rehearsal, and psychological preparation. We dealt with the issues as they came up, that was all, and improvised our way past any obstacles.
That night we had a final meeting in my room. Both Lon and I were eager to hear what Jimmy had been up to.
“I got this overcoat”-he held up a tan gabardine model, single-breasted, light, perfect for the weather and so banal that it would fit in anywhere in America-“and had a Chinese lady shorten the sleeves. Here, look.”
He threw the thing on. It hung well, even if the shoulder seams were a little off the shoulder, a few inches down the arm. Who would notice? More important, you could hide a tank in its folds.
“Okay,” he said, “here’s the interesting part. Question: how do we get a forty-inch, eight-pound rifle with scope and silencer into a building without anyone noticing it?”
“Something more sophisticated and more secure, please, than wrapping it in a paper bag,” I said.
“You’re going to have to break it down, obviously,” said Lon. “And I’m going to have to show you how to reassemble it. It isn’t just screwing in screws. You’ve got to set the three screws at a starting point, then tighten them three turns apiece in order, to a certain total for each hole. You’ve got to line up the slots with a piece of tape. That way, you preserve my zero.”
“He’s good at doing things,” I told Lon, nodding to Jimmy. “If you show him how to do it, he’ll do it exactly that way.”
“Mr. Scott,” said Jimmy, “I think I can manage. I’m not as stupid as I look.”
“It’s okay, Jimmy,” Lon said. “I didn’t mean anything snotty. I’m just nervous.”
“Me too,” said Jimmy, who looked as nervous as a stainless-steel rat trap, and we both had a tension-breaking laugh over such a ridiculous concept. Jimmy could talk his way into the Kremlin if he had to. “I also had the Chinese lady make me this,” he said.
He took a roll of material out of the coat pocket and unfurled it on the bed. It was about six feet long, four inches wide, and the woman had sewn pockets at either end, with crude but robust stitching meant to support weight.
“I throw it around my neck like a scarf,” Jimmy said. He did that so each end hung down the side of his body. “Now, in the left pocket, I slide in the rifle stock, with trigger guard and screws Scotch-taped in place and also the silencer. In the right pocket, I slide in the action, barrel, and scope. The pieces are hanging down my sides, halfway down my thighs, the metal parts a bit heavier than the wood, the whole thing awkward but secure. The lady was a good seamstress. Then I throw the coat on, and the coat being much longer than the ends of the scarf are, to my knees, it covers both completely. It’s so voluminous that nothing shows through the material. I just look like a businessman about his job on a coolish fall day in the great downtown trading center of Dallas, Texas. As long as I don’t run, squat, bump up against anybody or anything, I’m all right. Remember, my exposure will be short. Just the walk over from the car, the elevator upstairs, the walk down the hall, and one second to get in. I can get the rifle together in thirty seconds, you boys arrive, we open the window. Then we leave and go home and watch the rumpus on the television.”
“You must have brass balls, Irishman,” said Lon.
“Learned in the bog, sir,” said Jimmy.
“Tell me the rest, will you?” Lon said. “I don’t get it. I need to believe in it, and bloody Hugh here was so gung-ho and excited, I couldn’t follow him. I’m jumpy. I have to hear it from its author and know it’s going to work.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Scott,” said Jimmy.
“It’s a very good plan,” I said. “But we do need input. We need to know what to look for.”
Lon shook his head sadly.
“Tomorrow morning,” explained Jimmy, “around ten, I’ll show up at the Dal-Tex Building dressed in my best suit, my hair all pomaded fine-like, my eyes twinkly, my demeanor all charming Irish boyo. I will go into six offices on each of the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors of the Dal-Tex Building, those that front Elm as it nears Houston, and those on Houston as it looks down Elm. From any of those offices, Elm, as it passes the Book Depository and Dealey on its way to the triple overpass, is easily reached from the angle we need.
“In each office-I know what they are, I’ll spare you the details, but they’re garment wholesalers who move goods to Texas retailers in and around Dallas, some ladies’ lingerie, some men’s haberdashery, a tie specialist, two shoe lines, the rag trade, in short-and I’ll introduce myself to the girl and present her with my card.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of cards.
JAMES DELAHANTY O’NEILL
“JIMMY”
REPRESENTING
PREMIERE FASHIONS, BOSTON, MASS. 02102
DA9-3090
TELEX 759615 PREMIERE
“Then I hit her with my patter. Jimmy O’Neill, down from Boston, representing Premiere Fashions, purveyors of fine suitings, ladies’ wear and lingerie, and gents’ haberdashery. There is such a place, all will know it, but it’s not in this market. My pitch: we’re thinking of expanding, going national with the fine economy we’re experiencing, and I’m on a look-see tour to gauge the interest and was wondering if I could get a minute with the boss man to see if he’d be likely to take on a new line. In all instances, the answer should be no, not today. The reason is that the president’s coming to town, and we’re closing down the office from noon till two to go out and wave at the great young fellow. Darn, I say laughingly, my luck! I’ve seen him a thousand times in Boston, even in bars and restaurants, but I pick a day to come to Dallas, where nobody’s seen him, when he himself is here. She laughs and ushers me out.
“Of course, I’m scouting. First, will the office be closed? Second, how good is the angle to the street, particularly since we’re guessing the idiot will find some way to miss his first shot at the corner and Mr. Scott will have to pick it up as the limo goes down Elm and that little hill. Third, how big is the staff, in case there are any Republicans who might stay behind because they’re not about to admit a Democrat Irishman has become president. Fourth, what kind of lock’s on the door, and will it be easy to pop if I come back. Fifth- What’s fifth, you tell me. That’s what I need to know.”
“The windows,” said Lon. “We couldn’t tell from the street how they opened. We need an old-fashioned sliding window, up and down. No foldouts, because their hinges don’t let them fall low enough to be out of the line of fire.”
“Very good, sir,” said Jimmy.
“Books,” said Lon. “I’ve got to stabilize the rifle on something other than my lap. A heavy board that slides across and is supported on the arms of the chair would be best, but I can’t ask for that, I know. You’d never get it in. The best thing would be some heavy books to pack onto my lap. I’ll rest my elbows on them. That’s a request, not a demand. If it comes to it, we can secure the chair, and I can make that shot offhand. I still shoot offhand, sitting offhand, and I’m damned good, but the books would be helpful.”
“Books it’ll be, then,” said Jimmy.
“Finally, you said fourth, fifth, and sixth floors?”
“I did.”
“I’m thinking fifth is the preferable by far. I need as little angle downward as possible. Not for the shooting but for my placement in the room. If I’m on the sixth floor, I’ll have to be close to the window and maybe projecting the muzzle of the rifle beyond it in order to get the low angle. Not good, especially as it lets the muzzle of the suppressor out into the air, and the sonic boom won’t be contained in the room.”
“Is that it, Lon?” I asked.
“I can’t think of anything else,” Lon said.
“All right,” said Jimmy, “let me sum up how I see it happening. I find the most suitable of the offices that matches everything or nearly everything. I tell you by telephone which it is. Then I go back to the hotel, and around noon, I slip the rifle in its straps about my neck and cover it with the overcoat. I amble back through the crowds heading to the plaza to see the young president, head down Elm, and casually dip into the Dal-Tex Building. Should get there around twelve ten. No problem, though there is a busy sheriff’s station to the right of the lobby, but it’s a fine public building of commerce, with constant, unmonitored, in-out. I take the elevator to the proper floor. I’m guessing the place is largely deserted. I get to the office, pop the lock, slip inside. Quickly, I break out the rifle parts and assemble the rifle as Mr. Scott has shown me.
“You fellows hit the building at about twelve twenty. By that time most of the crowd has gathered and is awaiting His Highness. Mr. Meachum pulls Mr. Scott’s chair up the three steps and into the lobby, and again takes the elevator to the proper floor. Down the hall to the office. It’s open, and you slip in, time about twelve twenty-five. No need to rush, but we all know what’s got to happen. I’ll have cleared a space near the window and the rifle, loaded and assembled, will be there.”
“By the way,” said Lon, “the cartridge is too long to feed up through the magazine. You’ll have to carefully thread the rim into the bolt, then slide it forward. Only one. No need or time for a second. I’ll show you later.”
“Got that, sir. Then Mr. Meachum pushes Mr. Scott to the shooting position, and I pile and arrange the books in his lap. We hear the roar of the crowd as the motorcade comes down Main a block over, turns down Houston, then turns again down Elm. Mr. Meachum raises the window-”
“Say,” I said, “maybe it would be better if you opened the window first thing. That way, there’s no chance of somebody across the street being attracted to the moving window and then seeing evidence of the shot. I’m guessing even with the silencer, there’ll be some burst of gas.”
“That’s good,” said Lon. “It won’t be much, and it’ll be so light that I doubt it’ll be observable, but why take the chance?”
“So be it,” said Jimmy. “The second the job is done, down comes the window.”
“Shouldn’t he do that last?” Lon asked. “Anybody who hears a trace of the noise might have oriented to Dal-Tex and could catch the motion.”
“That’s good, sir,” said Jimmy. “Consider it done. Anyhow, I remove rifle and books from Mr. Scott, and Mr. Meachum wheels him out, down the corridor, and I’m guessing out of the building within two minutes, well before the police can have gotten over to seal it or investigate, though I’m sure they’ll be concentrating on our friend in the next building who’s making all the noise. In any event, it’s a man in a wheelchair and his attendant, who’d suspect them of mischief? Off you go, in whichever direction seems feasible, until you’re well clear of the mess. Possibly you stop off for lunch. Then back to the hotel.
“As for me, I break down the rifle, repack it in the whatever-you-want-to-call-it, throw on the coat, replace the books, close that pesky window as mentioned, and slip out, using my toys to lock the door. I’m out of the building a few minutes after you.”
“I thought of one more thing,” said Lon. “It just occurred to me. I don’t think it matters in the hallways, because there’s a lot of traffic, but if you can, the office has to have linoleum or bare wood. See, I’m a heavy guy, and the wheelchair leaves tracks. If they get back tomorrow and someone notices these mysterious wheelchair tracks on the floor, again, questions may be raised, maybe, I don’t know how investigations work, maybe-”
“It’s good,” I said. “The tracks, that’s very good. Jimmy, also try to find an office with thirteen-year-old Glenlivet Gold. Not the Glenlivet Red, but the Gold. I might want a highball during the-”
Everybody laughed, and so for the first time, I felt slightly optimistic.
I didn’t feel like breakfast that morning, but after a sleepless night, I had to get some air. Around 8 a.m. I left the hotel and took a little walk around downtown. It was dowdy, even shabby, since the miracle of Dallas with its steel and chrome skyline was years off. Absent the glow of the flying red neon horse fifteen or so stories up the Magnolia Oil Company building, it just looked crummy. The sky threatened rain, but the fresh air felt good to my lungs. The temperature would rise a bit, into the high fifties or low sixties, and these trees, at least, had lost most of their leaves, which blew about in the skittish wind. In those days, everyone raked their leaves, then piled them at the curb and burned them, so the odor of burning leaves was ever-present during the autumn; I tasted it as well, enough to give the air texture and remind me of boyhood days before I got myself into the president-killing business. (Remember the coup in Saigon? I’d killed other presidents.)
I stopped at the Walgreens soda fountain, read the Dallas Morning News over a cup of coffee, and listened as the Texans all about me gibbered excitedly about the president’s upcoming visit. The main thrust seemed to be whether or not to go to the parade route and see the handsome young man and his beautiful wife. There was also some annoyance at an ad that had appeared in the morning paper, in which someone accused the president of being soft on communism. The Texans in this corner of Dallas found the ad in poor taste, and more than a few of them groused about it.
I kept to myself, engaging no one, even if my tweed sport coat and red tie made me stand out a bit from them. They were so excited, they didn’t notice. I thought I had a white shirt left in my room and decided to change into it, and to a duller tie. I wished I’d brought a dark Brooks Brothers suit, but I’d not given much thought to wardrobe when I packed for the trip.
I walked back to the hotel, though chance took me by a hatter’s, on Main, a few blocks over. I went inside. I looked around, and a fellow came to wait on me. We had a pleasant chat, and I bought a mild little cowboy hat, gray for fall, with more brim than I was used to and with slightly more dramatic curl. I knew I would feel foolish in it, but the trick to wearing a hat is to pretend that you are not wearing a hat. The idea was to lower my profile and fit into the hat-rich Dallas culture, where a short-brim fedora, as I usually wore, would be far more noticeable than the demure cowpoke’s lid I now capped my head with.
Feeling more camouflaged, I walked back to the hotel and went upstairs and lay down for a bit. There’d been no calls. I was assuming Jimmy had already left and was doing his jobs, and that Lon was resting. I also assumed that our pigeon, Alek, had managed to get out to Mrs. Paine’s, retrieved his bag of “curtain rods,” gotten back to Dallas without spilling them all over the highway, and was on his way to work. I was never a praying type of fellow, and it seemed wrong to invoke celestial support for a deed so foul, but I couldn’t help myself from looking skyward and muttering a little something in case someone was listening on the upper floors.
At 10:45, I showered (again!), changed into my white shirt and dull brown tie, and sat and waited. And waited. And waited. At 11:18, the phone rang.
I picked it up.
It was Jimmy.
“Got it!” he said. “A little high, but everything else is perfect. Office 712, the seventh floor, right turn from the elevator, take the only left, and it’s on the right. Great lines down Elm.”
“Got it,” I said, and headed downstairs, pipe in mouth, horn-rims on, junior-cowpoke headgear firmly mounted. Lon was waiting, and I nodded at him.
“Nice hat,” he said.
It turned out we had little to say to each other beyond that exchange. If I looked as bad as he did, we were in trouble, hat or no hat. Then again, I had the normal Lon to use as baseline, the ruddy, vivid, sometimes outrageous paragon of stoicism and mordant humor, not this pale, solemn corpse. I could feel myself in the same colorless shroud of skin, with the same dryness of breath, the same sense of dread and doom all about, the presentiment of failure, tragedy, utter destruction of self, and all the self-love he had built. Plus, I was wearing a stupid hat! I was so damned heroic, I made myself sick! I pressed on, noble Yale champ that I am.
I had decided to spare myself the agony of pushing Lon to the site, a twelve-or-so block ordeal made more difficult in those unenlightened days by the absence of ramps or rails for the disabled. But getting Lon into the cab was never easy. You had to sort of roll-push him from his chair to the seat and wait until he squirmed and pulled himself upward; then you folded the wheelchair, slid it into the front seat, and went around to the other rear seat. For some reason, he seemed especially heavy that morning; perhaps he was involuntarily resisting me, willing himself into sheer deadweight, above the waist as well as below it.
“Where to, gentlemen?” asked the cabbie when, huffing and puffing, I finally got in.
I gave him the address of a medical building on Poydras, just beyond Main.
“You know, there’ll be traffic there,” he said. “JFK’s in town, he’s coming down Main in a motorcade, and it’ll all be jammed up with viewers.”
Damn! I hadn’t thought of that! Fool, jerk, dolt! Agh! What a ludicrous end to the operation if the assassins got stuck in traffic.
“I realize that,” I said. “That’s why we’re early. Jim’s appointment isn’t until one.”
“One-thirty,” said Lon, picking up on the game.
“Off we go, then,” sang the cabbie. “No problem.”
The cab whizzed along, did seem to slow almost to a stop on a main stem, but the driver cleverly plotted a new course and got us to Poydras well in advance of our time. I never even breathed hard during the trip.
He pulled up outside the building, and I got out to unload the wheelchair and Lon. The driver called, “Need any help, sir? Glad to pitch in.” They are so polite in Texas.
“Thanks, I’m used to it,” I said.
Indeed, Lon somehow willed himself to be lighter. I don’t know how he managed to vanquish the laws of physics, but it seemed he had obliterated a good twenty pounds of matter from the universe, and I fairly tossed him into the chair. Then I paid the driver, $1.75 plus a quarter tip, and turned to wheel Lon up the steps to the North Dallas Medical Arts Building. Damn, the driver seemed to linger, waiting for me to call for help to pull Lon up the steps, but then another fare slipped into the cab, and off they went.
I wheeled Lon the half block down Poydras and turned him left-that is, west, if it matters-and slowly down Elm a block to the Dal-Tex Building. Meanwhile, the threat of rain had cleared itself up; a broad, cloudless Texas sky vaulted overhead, full of brightness. In the opening between Dal-Tex and the County Records Building on our side of the street, I could see the crowd gathered in front of the Book Depository; it seemed like they were three or four deep already, and there were batches of people across the street, on the grass of the plaza. I wonder if it was as merry as it seemed or if that’s my memory playing tricks, filtering through the knowledge of the event that I knew was about to occur.
I suppose that was one America there, gathered gaily in the sunlight. You could hear indistinct crowd noises, a kind of purr or mutter from the breast of the mob, somehow fueled by happiness, glamour, hope, good thoughts of self and president and country. I knew I was about to take all that away and didn’t feel particularly great about it, but I felt-I say this over and over, do you think I’m overcompensating a bit? — I felt that in the long run, when things settled down, even if we never healed our wounds over the young man slain, our collective future would be brighter and fewer boys would come home in boxes or wheelchairs.
“Hugh,” Lon said, “I’ve got a great idea. Let’s not do this. Let’s take a cab to the airport and fly to Tijuana. We’ll spend the next six weeks drinking margaritas and screwing whores, even if I can’t screw anything. How does that sound?”
“You can’t screw whores because of a tragedy called paraplegia, and I can’t screw whores because of a tragedy called marriage,” I said. “Even if we both dream of whores, that’s the end of that.”
“You’re right. I guess we ought to go ahead.”
“Besides,” I said, “we can’t find any cabs. This isn’t Manhattan, you know.”
At Elm and Houston, we got a good look at the celebration. More and more people seemed to be gathering and spreading across the grass of the plaza as if it were some racecourse infield or county fair. The sun was bright, and I could see hats, cameras, and sunglasses and feel those positive feelings in the air. From pop music: “good vibrations.” It felt more like a circus or ball game than a political event, but I suppose that had to do with the unique identities of Jack and Jackie, who were more like movie stars than politicians.
When the light changed, I pushed Lon across Elm, then we turned up the street, to the entrance of the Dal-Tex Building. I checked my watch. It was 12:07 and felt a little early. But it wasn’t easy going up Elm, with the crowd continuing to rush down to get a good place to view the Kennedys, and a few times I had to pull back or turn sharply to avoid colliding with anybody.
When I got to the three broad steps that led to the entrance of the Dal-Tex Building, it was 12:15. I turned Lon outward and pulled him up the steps, then, evading this fellow and that, pivoted him and steered him to the main entrance. Luckily there were no revolving doors, a royal ordeal for anyone in a wheelchair. Someone held the door for us, and I slid into the dark lobby. To the right, behind a thick window and illuminated from within by fluorescent lighting, full of bustle, was an office of the sheriff of Dallas County. I could see a few uniformed deputies inside, but mainly, it was women at desks with typewriters, talking on phones or filling out official documents. There was a receiving counter, and a few people stood in line to be waited on by a sergeant. No one in there showed the slightest awareness that in a few minutes, the president of the United States would come by in a Lincoln limo, waving happily to the folks, breathing the sweet air, and enjoying the lush sunshine one last time.
I got to the elevators, punched up, and waited till a door opened. A few late stragglers were there, and I pulled Lon to the side to let them out, as they straightened hats or pulled ties tighter or shrugged into jackets against the slight chill in the air. When the car was empty, I backed Lon in, and the doors were just about shut when a woman ducked in. She smiled, punched-ah-three, and turned and asked me for a floor. “Six,” I said, because lying was natural to my state of being. Again: overcaution, a sign of paranoia, fear, lack of confidence.
The three of us rose in silence, and she got out at three, smiling, turning to say politely (as usual), “Good afternoon,” and I think we both muttered something. Then I quickly hit seven to make sure the elevator continued its ascent after the stop on six.
At seven, I pushed Lon out. The hall was darkish, empty, with no sign of human buzz or hum anywhere. Most people had gone to the plaza to see President Kennedy.
I pushed Lon down the hall, watching the signs on or at the doorways slide by, watching the numbers climb, until at last we came to an intersection and turned to the left, down another, better-lit corridor (the offices to the right, behind opaque glass, had exterior windows).
FUNTASTIC FASHIONS
MARY JANE JUNIORS
712
I pushed the door and stepped into the two-room office suite that was the headquarters of Funtastic Fashions, apparently, from the idealized pictures on the wall, some kind of line for naive young women whom you might find in the farm belt, all wholesome gingham and flower-patterned jumpers and dresses in heavy patterns, as worn, in the artist’s sketches, by pictograms representing the perfect, happy, well-adjusted junior miss. Odd how some details stick in mind: in one, Our Heroine was running with a dog, and the dog reminded me of a neighbor’s dog from some distant past. I could remember the dog, though not the neighbor or the city or the year. But the dog rang a bell.
I pulled the door softly shut, hearing it click locked, and pushed Lon across wood flooring beyond the secretary’s desk. The name on the door to the boss’s office was simple: Mr. Goldberg. It meant nothing to me; nor did the pictures on the wall of a middle-aged fellow who looked to be Jewish, with a wife and three children, all five beaming at the success Mr. Goldberg had made in Dallas, Texas. I slid Lon into the boss’s office, a square, high-ceilinged wood-floored room full of light, with an overhead fan rotating sluggishly with a slight hum. It was dominated by two large windows, and immediately across the way, I could see the upper floor of the Texas Book Depository. I pushed Lon to the window, and as we approached, the angles widened and revealed, in all its detail and seething mass of witnesses along both curbs, the spectacle of Elm Street trending left as it descended the gentlest of inclines, shielded at our end by the canopy of a few oak trees, yielding to the broadness of the plaza, green in bright sun, dotted with last-minute scurriers trying to get into at least the third rank along the curb for maximum proximity to the glamour couple. From our vantage, we could not see the grassy knoll, we could not see the amphitheater, the pillars, the marble benches, all the flourishes of Athens on a good day in 300 B.C., that the Texan city fathers had constructed there. But we could see every square inch of Elm Street once it emerged from the trees.
Jimmy had assembled the rifle, raised the window a few inches, and laid out a few large swatch books on Mr. Goldberg’s desk for Lon’s lap. I glanced at my watch. It was 12:24.
When I pushed Lon to the place where he’d determined to shoot from, we had our inevitable crisis. What do they say-no plan survives contact with the enemy?
The issue was height. In order to assure that minimum noise would escape from the room, Lon told us we had to be as far back from the window as possible, even with the German suppressor jerry-rigged to the muzzle. If it extended beyond the window, it would admit the report to the outer atmosphere and might attract attention, or at least curious eyes. The point was to contain as much of the attenuated report as possible within the confines of the room, where it would be deadened by the noise-absorption qualities of the walls and furnishings and by the buzz of the ceiling fan swishing away overhead. Lon would shoot from his chair but as far back from the window as possible while still having vantage on the target. The problem: at no place in the room would Lon be high enough to get the necessary angle over the sill!
We stood stupidly. Brilliant Hugh had fouled up again! It never occurred to me, nor had it occurred to Jimmy, why the fifth floor was preferable. It was too late to get down a floor or two, where the angles would have been more welcoming.
“Can we get you standing, Lon?” I asked.
“Not without my knee braces, which are in Roanoke.”
“We have to raise him,” I concluded.
It was Jimmy who remembered the swatch books originally destined for Lon’s lap. At least three inches deep, they contained fabric samples. He brought four of them over. “We can lift him up on these,” he said.
He set two down, and we labored to lift the wheelchair’s right tire, not an easy task, though Lon helped by shifting his weight accordingly. Then the other one. Lon plus chair was really heavy, and this lift was no picnic. I could feel my veins bulging with blood as I gave it all my strength, but it was probably Jimmy who did the bulk of the work. Lon was up high enough.
“Yeah,” he said, “good angle. But it’s crooked. The left one is higher than the right one. I can compensate, but-”
“I got it,” said Jimmy.
Quickly, he peeled off his nice new overcoat, folded it into quarters, and bent to the wheel. I did my part, again using all of my muscles, and Jimmy got the coat wedged between the rubber and the book. I saw that the tire had left a black mark where it pressed into the gabardine.
“Dry cleaning’s on me!” I said.
“Much better,” Lon said. It brought him to the level where he had the angle above the sill but beneath the bottom of the window. “Lock the brakes.”
As I bent to do so, we heard a rise in sound; it seemed that the motorcade had hit lower Main a block away, and when the magic Lincoln passed, it unleashed a roar of inchoate human energy, cheers and yells, yes, but also the collective sighs and deep breaths of the enchanted. Their prince had come. I knew that Kennedy was but a minute or so away.
“Here,” said Jimmy, handing Lon the rifle. It was a long, sleek thing, not like Alek’s piece of battered military junk, not like the dangerous army guns, the carbines and BARs and tommy guns I’d seen in Vietnam, not like the red burp guns, with their ugly, ventilated cooling housings and their Mob-style drums featured in every statue in Russia. I had to say that the rifle had an aristocratic grace, and in some odd way, it seemed appropriate to the young prince’s demise. Lon had told me it was a Winchester Model 70, and I knew that he and his late father had enjoyed a long and mutually satisfying relationship with the company. At one point, Lon’s father had been presented with a rifle called the Tenth Black King, in some awesome caliber, called that because the American walnut of the stock was so bloodred that it looked black in certain lights, and when Winchester wanted to give “Presentation Guns” to some who were prominent in the gun world, they had their custom shop build an edition of ten, all called Black Kings. Both Lon’s father and Lon used that rifle-which turned out to have unusual powers of accuracy-to win or place highly in national rifle competitions.
This one was not customized, at least not by Winchester. Lon had done some work on it, lightening the trigger, “bedding” the action, which I understand to be coating the interior, where the metal of the action sits in the inlay of the stock, with a kind of fiberglass or epoxy so that the contact between the surfaces is 100 percent even, and no odd stress from irregularities is transferred to the rifle, affecting the accuracy. On the whole, the thing was beautiful, a graceful orchestration of tubes supported in a slice of burnished wood, with a slight streamline that seemed to have it leaning forward, like a thoroughbred at full extension, muscles cut and the entire beast captured in a kind of forward bound.
A long tube, black and shiny, was secured to the action above the bolt by two stout metal rings, and at a point on the scope’s length between the rings lay an administrative housing, the site of a vertical and a horizontal turret by which the scope could be tuned for maximum accuracy. I was close; I happened to note the white lettering above the horizontal turret, and it read simply J. UNERTL. What distinguished this rifle from any other I’d seen was the German suppressor, the Schalldaempfer Type 3, as Lon called it. It too was tubular, and locked over the muzzle by means of a pivoting lever cranked to the closed position. The genius of German engineering! It was surprisingly stubby, under a foot long, looking like a steel water bottle screwed to the muzzle, and much discolored and tarnished from military use.
Lon handled the gun with extraordinary ease, I must say. His face deadpan, he accepted it and mounted it to his shoulder, one hand at the comb, the index finger suspended on the stock above the trigger, not touching the trigger. His other flew to the the end of the stock, which he acquired and used as leverage, thrusting the rifle back hard to shoulder, now supported by two elbows. This was the holding position. Because we’d used the swatch books to elevate him, they were not available for lap duty. He’d have to shoot offhand. I thought, For want of a nail, the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe, the horse is lost, for want of a horse, the battle is lost, and imagined the chain of catastrophe that could undo us.
Nevertheless, he was an elegant construction, slightly canted, the rifle and man solid, immutable, bent forward a bit under muscular tension as if in sprinter’s blocks, the slight vibration of his slow and easy breaths the only sign of life. The rifle was locked in his arms, which were resting on his elbows on his dead legs.
I positioned myself at the window, immediately adjacent to the opening. Craning to the left, I could see the Houston-Elm intersection as I heard the roar rolling toward us like a wave. I saw a Dallas police sedan and then. . nothing. I guessed he was some sort of advance car a half mile or so out. It seemed a minute passed, and then a white sedan came down the street, leading the parade. Three motorcycles followed, then five more in some kind of formation, then another white sedan, and finally, the large black Lincoln, with its cargo of imminent tragedy open to the crowd. It was flanked by motorcycle policemen, and we watched as it pulled wholly into view. It looked more like a black lifeboat than a car, a huge thing, with a driver and guard in the front seat, then behind them, though considerably lower, as if squatting, a male-female couple I took to be Governor and Mrs. Connally, and then Jack Kennedy himself, and next to him, in a pink pillbox hat, his wife.
His reddish hair glinted in the sunlight. Even from almost eighty yards and without binoculars, I could make out the ruddiness of his skin and could tell that all the lines of his face were pulling his mouth up into a smile, and at that moment it incongruously struck me that he was quite a handsome man. He was waving with one hand but only intermittently, and if I read his body posture in that split second, it was one of relaxation. The man was campaigning and happy.
The limo reached the hard left turn onto Elm from Houston just below me. At that point, it was out of sight to Lon, but I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against the pane. I watched as the car slowed almost to a halt and began its slow, majestic pivot toward its new direction. I could not breathe. This was Alek’s shot, his moment to enter history and send us all home absolved of any guilt.
Nothing happened.
I don’t know what the idiot was doing up there, but it wasn’t shooting. Silence. Obviously, some kind of failure, as per all anticipation. That put us right back on the fulcrum of events, the little creep with his cowardice, his incompetence, his stupidity. Agh!
The great car turned slowly left and began its descent down Elm, sliding down the slight undulation that led to the triple overpass, which moved it left in Lon’s sights, but gently, not radically. The public feet away on either side, all madly waving and cheering, you could see the excitement, the sparkle or glitter of crowd passion that you see at key moments of big ball games. The car was fully oriented toward Elm but just feet beyond the axis of the turn when Alek managed to fire his first shot.
We heard the crack! In my peripheral, I saw Lon react, not a jerk or a spasm but a tight, controlled lurch. He kept his discipline, though, and didn’t lose his hold on the rifle, which was still. He seemed calm. I knew he would fire at a specific point, in seconds, waiting for the target to climb into his crosshairs, and would make final mini-corrections before coordinating his shot with Kennedy’s arrival at the point of impact designator.
I locked my eyes on Kennedy and the car. Nothing stirred, no reaction, no sudden dive for cover, nothing. Had they noticed? I thought: Maybe it’s not Alek, maybe it’s a backfire or firecracker.
Then a second crack! rang out, and though the car had traveled a good twenty-five yards or so in the interval between shots, I could make out no reaction this time either. Possibly some movement, but nothing radical or reflexive as a bullet impact might have unleashed.
The fool missed twice. Of course! Idiot! Idiot! A burst of rage knifed through me. The little moron! God, what a fool he was; never did anything right in his life. He was struggling to catch up from the blown easy shot, was rushing, shooting poorly.
“He missed. Lon-” I said.
Again I pivoted instinctively, enough to see the fluid grace with which Lon raised the rifle, right elbow locked up for maximum support, canting the living part of his body slightly against the dead part, his head utterly still and locked on the opening in the telescopic sight. He was a portrait of stillness in motion, a discipline acquired over a hundred thousand rifle shots, the ball of his finger exquisitely balanced against the blade of the trigger. The next two, three seconds seemed to hang in eternity, although possibly that’s a conceit I impose from memory, for dramatic purposes, to make the tale more compelling, even if the only soul I’ve ever told it to is myself.
Feu.
The rifle leaped, but only slightly, in his hand, while his head stayed immobile to the scope and his trigger finger followed through to pin that lever to the back of the guard. It produced an oddly attenuated report, something like a book being dropped on a wood floor with weird tones of vibration, maybe a poke and a buzz to the inner ear but nothing sharp and percussive like a gunshot. You would expect more, would you not? It was a phenomenon of vibration, this key moment in history, a thrum or cello note extended by a master bowman. Yet in the instantaneous aftermath, I thought I heard Alek’s third shot. Could they have been simultaneous? No, because then I wouldn’t have heard both. It was as if Alek had fired a few hundredths of a second after Lon. We didn’t realize then, but it was the biggest break we were going to get that day.
Jimmy, unperturbed, was in charge in another second. “All right, fellows,” he crooned, “out you go now, while I tidy up here.”
Lon, stone-faced, handed the rifle to Jimmy as I knelt and raised the two brakes. It took another second for Jimmy to single-handedly ease Lon’s chair from the swatch books and pull the coat off, and then I had him turned around and was beelining to the door.
“Don’t rush, sir,” called Jimmy. “You’ve nothing to hide, remember.”
I took a quick peek back and saw that Jimmy already had the rifle half disassembled and was working on the third screw. Then the door closed, and I was in the outer office. I sped to that door, and it locked behind me with a click and we were in the hallway. I pushed down it, trying to control my breathing. Finally, I had to ask. “Good hit?”
“Don’t ask me what I saw through the scope, Hugh. Ever.”
We reached the elevator, I punched the down button and waited an eternity for it to arrive and the doors to open. I shoved Lon in, hit 1, and listened as the doors closed behind me.
When the elevator doors opened and I pushed Lon into the lobby of the Dal-Tex Building, it was as if we’d entered a new America. I say that knowing how trite it sounds, and then I worry again that my memory is playing tricks on me and has added a drama that wasn’t there.
Maybe. I still say it was like a massive change in the weather. I’ll argue till death that the color had been drained from the day and the atmosphere had turned sepia. I’ll claim that all the human specimens we observed were in a state of stunned shock, mouths and faces slack, posture discipline unhinged, a tone of disbelief bleeding toward numbness and shutdown everywhere. It was only about ninety seconds after Lon’s shot, and no one had processed what happened yet, although all knew, almost instantaneously, that something, something horrible, had transpired.
Then, as we watched, it transformed instantly into panic, buzz, dread, gibbering, stupidity. People couldn’t shut up. An insistent yammer began, a mutter with high notes, inflections, voices piping or breaking or losing steam in a flood of phlegm. The lobby was not crowded, but everyone began yapping at each other, along the lines of “He was shot?”
“In the head?”
“Oh my God, is he dead?”
“Who the hell could have done it?”
“Was it the Russians? Did the Commies get JFK?”
“Where did the shots come from?”
“The Book Depository? Are you kidding? The Book Depository!”
“Who would do such a terrible thing?”
Nobody paid the two of us any attention, and I pushed Lon to the door, rotated 180 degrees to back out and pull him through, got that done, and emerged into sunlight, heat, panic, incredible motion, pandemonium everywhere, random, brain-dead movement, and people talking insanely among themselves.
I saw only one man moving with purpose, a Dallas policeman who raced to the building, almost knocking me down getting by, and bulled his way inside. He was quick, that man, and I don’t know if it was by official directive or his own decision, but he’d understood that if the Book Depository was the probable origin point for the shooting, other buildings with access to Elm Street should be sealed for investigation.
He’d missed us, or perhaps scanned us from afar and dismissed us because of Lon’s disability. As for Jimmy, still inside, I felt confident that he could outthink and outmaneuver a Dallas policeman any day of his life.
I gingerly pushed Lon to the edge of the steps and began the ordeal of easing him down into the roiling crowd, which, drawn to tragedy exactly as had been the thousands who’d lined up to see the bullet-riddled corpses of Bonnie and Clyde, surged toward the plaza to see, to know, to feel, to bear witness, to be a part of what all felt was a calamitous day for our country.
I was trying to figure which way to go, as fighting the crowd with Lon wouldn’t be easy. I’d pretty much decided to get across Elm, divert to Houston, hit Main, and head up until the crowds had thinned, then cut to Commerce to get us back to the hotel.
Then the left wheelchair tire caught on something on the middle step. I bent awkwardly to see what it was (a chunk of loosened cement that had worked out of the joinery between the stone slabs) and was readjusting the chair by pulling it back a couple of inches when, in my peripheral vision, I saw Alek.
I happened to be tilted away from him; I was looking down and hunched and twisted to jigger the chair free, and perhaps that is why he didn’t see me. Was that luck? I suppose. The other truth is, he probably wouldn’t have recognized me under the cowboy hat I wore and under the pall of doom he wore.
He was the betrayed man. For an instant, but only an instant, I felt a mote of sympathy for him. He’d been looking through the scope, trying to get on target for his third shot, when he’d seen what only Lon had seen-though within months, thanks to Mr. Zapruder, the world would see it. Alek, with his low, weaselly cunning, would know in that instant he was tricked and abandoned. Stupendous fury must have overcome him, replaced in seconds with abject, sickening panic. Along with thoughts along the line of: Fucked again, failed again, now I’m really cooked. Or maybe there’d been a twinge of ego gratification in what had to be his impending destruction: at last he was important enough to betray. His paranoid fantasy had at last come true. He was that crazy. Somehow he’d gotten downstairs and out of the building before it was sealed. Now he had no place to go, he had no escape plan, he knew the Wagoneer wouldn’t be waiting at Houston and Pacific, that it wouldn’t be long before a canvass was taken at the depository and his absence was discovered, a few minutes beyond that when his FBI record was connected to his name. He knew he was about to become the most hunted man on earth.
He already looked it. He knew he was the patsy. He was grim, hunched, angry, churning ahead with menace and dread in his beady eyes. His skin was ashen, his hair was all messed up, his cheeks were hollow, his jowls set hard, as if he were grinding his teeth. Though muscular, he had his hands jammed into his pockets, which narrowed his shoulders and gave him an almost negligible slenderness. He was the quintessential man of the fringes, aware that the bright glare of the world’s attention was to be focused on him. No trained clandestine operative would have presented such an obvious profile to the world, but nobody else was paying much attention either. He fought against the human current that gushed toward Dealey and the scraps and fragments of hope that filled the air. I heard them too.
“Maybe he’s okay. Head wounds bleed a lot.”
“They got him to the hospital in minutes, maybe seconds. These days, docs can do anything.”
“Maybe it was a grazing wound, you know, splashed some blood but didn’t do any real harm. That happened more’n you’d think in the war.”
“A guy that vigorous, he’ll be up and about and playing touch football in a few days!”
Impervious, head down, clothes ever grubby and attitude ever surly, Alek bucked ahead, ducking, stutter-stepping, evading, and soon I lost sight of him. His destiny lay elsewhere.
I got Lon all the way down to the sidewalk and joined the human tide. Everywhere I looked, small scenes of grief played out: a Negro woman had collapsed and was shrieking violently, there seemed to be cops everywhere, children cried, women wept, the men had that grave, glaring war face that I’d seen and would see again in Vietnam. The pedestrian masses overspilled the streets, and traffic was at a standstill. We could see more and more police cars converging on the scene, though trapped in the amber of people and vehicles, going nowhere. Guns had come out, and I think federal agents had arrived with their tommy guns, or maybe it was Dallas Homicide with all the firepower. I don’t know who they thought they were going to fight; maybe some red sniper nest defended by machine guns on the sixth floor of the Book Depository.
That was the focus of the attention. It was surrounded by policemen and cars and earnest federal agents who’d taken out their badges and pinned them on the lapels of their dark suits. Many had pistols out too. At the same time, the television trucks-remember, TV news was in its infancy then, and the camera equipment was cumbersome-had somehow bulled their way through, gotten their cameras out, and set up shots. I could see, every which way, earnest reporters addressing the tripod-mounted eyes of the networks and the locals. (I think Dan Rather was there somewhere.) Farther down the hill, I could see armed officers on the grassy knoll that would become such a feature, and all across the green emptiness of Dealey, small groups of people stood, many pointing, first at the looming Book Depository, then at the grassy knoll. Nobody pointed at Dal-Tex.
And the noise. I can’t quite describe it, but it was as if, involuntarily, every one of the thousands of folks there had started to moan or snort or breathe too heavily. A persistent murmur filled the air, not the surge of joy I’d heard from Dal-Tex 712 but something guttural and low, animalistic. No one person contributed that much, but it was the voice of the collective unconscious expressing its horror and grief and regret. I’d never heard before and would never again hear anything like that.
I got Lon across Elm and we began to push our way up Houston toward Main. People stormed by us, late to the party but intent on joining. Nobody gave a damn about us except for one cop at the corner of Main and Elm, who noted me waiting for the solid stream of traffic to break to get across, and when I was about to give up and go up Main, he took command of the traffic, whistle and attitude at full blast, and cleared a space for us to get across. I nodded thanks to him, and he nodded back; that was my only encounter with law enforcement that day, and I’ll bet in ten seconds the officer had forgotten all about it.
I continued down Houston until I reached Commerce and started up it. The Adolphus was ten or so blocks away. Then, miraculously, I was able to flag a cab. I gave him the hotel and got Lon in. The driver couldn’t stop jabbering.
“Did you see it?”
“No,” I said, which should have been sufficient, but like any guilty man, I overexplained. “We were at the doctor’s for my brother’s checkup.”
He didn’t notice. His mind was obsessed with what had happened ten minutes ago. “Man, I can’t believe it. Can you, mister? Holy cow, it’s such a tragedy. He was such a handsome young man. And that wife. God, what a dish. She was Jean Simmons and Dana Wynter combined with a little Audrey Hepburn. Oh, Lord, what she must be going through. I heard on the cop channel, they drilled him square in the head and there wasn’t anything left and-”
“Is it official? Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. God, what a mess.”
It took some time to fight our way up Commerce-it was as if the city had shut down everywhere except Dealey Plaza-but eventually, we arrived at the Adolphus. The doorman, solemn as was everybody, helped me get Lon out of the cab seat and into his chair. I could see he had been crying.
The crying continued inside, where a few old ladies of the flowery Southern-gentlewoman sort sat in a corner of the lobby, two of them in tears, the other two ministering to them with white hankies. I heard someone ask if the show at the Century Room would be canceled that night.
“I need a drink,” said Lon.
“Good idea,” I said.
I wheeled us through the lobby, past the Grand Staircase and the elevators, and into the dark Men’s Bar, surprisingly crowded, surprisingly quiet, dominated by a large black-and-white TV above the mirror at the center. We found a table with a good view of it, requested that the waiter turn it up, and went through the Texan idiocy of the bottle club.
“Jenkins,” I said, giving my official cover name, under which I was registered. “I have a bottle of bourbon, J.B.; could I have a shot straight and a glass of ice water?”
Lon remembered his own nom de guerre, laid claim to his bottle of Southern Comfort, and ordered his own straight shot, with ice on the side.
“Bring both bottles, sirs?” the waiter asked.
“Yes,” I said, “I think we’re going to need them.”
I checked my watch. By now it was 1:39. Evidently, Walter Cronkite had just announced, then taken off his glasses and pinched his nose, that JFK was gone. Someone said something wise, and someone else closed him down fast Texas-style with “Shut up, Charlie Tait, or dadgum, I will shut you up myself.”
We sat there all afternoon in the dark silence, watching the images float across the screen. We watched the discovery of Alek’s rifle and the three cartridge cases, we heard of the swearing in of Lyndon Johnson, all without comment. The news came shortly thereafter that a cop had been shot to death in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, but nobody knew whether it was related to the president’s death except me. Alek’s roominghouse was in Oak Cliff; it had to be him, and the description of the assailant-young white man, five-ten or so, muscular build, under thirty-had to be him. At the time, I thought, Damn, I told him not to bring a gun, and the bastard disobeyed me! I knew I never should have counted on him and cursed myself doubly for springing such a dangerous incompetent on the snoozing world. Later, I realized he’d gone all the way back across town to retrieve the pistol, so he had at least stayed under discipline until he understood that he’d been betrayed. That was all I could have asked of him.
I said a prayer for the policeman. Hypocritical, no? But hypocrisy is one sin I cannot evade; it is, after all, the core of my profession, a demure churchgoing dad and Yalie by weekend who plots murder by weekday. I was quick to come to terms with it. I concluded in the end that I had done all that was possible to ensure such an outcome would not happen. It did anyway because of the intractability of the piteous Alek. It is a misfortune but not a tragedy. All operations of force-we were to learn this in spades in the coming decade-involve risk of collateral damage. The policeman, like the president, made his career decision based on a cost-benefit analysis, took his chances, and his number came up. That is the wicked way of the real world, morally justifiable if the ends themselves are morally justifiable. So it goes.
“I don’t think I can take any more of this,” Lon finally said.
“You okay?” I said.
“I’ve felt better,” he replied.
“Remember,” I said. “The long view.”
“Easy to say,” he said. “Not so easy to do.”
“I’ll push you,” I said, and started to get up.
“Hugh, I’ve had enough of you for one day, all right?”
He wheeled himself out of the bar, and I watched him propel himself across the lobby to the elevator, where another guest had to punch his floor. He rolled into the car, the brass doors closed behind him, and off he went.
I went back to the bourbon and the television. I watched Air Force One take off with the new president, the body of the old president, and that poor crushed rose of a woman who was, just two hours ago, the glamour center of the world.
At about 3:20, it came. It signified the beginning of a new phase, one in which I was extremely vulnerable, as was the agency for which I worked (and which I loved), whose reputation and possible ruin I had risked.
This from Dallas. The police department arrested a twenty-four-year-old man, Lee H. Oswald, in connection with the slaying of a Dallas policeman shortly after President Kennedy was assassinated. He also is being questioned to see if he had any connection with the slaying of the president. Oswald was pulled yelling and screaming from the Texas Theatre in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. .
It didn’t take long for them to round him up, did it? About two hours, and in that time he’d managed to kill a policeman. What a complete fool he was. Again it made me sick, and I took another bolt of the hooch, which hit like a mallet, driving me further into blur. I think I phased out after that, as the bourbon took over, and I fell into a stupor. I was not behaving well. This was not in the “Pip-pip, onward and upward” tradition of the agency and all its Skull and Bonesers. The event had reduced me to alcoholic stupor.
I don’t remember going upstairs to my room or taking a shower. Or climbing into my pajamas. I don’t remember going facedown on the bed.
I do remember waking up around midnight. And I remember the panic I felt.
Where was Jimmy Costello?