W. Neely St. Apartment 1

Dallas, TX

I thought: That’s where my car got stolen from.

And I thought: Oswald. The assassin’s name is Oswald Rabbit.

No, of course not. He was a man, not a cartoon character. But it was close.

“I’m coming for you, Mr. Rabbit,” I said. “Still coming.”

The phone rang shortly before nine-thirty. Sadie was home safe. “Don’t suppose anything came to you, did it? I’m a pest, I know.”

“Nothing. And you’re the farthest thing in the world from a pest.” She was also going to be the farthest thing in the world from Oswald Rabbit, if I had anything to do about it. Not to mention his wife, whose name might or might not be Mary, and his little girl, who I felt sure was named April.

“You were pulling my leg about a Negro being in the White House, weren’t you?”

I smiled. “Wait awhile. You can see for yourself.”

11/18/63 (Monday)

The DAVIN nurses, one old and formidable, the other young and pretty, arrived at 9:00 A.M. sharp. They did their thing. When the older one felt that I had grimaced, twitched, and moaned enough, she handed me a paper envelope with two pills in it. “Pain.”

“I don’t really think—”

“Take em,” she said—a woman of few words. “Freebies.”

I popped them in my mouth, cheeked them, swallowed water, then excused myself to use the bathroom. There I spat them out.

When I returned to the kitchen, the older nurse said: “Good progress. Don’t overdo.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Catch them?”

“Beg pardon?”

“The assholes who beat you up.”

“Uh . . . not yet.”

“Doing something you shouldn’t have been doing?”

I gave her my widest smile, the one Christy used to say made me look like a game-show host on crack. “I don’t remember.”

Dr. Ellerton came for lunch, bringing huge roast beef sandwiches, crispy french fries dripping in grease, and the promised milkshakes. I ate as much as I could manage, which was really quite a lot. My appetite was returning.

“Mike talked up the idea of doing yet another variety show,” he said. “This time to benefit you. In the end, wiser heads prevailed. A small town can only give so much.” He lit a cigarette, dropped the match into the ashtray on the table, and inhaled with gusto. “Any chance the police will catch the mugs who tuned up on you? What do you hear?”

“Nothing, but I doubt it. They cleaned out my wallet, stole my car, and split.”

“What were you doing on that side of Dallas, anyway? It’s not exactly the high-society part of town.”

Well, apparently I lived there.

“I don’t remember. Visiting someone, maybe.”

“Are you getting plenty of rest? Not straining the knee too much?”

“No.” Although I suspected I’d be straining it plenty before much longer.

“Still falling asleep suddenly?”

“That’s quite a bit better.”

“Terrific. I guess—”

The phone rang. “That’ll be Sadie,” I said. “She calls on her lunch break.”

“I have to be shoving off, anyway. It’s great to see you putting on weight, George. Say hello to the pretty lady for me.”

I did so. She asked me if any pertinent memories were coming back. I knew by her delicate phrasing that she was calling from the school’s main office—and would have to pay Mrs. Coleridge for the long-distance when she was done. Besides keeping the DCHS exchequer, Mrs. Coleridge had long ears.

I told her no, no new memories, but I was going to take a nap and hope something would be there when I woke up. I added that I loved her (it was nice to say something that was the God’s honest), asked after Deke, wished her a good afternoon, and hung up. But I didn’t take a nap. I took my car keys and my briefcase and drove downtown. I hoped to God I’d have something in that briefcase when I came back.

I motored slowly and carefully, but my knee was still aching badly when I entered the First Corn Bank and presented my safe deposit box key.

My banker came out of his office to meet me, and his name clicked home immediately: Richard Link. His eyes widened with concern when I limped to meet him. “What happened to you, Mr. Amberson?”

“Car accident.” Hoping he’d missed or forgotten the squib in the Morning News’s Police Beat page. I hadn’t seen it myself, but there had been one: Mr. George Amberson of Jodie, beaten and mugged, found unconscious, taken to Parkland Hospital. “I’m mending nicely.”

“That’s good to hear.”

The safe deposit boxes were in the basement. I negotiated the stairs in a series of hops. We used our keys, and Link carried the box into one of the cubicles for me. He set it on a tiny wedge of desk just big enough to hold it, then pointed to the button on the wall.

“Just ring for Melvin when you’ve finished. He’ll assist you.”

I thanked him, and when he was gone, I pulled the curtain across the cubicle’s doorway. We had unlocked the box, but it was still closed. I stared at it, my heart beating hard. John Kennedy’s future was inside.

I opened it. On top was a bundle of cash and a litter of stuff from the Neely Street apartment, including my First Corn checkbook. Beneath this was a sheaf of manuscript bound by two rubber bands. THE MURDER PLACE was typed on the top sheet. No author’s name, but it was my work. Below it was a blue notebook: the Word of Al. I held it in my hands, filled with a terrible certainty that when I opened it, all the pages would be blank. The Yellow Card Man would have erased them.

Please, no.

I flipped it open. On the first page, a photograph looked back at me. Narrow, not-quite-handsome face. Lips curved in a smile I knew well—hadn’t I seen it with my own eyes? It was the kind of smile that says I know what’s going on and you don’t, you poor boob.

Lee Harvey Oswald. The wretched waif who was going to change the world.

Memories came rushing in as I sat there in the cubicle, gasping for breath.

Ivy and Rosette on Mercedes Street. Last name Templeton, like Al’s.

The jump-rope girls: My old man drives a sub-ma-rine.

Silent Mike (Holy Mike) at Satellite Electronics.

George de Mohrenschildt ripping open his shirt like Superman.

Billy James Hargis and General Edwin A. Walker.

Marina Oswald, the assassin’s beautiful hostage, standing on my doorstep at 214 West Neely: Please excuse, have you seen my hubka?

The Texas School Book Depository.

Sixth floor, southeast window. The one with the best view of Dealey Plaza and Elm Street, where it curved toward the Triple Underpass.

I began shivering. I clutched my upper arms in my fists with my arms tightly locked over my chest. It made the left one—broken by the felt-wrapped pipe—ache, but I didn’t mind. I was glad. It tied me to the world.

When the shakes finally passed, I loaded the unfinished book manuscript, the precious blue notebook, and everything else into my briefcase. I reached for the button that would summon Melvin, then dummy-checked the very back of the box. There I found two more items. One was the cheap pawnshop wedding ring I’d purchased to support my cover story at Satellite Electronics. The other was the red baby rattle that had belonged to the Oswalds’ little girl ( June, not April). The rattle went into the briefcase, the ring into the watch pocket of my slacks. I would throw it away on my drive home. If and when the time came, Sadie would have a much nicer one.

Knocking on glass. Then a voice: “—all right? Mister, are you all right?”

I opened my eyes, at first with no idea where I was. I looked to my left and saw a uniformed beat-cop knocking on the driver’s side window of my Chevy. Then it came. Halfway back to Eden Fallows, tired and exalted and terrified all at the same time, that I’m going to sleep feeling had drifted into my head. I’d pulled into a handy parking space immediately. That had been around two o’clock. Now, from the look of the lowering light, it had to be around four.

I cranked my window down and said, “Sorry, Officer. All at once I started to feel very sleepy, and it seemed safer to pull over.”

He nodded. “Yup, yup, booze’ll do that. How many did you have before you jumped into your car?”

“None. I suffered a head injury a few months ago.” I swiveled my neck so he could see the place where the hair hadn’t grown back.

He was halfway convinced, but still asked me to exhale in his face. That got him the rest of the way.

“Lemme see your ticket,” he said.

I showed him my Texas driver’s license.

“Not thinking of motoring all the way back to Jodie, are you?”

“No, Officer, just to North Dallas. I’m staying at a rehabilitation center called Eden Fallows.”

I was sweating. I hoped that if he saw it, he’d just put it down to a man who’d been snoozing in a closed car on a warmish November day. I also hoped—fervently—that he wouldn’t ask to see what was in the briefcase on the bench seat beside me. In 2011, I could refuse such a request, saying that sleeping in my car wasn’t probable cause. Hell, the parking space wasn’t even metered. In 1963, however, a cop might just start rummaging. He wouldn’t find drugs, but he would find loose cash, a manuscript with the word murder in its title, and a notebook full of delusional weirdness about Dallas and JFK. Would I be taken either to the nearest police station for questioning, or back to Parkland for psychiatric evaluation? Did the Waltons take way too long to say goodnight?

He stood there a moment, big and red-faced, a Norman Rockwell cop who belonged on a Saturday Evening Post cover. Then he handed back my license. “Okay, Mr. Amberson. Go on back to this Fallows place, and I suggest you park your car for the night when you get there. You’re looking peaky, nap or no nap.”

“That’s exactly what I plan to do.”

I could see him in my rearview as I drove away, watching. I felt certain I was going to fall asleep again before I got out of his sight. There’d be no warning this time; I’d just veer off the street and onto the sidewalk, maybe mowing down a pedestrian or three before winding up in the show window of a furniture store.

When I finally parked in front of my little cottage with the ramp leading up to the front door, my head was aching, my eyes were watering, my knee was throbbing . . . but my memories of Oswald remained firm and clear. I slung my briefcase on the kitchen table and called Sadie.

“I tried you when I got home from school, but you weren’t there,” she said. “I was worried.”

“I was next door, playing cribbage with Mr. Kenopensky.” These lies were necessary. I had to remember that. And I had to tell them smoothly, because she knew me.

“Well, that’s good.” Then, without a pause or a change of inflection: “What’s his name? What’s the man’s name?”

Lee Oswald. She almost surprised it out of me, after all.

“I . . . I still don’t know.”

“You hesitated. I heard you.”

I waited for the accusation, gripping the phone hard enough to hurt.

“This time it almost popped into your head, didn’t it?”

“There was something,” I agreed cautiously.

We talked for fifteen minutes while I looked at the briefcase with Al’s notes inside it. She asked me to call her later that evening. I promised I would.

I decided to wait until after The Huntley-Brinkley Report to open the blue notebook again. I didn’t think I’d find much of practical value at this point. Al’s final notes were sketchy and hurried; he had never expected Mission Oswald to go on so long. Neither had I. Getting to the disaffected little twerp was like traveling on a road littered with fallen branches, and in the end the past might succeed in protecting itself, after all. But I had stopped Dunning. That gave me hope. I had the glimmerings of a plan that might allow me to stop Oswald without going to prison or the electric chair in Huntsville. I had excellent reasons to want to remain free. The best one of all was in Jodie this evening, probably feeding Deke Simmons chicken soup.

I worked my way methodically through my little invalid-friendly apartment, collecting stuff. Other than my old typewriter, I didn’t want to leave a trace of George Amberson behind when I left. I hoped that wouldn’t be until Wednesday, but if Sadie said that Deke was better and she was planning to come back on Tuesday night, I’d have to speed things up. And where would I hide out until my job was done? A very good question.

A trumpet-blast announced the network news. Chet Huntley appeared. “After spending the weekend in Florida, where he watched the test-firing of a Polaris missile and visited his ailing father, President Kennedy had a busy Monday, making five speeches in nine hours.”

A helicopter—Marine One—descended while a waiting crowd cheered. The next shot featured Kennedy approaching the crowd behind a makeshift barrier, brushing at his shaggy hair with one hand and his tie with the other. He strode well ahead of the Secret Service contingent, which jogged to keep up. I watched, fascinated, as he actually slipped through a break in the barrier and plunged into the waiting mass of people, shaking hands left and right. The agents with him looked dismayed as they hurried after.

“This was the scene in Tampa,” Huntley continued, “where Kennedy pressed the flesh for almost ten minutes. He worries the men whose job it is to keep him safe, but you can see that the crowd loves it. And so does he, David—for all his alleged aloofness, he enjoys the demands of politics.”

Kennedy was moving toward his limo now, still shaking hands and accepting the occasional lady-hug. The car was a top-down convertible, exactly like the one he’d ride in from Love Field to his appointment with Oswald’s bullet. Maybe it was the same one. For a moment the blurry black-and-white film caught a familiar face in the crowd. I sat on my sofa and watched as the President of the United States shook the hand of my former Tampa bookie.

I had no way of knowing if Roth was correct about “the syph” or just repeating a rumor, but Eduardo Gutierrez had lost a lot of weight, his hair was thinning, and his eyes looked confused, as if he wasn’t sure where he was or even who he was. Like Kennedy’s Secret Service contingent, the men flanking him wore bulky suit coats in spite of the Florida heat. It was only a glimpse, and then the footage switched to Kennedy pulling away in the open car that left him so vulnerable, still waving and flashing his grin.

Back to Huntley, his craggy face now wearing a bemused smile. “The day did have its funny side, David. As the president was entering the International Inn ballroom, where the Tampa Chamber of Commerce was waiting to hear him speak . . . well, listen for yourself.”

Back to the footage. As Kennedy entered, waving to the standing audience, an elderly gentleman in an Alpine hat and lederhosen struck up “Hail to the Chief ” on an accordion bigger than he was. The president did a double take, then lifted both hands in an amiable holy shit gesture. For the first time I saw him as I had come to see Oswald—as an actual man. In the double take and the gesture that followed it, I saw something even more beautiful than a sense of humor: an appreciation for life’s essential absurdity.

David Brinkley was also smiling. “If Kennedy’s reelected, perhaps that gentleman will be invited to play at the Inaugural Ball. Probably ‘The Beer Barrel Polka’ rather than ‘Hail to the Chief.’ Meanwhile, in Geneva . . .”

I turned off the TV, returned to the sofa, and opened Al’s book. As I flipped to the back, I kept seeing that double take. And the grin. A sense of humor; a sense of the absurd. The man in the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository had neither. Oswald had proved it time and again, and such a man had no business changing history.

I was dismayed to find that five of the last six pages in Al’s notebook dealt with Lee’s movements in New Orleans and his fruitless efforts to get to Cuba via Mexico. Only the last page focused on the lead-up to the assassination, and those final notes were perfunctory. Al had no doubt had that part of the story by heart, and probably figured that if I hadn’t gotten Oswald by the third week of November, it was going to be too late.

10/3/63: O back in Texas. He and Marina “sort of” separated. She at Ruth Paine’s house, O shows up mostly on weekends. Ruth gets O a job at Book Dep thru a neighbor (Buell Frazier). Ruth calls O “a fine young man.”

O living in Dallas during the work-week. Rooming house.

10/17/63: O starts work at Dep. Shifting books, unloading trucks, etc.

10/18/63: O turns 24. Ruth and Marina give him a surprise party. O thanks them. Cries.

10/20/63: 2^nd daughter born: Audrey Rachel. Ruth takes Marina to hosp (Parkland) while O works. Rifle stored in Paine garage, wrapped in blanket.

O repeatedly visited by FBI agent James Hosty. Stokes his paranoia.

11/21/63: O comes to Paine house. Begs Marina to reunite. M refuses. Last straw for O.

11/22/63: O leaves all his money on dresser for Marina. Also wedding ring. Goes from Irving to Book Dep with Buell Frazier. Has package wrapped in brown paper. Buell asks about it. “Curtain rods for my new apartment,” O tells him. Mann-Carc rifle probably disassembled. Buell parks in public lot 2 blocks from Book Dep. 3-min walk.

11:50 AM: O constructs sniper’s nest on SE corner of 6^th floor, using cartons to shield him from workers on other side, who are laying down plywood for new floor. Lunch. No one there but him. Everyone watching for Pres.

11:55 AM: O assembles & loads Mann-Carc.

12:29 PM: Motorcade arrives Dealey Plaza.

12:30 PM: O shoots 3 times. 3^rd shot kills JFK.

The piece of information I most wanted—the location of Oswald’s rooming house—wasn’t in Al’s notes. I restrained an urge to throw the notebook across the room. Instead I got up, put on my coat, and went outside. It was nearly full dark, but a three-quarter moon was rising in the sky. By its light I saw Mr. Kenopensky slumped in his wheelchair. His Motorola was in his lap.

I made my way down the ramp and limped over. “Mr. K? All right?”

For a moment he didn’t answer or even move, and I was sure he was dead. Then he looked up and smiled. “Just listenin to my music, son. They play swing at night on KMAT, and it really takes me back. I could lindy and bunny-hop like nobody’s biz back in the old days, though you’d never know to look at me now. Ain’t the moon purty?”

It was bigtime purty. We looked at it awhile without speaking, and I thought about the job I had to do. Maybe I didn’t know where Lee was staying tonight, but I knew where his rifle was: Ruth Paine’s garage, wrapped in a blanket. Suppose I went there and took it? I might not even have to break in. This was the Land of Ago, where folks in the hinterlands often didn’t lock their houses, let alone their garages.

Only what if Al was wrong? He’d been wrong about the stash-point before the Walker attempt, after all. Even if it was there . . .

“What’re you thinkin about, son?” Mr. Kenopensky asked. “You got a misery look. Not girl trouble, I hope.”

“No.” At least not yet. “Do you give advice?”

“Yessir, I do. It’s the one thing old coots are good for when they can’t swing a rope or ride a line no more.”

“Suppose you knew a man was going to do a bad thing. That his heart was absolutely set on it. If you stopped a man like that once—talked him out of it, say—do you think he’d try it again, or does that moment pass forever?”

“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 fleshing 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.

11/19/63 (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.”

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 glass 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, canvassing 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 fashion, 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.

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 assured him that I was. It was a lie. I was distraught and miserable. A man with a bum knee really shouldn’t have to carry the future of the world on his back.

I dropped my grateful butt 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 pass 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 assembled 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.

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 chore to perform on my used typewriter. An unpleasant one.

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.

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.

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 stitched 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 Dallas–Fort 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 shit 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?”

I had no intention of peaching on Ivy, even if she was still in Mozelle. “From Lee. Lee Oswald. He gave it to me so I could go in and water his plants.”

“That little pissant had plants?”

I hung up and drove back to 2703. My temporary landlord, perhaps motivated by curiosity, arrived in his Chrysler only fifteen minutes later. He was wearing his Stetson and fancy boots. I was sitting in the front room, listening to the argumentative ghosts of people who were still living. They had a lot to say.

Merritt wanted to pump me about Oswald—was he really a damn commanist? I said no, he was a good old Louisiana boy who worked at a place that would overlook the president’s motorcade on Friday. I said I hoped that Lee would let me share his vantage point.

“Fuckin Kennedy!” Merritt nearly shouted. “Now he’s a commanist for sure. Somebody ought to shoot that sumbitch til he cain’t wiggle.”

“You have a nice day, now,” I said, opening the door.

He went, but he wasn’t happy about it. This was a fellow who was used to having tenants kowtow and cringe. He turned on the cracked and crumbling concrete walk. “You leave the place as nice as you found it, now, y’hear?”

I looked around at the living room with its moldering rug, cracked plaster, and one brokedown easy chair. “No problem there,” I said.

I sat back down and tried to tune in to the ghosts again: Lee and Marina, Marguerite and de Mohrenschildt. I fell into one of my abrupt sleeps instead. When I woke up, I thought the chanting I heard must be from a fading dream.

“Charlie Chaplin went to FRANCE! Just to see the ladies DANCE!”

It was still there when I opened my eyes. I went to the window and looked out. The jump-rope girls were a little taller and older, but it was them, all right, the Terrible Trio. The one in the middle was spotty, although she looked at least four years too young for adolescent acne. Maybe it was rubella.

“Salute to the Cap’n!”

“Salute to the Queen,” I muttered, and went into the bathroom to wash my face. The water that belched out of the tap was rusty, but cold enough to wake me the rest of the way up. I had replaced my broken watch with a cheap Timex and saw it was two-thirty. I wasn’t hungry, but I needed to eat something, so I drove down to Mr. Lee’s Bar-B-Q. On the way back, I stopped at a drugstore for another box of headache powders. I also bought a couple of John D. MacDonald paperbacks.

The jump-rope girls were gone. Mercedes Street, ordinarily raucous, was strangely silent. Like a play before the curtain goes up on the last act, I thought. I went in to eat my meal, but although the ribs were tangy and tender, I ended up throwing most of them away.

I tried to sleep in the main bedroom, but in there the ghosts of Lee and Marina were too lively. Shortly before midnight, I relocated to the smaller bedroom. Rosette Templeton’s Crayola girls were still on the walls, and I somehow found their identical jumpers (Forest Green must have been Rosette’s favorite crayon) and big black shoes comforting. I thought those girls would make Sadie smile, especially the one wearing the Miss America crown.

“I love you, honey,” I said, and fell asleep.

11/21/63 (Thursday)

I didn’t want breakfast any more than I’d wanted dinner the night before, but by 11:00 A.M. I needed coffee desperately. A gallon or so seemed about right. I grabbed one of my new paperbacks—Slam the Big Door, it was called—and drove to the Happy Egg on Braddock Highway. The TV behind the counter was on, and I watched a news story about Kennedy’s impending arrival in San Antonio, where he was to be greeted by Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. Also to join the party: Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie.

Over footage of Kennedy and his wife walking across the tarmac of Andrews Air Force base in Washington, heading for the blue-and-white presidential plane, a correspondent who sounded like she might soon pee in her underwear talked about Jackie’s new “soft” hairdo, set off by a “jaunty black beret,” and the smooth lines of her “belted two-piece shirt-dress, by her favorite designer, Oleg Cassini.” Cassini might indeed be her favorite designer, but I knew Mrs. Kennedy had another outfit packed away on the plane. The designer of that one was Coco Chanel. It was pink wool, accessorized by a black collar. And of course there was a pink pillbox hat to top it off. The suit would go well with the roses she’d be handed at Love Field, not so well with the blood which would splatter the skirt and her stockings and shoes.

I went back to Mercedes Street and read my paperbacks. I waited for the obdurate past to swat me like a troublesome fly—for the roof to fall in or a sinkhole to open and drop 2703 deep into the ground. I cleaned my .38, loaded it, then unloaded it and cleaned it again. I almost hoped I would disappear into one of my sudden sleeps—it would at least pass the time—but that didn’t happen. The minutes dragged by, turning reluctantly into a stack of hours, each one bringing Kennedy that much closer to the intersection of Houston and Elm.

No sudden sleeps today, I thought. That will happen tomorrow. When the critical moment comes, I’ll just drop into unconsciousness. The next time I open my eyes, the deed will have been done and the past will have protected itself.

It could happen. I knew it could. If it did, I’d have a decision to make: find Sadie and marry her, or go back and start all over again. Thinking about it, I found there was really no decision to be made. I didn’t have the strength to go back and start over. One way or another, this was it. The trapper’s last shot.

That night, the Kennedys, Johnsons, and Connallys ate dinner in Houston, at an event put on by the League of Latin American Citzens. The cuisine was Argentinian: ensalada rusa and the stew known as guiso. Jackie made the after-dinner speech—in Spanish. I ate takeout burgers and fries . . . or tried to. After a few bites, that meal also went into the garbage can out back.

I had finished both of the MacDonald novels. I thought about getting my own unfinished book out of the trunk of my car, but the idea of reading it was sickening. I ended up just sitting in the half-busted armchair until it was dark outside. Then I went into the little bedroom where Rosette Templeton and June Oswald had slept. I lay down with my shoes off and my clothes on, using the cushion from the living room chair as a pillow. I’d left the door open and the light in the living room burning. By its glow I could see the Crayola girls in their green jumpers. I knew I was in for the sort of night that would make the long day I had just passed seem short; I’d lie here wide awake, my feet hanging over the end of the bed almost to the floor, until the first light of November twenty-second came filtering in through the window.

It was long. I was tortured by what-ifs, should-have-beens, and thoughts of Sadie. Those were the worst. The missing her and wanting her went so deep it felt like physical sickness. At some point, probably long after midnight (I’d given up looking at my watch; the slow movement of the hands was too depressing), I fell into a sleep that was dreamless and profound. God knows how long I would have slept the next morning if I hadn’t been awakened. Someone was shaking me gently.

“Come on, Jake. Open your eyes.”

I did as I was told, although when I saw who was sitting beside me on the bed, I was at first positive I was dreaming after all. I had to be. But then I reached out, touched the leg of her faded blue jeans, and felt the fabric under my palm. Her hair was tied up, her face almost devoid of makeup, the disfigurement of her left cheek clear and singular. It was Sadie. She had found me.

CHAPTER 28

11/22/63 (Friday)

I sat up and embraced her without even thinking about it. She hugged me back, as hard as she could. Then I kissed her, tasting her reality—the mingled flavors of tobacco and Avon. The lipstick was fainter; in her nervousness, she had nibbled most of it away. I smelled her shampoo, her deodorant, and the oily funk of tension-sweat beneath it. Most of all I touched her: hip and breast and the scarred furrow of her cheek. She was there.

“What time is it?” My trusty Timex had stopped.

“Quarter past eight.”

“Are you kidding? It can’t be!”

“It is. And I’m not surprised, even if you are. How long has it been since you got anything but the kind of sleep where you just pass out for a couple of hours?”

I was still trying to deal with the idea that Sadie was here, in the Fort Worth house where Lee and Marina had lived. How could it be? In God’s name, how? And that wasn’t the only thing. Kennedy was also in Fort Worth, at this very minute giving a breakfast speech to the local Chamber of Commerce at the Texas Hotel.

“My suitcase is in my car,” she said. “Will we take the Beetle to wherever we’re going, or your Chevy? The Beetle might be better. It’s easier to park. We may have to pay a lot for a space, even so, if we don’t go right now. The scalpers are already out, waving their flags. I saw them.”

“Sadie . . .” I shook my head in an effort to clear it and grabbed my shoes. I had thoughts in my head, plenty of them, but they were whirling around like paper in a cyclone, and I couldn’t catch a single one.

“I’m here,” she said.

Yes. That was the problem. “You can’t come with me. It’s too dangerous. I thought I explained that, but maybe I wasn’t clear enough. When you try to change the past, it bites. It’ll tear your throat out if you give it the chance.”

“You were clear. But you can’t do this alone. Face reality, Jake. You’ve put on a few pounds, but you’re still a scarecrow. You limp when you walk, and it’s a bad limp. You have to stop and rest your knee every two or three hundred steps. What would you do if you had to run?”

I said nothing. I was listening, though. I wound and set my watch as I did it.

“And that’s not the worst of it. You—yikes! What are you doing?” I had grabbed her thigh.

“Making sure you’re real. I still can’t quite believe it.” Air Force One was going to touch down at Love Field in a little over three hours. And someone was going to give Jackie Kennedy roses. At her other Texas stops, she’d been given yellow ones, but the Dallas bouquet was going to be red.

“I’m real and I’m here. Listen to me, Jake. The worst thing isn’t how badly you’re still banged up. The worst thing is the way you have of falling suddenly asleep. Haven’t you thought of that?”

I’d thought of it a lot.

“If the past is as malevolent as you say it is, what do you think is going to happen if you do succeed in getting close to the man you’re hunting before he can pull the trigger?”

The past wasn’t exactly malevolent, that was the wrong word, but I saw what she was saying and had no argument against it.

“You really don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“I absolutely do. And you’re forgetting something very important.” She took my hands and looked into my eyes. “I’m not just your best girl, Jake . . . if that’s what I still am to you—”

“That’s exactly why it’s so goddam scary having you turn up like this.”

“You say a man’s going to shoot the president, and I have reason to believe you, based on the other things that you’ve predicted that have come true. Even Deke’s half-persuaded. ‘He knew Kennedy was coming before Kennedy knew it,’ he said. ‘Right down to the day and the hour. And he knew the Missus was coming along for the ride.’ But you say it as if you were the only person who cared. You’re not. Deke cares. He would have been here if he wasn’t still running a fever of a hundred and one. And I care. I didn’t vote for him, but I happen to be an American, and that makes him not just the president but my president. Does that sound corny to you?”

“No.”

“Good.” Her eyes were snapping. “I have no intention of letting some crazy person shoot him, and I have no intention of falling asleep.”

“Sadie—”

“Let me finish. We don’t have much time, so you need to dig out your ears. Are they dug?”

“Yessum.”

“Good. You’re not getting rid of me. Let me repeat: not. I’m going. If you won’t let me into your Chevy, I’ll follow you in my Beetle.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, and didn’t know if I was cursing or praying.

“If we ever get married, I’ll do what you say, as long as you’re good to me. I was raised to believe that’s a wife’s job.” (Oh ye child of the sixties, I thought.) “I’m ready to leave everything I know behind and follow you into the future. Because I love you and because I believe that future you talk about is really there. I’ll probably never give you another ultimatum, but I’m giving you one now. You do this with me or you don’t do it at all.”

I thought about this, and carefully. I asked myself if she meant it. The answer was as clear as the scar on her face.

Sadie, meanwhile, was looking at the Crayola Girls. “Who do you suppose drew these? They’re actually quite good.”

“Rosette did them,” I said. “Rosette Templeton. She went back to Mozelle with her mamma after her daddy had an accident.”

“And then you moved in?”

“No, across the street. A little family named Oswald moved in here.”

“Is that his name, Jake? Oswald?”

“Yes. Lee Oswald.”

“Am I coming with you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

She smiled and put her hand on my face. Until I saw that relieved smile, I had no idea of how frightened she must have been when she shook me awake. “No, honey,” she said. “Not that I can see. That’s why they call it an ultimatum.”

We put her suitcase in the Chevrolet. If we stopped Oswald (and weren’t arrested), we could get her Beetle later and she could drive it back to Jodie, where it would look normal and at home in her driveway. If things didn’t go well—if we failed, or succeeded only to find ourselves on the hook for Lee’s murder—we’d simply have to run for it. We could run faster, farther, and more anonymously in a V-8 Chevy than in a Volkswagen Beetle.

She saw the gun when I put it into the inside pocket of my sport coat and said, “No. Outside pocket.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Where I can get at it if you all at once get tired and decide to take a nap.”

We went down the walk, Sadie hitching her purse over her shoulder. Rain had been forecast, but it looked to me as if the prognosticators would have to take a penalty card on that one. The sky was clearing.

Before Sadie could get in on the passenger side, a voice from behind me spoke up. “That your girlfriend, mister?”

I turned. It was the jump-rope girl with the acne. Only it wasn’t acne, it wasn’t rubella, and I didn’t have to ask why she wasn’t in school. She had chicken pox. “Yes, she is.”

“She’s purty. Except for the”—she made a gik sound that was, in a grotesque way, sort of charming—“on her face.”

Sadie smiled. My appreciation for her sheer guts continued to go up . . . and it never went down. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Sadie,” the jump-rope girl said. “Sadie Van Owen. What’s yours?”

“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but my name’s Sadie, too.”

The kid eyed her with a mistrustful cynicism that was all Mercedes Street Riot Grrrl. “No, it’s not!”

“It really is. Sadie Dunhill.” She turned to me. “That’s quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say, George?”

I wouldn’t, actually, and I didn’t have time to discuss it. “Need to ask you something, Miss Sadie Van Owen. You know where the buses stop on Winscott Road, don’t you?”

“Sure.” She rolled her eyes as if to ask how dumb do you think I am? “Say, have you two had the chicken pox?”

Sadie nodded.

“Me, too,” I said, “so we’re okay on that score. Do you know which bus goes into downtown Dallas?”

“The Number Three.”

“And how often does the Three run?”

“I think every half hour, but it might be every fifteen minutes. Why you want the bus when you got a car? When you got two cars?”

I could tell by Big Sadie’s expression that she was wondering the same thing. “I’ve got my reasons. And by the way, my old man drives a submarine.”

Sadie Van Owen cracked a huge smile. “You know that one?”

“Known it for years,” I said. “Get in, Sadie. We need to roll.”

I checked my new watch. It was twenty minutes to nine.

“Tell me why you’re interested in the buses,” Sadie said.

“First tell me how you found me.”

“When I got to Eden Fallows and you were gone, I burned the note as you asked, then checked with the old guy next door.”

“Mr. Kenopensky.”

“Yes. He didn’t know anything. By then the therapist lady was sitting on your steps. She wasn’t happy to find you gone. She said she’d traded with Doreen so Doreen could see Kennedy today.”

The Winscott Road bus stop was ahead. I slowed to see if there was a schedule inside the little shelter next to the post, but no. I pulled into a parking space a hundred yards ahead of the stop.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking out an insurance policy. If a bus doesn’t come by nine, we’ll go on. Finish your story.”

“I called the hotels in downtown Dallas, but nobody even wanted to talk to me. They’re all so busy. I called Deke next, and he called the police. Told them he had reliable information that someone was going to shoot the president.”

I’d been watching for the bus in my rearview mirror, but now I looked at Sadie in shock. Yet I felt reluctant admiration for Deke. I had no idea how much of what Sadie had told him he actually believed, but he’d gone way out on a limb, just the same. “What happened? Did he give his name?”

“He never got the chance. They hung up on him. I think that’s when I really started to believe you about how the past protects itself. And that’s what all this is to you, isn’t it? Just a living history book.”

“Not anymore.”

Here came a lumbering bus, green over yellow. The sign in the destination window read 3 MAIN STREET DALLAS 3. It stopped and the doors at the front and back flapped open on their accordion hinges. Two or three people got on, but there was no way they were going to find seats; when the bus rolled slowly past us, I saw that all of them were full. I glimpsed a woman with a row of Kennedy buttons pinned to her hat. She waved at me gaily, and although our eyes met for only a second, I could feel her excitement, delight, and anticipation.

I dropped the Chevy into gear and followed the bus. On the back, partially obscured by belching brown exhaust, a radiantly smiling Clairol girl proclaimed that if she only had one life, she wanted to live it as a blonde. Sadie waved her hand theatrically. “Uck! Drop back! It stinks!”

“That’s quite a criticism, coming from a pack-a-day chick,” I said, but she was right, the diesel stench was nasty. I fell back. There was no need to tailgate now that I knew Sadie Jump-Rope had been right about the number. She’d probably been right about the interval, too. The buses might run every half hour on ordinary days, but this was no ordinary day.

“I did some more crying, because I thought you were gone for sure. I was scared for you, but I hated you, too.”

I could understand that and still feel I’d done the right thing, so it seemed best to say nothing.

“I called Deke again. He asked me if you’d ever said anything about having another bolt-hole, maybe in Dallas but probably in Fort Worth. I said I didn’t remember you saying anything specific. He said it probably would have been while you were in the hospital, and all confused. He told me to think hard. As if I wasn’t. I went back to Mr. Kenopensky on the chance you might have said something to him. By then it was almost suppertime, and getting dark. He said no, but right about then his son came by with a pot roast dinner and invited me to eat with them. Mr. K got talking—he has all kinds of stories about the old days—”

“I know.” Up ahead, the bus turned east on Vickery Boulevard. I signaled and followed it but stayed far enough back so we didn’t have to eat the diesel. “I’ve heard at least three dozen. Blood-on-the-saddle stuff.”

“Listening to him was the best thing I could have done, because I stopped racking my brains for awhile, and sometimes when you relax, things let go and float to the surface of your mind. While I was walking back to your little apartment, I suddenly remembered you saying you lived for awhile on Cadillac Street. Only you knew that wasn’t quite right.”

“Oh my God. I forgot all about that.”

“It was my last chance. I called Deke again. He didn’t have any detailed city maps, but he knew there were some at the school library. He drove down—probably coughing his head off, he’s still pretty sick—got them, and called me from the office. He found a Ford Avenue in Dallas, and a Chrysler Park, and several Dodge Streets. But none of them had the feel of a Cadillac, if you know what I mean. Then he found Mercedes Street in Fort Worth. I wanted to go right away, but he told me I’d have a much better chance of spotting you or your car if I waited until morning.”

She gripped my arm. Her hand was cold.

“Longest night of my life, you troublesome man. I hardly slept a wink.”

“I made up for you, although I didn’t finally go under until the wee hours. If you hadn’t come, I might have slept right through the damn assassination.”

How dismal would that be for an ending?

“Mercedes goes on for blocks. I drove and drove. Then I could see the end, at the parking lot of some big building that looks like the back of a department store.”

“Close. It’s a Montgomery Ward warehouse.”

“And still no sign of you. I can’t tell you how downhearted I was. Then . . .” She grinned. It was radiant in spite of the scar. “Then I saw that red Chevy with the silly tailfins that look like a woman’s eyebrows. Bright as a neon sign. I shouted and pounded the dashboard of my little Beetle until my hand was sore. And now here I a—”

There was a low, crunching bang from the right front of the Chevy and suddenly we were veering at a lamppost. There was a series of hard thuds from beneath the car. I spun the wheel. It was sickeningly loose in my hands, but I got just enough steerage to avoid hitting the post head-on. Instead, Sadie’s side scraped it, creating a ghastly metal-on-metal screee. Her door bowed inward and I yanked her toward me on the bench seat. We came to a stop with the hood hanging over the sidewalk and the car listing to the right. That wasn’t just a flat tire, I thought. That was a mortal fucking injury.

Sadie looked at me, stunned. I laughed. As previously noted, sometimes there’s just nothing else you can do.

“Welcome to the past, Sadie,” I said. “This is how we live here.”

She couldn’t get out on her side; it was going to take a crowbar to pry the passenger door open. She slid the rest of the way across the seat and got out on mine. A few people were watching, not many.

“Gee, what happened?” a woman pushing a baby carriage asked.

That was obvious once I got around to the front of the car. The right front wheel had snapped off. It lay twenty feet behind us at the end of a curving trench in the asphalt. The jagged axle-stub gleamed in the sun.

“Busted wheel,” I told the woman with the baby carriage.

“Oh, law,” she said.

“What do we do?” Sadie asked in a low voice.

“We took out an insurance policy; now we file a claim. Nearest bus stop.”

“My suitcase—”

Yes, I thought, and Al’s notebook. My manuscripts—the shitty novel that doesn’t matter and the memoir that does. Plus my available cash. I glanced at my watch. Quarter past nine. At the Texas Hotel, Jackie would be dressing in her pink suit. After another hour or so of politics, the motorcade would be on the move to Carswell Air Force Base, where the big plane was parked. Given the distance between Fort Worth and Dallas, the pilots would barely have time to put their wheels up.

I tried to think.

“Would you like to use my phone to call someone?” the woman with the baby carriage asked. “My house is right up the street.” She scanned us, picking up on my limp and Sadie’s scar. “Are you hurt?”

“We’re fine,” I said. I took Sadie’s arm. “Would you call a service station and ask them to tow it? I know it’s a lot to ask, but we’re in a terrible hurry.”

“I told him that front end was wobbly,” Sadie said. She was pouring on the Georgia drawl. “Thank goodness we weren’t on the highway.” Ha-way.

“There’s an Esso about two blocks up.” She pointed north. “I guess I could stroll the baby over there . . .”

“Oh, that would be a lifesaver, ma’am,” Sadie said. She opened her purse, removed her wallet, and took out a twenty. “Give them this on account. Sorry to ask you like this, but if I don’t see Kennedy, I will just dah.” That made the baby carriage woman smile.

“Goodness, that much would pay for two tows. If you have some paper in your purse, I could scribble a receipt—”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We trust you. But maybe I’ll put a note under the wiper.”

Sadie was looking at me questioningly . . . but she was also holding out a pen and little pad with a cross-eyed cartoon kid on the cover. SKOOL DAZE, it said below his loopy grin. DEAR OLE GOLDEN SNOOZE DAZE.

A lot was riding on that note, but there was no time to think about the wording. I jotted rapidly and folded it under the wiper blade. A moment later we were around the corner and gone.

“Jake? Are you okay?”

“Fine. You?”

“I got bumped by the door and I’ll probably have a bruise on my shoulder, but otherwise, yes. If we’d hit that post, I probably wouldn’t have been. You, either. Who was the note for?”

“Whoever tows the Chevy.” And I hoped to God Mr. Whoever would do as the note asked. “We’ll worry about that part when we come back.”

If we came back.

The next bus pole was halfway up the block. Three black women, two white women, and a Hispanic man were standing by the post, a racial mixture so balanced it looked like a casting call for Law and Order SVU. We joined them. I sat on the bench inside the shelter next to a sixth woman, an African-American lady whose heroic proportions were packed into a white rayon uniform that practically screamed Well-to-do White Folks’ Housekeeper. On her bosom she wore a button that read ALL THE WAY WITH JFK IN ’64.

“Bad leg, sir?” she asked me.

“Yes.” I had four packets of headache powder in the pocket of my sport coat. I reached past the gun, got two of them, tore off the tops, and poured them into my mouth.

“Taking them that way will box your kidneys around,” she said.

“I know. But I’ve got to keep this leg going long enough to see the president.”

She broke into a large smile. “Don’t I hear that.”

Sadie was standing on the curb and looking anxiously back down the street for a Number Three.

“Buses runnin slow today,” the housekeeper said, “but one be along directly. No way I’m missin Kennedy, nuh-uh!”

Nine-thirty came and still no bus, but the ache in my knee was down to a dull throb. God bless Goody’s Powder.

Sadie came over. “Jake, maybe we ought to—”

“Here come a Three,” the housekeeper said, and rose to her feet. She was an awesome lady, dark as ebony, taller than Sadie by at least an inch, hair plank-straight and gleaming. “How-eee, I’m gonna get me a place right there in Dealey Plaza. Got samidges in my bag. And will he hear me when I yell?”

“I bet he will,” I said.

She laughed. “You better believe he will! Him and Jackie both!”

The bus was full, but the folks from the bus stop crammed on anyway. Sadie and I were the last, and the driver, who looked as harried as a stockbroker on Black Friday, held out his palm. “No more! I’m full! Got em crammed in like sardines! Wait for the next one!”

Sadie threw me an agonized look, but before I could say anything, the large lady stepped in on our behalf. “Nuh-uh, you let em on. The man he got a bum leg, and the lady got her own problems, as you can well see. Also, she skinny and he skinnier. You let em on or I’m gonna put you off and drive this bus myself. I can do it, too. I learned on my daddy’s Bulldog.”

The bus driver looked at her looming over him, then rolled his eyes and beckoned us aboard. When I reached for coins to stick in the fare-box, he covered it with a meaty palm. “Never mind the damn fare, just get behind the white line. If you can.” He shook his head. “Why they didn’t put on a dozen extra buses today I don’t know.” He yanked the chrome handle. The doors flopped shut fore and aft. The air brakes let go with a chuff and we were rolling, slow but sure.

My angel wasn’t done. She began hectoring a couple of working guys, one black and one white, seated behind the driver with their dinnerbuckets in their laps. “Get on up and give your seats to this lady and gentleman, now! Can’t you see he’s got a bad pin? And he’s still goin to see Kennedy!”

“Ma’am, that’s all right,” I said.

She took no notice. “Get up, now, was you raised in a woodshed?”

They got up, elbowing their way into the choked throng in the aisle. The black workingman gave the housekeeper a dirty look. “Nineteen sixty-three and I’m still givin the white man my seat.”

“Oh, boo-hoo,” his white friend said.

The bl

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 725