7
The streets making up the Dallas block I was interested in were Turtle Creek Boulevard (where the general lived), Wycliff Avenue (where I'd parked), Avondale Avenue (which was where I went after returning Walker's wave), and Oak Lawn, a street of small businesses that ran directly behind the general's house. Oak Lawn was the one I was most interested in, because it was going to be Lee's line of approach and route of escape on the night of April 10.
I stood in front of Texas Shoes & Boots, the collar of my denim jacket raised and my hands stuffed in my pockets. About three minutes after I took up this position, the bus stopped at the corner of Oak Lawn and Wycliff. Two women with cloth shopping bags got off immediately when the doors flopped open. Then Lee descended to the sidewalk. He carried a brown paper bag, like a workman's lunchsack.
There was a big stone church on the corner. Lee sauntered over to the iron railing running in front of it, read the noticeboard, took a small notepad out of his hip pocket, and jotted something down. After that he headed in my direction, tucking the notebook into his pocket as he walked. I hadn't expected that. Al had believed Lee was going to stash his rifle near the railroad tracks on the other side of Oak Lawn Avenue, a good half a mile away. But maybe the notes were wrong, because Lee didn't even glance in that direction. He was seventy or eighty yards away, and closing in fast on my position.
He's going to notice me and he's going to speak to me, I thought. He's going to say, "Aren't you the guy who lives downstairs? What are you doing here?" If he did, the future would skew off in a new direction. Not good.
I stared at the shoes and boots in the show window with sweat dampening the nape of my neck and rolling down my back. When I finally took a chance and shifted my eyes to the left, Lee was gone. It was like a magic trick.
I sauntered up the street. I wished I'd put on a cap, maybe even some sunglasses--why hadn't I? What kind of half-assed secret agent was I, anyway?
I came to a coffee shop about halfway along the block, the sign in the window advertising BREAKFAST ALL DAY. Lee wasn't inside. Beyond the coffee shop was the mouth of an alley. I walked slowly across it, glanced to my right, and saw him. His back was to me. He had taken his camera out of the paper sack but wasn't shooting with it, at least not yet. He was examining trash cans. He pulled off the lids, looked inside, then replaced them.
Every bone in my body--by which I mean every instinct in my brain, I suppose--was urging me to move on before he turned and saw me, but a powerful fascination held me in place a little longer. I think it would have held most people. How many opportunities do we have, after all, to watch a guy as he goes about the business of planning a cold-blooded murder?
He moved a little deeper into the alley, then stopped at a circular iron plate set in a plug of concrete. He tried to lift it. No go.
The alley was unpaved, badly potholed, and about two hundred yards long. Halfway down its length, the chain link guarding weedy backyards and vacant lots gave way to high board fences draped in ivy that looked less than vibrant after a cold and dismal winter. Lee pushed a mat of it aside, and tried a board. It swung out and he peered into the hole behind it.
Axioms about how you have to break eggs to make an omelet were all very fine, but I felt I had pressed my luck enough. I walked on. At the end of the block I stopped at the church that had caught Lee's interest. It was the Oak Lawn Church of Latter-day Saints. The noticeboard said there were regular services every Sunday morning and special newcomers' services every Wednesday night at 7 PM, with a social hour to follow. Refreshments would be served.
April 10 was a Wednesday and Lee's plan (assuming it wasn't de Mohrenschildt's) now seemed clear enough: hide the gun in the alley ahead of time, then wait until the newcomers' service--and the social hour, of course--was over. He'd be able to hear the worshippers when they came out, laughing and talking as they headed for the bus stop. The buses ran on the quarter hour; there was always one coming along. Lee would take his shot, hide the gun behind the loose board again (not near the train tracks), then mingle with the church folk. When the next bus came, he'd be gone.
I glanced to my right just in time to see him emerging from the alley. The camera was back in the paper sack. He went to the bus stop and leaned against the post. A man came along and asked him something. Soon they were in conversation. Batting the breeze with a stranger, or was this perhaps another friend of de Mohrenschildt's? Just some guy on the street, or a co-conspirator? Maybe even the famous Unknown Shooter who--according to the conspiracy theorists--had been lurking on the grassy knoll near Dealey Plaza when Kennedy's motorcade approached? I told myself that was crazy, but it was impossible to know for sure. That was the hell of it.
There was no way of knowing anything for sure, and wouldn't be until I saw with my own eyes that Oswald was alone on April 10. Even that wouldn't be enough to put all my doubts to rest, but it would be enough to proceed on.
Enough to kill Junie's father.
The bus came growling up to the stop. Secret Agent X-19--also known as Lee Harvey Oswald, the renowned Marxist and wife-beater--got on. When the bus was out of sight, I went back to the alley and walked its length. At the end, it widened out into a big unfenced backyard. There was a '57 or '58 Chevy Biscayne parked beside a natural gas pumping station. There was a barbecue pot standing on a tripod. Beyond the barbie was the backside of a big dark brown house. The general's house.
I looked down and saw a fresh drag-mark in the dirt. A garbage can stood at one end of it. I hadn't seen Lee move the can, but I knew he had. On the night of the tenth, he meant to rest the rifle barrel on it.
8
On Monday, March 25, Lee came walking up Neely Street carrying a long package wrapped in brown paper. Peering through a tiny crack in the curtains, I could see the words REGISTERED and INSURED stamped on it in big red letters. For the first time I thought he seemed furtive and nervous, actually looking around at his exterior surroundings instead of at the spooky furniture deep in his head. I knew what was in the package: a 6.5mm Carcano rifle--also known as a Mannlicher-Carcano--complete with scope, purchased from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago. Five minutes after he climbed the outside stairs to the second floor, the gun Lee would use to change history was in a closet above my head. Marina took the famous pictures of him holding it just outside my living room window six days later, but I didn't see it. That was a Sunday, and I was in Jodie. As the tenth grew closer, those weekends with Sadie had become the most important, the dearest, things in my life.
9
I came awake with a jerk, hearing someone mutter "Still not too late" under his breath. I realized it was me and shut up.
Sadie murmured some thick protest and turned over in bed. The familiar squeak of the springs locked me in place and time: the Candlewood Bungalows, April 5, 1963. I fumbled my watch from the nightstand and peered at the luminous numbers. It was quarter past two in the morning, which meant it was actually the sixth of April.
Still not too late.
Not too late for what? To back off, to let well enough alone? Or bad enough, come to that? The idea of backing off was attractive, God knew. If I went ahead and things went wrong, this could be my last night with Sadie. Ever.
Even if you do have to kill him, you don't have to do it right away.
True enough. Oswald was going to relocate to New Orleans for awhile after the attempt on the general's life--another shitty apartment, one I'd already visited--but not for two weeks. That would give me plenty of time to stop his clock. But I sensed it would be a mistake to wait very long. I might find reasons to keep on waiting. The best one was beside me in this bed: long, lovely, and smoothly naked. Maybe she was just another trap laid by the obdurate past, but that didn't matter, because I loved her. And I could envision a scenario--all too clearly--where I'd have to run after killing Oswald. Run where? Back to Maine, of course. Hoping I could stay ahead of the cops just long enough to get to the rabbit-hole and escape into a future where Sadie Dunhill would be
. . . well . . . about eighty years old. If she were alive at all. Given her cigarette habit, that would be like rolling six the hard way.
I got up and went to the window. Only a few of the bungalows were occupied on this early-spring weekend. There was a mud-or manure-splattered pickup truck with a trailer full of what looked like farm implements behind it. An Indian motorcycle with a sidecar. A couple of station wagons. And a two-tone Plymouth Fury. The moon was sliding in and out of thin clouds and it wasn't possible to make out the color of the car's lower half by that stuttery light, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was, anyway.
I pulled on my pants, undershirt, and shoes. Then I slipped out of the cabin and walked across the courtyard. The chilly air bit at my bed-warm skin, but I barely felt it. Yes, the car was a Fury, and yes, it was white over red, but this one wasn't from Maine or Arkansas; the plate was Oklahoma, and the decal in the rear window read GO, SOONERS. I peeked in and saw a scatter of textbooks. Some student, maybe headed south to visit his folks on spring break. Or a couple of horny teachers taking advantage of the Candlewood's liberal guest policy.
Just another not-quite-on-key chime as the past harmonized with itself. I touched the trunk, as I had back in Lisbon Falls, then returned to the bungalow. Sadie had pushed the sheet down to her waist, and when I came in, the draft of cool air woke her up. She sat, holding the sheet over her breasts, then let it drop when she saw it was me.
"Can't sleep, honey?"
"I had a bad dream and went out for some air."
"What was it?"
I unbuttoned my jeans, kicked off my loafers. "Can't remember."
"Try. My mother always used to say if you tell your dreams, they won't come true."
I got into bed with her wearing nothing but my undershirt. "My mother used to say if you kiss your honey, they won't come true."
"Did she actually say that?"
"No."
"Well," she said thoughtfully, "it sounds possible. Let's try it."
We tried it.
One thing led to another.
10
Afterward, she lit a cigarette. I lay watching the smoke drift up and turn blue in the occasional moonlight coming through the half-drawn curtains. I'd never leave the curtains that way at Neely Street, I thought. At Neely Street, in my other life, I'm always alone but still careful to close them all the way. Except when I'm peeking, that is. Lurking.
Just then I didn't like myself very much.
"George?"
I sighed. "That's not my name."
"I know."
I looked at her. She inhaled deeply, enjoying her cigarette guiltlessly, as people do in the Land of Ago. "I don't have any inside information, if that's what you're thinking. But it stands to reason. The rest of your past is made up, after all. And I'm glad. I don't like George all that much. It's kind of . . . what's that word you use sometimes? . . . kind of dorky."
"How does Jake suit you?"
"As in Jacob?"
"Yes."
"I like it." She turned to me. "In the Bible, Jacob wrestled an angel. And you're wrestling, too. Aren't you?"
"I suppose I am, but not with an angel." Although Lee Oswald didn't make much of a devil, either. I liked George de Mohrenschildt better for the devil role. In the Bible, Satan's a tempter who makes the offer and then stands aside. I hoped de Mohrenschildt was like that.
Sadie snubbed her cigarette. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were dark. "Are you going to be hurt?"
"I don't know."
"Are you going away? Because if you have to go away, I'm not sure I can stand it. I would have died before I said it when I was there, but Reno was a nightmare. Losing you for good . . ." She shook her head slowly. "No, I'm not sure I could stand that."
"I want to marry you," I said.
"My God," she said softly. "Just when I'm ready to say it'll never happen, Jake-alias-George says right now."
"Not right now, but if the next week goes the way I hope it does . . . will you?"
"Of course. But I do have to ask one teensy question."
"Am I single? Legally single? Is that what you want to know?"
She nodded.
"I am," I said.
She let out a comic sigh and grinned like a kid. Then she sobered. "Can I help you? Let me help you."
The thought turned me cold, and she must have seen it. Her lower lip crept into her mouth. She bit down on it with her teeth. "That bad, then," she said musingly.
"Let's put it this way: I'm currently close to a big machine full of sharp teeth, and it's running full speed. I won't allow you next to me while I'm monkeying with it."
"When is it?" she asked. "Your . . . I don't know . . . your date with destiny?"
"Still to be determined." I had a feeling that I'd said too much already, but since I'd come this far, I decided to go a little farther. "Something's going to happen this Wednesday night. Something I have to witness. Then I'll decide."
"Is there no way I can help you?"
"I don't think so, honey."
"If it turns out I can--"
"Thanks," I said. "I appreciate that. And you really will marry me?"
"Now that I know your name is Jake? Of course."
11
On Monday morning, around ten o'clock, the station wagon pulled up at the curb and Marina went off to Irving with Ruth Paine. I had an errand of my own to run, and was just about to leave the apartment when I heard the thump of footsteps descending the outside stairs. It was Lee, looking pale and grim. His hair was mussy and his face was stippled with a bad breakout of post-adolescent acne. He was wearing jeans and an absurd trenchcoat that flapped around his shins. He walked with one arm across his chest, as if his ribs hurt.
Or as if he had something under his coat. Before the attempt, Lee sighted in his new rifle somewhere out by Love Field, Al had written. I didn't care where he sighted it in. What I cared about was how close I'd just come to meeting him face-to-face. I'd made the careless assumption that I'd missed him going off to work, and--
Why wasn't he at work on a Monday morning, come to that?
I dismissed the question and went out, carrying my school briefcase. Inside were the never-to-be-finished novel, Al's notes, and the work-in-progress describing my adventures in the Land of Ago.
If Lee wasn't alone on the night of April 10, I might be spotted and killed by one of his co-conspirators, maybe even de Mohrenschildt himself. I still thought the odds of that were unlikely, but the odds of having to run away after killing Oswald were better. So were the odds of being captured and arrested for murder. I didn't want anyone--the police, for instance--finding Al's notes or my memoir if either of those things happened.
The important thing to me on that eighth of April was to get my paperwork out of the apartment and far away from the confused and aggressive young man who lived upstairs. I drove to the First Corn Bank of Dallas, and was not surprised to see that the bank official who helped me bore a striking resemblance to the Hometown Trust banker who had helped me in Lisbon Falls. This guy's name was Link instead of Dusen, but he still looked like the oldtime Cuban bandleader, Xavier Cugat.
I enquired about safe deposit boxes. Soon enough, the manuscripts were in Box 775. I drove back to Neely Street and had a moment of severe panic when I couldn't find the goddam key to the box.
Relax, I told myself. It's in your pocket somewhere, and even if it isn't, your new pal Richard Link will be happy to give you a duplicate. Might cost you all of a buck.
As if the thought had summoned it, I found the key hiding way down in the corner of my pocket, under my change. I put it on my key ring, where it would be safe. If I did have to run back to the rabbit-hole, and stepped into the past again after a return to the present, I'd still have it . . . although everything that had happened in the last four and a half years would reset. The manuscripts now in the safe deposit box would be lost in time. That was probably good news.
The bad news was that Sadie would be, too.
CHAPTER 22
1
The afternoon of April tenth was clear and warm, a foretaste of summer. I dressed in slacks and one of the sport coats I'd bought during my year teaching at Denholm Consolidated. The .38 Police Special, fully loaded, went into my briefcase. I don't remember being nervous; now that the time had come, I felt like a man encased in a cold envelope. I checked my watch: three-thirty.
My plan was to once more park in the Alpha Beta lot on Wycliff Avenue. I could be there by four-fifteen at the latest, even if the crosstown traffic was heavy. I'd scope out the alley. If it was empty, as I expected it would be at that hour, I'd check the hole behind the loose board. If Al's notes were right about Lee stashing the Carcano in advance (even though he'd been wrong about the place), it would be there.
I'd go back to my car for awhile, watching the bus stop just in case Lee showed up early. When the 7:00 P.M. newcomers' service started at the Mormon church, I'd stroll to the coffee shop that served breakfast all day and take a seat by the window. I would eat food I wasn't hungry for, dawdling, making it last, watching the buses arrive and hoping that when Lee finally got off one, he'd be alone. I would also be hoping not to see George de Mohrenschildt's boat of a car.
That, at least, was the plan.
I picked up my briefcase, glancing at my watch again as I did so. 3:33. The Chevy was gassed and ready to go. If I'd gone out and gotten into it then, as I'd planned to, my phone would have rung in an empty apartment. But I didn't, because someone knocked at the door just as I reached for the knob.
I opened it and Marina Oswald was standing there.
2
For a moment I just gaped, unable to move or speak. Mostly it was her unexpected presence, but there was something else, as well. Until she was standing right in front of me, I hadn't realized how much her wide blue eyes looked like Sadie's.