The men in dark glasses were back on the running boards as the motorcade began its swing into Houston Street and the last little dip before the freeway.
They ran to the birdcage elevators, four young men in the lunch-hour race, horse laughs, jostling at the gates. Lee heard them call to each other all the way down. Dust. Faded white paint on the old brick walls. Stacks of cartons everywhere. Old sprinkler pipes and scarred columns. A layer of dust hovered at a height of three feet. Loose books on the floor. His clipboard already hidden, jammed between cartons near the west wall. Stillness on six.
He stood at the southeast window inside a barrier of cartons. The larger ones formed a wall about five feet high and carried a memory with them, a sense of a kid’s snug hideout, making him feel apart and secure. Inside the barrier were four more cartons—one set lengthwise on the floor, two stacked, one small carton resting on the brick windowsill. A bench, a support, a gun rest. The wrapping paper he’d used to conceal the rifle was on the floor near his feet. Dust. Broken spider webs hanging from the ceiling. He saw a dime on the floor. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.
He looked down Houston Street as the motorcade approached, slow and vivid in the sun. There were people scattered on the lawns of Dealey Plaza, maybe a hundred and fifty, many with cameras. He held the rifle at port arms, more or less, and stood in plain view in the tall window. Everything looked so painfully clear.
The President had chestnut hair and the First Lady was radiant in a pink suit and small round hat. Lee was glad she looked so good. For her own sake. For the cameras. For the pictures that would enter the permanent record.
He spotted Governor John Connally in one of the jump seats, a Stetson in his lap. He liked Connally’s face, a rugged Texas face. This was the kind of man who would take a liking to Lee if he ever got to know him. Cartons stamped Books. Ten Rolling Readers. Everyone was grateful for the weather.
The white pilot car turned, the motorcycles turned. The Lincoln passed beneath him, easing left, making the deep turn left, seeming almost to rotate on an axis. Everything was slow and clear. He got down on one knee, placed his left elbow on the stacked cartons and rested the gun barrel on the edge of the carton on the sill. He sighted on the back of the President’s head. The Lincoln moved into the cover of the live oak, going about ten miles an hour. Ready on the left, ready on the right. Through the scope he saw the car metal shine.
He fired through an opening in the leaf cover.
When the car was in the clear again, the President began to react.
Lee turned up the handle, drew the bolt back.
The President reacted, arms coming up, elbows high and wide.
There were pigeons, suddenly, everywhere, cracking down from the eaves and beating west.
The report sounded over the plaza, flat and clear.
The President’s fists were clenched near his throat, arms bowed out.
Lee drove the bolt forward, jerking the handle down.
The Lincoln was moving slower now. It was almost dead still. It was sitting naked in the street eighty yards from the underpass.
Ready on the firing line.
Raymo got out of the supercharged Merc in the parking lot above the grassy embankment a little more than halfway down Elm. A wooden stockade fence enclosed the parking area, with trees and shrubs set alongside. The rear bumper of the car nudged the fence. There were ten or twelve cars parked nearby, many more in the spaces to the north and west.
Raymo stood a moment, rolling his shoulders. He gave a firm hoist to his balls, three quick jogs with the left hand. The fence was about five feet high, too high for him to brace his left arm comfortably. He went to the rear of the car and stood on the bumper. He looked out over the fence and across a stretch of lawn. The pilot car approached the Elm Street turn.
Frank Vásquez got out of the car on the driver’s side. He carried a Weatherby Mark V, scope-mounted, loaded with soft-point bullets that explode on impact. He stood by the rear fender until Raymo extended a hand. Frank gave him the weapon.
He went back to the driver’s seat. The car bounced when he got in and Raymo glanced back sharply.
The crowd noise from Main Street was still in the air, faintly, a rustle somewhere overhead, and Frank, with his back to the action, sat at the wheel listening. His view was past the railyards to the northwest. Water towers painted white. Power pylons trailing into a flat grim distance. All light and sky. He felt like he could see to the end of Texas.
Raymo stood just west of the point where the two sections of fence form a near-right angle. From the deep shade of the trees he looked out on a sun-dazzled scene. Small groups collecting on the grass on both sides of Elm, families, cameras, like the start of a picnic. The limousine came swinging into the street. People on the north side of Elm, their backs to Raymo, shaded their eyes from the sun. Other people waving, Kennedy waving, applause, sunlight, sharp glare on the hood of the limousine. A girl ran across the grass. The dangling men. Four men dangling from the sides of the follow-up car, only a few feet behind the blue Lincoln.
Dallas One. Repeat. I didn’t get all of it.
Leon fired too soon, with the car passing under the tree. The report sounded like a short charge, a little weak, a defect, not enough powder.
Kennedy reacted late, without surprise at first, his arms coming up slowly like a man on a rowing machine.
The driver slowed to half-speed. The driver sat there. The other agent sat there. They were waiting for a voice to explain it.
Pigeons flared past.
Raymo eased the gun barrel out over the fence. He set his feet firmly on the bumper. His left forearm, bracing the weapon, was wedged between the tops of two pickets. He tilted his head to the stock. He waited, sighting through the scope.
On the grass a woman saw the limousine emerge from behind a freeway sign with the President clutching at his throat. She heard a sharp noise, like a backfiring car, and realized it was the second noise she’d heard. She thought she saw a man throw a boy to the grass and fall on top of him. She didn’t really hear the first noise until she heard the second. A girl ran waving toward the limousine. The noise cracked and flattened, washing across the plaza. This wasn’t making sense at all.
There was so much clarity Lee could watch himself in the huge room of stacked cartons, scattered books, old brick walls, bare light bulbs, a small figure in a corner, partly hidden. He fired off a second shot.
He saw the Governor, who was turned right, begin to look the other way, then double up suddenly. A startle reaction. He knew this was called a startle reaction, from gun magazines.
He turned up the handle, drew the bolt back, then drove it forward.
Stand by a moment please.
Okay, he fired early the first time, hitting the President below the head, near the neck area somewhere. It was a foolishness he could dismiss on a certain level. Okay, he missed the President with the second shot and hit Connally. But the car was still sitting there, barely moving. He saw the First Lady lean toward the President, who was slumped down now. A man stood applauding at the edge of the telescopic frame.
Lee jerked the handle down and aimed. He heard the second spent shell roll across the floor.
There were roses on the seat between Jack and Jackie. The car’s interior was a nice light blue. The man was so close he could have spoken to them. He stood at curbside applauding. A woman called out to the car, “Hey we want to take your picture.” The President looked extremely puzzled, head leaning left. The man stood applauding, already deep in chaos, looking at crumpled bodies, a sense of guns coming out.
Put me on, Bill. Put me on.
Bobby W. Hargis, riding escort, left rear, knew he was hearing gunfire. There was a woman taking a picture and another woman about twenty feet behind her taking the same picture, only with the first woman in it. He couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from, two shots, but knew someone was hit in the car. A man threw his kid to the ground and fell on him. That
’s a vet, Hargis had time to think, with the Governor, Connally, kind of sliding down in the jump seat and his wife taking him in, gathering the man in. Hargis turned right just after noticing a girl in a pretty coat running across the lawn toward the President’s car. He turned his body right, keeping the motorcycle headed west on Elm, and then the blood and matter, the unforgettable thing, the sleet of bone and blood and tissue struck him in the face. He thought he’d been shot. The stuff hit him like a spray of buckshot and he heard it ping and spatter on his helmet. People were down on the grass. He kept his mouth closed tight so the fluid would not ooze in.
In the jump seat John was crumpled up. Nellie Connally pulled him over into her arms. She put her head down over his head. She was pretending she was him. They were both alive or both dead. They could not be one and one. Then the third shot sent stuff just everywhere. Tissue, bone fragments, tissue in pale wads, watery mess, tissue, blood, brain matter all over them.
She heard Jackie say, “They’ve killed my husband.”
It could have been Nellie’s own voice, someone speaking for her. She thought John was dead. Then he moved just slightly and she thought at the same time that Jackie was out of the car, gone off the end of the car, but now was somehow back. John moved in her arms. They were one heart pumping.
We are hit. Lancer is hit. Get us to Parkland fast.
The car picked up speed and everything went rushing past. Nellie thought how terrible this must be, what a terrible sight for people watching, to see the car speeding past with these shot-up men; what a horror, what a sight.
She heard Jackie say, “I have his brains in my hand.”
Everything rushing past.
The man in the white sweater, applauding, saw the stuff just erupt from the President’s head. The motorcycles went by. There were guns coming out, a man in the second car with an automatic rifle. The second car went by. A motorcycle went fishtailing up the grassy slope near the concrete structure, the colonnade. Someone with a movie camera stood on an abutment over there, aiming this way, and the man in the white sweater, hands suspended now at belt level, was thinking he ought to go to the ground, he ought to fall right now. A misty light around the President’s head. Two pink-white jets of tissue rising from the mist. The movie camera running.
Lee was about to squeeze off the third round, he was in the act, he was actually pressing the trigger.
The light was so clear it was heartbreaking.
There was a white burst in the middle of the frame. A terrible splash, a burst. Something came blazing off the President’s head. He was slammed back, surrounded all in dust and haze. Then suddenly clear again, down and still in the seat. Oh he’s dead he’s dead.
Lee raised his head from the scope, looking right. There was a white concrete wall extending from the columned structure, then a wooden fence behind it. A man on the wall with a camera. The fence deep in shadow. Freight cars sitting on the tracks above the underpass.
He got to his feet, moving away from the window. He knew he’d missed with the third shot. Went wild. Missed everything. Maggie’s drawers. He turned up the bolt handle.
Put me on. Put me on. Put me on.
He was already talking to someone about this. He had a picture, he saw himself telling the whole story to someone, a man with a rugged Texas face, but friendly, but understanding. Pointing out the contradictions. Telling how he was tricked into the plot. What is it called, a patsy? He saw a picture of an office with a tasseled flag, dignitaries in photos on the wall.
He drew the bolt back, then drove it forward, jerking the handle down. He walked diagonally across the floor to the northwest end, where the staircase was located. Books stacked ten cartons high. That fragrance of paper and binding.
The fender sirens opened up, the guns started coming out.
The girl stopped running toward the car. She stood and looked without expression.
A woman with a camera turned and saw that she was being photographed. A woman in a dark coat was aiming a Polaroid right at her. It was only then she realized she’d just seen someone shot in her own viewfinder. There was bloodspray on her face and arms. She thought, how strange, that the woman in the coat was her and she was the person who was shot. She felt so dazed and strange, with pale spray all over her. She sat down carefully on the grass. Just let herself down and sat there. The woman with the Polaroid didn’t move. The first woman sat on the grass, put her own camera down, looked at the colorless stuff on her arms. Pigeons spinning at the treetops. If she was shot, she thought, she ought to be sitting down.
Agent Hill was off the left running board and moving fast. There was another shot. He mounted the Lincoln from the bumper step, extending his left hand to the metal grip. It was a double sound. Either two shots or a shot and the solid impact, the bullet hitting something hard. He wanted to get to the President, get close, shield the body. He saw Mrs. Kennedy coming at him. She was climbing out of the car. She was on the rear deck crawling, both hands flat, her right knee on top of the rear seat. He thought she was chasing something and he realized he’d seen something fly by, a flash somewhere, something flying off the end of the limousine. He pushed her back toward the seat. The car surged forward, nearly knocking him off. They were in the underpass, in the shadows, and when they hit the light he saw Connally washed in blood. Spectators, kids, waving. He held tight to the handgrip. They were going damn fast. All four passengers were drenched in blood, crowded down together. He lay across the rear deck. He had this thought, this recognition. She was trying to retrieve part of her husband’s skull.
He held on tight. He could see right into the President’s head. They were doing eighty now.
FLASH
SSSSSSSSSS
BLOOD STAINEZAAC
KENNEDY SERIOSTY WOUNDED
SSSSSSSSSS
MAKE THAT PERHAPS PERHAPS
SERIOUSLY WOUNDED
Raymo’s view was briefly obscured. He had to wait for the right side of the limousine to clear the concrete abutment. He knew Connally was hit. He had time to think, Leon’s picking them off one by one. He had a sense of people ducking and scattering even though they weren’t in the frame. Now the car moved clear, quartering slowly in. He held on Kennedy’s head. The man was leaning left, tight-eyed in pain. A hundred and thirty feet. A hundred and twenty feet. He got off the shot. The man’s hair stood up. It just rippled and flew. Raymo stepped off the bumper and got in the back seat. Frank had the car moving. He drove between rows of parked cars behind the Depository. He headed straight for three freight cars marked Hutchinson Northern. Raymo leaned forward. Watch it, man. But he didn’t say a word.
See if the President will be able to appear out here. We have all these people that are waiting. I need to know whether to feed them or what to announce out here.
Frank found a lane to the street. He went one block east on Pacific Avenue. He made a left onto Record Street. Warehouses and parking lots. He felt there was someone sitting inside his body making these moves and turns. He tried not to think past the moment. Elevated highway straight ahead. He had a pestering fear about what would happen when they were past the moment of turns and traffic signs. He didn’t know how he’d feel when he was back in his body again.
The guns were coming out.
Cops left their Harleys to run up the slope with pistols drawn. In the motorcade the Secret Service men had automatic weapons cocked, sidearms coming out.
Pigeons reversing flight, beating eastward now.
Mackey watched from the south colonnade, across Elm, across Main, across Commerce. There was no one on the lawns or under the trees here. It was the matching half of the plaza, less than a hundred yards from the scene but totally remote, hot and empty in the glare. He stood against a column, arms folded. He let his sunglasses dangle from his right hand.
The sirens opened up. Outside the Book Depository, policemen stood with rifles and shotguns pointing up. Men pointing. People looking up.
GET OFF NXR
BULLETIN
SSSSSSSSSS ZA SNIPER SERIOUSLY
WOUNDED
OFF ALL OF YOU STAY
OFF AND
KEEP OFF GET OFF
A small girl stood with a hand over each ear. The motorcade was in collapse, vehicles stopped, others rushing past. Ordinary traffic moved into Elm. Many people running up the steps between the stockade fence and the colonnade. A goddamn mob of people. Figures prone on the grass. A man pounding his fist on the hood of a car. Mackey saw a man get out of another car and fall down. Ragged cries and shouts. People on their knees. Others sitting, with cameras, out of breath and unbelieving.
He saw a fire truck come down Main. It was the dumbest thing he’d seen in twenty years.
From this distance Mackey wasn’t sure whether the people going up the embankment steps looked like a lynch mob or men and women in raw shock, in flight, running with others. He was thirsty and depressed. Strange harsh cries kept sounding from the lawns, from the echoing underpass, a thickness of voice, all desperate effort, like speech of the deaf and dumb.