11/22/63 Кинг Стивен

Vada came back and touched Lee’s arm. He paid no attention to her, just unwrapped the makeshift cotton scarf from around baby June’s neck and flung that at Marina. It fell to the terminal floor. She bent and picked it up without speaking.

Robert joined them and gave his brother a friendly punch on the shoulder. The terminal had almost entirely cleared out now—the last of the deplaning passengers had passed the Oswald family—and I heard what he said clearly. “Give her a break, she just got here. She doesn’t even know where here is yet.”

“Look at this kid,” Lee said, and raised June for inspection. At that, she finally began to cry. “She’s got her wrapped up like a damn Egyptian mummy. Because that’s the way they do it back home. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Staryj baba! Old woman.” He turned back to Marina with the bawling baby in his arms. She looked at him fearfully. “Staryj baba!”

She tried to smile, the way people do when they know the joke is on them, but not why. I thought fleetingly of Lennie, in Of Mice and Men. Then a grin, cocky and a little sideways, lit Oswald’s face. It made him almost handsome. He kissed his wife gently, first on one cheek, then the other.

“USA!” he said, and kissed her again. “USA, Rina! Land of the free and home of the turds!”

Her smile became radiant. He began to speak to her in Russian, handing back the baby as he did so. He put his arm around her waist as she soothed June. She was still smiling as they left my field of vision, and shifted the baby to her shoulder so she could take his hand.

8

I went home—if I could call Mercedes Street home—and tried to take a nap. I couldn’t get under, so I lay there with my hands behind my head, listening to the uneasy street noises and speaking with Al Templeton. This was a thing I found myself doing quite often, now that I was on my own. For a dead man, he always had a lot to say.

“I was stupid to come to Fort Worth,” I told him. “If I try to hook up that bug to the tape recorder, someone’s apt to see me. Oswald himself might see me, and that would change everything. He’s already paranoid, you said so in your notes. He knew the KGB and MVD were watching him in Minsk, and he’s going to be afraid that the FBI and the CIA are watching him here. And the FBI actually will be, at least some of the time.”

“Yes, you’ll have to be careful,” Al agreed. “It won’t be easy, but I trust you, buddy. It’s why I called you in the first place.”

“I don’t even want to get near him. Just seeing him in the airport gave me a class-A case of the willies.”

“I know you don’t, but you’ll have to. As someone who spent damn near his whole life cooking meals, I can tell you that no omelet was ever made without breaking eggs. And it would be a mistake to overestimate this guy. He’s no super-criminal. Also, he’s going to be distracted, mostly by his batshit mother. How good is he going to be at anything for awhile except shouting at his wife and knocking her around when he gets too pissed off for shouting to be enough?”

“I think he cares for her, Al. At least a little, and maybe a lot. In spite of the shouting.”

“Yeah, and it’s guys like him who are most likely to fuck up their women. Look at Frank Dunning. You just take care of your business, buddy.”

“And what am I going to get if I do manage to hook up that bug? Tape recordings of arguments? Arguments in Russian? That’ll be a big help.”

“You don’t need to decode the man’s family life. It’s George de Mohrenschildt you need to find out about. You have to make sure de Mohrenschildt isn’t involved in the attempt on General Walker. Once you accomplish that, the window of uncertainty closes. And look on the bright side. If Oswald catches you spying on him, his future actions might change in a good way. He might not try for Kennedy after all.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No. Actually I don’t.”

“Neither do I. The past is obdurate. It doesn’t want to be changed.”

He said, “Buddy, now you’re cooking…”

“With gas,” I heard myself muttering. “Now I’m cooking with gas.”

I opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep after all. Late light was coming in through the drawn curtains. Somewhere not far away, on Davenport Street in Fort Worth, the Oswald brothers and their wives would be sitting down to dinner—Lee’s first meal back on his old stomping grounds.

Outside my own little bit of Fort Worth, I could hear a skip-rope chant. It sounded very familiar. I got up, went through my dim living room (furnished with two thrift-shop easy chairs but nothing else), and twitched back one of the drapes an inch or so. Those drapes had been my very first installation. I wanted to see; I didn’t want to be seen.

2703 was still deserted, with the FOR RENT sign double-tacked to the railing of the rickety porch, but the lawn wasn’t deserted. There, two girls were twirling a jump rope while a third stutter-stepped in and out. Of course they weren’t the girls I’d seen on Kossuth Street in Derry—these three, dressed in patched and faded jeans instead of crisp new shorts, looked runty and underfed—but the chant was the same, only now with Texas accents.

“Charlie Chaplin went to France! Just to watch the ladies dance! Salute to the Cap’un! Salute to the Queen! My old man drives a sub-ma-rine!”

The skip-rope girl caught her foot and went tumbling into the crabgrass that served as 2703’s front lawn. The other girls piled on top of her and all three of them rolled in the dirt. Then they got to their feet and went pelting away.

I watched them go, thinking I saw them but they didn’t see me. That’s something. That’s a start. But Al, where’s my finish?

De Mohrenschildt was the key to the whole deal, the only thing keeping me from killing Oswald as soon as he moved in across the street. George de Mohrenschildt, a petroleum geologist who speculated in oil leases. A man who lived the playboy lifestyle, mostly thanks to his wife’s money. Like Marina, he was a Russian exile, but unlike her, from a noble family—he was, in fact, Baron de Mohrenschildt. The man who was going to become Lee Oswald’s only friend during the few months of life Oswald had left. The man who was going to suggest to Oswald that the world would be much better off without a certain racist right-wing ex-General. If de Mohrenschildt turned out to be part of Oswald’s attempt to kill Edwin Walker, my situation would be vastly complicated; all the nutty conspiracy theories would then be in play. Al, however, believed all the Russian geologist had done (or would do; as I’ve said, living in the past is confusing) was egg on a man who was already obsessed with fame and mentally unstable.

Al had written in his notes: If Oswald was on his own on the night of April 10^th, 1963, chances that there was another gunman involved in the Kennedy assassination seven months later drop to almost zero.

Below this, in capital letters, he had added his final verdict: GOOD ENOUGH TO TAKE THE SON OF A BITCH OUT.

9

Seeing the little girls who hadn’t seen me made me think of that old Jimmy Stewart suspenser, Rear Window. A person could see a lot without ever leaving his own living room. Especially if he had the right tools.

The next day, I went to a sporting goods store and bought a pair of Bausch & Lomb binoculars, reminding myself to be wary of sunflashes on the lenses. Since 2703 was on the east side of Mercedes Street, I thought I’d be safe enough in that regard anytime after noon. I poked the glasses through the gap in my drapes, and when I adjusted the focus knob, the crappy living room—kitchen across the way became so bright and detailed that I might’ve been standing in it.

The Leaning Lamp of Pisa was still on the old bureau where the kitchen utensils were stored, waiting for someone to turn it on and activate the bug. But it would do me no good unless it was hooked up to the cunning little Japanese reel-to-reel, which could record up to twelve hours on its slowest speed. I had tried it out, actually speaking into the spare bugged lamp (which made me feel like a character in a Woody Allen comedy), and while the playback was draggy, the words were understandable. All of which meant I was good to go.

If I dared to.

10

July Fourth on Mercedes Street was busy. Men with the day off watered lawns that were beyond saving—other than a few afternoon and evening thunderstorms, the weather had been hot and dry—then plopped down in lawn chairs, listening to baseball games on the radio and drinking beer. Subteen posses threw firecrackers at stray dogs and the few roving chickens. One of the latter was struck by a cherry bomb and exploded in a mass of blood and feathers. The child who tossed it was dragged screaming into one of the houses farther down the street by a mother wearing nothing but a slip and a Farmall baseball cap. I guessed by her unsteady gait that she had downed a few brewskis herself. The closest thing to fireworks came just after ten o’clock, when someone, possibly the same kid who slashed my convertible’s tires, torched an old Studebaker that had been sitting abandoned in the parking lot of the Montgomery Ward warehouse for the last week or so. Fort Worth FD came to put it out, and everyone turned out to watch.

Hail Columbia.

The next morning I walked down to inspect the burned-out hulk, which sat sadly on the puddled remains of its tires. I spotted a telephone booth near one of the warehouse loading bays, and on impulse called Ellie Dockerty, getting the operator to find the number and connect me. I did it partly because I was lonely and homesick, mostly because I wanted news of Sadie.

Ellie answered on the second ring, and she seemed delighted to hear my voice. Standing there in an already roasting phone booth, with Mercedes Street sleeping off the Glorious Fourth behind me and the smell of charred car in my nostrils, that made me smile.

“Sadie’s fine. I’ve had two postcards and a letter. She’s working at Harrah’s as a waitress.” She lowered her voice. “I believe as a cocktail waitress, but the schoolboard will never hear that from me.”

I visualized Sadie’s long legs in a short cocktail waitress’s skirt. I visualized businessmen trying to see the tops of her stockings or into the valley of her dcolletage as she bent to put drinks on a table.

“She asked after you,” Ellie said, and that made me smile again. “I didn’t want to tell her that you’d sailed off the edge of the earth as far as anyone in Jodie knew, so I said you were busy with your book and doing fine.”

I hadn’t added a word to The Murder Place in a month or more, and on the two occasions when I’d picked up the manuscript and tried to read it, it all seemed to be written in third-century Punic. “I’m glad that she’s doing well.”

“Her residency requirement will be fulfilled by the end of the month, but she’s decided to stay out there until the end of summer vacation. She says the tips are very good.”

“Did you ask her for a picture of her soon-to-be ex-husband?”

“Just before she left. She said she has none. She believes her parents have several, but she refused to write them about it. Said they’d never given up on the marriage, and it would give them false hope. She also said she believed you were overreacting. Wildly overreacting was the phrase she used.”

That sounded like my Sadie. Only she wasn’t mine anymore. Now she was just hey waitress, bring us another round… and bend a little lower this time. Every man has a jealous-bone, and mine was twanging hard on the morning of July fifth.

“George? I have no doubt she still cares for you, and it might not be too late to clear this mess up.”

I thought of Lee Oswald, who wouldn’t make his attempt on General Edwin Walker’s life for another nine months. “It’s too early,” I said.

“I beg pardon?”

“Nothing. It’s good to talk to you, Miz Ellie, but pretty soon the operator’s going to come on the line asking for more money, and I’m all out of quarters.”

“I don’t suppose you could get down this way for a burger and a shake, could you? At the diner? If so, I’ll invite Deke Simmons to join us. He asks about you almost every day.”

The thought of going back to Jodie and seeing my friends from the high school was probably the only thing that could have cheered me up that morning. “Absolutely. Would this evening be too soon? Say five o’clock?”

“It’s perfect. We country mice eat early.”

“Fine. I’ll be there. My treat.”

“I’ll match you for it.”

11

Al Stevens had hired a girl I knew from Business English, and I was touched by the way she lit up when she saw who was sitting with Ellie and Deke. “Mr. Amberson! Wow, it’s great to see you! How’re you doing?”

“Fine, Dorrie,” I said.

“Well, order big. You’ve lost weight.”

“It’s true,” Ellie said. “You need a good taking-care-of.”

Deke’s Mexican tan was gone, which told me he was spending most of his retirement indoors, and whatever weight I’d lost, he’d found. He shook my hand with a hard grip and told me how good it was to see me. There was no artifice in the man. Or in Ellie Dockerty, for that matter. Leaving this place for Mercedes Street, where they celebrated the Fourth by blowing up chickens, began to seem increasingly mad to me, no matter what I knew about the future. I certainly hoped Kennedy was worth it.

We ate hamburgers, french fries sizzling with grease, and apple pie la mode. We talked about who was doing what, and had a laugh over Danny Laverty, who was finally writing his long-bruited book. Ellie said that according to Danny’s wife, the first chapter was titled “I Enter the Fray.”

Toward the end of the meal, as Deke stuffed his pipe with Prince Albert, Ellie lifted a tote she had stored under the table and produced a large book, which she passed above the greasy remains of our meal. “Page eight-nine. And push back from that unsightly puddle of ketchup, if you please. This is strictly on loan, and I want to send it back in the same condition I received it.”

It was a yearbook called Tiger Tails, and had come from a school a lot more fancy-schmancy than DCHS. Tiger Tails was bound in leather instead of cloth, the pages were thick and glossy, and the ad section at the back was easily a hundred pages thick. The institution it memorialized—exalted might be a better word—was Longacre Day School in Savannah. I thumbed through the uniformly vanilla senior section and thought there might be a black face or two there by the year 1990. Maybe.

“Holy joe,” I said. “Sadie must have taken a pretty good whack in the wallet when she came to Jodie from here.”

“I believe she was very anxious to get away,” Deke said quietly. “And I’m sure she had her reasons.”

I turned to page eighty-nine. It was headed LONGACRE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT. There was a corny group shot of four teachers in white lab coats holding bubbling beakers—paging Dr. Jekyll—and below it were four studio shots. John Clayton didn’t look a bit like Lee Oswald, but he had the same sort of pleasantly forgettable face, and his lips were dimpled at the corners by the same suggestion of a smile. Was that the ghost of amusement or barely hidden contempt? Hell, maybe it was just the best the obsessive-compulsive bastard could do when the photographer told him to say cheese. The only distinguishing features were hollows at the temples, which almost matched the dimples at the corners of his mouth. The photo wasn’t color, but his eyes were light enough to make me pretty sure they were either blue or gray.

I turned the book toward my friends. “See these indents on the sides of his head? Is that just a natural formation, like a hooked nose or a chin-dimple?”

They said “No” at exactly the same time. It was sort of comical.

“They’re forceps marks,” Deke said. “Made when some doc finally got tired of waiting and dragged him out of his mama. They usually go away, but not always. If his hair wasn’t thinning on the sides, you wouldn’t see them at all, would you?”

“And he hasn’t been around, asking about Sadie?” I asked.

“No.” They said it in unison again. Ellen added, “No one’s been asking after her. Except for you, George. You damned fool.” She smiled as people do when it’s a joke, but not really.

I looked at my watch and said, “I’ve kept you folks long enough. I’ll be heading on back.”

“Want to take a stroll down to the football field before you go?” Deke asked. “Coach Borman said to bring you by, if I got a chance. He’s got them practicing already, of course.”

“In the cool of the evening, at least,” Ellie said, getting up. “Thank God for small favors. Remember when the Hastings boy got a heatstroke three years ago, Deke? And how they thought it was a heart attack at first?”

“I can’t imagine why he’d want to see me,” I said. “I turned one of his prize defensemen to the dark side of the universe.” I lowered my voice and whispered hoarsely, “Theater arts!”

Deke smiled. “Yeah, but you saved another one from maybe getting red-shirted at ’Bama. Or at least that’s what Borman thinks. Because, my son, that’s what Jim LaDue told him.”

At first I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. Then I remembered the Sadie Hawkins, and grinned. “All I did was catch three of them passing a bottle of rotgut. I threw it over the fence.”

Deke had stopped smiling. “One of those boys was Vince Knowles. Did you know he was drunk when he rolled that truck of his?”

“No.” But it didn’t surprise me. Cars and booze have always been a popular and sometimes lethal high school cocktail.

“Yessir. That, combined with whatever you said to those boys at the dance, got LaDue to swear off drinking.”

“What did you say?” Ellie asked. She was fumbling her wallet out of her purse, but I was too lost in the memory of that night to argue with her about the check. Do not fuck up your futures: that was what I’d said. And Jim LaDue, he of the lazy I’ve-got-the-world-on-a-string smile, had actually taken it to heart. We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

Ellie trotted off to pay the check.

I said, “Tell Miz Dockerty to keep an eye out for the man in that picture, Deke. You too. He may not come around, I’m starting to think I could’ve been wrong about that, but he might. And he’s not wrapped too tightly.”

Deke promised he would.

12

I almost didn’t walk over to the football field. Jodie was particularly beautiful in the slanting light of that early July evening and I think part of me wanted to get my ass back to Fort Worth before I lost the will to go there. I wonder how much would have changed if I had skipped that little side trip? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot.

Coach was running a final two or three plays with the special teams kids while the rest of the players sat on the bench with their helmets off and sweat trickling down their faces. “Red two, red two!” Coach shouted. He saw Deke and me and lifted a spread hand: five minutes. Then he turned back to the small and weary squad still on the field. “One more time! Let’s see you make that daring leap from no-ass to poor-ass, what do you say?”

I looked across the field and saw a guy in a sport coat loud enough to scream. He was trotting up and down the sidelines with earphones on his head and what looked like a salad bowl in his hands. His glasses reminded me of someone. At first I couldn’t make the connection, then I did: he looked a little like Silent Mike McEachern. My own personal Mr. Wizard.

“Who’s that?” I asked Deke.

Deke squinted. “Damn if I know.”

Coach clapped his hands and told his kids to shower up. He walked over to the bleachers and clapped me on the back. “Howza goin, Shakespeare?”

“Pretty good,” I said, smiling gamely.

“Shakespeare, kick in the rear, that’s what we used to say when we were kids.” He laughed heartily.

“We used to say Coach, Coach, step on a roach.”

Coach Borman looked puzzled. “Really?”

“Nah, just goofin witcha.” And sort of wishing I’d acted on my first impulse and scooted out of town after supper. “How does the team look?”

“Aw, they good boys, they goan try hard, but it won’t be the same without Jimmy. Did you see the new billboard out there where 109 splits off from Highway 77?” Only he said it seb’ny-seb’n.

“Too used to it to notice, I guess.”

“Well, have a look on the way out, podna. Boosters done it up right. Jimmy’s mama ’bout cried when she saw it. I understand I owe you a vote a thanks for gettin that young man to swear off the drinkin.” He removed his cap with the big C on it, armed sweat from his forehead, put it back on, and sighed heavily. “Probably owe that fuckin nummie Vince Knowles a vote a thanks, too, but puttin him on my prayer list is the best I can do.”

I recalled that Coach was a Baptist of the hard-shell variety. In addition to prayer lists, he probably believed all that shit about Noah’s sons.

“No thanks necessary,” I said. “Just doing my job.”

He looked at me keenly. “You ought to still be doing it, not jerking off over some book. Sorry if that’s too blunt, but it’s how I feel.”

“That’s all right.” It was. I liked him better for saying it. In another world, he might even have been right. I pointed across the field, where the Silent Mike look-alike was packing his salad bowl into a steel case. His earphones were still hanging around his neck. “Who’s that, Coach?”

Coach snorted. “Think his name is Hale Duff. Or maybe it’s Cale. New sports guy at the Big Damn.” He was talking about KDAM, Denholm County’s one radio station, a teensy sundowner that ran farm reports in the morning, country music in the afternoons, and rock after school let out. The kids enjoyed the station breaks as much as the music; there would be an explosion followed by an old cowboy type saying, “K-DAM! That was a big ’un!” In the Land of Ago, this is considered the height of risqu wit.

“What’s that contraption of his, Coach?” Deke asked. “Do you know?”

“I know, all right,” Coach said, “and if he thinks I’m gonna let him use it during a game broadcast, he’s out of his sneaker. Think I want ever’one who’s got a radio hearin me call my boys a bunch of goddam pussies when they can’t deny the rush on third and short?”

I turned to him, very slowly. “What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t believe him, so I tried it myself,” the Coach said. Then, with mounting indignation: “I heard Boof Redford tellin one of the freshmen that my balls were bigger than my brains!”

“Really,” I said. My heartbeat had picked up appreciably.

“Duffer there said he built it in his goddam garage,” Coach grumbled. “Said when it’s turned up to full gain, you can hear a cat fart on the next block. That’s bullshit, accourse, but Redford was on the other side of the field when I heard him make his smart remark.”

The sports guy, who looked all of twenty-four, picked up his steel equipment case and waved with his free hand. Coach waved back, then muttered under his breath, “The gameday I let him on my field with that thing will be the day I put a Kennedy sticker on my fucking Dodge.”

13

It was almost dark when I got to the intersection of 77 and 109, but a bloated orange moon was rising in the east, and it was good enough to see the billboard. It was Jim LaDue, smiling with his football helmet in one hand, a pigskin in the other, and a lock of black hair tumbled heroically over his forehead. Above the picture, in star-spangled letters, was CONGRATULATIONS TO JIM LADUE, ALL-STATE QUARTERBACK 1960 AND 1961! GOOD LUCK AT ALABAMA! WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU!

And below, in red letters that seemed to scream:

“JIMLA!”

14

Two days later, I walked into Satellite Electronics and waited while my host sold an iPod-sized transistor to a gum-chewing kid. When he was out the door (already pressing the little radio’s earpiece into place), Silent Mike turned to me. “Why, it’s my old pal Doe. How can I help you today?” Then, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper: “More bugged lamps?”

“Not today,” I said. “Tell me, have you ever heard of something called an omnidirectional microphone?”

His lips parted over his teeth in a smile. “My friend,” he said, “you have once more come to the right place.”

CHAPTER 18

1

I got a phone put in, and the first person I called was Ellen Dockerty, who was happy to give me Sadie’s Reno address. “I have the telephone number of the rooming house where she’s staying, too,” Ellen said. “If you want it.”

Of course I did, but if I had it, I would eventually give in to temptation and call. Something told me that would be a mistake.

“Just the address will be fine.”

I wrote her a letter as soon as I hung up, hating the stilted, artificially chatty tone but not knowing how to get past it. The goddam broom was still between us. And what if she met some high-rolling sugar daddy out there and forgot all about me? Wasn’t it possible? She’d certainly know how to give him a good time in bed; she had been a fast learner and was as agile there as she was on the dance floor. That was the jealous-bone again, and I finished the letter in a rush, knowing I probably sounded plaintive and not caring. Anything to tear through the artificiality and say something honest.

I miss you, and I’m sorry as hell for the way we left things. I just don’t know how to make it better now. I have a job to do, and it won’t be done until next spring. Maybe not even then, but I think it will be. I hope it will be. Please don’t forget me. I love you, Sadie.

I signed it George, which seemed to cancel out any poor honesty I’d managed. Beneath it I added Just in case you want to call, and my new telephone number. Then I walked down to the Benbrook Library and posted the letter into the big blue mailbox out front. For the time being it was the best I could do.

2

There were three pictures clipped into Al’s notebook, printed off various computer sites. One was of George de Mohrenschildt, wearing a banker-gray suit with a white hankie in the breast pocket. His hair was combed away from his brow and neatly parted in the accepted executive style of the time. The smile that creased his thickish lips reminded me of Baby Bear’s bed: not too hard, not too soft, just right. There was no trace of the authentic crazy I would soon observe ripping his shirt open on the porch of 2703 Mercedes Street. Or maybe there was a trace. Something in the dark eyes. An arrogance. A touch of the old fuck-you.

The second picture was of the infamous shooter’s nest, constructed of book cartons, on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

The third was of Oswald, dressed in black, holding his mail-order rifle in one hand and a couple of leftist magazines in the other. The revolver he would use to kill Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit during his fucked-up getaway—unless I stopped him—was tucked in Ozzie’s belt. This picture would be taken by Marina less than two weeks before the attempt on General Walker’s life. The location was the enclosed side yard of a two-apartment building at 214 West Neely Street in Dallas.

While I marked time waiting for the Oswalds to move into the shack across the street from mine in Fort Worth, I visited 214 West Neely often. Dallas most assuredly sucked the big one, as my 2011 students were wont to say, but West Neely was in a slightly better neighborhood than Mercedes Street. It stank, of course—in 1962, most of central Texas smells like a malfunctioning refinery—but the odors of shit and sewage were absent. The street was crumbling but paved. And there were no chickens.

A young couple with three children currently lived upstairs at 214. After they moved out, the Oswalds would move in. It was the downstairs apartment that concerned me, because when Lee, Marina, and June moved in above, I wanted to be below.

In July of ’62, the ground-floor apartment was occupied by two women and a man. The women were fat, slow-moving, and partial to wrinkled sleevelss dresses. One was in her sixties and walked with a pronounced limp. The other was in her late thirties or early forties. The facial resemblance pegged them as mother and daughter. The man was skeletal and wheelchair-bound. His hair was a thin white spray. A bag of cloudy pee attached to a fat catheter tube sat in his lap. He smoked constantly, tapping into an ashtray clamped to one of the wheelchair armrests. That summer I always saw him dressed in the same clothes: red satin basketball shorts that showed his wasted thighs almost to the crotch, a strap-style tee-shirt nearly as yellow as the urine in his catheter tube, sneakers held together by duct tape, and a large black cowboy hat with what appeared to be a snakeskin band. On the front of the hat were crossed cavalry swords. Either his wife or his daughter would push him out onto the lawn, where he would sit slumped beneath a tree, still as a statue. I began to lift my hand to him as I cruised slowly by, but he never raised his own in turn, although he came to recognize my car. Maybe he was afraid to return my wave. Maybe he thought he was being evaluated by the Angel of Death, who made his rounds in Dallas behind the wheel of an aging Ford convertible instead of on a black horse. In a way, I suppose that’s what I was.

This trio looked like they’d been in residence awhile. Were they still going to be in residence next year, when I needed the place? I didn’t know. Al’s notes said nothing about them. For the time being, all I could do was watch and wait.

I picked up my new piece of equipment, which Silent Mike had crafted himself. I waited for my telephone to ring. Three times it did, and I leaped for it each time, hoping. Twice it was Miz Ellie, calling to chat. Once it was Deke, inviting me to dinner, an invitation I accepted gratefully.

Sadie didn’t call.

3

On the third of August, a ’58 Bel Air sedan pulled into 2703’s excuse for a driveway. It was followed by a gleaming Chrysler. The Oswald brothers got out of the Bel Air and stood side by side, not talking.

I reached through the drapes long enough to run up my front window, letting in the street noise and a lackluster puff of hot, humid air. Then I ran for the bedroom and brought my new piece of equipment out from under the bed. Silent Mike had cut a hole in the bottom of a Tupperware bowl and taped the omnidirectional mike—which he assured me was top-of-the-line—into it, so it stuck up like a finger. I attached the microphone leads to the connecting points on the back of the tape recorder. There was a plug-in for headphones, which my electronics pal had also claimed were top-of-the-line.

I peered out and saw the Oswalds talking to the guy from the Chrysler. He was wearing a Stetson, a rancher’s tie, and gaudy stitched boots. Better dressed than my landlord, but of the same tribe. I didn’t have to hear the conversation; the man’s gestures were textbook. I know it ain’t much, but then, you ain’t got much. Do you, podna? It had to be a hard scripture for a world traveler like Lee, who believed he was destined for fame, if not necessarily fortune.

There was an electrical socket in the baseboard. I plugged in the tape recorder, hoping I wouldn’t give myself a shock or blow a fuse. The tape recorder’s little red light went on. I donned the earphones and slipped the Tupperware bowl into the gap between the curtains. If they looked over here they’d be squinting into the sun, and thanks to the shadow cast by the eave above the window, they would see either nothing or an unremarkable white blur that might be anything. I reminded myself to cover the bowl with black friction tape, nevertheless. Always safe, never sorry.

And in any case, I could hear nothing.

Even the street sounds had become muffled.

Oh yeah, this is great, I thought. This is just fucking brilliant. Thanks a pantload, Silent Mi—

Then I noticed the VOL control on the tape recorder was sitting at zero. I twisted it all the way to the + mark, and was blasted by voices. I tore the earphones off my head with a curse, turned the VOL knob to the halfway point, and tried again. The result was remarkable. Like binoculars for the ears.

“Sixty a month strikes me as a little bit steep, sir,” Lee Oswald was saying (considering the Templetons had been paying ten dollars a month less, it struck me that way, too). His voice was respectful, tinged by just a trace of Southern accent. “If we could agree on fifty-five…”

“I can respect a man who wants to dicker, but don’t even bother trine,” Snakeskin Boots said. He rocked back and forth on his stacked heels like a man who’s anxious to be gone. “I gotta git what I gotta git. If I don’t git it from you, I’m goan git it from someone else.”

Lee and Robert glanced at each other.

“Might as well go in and have a look around,” Lee said.

“This a good place on a fam’ly street,” Snakeskin Boots said. “Y’all want to watch out for that first porch step, though, it needs a smidge of carpenterin. I got s’many of these places, and people is s’hard on them. That last bunch, law.”

Watch it, asshole, I thought. That’s Ivy’s people you’re talking about.

They went inside. I lost the voices, then got them again—faintly—when Snakeskin Boots ran up the front room window. It was the one Ivy had said the neighbors across the way could see into, and she was a hundred percent correct on that score.

Lee asked what his prospective landlord intended to do about the holes in the walls. There was no indignation in the query, no sarcasm, but no subservience, either, in spite of the sir appended to every sentence. It was a respectful yet flat mode of address he had probably learned in the Marines. Colorless was the best word for him. He had the face and voice of a man who was good at sliding through the cracks. In public, at least. It was Marina who saw his other face and heard his other voice.

Snakeskin Boots made vague promises, and absolutely guaranteed a new mattress for the big bedroom, on account of how “that last bunch had gone and stole” the one that had been in there. He reiterated that if Lee didn’t want the place someone else would (as if it hadn’t been standing vacant all year), then invited the brothers to inspect the bedrooms. I wondered how they would enjoy Rosette’s artistic efforts.

I lost their voices, then got them again as they toured the kitchen area. I was happy to see them pass the Leaning Lamp of Pisa without a glance.

“—basement?” Robert asked.

“No basement!” Snakeskin Boots replied, booming it, as if the lack of a basement were an advantage. Apparently he thought it was. “Neighborhood like this, all they do is ship water. And the damp, law!” Here I lost the vocal track again as he opened the rear door to show them the backyard. Which was not a yard at all but an empty field.

Five minutes later they were out front again. This time it was Robert, the elder brother, who tried to dicker. He had no more success than Lee had.

“Will you give us a minute?” Robert asked.

Snakeskin Boots looked at his clunky chromed-up watch, and allowed as how he could do that. “But I got a ’pointment over on Church Street, so you fellas need to hurry on n make up your minds.”

Robert and Lee walked to the rear of Robert’s Bel Air, and although they pitched their voices low to keep Snakeskin Boots from hearing, when I tilted the bowl in their direction, I got most of it. Robert was in favor of looking at some more places. Lee said he wanted this one. It would do fine for a start.

“Lee, it’s a hole,” Robert said. “It’s throwin your…” Money away, probably.

Lee said something I couldn’t make out. Robert sighed and raised his hands in surrender. They went back to Snakeskin Boots, who gave Lee’s hand a brief pump and praised the wisdom of his choice. He launched into the Landlord Scripture: first month, last month, damage deposit. Robert stepped in then, saying there would be no damage deposit until the walls were fixed and the new mattress was installed.

“New mattress, sure,” Snakeskin Boots said. “And I’ll see that step fixed so the little woman don’t turn her ankle. But if’n I fix them walls right off, I’d have to boost the rent by five a month.”

I knew from Al’s notes that Lee was going to take the place, and still I expected him to walk away from this outrage. Instead, he took a limp wallet out of his back pocket and removed a thin sheaf of bills. He counted most of them into his new landlord’s outstretched hand while Robert walked back to his car, shaking his head in disgust. His eyes turned briefly to my house across the street, then passed on, disinterested.

Snakeskin Boots flogged Lee’s hand again, then jumped into his Chrysler and drove off fast, leaving a scrunch of dust behind.

One of the jump-rope girls came barreling up on a rusty scooter. “You movin into Rosette’s house, mister?” she asked Robert.

“No, he is,” Robert said, and cocked a thumb at his brother.

She pushed her scooter to Lee and asked the man who was going to blow off the right side of Jack Kennedy’s head if he had any kids.

“I’ve got a little girl,” Lee said. He put his hands on his knees so he could get down to her level.

“She purty?”

“Not as pretty as you, nor as big.”

“Can she jump rope?”

“Honey, she can’t even walk yet.” Can’t came out cain’t.

“Well bullpucky on her.” She scooted away in the direction of Winscott Road.

The two brothers turned toward the house. This muffled them a little, but when I cranked the volume, I could still make out most of what they were saying.

“This… pig in a poke,” Robert told him. “When Marina sees it, she’ll be on you like flies on a dog-turd.”

“I’ll… Rina,” Lee said. “But brother, if I don’t… from Ma and out of that little apartment, I’m apt to kill her.”

“She can be a… but… loves you, Lee.” Robert walked a few steps toward the street. Lee joined him, and their voices came through clear as a bell.

“I know it, but she can’t help herself. The other night when me n Rina’s goin at it, she hollers at us from the foldout. She’s sleeping in the livin room, you know. ‘Take it easy on that, you two,’ she hollers, ‘it’s too soon for another one. Wait until you can pay for the one you’ve got.’”

“I know it. She can be hard.”

“She keeps buyin things, brother. Says they’re for Rina, but shoves em up into my face.” Lee laughed and walked back to the Bel Air. This time it was his eyes that skated across 2706, and it took all I had to hold still behind the drapes. And to hold the bowl still, too.

Robert joined him. They leaned on the back bumper, two men in clean blue shirts and workingmen’s pants. Lee wore a tie, which he now pulled down.

“Listen to this. Ma goes to Leonard Brothers and comes back with all these clothes for Rina. She drags out a pair of shorts that are as long as bloomers, only paisley. ‘Look, Reenie, aren’t they purty?’ she says.” Lee’s imitation of his mother’s accent was savage.

“What’d Rina say?” Robert was smiling.

“She says, ‘No, Mamochka, no, I thank but I no like, I no like. I like this way.’ Then she puts her hand on her leg.” Lee put the side of his hand on his own, about halfway up the thigh.

Robert’s smile widened to a grin. “Bet Ma liked that.”

“She says, ‘Marina, shorts like that are for young girls who parade themselves on the streets looking for boyfriends, not for married women.’ You’re not to tell her where we are, brother. You are not. We got that straight?”

Robert didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Perhaps he was remembering a cold day in November of 1960. His mama trotting after him along West Seventh, calling out, “Stop, Robert, don’t walk so fast, I’m not done with you!” And although Al’s notes said nothing on the subject, I doubted if she was done with Lee, either. After all, Lee was the son she really cared about. The baby of the family. The one who slept in the same bed with her until he was eleven. The one who needed regular checking to see if he’d started getting hair around his balls yet. Those things were in Al’s notes. Next to them, in the margin, were two words you’d not ordinarily expect from a short-order cook: hysterical fixation.

“We got it straight, Lee, but this ain’t a big town. She’ll find you.”

“I’ll send her packing if she does. You can count on that.”

They got into the Bel Air and drove away. The FOR RENT sign was gone from the porch railing. Lee and Marina’s new landlord had taken it with him when he went.

I walked to the hardware store, bought a roll of friction tape, and covered the Tupperware bowl with it, outside and inside. On the whole, I thought it had been a good day, but I had entered the danger zone. And I knew it.

4

On August 10, around five in the afternoon, the Bel Air reappeared, this time pulling a small wooden trailer. It took Lee and Robert less than ten minutes to carry all of the Oswalds’ worldly goods into the new manse (being careful to avoid the loose porch board, which had still not been fixed). During the moving-in process, Marina stood on the crabgrassy lawn with June in her arms, looking at her new home with an expression of dismay that needed no translation.

This time all three of the jump-rope girls appeared, two walking, the other pushing her scooter. They demanded to see the baby, and Marina complied with a smile.

“What’s her name?” one of the girls asked.

“June,” Marina said.

Then they all jumped in. “How old is she? Can she talk? Why don’t she laugh? Does she have a dolly?”

Marina shook her head. She was still smiling. “Sorry, I no spik.”

The three girls pelted off, yelling “I no spik, I no spik!” One of the surviving Mercedes Street chickens flew out of their way, squawking. Marina watched them go, her smile fading.

Lee came out on the lawn to join her. He was stripped to the waist, sweating hard. His skin was fishbelly white. His arms were thin and slack. He put an arm around her waist, then bent and kissed June. I thought Marina might point at the house and say no like, I no like—she had that much English down—but she only handed Lee the baby and climbed to the porch, tottering for a moment on the loose step, then catching her balance. It occurred to me that Sadie probably would have gone sprawling, then limped on a swollen ankle for the next ten days.

It also occurred to me that Marina was as anxious to get away from Marguerite as her husband was.

5

The tenth was a Friday. On Monday, about two hours after Lee had left for another day of putting together aluminum screen doors, a mud-colored station wagon pulled up to the curb in front of 2703. Marguerite Oswald was out on the passenger side almost before it stopped rolling. Today the red kerchief had been replaced by a white one with black polka dots, but the nurse’s shoes were the same, and so was the look of dissatisfied pugnacity. She had found them, just as Robert had said she would.

Hound of heaven, I thought. Hound of heaven.

I was looking out through the crack between the drapes, but saw no point in powering up the mike. This was a story that needed no soundtrack.

The friend who had driven her—a portly gal—struggled out from behind the wheel and fanned the neck of her dress. The day was already another scorcher, but Marguerite cared nothing for that. She hustled her chauffeur around to the trunk of the station wagon. Inside was a high chair and a bag of groceries. Marguerite took the former; her friend hoisted the latter.

The jump-rope girl with the scooter came riding up, but Marguerite gave her short shrift. I heard “Scat, child!” and the jump-rope girl rode away with her lower lip pooched out.