Around the bend. Up to the fourth floor. Now I was gasping, too, and the stairs looked steeper. Like a mountain. The cradle-rest at the top of the beggars crutch was slimy with sweat. My head pounded; my ears rang with the sound of the cheering crowd below. The eye of my imagination opened wide and I could see the approaching motorcade: the security car, then the presidential limo with the Harley-Davidson DPD motorcycles flanking it, the cops on them wearing white chin-strapped helmets and sunglasses.
Around another corner. The crutch skidding, then steadying. Up again. The crutch thudding. Now I could smell sweet sawdust from the sixth-floor renovations: workmen replacing the old plank boards with new ones. Not on Lees side, though. Lee had the southeast side to himself.
I reached the fifth-floor landing and made the last turn, my mouth open to scoop in air, my shirt a drenched rag against my heaving chest. Stinging sweat ran into my eyes and I blinked it away.
Three book cartons stamped ROADS TO EVERYWHERE and 4th AND 5th GRADE READERS blocked the stairs to the sixth floor. I stood on my right leg and slammed the foot of the crutch into one of them, sending it spinning. Behind me I could hear Sadie, now between the fourth and fifth floors. So I had been right to keep the gun, it seemed, although who really knew? Judging from my own experience, knowing you are the one with the primary responsibility to change the future makes you run faster.
I squeezed through the gap I created. To do so I had to put my full weight on my left leg for a second. It gave a howl of pain. I groaned and grabbed at the railing to keep from spilling forward onto the stairs. Looked at my watch. It said twelve twenty-eight, but what if it was slow? The crowd was roaring.
Jake for Gods sake hurry Sadie, still on the stairs to the fifth-floor landing.
I started up the last flight, and the sound of the crowd began to drain away into a great silence. By the time I reached the top, there was nothing but the rasp of my breath and the burning hammerstrokes of my overtaxed heart.
14
The sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was a shadowy square dotted with islands of stacked book cartons. The overhead lights were burning where the floor was being replaced. They were off on the side where Lee Harvey Oswald planned to make history in one hundred seconds or less. Seven windows overlooked Elm Street, the five in the middle large and semicircular, the ones on the ends square. The sixth floor was gloomy around the stairhead but filled with hazy light in the area overlooking Elm Street. Thanks to the floating sawdust from the floor project, the sunbeams slanting in through the windows looked thick enough to cut. The beam falling through the window at the southeast corner, however, had been blocked off by a stacked barricade of book cartons. The snipers nest was all the way across the floor from me, on a diagonal that ran from northwest to southeast.
Behind the barricade, in the sunlight, a man with a gun stood at the window. He was stooped, peering out. The window was open. A light breeze was ruffling his hair and the collar of his shirt. He began to raise the rifle.
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I broke into a shambling run, slaloming around the stacked cartons, digging in my coat pocket for the.38.
Lee! I shouted. Stop, you son of a bitch!
He turned his head and looked at me, eyes wide, mouth hung open. For a moment he was just Leethe guy who had laughed and played with Junie in the bath, the one who sometimes hugged his wife and kissed her upturned faceand then his thin and somehow prissy mouth wrinkled into a snarl that showed his upper teeth. When that happened, he changed into something monstrous. I doubt you believe that, but I swear its true. He stopped being a man and became the daemonic ghost that would haunt America from this day on, perverting its power and spoiling its every good intent.
If I let it.
The noise of the crowd rushed in again, thousands of people applauding and cheering and yelling their brains out. I heard them and Lee did, too. He knew what it meant: now or never. He whirled back to the window and socked the rifles butt-plate against his shoulder.
I had the pistol, the same one Id used to kill Frank Dunning. Not just like it; in that moment it was the same gun. I thought so then and I think so now. The hammer tried to catch in the pocket-lining but I dragged the.38 out, hearing cloth rip as I did so.
I fired. My shot went high and only exploded splinters from the top of the window frame, but it was enough to save John Kennedys life. Oswald jerked at the sound of the report, and the 160-grain slug from the Mannlicher-Carcano went high, shattering a window in the county courthouse.
There were screams and bewildered shouts from below us. Lee turned toward me again, his face a mask of rage, hate, and disappointment. He raised his rifle again, and this time it wouldnt be the President of the United States hed be aiming at. He worked the boltclack-clackand I fired at him again. Although I was three-quarters of the way across the room, less than twenty-five feet away, I missed again. I saw the side of his shirt twitch, but that was all.
My crutch struck a stack of boxes. I tottered to the left, flailing with my gun-hand for balance, but there was no chance of that. For just a moment I thought of how, on the day Id met her, Sadie had literally fallen into my arms. I knew what was going to happen. History doesnt repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devils music. This time I was the one who stumbled, and that was the crucial difference.
I could no longer hear her on the stairs but I could still hear her rapid footfalls.
Sadie, down! I shouted, but it was lost in the bark of Oswalds rifle.
I heard the bullet pass above me. I heard her cry out.
Then there was more gunfire, this time from outside. The presidential limo had taken off, driving toward the Triple Underpass at breakneck speed, the two couples inside ducking and holding onto each other. But the security car had pulled up on the far side of Elm Street near Dealey Plaza. The cops on the motorcycles had stopped in the middle of the street, and at least four dozen people were acting as spotters, pointing up at the sixth-floor window, where a skinny man in a blue shirt was clearly visible.
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I heard a patter of thumps, a sound like hailstones striking mud. Those were the bullets that missed the window and hit the bricks above or on either side. Many didnt miss. I saw Lees shirt billow out as if a wind had started to blow inside ita red one that tore holes in the fabric: one above the right nipple, one at the sternum, a third where his navel would be. A fourth tore his neck open. He danced like a doll in the hazy, sawdusty light, and that terrible snarl never left his face. He wasnt a man at the end, I tell you; he was something else. Whatever gets into us when we listen to our worst angels.
A bullet spanged one of the overhead lights, shattered the bulb, and set it to swaying. Then a bullet tore off the top of the would-be assassins head, just as one of Lees had torn off the top of Kennedys in the world Id come from. He collapsed onto his barricade of boxes, sending them tumbling to the floor.
Shouts from below. Someone yelling Man down, I saw him go down!
Running, ascending footfalls. I sent the.38 spinning toward Lees body. I had just enough presence of mind to know that I would be badly beaten, perhaps even killed by the men coming up the stairs if they found me with a gun in my hand. I started to get up, but my knee would no longer hold me. That was probably just as well. I might not have been visible from Elm Street, but if I was, theyd open fire on me. So I crawled to where Sadie lay, supporting my weight on my hands and dragging my left leg behind me like an anchor.
The front of her blouse was soaked with blood, but I could see the hole. It was dead-center in her chest, just above the slope of her breasts. More blood poured from her mouth. She was choking on it. I got my arms under her and lifted her. Her eyes never left mine. They were brilliant in the hazy gloom.
Jake, she rasped.
No, honey, dont talk.
She took no notice, thoughwhen had she ever? Jake, the president!
Safe. I hadnt actually seen him all in one piece as the limo tore away, but I had seen Lee jerk as he fired his only shot at the street, and that was enough for me. And I would have told Sadie he was safe no matter what.
Her eyes closed, then opened again. The footfalls were very close now, turning from the fifth-floor landing and starting up the final flight. Far below, the crowd was bellowing its excitement and confusion.
Jake.
What, honey?
She smiled. How we danced!
When Bonnie Ray and the others arrived, I was sitting on the floor and holding her. They stampeded past me. How many I dont know. Four, maybe. Or eight. Or a dozen. I didnt bother to look at them. I held her, rocking her head against my chest, letting her blood soak into my shirt. Dead. My Sadie. She had fallen into the machine, after all.
I have never been a crying man, but almost any man whos lost the woman he loves would, dont you think? Yes. But I didnt.
Because I knew what had to be done.
PART 6
The Green Card Man
CHAPTER 29
1
I wasnt exactly arrested, but I was taken into custody and driven to the Dallas police station in a squad car. On the last block of the ride, peoplesome of them reporters, most of them ordinary citizenspounded on the windows and peered inside. In a clinical, distant way, I wondered if I would perhaps be dragged from the car and lynched for attempting to murder the president. I didnt care. What concerned me most was my bloodstained shirt. I wanted it off; I also wanted to wear it forever. It was Sadies blood.
Neither of the cops in the front seat asked me any questions. I suppose someone had told them not to. If they had asked any, I wouldnt have replied. I was thinking. I could do that because the coldness was creeping over me again. I put it on like a suit of armor. I could fix this. I would fix this. But first I had some talking to do.
2
They put me in a room that was as white as ice. There was a table and three hard chairs. I sat in one of them. Outside, telephones rang and a Teletype chattered. People went back and forth talking in loud voices, sometimes shouting, sometimes laughing. The laughter had a hysterical sound. It was how men laugh when they know theyve had a narrow escape. Dodged a bullet, so to speak. Perhaps Edwin Walker had laughed like that on the night of April tenth, as he talked to reporters and brushed broken glass from his hair.
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The same two cops who brought me from the Book Depository searched me and took my things. I asked if I could have my last two packets of Goodys. The two cops conferred, then tore them open and poured them out on the table, which was engraved with initials and scarred with cigarette burns. One of them wetted a finger, tasted the powder, and nodded. Do you want water?
No. I scooped up the powder and poured it into my mouth. It was bitter. That was fine with me.
One of the cops left. The other asked for my bloody shirt, which I reluctantly took off and handed over. Then I pointed at him. I know its evidence, but you treat it with respect. The blood on it came from the woman I loved. That might not mean much to you, but its also from the woman who helped to stop the murder of President Kennedy, and that should.
We only want it for blood-typing.
Fine. But it goes on my receipt of personal belongings. Ill want it back.
Sure.
The cop whod left came back with a plain white undershirt. It looked like the one Oswald had been wearingor would have been wearingin the mugshot taken shortly after his arrest at the Texas Theatre.
3
I arrived in the little white interview room at twenty past one. About an hour later (I cant say with exactitude because there was no clock and my new Timex had been taken with the rest of my personal effects), the same two uniforms brought me some company. An old acquaintance, in fact: Dr. Malcolm Perry, toting a large black country doctors medical bag. I regarded him with mild astonishment. He was here at the police station visiting me because he didnt have to be at Parkland Hospital, picking bits of bullet and shards of bone out of John Kennedys brain. The river of history was already moving into its new course.
Hello, Dr. Perry.
He nodded. Mr. Amberson. The last time hed seen me, hed called me George. If Id had any doubts about being under suspicion, that would have confirmed them. But I didnt. Id been there, and Id known what was about to happen. Bonnie Ray Williams would already have told them as much.
I understand youve reinjured that knee.
Unfortunately, yes.
Lets have a look.
He tried to pull up my left pants leg and couldnt. The joint was too swollen. When he produced a pair of scissors, both cops stepped forward and drew their guns, keeping them pointed at the floor with their fingers outside the trigger guards. Dr. Perry looked at them with mild astonishment, then cut the leg of my pants up the seam. He looked, he touched, he produced a hypodermic needle and drew off fluid. I gritted my teeth and waited for it to be over. Then he rummaged in his bag, came out with an elastic bandage, and wrapped the knee tightly. That provided some relief.
I can give you something for the pain, if these officers dont object.
They didnt, but I did. The most crucial hour of my lifeand Sadieswas dead ahead. I didnt want dope clouding my brain when it rolled around.
Do you have any Goodys Headache Powder?
Perry wrinkled his nose as if he had smelled something bad. I have Bayer Aspirin and Emprin. The Emprins a bit stronger.
Give me that, then. And Dr. Perry?
He looked up from his bag.
Sadie and I didnt do anything wrong. She gave her life for her country and I would have given mine for her. I just didnt get the chance.
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If so, let me be the first to thank you. On behalf of the whole country.
The president. Where is he now? Do you know?
Dr. Perry looked at the cops, eyebrows raised in a question. They looked at each other, then one of them said, Hes gone on to Austin, to give a dinner speech, just like he was scheduled to do. I dont know if that makes him crazy-brave or just stupid.
Maybe, I thought, Air Force One was going to crash, killing Kennedy and everyone else on board. Maybe he was going to have a heart attack or a fatal stroke. Maybe some other chickenshit bravo was going to blow his handsome head off. Did the obdurate past work against the things changed as well as against the change-agent? I didnt know. Nor much care. I had done my part. What happened to Kennedy from this point on was out of my hands.
I heard on the radio that Jackie isnt with him, Perry said quietly. He sent her on ahead to the vice presidents ranch in Johnson City. Hell join her there for the weekend as planned. If what you say is true, George
I think thats enough, doc, one of the cops said. It certainly was for me; to Mal Perry I was George again.
Dr. Perrywho had his share of doctors arroganceignored him. If what you say is true, then I see a trip to Washington in your future. And very likely a medal ceremony in the Rose Garden.
After he departed, I was left alone again. Only not really; Sadie was there, too. How we danced, shed said just before she passed from this world. I could close my eyes and see her in line with the other girls, shaking her shoulders and doing the Madison. In this memory she was laughing, her hair was flying, and her face was perfect. 2011 surgical techniques could do a lot to fix what John Clayton had done to that face, but I thought I had an even better technique. If I got a chance to use it, that was.
4
I was allowed to baste in my own painful juices for two hours before the door of the interview room opened again. Two men came in. The one with the basset-hound face beneath a white Stetson hat introduced himself as Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police. He had a briefcasebut not my briefcase, so that was all right.
The other guy had heavy jowls, a drinkers complexion, and short dark hair that gleamed with hair tonic. His eyes were sharp, inquisitive, and a little worried. From the inside pocket of his suit coat he produced an ID folder and flipped it open. James Hosty, Mr. Amberson. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
You have good reason to look worried, I thought. You were the man in charge of monitoring Lee, werent you, Agent Hosty?
Will Fritz said, Like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Amberson.
Yes, I said. And Id like to get out of here. People who save the President of the United States generally dont get treated like criminals.
Now, now, Agent Hosty said. We sent you a doc, didnt we? And not just any doc; your doc.
Ask your questions, I said.
And got ready to dance.
5
Fritz opened his briefcase and brought out a plastic bag with an evidence tag taped to it. Inside it was my.38. We found this lying against the barricade of boxes Oswald set up, Mr. Amberson. Was it his, do you think?
No, thats a Police Special. Its mine. Lee had a.38, but it was a Victory model. If it wasnt on his body, youll probably find it wherever he was staying.
Fritz and Hosty looked at each other in surprise, then back at me.
So you admit you knew Oswald, Fritz said.
Yes, although not well. I didnt know where he was living, or I would have gone there.
As it happens, Hosty said, he had a room on Beckley Street. He was registered under the name O. H. Lee. He seems to have had another alias, too. Alek Hidell. He used it to get mail.
Wife and kiddo not with him? I asked.
Hosty smiled. It spread his jowls approximately half a mile in either direction. Whos asking the questions here, Mr. Amberson?
Both of us, I said. I risked my life to save the president, and my fiancée gave hers, so I think I have a right to ask questions.
Then I waited to see how tough theyd get. If real tough, they actually believed Id been in on it. Real easy, they didnt but wanted to be sure. It turned out to be somewhere in the middle.
Fritz used a blunt finger to spin the bag with the gun in it. Ill tell you what might have happened, Mr. Amberson. I wont say it did, but youd have to convince us otherwise.
Uh-huh. Have you called Sadies folks? They live in Savannah. You should also call Deacon Simmons and Ellen Dockerty, in Jodie. They were like surrogate parents to her. I considered this. To both of us, really. I was going to ask Deke to be my best man at our wedding.
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Fritz took no notice of this. What might have happened was you and your girl were in on it with Oswald. And maybe at the end you got cold feet.
The ever-popular conspiracy theory. No home should be without one.
Maybe you realized at the last minute that you were getting ready to shoot the most powerful man in the whole world, Hosty said. You had a moment of clarity. So you stopped him. If it went like that, youd get a lot of leniency.
Yes. Leniency to consist of forty, maybe even fifty years in Leavenworth eating mac and cheese instead of death in the Texas electric chair.
Then why werent we there with him, Agent Hosty? Instead of hammering on the door to be let in?
Hosty shrugged. You tell me.
And if we were plotting an assassination, you must have seen me with him. Because I know you had him under at least partial surveillance. I leaned forward. Why didnt you stop him, Hosty? That was your job.
He drew back as if Id raised a fist to him. His jowls reddened.
For a few moments at least, my grief hardened into a kind of malicious pleasure. The FBI kept an eye on him because he defected to Russia, redefected to the United States, then tried to defect to Cuba. He was handing out pro-Fidel leaflets on street corners for months before this horror show today.
How do you know all that? Hosty barked.
Because he told me. Then what happens? The president whos tried everything he can think of to knock Castro off his perch comes to Dallas. Working at the Book Depository, Lee had a ringside seat for the motorcade. You knew it and did nothing.
Fritz was staring at Hosty with something like horror. Im sure Hosty was regretting the fact that the Dallas cop was even in the room, but what could he do? It was Fritzs station.
We did not consider him a threat, Hosty said stiffly.
Well, that was certainly a mistake. What was in the note he gave you, Hosty? I know Lee went to your office and left you one when he was told you werent there, but he wouldnt tell me what was in it. He just gave that thin little fuck-you smile of his. Were talking about the man who killed the woman I loved, so I think I deserve to know. Did he say he was going to do something that would make the world sit up and take notice? I bet he did.
It was nothing like that!
Show me the note, then. Double-dog dare you.
Any communication from Mr. Oswald is Bureau business.
I dont think you can show it. Ill bet its ashes in your office toilet, as per Mr. Hoovers orders.
If it wasnt, it would be. It was in Als notes.
If youre such an innocent, Fritz said, youll tell us how you knew Oswald and why you were carrying a handgun.
And why the lady had a butchers knife with blood on it, Hosty added.
I saw red at that. The lady had blood everywhere! I shouted. On her clothes, on her shoes, in her purse! The son of a bitch shot her in the chest, or didnt you notice?
Fritz: Calm down, Mr. Amberson. No ones accusing you of anything. The subtext: Yet.
I took a deep breath. Have you talked to Dr. Perry? You sent him to examine me and take care of my knee, so you must have. Which means you know I was beaten within an inch of my life last August. The man who ordered the beatingand participated in itis a bookie named Akiva Roth. I dont think he meant to hurt me as badly as he did, but probably I smarted off to him and made him mad. I cant remember. Theres a lot I cant remember since that day.
Why didnt you report this after it happened?
Because I was in a coma, Detective Fritz. When I came out of it, I didnt remember. When I did remembersome of it, at leastI recalled Roth saying he was hooked up with a Tampa bookie Id done business with, and a New Orleans mobster named Carlos Marcello. That made going to the cops seem risky.
Are you saying DPD is dirty? I didnt know if Fritzs anger was real or faked, and didnt much care.
Im saying I watch The Untouchables and I know the Mob doesnt like rats. I bought a gun for personal protectionas is my right under the Second Amendmentand I carried it. I pointed at the evidence bag. That gun.
Hosty: Whered you buy it?
I dont remember.
Fritz: Your amnesia is pretty convenient, isnt it? Like something on The Secret Storm or As the World Turns.
Talk to Perry, I repeated. And take another look at my knee. I reinjured it racing up six flights of stairs to save the presidents life. Which I will tell the press. Ill also tell them my reward for doing my duty as an American citizen was an interrogation in a hot little room without even a glass of water.
Do you want water? Fritz asked, and I understood that this could be all right, if I didnt misstep. The president had escaped assassination by the skin of his teeth. These two mennot to mention Dallas Police Chief Jesse Currywould be under enormous pressure to provide a hero. Since Sadie was dead, I was what they had.
No, I said, but a Co-Cola would be very nice.
6
As I waited for my Coke, I thought of Sadie saying Were leaving a trail a mile wide. It was true. But maybe I could make that work for me. If, that was, a certain tow truck driver from a certain Fort Worth Esso station had done as the note under the Chevrolets windshield wiper had asked.
Fritz lit a cigarette and shoved the pack across to me. I shook my head and he took it back. Tell us how you knew him, he said.
I said Id met Lee on Mercedes Street, and wed struck up an acquaintance. I listened to his rantings about the evils of fascist-imperialist America and the wonderful socialist state that would emerge in Cuba. Cuba was the ideal, he said. Russia had been taken over by worthless bureaucrats, which was why hed left. In Cuba there was Uncle Fidel. Lee didnt come right out and say that Uncle Fidel walked on the water, but he implied it.
I thought he was nuts, but I liked his family. That much was true. I did like his family, and I did think he was nuts.
How did a professional educator such as yourself come to be living on the shitass side of Fort Worth in the first place? Fritz asked.
I was trying to write a novel. I found out I couldnt do it while I was teaching school. Mercedes Street was a dump, but it was cheap. I thought the book would take at least a year, and that meant I had to stretch my savings. When I got depressed about the neighborhood, I tried to pretend I was living in a garret on the Left Bank.
Fritz: Did your savings include money you won from bookies?
Me: Im going to take the Fifth on that one.
At this, Will Fritz actually laughed.
Hosty: So you met Oswald and became friendly with him.
Relatively friendly. You dont become close buddies with crazy people. At least I dont.
Go on.
Lee and his family moved out; I stayed. Then one day, out of the blue, I got a call from him saying he and Marina were living on Elsbeth Street in Dallas. He said it was a better neighborhood and the rents were cheap and plentiful. I told Fritz and Hosty that I was tired of Mercedes Street by then, so I came on over to Dallas, had lunch with Lee at the Woolworths counter, then took a walk around the neighborhood. I rented the ground-floor apartment at 214 West Neely Street, and when the upstairs apartment went vacant, I told Lee. Kind of returning the favor.
His wife didnt like the place on Elsbeth, I said. The West Neely Street building was just around the corner, and much nicer. So they moved in.
I had no idea how closely they would check this story, how well the chronology would hold up, or what Marina might tell them, but those things werent important to me. I only needed time. A story that was even halfway plausible might give it to me, especially since Agent Hosty had good reason to treat me with kid gloves. If I told what I knew about his relationship with Oswald, he might spend the rest of his career freezing his ass off in Fargo.
Then something happened that put my ears up. Last April, this was. Right around Easter. I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on my book, when this fancy cara Cadillac, I thinkpulled up, and two people got out. A man and a woman. Well-dressed. They had a stuffed toy for Junie. Shes
Fritz: We know who June Oswald is.
They went up the stairs, and I heard the guyhe had kind of a German accent and a big booming voiceI heard him say, Lee, how did you miss?
Hosty leaned forward, eyes as wide as they could get in that fleshy face. What?
You heard me. So I checked the paper, and guess what? Someone took a shot at some retired general four or five days before. Big right-winger. Just the kind of guy Lee hated.
What did you do?
Nothing. I knew he had a pistolhe showed it to me one daybut the paper said the guy who shot at Walker used a rifle. Besides, most of my attention was taken up by my girlfriend by then. You asked why she had a knife in her purse. The answer is simpleshe was scared. She was also attacked, only not by Mr. Roth. It was her ex-husband. He disfigured her pretty badly.
We saw the scar, Hosty said, and were sorry for your loss, Amberson.
Thank you. You dont look sorry enough, I thought. The knife she was carrying was the same one her exJohn Clayton was his nameused on her. She carried it everywhere. I thought of her saying, Just in case. I thought of her saying, This is an in-case if there ever was one.
I put my hands over my face for a minute. They waited. I dropped them into my lap and went on in a toneless Joe Friday voice. Just the facts, maam.
I kept the place on West Neely, but I spent most of the summer in Jodie, taking care of Sadie. Id pretty much given up on the book idea, was thinking about reapplying at Denholm Consolidated. Then I ran into Akiva Roth and his goons. Wound up in the hospital myself. When they let me out, I went to a rehab center called Eden Fallows.
