11/22/63: A Novel (80 page)

Before I left Neely Street, I walked around the fenced-in side yard, where, just three months before, Marina had taken photographs of Lee holding his rifle. There was nothing to see but beaten earth and a few hardy weeds. Then, as I turned to go, I
did
see something: a flash of red under the outside stairs. It was a baby’s rattle. I took it and put it in the glove compartment of my Chevy along with the bug, but unlike the bug, I held onto it. I don’t know why.

My next stop was the sprawling ranch on Simpson Stuart Road where George de Mohrenschildt lived with his wife, Jeanne. As soon as I saw it I rejected it for the meeting I had planned. For one thing, I couldn’t be sure when Jeanne would be in the house and when she’d be away, and this particular conversation had to be strictly Two Guys
.
For another, it wasn’t quite isolated enough. Paul Quinn College, an all-black school, was close by, and summer classes must have been in. There weren’t droves of kids, but I saw plenty, some walking and some on bikes. Not good for my purposes. It was possible that our discussion might be noisy. It was possible it might not be a discussion—at least in the Merriam-Webster sense—at all.

Something caught my eye. It was on the de Mohrenschildts’ wide front lawn, where sprinklers flung graceful sprays in the air and created rainbows that looked small enough to put in your pocket. 1963 wasn’t an election year, but in early April—right around the time somebody had taken a shot at General Edwin Walker—the representative from the Fifth District had dropped dead of a heart attack. There was going to be a run-off election for his seat on August sixth.

The sign read
ELECT JENKINS TO THE 5
^TH
DISTRICT! ROBERT “ROBBIE” JENKINS, DALLAS’S WHITE KNIGHT!

According to the papers, Jenkins was that for sure, a right-winger who saw eye-to-eye with Walker and Walker’s spiritual advisor, Billy James Hargis. Robbie Jenkins stood for states’ rights, separate-but-equal schools, and reinstituting the Missile Crisis blockade around Cuba. The same Cuba de Mohrenschildt had called “that beautiful island.” The sign supported a strong feeling that I’d already developed about de Mohrenschildt. He was a dilettante who, at bottom, held no political beliefs at all. He would support whoever amused him or put money in his pocket. Lee Oswald couldn’t do the latter—he was so poor he made churchmice look loaded—but his humorless dedication to socialism
combined with his grandiose personal ambitions had provided de Mohrenschildt with plenty of the former.

One deduction seemed obvious: Lee had never trod the lawn or soiled the carpets of this house with his poorboy feet. This was de Mohrenschildt’s other life . . . or one of them. I had a feeling he might have several, keeping them all in various watertight compartments. But that didn’t answer the central question: was he so bored he would have accompanied Lee on his mission to assassinate the fascist monster Edwin Walker? I didn’t know him well enough to make even an educated guess.

But I would. My heart was set on it.

The sign in the window of Frank Frati’s pawnshop read WELCOME TO GUITAR CENTRAL, and there were plenty of them on display: acoustics, electrics, twelve-strings, and one with a double fretboard that reminded me of something I’d seen in a Mötley Crüe video. Of course there was all the other detritus of busted lives—rings, brooches, necklaces, radios, small appliances. The woman who confronted me was skinny instead of fat, she wore slacks and a Ship N Shore blouse instead of a purple dress and mocs, but the stone face was the same as that of a woman I’d met in Derry, and I heard the same words coming out of my mouth. Close enough for government work, anyway.

“I’d like to discuss a rather large sports-oriented business proposition with Mr. Frati.”

“Yeah? Is that a bet when it’s at home with its feet up?”

“Are you a cop?”

“Yeah, I’m Chief Curry of the Dallas Police. Can’t you tell from the glasses and the jowls?”

“I don’t see any glasses or jowls, ma’am.”

“That’s because I’m in disguise. What you want to bet on in the middle of the summer, chum? There’s nothing to bet on.”

“Case-Tiger.”

“Which pug?”

“Case.”

She rolled her eyes, then shouted back over her shoulder. “Better get out here, Dad, you got a live one.”

Frank Frati was at least twice Chaz Frati’s age, but the resemblance was still there. They were related, of course they were. If I mentioned I had once laid a bet with a Mr. Frati of Derry, Maine, I had no doubt we could have a pleasant little discussion about what a small world it was.

Instead of doing that, I proceeded directly to negotiations. Could I put five hundred dollars on Tom Case to win his bout against Dick Tiger in Madison Square Garden?

“Yes indeedy,” Frati said. “You could also stick a red-hot branding iron up your rootie-patootie, but why would you want to?”

His daughter yapped brief, bright laughter.

“What kind of odds would I get?”

He looked at the daughter. She put up her hands. Two fingers raised on the left, one finger on the right.

“Two-to-one? That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s a ridiculous life, my friend. Go see an Ionesco play if you don’t believe me. I recommend
Victims of Duty.
”

Well, at least he didn’t call me cuz, as his Derry cuz had done.

“Work with me a little on this, Mr. Frati.”

He picked up an Epiphone Hummingbird acoustic and began to tune it. He was eerily quick. “Give me something to work with, then, or blow on over to Dallas. There’s a place called—”

“I know the place in Dallas. I prefer Fort Worth. I used to live here.”

“The fact that you moved shows more sense than wanting to bet on Tom Case.”

“What about Case by a knockout somewhere in the first seven rounds? What would that get me?”

He looked at the daughter. This time she raised three fingers on her left hand.

“And Case by a knockout in the first five?”

She deliberated, then raised a fourth finger. I decided not to push it any farther. I wrote my name in his book and showed him my driver’s license, holding my thumb over the Jodie address just as I had when I’d bet on the Pirates at Faith Financial almost three years ago. Then I passed over my cash, which was about a quarter of all my remaining liquidity, and tucked the receipt into my wallet. Two thousand would be enough to pay down some more of Sadie’s expenses and carry me for my remaining time in Texas. Plus, I wanted to gouge this Frati no more than I’d wanted to gouge Chaz Frati, even though he
had
set Bill Turcotte on me.

“I’ll be back the day after the dance,” I said. “Have my money ready.”

The daughter laughed and lit a cigarette. “Ain’t that what the chorus girl said to the archbishop?”

“Is your name Marjorie, by any chance?” I asked.

She froze with the cigarette in front of her and smoke trickling from between her lips. “How’dja know?” She saw my expression and laughed. “Actually, it’s Wanda, sport. I hope you bet better than you guess names.”

Heading back to my car, I hoped the same thing.

I stayed with Sadie on the morning of August fifth until they put her on a gurney and rolled her down to the operating room. There Dr. Ellerton was waiting for her, along with enough other docs to field a basketball team. Her eyes were shiny with preop dope.

“Wish me luck.”

I bent and kissed her. “All the luck in the world.”

It was three hours before she was wheeled back to her room—same room, same picture on the wall, same horrible squatting commode—fast asleep and snoring, the left side of her face covered in a fresh bandage. Rhonda McGinley, the nurse with the fullback shoulders, let me stay with her until she came around a little, which was a big infraction of the rules. Visiting hours are more stringent in the Land of Ago. Unless the head nurse has taken a shine to you, that is.

“How are you?” I asked, taking Sadie’s hand.

“Sore. And sleepy.”

“Go back to sleep then, honey.”

“Maybe next time . . .” Her words trailed off in a furry
hzzzzz
sound. Her eyes closed, but she forced them open with an effort. “. . . will be better. In your place.”

Then she was gone, and I had something to think about.

When I went back to the nurses’ station, Rhonda told me that Dr. Ellerton was waiting for me downstairs in the cafeteria.

“We’ll keep her tonight and probably tomorrow, too,” he said. “The last thing we want is for any sort of infection to develop.” (I
thought of this later, of course—one of those things that’s funny, but not very.)

“How did it go?”

“As well as can be expected, but the damage Clayton inflicted was very serious. Pending her recovery, I’m going to schedule her second go-round for November or December.” He lit a cigarette, chuffed out smoke, and said: “This is a helluva surgical team, and we’re going to do everything we can . . . but there are limits.”

“Yes. I know.” I was pretty sure I knew something else, as well: there were going to be no more surgeries. Here, at least. The next time Sadie went under the knife, it wouldn’t be a knife at all. It would be a laser.

In
my
place.

Small economies always come back and bite you in the ass. I’d had the phone taken out of my Neely Street apartment in order to save eight or ten dollars a month, and now I wanted it. But there was a U-Tote-M four blocks away with a phone booth next to the Coke cooler. I had de Mohrenschildt’s number on a scrap of paper. I dropped a dime and dialed.

“De Mohrenschildt residence, how may I help you?” Not Jeanne’s voice. A maid, probably—where
did
the de Mohrenschildt bucks come from?

“I’d like to speak to George, please.”

“I’m afraid he’s at the office, sir.”

I grabbed a pen from my breast pocket. “Can you give me that number?”

“Yes, sir. CHapel 5-6323.”

“Thanks.” I wrote it on the back of my hand.

“May I say who called, if you don’t reach him, sir?”

I hung up. That chill was enveloping me again. I welcomed it. If I’d ever needed cold clarity, it was now.

I dropped another dime and this time got a secretary who told me I’d reached the Centrex Corporation. I told her I wanted to speak to Mr. de Mohrenschildt. She, of course, wanted to know why.

“Tell him it’s about Jean-Claude Duvalier and Lee Oswald. Tell him it’s to his advantage.”

“Your name, sir?”

Puddentane wouldn’t do here. “John Lennon.”

“Please hold, Mr. Lennon, I’ll see if he’s available.”

There was no canned music, which on the whole seemed an improvement. I leaned against the wall of the hot booth and stared at the sign reading IF YOU SMOKE, PLEASE TURN ON FAN. I didn’t smoke, but turned the fan on, anyway. It didn’t help much.

There was a click in my ear loud enough to make me wince, and the secretary said, “You’re connected, Mr. D.”

“Hello?” That jovial booming actor’s voice. “Hello? Mr. Lennon?”

“Hello. Is this line secure?”

“What do you . . . ? Of course it is. Just a minute. Let me shut the door.”

There was a pause, then he was back. “What’s this about?”

“Haiti, my friend. And oil leases.”

“What’s this about
Monsieur
Duvalier and that guy Oswald?” There was no worry in his voice, just cheerful curiosity.

“Oh, you know them both much better than that,” I said. “Go ahead and call them Baby Doc and Lee, why don’t you?”

“I’m awfully busy today, Mr. Lennon. If you don’t tell me what this is about, I’m afraid I’ll have to—”

“Baby Doc can approve the oil leases in Haiti you’ve been wanting for the last five years. You know this; he’s his father’s righthand man, he runs the
tonton macoute,
and he’s next in line for the big chair. He likes you, and
we
like you—”

De Mohrenschildt began to sound less like an actor and more like a real guy. “When you say
we,
do you mean—”

“We
all
like you, de Mohrenschildt, but we’re worried about your association with Oswald.”

“Jesus, I hardly know the guy! I haven’t seen him in six or eight months!”

“You saw him on Easter Sunday. You brought his little girl a stuffed rabbit.”

A very long pause. Then: “All right, I guess I did. I forgot about that.”

“Did you forget about someone taking a shot at Edwin Walker?”

“What has that got to do with
me
? Or my business?” His puzzled outrage was almost impossible to disbelieve. Key word:
almost
.

“Come on, now,” I said. “You accused Oswald of doing it.”

“I was joking, goddammit!”

I gave him two beats, then said, “Do you know what company I work for, de Mohrenschildt? I’ll give you a hint—it’s
not
Standard Oil.”

There was silence on the line while de Mohrenschildt ran through the bullshit I’d spouted so far. Except it
wasn’t
bullshit, not entirely. I’d known about the stuffed rabbit, and I’d known about the how-did-you-miss crack he’d made after his wife spotted the rifle. The conclusion was pretty clear. My company was The Company, and the only question in de Mohrenschildt’s mind right now—I hoped—was how much more of his no doubt interesting life we’d bugged.

“This is a misunderstanding, Mr. Lennon.”

“I hope for your sake that it is, because it looks to us like you might have primed him to take the shot. Going on and on about what a racist Walker is, and how he’s going to be the next American Hitler.”

“That’s totally untrue!”

I ignored this. “But it’s not our chief worry. Our chief worry is that you may have accompanied Mr. Oswald on his errand last April tenth.”

“
Ach, mein Gott!
That’s insane!”

“If you can prove that—and if you promise to stay away from
the unstable Mr. Oswald in the future—”

“He’s in New Orleans, for God’s sake!”

“Shut up,” I said. “We know where he is and what he’s doing. Handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. If he doesn’t stop soon, he’ll wind up in jail.” Indeed he would, and in less than a week. His uncle Dutz—the one associated with Carlos Marcello—would go his bail. “He’ll be back in Dallas soon enough, but you won’t see him. Your little game is over.”