11/22/63: A Novel (97 page)

“I thought I’d spend the night in a hotel, but the hotels were full. Then I thought of Mercedes Street. I’d turned in the key to 2706, where I lived, but I still had a key to 2703 across the street, where Lee lived. He gave it to me so I could go in and water his plants.”

Hosty: “He had
plants
?”

My attention was still fixed on Will Fritz. “Sadie got alarmed when she found me gone from Eden Fallows. Deke did, too. So he did call the police. Not just once but several times. Each time, the cop
who took his call told him to stop bullshitting and hung up. I don’t know if anyone bothered to make a record of those calls, but Deke will tell you, and he has no reason to lie.”

Now Fritz was the one turning red. “If you knew how many death threats we had . . .”

“I’m sure. And only so many men. Just don’t tell me that if we’d called the police, Sadie would still be alive. Don’t tell me that, okay?”

He said nothing.

“How did she find you?” Hosty asked.

That was something I didn’t have to lie about, and I didn’t. Next, though, they’d ask about the trip from Mercedes Street in Fort Worth to the Book Depository in Dallas. That was the part of my story most fraught with peril. I wasn’t worried about the Studebaker cowboy; Sadie had cut him, but only after he tried to steal her purse. The car had been on its last legs, and I had a feeling the cowboy might not even come forward to report it stolen. Of course we had stolen another one, but given the urgency of our errand, the police would surely not file charges in the matter. The press would crucify them if they tried. What I was worried about was the red Chevrolet, the one with tailfins like a woman’s eyebrows. A trunk with a couple of suitcases in it could be explained away; we’d had dirty weekends at the Candlewood Bungalows before. But if they got a look at Al Templeton’s notebook . . . I didn’t even want to think about that.

There was a perfunctory knock on the door of the interview room, and one of the cops who had brought me to the police station poked his head in. Behind the wheel of the cruiser, and while he and his buddy had been going through my personal belongings, he had looked stone-faced and dangerous, a bluesuit right out of a crime movie. Now, unsure of himself and bug-eyed with excitement, I saw he was no more than twenty-three, and still coping with the last of his adolescent acne. Behind him I could see a lot of people—some in uniform, some not—craning for a look at me. Fritz and Hosty turned to the uninvited newcomer with impatience.

“Sirs, I’m sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Amberson has a phone call.”

The flush returned to Hosty’s jowls full force. “Son, we’re doing an interrogation here. I don’t care if it’s the President of the United States calling.”

The cop swallowed. His Adam’s apple went up and down like a monkey on a stick. “Uh, sirs . . . it
is
the President of the United States.”

It seemed they cared, after all.

They took me down the hall to Chief Curry’s office. Fritz had me under one arm and Hosty had the other. With them supporting sixty or seventy pounds of my weight between them, I hardly limped at all. There were reporters, TV cameras, and huge lights that must have raised the temperature to a hundred degrees. These people—one step above paparazzi—had no place in a police station in the wake of an assassination attempt, but I wasn’t surprised. Along another timeline, they had crowded in after Oswald’s arrest and no one had kicked them out. As far as I knew, no one had even suggested it.

Hosty and Fritz bulled their way through the scrum, stone-faced. Questions were hurled at them and at me. Hosty shouted: “Mr. Amberson will have a statement after he has been fully debriefed by the authorities!”

“When?”
someone shouted.

“Tomorrow, the day after, maybe next week!”

There were groans. They made Hosty smile.

“Maybe next
month.
Right now he’s got President Kennedy waiting on the line, so
y’all fall back
!”

They fell back, chattering like magpies.

The only cooling device in Chief Curry’s office was a fan on a bookshelf, but the moving air felt blessed after the interrogation
room and the media microwave in the hall. A big black telephone handset lay on the blotter. Beside it was a file with LEE H. OSWALD printed on the tab. It was thin.

I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

The nasal New England voice that responded sent a chill up my back. This was a man who would have now been lying on a morgue slab, if not for Sadie and me. “Mister Amberson? Jack Kennedy here. I . . . ah . . . understand that my wife and I owe you . . . ah . . . our lives. I also understand that you lost someone very dear to you.”
Dear
came out
deah,
the way I’d grown up hearing it.

“Her name was Sadie Dunhill, Mr. President. Oswald shot her.”

“I’m so sorry for your . . . ah . . . loss, Mr. Amberson. May I call you . . . ah . . . George?”

“If you like.” Thinking:
I’m not having this conversation. It’s a dream.

“Her country will give her a great outpouring of thanks . . . and you a great outpouring of condolence, I’m sure. Let me . . . ah . . . be the first to offer both.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” My throat was closing and I could hardly speak above a whisper. I saw her eyes, so bright as she lay dying in my arms.
Jake, how we danced.
Do presidents care about things like that? Do they even know about them? Maybe the best ones do. Maybe it’s why they serve.

“There’s . . . ah . . . someone else who wants to thank you, George. My wife’s not here right now, but she . . . ah . . . plans to call you tonight.”

“Mr. President, I’m not sure where I’ll be tonight.”

“She’ll find you. She’s very . . . ah . . . determined when she wants to thank someone. Now tell me, George, how are
you
?”

I told him I was all right, which I was not. He promised to see me at the White House very shortly, and I thanked him, but I didn’t think any White House visit was going to happen. All during that dreamlike conversation while the fan blew on my sweaty face and the pebbled glass upper panel of Chief Curry’s
door glowed with the supernatural light of the TV lights outside, two words beat in my brain.

I’m safe. I’m safe. I’m safe.

The President of the United States had called from Austin to thank me for saving his life, and I was safe. I could do what I needed to do.

Five minutes after concluding my surreal conversation with John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Hosty and Fritz were hustling me down the back stairs and into the garage where Oswald would have been shot by Jack Ruby. Then it had been crowded in anticipation of the assassin’s transfer to the county jail. Now it was so empty our footsteps echoed. My minders drove me to the Adolphus Hotel, and I felt no surprise when I found myself in the same room I’d occupied when I first came to Dallas. Everything that goes around comes around, they say, and although I’ve never been able to figure out who the mysteriously wise sages known as “they” might be, they’re certainly right when it comes to time-travel.

Fritz told me the cops posted in the corridor and below, in the lobby, were strictly for my own protection, and to keep the press away. (Uh-huh.) Then he shook my hand. Agent Hosty also shook my hand, and when he did, I felt a folded square of paper pass from his palm to mine. “Get some rest,” he said. “You’ve earned it.”

When they were gone, I unfolded the tiny square. It was a page from his notebook. He had written three sentences, probably while I was on the phone with Jack Kennedy.

Your phone is tapped. I will see you at 9
P.M.
Burn this & flush the ashes.

I burned the note as Sadie had burned mine, then picked up the phone and unscrewed the mouthpiece. Inside, clinging to the wires, was a small blue cylinder no bigger than a double-A battery. I was amused to see that the writing on it was Japanese—it made me think of my old pal Silent Mike.

I jiggered it loose, put it in my pocket, screwed the mouthpiece back on, and dialed 0. There was a very long pause at the operator’s end after I said my name. I was about to hang up and try again when she started crying and babbling her thanks for saving the president. If she could do anything, she said, if anyone in the
hotel
could do anything, all I had to do was call, her name was Marie, she would do
anything
to thank me.

“You could start by putting through a call to Jodie,” I said, and gave her Deke’s number.

“Of course, Mr. Amberson. God bless you, sir. I’m connecting your call.”

The phone burred twice, then Deke answered. His voice was heavy and laryngeal, as if his bad cold had gotten worse. “If this is another goddam reporter—”

“It’s not, Deke. It’s me. George.” I paused. “Jake.”

“Oh, Jake,” he said mournfully, and then
he
started to cry. I waited, holding the phone so tightly it hurt my hand. My temples throbbed. The day was dying, but the light coming in through the windows was still too bright. In the distance, I heard a rumble of thunder. Finally he said, “Are you all right?”

“Yes. But Sadie—”

“I know. It’s on the news. I heard while I was on my way to Fort Worth.”

So the woman with the baby carriage and the tow truck driver from the Esso station had done as I’d hoped they would. Thank God for that. Not that it seemed very important as I sat listening to this heartbroken old man try to control his tears.

“Deke . . . do you blame me? I’d understand if you do.”

“No,” he said at last. “Ellie doesn’t, either. When Sadie made up her mind to a thing, she carried through. And if you were on Mercedes Street in Fort Worth, I was the one who told her how to find you.”

“I was there.”

“Did the son of a bitch shoot her? They say on the newscasts that he did.”

“Yes.
He meant to shoot me, but my bad leg . . . I tripped over a box or something and fell down. She was right behind me.”

“Christ.” His voice strengthened a bit. “But she died doing the right thing. That’s what I’m going to hold onto. It’s what you have to hold onto, as well.”

“Without her, I never would have gotten there. If you could have seen her . . . how determined she was . . . how brave . . .”

“Christ,” he repeated. It came out in a sigh. He sounded very, very old. “It was all true. Everything you said. And everything
she
said about you. You really are from the future, aren’t you?”

How glad I was that the bug was in my pocket. I doubted if they’d had time to plant listening devices in the room itself, but I still cupped my hand to the mouthpiece and lowered my voice. “Not a word about any of that to the police or the reporters.”

“Good God, no!” He sounded indignant at the very idea. “You’d never breathe free air again!”

“Did you go ahead and get our luggage out of the Chevy’s trunk? Even after—”

“You bet. I knew it was important, because as soon as I heard, I knew you’d be under suspicion.”

“I think I’ll be all right,” I said, “but you need to open my briefcase and . . . do you have an incinerator?”

“Yes, behind the garage.”

“There’s a blue notebook in the briefcase. Put it in the incinerator and burn it. Will you do that for me?”
And for Sadie. We’re both depending on you.

“Yes. I will. Jake, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“And I’m sorry for yours. Yours and Miz Ellie’s.”

“It’s not a fair trade!” he burst out. “I don’t care if he
is
the president, it’s not a fair trade!”

“No,” I said. “It’s not. But Deke . . . it wasn’t just about the president. It’s about all the bad stuff that would have happened if he had died.”

“I guess I have to take your word for that. But it’s hard.”

“I know.”

Would they have a memorial assembly for Sadie at the high school, as they had for Miz Mimi? Of course they would. The networks would send camera crews, and there wouldn’t be a dry eye in America. But when the show was over, Sadie would still be dead.

Unless I changed it. It would mean going through everything again, but for Sadie I’d do that. Even if she took one look at me at the party where I’d met her and decided I was too old for her (although I would do my best to change her mind about that). There was even an upside: now that I knew Lee really had been the lone gunman, I wouldn’t have to wait so long to dispatch his sorry ass.

“Jake? Are you still there?”

“Yes. And remember to call me George when you talk about me, okay?”

“No fear there. I may be old, but my brains still work pretty well. Am I going to see you again?”

Not if Agent Hosty tells me what I want to hear,
I thought.

“If you don’t, it’s because things are working out for the best.”

“All right. Jake . . . George . . . did she . . . did she say anything at the end?”

I wasn’t going to tell him what her final words had been, that was private, but I could give him something. He would pass it on to Ellie, and Ellie would pass it on to all Sadie’s friends in Jodie. She’d had many.

“She asked if the president was safe. When I told her he was, she closed her eyes and slipped away.”

Deke began to cry again. My face was throbbing. Tears would have been a relief, but my eyes were as dry as stones.

“Goodbye,” I said. “Goodbye, old friend.”

I hung up gently and sat still for quite some time, watching the light of a Dallas sunset fall red through the window.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,
the old saying has it . . . but I heard another rumble of thunder. Five minutes later, when I had myself under control, I picked up my debugged phone and once again dialed 0. I told Marie I was going to lie down, and asked for an eight-o’clock
wake-up call. I also asked her to put a do-not-disturb on the phone until then.

“Oh, that’s already taken care of,” she said excitedly. “No incoming calls to your room, orders from the police chief.” Her voice dropped a register. “Was he crazy, Mr. Amberson? I mean, he
must
have been, but did he look it?”

I remembered the cheated eyes and daemonic snarl. “Oh, yes,” I said. “He certainly did. Eight o’clock, Marie. Nothing until then.”