Frame 232 (13 page)

“Do you have any idea who the man in the storm drain is?”

“No, no clue. There have been plenty of suggestions over the years about who else was involved
 
—the Mafia, European hit men, Cuban soldiers of fortune, CIA operatives, stuff like that
 
—but no one knows for sure.” He shook his head. “The
mere fact that someone else was there, and with what almost has to be a rifle . . . That’s a
very
big deal.”

“I don’t think he fired a shot.”

“No, another shot would’ve been discovered sooner or later. But I’ve read a few things about the possibility of a shooter being down there. There were some conspiracy theorists who pushed the point, but they were usually written off as crazies. When I started studying the assassination, however, I thought it made some sense. First, if you look at the layout of Dealey Plaza, you’ll see that, from a sniper’s perspective, it’s actually an excellent position. Chances are you’d have a clear shot at the president at some point. Second, in all the mayhem that followed the shooting, it would be easy for such a person to escape. I don’t know where the pipes led, but they obviously went somewhere
 
—maintenance crews had to get in there from time to time, so there were entrance and exit routes. And third, even with Secret Service checking out the site ahead of the president’s visit, the shooter could’ve gone down there a day or two before and simply waited. One quality that’s consistent with top assassins, I’ve learned, is patience. Also, the odds of the person being seen by the crowd were slim to none. Remember
 
—the volume of spectators was much heavier along Main Street than in Dealey Plaza. In fact, on the side where your mother stood, there were no more than a handful of people. So her film is the only piece of visual evidence that even
shows
someone in the storm drain.” He checked the screen again. “I don’t know everything about the assassination, but I know enough to be sure that this represents a paradigm shift. This is huge
beyond
huge.”

The laptop finally finished processing, and the file with the meaningless name WRT0004.mov appeared on the desktop.

“I’m going to take another look at it and try to zoom in closer,” he said. “If you don’t mind, that is. You don’t have to watch.”

“Sure.”

The transfer was perfect, even slightly improved over the original by enhancement features native to the software. Hammond fast-forwarded to the point just before the second gunman appeared, then paused it. “I’m already thinking of him as Storm-Drain Man, just as so many of the other figures in Dealey Plaza have been similarly anointed. There’s Umbrella Man, Black-Dog Man, and of course, your mom, the Babushka Lady.” He clicked on the Forward button to move the images one frame at a time.

The storm drain stood empty. Then the gunman’s head came up. Dark hair, thick on the top and sides. He also appeared to have heavily rendered eyebrows. “Of Spanish descent?” Hammond wondered aloud. “Latino? Or maybe Italian? Italian might lend credence to the theories of Mafia involvement, although it certainly wouldn’t prove it.”

The man was initially turned sideways, offering a reasonably good view of his left profile. Then he looked toward the road, which offered a decent shot of the top three-quarters of his face. That was when the man lifted his weapon.

“That has to be a rifle,” Hammond said. “No doubt.”

The nose of the limousine inched into the right side of the frame, and Storm-Drain Man appeared to follow it. The rifle barrel was still being held at a slight angle, a nonshooting position. Then the storm drain disappeared behind the passing vehicle.

“Is there any way to go back and get a closer look at him?” Sheila asked.

“Exactly what I’m thinking.” Hammond returned to the
first frame that offered a clear view of the man
 
—the left profile
 
—and enlarged it. The image pixelated into a blur of meaningless blocks. “No, that’s no good.” He browsed further, found the spot where the man’s face was clearest
 
—the three-quarter shot just after he turned toward the limo
 
—and tried again. The result wasn’t much better. “Also no good.”

“Is there anything you can do to improve it?”

“Yes and no. Yes, it’s possible, but not with the software I have on the machine now. Like I said, this is what they use to make transfers of people’s home movies and stuff like that. It cleans them up to a degree, but it’s not meant for advanced work.”

“So what now?”

“Is there a wireless router in this house?”

Sheila laughed. “Uh, no. . . . My mom had little interest in computers. It was hard enough getting her to use a cell phone.”

“That’s too bad. I need to get a better image-enhancement program. There are several that will do the job, and I could’ve downloaded one if I had Internet access. Actually, hang on a second.”

With the help of AirPort Extreme’s search feature, he discovered that one of Sheila’s neighbors had an unprotected router. The signal was weak, however.

“I could probably get the program I need through this, but it would take a while and, by the look of the signal strength, probably cut out a few times.”

Sheila closed her eyes and sighed. “Sorry.”

“No, that’s okay. There’s another option
 
—we could go to the nearest Apple Store. There’s one about twenty miles away.”

“How do you know that?”

“I checked before I came.” He stood. “Care to come along for the ride?”

“Yeah, I could use the break.”

Hammond smiled. “I had a feeling.”

“Let me change, though. I’m not exactly dressed to go out. I’ve been cleaning out cabinets and closets all day. I don’t even
feel
clean.”

“All right. I’ll hang here and check out the film again.”

Hammond returned to the laptop after she left. He went through the file several times but couldn’t get an improved image of Storm-Drain Man, no matter what he tried. It occurred to him that he might want Noah to take a look at it at some point, and that meant posting it on the Internet. While there were security risks to this, they were, he estimated, infinitesimal. He had his own FTP site, password protected and with military-strength encryption. Plus, what were the odds that some hacker would be on the lookout for the Babushka Lady film at this moment?

He opened the Fetch program. Then, by carrying the laptop around the room, he found that the signal strength improved a little by the washer and dryer. He logged in to his storage site, created a new folder called “BLF”
 
—Babushka Lady Film
 
—and started the transfer. A progress box appeared, and he realized the upload was going to take some time. The file was huge. To keep himself occupied, he opened a browser and started going through sites associated with the assassination.

A short time later, he heard Sheila ask, “Everything going okay?” He turned to find her standing on the bottom step, now dressed in faded jeans and a dusty-purple scoop-neck T-shirt.

“Everything’s fine. Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be under the circumstances.”

“Okay, let’s hit the road.”

Birk’s employer didn’t react well to the news of Hammond’s arrival. While he said it confirmed his suspicions about Margaret Baker, it also meant getting his hands on the film would be considerably more complicated. He also said he knew of Hammond, his reputation
 
—he had recently heard a newscaster refer to him as a “seeker of truth and righter of wrongs”
 
—and the considerable resources at his disposal.

Birk had never heard the man use so much profanity.

“So what do I do?” Birk asked when the storm subsided.

His instructions were brief, explicit, and even by Birk’s standards, chilling.

THE APPLE STORE
was crowded, so Hammond wore glasses and a baseball cap. He found the necessary software and, handing Sheila a folded sheaf of hundreds, asked her to pay for it.

“So tell me about yourself,” he said in the rental car on the way back. “I know the last few days have been very hard on you. What do you do when you’re not discovering family heirlooms that change how we look at history?”

She laughed. “I own a few fitness centers in the Dearborn area of Michigan.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. I almost lost them a few years back when a national chain tried to muscle in on my territory.”

“And you fought them off?”

“I did.”

Hammond looked at her briefly, a look that said,
My opinion of you just went up a notch.
“That’s great
 
—good for you. You like running a business, then?”

“Well, it’s better than the job I had before that, working in a big corporation. I did that for seven agonizing years after college.”

“Not your cup of tea?”

“No, although I thought it was at first. I was so excited when I got it. High-profile organization, good salary, health benefits. It seemed like I was heading in the right direction. Then I got into the actual day-to-day aspects of it, and I was miserable by the end of the first year.”

“I’ve heard stories.”

“You sit there from dawn until dusk and spend maybe four hours on actual work. The rest is nonsense. Paperwork, meetings, office politics. Dealing with the bureaucracy is like arm-wrestling an octopus. My department spent so much time talking about work that it never actually did any. I remember one week when I was in meetings every hour of every day. Never even got near my desk. And at the end of all those discussions, nothing was different. Just a bunch of overpaid freeloaders trying to make it look like they were being productive.”

“Sounds like big business these days.”

“Everything that’s bad about the modern workplace could be found in abundance there.” She shook her head. “Another big ship sinking slowly, and no one on board cared. Their plan was to scuttle it on the way down, then jump to the next one.”

“Why did you stay?”

“Because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do with my life. The big important job that would turn you into a big important person. I didn’t even consider getting married or having children, and I love children. I have a cousin in Allen Park with three wonderful daughters, and I try to see them as often as I can. But I never had any of my own. I just poured myself into my career. I got the house I couldn’t really afford, the car I couldn’t really afford, the jewelry, the clothes, the shoes. I bought into the whole spend-now-and-pay-later
thing in the early 2000s. The new American dream. Next thing I knew, I was drowning in debt.” She sighed. “If you could see one of my old credit card bills, you’d have a heart attack. I still can’t believe how much money I blew through.”

“But you still managed to start a business?”

“Not right away. A few years into that first job, I began to realize how pointless it all was. I remember sitting in my living room late one night, unable to sleep, surrounded by all my expensive toys, and thinking,
I’m unhappier now than I’ve ever been.
I couldn’t stand the company, couldn’t stand most of my coworkers, couldn’t stand my neighbors . . . couldn’t stand my whole life.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It was horrible. So I just decided, then and there, that it was time for some big changes. The next day, I sat down and made a plan to get out. I began selling off all my junk, set a strict budget, and slowly crawled out of the financial hole I’d dug. I was nearly back in the black when I learned the local gym where I was a member was about to go bankrupt. It was potentially very profitable, but it was poorly managed. So I talked to a banker friend and got the money to buy the place. It was cheap, too, because the owner was in even more financial trouble than me. He was a drug addict.”

Hammond gave a disapproving snort. “Drugs
 
—don’t even get me started. One of the greatest evils of our society.”

“I agree completely. Anyway, within a year the business was doing great again, and a few years after that I was able to unlock my corporate cage, walk out, and open more locations.”

Hammond was smiling. “That’s an incredible story. You must be very proud of yourself.”

“The gyms were a good opportunity. I figured they’d be
a way to eliminate my remaining debt and build up some savings again. And I’m very nearly there
 
—almost all my debts paid off, including the initial loans for the business itself. But I’m not so sure I want to be running them ten years from now. It’s good money, but there’s nothing satisfying on a personal level. I’m not passionate about it.”

“Then what
are
you passionate about?”

“I don’t know. Something where you make a positive difference in the world, I guess. I volunteer at the homeless shelters around Detroit once in a while, but I’m not having any significant impact. They’d survive just fine if I stopped showing up. All I know for certain is that I did the it’s-all-about-me thing for years, and it left me feeling as hollow as a rotting log. Expensive home, expensive car, expensive jewelry . . .” She shook her head. “Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“Why do you say that?”

“A love of material things. Sad, right?”

“No. What’s sad is that people are programmed from a very early age to do what you did. You can’t go anywhere without seeing an advertisement of some kind. You can’t turn on the TV without being told you need ten things you really don’t. Phone calls from companies trying to sell you all sorts of junk, a thousand pounds of flyers stuffed into your mailbox. Frankly, I’m surprised you weren’t
more
in debt.”

“Tell me about it. I’ve definitely learned that money isn’t everything, that’s for sure. But look who I’m discussing this with
 
—a billionaire. What irony.”

“It’s not as ironic as you might think. Remember, my fortune was built by my father, not me. It’s useful
 
—don’t get me wrong. I couldn’t do what I do without it. But I don’t worship it. I’m not one of these sneering, arrogant types who lives by the motto ‘Being rich means never having to say
you’re sorry.’ I know people like that, and they make me sick to my stomach. It’s money, but that’s all it is.”

What he left out here was his ongoing conviction that his family would likely still be alive if they hadn’t had the so-called privilege of extreme wealth in the first place. Ordinary people took vacations in ordinary planes, not planes they owned and kept on their estates. Furthermore, Hammond doubted there would have been as much space between him and his father had the latter not been so hard-driven to accumulate such a vast fortune. But he wasn’t going to discuss any of this now, not only because he didn’t want to expose this part of his soul but also because he had come to understand that people who weren’t wealthy found it impossible to believe anyone could resent wealth as much as he did.

Moving back to a more comfortable topic, he said, “So if you’re not going to be tending to these fitness centers of yours forever, what’s your next big career move?”

“I’m just not sure. It’s funny
 
—when you’re young, you seem to be able to see the road ahead pretty clearly. You just kind of know what’s next. Now that I’m older and my grand plan has been scrambled, I don’t have that kind of vision anymore. No obvious career path, no burning ambitions, no significant relationships.”

Hammond felt the pull of hesitation here. He’d only known this woman for a few hours and wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate to delve into personal topics. He decided to play it lighthearted. “You aren’t in a relationship? And here you seem utterly charming.”

She laughed again, and he decided her initial apprehension toward him had abated somewhat. “Not that charming, apparently. I was in a serious relationship for more than two
years. Then, a few months ago, I caught him with someone else. One of my customers.”

“Wow. I’m very sorry.”

Staring out the window, she smiled. “What a blow to the ego that was. You really think you know a person, and then . . . I don’t mean to ramble on like this. I apologize.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, this can’t be making you feel very comfortable.”

“It’s no problem, really.
I’m
the one who should apologize for prying. I’m just trying to make small talk.”

“Yeah, well, long story short, I haven’t even thought about having another man in my life since then, and I’m in no rush, either. My heart’s still got too many bruises on it.”

“That’s a good attitude. You need to give yourself time to fully recover.”

“From that and from everything else going on lately. It seems I’m at something of a crossroads right now.”

“Except the intersection doesn’t go four ways
 
—it goes about a hundred, right?”

She thought about this for a moment, then said, “Yes, exactly. That’s a perfect way of putting it.”

“I’m a regular Ernest Hemingway.”

“Yeah, and you sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

Hammond felt his smile fade away to nothing. Then he said quickly, “Your mom was an amazing woman. I’ve been thinking about what it must have been like for her all those years, knowing about that film, knowing what was on it.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m guessing this has crossed your mind already.”

“My heart breaks whenever I think about what she went through. Keeping that secret to herself, living every day in fear.”

“I’ll bet. Oh, and by the way, I uploaded the digital safety copy of the film onto my online storage site. That’s what I was doing when you were getting changed before. I hope that’s all right.”

“That’s fine.”

“The first thing I need to do is make sure the file was fully uploaded.”

“Aren’t you concerned that it’s floating around in cyberspace?”

“No. The site has passwords, encryption, all that.” Hammond took out his phone and unfolded it. It was fairly large by contemporary standards, and there was no brand name printed anywhere on the case.

“Never saw a phone like that before,” Sheila said.

“It’s a satellite phone made by Hammond Communications. It’s an experimental model, so technically there’s no record of its existence.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“The company has a license to develop new technologies. They have to have that kind of freedom or they wouldn’t get anything done. Besides, the stuff they’re coming up with will be beneficial to everyone. For example, they’re putting together a GPS tracking system whereby ordinary cell phones can be located in an instant.”

“Isn’t there already a technology like that?”

“There is, but it has limitations. We’re trying to make significant improvements.”

“Some will consider it an invasion of privacy.”

“A phone can still be turned off, and I’m sure plenty of third-party hack services will come up with blocking software. Also, phones with advanced encryption and security features
 
—like, say, the one the president keeps in his jacket
pocket
 
—will be immune. And of course, you need to know the number of the phone you want to track in the first place. But think of the advantages. For example, parents will be able to locate their children at any time, and
some
criminals will be caught. We’re just about finished with the first version of the software, and the results thus far have been very promising.”

“Sounds cool.”

“It is.”

“So what’s next with my mom’s film?”

“I need to see if I can get a better look at Storm-Drain Man. That’s where the image-enhancement software comes in. I have no idea who the guy is, but maybe someone else will. I have a friend in the area who knows more about the assassination than I do, maybe more than anyone in the world. He should be able to offer some insight.”

“And let’s say you identify the guy. What happens then?”

“Then things could get a little dicey. I don’t think I need to tell you how sensitive a subject this is. Remember, for decades more than half the public has believed the assassination was a conspiracy and not the work of Oswald alone. When you were upstairs getting changed before, I did some brushing up on the assassination via the Internet. The Warren Commission’s report, which was the official government ruling on the killing released in 1964, concluded that Oswald was the so-called lone gunman. But in 1976, the House of Representatives formed the Select Committee on Assassinations for the purpose of further investigating the murders of both President Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Their findings on Kennedy were remarkable. They discovered, for example, that the FBI’s investigation of the assassination, upon which the Warren Report was largely
based, barely touched on the idea that more than one person was involved. They simply didn’t want to deal with
 
—or perhaps they were
instructed
not to deal with
 
—the notion of a conspiracy. Also, the CIA gave the commission minimal cooperation. In the committee’s mind, that increased suspicion of the CIA’s possible involvement. I’m not saying that’s conclusive, but it seems highly unusual. Finally, the Warren Commission was under pressure from both the public and many political leaders to issue
some
kind of conclusion, because the general population couldn’t deal with the idea of such a heinous crime going unsolved. An answer was needed, so the Warren Commission came up with one.”