The Day Kennedy Was Shot (54 page)

In the first moments of Johnson's presidency, he did not feel strong enough to go alone. He needed these people. He was willing to bury his pride in the bottom of his pocket and tell them that he required their counsel, their guidance. In spite of his own considerable ego, Lyndon Johnson lacked the confidence of a John F. Kennedy. “When the going gets tough,” Kennedy used to say, “the tough get going.” Most of all, in the cold loneliness at the summit of power, Johnson needed a feeling of continuance of administration. And this is what the Kennedy clan would deny him.

As
Air Force One
began to surrender to the forces of gravity, the small group in the back of the plane began to plot ways and means of keeping the President of the United States out of the casket photos. The world would be watching, and the Kenne
dys did not want the Johnsons in their mourning pictures. At one point, when Major-General Ted Clifton went aft to ask a question, O'Donnell, sitting opposite the grieving lady, curled his lip and said: “Why don't you hurry back and serve your new boss?” It was less a question than a declaration of the honorable thing—that all must go down with the ship and the captain.
^*

The Secret Service suggested that the new President spend the night at the White House. There was lots of room without disturbing the Kennedy family. This was declined at once. Johnson was irritated by it. “We are going home to The Elms,” he said. “That's where we live. If you can protect us at the White House, by God you can protect us at home too.”

The long rays splashed red against the broken comb of downtown Dallas, and a timid westerly breeze swept the confetti of the parade against the curbs on Main Street. Lights went on at the burlesque house off Ackard, and homeward traffic bounded on the elevated highways. For Dallas, this was going to be a long night. The city, afflicted with a monumental ego, flinched. As Lieutenant Jack Revill had said: Big D died.

At the end of the maximum security alley, the last rays of sunlight splashed against the dirty opaque window. By glancing at it, Lee Harvey Oswald could detect the difference between daylight and dark but nothing else. He heard the clang of the security door and looked up to see jail guard Jim Poppelwell coming in. The guards on the chairs became alert. “All right,” Poppelwell said, “he can make his phone call.”

Oswald dropped down off the bunk. Poppelwell was turning a dime over in his hand. The cell door was opened, and the prisoner emerged in his shorts and socks. As Oswald was led out,
the Negro prisoner was awakened and told that he was being transferred to another wing. The three cells would be exclusive for Lee Harvey Oswald.

The two telephones in the glass booth were also exclusive. Guard Poppelwell placed his man inside and prepared to lock the door after handing the prisoner a dime. Oswald asked how he could phone New York with that. The guard shrugged. That was not his department. Oswald has thirteen dollars somewhere in this jail. Poppelwell explained that he had nothing to do with the matter except to follow orders—give Oswald a dime and permit him to make a phone call. It was a patent injustice to grant the right of a telephone and deny the prisoner the right to use his money to make it, but Oswald realized that a protest would be fruitless.

He deposited the dime and asked for long-distance information. The operator asked, “Where?” and he said: “New York.” He was told that he could deposit his dime and dial 212-555-1212. He did. When he was asked whom he wanted, the young man spent considerable time saying and spelling John Abt. He might have asked for the law firm of Freedman & Unger, at 320 Broadway, but he didn't know. Besides, it was close to 6
P.M.
in New York, and attorneys would be homeward bound with their briefcases.

The operator said she had a John J. Abt at 299 Broadway. He said that would do. The number was AC 2-4611. Oswald repeated it and hung up. Then he looked back at Poppelwell and asked him to open the door. He had forgotten the number. Could he have a piece of paper and a pencil? Jim Poppelwell considered the matter gravely. He could not think of a prison regulation against supplying a prisoner with a pencil and a bit of paper.

Oswald was locked in while the guard went for it. Poppelwell tore the corner from a telephone contact slip and handed it in with a pencil. The prisoner was locked in and the process
started again. This time he wrote “John J. Abt, 299 Broadway, New York” and, underneath: “212 AC 2-4611.” Then he redialed the long-distance operator and asked to place the call collect. In a moment, the operator was back with him. She wanted to know who was calling collect from Dallas, Texas. He told her “Lee Oswald.” It turned out almost as he must have divined; the call was refused.

Could he call again later? Poppelwell took him out of the booth and said he would ask Captain Fritz. Oswald said that he would call home and ask his wife to call Abt. On the third floor, reporters were asking police officers if Oswald had asked for a lawyer. “He's phoning one now,” they were told. None of the cops could recall the name of the lawyer, except that he was a New York man.

At Andrews, the drill team came to attention. The distinguished gentlemen of the United States, and the equally distinguished gentlemen of many foreign countries, were organized in disorganized knots on the concrete. Outside the fence, thousands of faces peered through the metal links, as a similar crowd had six hours ago in Dallas. The overhead lights in a big hangar tossed a pale carpet on the apron. Military officers in blue and in gold, bedecked with ribbons and fourragères, stood at ease, watching the television cameras being set up on wooden stands.

The company was impressive and strained. Conversation was whispered. Now and then a platoon of military in gleaming boots and steel hats would march out of the darkness into the light, the rows of feet lifting rhythmically and setting down hard on the strip, to come to a loud halt in the area of the lights. The White House helicopters, green bugs with pinwheel hats, sat on the edge of the night.

Someone said: “Here he comes.” Eyes lifted to the night sky. The word was passed. “Here he comes.” A youthful voice roared: “Ten-shun!” Fire trucks astride the runway turned their lights
on. The revolving beacon on top of the control tower snapped green. A small brown staff car took off with a burning of rubber. The word having been passed, all eyes looked in varied directions. To the west, a yellow star above the horizon was the only thing that moved.

Air Force One
was on its base leg. It could be seen, not heard. The small yellow light descended slowly. It moved toward the city of Washington. All aircraft aloft or on the strip at Washington International Airport remained in aeronautical limbo. The tower cleared them out with “V.I.P.” warnings, but the captains and the first officers, usually unconcerned, searched the skies from their flight decks looking for the last moment of John F. Kennedy's last flight. Some were in a holding pattern as far off as Friendship Airport at Baltimore.

The big plane was low coming over the Potomac basin. The Pratt and Whitney fans were down to a whisper. Under the silver wings passed the pale vision of the White House, the Capitol dome, scenes of triumph. The big plane made the final turn. Those waiting at Andrews Air Force Base could see nothing for a moment. Then the plane's star-bright wing lights came on, and the vision looked like a steady yellow candle standing in the sky. It remained there, seeming not to move, then the engines could be heard and the plane dropped down and down, louder and louder, over the fence and holding its rubber feet a foot or two over the blue-ribboned runway, then it touched and the engines gathered their breath for one final shriek of protest.

Air Force One
ran down the runway, the windows bright with lights, and came to a pause at the far end. A woman in the group of silent men dug into her purse for a kerchief. She caught her husband's stern glance and snapped it shut. The long night had begun.

Darkness was stronger than light. There was a faint roar to the city, a sound which seemed to emanate from within the ear. The pigeons were in repose on the roof. Their claws made scratching polyphonics, mixed with cooing and the reshuffling of feathers as jealous males met. They could hear the contrapuntal click of the Hertz clock snapping the minutes like matchsticks. There were whistles, too, but these were irregular sounds from the street. In front of the Texas School Book Depository, young men in metal helmets addressed themselves to pedestrians with whistles.

The confluence of Elm, Main, and Commerce at Dealey Plaza made a traffic sink. It was slow this evening. Dallas was fascinated by it. Some people jumped on the macadam and said, “This is where he was shot.” Students romped on the grass. Elders looked up at the Depository windows and saw the lights wink off one at a time. A police car parked on the grass squawked the tinny dialogue of assassination.

Deputy Chief N. T. Fisher, was leaving Love Field for police headquarters. It had been a bad, bad day. “Has there been any developments that you can tell me on the suspect that shot the officer,” he asked the dispatcher. “Was there any connections with the shooting of the President?” “At this time,” the dispatcher said, “it is my understanding that he is the same person. He is in custody.” Fisher said: “Ten four. Thank you.” “That's not official,” the dispatcher said. “That's just the rumor up here. . . .” The dispatcher returned in a moment. “Four . . . hold the presidential cars at the location. 508 is en route to print them.” Fisher
was sure that there would be no fingerprinting of the presidential cars. “As far as I know,” he said, “these cars were loaded on an Army transport. I don't know whether they are still there or not. I'll check.” It didn't take long. “For your information,” Fisher said, “they have been loaded and left on the other transport.”

A postal employee at the terminal annex was sorting mail, scanning and skipping it into bins. He kept muttering, “Oswald” to himself. He had seen the name or had heard it. “Oswald.” It wasn't common. The envelopes flicked into air and managed to drop into the proper bins. He kept thinking about the name and the shocking murder and suddenly, without trying, he remembered.

He had rented a post office box to a man named Oswald. That was where he had heard the name. He got the list of owners of boxes. The card was found. Three weeks ago a man who had called himself Lee H. Oswald had rented Box 6225. The business of the applicant, as signed on the back of the card, was “Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Chairman.” The post office clerk took the card to his supervisor, who called the postmaster. They examined 6225. There wasn't much in it, but what there was was suspicious: a Russian magazine addressed to Lee H. Oswald.

No one seemed to know who had charge of the assassination investigation, so the postmaster called the Secret Service, the Dallas police, the FBI, and the sheriff. Then they posted an unobtrusive guard over 6225 to see if an accomplice might come in and claim the magazine. The clerk returned to sorting letters, satisfied that he had a pretty good memory.

Seth Kantor had a superior memory. He was using it under adverse circumstances while trying to find a place on the third floor to stand still. Of the out-of-town reporters, Mr. Kantor was the one who knew Dallas, Fort Worth, and Lee Harvey Oswald. Well, not precisely. He had not met Oswald, but he knew him. Kantor had some of the jadedness of the effete big-time
reporter, but it wasn't so long ago that he had been a young and energetic innocent on the
Fort Worth Press.

He had read about a United States marine who had defected to Russia. One day—was it in 1960?—the boy's mother had come to the
Fort Worth Press.
The paper had agreed to pay for a phone call to her son in Moscow. Kent Biffle had arranged a three-way hookup between the son, the mother in her apartment, and himself at the city desk of the
Fort Worth Press.
Everyone had been disappointed. Biffle had trouble getting the overseas operator in New York. Then he had to go on to Europe and from there to Moscow. Operators were cutting in and out of the line, and the minutes dissolved into hours.

Seth Kantor had watched Biffle from the other side of the city desk. When the call had finally gone through, the
Press
operator rang Mrs. Oswald at home, and she picked up the phone and gushed her love at her wayward boy and told him how nice the
Fort Worth Press
people had been to arrange the three-way call. Oswald hung up. He wasted no time telling his mother that he loved her, or missed her, or would write to her. She had been willing to forget that he had obtained an early discharge from the Marine Corps as a “hardship” case because his mother was ill and he was her sole support. He had come home and left at once for Russia without telling her anything. In truth, the only contact he wanted with his mother was to remind her that she owed him some money.

As Kantor recalled, the call ended abruptly. As he leaned against a partition in the busy third-floor corridor, looking at the anxiety-swept faces of his confreres, he remembered this phone call. The reporter had gone on to a better position, and he had picked up a newspaper a year ago which stated that Lee Harvey Oswald was due home at Fort Worth with a Russian bride. Kantor worked in Washington. He had clipped that story and made a note that if Lee Harvy Oswald ever came to Washington Mr. Kantor would try to interview him.

Today the reporter had been part of the motorcade in his own Fort Worth and Dallas. It had been exciting, almost emotional seeing old friends and a best man at one's wedding at a crossroads. It was not a time, considering the familiar faces and streets, the places where a man had once found stories worth space in a newspaper, to think of a defector who had been home over a year. And now Lee Harvey Oswald was once more the story, a bigger and more catastrophic one than anyone might dream. For the first time, among the craning heads, the lights and the shouts, Seth Kantor saw the sullen face, the bruised eyes, the manacled wrists, and he wondered what warped mechanism ticked in that head.