Of course I did, but if I had it, I would eventually give in to temptation and call. Something told me that would be a mistake.
“Just the address will be fine.”
I wrote her a letter as soon as I hung up, hating the stilted, artificially chatty tone but not knowing how to get past it. The goddam broom was still between us. And what if she met some high-rolling sugar daddy out there and forgot all about me? Wasn’t it possible? She’d certainly know how to give him a good time in bed; she had been a fast learner and was as agile there as she was on the dance floor. That was the jealous-bone again, and I finished the letter in a rush, knowing I probably sounded plaintive and not caring. Anything to tear through the artificiality and say something honest.
I miss you, and I’m sorry as hell for the way we left things. I just don’t know how to make it better now. I have a job to do, and it won’t be done until next spring. Maybe not even then, but I think it will be. I hope it will be. Please don’t forget me. I love you, Sadie.
I signed it George, which seemed to cancel out any poor honesty I’d managed. Beneath it I addedJust in case you want to call,and my new telephone number. Then I walked down to the Benbrook Library and posted the letter into the big blue mailbox out front. For the time being it was the best I could do.
2
There were three pictures clipped into Al’s notebook, printed off various computer sites. One was of George de Mohrenschildt, wearing a banker-gray suit with a white hankie in the breast pocket. His hair was combed away from his brow and neatly parted in the accepted executive style of the time. The smile that creased his thickish lips reminded me of Baby Bear’s bed: not too hard, not too soft, just right. There was no trace of the authentic crazy I would soon observe ripping his shirt open on the porch of 2703 Mercedes Street. Or maybe therewasa trace. Something in the dark eyes. An arrogance. A touch of the old fuck-you.
The second picture was of the infamous shooter’s nest, constructed of book cartons, on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
The third was of Oswald, dressed in black, holding his mail-order rifle in one hand and a couple of leftist magazines in the other. The revolver he would use to kill Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit during his fucked-up getaway—unless I stopped him—was tucked in Ozzie’s belt. This picture would be taken by Marina less than two weeks before the attempt on General Walker’s life. The location was the enclosed side yard of a two-apartment building at 214 West Neely Street in Dallas.
While I marked time waiting for the Oswalds to move into the shack across the street from mine in Fort Worth, I visited 214 West Neely often. Dallas most assuredly sucked the big one, as my 2011 students were wont to say, but West Neely was in a slightly better neighborhood than Mercedes Street. It stank, ofcourse—in 1962, most of central Texas smells like a malfunctioning refinery—but the odors of shit and sewage were absent. The street was crumbling but paved. And there were no chickens.
A young couple with three children currently lived upstairs at 214. After they moved out, the Oswalds would move in. It was the downstairs apartment that concerned me, because when Lee, Marina, and June moved in above, I wanted to be below.
In July of ’62, the ground-floor apartment was occupied by two women and a man. The women were fat, slow-moving, and partial to wrinkled sleeveless dresses. One was in her sixties and walked with a pronounced limp. The other was in her late thirties or early forties. The facial resemblance pegged them as mother and daughter. The man was skeletal and wheelchair-bound. His hair was a thin white spray. A bag of cloudy pee attached to a fat catheter tube sat in his lap. He smoked constantly, tapping into an ashtray clamped to one of the wheelchair armrests. That summer I always saw him dressed in the same clothes: red satin basketball shorts that showed his wasted thighs almost to the crotch, a strap-style tee-shirt nearly as yellow as the urine in his catheter tube, sneakers held together by duct tape, and a large black cowboy hat with what appeared to be a snakeskin band. On the front of the hat were crossed cavalry swords. Either his wife or his daughter would push him out onto the lawn, where he would sit slumped beneath a tree, still as a statue. I began to lift my hand to him as I cruised slowly by, but he never raised his own in turn, although he came to recognize my car. Maybe he was afraid to return my wave. Maybe he thought he was being evaluated by the Angel of Death, who made his rounds in Dallas behind the wheel of an aging Ford convertible instead of on a black horse. In a way, I suppose that’s what I was.
This trio looked like they’d been in residence awhile. Were they still going to be in residence next year, when I needed the place? I didn’t know. Al’s notes said nothing about them. For the time being, all I could do was watch and wait.
I picked up my new piece of equipment, which Silent Mike had crafted himself. I waited for my telephone to ring. Three times itdid, and I leaped for it each time, hoping. Twice it was Miz Ellie, calling to chat. Once it was Deke, inviting me to dinner, an invitation I accepted gratefully.
Sadie didn’t call.
3
On the third of August, a ’58 Bel Air sedan pulled into 2703’s excuse for a driveway. It was followed by a gleaming Chrysler. The Oswald brothers got out of the Bel Air and stood side by side, not talking.
I reached through the drapes long enough to run up my front window, letting in the street noise and a lackluster puff of hot, humid air. Then I ran for the bedroom and brought my new piece of equipment out from under the bed. Silent Mike had cut a hole in the bottom of a Tupperware bowl and taped the omnidirectional mike—which he assured me was top-of-the-line—into it, so it stuck up like a finger. I attached the microphone leads to the connecting points on the back of the tape recorder. There was a plug-in for headphones, which my electronics pal had also claimed were top-of-the-line.
I peered out and saw the Oswalds talking to the guy from the Chrysler. He was wearing a Stetson, a rancher’s tie, and gaudy stitched boots. Better dressed than my landlord, but of the same tribe. I didn’t have to hear the conversation; the man’s gestures were textbook.I know it ain’t much, but then, you ain’tgotmuch. Do you, podna?It had to be a hard scripture for a world traveler like Lee, who believed he was destined for fame, if not necessarily fortune.
There was an electrical socket in the baseboard. I plugged in the tape recorder, hoping I wouldn’t give myself a shock or blow a fuse. The tape recorder’s little red light went on. I donned the earphones and slipped the Tupperware bowl into the gap between the curtains. If they looked over here they’d be squinting into the sun, and thanks to the shadow cast by the eave above the window,they would see either nothing or an unremarkable white blur that might be anything. I reminded myself to cover the bowl with black friction tape, nevertheless. Always safe, never sorry.
And in any case, I could hear nothing.
Even the street sounds had become muffled.
Oh yeah, this is great,I thought.This is just fucking brilliant. Thanks a pantload, Silent Mi—
Then I noticed the VOL control on the tape recorder was sitting at zero. I twisted it all the way to the+mark, and wasblastedby voices. I tore the earphones off my head with a curse, turned the VOL knob to the halfway point, and tried again. The result was remarkable. Like binoculars for the ears.
“Sixty a month strikes me as a little bit steep, sir,” Lee Oswald was saying (considering the Templetons had been paying ten dollars a month less, it struck me that way, too). His voice was respectful, tinged by just a trace of Southern accent. “If we could agree on fifty-five…”
“I can respect a man who wants to dicker, but don’t even bother trine,” Snakeskin Boots said. He rocked back and forth on his stacked heels like a man who’s anxious to be gone. “I gotta git what I gotta git. If I don’t git it from you, I’m goan git it from someone else.”
Lee and Robert glanced at each other.
“Might as well go in and have a look around,” Lee said.
“This a good place on a fam’ly street,” Snakeskin Boots said. “Y’all want to watch out for that first porch step, though, it needs a smidge of carpenterin. I got s’many of these places, and people is s’hard on them. That last bunch, law.”
Watch it, asshole,I thought.That’s Ivy’s people you’re talking about.
