“I’ve been looking for an apartment in this neighborhood. Will you be keeping this one?”
“No,” the younger one said. “He had somein-surance. Bout the only thing he did have. ’Cept for some medals in a box.” She sniffed. I tell you, it broke my heart a little to see how grief-stricken those two ladies were.
“He said you was a ghost,” the widow told me. “He said he could see right through you. Accourse he was as crazy as a shithouse mouse. Last three years, ever since he had his stroke and they put him on that peebag. Me n Ida’s goin back to Oklahoma.”
Try Mozelle,I thought.That’s where you’re supposed to go when you give up your apartment.
“What do you want?” the younger one asked. “We got to take him a suit on down to the funeary home.”
“I’d like the number of your landlord,” I said.
The widow’s eyes gleamed. “What’d it be worth to you, mister?”
“I’ll give it to you for free!” said the young woman on the second-floor balcony.
The bereaved daughter looked up and told her to shut her fucking mouth. That was the thing about Dallas. Derry, too.
Neighborly.
CHAPTER 19
1
George de Mohrenschildt made his grand entrance on the afternoon of September fifteenth, a dark and rainy Saturday. He was behind the wheel of a coffee-colored Cadillac right out of a Chuck Berry song. With him was a man I knew, George Bouhe, and one I didn’t—a skinny whip of a guy with a fuzz of white hair and the ramrod back of a fellow who’s spent a good deal of time in the military and is still happy about it. De Mohrenschildt went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. I dashed to get the distance mike.
When I came back with my gear, Bouhe had a folded-up playpen under his arm, and the military-looking guy had an armload of toys. De Mohrenschildt was empty-handed, and mounted the steps in front of the other two with his head up and his chest thrown out. He was tall and powerfully built. His graying hair was combed slantwise back from his broad forehead in a way that said—to me, at least—look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. For I am GEORGE.
I plugged in the tape recorder, put on the headphones, and tilted the mike-equipped bowl across the street.
Marina was out of sight. Lee was sitting on the couch, reading a thick paperback by the light of the lamp on the bureau. When he heard footsteps on the porch, he looked up with a frown and tossed his book on the coffee table.More goddam expats,he might have been thinking.
But he went to answer the knock. He held out his hand to the silver-haired stranger on his porch, but de Mohrenschildt surprised him—and me—by pulling Lee into his arms and bussing him on both cheeks. Then he held him back by the shoulders. His voice was deep and accented—German rather than Russian, I thought. “Let me look at a young man who has journeyed so far and come back with his ideals intact!” Then he pulled Lee into another hug. Oswald’s head just showed above the bigger man’s shoulder, and I saw something even more surprising: Lee Harvey Oswald was smiling.
2
Marina came out of the baby’s room with June in her arms. She exclaimed with pleasure when she saw Bouhe, and thanked him for the playpen and what she called, in her stilted English, the “child’s playings.” Bouhe introduced the skinny man as Lawrence Orlov—ColonelLawrence Orlov, if you please—and de Mohrenschildt as “a friend of the Russian community.”
Bouhe and Orlov went to work setting the playpen up in the middle of the floor. Marina stood with them, chatting in Russian. Like Bouhe, Orlov couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the young Russian mother. Marina was wearing a smock top and shorts showcasing legs that went up forever. Lee’s smile was gone. He was retreating into his usual gloom.
Only de Mohrenschildt wouldn’t let him. He spotted Lee’s paperback, sprang to the coffee table, and picked it up. “Atlas Shrugged?” Speaking just to Lee. Completely ignoring the others, who were admiring the new playpen. “Ayn Rand? What is a young revolutionary doing withthis?”
“Know your enemy,” Lee said, and when de Mohrenschildt burst into a hearty roar of laughter, Lee’s smile resurfaced.
“And what do you make of Miss Rand’s cri de coeur?” That struck a chord when I played the tape back. I listened to the commenttwice before it clicked: it was almost exactly the same phrase Mimi Corcoran had used when asking me aboutThe Catcher in the Rye.
“I think she’s swallowed the poison bait,” Oswald said. “Now she’s making money by selling it to other people.”
“Exactly, my friend. I’ve never heard it put better. There will come a day when the Rands of the world will answer for their crimes. Do you believe that?”
“I know it,” Lee said. He spoke matter-of-factly.
De Mohrenschildt patted the couch. “Sit by me. I want to hear of your adventures in the homeland.”
But first Bouhe and Orlov approached Lee and de Mohrenschildt. There was a lot of back and forth in Russian. Lee looked dubious, but when de Mohrenschildt said something to him, also in Russian, Lee nodded and spoke briefly to Marina. The way he flicked his hand at the door made it pretty clear:Go on, then, go.
De Mohrenschildt tossed his car keys to Bouhe, who fumbled them. De Mohrenschildt and Lee exchanged a look of shared amusement as Bouhe grubbed them off the dirty green carpet. Then they left, Marina carrying the baby in her arms, and drove off in de Mohrenschildt’s boat of a Cadillac.
“Now we have peace, my friend,” de Mohrenschildt said. “And the men will open their wallets, which is good, yes?”
