When the Past Came Calling

by Larry S. Kaplan

  After making my way slowly onto the plane with the other passengers, I stowed my carry-on and dodged into the nearest restroom. Once I was settled into my seat, I struggled to open the package. It was sealed too well—seemingly with superglue. I couldn’t open it at the seams, so I had to rip apart the heavy-duty paper to create enough of an opening to retrieve the contents. It was a book—apparently, a journal or diary. The cover was fashioned from plain brown leather, and it lacked a title or any other identifying words. But when I turned to the first page, I saw written there, BENNY’S MANIFESTO.

  Chapter 26

  May 9, 1989

  I had planned to spend my time during the flight to New York rereading the law textbook Conrad had given me. But once the plane was safely at cruise altitude, there was no way I could resist reading Benny’s journal first. Beneath the title, he’d written “Part 1,” and as I flipped through the pages, I noticed it was further divided into chapters—and included long passages of dialogue. Leave it to Benny to organize his manifesto into that kind of detail. Clearly, he was still the same obsessive-compulsive eccentric I’d known since childhood.

  The manifesto began with a letter to me in Benny’s distinctive handwriting, instantly recognizable from the almost-daily letters he would send me from Camp Ojibwa, the summer camp he attended when we were in junior high.

  Dear David,

  You are the one person left, other than my mother, who doesn’t think I’m crazy. And frankly, I think she has her doubts. (Maybe you do, too?) In any event, I think you will give me the benefit of the doubt, so I am sending this to you. You are really the only person I can trust.

  I have known for a while that they have been looking for me. I thought I was safe, but then three nights ago, during the performance of Oliver! at Lincoln Hall, I heard the doors into the auditorium open shortly after the show began. My ears have become highly attuned to things like that. A few people in the back rows uttered some “shushes” because of the disturbance. I decided to take a peek from above the backdrop that was in use at the time. From where I was stationed, and given the pitch darkness backstage, no one in the audience could possibly see me.

  I needed to climb up some rigging in order to get above the backdrop. I did so just in time to see a man and woman take a couple of empty seats near the front of the stage, since this production of Oliver! hasn’t exactly been packing them in.

  I know you think I’m a bit paranoid, but sometimes a bit of paranoia can be a good thing. It caused me to remain on my perch and study the two people who entered. They appeared to be paying no attention to the show taking place on stage. Instead, they were looking in all directions around the auditorium…as if they were casing the joint. After about ten minutes of this, I saw the man tap the woman on her arm and point directly to where I was posted above the backdrop. There was no way he could have seen me—unless he had night goggles on, which he didn’t. But then I started to think: what if they were wearing night contact lenses? Maybe they were wearing something like that so they could see me?

  Anyway, after the two of them conferred with each other, they stood up as if they were going to leave. She was a very attractive blonde. And he—well, he was extremely tall and thin. In any case, I didn’t like the looks of either of them, so I decided it was time for me to leave. As in immediately. I feared they were onto my location backstage and would come back there looking for me.

  I’ve always had a contingency plan in case my backstage refuge was ever discovered. I didn’t get a chance to tell you about it, David, because you ran off, screaming at me, when I gave you Lena’s letter. I don’t blame you for getting so mad, I really don’t. But you were so angry, I figured you might never try to make contact with me again.

  So I decided I needed to write everything down—everything I have discovered about the Kennedy assassination, so someone will be able to tell the story in the event they successfully track me down.

  I know that no one will believe a word of this if it comes from me. I have already been branded a kook. But you, David, you have people’s respect. They will believe you. Please give me the benefit of the doubt on this, for old time’s sake, if nothing else, and at least read what I have to say. If you are not persuaded, then just burn this manifesto. In fact, burn it regardless.

  I’m sorry I needed to go through your uncle Bert to get to you. As you know, I don’t really know him. But growing up, I remember you told me he was an Orthodox Jew. The people who I am relying on now for my safety and my sanity are also Orthodox Jews. When I told them your uncle’s name, they were able to find his synagogue and the name of his rabbi for me. I guess there is a communications network among these extremely religious Jews that makes such things possible. So David, please read what I have written. Then you can decide what to do next.

  —Benny

  CHAPTER 27

  May 9, 1989

  I settled myself more comfortably in my seat and inhaled deeply to quell some of the anxiety I was feeling as I started reading the first page of Benny’s manifesto. My focus was so intense that I soon became oblivious to my surroundings.

  Chapter 1

  As you know, I was always rather fascinated with President Kennedy’s assassination. Remember on the Sunday after he was killed—when you and I were at Sunday school at Temple Beth El—just as we were leaving to go home, someone came into the temple shouting that Lee Harvey Oswald had just been murdered? We were only thirteen, but then and there I knew that Kennedy’s killing must have involved a whole bunch of people. Why in the world would a Jew like Jack Ruby, who ran a strip club, as we later learned, be willing to throw his whole life away just to kill Kennedy’s killer? It made no sense. It made no sense to anyone, but I guess the nonsense of it bothered me more than most.

  It didn’t seem to bother you too much, David, and that’s why I never really talked a lot about it with you. No one in eighth grade really seemed to let it affect them like it affected me. So I just kept my feelings inside. I had a few discussions with my dad about it. He was confident the government would solve the problem, and when the Warren Commission concluded that there was a lone shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, and he was it—well, that was good enough for my dad.

  Don’t get me wrong. I loved my father. Loved him more than I ever realized. When he died—when we were sixteen—I really wasn’t able to handle it. Especially when I learned that he committed suicide. But you and I talked about that already when you came to see me backstage a few weeks ago.

  I don’t know if it’s fair to blame my fuck-ups in college on my dad’s death, but it probably had something to do with them. But another part of my problem was the whole Kennedy assassination thing. Maybe it was a combination of losing my father and feeling like I was the only person in the world who knew Kennedy’s real killers had gotten away with murder. Anyway, whatever the reason, it made focusing on college-level classes—especially at a school like the University of Wisconsin—impossible. So I started dropping classes I was struggling in midway through the term to avoid getting a failing grade. In no time, I was so far behind in any kind of graduation timetable that I decided to switch schools, find someplace easier.

  So I transferred to College of Lake County, a community college. But once I’d gotten in the habit of dropping classes whenever I needed to avoid a failing grade, the pattern just continued, even at an easier school. But my mom couldn’t afford to keep me in school for the rest of my life, so I started to intersperse my classes with work—very low-level work—like doing part-time shit in warehouses, delivering pizza, stuff like that.

  I was too embarrassed about what I was doing to keep in touch with anybody. And anyway, David, I was still mad at you about the whole Timekeepers thing. Even if I’d become a big success, I don’t know that I would have tried to make contact with you.

  Anyway, soon the years started to just drift away. And in 1977, when I was twenty-seven, and most of the kids I went to high school with had already finished college and grad school
and had good jobs, I was still loads of credits short of getting even an associate’s degree. By now I’d worked my way south where part-time work was easier to find, and where I was less likely to run into anyone I knew.

  I was doing warehouse work in Amarillo, Texas, when I heard about this new school that had just opened outside Dallas that was supposedly tailor-made for students who had my kinds of issues. It was another community college—North Lake College. I decided to give it a try.

  Chapter 2

  I was probably the oldest guy on the North Lake College campus. But I always looked ridiculously young for my age, so I sort of fit in. I lived in a nearby apartment complex that was basically student housing. One day I was sitting in the student lounge reading Profiles in Courage for a history class—you know, it’s the book Kennedy wrote about eight notably courageous US senators—and this kid I didn’t know, who was studying just across from me, asked if I was interested in John F. Kennedy. I said that I was—and that was that.

  One day, after we became a little better acquainted, Vlad—Vladimir was his name—tells me that his dad actually met Lee Harvey Oswald between the time he was arrested and the time Jack Ruby killed him. I said, “No way! How could that be?”

  Then he tells me that his dad was Russian-born, and used to be a translator for a private investigator who helped out lawyers in divorce cases involving Russians who’d struck it rich in Dallas and wanted “a little change in scenery.” Vlad goes on to say that the day after Kennedy was killed, someone with the Dallas police department needed someone who spoke Russian so they could ask Lee Harvey Oswald some questions.

  “Why would they need to talk to him in Russian?” I interrupted him at this point, convinced he was bullshitting me. I had watched the videos of Oswald after he was arrested. He spoke perfect English, even though we came to learn he had lived in Russia for a time.

  “They wouldn’t tell my father, at first,” Vlad replied. “Anyway, it was one of the lawyers my dad did work for who got him involved. I guess he knew some of the cops and heard they were looking for someone who spoke Russian, so he suggested my father.”

  I still figured Vlad was bullshitting me, but I decided to play along and ask just enough questions to the point where he would realize I was onto him.

  “Did they eventually tell your dad why they wanted him to speak to Oswald in Russian?” I asked.

  “Yeah. They said they needed to compare Oswald’s Russian to this voice on a tape they had.”

  “The voice on the tape was a Russian voice?”

  “Yeah. It was someone speaking in Russian. They wanted my dad to have a conversation with Oswald in Russian, and then listen to the voice on the tape to determine if it was Oswald’s.”

  “And?”

  “And he concluded that it wasn’t. He told them Oswald’s Russian was much better than the guy’s on the tape. Anyway, that was the end of it. The next day Oswald was dead.”

  Chapter 3

  I must admit, Vlad’s story sounded very intriguing, but I still had my doubts. Over time, it’s a natural thing for people to imagine they participated in some big event in history even though they didn’t. I once heard that over one hundred thousand people claimed to be in Wrigley Field the day Babe Ruth pointed to the outfield before he hit a home run in the 1932 World Series. Yet Wrigley Field only holds about forty thousand people. Some of those folks probably really believed they were there—but maybe they went the week before or the week after; yet over time, their imaginations just willed them to be a part of something historic.

  The friendship between Vlad and me continued for several months until one day he invited me over to dinner at his house with him and his dad. His mother had passed away several years before, so dinner was just the three of us. His father was older than I expected. And he was obviously Russian—with a name like Sergei Bolitnokov, it’s hard to be more Russian than that. After dinner, we sat around the family room to watch TV and talk. I wanted to ask him about the story Vlad told me, but I was embarrassed to bring it up. But Vlad did it for me.

  “Dad,” he began, once we were all comfortably ensconced on the couch, “I told Benny how you met Lee Harvey Oswald the day before he was killed. He was pretty impressed—right, Benny?”

  He caught me off guard. “Right,” I said somewhat hesitantly, worried that his father would be embarrassed if he’d made up the story just to impress his son or if perchance it was true, angry that Vlad had shared it with me.

  “Please, Vladimir, it was not such a big deal. You shouldn’t brag about your father.”

  “So, it’s true?” I exclaimed. “You did actually meet Oswald.”

  “For just a little while,” he said, clearly trying to diminish the importance of the incident in my eyes. “Now, it’s forgotten—a footnote in your history.”

  “Vlad said they wanted you to speak Russian with him so they could compare his voice to a tape,” I said, emboldened now that Mr. Bolitnokov seemed willing to talk about his experience.

  “Yes, the FBI office in Dallas had been given a copy of the tape of a call made to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. Apparently, Oswald had gone down there for a few days—in late September, early October, 1963. About seven weeks before the assassination.”

  “And he called the Soviet Embassy while he was down there?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s just it. You see—at least as it was told to me—he went to Mexico City to get a visa so he could travel to Cuba. From there, supposedly, he planned to go to the Soviet Union. He couldn’t get that visa here in the United States.”

  “And did he call the embassy to do that?”

  “Your friend asks a lot of questions, Vladimir. But that’s OK. Anyway, he didn’t need to call the embassy for help in getting from Cuba to the Soviet Union, since that could have been handled by the Soviet Embassy in Cuba. But someone called the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City at the same time Oswald was down there. And this someone identified himself as Oswald. And he spoke in Russian.”

  “But it wasn’t him?”

  “Well, that’s what the FBI wanted to find out. I listened to the tape, and then I had my little conversation with Oswald in Russian. And I came to my conclusion.”

  “Which was?”

  “Which was that there was no way it was the same voice. The person on the tape spoke Russian very poorly, like someone who might have left Russia decades before and hadn’t spoken it in a while. Oswald, on the other hand, spoke Russian very well, which was amazing, really, considering that he didn’t live there that long.”

  “What did the guy on the tape say?” I asked.

  “Just that he would like to visit the embassy, and when they refused, he dropped the name of some Russian who worked there who was a friend of his. But still they refused him.”

  “The Russians refused him?”

  “Yes,” Bolitnokov affirmed.

  “But why—if Oswald didn’t have the necessary influence—would someone want to impersonate him to gain access to the embassy?”

  “That, my friend Benny, is way beyond my pay grade. I am merely a translator.”

  “So, you’re saying that someone knew Oswald was in Mexico City and called the Soviet Embassy pretending to be him.”

  “I think we can agree on that much, Benny. But any significance beyond that—well, it’s lost on me.”

  “But why haven’t I heard about this before? I read the Warren Commission Report cover to cover. There is nothing in there about a tape of a call to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City by someone impersonating Oswald.”

  “Of course it wouldn’t be in there,” Mr. Bolitnokov responded. “That’s an easy one. I found out from my lawyer friend’s contacts on the police force that the Russians weren’t supposed to know we had their embassy phone line tapped. If that information was ever made public, imagine the diplomatic furor it would cause.”

  I could imagine it. It would have been pretty embarrassing at the least, if not something worse. “Did the police sa
ve the tape?” I asked.

  “No. They had strict instructions from the FBI to destroy it in order to avoid the possibility of any backlash from the Soviets.”

  Chapter 4

  There was something about Mr. Bolitnokov’s story that bothered me, David, bothered me a lot more than it bothered him. It was this: there were only two reasons to impersonate someone as a way of getting into the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City.

  One reason was if you thought the guy you were impersonating could open doors for you that you couldn’t open yourself. But that obviously wasn’t the reason. Oswald’s name apparently meant nothing to the people at the Soviet Embassy, and it didn’t open any doors.

  The second reason is to create a record that the person did what you impersonated him doing. In other words, someone wanted a record of Lee Harvey Oswald’s phone call to the Soviet Embassy while he was in Mexico City—even though he wasn’t the one who made the call. Now, why would anyone want to create that kind of record? There’s just one answer: someone wanted it to appear that Oswald and the Russians were in cahoots about something—when they really weren’t. Now, who would have a motive to do that? It’s obvious, David—the people who actually killed Kennedy.

  And this means they knew—seven weeks before Oswald pulled the trigger—that he was going to assassinate Kennedy. Otherwise, why create this elaborate charade using Oswald’s name at a time when no one knew who he was?

  It’s so that when the shit hits the fan and Kennedy is assassinated, the trail will lead to the Russians.

  Here’s another thing I figured out, David. Whoever was behind the call to the Soviet Embassy had to know their phone line was tapped. They knew there would be a tape. And they knew this tape would implicate the Russians as having pulled Oswald’s strings rather than themselves. But when Bolitnokov was proof positive that Oswald’s Russian didn’t match the Russian on the tape, they realized they’d fucked up in who they chose to impersonate Oswald. They probably assumed Oswald’s Russian wasn’t that good based on how briefly he’d lived in the Soviet Union, so they found someone—they thought—who spoke Russian just as poorly.