When the Past Came Calling

by Larry S. Kaplan

  Conrad backed into the living room, continuing to point the gun at us as he beckoned with his other hand to follow him. When he came to the desk, he told us to stay where we were and he started leafing through some of the books.

  Since he needed to use both hands to flip through the pages, he laid his gun down nearby. I was mulling over what my chances were of grabbing it while he was otherwise occupied. But what was I thinking? He was CIA. He would have his gun back in his hand and a bullet in my head before I even took two steps.

  “I had to come back here, David, because before I killed him, Rabbi Salinas told me where to find Benny—but he sent me on a wild goose chase to some youth hostel on the other side of fucking Mexico City. There was no Benny there. And then it hit me. What Benny said in his manifesto. About the red-letter day and locusts. To look in the margin. I’m not much of a biblical scholar, but I know enough—”

  Just then, the front door opened wide. “Get your hands up!” I heard a familiar voice say.

  When I looked over to see who it was, I saw a man of short stature with a yarmulke clipped to his hair. He was holding a gun trained directly on Tristan Conrad. It was my uncle Bert!

  “Really?” said Conrad, responding to the command. “I think you’re a bit out of your league—don’t you, Bert? Why don’t you do the wise thing and get out of here? I’ll even let you take your nephew and this young lady with you. With no unpleasant repercussions.”

  My uncle appeared to be thinking over Conrad’s offer. Then, with split-second timing, Conrad grabbed his gun and a shot exploded. I turned to see if he had gotten my uncle. But my uncle was still standing. I turned back and saw that it was Conrad who had been hit, right between the eyes, by my uncle Bert’s single shot.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve used one of these,” Uncle Bert remarked, visibly shaken but resolute, looking at the firearm in his hand. “Not since the war.”

  “Uncle Bert, what are you doing here?” I exclaimed, overcome with joy and relief by the outcome of the shooting.

  “When you didn’t come home from New York, David, I became concerned. I thought it might have had something to do with the package I delivered to you. My rabbi knew the source of the package was Rabbi Salinas. He told me where I could find him.”

  I was eternally grateful to my uncle for being such a worrywart. But now we had to focus on finding Benny.

  “Now that Rabbi Salinas is dead,” I pointed out, “we have no clue as to how to find Benny.”

  “That’s not true, David. You heard what Conrad said—about the red-letter day and locusts, right?”

  “Yes, but I thought that was just another one of Benny’s crazy ramblings.”

  “Not so crazy as you might think. What was Benny’s red-letter day?”

  “I don’t know. His birthday?”

  “That wouldn’t qualify as a red-letter day. Was he consumed by some event? An event whose date is well known?”

  “Probably the day Kennedy was killed.”

  “Well, that would certainly be a red-letter day for a lot of people. And what day was that?”

  “November 22.”

  “Let’s take a look over here.” My uncle motioned as he walked toward the rabbi’s desk and the Hebrew Bible Conrad had been looking at.

  “November is the eleventh month, so Benny’s red-letter day would be eleven twenty-two.” My uncle thumbed through the Tanakh’s worn pages until he found the one he was looking for.

  “Here is what it says in Leviticus 11:22: ‘Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind…’Benny was providing a clue to where to find him. Look, David, in the margin by verse 22. There’s some writing there. Can you make it out?”

  I could. It was unmistakably Benny’s handwriting. It said: “Teatro Judío Nacional.”

  “That’s the National Jewish Theater, here in Polanco,” Anita interjected. “Why would your friend Benny be hiding there?”

  “It’s a long story, Anita,” I replied. “But believe me, it makes all the sense in the world. Do you know where it is?”

  “Sure. It’s less than a mile from here.”

  “Can you take us there?”

  “Of course, but what about…?”

  “We will call the police, of course,” my uncle said. “But since they might detain us here for a while for questioning, I think it’s more important to make sure Benny is OK first.”

  Anita led us on the fifteen-minute walk to the theater. As we approached it and I could make out the words on the marquee, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony.

  “Oliver!” I blurted.

  “Why not?” Anita said. “There is a Jewish aspect to it. Everyone knows that Fagin was supposed to be a Jew.”

  “Is there a back entrance?” I asked. “One that might be used for bringing in the sets and the equipment?”

  “I think so,” she replied. “It’s behind the theater, I believe—in the alley.”

  We walked around to the back, and I knocked on the door with my fist: long, short, short, long, long. A few moments later, the door opened. It was Benny.

  “What took you so long?” he asked in his high-pitched voice, gesticulating excitedly with his arms like he was conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

  When I left Omsk for Mexico City, I had promised Lena I would return to her, not someday but as soon as I found Benny and was certain he was safe. I tried to convince him to come back to Omsk with me because he would find sanctuary there and be protected from any of Conrad’s cohorts who might still be out to silence him.

  But Benny had other plans. When he learned that Conrad or his people were responsible for his mother’s death, Benny decided there was no reason for him to return to the United States. Instead he decided to remain in the Polanco district of Mexico City and write a book on the Kennedy assassination that would incorporate everything he’d learned through all the years of his investigation, including the key content of his manifesto. When I pointed out to him that the idea was at least unwise, if not positively dangerous, he refused to listen.

  As he explained it, the only person he would implicate who could cause him any harm was Conrad—and he was no longer a threat. Kostay had no problem with his role being revealed, and neither did Ivan Brodsky, since in September of 1963 they had no idea that their participation in the phone call to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City would ultimately be used in the plot to kill Kennedy. As to the Texas oilmen, Benny said he was prepared to take his chances. He wasn’t in a position to reveal the actual names of any of them, so in his eyes, they would have no reason to expose themselves by coming after him. And what would be the point after the book was published?

  I think Benny took a shine to Anita Alvarez, which may have played a part in his decision to remain in Mexico City. But I know that after Anita learned about the chain of the events that ultimately led to the murder of Rabbi Salinas, she insisted on working with Benny on his book and helping him to get the truth published.

  My uncle Bert decided to give me an unlimited leave of absence from the law office—a sabbatical to find myself in Omsk and to discover whether Lena and I, once we spent more time together than a single night in a rainstorm, were intended for something more permanent. Maybe it was just a coincidence that the fabricated story about a missing Dr. Whidden found its way to me and led me to the girl I hadn’t seen in twenty-three years. But like I’ve said, I am not a big believer in coincidences. Some things are just meant to be.

  I don’t know if Benny’s book will change anybody’s mind about the Kennedy assassination. After so many years, the majority of Americans seem to regard conspiracy theorists as oddballs. We’ll just have to wait and see if it has the power to alter history.

  Documents first declassified on October 26, 1993, revealed a transcript of a telephone call between President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made on November 23, 1963, the day after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated.

  Johnson: “Have you est
ablished any more about the visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico in September?”

  Hoover: “No, this is one angle that’s very confusing, for this reason. We have up here the tape and one photograph of the man who was at the Soviet Embassy using Oswald’s name. That picture and tape do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy down there.”

  Although the tape referred to by Hoover has never been produced, documents declassified in 1998 include written transcripts of two telephone calls made by a person claiming to be Lee Oswald to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. The transcript of the first phone call, made on September 28, 1963 (CIA Record Number 104-10422-10143) reads: “Speaks terrible, hardly recognizable Russian.”

  Oswald was known to speak Russian fluently.

  In a written transcript of the second phone call to the Soviet Embassy made on October 1, 1963 (CIA Record Number 104-10413-10026), a man with the same voice as the September 28 caller speaks with Soviet Embassy official Ivan Obyedkov.

  Oswald: “Hello, this Lee Oswald speaking. I was at your place last Saturday and spoke to a consul, and they said that they’d send a telegram to Washington, so I wanted to find out if you have anything new? But I don’t remember the name of the consul.”

  Obyedkov: “Kostikov. He is dark.”

  Oswald: “Yes…”

  A CIA cable dated October, 8, 1963, seven days after the second phone call to the Soviet Embassy (CIA Record Number 104-10015-10304), and released 9/15/95, states: “American male who spoke broken Russian and said his name Lee Oswald…stated he ws at SovEmb on 28 Sep when he spoke with consul whom he believed to be Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov…”

  In an October 16, 1963, memo from Winston N. Scott, the head of the CIA office in Mexico City, to the US ambassador in Mexico City, Mr. Scott notes: “The following information was received from a usually reliable and extremely sensitive source. On October 1, 1963 an American male contacted the Soviet Embassy and identified himself as Lee Harvey Oswald. This officer determined that Oswald had been at the Soviet Embassy on September 28, 1963 and had talked with Valeriy Kostikov, a member of the Consular Section…”

  In a letter dated November 23, 1963, one day after the assassination and declassified in 1998, the FBI writes to the Honorable James J. Rowley, chief of the US Secret Service. The letter attaches an FBI memo also dated November 23, 1963, which states: “The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on October 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identified himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City…Special Agents of the bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas…and have listened to a recording of his voice…are of the opinion that the above-referenced individual…was not Lee Harvey Oswald.”

  An internal CIA memo dated November 27, 1963, from D. J. Brennan Jr. to Mr. W. C. Sullivan released on 3/19/93, states, with respect to subject “Lee Harvey Oswald”: “Reference is made to my memorandum dated 11/23/63 setting forth the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) information pertaining to the subject’s contacts with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. The referenced memorandum further indicated that subject had been in contact with Valeriy Kostikov, Soviet Embassy, Mexico City, and that Kostikov had been tentatively identified being in the department in the KGB which handles sabotage and assassinations.”

  Larry Kaplan has been a practicing trial attorney since 1975. He is the author of Complex Federal Litigation, as well as two fiction novels: A Colony of Eves and When the Past Came Calling.

  Kaplan is a married father of four, with a fascination for midsixties pop culture and politics. Along with his experience as a trial attorney, being a teenager in the sixties was a major inspiration for his latest novel—When the Past Came Calling, about an attorney protagonist searching through past memories for clues to help solve a shocking deception.