Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Douglas Brode

  Lorita's Brute Man handed her the gun. Her eyes revealed confusion. He smiled manically.

  “Go ahead. Your assignment was to kill me? Do it.”

  Castro glided the gun toward his face, opened his mouth, lowering his lips around the cigar-shaped barrel. If Lorita did as instructed, the last thing on earth Castro would see before his brains exploded out the back of his head, onto the pillow, would be her breasts swinging like two exotic dancers at a Havana casino, performing in perfect tandem ...

  Lorita shifted positions, squinting, trying to find a solid position, tightening her grip on the trigger.

  “Wow,” she exclaimed. “Just like in the movies!”

  Spy thrillers, she meant. With the advent of the 1960s, such Kiss! Kiss! Bang! Bang! projects had been shot in Asia and Europe, becoming popular on the international market. In a radio report Lorita heard, owing to the new tolerance that overtook America following the election of young JFK as president, a James Bond book was being filmed by a Hollywood company, the American mainstream apparently ready for such kinky stuff.

  She had read Dr. No, Casino Royale and all the others, at the suggestion of Frank. He had explained that Lorita must, in real life, emulate Fleming’s lethal literary ladies. Become in actuality what they embodied in his fictions. Perhaps not so imaginary, though. George explained that Fleming, whom he knew, based those ‘Bond girls’ on daring women he, as an English operative during and after World War II, once worked with.

  Perhaps there was no true, certain dividing line between fantasy and reality. Maybe each impacted on the other. At any rate, those novels provided her education. Lorita's job now was to live out what others read about, saw at the cinema, only dreamed of doing. For her, this constituted her ordinary life.

  Well, perhaps not ordinary ... everyday yes, but—

  “Oh,” Lorita squealed as he entered her again, fighting his way past the weak barrier of her panties. "Just imagine: In only a moment you’ll be coming and going at the same time!"

  *

  Castro had remained supremely calm through all this. That unnerved Lorita, though she readied herself to complete the assassination. Yet a minute went by, then another, she unable to consummate what she had arrived for. Those pills would have allowed Lorita to remain remote from the administration of death. To pull the trigger, witness her lover’s head explode like a dropped melon, brains splattering everywhere?

  Ugh!

  It was, simply, too much. Hard as she tried Lorita found herself gradually relaxing her finger from the trigger. “I can’t,” she wailed, removing the barrel from Fidel’s mouth.

  “Of course you can’t.” With a firm movement he took the pistol from her hand, returning it to the open drawer.

  “Now what?”

  “Leave.”

  “Just like that?” She snapped her fingers. Castro nodded.

  Wanefully, Lorita pulled herself up off the horizontal slab of male flesh and stood upright, a sad rather than glamorous figure in the now ripped strip of material partially covering her nakedness. Lorita glared back at the rough beast sprawled naked on the bed. Then, as if nothing untoward had occurred, she regained her composure, sniffed, and set about dressing, holding back tears. Once the silver sheaf again adorned her frame Lorita gathered up her purse and made ready to leave.

  “Goodbye, brute man.”

  Cautiously, she stepped past Castro and out the door, back into the main room without a parting glance. Once there, Lorita stopped, pulling a small object out of her purse.

  “Here,” Lorita called, turning to toss the key back onto the bedroom floor.

  “You won’t be coming back, then?”

  “Never.”

  “Will there be others?”

  “That’s not for me to say.” She made ready to exit but halted again, glancing back over her shoulder. “When you said to me, ’no one can,’ what did you mean?”

  Castro gloatingly smiled from ear to ear. “I am Fidel. My destiny is to guide Cuba into its future. That was written in the stars a million years ago. No one can interfere with fate. Not even a woman as willful and wicked as you.”

  "Me, wicked? You're the one!"

  "Have it your way, Lorita. You always do."

  Lorita did not know how to respond to that, so she exited the room, the suite, the hotel, and the life of Fidel Castro.

  It’s the Mob, Castro thought, remaining stock-still in the darkness. The Mafia has declared open war! Or, no. Maybe the CIA. Which one most wants me dead ...?

  My worst nightmare would be both ... working together.

  *

  Why is it that we always think of the perfect thing to say once it is too late? For years following her hurried departure, Lorita rolled over in her mind what she might have told Fidel. Never had she revealed to him that, when she left Germany at age fifteen—truly a Lolita then—Lorita had not gone directly to Cuba to seek him out. That had been her great lie during their first meeting up in the hills. Lorita journeyed to Venezuela. There she schemed to meet and seduce Pres. Marcos Perez Jimenez, the right-wing Junta dictator. Though married, Jimenez set her up in a suite at majestic Humboldt Hotel, overlooking Caracas.

  The two spent many a pleasurable hour in the king-size bed until in 1958 the communists staged a coup. Then Jimenez hurried off to America. In the land of freedom and democracy this brutal former dictator received the Legion of Merit for distinguished resistance to The Red Menace.

  Sadly, he took along his wife and family but not Lorita.

  Guessing that the next great Third World leader would be a communist, this the coming thing in under-developed countries, Lorita determined to become mistress to such a man. Those in the know she spoke with insisted that Fidel Castro would likely emerge as that personage. So off little Lorita trekked to Cuba, proving once and for all that the power of female beauty over the male cuts across all existing political lines.

  Damn! If only I’d have thought to mention to Fidel that he’d accepted the castoff mistress of a diehard fascist as the great love of his life, such a revelation might have killed him faster than botulism or a bullet.

  Why didn't I think of it then?

  *

  For once, and to Frank Sturgis' amazement, The Kraut showed up not only on time but early! This would be the final meeting. Their designated place, once again, was Banana Royale, 24 hours after the previous encounter. The man called George had been listening to Radio Cuba all morning. Nothing. Concerned, he next poured through the papers. No major revelations. Life appeared to be normal in Cuba today. That could only mean one thing: The assassination attempt had failed. This was confirmed by Lorita's rare on-time appearance, in and of itself spelling disaster.

  Approaching, she employed the last refuge of a female scoundrel. Weeping openly, Lorita collapsed into George’s masculine arms, spitting out a semi-coherent rant.

  The Bond Girl? Gone. In her place? This sad little loser.

  In a cold Cream jar? You must be kidding ... !

  As he sent her packing, George wondered whether she ought to be eliminated as a security risk. If so, he would do to her what she failed to achieve with Fidel. Enjoy Lorita's fine body a final time, then ...

  No. Why kill such a total klutz? Let her talk to anyone she chooses. Nobody in his right mind would believe anything such a train wreck says. Go on your merry way. And good riddance!

  Now, though, he would have to meet with Joe the Courier. Inform the man born Santos Trafficante, Jr. as to what had gone down ... or rather failed to go down. Discuss what they ought to do next.

  No question Castro must die. Enough with pretty women. Deadlier than the male? That adage suddenly seemed a bad joke.

  George already had something else in mind. Pick a man to do the job. Some obscure fellow, secretly dreaming of glory, greatness, immortality even, while plodding unnoticed through the world. No more take-your-breath-away bitches! Some face in the crowd, an invisible man. He had several candidates in mind.

  George
and Joe were due back in Florida tonight. The next week they were expected to arrive in New Orleans for a top-level meeting with mob boss Meyer Lansky, where this current problem would be discussed. The Big Easy! Sturgis’ favorite city, other than what he had discovered in Havana, for daylight decisions and late-night debauchery. How he loved Bourbon Street.

  In truth, the top candidate on George’s list had often walked that street in his youth. Feeling worthless, powerless. Dreaming of greatness, with not a clue how it might be achieved. Eager to be found, fearful that he would forever remain obscure.

  CHAPTER TWO:

  THE LATE MATINEE

  “I lost it at the movies.”

  —film critic Pauline Kael, 1966

  One clammy afternoon in late April 1954, six years before Frank Sturgis returned from Cuba and, while in New Orleans, set about deciding on the right person to kill Castro, the nowhere man 'George' ultimately picked wandered aimlessly along Bourbon Street. Head bowed low, eyes on the concrete, Lee Oswald drifted past Po’ Boy shops, Dixieland dens, and sleazy strip clubs.

  Above the rickety door to each, neon lights blazed like electric-rainbows in the warm afternoon drizzle. The time: just before three p.m., after the lunch crowd abandoned such declasse havens from the real world; before the early evening clientele trickled in. At this awkward juncture in the daily pattern, few frequented the garbage-laden streets, where blues and jazz poured out of shabby, timeworn, ever-enticing buildings.

  That explained why this particular visitor arrived now. Lee hated crowds, more than almost anything. Except perhaps being alone. That made no sense at all. Then again, little about Lee Harvey Oswald ever seemed ‘right’ to those whom he, in the privacy of his mind, dismissed as The Normals.

  Others sensed this in the youth's personality on meeting him. For all of his fifteen years, strangers had made it a point to keep their distance. Here, other stragglers passing through the dreary weather, soft rain on neon transforming urban decay into a lurid phantasmagoria, drifted past without making eye contact. Lee turned up his jacket-collar and pushed on, if with no particular place to go. As was always the case.

  In his vision—that bizarre, unique way in which L.H.O. always had and, for the remainder of his brief life, would perceive the world—he’d brought the lousy weather down on this part of The Big Easy simply by showing up. He was cursed, carrying an invisible mark of Cain wherever he went. This rain, that ruined a potentially pleasant day for others, had been summoned by Lee’s immense capacity for negativity. Or so he believed.

  A scrawny kid, oblivious now to the rich Creole culture and Cajun lifestyle surrounding him, Lee had only a single thought on this even grayer day than usual: why had he been born? In all truth, he wished that event never occurred. As Lee had done several times previous in in his miserable excuse for a life, the youth considered purchasing a pistol at one of those seedy pawn-shops located on side-streets, then pointing the barrel at his head, bringing the dark farce to an end.

  Why not? All that awaited him on the morrow was more of the same. Lee despised his existence, perceiving himself one of nature’s mistakes. Maybe there was, as his mother Marguerite insisted, a better place up there. If not, oblivion would likely prove preferable to more of this.

  Lee had spent the morning seated in a cramped apartment he shared with his mother at 1454 Saint Mary Street, listening to an album of heartbreaking songs that touched him in a way current pop hits by performers such as Patti Page and Doris Day, popular with The Normals, did not. The selection of mournful saloon-ballads was performed by Frank Sinatra. The disc, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” had been released by Capitol. After catching the title tune on the radio, Lee had hurried out to purchase his own copy. During the past week he’d listened to it, again and again, each day at precisely the same time.

  Lee owned other Sinatra albums, but this one struck him as special. In the past, The Voice always presented diverse styles on his latest 33 1/3 L.P., ranging from slow, sultry romantic tunes to upbeat swing. A Concept Album was how the guy at the record store described this disc after congratulating Lee for not, like most other kids, purchasing “Rocket 88“ by Ike Turner or “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets, both of which this salesman carried only out of economic necessity.

  “I’m not like most kids my age,” Lee replied. He despised the New Music which overnight became all the rage with typical teenagers. Lee considered rock ’n’ roll emblematic of everything that had gone wrong with the world during these past few years. Besides, if others of his age group loved it, he—despising them for their normalcy—must go entirely in the other direction.

  “I knew that the moment you walked in,” the store owner said. Lee wasn’t certain if that were intended as a compliment, an insult, or merely an observation. Carrying his purchase, Lee made his way back to his current living space which, if things proceeded as usual, would be relegated to a past address in three months. Marguerite would raise a finger on high, not unlike a Puritanical schoolmarm about to deliver a lecture, and announce, as she had many times before: “We must move!”

  As if that, in and of itself, would solve all of this family’s multitude of problems.

  “A fresh start. New surroundings. This time it’ll all be different, Lee. No, don’t cry. And don’t laugh. It scares me when you laugh like that, even more than when you cry.”

  But things didn't become better. Years later, while Lee served in the Marines, a smart top sergeant shared a phrase Lee never forgot: “There is nothing more stupid than doing the same thing time after time, always expecting a different result.”

  While home on leave from the service (another temporary home, as with all the others), Lee had tried to explain that to Marguerite. She didn’t get it. Told him to stop bothering her with silly talk. Then left for hours, not the first time she’d done so. On more than one occasion, Marguerite disappeared for several days, eventually wandering back, blithely smiling.

  “How’s my boy? My baby boy? Lee? What’s ... wrong?”

  Lee spent that leave in New Orleans mostly alone. When she returned to their shabby apartment, Marguerite announced she had experienced an epiphany: They must move back to Fort Worth at once. Or maybe to New York? Hadn’t they been happy there, living with Lee’s half-brother John, Marguerite’s son from her first marriage, and his wife? No, actually.

  Bad as things had been everywhere, that struck Lee as the worst. Except for the Bronx Zoo. That, Lee adored. When no one else stood nearby he’d whisper to the animals. They loved him! Lee sensed that they waited patiently for his return, he the only visitor beyond those bars who felt as caged as they did.

  Animals were wonderful. So sincere. Not like ... people.

  Otherwise, New York had not been so good. In fact, awful.

  *

  What made this day different, somehow worse, than all the others? He’d woken with a start, as always, at seven. Marguerite was even then leaving for work. Wherever they lived, she always managed to find a job, more often than not on some managerial level. This required her to leave at dawn and return at dark.

  Lee moped around the current house during daylight hours, then headed out in the evening, to whatever solace he found out there. Some dreary bar or greasy-spoon-diner, worthy to serve as model for yet another melancholy Edward Hopper painting. There, other nighthawks met to join in world-weary conversation.

  Always, Lee sat alone, a stale beer or watery cup of coffee before him. Purchased not to consume, necessary if he were to be allowed to remain undisturbed. Always too there were The Movies.

  Not first-run houses, frequented by couples and families. When Lee wanted to catch a flick, he’d head for some second-run theatre, likely in disrepair. Their forlorn appearances vividly reflected the way this patron felt about himself.

  In such a run-down enclave Lee could drop into a torn seat for several hours of oblivion. The equivalent, in whatever town he happened to inhabit, of 42nd Street in Manhattan, w
here crowds of derelicts, hipsters, and kids who wanted to perform forbidden acts in the smoke and semi-darkness conjoined: where last week’s wanna-be hits were now relegated to today’s also-rans, and the 1948 Western epic Red River with John Wayne played forever.

  At such downtrodden bijous Lee found himself swept off to dream worlds, more true for him in their drab-noir black-and-white or glossy Technicolor than unrewarding everyday life.

  Even in such a sordid place, the clientele composed of out-of-mainstream types similar to if not as extreme as he, Lee would make it a point upon entering to check out the crowd, then locate a seat as geometrically far from all the others as possible. That way, he could be alone in the crowd.

  True, he hated being by himself. Far worse though was being with other people. What Lee most hated was being alive. The central question of his life had always been: Why was I born?

  Always, when in the south, he would veer to his left and sit in the section reserved for colored people. Though his skin might be white, Lee alone appreciated how alien they must feel as a minority group. He himself constituted a minority of one.

  *

  I could use a movie. Maybe there’s a theatre around here. If I happen upon one, I’ll go in. No matter what’s playing. I’ll catch a movie and I’ll feel better. Or at least less bad.

  When the going gets tough, businessman Joseph Kennedy once claimed, the tough get going. The weak? They head for the nearest movie. Hoping for oblivion. The smart ones on some level sense that what movies offer is less an escape from reality than a means of comprehending it. Filled with iconic visions that alter, perhaps without our realizing it, the way we see, act, and live once we’ve drifted back out of the theatre, onto the street; changed, if in ways we do not always comprehend.

  Lee had always been one of ‘the weak.’ Today, his stress felt more impossible to bear than ever. The pain began with the arrival of the morning mail. Ordinarily, Lee did not bother to fetch it. Marguerite would do that when she returned. There was never anything for Lee, anyway. Who would write to him?