Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Douglas Brode

  Several hours after Lee and Johnny had fallen asleep on the dirt floor, each stirred as there came a dull noise at the door. They rose without exchanging a word. This, they knew, was the pre-planned escape; one of the supposed guerillas in the squad would be a CIA plant. As the scenario dictated, the lock had been removed. Cautiously, they slipped off into the night and started on their long walk to Havana.

  So far, so good!

  *

  Two days later, everything quickly turned to shit. Dick Tracy was the first to fail. Since he had never before come face to face with Castro, he’d been assigned the task of doing just that. As Castro sat down at one of Casalta’s outdoor tables, always preferring to catch the first breeze from the sea rather than swelter inside, Dick Tracy stepped up, thrusting forward a pen and paper, humbly requesting Fidel’s autograph. Though two guards stepped between their leader and this sudden interloper, patting the man down as they checked for weapons, Castro nodded magnanimously; happy to oblige! As the American set a pen and paper down on the table Castro yanked a pen from an inner jacket pocket, writing:

  If only more U.S. citizens would come to visit all would know that we are not your enemies!

  —Fidel Castro

  This left Dick Tracy, recovering from his surprise, saying thank you to Castro, hastily picking up the autographed paper and his own pen, then departing. This pen contained a secret syringe filled with poison. The plan had been that, as Castro completed writing a message, Dick Tracy would reach to take back his pen while thumbing the lever, releasing botulin, pricking Castro’s skin, and injecting poison into his system. He hadn’t guessed Castro would have a pen of his own. Phase one had failed.

  Lee, across the plaza, was already in position with a Browning FN High Power Bolt Action Rifle, the 1959 Safari Grade Model, SN L7168, peering through a telescopic sight, aiming at the guards. Having achieved sharpshooter rank in the marines, in the South Pacific proving to George back home that he had no compunction killing someone who needed killing, Lee had received this assignment. When Tracy bolted and ran, Lee would, employing smokeless-powder cartridges so as not to give away his hiding place, take both the guards down.

  Within seconds of Dick Tracy leaving, out of the restaurant ambled Johnny Rosselli, carrying a hot plate of grilled shrimps, the dictator’s favorite, which he ordered every Wednesday night. These, Rosselli had drenched in botulin as well as lemon and butter, adding the third element while easing out the door. Despite his face-to-face confrontation with Castro in mid-January, 1959, Rosselli had no fear of being recognized. His hair was now light brown instead of jet black, he wore contact lenses to change his eye color to a shade of sea-green, and he kept his head tilted to one side while setting down the platter.

  There was only one problem: an old friend of Castro’s, to whom the dictator recently extended a favor, had sent precisely this dish over to the dictator’s offices for lunch, accompanied by a bottle of white wine. So now Castro was in the mood for something else, perhaps a rare steak. He pushed the plate over to a cabinet minister seated at his right, whispering in the waiter’s ear that he wanted a different dish. Maintaining his low profile, Rosselli nodded, turned as if to step back inside Casalta, then slipped off into the crowd. Like a wisp of smoke, Johnny was gone, even as Castro’s doomed associate swallowed a mouthful of the delicacy and, gagging, fell to the ground. He rolled about, his face at first crimson, then ashen, dying.

  Lee was to have shot down the guards if Castro ate and died, covering Johnny’s escape. Such tactical work was no longer his concern. Now, all he had to do was pull the trigger, bring down Castro, and hurry off, meeting the others at the Cessna in a pre-arranged place. Lee’s finger tightened on the trigger. Even as he began to squeeze, in the slow and efficient manner mastered at Boot Camp, Castro stood up and stared straight at him as if the dictator knew precisely where Lee had hidden himself. Lee was gripped by shock and confusion: How and why had Castro glanced this way? Lee could not know that toward the end of January 1959, this was the spot from which Enrique Avirez had tried, and failed, to pull the trigger on Castro.

  The dictator experienced a sense of déjà vu, fully expecting to die this time around. Perhaps that explained why he did not. Lee saw such passion, fury, desperation, and intense longing to live in the eyes of the man across the way, his finger momentarily froze. Lee blinked, then quickly regained composure, readying to shoot. In that split-second the guards had thrown Castro down on the ground and leaped on top of him, shielding his body with their own. Someone in the late-afternoon crowd spotted Lee and pointed, shouting. Dropping the rifle, Lee rose, turned, and ran for his life.

  Twisting his way up and down narrow boulevards, Lee almost immediately crashed headlong into a police officer summoned to the scene. Assuming this panicky fugitive must be guilty of something, he grabbed Lee by his short hair, yanked him up, and hurried to nearest police station. Once inside Lee bleated his innocence, halting in mid-sentence until he saw Johnny Rosselli and Dick Tracy in handcuffs, these now placed on his wrists.

  *

  The prisoners bounced up and down, driven over roads bumpier than any Lee could remember. They sat on a hard metal bench, handcuffed, in the back of a filthy police truck. Three guards squatted across the way, glumly staring. Each cradled a Thompson submachine gun. None spoke during the fifteen minute drive. Each guard’s eyes suggested they secretly hoped for some small gesture to justify opening fire. There wasn’t enough food in Cuba to go around. Who wanted three more mouths to feed?

  Furtively, Lee glanced at Johnny on his left, Dick Tracy to the right. The latter stared ahead as if willing himself into oblivion, Lee guessing this was Company policy. Johnny hunched over, shoulders downward, likely the Mob approach. As the truck at last slowed, the guards broke their silence, conversing in ecstatic Spanish. Something major was about to happen.

  “You will disembark immediately,” the one in charge, at last making eye contact, commanded. The incessant whirring of the vehicle’s motor ceased, the scent of hot oil from its timeworn engine engulfing them. “Now, do you hear?”

  As when they’d disembarked the Cessna, Lee hopped down first. On the street, many Cubans paraded by, a few in the rich colored clothing from pre-revolutionary days. Most men now chose military fatigues, signifying the preferred no-nonsense style of a regime that condemned any personal pleasure as political decadence. With of course Fidel’s secret exception: fine cigars, grilled shrimp, beautiful women. Johnny Handsome and Dick Tracy dropped down beside Lee, the constant flow of Cubans considering these handcuffed Americans with curiosity. A ragged man, face full of hatred for anyone from a country arrogant enough to send armed men here to kill their leader, spat in their direction.

  God help me! Please? I’m begging you ... Please give this one a happy ending. Get me back to Minsk and beautiful Marina?

  Glancing about to get his bearings, Lee’s attention was drawn to something on high. They stood, he realized, in the shadow of a looming hill topped by a dark fortress, something right out of the middle ages. Then he recalled seeing it on his previous secretive visit: El Principe prison.

  “You will be our honored guests,” the lead guard announced without emotion, “in our own great castle.”

  With that stout fellow pompously leading the way, Lee and the others shuffling behind him, the remaining guards holding tight on either side, they trudged up the hill. Minutes later they approached the first of two immense drawbridges, its thick, splintered plank surface slowly lowering over a winding moat.

  “This is bad, bad, bad,” Lee whispered, any bravado that he had felt setting off on their mission long gone.

  “Stay calm,” Dick Tracy whispered.

  “All they can do is kill us,” Johnny Rosselli laughed. “Hey, everyone dies.”

  “No talking,” the lead guard called over his shoulder. Another jabbed Lee in the belly with his gun barrel, a signal to cross over at once. The wood bridge, with its metal bindings, creaked as the party stu
mbled across. When they at last reached the incline’s halfway point, nearing the second drawbridge, another group of guards awaited with three more prisoners, these appearing more bedraggled than themselves. Lee guessed them to be Cubans captured during a counter-revolutionary demonstration. The two trios merged, making silent eye contact, saying nothing.

  At least I’m not alone. My guess is that they’ll be worse off than us. Castro won’t think twice about executing some of his own people. U.S. Citizens? Maybe that will give him pause.

  Once beyond the building’s looming entrance they were guided down a narrow corridor. Everything smelled stale, as if old, unwashed clothing were piled high nearby. At last reaching their journey’s end, the entire party entered a cavernous room. The only pieces of furniture were a large desk and accompanying chair. In it, a big man with a barrel-like torso sat, reading reports Lee assumed contained all the known facts about the six.

  Additional guards circled, grunting for the prisoners to step in the seated man’s direction. When Lee hesitated, one nasty looking guard shoved a gun barrel against his back.

  “My friend,” whispered the burly, red-headed prisoner just beside him, “as Sophocles said some two thousand years ago, ’the greatest gift would be to have never been born.’”

  He quotes a philosopher? In English? Oh, that’s right. George told me: educated citizens are always suspect in Castro’s Cuba. They think too much, fail to follow the party line. And speaking of George: where are you when we most need you?

  For the following quarter-hour, the commander lectured his prisoners about El Principe, afterwards sharing his resume. A thirty-something man with black eyes set deep in a flat frying pan of a face, the commandant’s other features camouflaged by a huge Zapata mustache, his unnaturally round head perched without a noticeable neck atop an unusually thick body.

  “Comprehend, uninvited American guests, I am Captain Pupo Puerta Valle, supreme commander of El Castillo del Principe. Before accepting this position I had the honor to serve as group leader in Fidel Castro’s personal bodyguard. We wore civilian attire so as not to be easily recognized by those hoping to harm our leader. Every man carried a .45 automatic with orders to shoot first, as your American cowboys say, ask questions later. These were replaced by more sophisticated weaponry, the Belgian-made 9 mm automatic 15 shot pistol, our new arsenal provided by a European nation sympathetic to our cause.” Everyone sneaked a quick glimpse at Valle’s holstered gun. “In time, the personal bodyguard was disbanded, the Party assuming responsibility for Castro’s continued safety. I was given the honor of serving in any other capacity and picked the position in which you now find me. Traitors among our ranks are summarily executed. Americans who have arrived without invitation are held until we can determine the best manner of dealing with your situation. Some are returned home, others allowed to stay, and a few executed. Only time will tell as to your fates. In the meantime, you are under my jurisdiction. No matter how brave and bold you might consider yourselves, I will learn precisely who you are and who sent you. As someone once put it, ‘there is an easy way to do things and a hard way.’ Only fools choose the hard way. Shortly, I will learn which of you happen to be fools.”

  Torture! He means torture if we don’t break down and talk.

  Captain Valle whirled his head as a signal to his men. With weapons still held ready, the guards pulled backward. A moment later a dozen uniformed men, brandishing rifles with bayonets in place, hurried in from the corridor.

  “You six will strip down,” Valle ordered. “Now!”

  The prisoners hurriedly removed their clothes, standing in this clammy room in their underwear. “I said strip,” Valle continued. Each prisoner allowed his drawers to drop. Glancing down, Lee noticed that the grey stone floor had over the years been bloodied, leaving a ghastly purple stain.

  Once they were naked, two enormous guards stepped up alongside each of the six. They lowered their rifles so that a pair of bayonets touched up against each man’s scrotum. As if part of a choreographed routine, one guard extended his blade forward until it pricked the flesh of each prisoner’s limp penis. His partner simultaneously jabbed at each prisoner’s sad hanging sack. In precise movements, this bizarre ballet of bayonets continued. Guards toyed with the men’s masculinity, always on the verge of castrating them, barely holding back.

  Please, God, not that! Just let them kill me.

  “Any questions?” Valle demanded in an irritated tone that made things abundantly clear: no response need be offered.

  No, no, no. I don’t want to say this. It’s just like the first day at Boot Camp when I tried to become ‘Angelo Maggio,’ Sinatra’s adorable runt who had a gag for everything. I tried doing that and it didn’t work. Some sergeant told me, during one of my low ebbs, that nothing is more stupid than doing the same thing over and over again, always expecting a different result. I only wish I could stop the words before I speak them—

  “Captain Valle? Where do babies come from?” *

  “I’m sorry,” Lee wailed, cocking his head toward the jail cell’s bleak ceiling. “I didn’t mean to say it.”

  “Why the fuck did you?” Johnny demanded.

  “I don’t know. It kinda slipped out.”

  “It must’ve come from somewhere.”

  “Jerry Lewis.”

  “What?”

  “It was in a Jerry Lewis movie. He and Dean Martin were in the army. A top sergeant bawled them out. Then he asked, ‘are there any questions.’ So Jerry—”

  “That’s only a movie!” Johnny shouted.

  “George warned me about you. Said you could be our top operative if it weren’t for something crazy deep down inside.”

  “I’m sorry. Sincerely! I’ll try—” Then, Lee wept.

  How often in my life have I wished that I were dead? And considered suicide? Those were “the good ol’ days” compared to this. If only there were a way out, I’d take it. Something I might use to end it all. But there’s nothing ... nothing!

  Now Dick Tracy began to feel sorry for Oswald, who during this reprimand had shriveled up before the agent’s eyes. Lee literally fell down into a corner of their small cell.

  “Marguerite!” Lee sobbed. “Marina ...”

  I never realized it ‘til now: The names of my lover and mother begin with the same three letters. What might that mean?

  Following Lee’s bizarre bad joke, Captain Valle ordered the self-styled clown tied to a rack against the wall, arms forcibly stretched outward as guards primitively bound his hands.

  “I was only kidding. Can’t you take a joke?”

  Valle turned and stepped around to his desk, taking a whip from the central drawer. He returned to where Lee helplessly hung and administered five harsh lashes. Lee yelped each time the thick strand of leather tore down on his milky flesh. The other five, forced to watch, had to struggle to keep from vomiting. This included Rosselli who, while working for Capone in Chicago, had seen, even done, pretty much everything. Yet nothing came close to this. The smell of torn flesh ...

  When the ordeal finally ended, Lee, initially standing, hung by cuffed wrists, semi-conscious, like a side of beef in a slaughterhouse. Valle signaled his minions; one rushed out of the room, returning with a metal tub. He splashed water across Lee’s back. This brought Lee out of his stupor. Valle ordered Lee released and, wobbly though he was, the humbled prisoner managed to stumble back in the line with the other prisoners.

  The two original groups, during their march through the corridor to the cells, had remained separate. During the ordeal a sense that they were developing into one amorphous community gradually overcame everyone. The trios were forced into adjacent cells at bayonet point. In the confines of their 25 by 20-ft. cell, Dick Tracy inspected the wounds on Lee’s back. His partner would live, though infection might become a problem.

  All had to urinate and defecate in a single hole. They slept on hard stone as there were no cots. The two sets of three men remained in their cells 2
4 hours a day, except when guards arrived to drag someone down the corridor for interrogation. The victim would be solemnly greeted by Valle and returned an hour or so later, badly beaten. Why are you here? Valle demanded. Who sent you? Lee, like his two companions, had been fully briefed by George during planning session as to how to answer if things came down to this: I acted on my own accord. Yes, the other two men were my co-conspirators, but that is the limit of guilt. We are American patriots. Right or wrong, we arrived to eliminate our country’s greatest threat in the Western hemisphere.

  Beat me, whip me, kill me. All I can do is admit my guilt, accept any punishment. But you cannot break me, cannot force me to lie and say that the United States government had any part in this. I’ll go to my death assuming full responsibility.

  I will die lying to protect me country. I am a patriot. This is what I promised George at our first meeting in Mexico.

  No matter how badly the Americans were tortured, the Cubans in the adjoining cell had it worse. If for the first two days an invisible wall of secrecy separated the cells, a camaraderie gradually developed. Men from one group exchanged words now and then with the others. The conversations continually expanded in length and intensity. Essential to such talk was the reality that Valle had spoken of that first day: Fidel Castro feared nothing more than allowing the U.S. government some excuse to send in the marines, which might occur if the Americans were to be summarily executed despite their assassination attempt. Even a long stay in El Principe for them could lead to an invasion.

  No doubt Castro wondered if that might be a pre-planned narrative, the three sent down to purposefully be arrested, this allowing the U.S. an excuse to do what the administration most hungered for: a full scale invasion of Cuba, motivated by the need to “save” the “innocent” U.S. citizens held there.

  As for the Cubans in the next cell? That was something else entirely. They awaited execution at Fidel Castro’s whim.

  *