by Jim Bishop
He passed it, went out into the curving white hall, kept walking down through the West Wing, out past the Press Room, into the night air again, and down the walkway to East Executive Avenue, then across the street into the dismal old structure which had once been the State Department, but which was now called the Executive Office Building or EOB. Any department which had no White House priority, from telephone operators to mail room to Vice-President, was jammed in among the old high ceilings and exposed heating pipes.
Johnson went upstairs to his office and said hello to his private secretary, Mrs. Juanita Roberts. They were always in excellent balance: he roared, she whispered. He looked around and learned that he had picked up some men on the way from the helipad. He went behind his desk, moved all the pending papers to one side to clear the blotter and looked up at the men who stood. He told Ted Reardon that he wanted a Cabinet meeting at 10 A.M. He was going to require a lot of service tonight and he wanted no excuses. Reardon left to begin phoning the Cabinet ministers—some of whom were on a plane coming in from Hawaii.
Johnson was not in doubt. He knew the necessary steps but to prod these people he put on his son-of-a-bitch face. Kilduff, who had worked so hard for the new President, was dressed down for not having the casket leave by the front ramp. The President didn’t care for excuses; it would have been proper for him to leave the plane with Mrs. Kennedy and the body of John F. Kennedy. Who the hell’s idea was it to get that forklift at the back of the plane?
A Secret Service man informed him that his home phone number at The Elms had been changed. It was now hooked into the White House. “Luci Johnson was picked up at school and is at the house. Lynda is at the home of Governor Connally with the Connally children.” It eased the worriment in his mind to know that the girls were protected by agents; it made him feel better to know that Mrs. Johnson was on her way home. He knew that the scar of noon would never heal in his wife. The house would be a warm refuge for her.
All evening long highly placed men would come to this second-rate office to reassess the new Chief Executive and to be reassessed by him. To all, he enunciated the same battle order: “There must be no gap in government. We must go forward in unity.” He sent for soup. He took phone calls. He made phone calls. At one point he was dictating a memo, and the President lapsed into reverie. His eyes stared at the far wall. “Rufe did a heroic thing today,” he murmured, almost to himself. “He threw me down in that car and threw himself on top of me.”
There was one facet of Johnson’s character which few people knew. He was genuinely surprised when someone did something for him gratuitously.
A few automobiles were in the lot, parked against the wall of Holy Trinity Church. The big starry lights at the entrance were lighted, though few attended the first solemn high Mass for the repose of the soul of John F. Kennedy. It was fitting that it should be celebrated by the last priest to see him alive and the first to see him dead. Father Oscar Huber, looking smaller than usual in the enormous chasuble, holding the gold chalice under its cover, ascended the brilliantly lighted altar and felt a weariness in his body.
His acolytes held his garment up the three steps, then stepped back as Huber set the chalice down and touched the altar stone with both hands. The few communicants in the dimness of the pews arose with a shuffling of feet. Others, who had come only to say the Stations of the Cross, decided to stay. No one told them that this Mass was for a President. It had not been announced in the parish bulletin, and the few in the church assumed that it must be for the dead President.
It would have pleased the President. The Church, the Sacraments, Mass, religious love and fear were instilled in the Kennedy children early. Their mother retained the faith of a child. In Palm Beach, Jack Kennedy was an usher at the Catholic church and helped to take up the Sunday collection. When he went to Washington as President, a wry monsignor, leaning over the pulpit one Sunday, said: “And now let us say an Our Father and a Hail Mary for an usher who has left us. I’m not allowed to mention his name, but he got a new job in Washington.”*
The Roman Catholic Church is always more of a joy to a sinner than a saint because within its gates lie forgiveness and love. The President, if his friends can be believed, was closer to being a merry sinner than a saint. He was attracted to the sins of the flesh and found them difficult to resist. In this, he joined hands with the average man everywhere. In his church, in his conscience he was a silent penitent. He seldom discussed religion and was never known to permit his Catholicism to influence his thinking as a statesman. Some thought that, as President, he was slightly antagonistic to his church.
Father Huber turned to the gospel and opened the big book, tilted on a stand, to the red ribbon which bisected a page. It was opened to the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 24, verses 15 to 35. “ . . . for as the lightning comes forth from the east and shines even to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Wherever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together . . .”
On the third floor, Detective Guy F. Rose was busy working a neglected angle. A woman neighbor of the Oswalds had said her brother had driven Oswald to work with curtain rods. The cop flipped the pages of his notebook. That was Linnie Mae Randall; Linnie Mae Randall, who said her brother’s name was what? Frazier. Wesley Frazier. She had volunteered that her brother was at some hospital if the police wanted him.
Rose wanted him. It had occurred to Will Fritz and his overworked Homicide squad that Frazier might be a party to a plot to take the life of the President. Frazier worked with Oswald. Frazier and Oswald were buddies of a sort. Where did the Frazier boy go after the assassination? Where was he during the shooting?
Guy Rose phoned Parkland Hospital. The operator had no patient named Frazier. She would connect the policeman with the record room. He waited for a response. Rose could have taken Mrs. Linnie Mae Randall to headquarters with him while taking the Paines and Mrs. Oswald. Also, when she mentioned that her brother was at some hospital, Rose could have phoned Fritz and asked a detective to pick him up. They could be most important witnesses; anyone who had studied the Lincoln assassination might see a parallel between the Fraziers and the Surratts.
Parkland was sure that it had no record of a Frazier. Calls were placed to other hospitals, to sanitariums, to clinics in and around Dallas. The detective made a list of doctors in Irving Professional Center. He did not want to think that young Wesley Frazier had slipped through his fingers. It could be most important; it could be nothing at all. As he made the phone calls, Detective Rose watched Detective Senkel herding Marina Oswald and the Paines out of the Forgery office. He dialed the Irving Professional Center and identified himself. A nurse supervisor said yes, they had a Mr. Frazier senior as a patient.
Rose said, “Thank you,” and hung up. He phoned Irving police headquarters. Rose said he was working on the Kennedy thing and he thought that there was a wanted man in the Irving Professional Center. He was put on the phone with Detective J. A. McCabe, who said he would go out to the clinic at once and try to pick up Wesley Frazier. “We understand that this boy brought our suspect to work this morning—drove him in,” Rose said.
“Call me back in fifteen minutes,” Detective McCabe said. Guy Rose agreed. “Just take him into custody,” he said. “If you get him, we’ll send a man out right away.”
The ambulance and its entourage of cars moved out Massachusetts Avenue in the dark of night, but there was a feeling in Washington that the lights were on; the people were present, but there was a mood of solemn meditation. The ambulance drew abreast of slow-moving cars. Greer tapped the siren lightly, and the cars moved to the side. The movie marquees proclaimed their wares, but few Washingtonians looked for entertainment. The meat markets, the supermarkets were open with Friday night sales on hams and loins of pork. Few automobiles cooled in the parking lots.
The ambulance passed Woodley. In the dark hush, the tall and dignified stone of Washington Cathedral rolled by. Inside, Woodrow Wilson l
ay in a crypt. He, too, had had lofty ideals. In death, two Democratic Presidents were close, and then the distance opened up. No bullet had cut Wilson down; the assassins of the United States Senate had sabotaged his dreams for a League of Nations and he had died slowly, defeated. The car followed Wisconsin Avenue and Route 240.
In the back, Robert Kennedy tried to console his sister-in-law. At one point, he had pulled back the glass partition which separated them from the driver’s section and he asked Roy Kellerman if any of them knew that a suspect had been arrested in Dallas. Kellerman said no. “They think he’s a communist,” the Attorney General said. The widow was shocked. To be killed by a Red seemed, to her, to rob her husband’s demise of significance. She thought he had been killed by a white supremacist; she had been sure he had given his life for civil rights. The martyr Abraham Lincoln had been cut down by a Southern sympathizer; the Negroes, free and slave, had wept. A warped, misguided communist could, in her mind, rob her husband’s death of meaning.
The ambulance barely rocked. The highway was flat and smooth, and Chevy Chase slid by the big windows as a series of flashing lights through the curtains. The darkness of the hummocks of trees came again, and the two who loved this man so fervently stared at each other in the barely perceptible gloom. It was a macabre scene—morbid indeed—and yet they understood, without mentioning it, that they must be as close to Jack as possible; the hours were numbered. General McHugh sat with them, but he could not be a member of this triumvirate. Like a good soldier, he sat quietly, trying not to listen unless a remark was addressed to him. The Attorney General said that everything would be done as she wished it. He would help in every possible manner; right now Sarge was in the White House drawing up preliminary plans and he had a sizable team working with him.
She had time to tell her brother-in-law about the triumphal motorcade, the happy faces in bright channels of sunlight. She had time, if she chose, to tell the brother of her cherished husband about the sharp, clear crack of the shots; the dreamy expression on Jack’s face as he slowly leaned toward her; the spasm of the body as the back of his head flew off. There was time to tell the one man to whom she could bare her feelings. The interminable whipping speed of that car to Parkland; the bloody roses; the strange, cold faces of doctors and nurses and the long fight for something already lost.
That man, that execrable man who wanted to confiscate her Jack; the running flight to cars to the airport. The agony, the horrifying, lonely agony of it and then to find that the President had hardly died before the Johnsons were there in Air Force One—no privacy, no respect—waiting for a judge to swear him in and then asking her, actually asking her, to step forward to be photographed with him. There were things that Jacqueline Kennedy would never forget or, for that matter, understand. A kindred mind across the curving lid absorbed her words, her shock, her spite. Robert Kennedy, tense, taut, could sympathize with her position, feelings of grief, and rancor. He could husband a hate for a long time.
At Glenbrook the ambulance slowed. Three thousand people leaned on the double-railed fence around the huge skyscraper and adjacent hospital buildings. This was the Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland. The people were quiet. They saw the ambulance. There was no movement toward it. The faces watched the vehicle with that speculative look which said: “Up to now, I didn’t believe it happened.” Greer moved the vehicle toward the main entrance.
The commander of the institution, Captain Canada, was in uniform silhouetted against the lights of the main entrance. Admiral Calvin Galloway was at his side. For the United States Navy, the situation was sensitive. It would be dangerous to say or do the wrong thing. Canada had been wrong inadvertently all along, so far. He had sent the ambulance and cardiologist in case Lyndon Johnson had a heart attack. The bus was returning to the curving driveway with a dead President.
The captain had been advised that Kennedy would arrive by helicopter. He had placed an honor guard at the helipad; two helicopters arrived, but they carried the Andrews Air Force Base honor guard, which wanted to be on hand at Bethesda when the body arrived. Both honor guards were standing at attention at the pads. Canada had been told about the crowd collecting around the big institution. A short fence made of two rows of pipe would not keep them off the grounds. He had called General Philip Wehle of the Military District of Washington, asking for soldiers. The general was still at Andrews.
Smartly, Canada, accompanied by Admiral Galloway and junior officers, stepped down and approached the three cars. They helped the people to alight. Captain Canada had a chaplain with him in case Mrs. Kennedy needed comforting. She didn’t. Her brother-in-law took her arm and led the group toward the towering entrance. They may have appeared to be reasonable people, but Canada soon learned that the Kennedys were in no mood to dicker.
General McHugh told Galloway that the Kennedys were here for an autopsy and embalming. The admiral said that Bethesda did not have the means of embalming a body. Godfrey was adamant. He demanded to know if the admiral was telling him that it was impossible. Galloway kept his temper. It was not impossible; it might be unsatisfactory work, which could be worse. McHugh called up his reserves. O’Donnell and O’Brien were flagged to his side. The general said that the Navy did not want to do the embalming—the admiral had recommended a funeral director. “You heard the general’s decision,” Kenny O’Donnell snapped. The admiral and the captain stood as O’Donnell and the general left for a sixteenth floor.
In a moment, McHugh was back. Most of the others, except for Roy Kellerman and his Secret Service group, had gone up in the elevators. The body was driven to a rear entrance. It was taken out of the ambulance and placed in an empty and well-lighted corridor. There it reposed. McHugh stood by it and wondered what had happened. Kellerman and Greer stood looking around. No one spoke. No one appeared. They waited.
The headlights of the solitary car lit the quiet street momentarily and the low branches of the trees looked greener. The car turned into the driveway of a Walnut Hills home, and Dr. Malcolm Perry turned the ignition off and went into his house. His day’s work at Parkland Hospital was done. The thoughtful face, wiped clean of expression, brightened when he saw his daughter, Jolene, and his son, Malcolm.
Malcolm was three and chattered his joy at the sight of his father. Jolene held out her school work for approval. There were some papers covered with large printed letters. “Say,” he said, “that’s good work.” Dr. Perry brought the school papers up for one more look, and his world shattered into fragments.
The papers dropped from his hand. “I’m tired,” he said to Mrs. Perry. “I’ve never been this tired in all my life.”
* * *
The Evening Hours
6 p.m.
The coffee machine ran out. Policemen dropped coins in it, held paper cups under a spout barely dripping, and kicked the automatic vendor. This was supper time for the Dallas department and there would be no supper tonight. Almost all of the personnel had worked all day and only a few were permitted to leave at 4 P.M. when the next shift arrived. Two deputy chiefs sat in front offices handling phone calls from all over the world. There were newspaper editors, police officers, statesmen, diplomats, and the civic-minded.
Some wanted inside information about the crime and the suspect. Some asked for official statements. Many offered suggestions. One woman, excited, phoned and said: “Part of a chicken sandwich was found on the sixth floor—right? Well, all you have to do is pump Lee Harvey Oswald’s stomach. If chicken comes up, he’s your man.” Some were disturbed. They had seen visions and could solve the crime at once if they could be flown to Dallas. A few excoriated the city and the police department. “If you had properly protected Mr. Kennedy, he wouldn’t be dead.” “You know who killed him—you did.” “Dallas should hang its head in shame.”
On the several floors of police headquarters, men worked harder than ever in the history of the department. Uniformed men and detectives breasted the crowds in the halls to run down a tip, fin
d a witness, do an errand, pick up an item of evidence, or they were en route back into headquarters, bucking the same crowds, reporting in, and getting a fresh assignment which could not be delayed a minute. There was no time to buy a sandwich; it could have been chewed hurriedly if someone had brought it in. The Dallas Police Department was operating like a tentacled octopus with no body; all the legs were waving and threshing, but the effort appeared to be without direction.
The chief sat in his office at the head of the third-floor T. He was a man alone, as though he were too aloof to seek his men or they were too aloof to consult him. He “assumed” that Captain Talbert had the people in the building under control, but no one saw Talbert running to Curry’s office with reports. Will Fritz handled the case as though Homicide were divorced from the rest of the department. Between the interrogations he did not report to the chief with progress or problems. On the fourth floor, Lieutenant Day of the Crime Laboratory had examined the rifle, the bullets, the revolver, the cardboard boxes found adjacent to the sixth-floor window, the blanket which had just arrived from Mrs. Paine’s house, but Chief Curry had very little firsthand knowledge of the findings. Lieutenant Revill of Intelligence had handed in a quick report on FBI Agent Hosty, stating that Hosty admitted knowing about Lee Harvey Oswald as a communist and potential assassin, and Curry had read it through his rimless glasses in silence and locked it in his desk.
Curry left his office and walked back down the corridor to Homicide. The reporters, as always, pressed him for a statement. He offered none. It was barely possible that anyone who was watching all the angles of this case on television might know more about it than the chief. He inched through the taut, sweaty faces and the klieg lights and turned into the glassy section marked Homicide. He could see the prisoner, lips pursed, listening to the questions of Will Fritz, and he could see the other officers, some standing, some sitting, staring at the prisoner waiting for an answer.
