by Stephen King
“Ask your questions,” I said.
And got ready to dance.
5
Fritz opened his briefcase and brought out a plastic bag with an evidence tag taped to it. Inside it was my .38. “We found this lying against the barricade of boxes Oswald set up, Mr. Amberson. Was it his, do you think?”
“No, that’s a Police Special. It’s mine. Lee had a .38, but it was a Victory model. If it wasn’t on his body, you’ll probably find it wherever he was staying.”
Fritz and Hosty looked at each other in surprise, then back at me.
“So you admit you knew Oswald,” Fritz said.
“Yes, although not well. I didn’t know where he was living, or I would have gone there.”
“As it happens,” Hosty said, “he had a room on Beckley Street. He was registered under the name O. H. Lee. He seems to have had another alias, too. Alek Hidell. He used it to get mail.”
“Wife and kiddo not with him?” I asked.
Hosty smiled. It spread his jowls approximately half a mile in either direction. “Who’s asking the questions here, Mr. Amberson?”
“Both of us,” I said. “I risked my life to save the president, and my fiancée gave hers, so I think I have a right to ask questions.”
Then I waited to see how tough they’d get. If real tough, they actually believed I’d been in on it. Real easy, they didn’t but wanted to be sure. It turned out to be somewhere in the middle.
Fritz used a blunt finger to spin the bag with the gun in it. “I’ll tell you what might have happened, Mr. Amberson. I won’t say it did, but you’d have to convince us otherwise.”
“Uh-huh. Have you called Sadie’s folks? They live in Savannah. You should also call Deacon Simmons and Ellen Dockerty, in Jodie. They were like surrogate parents to her.” I considered this. “To both of us, really. I was going to ask Deke to be my best man at our wedding.”
Fritz took no notice of this. “What might have happened was you and your girl were in on it with Oswald. And maybe at the end you got cold feet.”
The ever-popular conspiracy theory. No home should be without one.
“Maybe you realized at the last minute that you were getting ready to shoot the most powerful man in the whole world,” Hosty said. “You had a moment of clarity. So you stopped him. If it went like that, you’d get a lot of leniency.”
Yes. Leniency to consist of forty, maybe even fifty years in Leavenworth eating mac and cheese instead of death in the Texas electric chair.
“Then why weren’t we there with him, Agent Hosty? Instead of hammering on the door to be let in?”
Hosty shrugged. You tell me.
“And if we were plotting an assassination, you must have seen me with him. Because I know you had him under at least partial surveillance.” I leaned forward. “Why didn’t you stop him, Hosty? That was your job.”
He drew back as if I’d raised a fist to him. His jowls reddened.
For a few moments at least, my grief hardened into a kind of malicious pleasure. “The FBI kept an eye on him because he defected to Russia, redefected to the United States, then tried to defect to Cuba. He was handing out pro-Fidel leaflets on street corners for months before this horror show today.”
“How do you know all that?” Hosty barked.
“Because he told me. Then what happens? The president who’s tried everything he can think of to knock Castro off his perch comes to Dallas. Working at the Book Depository, Lee had a ringside seat for the motorcade. You knew it and did nothing.”
Fritz was staring at Hosty with something like horror. I’m sure Hosty was regretting the fact that the Dallas cop was even in the room, but what could he do? It was Fritz’s station.
“We did not consider him a threat,” Hosty said stiffly.
“Well, that was certainly a mistake. What was in the note he gave you, Hosty? I know Lee went to your office and left you one when he was told you weren’t there, but he wouldn’t tell me what was in it. He just gave that thin little fuck-you smile of his. We’re talking about the man who killed the woman I loved, so I think I deserve to know. Did he say he was going to do something that would make the world sit up and take notice? I bet he did.”
“It was nothing like that!”
“Show me the note, then. Double-dog dare you.”
“Any communication from Mr. Oswald is Bureau business.”
“I don’t think you can show it. I’ll bet it’s ashes in your office toilet, as per Mr. Hoover’s orders.”
If it wasn’t, it would be. It was in Al’s notes.
“If you’re such an innocent,” Fritz said, “you’ll tell us how you knew Oswald and why you were carrying a handgun.”
“And why the lady had a butcher’s knife with blood on it,” Hosty added.
I saw red at that. “The lady had blood everywhere!” I shouted. “On her clothes, on her shoes, in her purse! The son of a bitch shot her in the chest, or didn’t you notice?”
Fritz: “Calm down, Mr. Amberson. No one’s accusing you of anything.” The subtext: Yet.
I took a deep breath. “Have you talked to Dr. Perry? You sent him to examine me and take care of my knee, so you must have. Which means you know I was beaten within an inch of my life last August. The man who ordered the beating—and participated in it—is a bookie named Akiva Roth. I don’t think he meant to hurt me as badly as he did, but probably I smarted off to him and made him mad. I can’t remember. There’s a lot I can’t remember since that day.”
“Why didn’t you report this after it happened?”
“Because I was in a coma, Detective Fritz. When I came out of it, I didn’t remember. When I did remember—some of it, at least—I recalled Roth saying he was hooked up with a Tampa bookie I’d done business with, and a New Orleans mobster named Carlos Marcello. That made going to the cops seem risky.”
“Are you saying DPD is dirty?” I didn’t know if Fritz’s anger was real or faked, and didn’t much care.
“I’m saying I watch The Untouchables and I know the Mob doesn’t like rats. I bought a gun for personal protection—as is my right under the Second Amendment—and I carried it.” I pointed at the evidence bag. “That gun.”
Hosty: “Where’d you buy it?”
“I don’t remember.”
Fritz: “Your amnesia is pretty convenient, isn’t it? Like something on The Secret Storm or As the World Turns.”
“Talk to Perry,” I repeated. “And take another look at my knee. I reinjured it racing up six flights of stairs to save the president’s life. Which I will tell the press. I’ll also tell them my reward for doing my duty as an American citizen was an interrogation in a hot little room without even a glass of water.”
“Do you want water?” Fritz asked, and I understood that this could be all right, if I didn’t misstep. The president had escaped assassination by the skin of his teeth. These two men—not to mention Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry—would be under enormous pressure to provide a hero. Since Sadie was dead, I was what they had.
“No,” I said, “but a Co’-Cola would be very nice.”
6
As I waited for my Coke, I thought of Sadie saying We’re leaving a trail a mile wide. It was true. But maybe I could make that work for me. If, that was, a certain tow truck driver from a certain Fort Worth Esso station had done as the note under the Chevrolet’s windshield wiper had asked.
Fritz lit a cigarette and shoved the pack across to me. I shook my head and he took it back. “Tell us how you knew him,” he said.
I said I’d met Lee on Mercedes Street, and we’d struck up an acquaintance. I listened to his rantings about the evils of fascist-imperialist America and the wonderful socialist state that would emerge in Cuba. Cuba was the ideal, he said. Russia had been taken over by worthless bureaucrats, which was why he’d left. In Cuba there was Uncle Fidel. Lee didn’t come right out and say that Uncle Fidel walked on the water, but he implied it.
“I thought he was nuts, but I lik
ed his family.” That much was true. I did like his family, and I did think he was nuts.
“How did a professional educator such as yourself come to be living on the shitass side of Fort Worth in the first place?” Fritz asked.
“I was trying to write a novel. I found out I couldn’t do it while I was teaching school. Mercedes Street was a dump, but it was cheap. I thought the book would take at least a year, and that meant I had to stretch my savings. When I got depressed about the neighborhood, I tried to pretend I was living in a garret on the Left Bank.”
Fritz: “Did your savings include money you won from bookies?”
Me: “I’m going to take the Fifth on that one.”
At this, Will Fritz actually laughed.
Hosty: “So you met Oswald and became friendly with him.”
“Relatively friendly. You don’t become close buddies with crazy people. At least I don’t.”
“Go on.”
Lee and his family moved out; I stayed. Then one day, out of the blue, I got a call from him saying he and Marina were living on Elsbeth Street in Dallas. He said it was a better neighborhood and the rents were cheap and plentiful. I told Fritz and Hosty that I was tired of Mercedes Street by then, so I came on over to Dallas, had lunch with Lee at the Woolworth’s counter, then took a walk around the neighborhood. I rented the ground-floor apartment at 214 West Neely Street, and when the upstairs apartment went vacant, I told Lee. Kind of returning the favor.
“His wife didn’t like the place on Elsbeth,” I said. “The West Neely Street building was just around the corner, and much nicer. So they moved in.”
I had no idea how closely they would check this story, how well the chronology would hold up, or what Marina might tell them, but those things weren’t important to me. I only needed time. A story that was even halfway plausible might give it to me, especially since Agent Hosty had good reason to treat me with kid gloves. If I told what I knew about his relationship with Oswald, he might spend the rest of his career freezing his ass off in Fargo.
“Then something happened that put my ears up. Last April, this was. Right around Easter. I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on my book, when this fancy car—a Cadillac, I think—pulled up, and two people got out. A man and a woman. Well-dressed. They had a stuffed toy for Junie. She’s—”
Fritz: “We know who June Oswald is.”
“They went up the stairs, and I heard the guy—he had kind of a German accent and a big booming voice—I heard him say, ‘Lee, how did you miss?’”
Hosty leaned forward, eyes as wide as they could get in that fleshy face. “What?”
“You heard me. So I checked the paper, and guess what? Someone took a shot at some retired general four or five days before. Big right-winger. Just the kind of guy Lee hated.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I knew he had a pistol—he showed it to me one day—but the paper said the guy who shot at Walker used a rifle. Besides, most of my attention was taken up by my girlfriend by then. You asked why she had a knife in her purse. The answer is simple—she was scared. She was also attacked, only not by Mr. Roth. It was her ex-husband. He disfigured her pretty badly.”
“We saw the scar,” Hosty said, “and we’re sorry for your loss, Amberson.”
“Thank you.” You don’t look sorry enough, I thought. “The knife she was carrying was the same one her ex—John Clayton was his name—used on her. She carried it everywhere.” I thought of her saying, Just in case. I thought of her saying, This is an in-case if there ever was one.
I put my hands over my face for a minute. They waited. I dropped them into my lap and went on in a toneless Joe Friday voice. Just the facts, ma’am.
“I kept the place on West Neely, but I spent most of the summer in Jodie, taking care of Sadie. I’d pretty much given up on the book idea, was thinking about reapplying at Denholm Consolidated. Then I ran into Akiva Roth and his goons. Wound up in the hospital myself. When they let me out, I went to a rehab center called Eden Fallows.”
“I know it,” Fritz said. “Kind of an assisted living thing.”
“Yes, and Sadie was my chief assistant. I took care of her after her husband cut her; she took care of me after Roth and his associates beat me up. Things go around that way. They make … I don’t know … a kind of harmony.”
“Things happen for a reason,” Hosty said solemnly, and for a moment I felt like launching myself over the table and pummeling his flushed and fleshy face. Not because he was wrong, though. In my humble opinion, things do happen for a reason, but do we like the reason? Rarely.
“Near the end of October, Dr. Perry okayed me to drive short distances.” This was a blatant lie, but they might not check it with Perry for awhile … and if they made an investment in me as an authentic American Hero, they might not check at all. “I went into Dallas on Tuesday of this week to visit the apartment house on West Neely. Mostly on a whim. I wanted to see if looking at it would bring back some more of my memories.”
I had indeed gone to West Neely, but to get the gun under the porch.
“Afterward, I decided to get my lunch at Woolworth’s, just like in the old days. And who should I see at the counter but Lee, having a tuna on rye. I sat down and asked him how it was going, and that was when he told me the FBI was harassing him and his wife. He said, ‘I’m going to teach those bastards not to fuck with me, George. If you’re watching TV on Friday afternoon, maybe you’ll see something.’”
“Holy cow,” Fritz said. “Did you connect that with the president’s visit?”
“Not at first. I never followed Kennedy’s movements all that closely; I’m a Republican.” Two lies for the price of one. “Besides, Lee went right on to his favorite subject.”
Hosty: “Cuba.”
“Right. Cuba and viva Fidel. He didn’t even ask why I was limping. He was totally wrapped up in his own stuff, you know? But that was Lee. I bought him a custard pudding—boy, that’s good at Woolworth’s, and only a quarter—and asked him where he was working. He told me the Book Depository on Elm Street. Said it with a big smile, as if unloading trucks and shifting boxes around was the world’s biggest deal.”
I let most of his blather roll off my back, I went on, because my leg was hurting and I was getting one of my headaches. I drove home to Eden Fallows and took a nap. But when I woke up, the German guy’s how-did-you-miss crack came back to me. I put on the TV, and they were talking about the president’s visit. That, I said, was when I started to worry. I hunted through the pile of newspapers in the living room, found the motorcade route, and saw it went right by the Book Depository.
“I stewed about it all day Wednesday.” They were leaning forward over the table now, hanging on every word. Hosty was making notes without looking down at his pad. I wondered if he’d be able to read them later. “I’d say to myself, Maybe he really means it. Then I’d say, Nah, Lee’s all hat and no cattle. Back and forth like that. Yesterday morning I called Sadie, told her the whole story, and asked her what she thought. She phoned Deke—Deke Simmons, the man I called her surrogate father—then called me back. She said I should tell the police.”
Fritz said, “I don’t mean to add to your pain, son, but if you’d done that, your ladyfriend would still be alive.”
“Wait. You haven’t heard the whole story.” Neither had I, of course; I was making up sizable chunks of it as I went. “I told her and Deke no cops, because if Lee was innocent, he’d really be screwed. You have to understand that the guy was barely holding on by the skin of his teeth. Mercedes Street was a dump and West Neely was only a little better, but that was okay for me—I’m a single man, and I had my book to work on. Plus a little money in the bank. Lee, though … he had a beautiful wife and two daughters, the second one just newborn, and he could hardly keep a roof over their heads. He wasn’t a bad guy—”
At this I felt an urge to check my nose and make sure it wasn’t growing.
“—but he was a world-class
fuckup, pardon my French. His crazy ideas made it hard for him to hold a job. He said when he got one, the FBI would go in and queer things for him. He said it happened with his printing job.”
“That’s bullshit,” Hosty said. “The boy blamed everyone else for problems he made himself. We agree on some things, though, Amberson. He was a world-class fuckup, and I felt sorry for his wife and kids. Sorry as hell.”
“Yeah? Good for you. Anyway, he had a job and I didn’t want to lose it for him if he was just running his mouth … which was a thing he specialized in. I told Sadie I was going over to the Book Depository tomorrow—today, now—just to check up on him. She said she’d come with me. I said no, if Lee really was off his rocker and meant to do something, she could be in danger.”
“Did he seem off his rocker when you had lunch with him?” Fritz asked.
“No, cool as a cucumber, but he always was.” I leaned toward him. “I want you to listen to this part very closely, Detective Fritz. I knew she meant to go with me no matter what I told her. I could hear it in her voice. So I got the hell out. I did that to protect her. Just in case.”
And this is an in-case if there ever was one, the Sadie in my head whispered. She would live there until I saw her again in the flesh. I swore I would, no matter what.
“I thought I’d spend the night in a hotel, but the hotels were full. Then I thought of Mercedes Street. I’d turned in the key to 2706, where I lived, but I still had a key to 2703 across the street, where Lee lived. He gave it to me so I could go in and water his plants.”
Hosty: “He had plants?”
My attention was still fixed on Will Fritz. “Sadie got alarmed when she found me gone from Eden Fallows. Deke did, too. So he did call the police. Not just once but several times. Each time, the cop who took his call told him to stop bullshitting and hung up. I don’t know if anyone bothered to make a record of those calls, but Deke will tell you, and he has no reason to lie.”
Now Fritz was the one turning red. “If you knew how many death threats we had …”
“I’m sure. And only so many men. Just don’t tell me that if we’d called the police, Sadie would still be alive. Don’t tell me that, okay?”
