by Don DeLillo
“He shot at Walker.”
“That’s the point. Walker was politics. But Leon can’t get worked up over Kennedy. He figures the man has made amends for past errors. He’s a little dazzled by the Kennedy magic.”
Banister wanted to crush something.
“Leon’s a type he is willing to relinquish control at some point down the line,” Ferrie said. “It just hasn’t happened yet. Where’s Mackey?”
“Miami. He’s got two houses set up. One for Alpha people. One for his own team.”
“If Leon is in?”
“If Leon is in,” Banister said, “you fly him to Miami the night before.”
“Then what?”
“We have to work it out.”
“Once it’s done I want him out of there,” Ferrie said. “I don’t want him abandoned or killed. He leaves his rifle behind and he gets out like the rest of them.”
“That’s always a possibility,” Banister said.
Ferrie tossed the empty carton toward a basket.
“Do you trust Alpha 66?” he said.
“What the hell. They’ve been running a high fever ever since Pigs. That’s two and a half years with a thermometer up their ass. They’re ready. Nobody doubts their readiness.”
“Do you trust Mackey?”
“I trust him completely,” Banister said. “He wants a wall of shooters. Maybe eight men elevated on both sides of the street. As many as ten men. A shooting gallery.”
“I thought Mackey liked a hand-knit operation.”
“That’s what he likes. This is what he gets. Alpha is in whether we want them or not. Best to join forces. He’ll make the most of it. Once the motorcade route is public, he’ll scout the area and set up positions. The hero comes riding into town. Tra-la, tra-la. We get him first crack out of the box.”
They went down the stairs and paused outside the building entrance.
Banister said, “We have one more thing working. We want to leave an imprint of Oswald’s activities starting today and ending when the operation is complete. A series of incidents. We want to establish Oswald as a man that people will later remember. Someone involved in suspicious business.”
“What if Oswald doesn’t cooperate?”
“We create our own Oswald. A second, a third, a fourth. This plan goes into effect no matter what he does after Mexico City. Mackey wants Oswalds all over Texas. He wants Alpha to supply the people. I talked to Carmine Latta about money for this thing.”
“I’m the one who talks to Carmine.”
“Not this time.”
“I’m the contact.”
“Shut up so I can tell you.”
“Carmine and I have a rapport.”
“There’s an Alpha chapter in Dallas with headquarters in some rundown house. Carmine sent his bodyguard to Dallas earlier today. Pockets hot with cash.”
In Mexico City
Postcard #6. Mexico City. Ancient and modern. Sprawling yet intimate. A city of contrasts. Leon stands in his room at the Hotel del Comercio, counting out his pesos. He has a street map with the day’s destinations clearly marked. He has his documents and clippings. He has his thirty-five-cent Spanish-English dictionary with the kangaroo emblem. (New, concise. Nuevo, conciso.) He enjoys foreign travel, just like the President.
He walks two miles from his hotel to the Cuban embassy. He tells the woman he is going to Russia and wants to stop off in Cuba for a while. It is easier to get a transit visa because of the Cuban wariness of Americans. And anyone on his way to Russia gets the benefit of the doubt.
The woman examines his old Soviet work permit, his proof of marriage to a Soviet citizen, his proof of leadership in the Fair Play for Cuba movement, the news story of his arrest and a number of other documents.
She does not say sí. She does not say no.
She sends him off to get photographs for the visa application. He stops in at the Soviet embassy, a couple of blocks away. The nearness is reassuring. The embassy is a large gray villa with a columned entrance and fancy dormers. There are armed sentries and a tall iron fence with a spiky top. It occurs to Leon that a concealed camera is probably taking his picture as he enters.
An official looks at his papers. It might be nice, he says, if Leon could come back with his Cuban transit visa in hand.
All right. He gets his picture taken and goes back to the Cuban embassy. The woman says he must get his Soviet entry visa before he can get his Cuban transit visa.
All right. He goes back to the villa. The man tells him a Soviet visa will take. four months to arrange if he can get it at all. Leon says that when he was in Finland he got a visa in two days. The man says, “But this is Mexico City,” and Leon expects him to add, “Hotbed of intrigue.”
He eats the soup of the day, rice and meat. It costs forty-two cents. He checks the menu against the dictionary, then takes a bite of food, then checks again.
The next day at the Cuban embassy he demands to see the consul. He stands there shouting at the man. They have a loud and bitter exchange. He knows his rights. He is a friend of the revolution.
Then he goes to the Soviets and tells the man to check with the embassy in Washington. There are letters on file. His wife is Russian. They were married the day Castro won the Lenin Peace Prize.
It occurs to Leon that this man is KGB. So he mentions Kirilenko. Is this a good idea or not? At least it’s a name, it’s a link. It also occurs to Leon that he is being photographed not only by hidden Soviet cameras but probably by CIA cameras concealed in the building across the street or in a parked car or dangling, for all he knows, from a satellite in the sky.
His room number is eighteen. It is almost October and he was born on the eighteenth. David Ferrie was born on March 18. They have sat and discussed this. The year of Ferrie’s birth is 1918.
On Sunday he goes to the movies in the afternoon and again in the evening.
The next day he visits the Cuban embassy, talks to the Soviet embassy on the phone and then visits the Soviet embassy. It occurs to him that the CIA probably taps the Soviet telephones.
Cuba and Russia. Russia is not totally out of the question. He could actually go back to Russia if Marina’s visa comes through. He could visit or actually stay. They could be a family again.
Leon asks the Soviet official if there is any reply to the telegram sent to Washington. He tells the man he has information to offer in return for travel expenses to the USSR. He mentions Kirilenko again.
In the afternoon he consults his copy of Esta Semana, which he picked up in the hotel lobby. Events and locations in English and Spanish. Everything here happens in twos and his eyes constantly dart from one language to the other.
The next day they tell him at both embassies that there are no new developments. Once again he shows his documents, his correspondence. Documents are supposed to provide substance for a claim or a wish. A man with papers is substantial.
But this is the bureaucratic trap, in two languages, three languages, and nothing has effect. He is turned down, frozen out. It’s hard to believe the representatives of the new Cuba are treating him this way. It’s a deep disappointment. He feels he is living at the center of an emptiness. He wants to sense a structure that includes him, a definition clear enough to specify where he belongs. But the system floats right through him, through everything, even the revolution. He is a zero in the system.
For the third or fourth time he eats dinner in the small restaurant next to his hotel. It occurs to him that communications are flowing between agencies in the U. S. based on these wiretaps and the pictures taken by these hidden cameras.
Up to now he has been the only North American in the hotel and in the restaurant. But he realizes someone is looking at him, a man at a table near the kitchen, and Leon is fairly certain it is not a Mexican. He thinks he had a glimpse of the man coming in. But he doesn’t want to look that way and see who it is. He senses something about the man that he doesn’t want to know. There is music playing on a radio th
at sits on a shelf, maybe a fandango. He shifts in his chair, turning his back completely to the comer of the room where the man is sitting. Because the curious thing, the odd and strange and singular thing is that Leon believes the man is T. J. Mackey. He sips his water carefully. He feels the blood sort of surge up his back. He knows the man is not Latin, from the glimpse. He knows he’s broad-shouldered, hair cut close. He takes the dictionary out of his pocket just for something to do, a busyness, flipping through the pages. It was just a glimpse, a blur. He drinks his water slowly, almost formally, aware of himself, holding himself in a correct and serious way, as anyone does who knows he is being watched.
Walking across the square he hears someone call, “Leon,” but the name is pronounced more Spanish than English and he decides it is not meant for him.
The next day he gets on a bus at eight-thirty in the morning and sits in seat number twelve, which he has reserved in the name H. O. Lee. It is not until they approach the International Bridge, seventeen hours later, that Leon realizes he has forgotten to visit Trotsky’s house, the fortified house in Mexico City where Trotsky spent his last years in exile. The sense of regret makes him feel breathless, physically weak, but he shifts out of it quickly, saying so what.
He carries two bananas in a paper bag and he takes them out and gulps them down before the bus reaches customs. He figures fruit is not allowed across the border and the last thing he wants now is another tussle with authority.
4 October
Mary Frances pushed the vacuum cleaner across the living-room floor. She was feeling bloated and hormonal. It was an effort just to exist, to put one heavy foot ahead of the other. Friday, after school, and she had to vacuum around Suzanne, who knelt on the floor watching cartoon rabbits on TV. She vacuumed over the bump between the living room and dining room. She vacuumed around the table and under the oak sideboard. There was so much drag on her body today, so many resisting forces.
Win walked past the doorway with a knife in his hand.
She pushed the vacuum cleaner back into the living room. It was a five-year-old Hoover with a receptacle unit shaped like a space satellite. Funny, she thought, how she could vacuum back and forth in front of Suzanne and the girl never complained. The girl looked right through her. The girl heard the cartoon voices through the noise of the Hoover.
After dinner Win went down to the basement to investigate a noise. He watched himself come down the plank stairs, head tilted slightly, fingers of the right hand extended. Houses make noises, Mary Frances said. He smelled turpentine and understood how you could become hooked on the smell of turpentine, give yourself up to it, volatile, sticky, piney, your whole life centered on spirits of turpentine. Mary Frances told him that houses shift and settle all the time.
Thanks. But there is sometimes more to it.
He went back up to the living room and sat with her, listening to the radio. She liked the revivalist preachers, men of a certain creepy eloquence.
“Don’t you feel well?” he said.
“I’m all right.”
“I want you to be well.”
“I’m all right.”
“Because it would be devastating if you weren’t well. That mustn’t happen, understand? I actually couldn’t bear it.”
She had a Sears catalogue on her lap. She’d used catalogues to shop when they were posted to remote areas. ISOLATION TROPIC. He wondered what the hell had happened to Mackey.
“Don’t be so solemn,” she said.
“Don’t you like being fussed after?”
“Not the way you do it. ”
“The housewife who never has time for herself. Doesn’t she relish a little attention?”
“Not the way you do it. Looking so stricken. It chills my blood.”
He laughed. They heard Suzanne walk through the kitchen singing a rhyme popular with local kids. Mackey had eluded all attempts by Parmenter to trace him. What did it mean? Larry said he probably just walked off. Doesn’t want to do it. Wants to change careers. It’s over. We tried.
“Beans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot.”
Parmenter himself was in Buenos Aires getting a preview of his new job. This is the future of the Agency, he said to Everett. Keeping track of world currencies. Moving and hiding money. Building reserves of money. Financing vast operations with complex networks of money.
Lancer is coming to Texas.
“Did you notice the casual tone?” Mary Frances said.
“It’s a kids’ jingle. What sort of tone?”
“No but the way she sort of rehearsed the casualness. So we wouldn’t know we were supposed to hear.”
“It was casual because it was casual.”
“Where’s the steak knife you were using to scrape paint? We keep losing knives.”
Premonition. The story about the President’s trip was in the Record-Chronicle a week ago. A brief tour of Texas in November, after his swing through Florida. Stops at Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Dallas. Buried inside the paper. Three or four lines that only a person with a compelling interest in the President’s whereabouts might take note of. Win thought it was eerie that President Jack would be headed in this general direction. The plot coming to the plotter. Assuming he made it past Miami. Because Parmenter might be wrong. Something might still be in force, some movement, a driving logic.
“I can’t find the paint scraper,” he said.
“Just leave the knives alone.”
“There’s something about a paint scraper. You know it’s there. You’re looking right at it. But you can’t quite pick it out of the background. Let’s face it, the background is vast and confusing.”
He wanted a way out of guilt and fear. He was not strong enough to survive the damage this operation might cause if it developed a second life. He half yearned to be found out. It would be a deliverance in a way to be confronted, polygraphed, forced to tell the truth. He believed in the truth. He feared and welcomed the chance to be polygraphed. The Office of Security had models designed to fit in suitcases. You could be fluttered in your home. They would arrive with a two-suit Samsonite case. Unpack the machine, mix some control questions in with the serious stuff. His body would do the rest, yield up its unprotected data. The machine intervenes between a man and his secrets. There is something intimate about the polygraph. It measures skin conduction and hears you sweat. It allows you to give yourself away. Lies quicken the breath. They make the blood pound. It was such an old-fashioned idea, dated and quaint, but he’d seen himself how well it worked. Failed one test. Broke down at the start of another. Polygraph. A nice technical sound to it, a specialist’s sound, but still traditional, decipherable, from the Greek.
“Where is she?” He called out, “Where’s my little girl?”
“In her room,” Mary Frances said.
He called out, “But we want her down here. We need some serious cheering up.”
“Once she’s in her room, the subject’s closed. The day is definitely over.”
“I had to share a room,” he said.
“I had my own, thank God.”
“I think you’ll find that the great figures of history rarely had their own rooms.”
“I loved my room,” she said.
“Are you saying nothing ever again has been quite so nice?” He called out, “Come down and talk to us or we’ll be very unhaaaappy.”
He went out to the porch to investigate a noise. He stood there smoking. He could hear the radio faintly. An old voice, a radio voice from another era can bring back everything. This was a house that nurtured memories. The curved porch. The oak posts furled in trumpet vines.
He knew all the techniques ever devised to beat the machine but he also knew he would be helpless to bring them into play. He believed in the polygraph. He wanted to cooperate, show everyone the machine was working well. Devices make us pliant. We want to please them. The machine was his only hope of deliverance after what he’d done, what
he’d loosed into the crowd. A way out of death. Because in time a pity would fall across their faces. They would all see he only wanted what was right for his country. He loved his country. He loved Cuba, knew the language and the literature. He would go beyond yes and no. Tell them about the deathward-tending logic of a plot. T-Jay is out there somewhere, chewing gum and squinting in the light. They would nod and understand. A forgiveness would come to their eyes. Because they are not, after all, unmerciful men. Say what you will about the Agency. The Agency forgives.
God is alive and well in Texas.
He went inside and turned off the radio. The day wasn’t half done and it was time to go to bed again. He checked the front door and turned off the porch light. He walked down the hall for the millionth time, checked the back door, checked to see that the oven was off. The last thing downstairs was the oven, except for the kitchen light. He turned off the kitchen light and began to climb the stairs.
He slipped near the top of the stairway, an ordinary misstep, no harm, no deeper meaning, but Mary Frances was out of the bedroom in a silent burst to take him by the elbow and lead him inside.
He sat at the edge of the bed taking off his shoes. She watched him, reading his face for signs.
“Just a little slip,” he said.
“It sounded.”
“Just an ordinary fool missing a step.”
“You have a seminar tomorrow. Arts and Sciences Building. Ten A.M.”
“I want you to be well,” he said. “You have to be absolutely well. We can’t have a situation where you’re not completely yourself. I couldn’t even begin to carry on if you somehow weren’t well. I count on you for everything that matters.”
The Agency forgives. There wasn’t a man in the upper ranks of the four directorates who didn’t understand the perils of clandestine work. They would be pleased by his willingness to cooperate. What’s more, they would admire the complexity of his plan, incomplete as it was. It had art and memory. It had a sense of responsibility, of moral force. And it was a picture in the world of their own guilty wishes. He was never more surely an Agency man than in the first breathless days of dreaming up this plot.
