11/22/63

Hosty stubbed out his cigarette hard enough to send up a fountain of sparks. Some landed on the back of his hand, but he didn’t seem to feel them. “That’s a fucking lie!”

“I know,” I said. “And I’ll tell it with a straight face. If you force me to. Has the idea of getting rid of me come up yet, Hosty?”

“Spare me the comic-book stuff. We don’t kill people.”

“Tell it to the Diem brothers over in Vietnam.”

He was looking at me the way a man might look at a seemingly inoffensive mouse that had suddenly bitten. And with big teeth. “How do you know America had anything to do with the Diem brothers? According to what I read in the papers, our hands are clean.”

“Let’s not get off the subject. The thing is, right now I’m too popular to kill. Or am I wrong?”

“No one wants to kill you, Amberson. And no one wants to poke holes in your story.” He barked an unamused laugh. “If we started doing that, the whole thing would unravel. That’s how thin it is.”

“‘Romance at short notice was her specialty,’” I said.

“Huh?”

“H. H. Munro. Also known as Saki. The story is called ‘The Open Window.’ Look it up. When it comes to the art of creating bullshit on the spur of the moment, it’s very instructive.”

He scanned me, his shrewd little eyes worried. “I don’t understand you at all. That concerns me.” In the west, out toward Midland where the oil wells thump without surcease and the gas flares dim the stars, more thunder rumbled.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“I think that when we trace you back a little farther from Derren or Derry or whatever it is, we’re going to find… nothing. As if you stepped right out of thin air.”

This was so close to the truth it nearly took my breath away.

“What we want is for you to go back to the nowhere you came from. The scandal-press will gin up the usual nasty speculations and conspiracy theories, but we can guarantee you that you’ll come out of this looking pretty good. If you even care about such things, that is. Marina Oswald will support your story right down the line.”

“You’ve already spoken to her, I take it.”

“You take it right. She knows she’ll be deported if she doesn’t play ball. The gentlemen of the press haven’t had a very good look at you; the photos that show up in tomorrow’s papers are going to be little more than blurs.”

I knew he was right. I had been exposed to the cameras only on that one quick walk down the hall to Chief Curry’s office, and Fritz and Hosty, both big men, had had me under the arms, blocking the best photo sightlines. Also, I’d had my head down because the lights were so bright. There were plenty of pictures of me in Jodie — even a portrait shot in the yearbook from the year I’d taught there full-time — but in this era before JPEGs or even faxes, it would be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week before they could be found and published.

“Here’s a story for you,” Hosty said. “You like stories, don’t you? Things like this ‘Open Window’?”

“I’m an English teacher. I love stories.”

“This fellow, George Amberson, is so stunned with grief over the loss of his girlfriend—”

“Fiancée.”

“Fiancée, right, even better. He’s so grief-stricken that he ditches the whole works and simply disappears. Wants nothing to do with publicity, free champagne, medals from the president, or ticker-tape parades. He just wants to get away and mourn his loss in privacy. That’s the kind of story Americans like. They see it on TV all the time. Instead of ‘The Open Window,’ it’s called ‘The Modest Hero.’ And there’s this FBI agent who’s willing to back up every word, and even read a statement that you left behind. How does that sound?”

It sounded like manna from heaven, but I held onto my poker face. “You must be awfully sure I can disappear.”

“We are.”

“And you really mean it when you tell me I won’t be disappearing to the bottom of the Trinity River, as per the director’s orders?”

“Nothing like that.” He smiled. It was meant to be reassuring, but it made me think of an old line from my teenage years: Don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant, I had the mumps when I was fourteen.

“Because I might have left a little insurance, Agent Hosty.”

One eyelid twitched. It was the only sign the idea distressed him. “We think you can disappear because we believe… let’s just say you could call on assistance, once you were clear of Dallas.”

“No press conference?”

“That’s the last thing we want.”

He opened his briefcase again. From it he took a yellow legal pad. He passed it over to me, along with a pen from his breast pocket. “Write me a letter, Amberson. It’ll be Fritz and me who’ll find it tomorrow morning when we come to pick you up, but you can head it ‘To Whom It May Concern.’ Make it good. Make it genius. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Sure,” I said. “Romance at short notice is my specialty.”