11/22/63: A Novel

Lee would be questioned at gunpoint in the second-floor break room even before the speeding motorcade delivered the dying president to Parkland Hospital. The cop who did the questioning would recall later that the young man had been reasonable and persuasive. Once foreman Roy Truly vouched for him as an employee, the cop would let Ozzie Rabbit go and then hurry upstairs to seek the source of the gunshots. It was possible to believe that, if not for his encounter with Patrolman Tippit, Lee might not have been captured for days or weeks.

“Sadie, the Dallas cops are going to shock the world with their incompetence. I’d be nuts to trust them. They might not even act on an anonymous tip.”

“But why? Why wouldn’t they?”

“Right now because the guy’s not even in Texas, and he doesn’t mean to come back. He’s planning to defect to Cuba.”

“ Cuba? Why in the world Cuba?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to work. He’s going to return to Dallas, but not with any plan to kill the president. He doesn’t even know Kennedy’s coming to Dallas. Kennedy himself doesn’t know, because the trip hasn’t been scheduled yet.”

“But you know.”

“Yes.”

“Because in the time you come from, all this is in the history books.”

“The broad strokes, yes. I got the specifics from the friend who sent me here. I’ll tell you the whole story someday when this is over, but not now. Not while the machine with all those teeth is still running full tilt. The important thing is this: if the police question the guy at any point before mid-November, he’s going to sound completely innocent, because he is innocent.” Another of those vast cloud-shadows rolled over us, temporarily dropping the temperature by ten degrees or so. “For all I know, he may not have made up his mind entirely until the moment he pulled the trigger.”

“You speak as if it’s already happened,” she marveled.

“In my world, it has.”

“What’s important about mid-November?”

“On the sixteenth, the Morning News is going to tell Dallas about Kennedy’s motorcade down Main Street. L- the guy will read that and realize the cars will go right past the place where he’s working. He’s probably going to think it’s a message from God. Or maybe the ghost of Karl Marx.”

“Where’s he going to work?”

I shook my head again. That wasn’t safe for her to know. Of course, none of this was safe. Yet (I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating) what a relief to tell at least some of it to another person.

“If the police talked to him, they might at least frighten him out of doing it.”

She was right, but what a horrifying risk. I’d already taken a smaller one by talking to de Mohrenschildt, but de Mohrenschildt wanted those oil leases. Also, I’d done more than frighten him-I’d scared the living bejesus out of him. I thought he’d keep mum. Lee, on the other hand…

I took Sadie’s hand. “Right now I can predict where this man’s going the same way I could predict where a train is going to go, because it can’t leave the tracks. Once I step in, once I meddle, all bets are off.”

“If you talked to him yourself?”

A truly nightmarish image came into my mind. I saw Lee telling the cops, The idea was put into my head by a man named George Amberson. If it hadn’t been for him, I never would have thought of it.

“I don’t think that would work, either.”

In a small voice, she asked: “Will you have to kill him?”

I didn’t answer. Which was an answer in itself, of course.

“And you really know this is going to happen.”

“Yes.”

“The way you know Tom Case is going to win that fight on the twenty-ninth.”

“Yes.”

“Even though everybody who knows boxing says Tiger’s going to murder him.”

I smiled. “You’ve been reading the sports pages.”

“Yes. I have.” She took the piece of grass from my mouth and put it in her own. “I’ve never been to a prizefight. Will you take me?”

“It’s not exactly live, you know. It’s on a big TV screen.”

“I know. Will you take me?”

9

There were plenty of good-looking women in the Dallas Auditorium on fight night, but Sadie got her fair share of admiring glances. She had made herself up carefully for the occasion, but even the most skillful makeup could only minimize the damage to her face, not completely hide it. Her dress helped matters considerably. It clung smoothly to her body line, and had a deep scoop neck.

The brilliant stroke was a felt fedora given to her by Ellen Dockerty, when Sadie told her that I had asked her to go to the prizefight with me. The hat was an almost exact match for the one Ingrid Bergman wears in the final scene of Casablanca. With its insouciant slant, it set her face off perfectly… and of course it slanted to the left, putting a deep triangle of shadow over her bad cheek. It was better than any makeup job. When she came out of the bedroom for inspection, I told her she was absolutely gorgeous. The look of relief on her face and the excited sparkle in her eyes suggested that she knew I was doing more than trying to make her feel good.