11/22/63: A Novel

“If so, let me be the first to thank you. On behalf of the whole country.”

“The president. Where is he now? Do you know?”

Dr. Perry looked at the cops, eyebrows raised in a question. They looked at each other, then one of them said, “He’s gone on to Austin, to give a dinner speech, just like he was scheduled to do. I don’t know if that makes him crazy-brave or just stupid.”

Maybe, I thought, Air Force One was going to crash, killing Kennedy and everyone else on board. Maybe he was going to have a heart attack or a fatal stroke. Maybe some other chickenshit bravo was going to blow his handsome head off. Did the obdurate past work against the things changed as well as against the change-agent? I didn’t know. Nor much care. I had done my part. What happened to Kennedy from this point on was out of my hands.

“I heard on the radio that Jackie isn’t with him,” Perry said quietly. “He sent her on ahead to the vice president’s ranch in Johnson City. He’ll join her there for the weekend as planned. If what you say is true, George-”

“I think that’s enough, doc,” one of the cops said. It certainly was for me; to Mal Perry I was George again.

Dr. Perry-who had his share of doctor’s arrogance-ignored him. “If what you say is true, then I see a trip to Washington in your future. And very likely a medal ceremony in the Rose Garden.”

After he departed, I was left alone again. Only not really; Sadie was there, too. How we danced, she’d said just before she passed from this world. I could close my eyes and see her in line with the other girls, shaking her shoulders and doing the Madison. In this memory she was laughing, her hair was flying, and her face was perfect. 2011 surgical techniques could do a lot to fix what John Clayton had done to that face, but I thought I had an even better technique. If I got a chance to use it, that was.

4

I was allowed to baste in my own painful juices for two hours before the door of the interview room opened again. Two men came in. The one with the basset-hound face beneath a white Stetson hat introduced himself as Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police. He had a briefcase-but not my briefcase, so that was all right.

The other guy had heavy jowls, a drinker’s complexion, and short dark hair that gleamed with hair tonic. His eyes were sharp, inquisitive, and a little worried. From the inside pocket of his suit coat he produced an ID folder and flipped it open. “James Hosty, Mr. Amberson. Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

You have good reason to look worried, I thought. You were the man in charge of monitoring Lee, weren’t you, Agent Hosty?

Will Fritz said, “Like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Amberson.”

“Yes,” I said. “And I’d like to get out of here. People who save the President of the United States generally don’t get treated like criminals.”

“Now, now,” Agent Hosty said. “We sent you a doc, didn’t we? And not just any doc; your doc.”

“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 fiancee 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.