11/22/63: A Novel

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 liked 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.”