11/22/63: A Novel

Hosty’s knock came promptly at nine. I opened up and he ambled in. He carried a briefcase in one hand (but not my briefcase, so that was still all right). In the other was a bottle of champagne, the good stuff, Moet et Chandon, with a red, white, and blue bow tied around the neck. He looked very tired.

“Amberson,” he said.

“Hosty,” I responded.

He closed the door, then pointed to the phone. I took the bug from my pocket and displayed it. He nodded.

“There are no others?” I asked.

“No. That bug is DPD’s, and this is now our case. Orders straight from Hoover. If anyone asks about the phone bug, you found it yourself.”

“Okay.”

He held up the champagne. “Compliments of the management. They insisted I bring it up. Would you care to toast the President of the United States?”

Considering that my beautiful Sadie now lay on a slab in the county morgue, I had no interest in toasting anything. I had succeeded, and success tasted like ashes in my mouth.

“No.”

“Me, either, but I’m glad as hell he’s alive. Want to know a secret?”

“Sure.”

“I voted for him. I may be the only agent in the whole Bureau who did.”

I said nothing.

Hosty seated himself in one of the room’s two armchairs and gave a long sigh of relief. He set his briefcase between his feet, then turned the bottle so he could read the label. “Nineteen fifty-eight. Wine fanciers would probably know if that was a good year, but I’m more of a beer man, myself.”

“So am I.”

“Then you might enjoy the Lone Star they’re holding for you downstairs. There’s a case of the stuff, and a framed letter promising you a case a month for the rest of your life. More champagne, too. I saw at least a dozen bottles. Everyone from the Dallas Chamber of Commerce to the City Board of Tourism sent them. You have a Zenith color television still in the carton, a solid gold signet ring with a picture of the president in it from Calloway’s Fine Jewelry, a certificate for three new suits from Dallas Menswear, and all kinds of other stuff, including a key to the city. The management has set aside a room on the first floor for your swag, and I’m guessing that by dawn tomorrow they’ll have to set aside another. And the food! People are bringing cakes, pies, casseroles, roasts of beef, barbecue chicken, and enough Mexican to give you the runs for five years. We’re turning them away, and they hate to go, let me tell you. There are women out there in front of the hotel that… well, let’s just say Jack Kennedy himself would be envious, and he’s a legendary cocksman. If you knew what the director has in his files on that man’s sex life, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“My capacity for belief might surprise you.”

“Dallas loves you, Amberson. Hell, the whole country loves you.” He laughed. The laugh turned into a cough. When it passed, he lit a cigarette. Then he looked at his watch. “As of nine-oh-seven Central Standard Time on the evening of November twenty-second, 1963, you are America’s fair-haired boy.”

“What about you, Hosty? Do you love me? Does Director Hoover?”

He set his cigarette aside in the ashtray after a single drag, then leaned forward and pinned me with his eyes. They were deep-set in folds of flesh, and they were tired, but they were nonetheless very bright and aware.

“Look at me, Amberson. Dead in the eyes. Then tell me if you were or weren’t in on it with Oswald. And make it the truth, because I’ll know a lie.”

Given his egregious mishandling of Oswald, I didn’t believe that, but I believed that he believed it. So I locked onto his gaze and said: “I was not.”

For a moment he said nothing. Then he sighed, settled back, and picked up his cigarette. “No. You weren’t.” He jetted smoke from his nostrils. “Who do you work for, then? The CIA? The Russians, maybe? I don’t see it myself, but the director believes the Russians would gladly burn a deep-cover asset in order to stop an assassination that would spark an international incident. Maybe even World War III. Especially when folks find out about Oswald’s time in Russia.” He said it Roosha, the way the televangelist Hargis did on his broadcasts. Maybe it was Hosty’s idea of a jest.

I said, “I work for no one. I’m just a guy, Hosty.”

He pointed his cigarette at me. “Hold that thought.” He unstrapped his briefcase and took out a file even thinner than the one on Oswald I’d spied in Curry’s office. This file would be mine, and it would thicken… but not as quickly as it would have done in the computer-driven twenty-first century.

“Before Dallas, you were in Florida. The town of Sunset Point.”

“Yes.”

“You substitute-taught in the Sarasota school system.”

“Correct.”

“Before that, we believe you spent some time in… was it Derren? Derren, Maine?”

“Derry.”

“Where you did exactly what?”

“Where I started my book.”

“Uh-huh, and before that?”

“Here and there, all around the square.”

“How much do you know about my dealings with Oswald, Amberson?”

I kept silent.

“Don’t play it so cozy. It’s just us girls.”

“Enough to cause trouble for you and your director.”

“Unless?”