11/22/63: A Novel

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Let’s have a look.”

He tried to pull up my left pants leg and couldn’t. The joint was too swollen. When he produced a pair of scissors, both cops stepped forward and drew their guns, keeping them pointed at the floor with their fingers outside the trigger guards. Dr. Perry looked at them with mild astonishment, then cut the leg of my pants up the seam. He looked, he touched, he produced a hypodermic needle and drew off fluid. I gritted my teeth and waited for it to be over. Then he rummaged in his bag, came out with an elastic bandage, and wrapped the knee tightly. That provided some relief.

“I can give you something for the pain, if these officers don’t object.”

They didn’t, but I did. The most crucial hour of my life — and Sadie’s — was dead ahead. I didn’t want dope clouding my brain when it rolled around.

“Do you have any Goody’s Headache Powder?”

Perry wrinkled his nose as if he had smelled something bad. “I have Bayer Aspirin and Emprin. The Emprin’s a bit stronger.”

“Give me that, then. And Dr. Perry?”

He looked up from his bag.

“Sadie and I didn’t do anything wrong. She gave her life for her country. . and I would have given mine for her. I just didn’t get the chance.”

“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.