11/22/63: A Novel

“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 fiancée 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.

“Maybe you realized at the last minute that you were getting ready to shoot the most powerful man in the whole world,” Hosty said. “You had a moment of clarity. So you stopped him. If it went like that, you’d get a lot of leniency.”

Yes. Leniency to consist of forty, maybe even fifty years in Leavenworth eating mac and cheese instead of death in the Texas electric chair.

“Then why weren’t we there with him, Agent Hosty? Instead of hammering on the door to be let in?”

Hosty shrugged. You tell me.

“And if we were plotting an assassination, you must have seen me with him. Because I know you had him under at least partial surveillance.” I leaned forward. “Why didn’t you stop him, Hosty? That was your job.”

He drew back as if I’d raised a fist to him. His jowls reddened.

For a few moments at least, my grief hardened into a kind of malicious pleasure. “The FBI kept an eye on him because he defected to Russia, redefected to the United States, then tried to defect to Cuba. He was handing out pro-Fidel leaflets on street corners for months before this horror show today.”

“How do you know all that?” Hosty barked.

“Because he told me. Then what happens? The president who’s tried everything he can think of to knock Castro off his perch comes to Dallas. Working at the Book Depository, Lee had a ringside seat for the motorcade. You knew it and did nothing.”

Fritz was staring at Hosty with something like horror. I’m sure Hosty was regretting the fact that the Dallas cop was even in the room, but what could he do? It was Fritz’s station.

“We did not consider him a threat,” Hosty said stiffly.

“Well, that was certainly a mistake. What was in the note he gave you, Hosty? I know Lee went to your office and left you one when he was told you weren’t there, but he wouldn’t tell me what was in it. He just gave that thin little fuck-you smile of his. We’re talking about the man who killed the woman I loved, so I think I deserve to know. Did he say he was going to do something that would make the world sit up and take notice? I bet he did.”

“It was nothing like that!”

“Show me the note, then. Double-dog dare you.”

“Any communication from Mr. Oswald is Bureau business.”

“I don’t think you can show it. I’ll bet it’s ashes in your office toilet, as per Mr. Hoover’s orders.”

If it wasn’t, it would be. It was in Al’s notes.

“If you’re such an innocent,” Fritz said, “you’ll tell us how you knew Oswald and why you were carrying a handgun.”

“And why the lady had a butcher’s knife with blood on it,” Hosty added.

I saw red at that. “The lady had blood everywhere!” I shouted. “On her clothes, on her shoes, in her purse! The son of a bitch shot her in the chest, or didn’t you notice?”

Fritz: “Calm down, Mr. Amberson. No one’s accusing you of anything.” The subtext: Yet.

I took a deep breath. “Have you talked to Dr. Perry? You sent him to examine me and take care of my knee, so you must have. Which means you know I was beaten within an inch of my life last August. The man who ordered the beating — and participated in it — is a bookie named Akiva Roth. I don’t think he meant to hurt me as badly as he did, but probably I smarted off to him and made him mad. I can’t remember. There’s a lot I can’t remember since that day.”

“Why didn’t you report this after it happened?”