11/22/63: A Novel

“Because I was in a coma, Detective Fritz. When I came out of it, I didn’t remember. When I did remember — some of it, at least — I recalled Roth saying he was hooked up with a Tampa bookie I’d done business with, and a New Orleans mobster named Carlos Marcello. That made going to the cops seem risky.”

“Are you saying DPD is dirty?” I didn’t know if Fritz’s anger was real or faked, and didn’t much care.

“I’m saying I watch The Untouchables and I know the Mob doesn’t like rats. I bought a gun for personal protection — as is my right under the Second Amendment — and I carried it.” I pointed at the evidence bag. “That gun.”

Hosty: “Where’d you buy it?”

“I don’t remember.”

Fritz: “Your amnesia is pretty convenient, isn’t it? Like something on The Secret Storm or As the World Turns.”

“Talk to Perry,” I repeated. “And take another look at my knee. I reinjured it racing up six flights of stairs to save the president’s life. Which I will tell the press. I’ll also tell them my reward for doing my duty as an American citizen was an interrogation in a hot little room without even a glass of water.”

“Do you want water?” Fritz asked, and I understood that this could be all right, if I didn’t misstep. The president had escaped assassination by the skin of his teeth. These two men — not to mention Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry — would be under enormous pressure to provide a hero. Since Sadie was dead, I was what they had.

“No,” I said, “but a Co’-Cola would be very nice.”

6

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?’”