11/22/63: A Novel

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?”

“Let me put it this way. The amount of trouble I cause you will be directly proportional to the amount of trouble you cause me.”

“Would it be fair to say that when it came to making trouble, you’d make up what you didn’t absolutely know. . and to our detriment?”

I said nothing.

He said, as if speaking to himself, “It doesn’t surprise me that you were writing a book. You should have carried on with it, Amberson. It probably would have been a bestseller. Because you’re bloody good at making things up, I’ll give you that. You were pretty plausible this afternoon. And you know things you have no business knowing, which is what makes us believe you’re far from a private citizen. Come on, who wound you up? Was it Angleton at the Firm? It was, wasn’t it? Sly rose-growing bastard that he is.”

“I’m just me,” I said, “and I probably don’t know as much as you think. But yes, I know enough to make the Bureau look bad. How Lee told me he came right out and told you that he was going to shoot Kennedy, for instance.”

Hosty stubbed out his cigarette hard enough to send up a fountain of sparks. Some landed on the back of his hand, but he didn’t seem to feel them. “That’s a fucking lie!”

“I know,” I said. “And I’ll tell it with a straight face. If you force me to. Has the idea of getting rid of me come up yet, Hosty?”

“Spare me the comic-book stuff. We don’t kill people.”

“Tell it to the Diem brothers over in Vietnam.”

He was looking at me the way a man might look at a seemingly inoffensive mouse that had suddenly bitten. And with big teeth. “How do you know America had anything to do with the Diem brothers? According to what I read in the papers, our hands are clean.”

“Let’s not get off the subject. The thing is, right now I’m too popular to kill. Or am I wrong?”

“No one wants to kill you, Amberson. And no one wants to poke holes in your story.” He barked an unamused laugh. “If we started doing that, the whole thing would unravel. That’s how thin it is.”

“‘Romance at short notice was her specialty,’” I said.

“Huh?”

“H. H. Munro. Also known as Saki. The story is called ‘The Open Window.’ Look it up. When it comes to the art of creating bullshit on the spur of the moment, it’s very instructive.”

He scanned me, his shrewd little eyes worried. “I don’t understand you at all. That concerns me.” In the west, out toward Midland where the oil wells thump without surcease and the gas flares dim the stars, more thunder rumbled.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“I think that when we trace you back a little farther from Derren or Derry or whatever it is, we’re going to find. . nothing. As if you stepped right out of thin air.”

This was so close to the truth it nearly took my breath away.