11/22/63 Part 50

I started to call her back, but when the operator said "Number, please?" sanity rea.s.serted itself. I put the phone back in its cradle. She had said what she needed to say. Trying to get her to say more would only make things worse.

I tried to tell myself that her call had been nothing but a stratagem to get me off the dime, a speak for yourself, John Alden kind of thing. It wouldn't work because that wasn't Sadie. It had seemed more like a cry for help.

I picked up the phone again, and this time when the operator asked for a number, I gave her one. The phone rang twice on the other end, and then Ellen Dockerty said, "Yes? Who is it, please?"

"Hi, Miz Ellie. It's me. George."

Maybe that moment-of-silence thing was catching. I waited. Then she said, "h.e.l.lo, George. I've been neglecting you, haven't I? It's just that I've been awfully-"

"Busy, sure. I know what the first week or two's like, Ellie. I called because Sadie just called me."

"Oh?" She sounded very cautious.

"If you told her my number was on a Fort Worth exchange instead of Dallas, it's okay."

"I wasn't gossiping. I hope you understand that. I thought she had a right to know. I care for Sadie. Of course I care for you, too, George . . . but you're gone. She's not."

I did understand, although it hurt. The feeling of being in a s.p.a.ce capsule bound for the outer depths recurred. "I'm fine with that, Ellie, and it really wasn't much of a fib. I expect to be moving to Dallas soon."

No response, and what could she say? Perhaps you are, but we both know you're a bit of a liar?

"I didn't like the way she sounded. Does she seem all right to you?"

"I'm not sure I want to answer that question. If I said no, you might come roaring down to see her, and she doesn't want to see you. Not as things stand."

Actually she had answered my question. "Was she okay when she came back?"

"She was fine. Glad to see us all."

"But now she sounds distracted and says she feels sad."

"Is that so surprising?" Miz Ellie spoke with asperity. "There are lots of memories here for Sadie, many of them connected to a man she still has feelings for. A nice man and a lovely teacher, but one who arrived flying false colors."

That one really hurt.

"It seemed like something else. She spoke about some sort of coming crisis that she heard about from-" From the Yalie who was sitting in the doorway of history? "From someone she met in Nevada. Her husband filled her head with a lot of nonsense-"

"Her head? Her pretty little head?" Not just asperity now; outright anger. It made me feel small and mean. "George, I have a stack of folders a mile high in front of me, and I need to get to them. You cannot psychoa.n.a.lyze Sadie Dunhill at long distance, and I cannot help you with your love life. The only thing I can do is to advise you to come clean if you care for her. Sooner rather than later."

"You haven't seen her husband around, I suppose?"

"No! Goodnight, George!"

For the second time that night, a woman I cared about hung up on me. That was a new personal record.

I went into the bedroom and began to undress. Fine when she arrived. Glad to be back with all her Jodie friends. Not so fine now. Because she was torn between the handsome, on-the-fast-track-to-success new guy and the tall dark stranger with the invisible past? That would probably be the case in a romance novel, but if it was the case here, why hadn't she been down at the mouth when she came back?

An unpleasant thought occurred to me: maybe she was drinking. A lot. Secretly. Wasn't it possible? My wife had been a secret heavy drinker for years-before I married her, in fact-and the past harmonizes with itself. It would be easy to dismiss that, to say that Miz Ellie would have spotted the signs, but drunks can be clever. Sometimes it's years before people start to get wise. If Sadie was showing up for work on time, Ellie might not notice that she was doing so with bloodshot eyes and mints on her breath.

The idea was probably ridiculous. All my suppositions were suspect, each one colored by how much I still cared for Sadie.

I lay back on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. In the living room, the oil stove gurgled-it was another cool night.

Let it go, buddy, Al said. You have to. Remember, you're not here to get- The girl, the gold watch, and everything. Yeah, Al, got it.

Besides, she's probably fine. You're the one with the problem.

More than just one, actually, and it was a long time before I fell asleep.

16.

The following Monday, when I made one of my regular drive-bys of 214 West Neely Street in Dallas, I observed a long gray funeral hack parked in the driveway. The two fat ladies were standing on the porch, watching a couple of men in dark suits lift a stretcher into the rear. On it was a sheeted form. On the tottery-looking balcony above the porch, the young couple from the upstairs apartment was also watching. Their youngest child was sleeping in his mother's arms.

The wheelchair with the ashtray clamped to the arm stood orphaned under the tree where the old man had spent most of his days last summer.

I pulled over and stood by my car until the hea.r.s.e left. Then (although I realized the timing was rather, shall we say, cra.s.s) I crossed the street and walked up the path to the porch. At the foot of the stairs, I tipped my hat. "Ladies, I'm very sorry for your loss."

The older of the two-the wife who was now a widow, I a.s.sumed-said: "You've been here before."

Indeed I have, I thought of saying. This thing is bigger than pro football.

"He saw you." Not accusing; just stating a fact.

"I've been looking for an apartment in this neighborhood. Will you be keeping this one?"

"No," the younger one said. "He had some in-surance. Bout the only thing he did have. 'Cept for some medals in a box." She sniffed. I tell you, it broke my heart a little to see how grief-stricken those two ladies were.

"He said you was a ghost," the widow told me. "He said he could see right through you. Accourse he was as crazy as a s.h.i.thouse mouse. Last three years, ever since he had his stroke and they put him on that peebag. Me n Ida's goin back to Oklahoma."

Try Mozelle, I thought. That's where you're supposed to go when you give up your apartment.

"What do you want?" the younger one asked. "We got to take him a suit on down to the funeary home."

"I'd like the number of your landlord," I said.

The widow's eyes gleamed. "What'd it be worth to you, mister?"

"I'll give it to you for free!" said the young woman on the second-floor balcony.

The bereaved daughter looked up and told her to shut her f.u.c.king mouth. That was the thing about Dallas. Derry, too.

Neighborly.

CHAPTER 19.

1.

George de Mohrenschildt made his grand entrance on the afternoon of September fifteenth, a dark and rainy Sat.u.r.day. He was behind the wheel of a coffee-colored Cadillac right out of a Chuck Berry song. With him was a man I knew, George Bouhe, and one I didn't-a skinny whip of a guy with a fuzz of white hair and the ramrod back of a fellow who's spent a good deal of time in the military and is still happy about it. De Mohrenschildt went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. I dashed to get the distance mike.

When I came back with my gear, Bouhe had a folded-up playpen under his arm, and the military-looking guy had an armload of toys. De Mohrenschildt was empty-handed, and mounted the steps in front of the other two with his head up and his chest thrown out. He was tall and powerfully built. His graying hair was combed slantwise back from his broad forehead in a way that said-to me, at least-look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. For I am GEORGE.

I plugged in the tape recorder, put on the headphones, and tilted the mike-equipped bowl across the street.

Marina was out of sight. Lee was sitting on the couch, reading a thick paperback by the light of the lamp on the bureau. When he heard footsteps on the porch, he looked up with a frown and tossed his book on the coffee table. More G.o.ddam expats, he might have been thinking.

But he went to answer the knock. He held out his hand to the silver-haired stranger on his porch, but de Mohrenschildt surprised him-and me-by pulling Lee into his arms and bussing him on both cheeks. Then he held him back by the shoulders. His voice was deep and accented-German rather than Russian, I thought. "Let me look at a young man who has journeyed so far and come back with his ideals intact!" Then he pulled Lee into another hug. Oswald's head just showed above the bigger man's shoulder, and I saw something even more surprising: Lee Harvey Oswald was smiling.

2.

Marina came out of the baby's room with June in her arms. She exclaimed with pleasure when she saw Bouhe, and thanked him for the playpen and what she called, in her stilted English, the "child's playings." Bouhe introduced the skinny man as Lawrence Orlov-Colonel Lawrence Orlov, if you please-and de Mohrenschildt as "a friend of the Russian community."

Bouhe and Orlov went to work setting the playpen up in the middle of the floor. Marina stood with them, chatting in Russian. Like Bouhe, Orlov couldn't seem to take his eyes off the young Russian mother. Marina was wearing a smock top and shorts showcasing legs that went up forever. Lee's smile was gone. He was retreating into his usual gloom.

Only de Mohrenschildt wouldn't let him. He spotted Lee's paperback, sprang to the coffee table, and picked it up. "Atlas Shrugged?" Speaking just to Lee. Completely ignoring the others, who were admiring the new playpen. "Ayn Rand? What is a young revolutionary doing with this?"

"Know your enemy," Lee said, and when de Mohrenschildt burst into a hearty roar of laughter, Lee's smile resurfaced.

"And what do you make of Miss Rand's cri de coeur?" That struck a cord when I played the tape back. I listened to the comment twice before it clicked: it was almost exactly the same phrase Mimi Corcoran had used when asking me about The Catcher in the Rye.

"I think she's swallowed the poison bait," Oswald said. "Now she's making money by selling it to other people."

"Exactly, my friend. I've never heard it put better. There will come a day when the Rands of the world will answer for their crimes. Do you believe that?"

"I know it," Lee said. He spoke matter-of-factly.

De Mohrenschildt patted the couch. "Sit by me. I want to hear of your adventures in the homeland."

But first Bouhe and Orlov approached Lee and de Mohrenschildt. There was a lot of back and forth in Russian. Lee looked dubious, but when de Mohrenschildt said something to him, also in Russian, Lee nodded and spoke briefly to Marina. The way he flicked his hand at the door made it pretty clear: Go on, then, go.

De Mohrenschildt tossed his car keys to Bouhe, who fumbled them. De Mohrenschildt and Lee exchanged a look of shared amus.e.m.e.nt as Bouhe grubbed them off the dirty green carpet. Then they left, Marina carrying the baby in her arms, and drove off in de Mohrenschildt's boat of a Cadillac.

"Now we have peace, my friend," de Mohrenschildt said. "And the men will open their wallets, which is good, yes?"

"I get tired of them always opening their wallets," Lee said. "Rina's starting to forget that we didn't come back to America just to buy a d.a.m.n freezer and a bunch of dresses."

De Mohrenschildt waved this away. "Sweat from the back of the capitalist hog. Man, isn't it enough that you live in this depressing place?"

Lee said, "It sure idn't much, is it?"

De Mohrenschildt clapped him on the back almost hard enough to knock the smaller man off the couch. "Cheer up! What you take now, you give back a thousandfold later. Isn't that what you believe?" And when Lee nodded: "Now tell me how things stand in Russia, Comrade-may I call you Comrade, or have you repudiated that form of address?"

"You can call me anything but late to dinner," Oswald said, and laughed. I could see him opening to de Mohrenschildt the way a flower opens to the sun after days of rain.

Lee talked about Russia. He was long-winded and pompous. I wasn't very interested in his rap about how the Communist bureaucracy had hijacked all the country's wonderful prewar socialist ideals (he pa.s.sed over Stalin's Great Purge in the thirties). Nor was I interested in his judgment that Nikita Khrushchev was an idiot; you could hear the same idle bulls.h.i.t about American leaders in any barbershop or shoeshine parlor right here. Oswald might be going to change the course of history in a mere fourteen months, but he was a bore.

What interested me was the way de Mohrenschildt listened. He did it as the world's more charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet. This might have been the first time in his life that Lee had been listened to in such a way.

"There's only one hope for socialism that I see," Lee finished, "and that's Cuba. There the revolution is still pure. I hope to go there one day. I may become a citizen."

De Mohrenschildt nodded gravely. "You could do far worse. I have been, many times, before the current administration made it difficult to travel there. It is a beautiful country . . . and now, thanks to Fidel, it's a beautiful country that belongs to the people who live there."

"I know it." Lee's face was shining.

"But!" De Mohrenschildt raised a lecturely finger. "If you believe the American capitalists will let Fidel, Raul, and Che work their magic without interference, you're living in a dream-world. Already the wheels are turning. You know this fellow Walker?"

My ears p.r.i.c.ked up.

"Edwin Walker? The general who got fired?" Lee said it fard.

"The very one."

"I know him. Lives in Dallas. Ran for governor and got his a.s.s kicked. Then he goes over to Miss'sippi to stand with Ross Barnett when James Meredith integrated Ole Miss. He's just another segregationist little Hitler."

"A racist, certainly, but for him the segregationist cause and the Klan bobos are just a blind. He sees the push for Negro rights as a club to beat at the socialist principles that so haunt him and his ilk. James Meredith? A communist! The N-double-A-C-P? A front! SNCC? Black on top, red inside!"

"Sure," Lee said, "it's how they work."