Chapter 17 #4
“I know you don’t, but you’ll have to. As someone who spent damn near his whole life cooking meals, I can tell you that no omelet was ever made without breaking eggs.
And it would be a mistake to overestimate this guy.
He’s no super-criminal. Also, he’s going to be distracted, mostly by his batshit mother.
How good is he going to be at anything for awhile except shouting at his wife and knocking her around when he gets too pissed off for shouting to be enough? ”
“I think he cares for her, Al. At least a little, and maybe a lot. In spite of the shouting.”
“Yeah, and it’s guys like him who are most likely to fuck up their women. Look at Frank Dunning. You just take care of your business, buddy.”
“And what am I going to get if I do manage to hook up that bug? Tape recordings of arguments? Arguments in Russian? That’ll be a big help.”
“You don’t need to decode the man’s family life.
It’s George de Mohrenschildt you need to find out about.
You have to make sure de Mohrenschildt isn’t involved in the attempt on General Walker.
Once you accomplish that, the window of uncertainty closes.
And look on the bright side. If Oswald catches you spying on him, his future actions might change in a good way.
He might not try for Kennedy after all.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“No. Actually I don’t.”
“Neither do I. The past is obdurate. It doesn’t want to be changed.”
He said, “Buddy, now you’re cooking…”
“With gas,” I heard myself muttering. “Now I’m cooking with gas.”
I opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep after all. Late light was coming in through the drawn curtains. Somewhere not far away, on Davenport Street in Fort Worth, the Oswald brothers and their wives would be sitting down to dinner—Lee’s first meal back on his old stomping grounds.
Outside my own little bit of Fort Worth, I could hear a skip-rope chant.
It sounded very familiar. I got up, went through my dim living room (furnished with two thrift-shop easy chairs but nothing else), and twitched back one of the drapes an inch or so.
Those drapes had been my very first installation.
I wanted to see; I didn’t want to be seen.
2703 was still deserted, with the FOR RENT sign double-tacked to the railing of the rickety porch, but the lawn wasn’t deserted.
There, two girls were twirling a jump rope while a third stutter-stepped in and out.
Of course they weren’t the girls I’d seen on Kossuth Street in Derry—these three, dressed in patched and faded jeans instead of crisp new shorts, looked runty and underfed—but the chant was the same, only now with Texas accents.
“Charlie Chaplin went to France! Just to watch the ladies dance! Salute to the Cap’un! Salute to the Queen! My old man drives a sub-ma-rine!”
The skip-rope girl caught her foot and went tumbling into the crabgrass that served as 2703’s front lawn. The other girls piled on top of her and all three of them rolled in the dirt. Then they got to their feet and went pelting away.
I watched them go, thinking I saw them but they didn’t see me. That’s something. That’s a start. But Al, where’s my finish?
De Mohrenschildt was the key to the whole deal, the only thing keeping me from killing Oswald as soon as he moved in across the street.
George de Mohrenschildt, a petroleum geologist who speculated in oil leases.
A man who lived the playboy lifestyle, mostly thanks to his wife’s money.
Like Marina, he was a Russian exile, but unlike her, from a noble family—he was, in fact, Baron de Mohrenschildt.
The man who was going to become Lee Oswald’s only friend during the few months of life Oswald had left.
The man who was going to suggest to Oswald that the world would be much better off without a certain racist right-wing ex-General.
If de Mohrenschildt turned out to be part of Oswald’s attempt to kill Edwin Walker, my situation would be vastly complicated; all the nutty conspiracy theories would then be in play.
Al, however, believed all the Russian geologist had done (or would do; as I’ve said, living in the past is confusing) was egg on a man who was already obsessed with fame and mentally unstable.
Al had written in his notes: If Oswald was on his own on the night of April 10th, 1963, chances that there was another gunman involved in the Kennedy assassination seven months later drop to almost zero.
Below this, in capital letters, he had added his final verdict: GOOD ENOUGH TO TAKE THE SON OF A BITCH OUT.
9
Seeing the little girls who hadn’t seen me made me think of that old Jimmy Stewart suspenser, Rear Window. A person could see a lot without ever leaving his own living room. Especially if he had the right tools.
The next day, I went to a sporting goods store and bought a pair of Bausch & Lomb binoculars, reminding myself to be wary of sunflashes on the lenses.
Since 2703 was on the east side of Mercedes Street, I thought I’d be safe enough in that regard anytime after noon.
I poked the glasses through the gap in my drapes, and when I adjusted the focus knob, the crappy living room–kitchen across the way became so bright and detailed that I might’ve been standing in it.
The Leaning Lamp of Pisa was still on the old bureau where the kitchen utensils were stored, waiting for someone to turn it on and activate the bug.
But it would do me no good unless it was hooked up to the cunning little Japanese reel-to-reel, which could record up to twelve hours on its slowest speed.
I had tried it out, actually speaking into the spare bugged lamp (which made me feel like a character in a Woody Allen comedy), and while the playback was draggy, the words were understandable. All of which meant I was good to go.
If I dared to.
10
July Fourth on Mercedes Street was busy.
Men with the day off watered lawns that were beyond saving—other than a few afternoon and evening thunderstorms, the weather had been hot and dry—then plopped down in lawn chairs, listening to baseball games on the radio and drinking beer.
Subteen posses threw firecrackers at stray dogs and the few roving chickens.
One of the latter was struck by a cherry bomb and exploded in a mass of blood and feathers.
The child who tossed it was dragged screaming into one of the houses farther down the street by a mother wearing nothing but a slip and a Farmall baseball cap.
I guessed by her unsteady gait that she had downed a few brewskis herself.
The closest thing to fireworks came just after ten o’clock, when someone, possibly the same kid who slashed my convertible’s tires, torched an old Studebaker that had been sitting abandoned in the parking lot of the Montgomery Ward warehouse for the last week or so.
Fort Worth FD came to put it out, and everyone turned out to watch.
Hail Columbia.
The next morning I walked down to inspect the burned-out hulk, which sat sadly on the puddled remains of its tires.
I spotted a telephone booth near one of the warehouse loading bays, and on impulse called Ellie Dockerty, getting the operator to find the number and connect me.
I did it partly because I was lonely and homesick, mostly because I wanted news of Sadie.
Ellie answered on the second ring, and she seemed delighted to hear my voice. Standing there in an already roasting phone booth, with Mercedes Street sleeping off the Glorious Fourth behind me and the smell of charred car in my nostrils, that made me smile.
“Sadie’s fine. I’ve had two postcards and a letter. She’s working at Harrah’s as a waitress.” She lowered her voice. “I believe as a cocktail waitress, but the schoolboard will never hear that from me.”
I visualized Sadie’s long legs in a short cocktail waitress’s skirt. I visualized businessmen trying to see the tops of her stockings or into the valley of her décolletage as she bent to put drinks on a table.
“She asked after you,” Ellie said, and that made me smile again. “I didn’t want to tell her that you’d sailed off the edge of the earth as far as anyone in Jodie knew, so I said you were busy with your book and doing fine.”
I hadn’t added a word to The Murder Place in a month or more, and on the two occasions when I’d picked up the manuscript and tried to read it, it all seemed to be written in third-century Punic. “I’m glad that she’s doing well.”
“Her residency requirement will be fulfilled by the end of the month, but she’s decided to stay out there until the end of summer vacation. She says the tips are very good.”
“Did you ask her for a picture of her soon-to-be ex-husband?”
“Just before she left. She said she has none. She believes her parents have several, but she refused to write them about it. Said they’d never given up on the marriage, and it would give them false hope. She also said she believed you were overreacting. Wildly overreacting was the phrase she used.”
That sounded like my Sadie. Only she wasn’t mine anymore. Now she was just hey waitress, bring us another round… and bend a little lower this time. Every man has a jealous-bone, and mine was twanging hard on the morning of July fifth.
“George? I have no doubt she still cares for you, and it might not be too late to clear this mess up.”
I thought of Lee Oswald, who wouldn’t make his attempt on General Edwin Walker’s life for another nine months. “It’s too early,” I said.
“I beg pardon?”
“Nothing. It’s good to talk to you, Miz Ellie, but pretty soon the operator’s going to come on the line asking for more money, and I’m all out of quarters.”
“I don’t suppose you could get down this way for a burger and a shake, could you? At the diner? If so, I’ll invite Deke Simmons to join us. He asks about you almost every day.”