Chapter 24 #5
“You could try Frank Frati, over in Fort Worth. He runs a pawnshop.” Scronk went the chair as he leaned forward to get a better look at my face. “What’d I say? Or did you inhale a bug?”
“Uh-uh. It’s just that I knew a Frati once. Who also ran a pawnshop and took bets.”
“Probably they both came from the same savings-and-loan clan in Romania. Anyway, he might fade five Cs—especially a sucker bet like you’re talking about. But you won’t get the odds you deserve. Of course you wouldn’t get em from Roth, either, but you’d get better than you would from Frank Frati.”
“But with Frank I wouldn’t get the Mob connection. Right?”
“I guess not, but who really knows? Bookies, even the part-time ones, ain’t known for their high-class business associations.”
“Probably I should take your advice and hold onto my money.”
Quinlan looked horrified. “No, no, no, don’t do that. Bet it on the Bears to win the NFL. That way you make a bundle. I practically guarantee it.”
14
On July twenty-second, I told Sadie I had to run some errands in Dallas and said I’d ask Deke to check in on her. She said there was no need, that she’d be fine. She was regaining her old self. Little by slowly, yes, but she was regaining it.
She asked no questions about the nature of my errands.
My initial stop was at First Corn, where I opened my safe deposit box and triple-checked Al’s notes to make sure I really remembered what I thought I had.
And yes, Tom Case was going to be the upset winner, knocking out Dick Tiger in the fifth.
Al must have found the fight on the internet, because he had been gone from Dallas—and the sensational sixties—long before then.
“Can I help you with anything else today, Mr. Amberson?” my banker asked as he escorted me to the door.
Well, you could say a little prayer that my old buddy Al Templeton didn’t swallow a bunch of internet bullshit.
“Maybe so. Do you know where I could find a costume shop? I’m supposed to be the magician at my nephew’s birthday party.”
Mr. Link’s secretary, after a quick glance through the Yellow Pages, directed me to an address on Young Street.
There I was able to buy what I needed. I stored it at the apartment on West Neely—as long as I was paying rent on the place, it ought to be good for something.
I left my revolver, too, putting it on a high shelf in the closet.
The bug, which I had removed from the upstairs lamp, went into the glove compartment of my car, along with the cunning little Japanese tape recorder.
I would dispose of them somewhere in the scrubland on my return to Jodie.
They were of no more use to me. The apartment upstairs hadn’t been re-rented, and the house was spookily silent.
Before I left Neely Street, I walked around the fenced-in side yard, where, just three months before, Marina had taken photographs of Lee holding his rifle.
There was nothing to see but beaten earth and a few hardy weeds.
Then, as I turned to go, I did see something: a flash of red under the outside stairs.
It was a baby’s rattle. I took it and put it in the glove compartment of my Chevy along with the bug, but unlike the bug, I held onto it. I don’t know why.
15
My next stop was the sprawling ranch on Simpson Stuart Road where George de Mohrenschildt lived with his wife, Jeanne.
As soon as I saw it I rejected it for the meeting I had planned.
For one thing, I couldn’t be sure when Jeanne would be in the house and when she’d be away, and this particular conversation had to be strictly Two Guys.
For another, it wasn’t quite isolated enough.
Paul Quinn College, an all-black school, was close by, and summer classes must have been in.
There weren’t droves of kids, but I saw plenty, some walking and some on bikes.
Not good for my purposes. It was possible that our discussion might be noisy.
It was possible it might not be a discussion—at least in the Merriam-Webster sense—at all.
Something caught my eye. It was on the de Mohrenschildts’ wide front lawn, where sprinklers flung graceful sprays in the air and created rainbows that looked small enough to put in your pocket.
1963 wasn’t an election year, but in early April—right around the time somebody had taken a shot at General Edwin Walker—the representative from the Fifth District had dropped dead of a heart attack.
T[here was going to be a run-off election for his seat on August sixth.
The sign read ELECT JENKINS TO THE 5TH DISTRICT! ROBERT “ROBBIE” JENKINS, DALLAS’S WHITE KNIGHT!
According to the papers, Jenkins was that for sure, a right-winger who saw eye-to-eye with Walker and Walker’s spiritual advisor, Billy James Hargis.
Robbie Jenkins stood for states’ rights, separate-but-equal schools, and reinstituting the Missile Crisis blockade around Cuba.
The same Cuba de Mohrenschildt had called “that beautiful island.” The sign supported a strong feeling that I’d already developed about de Mohrenschildt.
He was a dilettante who, at bottom, held no political beliefs at all.
He would support whoever amused him or put money in his pocket.
Lee Oswald couldn’t do the latter—he was so poor he made churchmice look loaded—but his humorless dedication to socialism combined with his grandiose personal ambitions had provided de Mohrenschildt with plenty of the former.
One deduction seemed obvious: Lee had never trod the lawn or soiled the carpets of this house with his poorboy feet.
This was de Mohrenschildt’s other life… or one of them.
I had a feeling he might have several, keeping them all in various watertight compartments.
But that didn’t answer the central question: was he so bored he would have accompanied Lee on his mission to assassinate the fascist monster Edwin Walker?
I didn’t know him well enough to make even an educated guess.
But I would. My heart was set on it.
16
The sign in the window of Frank Frati’s pawnshop read WELCOME TO GUITAR CENTRAL, and there were plenty of them on display: acoustics, electrics, twelve-strings, and one with a double fretboard that reminded me of something I’d seen in a Motley Crüe video.
Of course there was all the other detritus of busted lives—rings, brooches, necklaces, radios, small appliances.
The woman who confronted me was skinny instead of fat, she wore slacks and a Ship N Shore blouse instead of a purple dress and mocs, but the stone face was the same as that of a woman I’d met in Derry, and I heard the same words coming out of my mouth.
Close enough for government work, anyway.
“I’d like to discuss a rather large sports-oriented business proposition with Mr. Frati.”
“Yeah? Is that a bet when it’s at home with its feet up?”
“Are you a cop?”
“Yeah, I’m Chief Curry of the Dallas Police. Can’t you tell from the glasses and the jowls?”
“I don’t see any glasses or jowls, ma’am.”
“That’s because I’m in disguise. What you want to bet on in the middle of the summer, chum? There’s nothing to bet on.”
“Case-Tiger.”
“Which pug?”
“Case.”
She rolled her eyes, then shouted back over her shoulder. “Better get out here, Dad, you got a live one.”
Frank Frati was at least twice Chaz Frati’s age, but the resemblance was still there. They were related, of course they were. If I mentioned I had once laid a bet with a Mr. Frati of Derry, Maine, I had no doubt we could have a pleasant little discussion about what a small world it was.
Instead of doing that, I proceeded directly to negotiations. Could I put five hundred dollars on Tom Case to win his bout against Dick Tiger in Madison Square Garden?
“Yes indeedy,” Frati said. “You could also stick a red-hot branding iron up your rootie-patootie, but why would you want to?”
His daughter yapped brief, bright laughter.
“What kind of odds would I get?”
He looked at the daughter. She put up her hands. Two fingers raised on the left, one finger on the right.
“Two-to-one? That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s a ridiculous life, my friend. Go see an Ionesco play if you don’t believe me. I recommend Victims of Duty.”
Well, at least he didn’t call me cuz, as his Derry cuz had done.
“Work with me a little on this, Mr. Frati.”
He picked up an Epiphone Hummingbird acoustic and began to tune it. He was eerily quick. “Give me something to work with, then, or blow on over to Dallas. There’s a place called—”
“I know the place in Dallas. I prefer Fort Worth. I used to live here.”
“The fact that you moved shows more sense than wanting to bet on Tom Case.”
“What about Case by a knockout somewhere in the first seven rounds? What would that get me?”
He looked at the daughter. This time she raised three fingers on her left hand.
“And Case by a knockout in the first five?”
She deliberated, then raised a fourth finger.
I decided not to push it any farther. I wrote my name in his book and showed him my driver’s license, holding my thumb over the Jodie address just as I had when I’d bet on the Pirates at Faith Financial almost three years ago.
Then I passed over my cash, which was about a quarter of all my remaining liquidity, and tucked the receipt into my wallet.
Two thousand would be enough to pay down some more of Sadie’s expenses and carry me for my remaining time in Texas.
Plus, I wanted to gouge this Frati no more than I’d wanted to gouge Chaz Frati, even though he had set Bill Turcotte on me.
“I’ll be back the day after the dance,” I said. “Have my money ready.”
The daughter laughed and lit a cigarette. “Ain’t that what the chorus girl said to the archbishop?”
“Is your name Marjorie, by any chance?” I asked.
She froze with the cigarette in front of her and smoke trickling from between her lips. “How’dja know?” She saw my expression and laughed. “Actually, it’s Wanda, sport. I hope you bet better than you guess names.”
Heading back to my car, I hoped the same thing.