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“I tried you when I got home from school, but you weren’t there,” she said. “I was worried.”
“I was next door, playing cribbage with Mr. Kenopensky.” These lies were necessary. I had to remember that. And I had to tell them smoothly, because she knew me.
“Well, that’s good.” Then, without a pause or a change of inflection: “What’s his name?
What’s the man’s name?”
Lee Oswald. She almost surprised it out of me, after all.
“I . . . I still don’t know.”
“You hesitated. I heard you.”
I waited for the accusation, gripping the phone hard enough to hurt.
“This time it almost popped into your head, didn’t it?”
“There was something,” I agreed cautiously.
We talked for fifteen minutes while I looked at the briefcase with Al’s notes inside it. She asked me to call her later that evening. I promised I would.
9
I decided to wait until after The Huntley-Brinkley Report to open the blue notebook again. I didn’t think I’d find much of practical value at this point. Al’s final notes were sketchy and hurried; he had never expected Mission Oswald to go on so long. Neither had I. Getting to the disaffected little twerp was like traveling on a road littered with fallen branches, and in the end the past might succeed in protecting itself, after all. But I had stopped Du
I worked my way methodically through my little invalid-friendly apartment, collecting stuff.
Other than my old typewriter, I didn’t want to leave a trace of George Amberson behind when I left.
I hoped that wouldn’t be until Wednesday, but if Sadie said that Deke was better and she was pla
A trumpet-blast a
“This was the scene in Tampa,” Huntley continued, “where Ke
Ke
I had no way of knowing if Roth was correct about “the syph” or just repeating a rumor, but Eduardo Gutierrez had lost a lot of weight, his hair was thi
Back to Huntley, his craggy face now wearing a bemused smile. “The day did have its fu
For the first time I saw him as I had come to see Oswald—as an actual man. In the double take and the gesture that followed it, I saw something even more beautiful than a sense of humor: an appreciation for life’s essential absurdity.
David Brinkley was also smiling. “If Ke
I turned off the TV, returned to the sofa, and opened Al’s book. As I flipped to the back, I kept seeing that double take. And the grin. A sense of humor; a sense of the absurd. The man in the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository had neither. Oswald had proved it time and again, and such a man had no business changing history.
10
I was dismayed to find that five of the last six pages in Al’s notebook dealt with Lee’s movements in New Orleans and his fruitless efforts to get to Cuba via Mexico. Only the last page focused on the lead-up to the assassination, and those final notes were perfunctory. Al had no doubt had that part of the story by heart, and probably figured that if I hadn’t gotten Oswald by the third week of November, it was going to be too late.
10/3/63: O back in Texas. He and Marina “sort of” separated. She at Ruth Paine’s house, O
shows up mostly on weekends. Ruth gets O a job at Book Dep thru a neighbor (Buell Frazier). Ruth calls O “a fine young man.”
O living in Dallas during the work-week. Rooming house.
10/17/63: O starts work at Dep. Shifting books, unloading trucks, etc.
10/18/63: O turns 24. Ruth and Marina give him a surprise party. O thanks them. Cries.
10/20/63: 2 nd daughter born: Audrey Rachel. Ruth takes Marina to hosp (Parkland) while O
works. Rifle stored in Paine garage, wrapped in blanket.
O repeatedly visited by FBI agent James Hosty. Stokes his paranoia.
11/21/63: O comes to Paine house. Begs Marina to reunite. M refuses. Last straw for O.
11/22/63: O leaves all his money on dresser for Marina. Also wedding ring. Goes from Irving to Book Dep with Buell Frazier. Has package wrapped in brown paper. Buell asks about it.
“Curtain rods for my new apartment,” O tells him. Ma