In July of ’62, the ground-floor apartment was occupied by two women and a man. The women were fat, slow-moving, and partial to wrinkled sleeveless dresses. One was in her sixties and walked with a pronounced limp. The other was in her late thirties or early forties. The facial resemblance pegged them as mother and daughter. The man was skeletal and wheelchair-bound. His hair was a thin white spray. A bag of cloudy pee attached to a fat catheter tube sat in his lap. He smoked constantly, tapping into an ashtray clamped to one of the wheelchair armrests. That summer I always saw him dressed in the same clothes: red satin basketball shorts that showed his wasted thighs almost to the crotch, a strap-style tee-shirt nearly as yellow as the urine in his catheter tube, sneakers held together by duct tape, and a large black cowboy hat with what appeared to be a snakeskin band. On the front of the hat were crossed cavalry swords. Either his wife or his daughter would push him out onto the lawn, where he would sit slumped beneath a tree, still as a statue. I began to lift my hand to him as I cruised slowly by, but he never raised his own in turn, although he came to recognize my car. Maybe he was afraid to return my wave. Maybe he thought he was being evaluated by the Angel of Death, who made his rounds in Dallas behind the wheel of an aging Ford convertible instead of on a black horse. In a way, I suppose that’s what I was.
This trio looked like they’d been in residence awhile. Were they still going to be in residence next year, when I needed the place? I didn’t know. Al’s notes said nothing about them. For the time being, all I could do was watch and wait.
I picked up my new piece of equipment, which Silent Mike had crafted himself. I waited for my telephone to ring. Three times it did, and I leaped for it each time, hoping. Twice it was Miz Ellie, calling to chat. Once it was Deke, inviting me to dinner, an invitation I accepted gratefully.
Sadie didn’t call.
On the third of August, a ’58 Bel Air sedan pulled into 2703’s excuse for a driveway. It was followed by a gleaming Chrysler. The Oswald brothers got out of the Bel Air and stood side by side, not talking.
I reached through the drapes long enough to run up my front window, letting in the street noise and a lackluster puff of hot, humid air. Then I ran for the bedroom and brought my new piece of equipment out from under the bed. Silent Mike had cut a hole in the bottom of a Tupperware bowl and taped the omnidirectional mike — which he assured me was top-of-the-line — into it, so it stuck up like a finger. I attached the microphone leads to the connecting points on the back of the tape recorder. There was a plug-in for headphones, which my electronics pal had also claimed were top-of-the-line.
I peered out and saw the Oswalds talking to the guy from the Chrysler. He was wearing a Stetson, a rancher’s tie, and gaudy stitched boots. Better dressed than my landlord, but of the same tribe. I didn’t have to hear the conversation; the man’s gestures were textbook.
There was an electrical socket in the baseboard. I plugged in the tape recorder, hoping I wouldn’t give myself a shock or blow a fuse. The tape recorder’s little red light went on. I donned the earphones and slipped the Tupperware bowl into the gap between the curtains. If they looked over here they’d be squinting into the sun, and thanks to the shadow cast by the eave above the window, they would see either nothing or an unremarkable white blur that might be anything. I reminded myself to cover the bowl with black friction tape, nevertheless. Always safe, never sorry.
And in any case, I could hear nothing.
Even the street sounds had become muffled.
Then I noticed the VOL control on the tape recorder was sitting at zero. I twisted it all the way to the + mark, and was
“Sixty a month strikes me as a little bit steep, sir,” Lee Oswald was saying (considering the Templetons had been paying ten dollars a month less, it struck me that way, too). His voice was respectful, tinged by just a trace of Southern accent. “If we could agree on fifty-five…”
“I can respect a man who wants to dicker, but don’t even bother trine,” Snakeskin Boots said. He rocked back and forth on his stacked heels like a man who’s anxious to be gone. “I gotta git what I gotta git. If I don’t git it from you, I’m goan git it from someone else.”
