“Just ring for Melvin when you’ve finished. He’ll assist you.”
I thanked him, and when he was gone, I pulled the curtain across the cubicle’s doorway. We had unlocked the box, but it was still closed. I stared at it, my heart beating hard. John Kennedy’s future was inside.
I opened it. On top was a bundle of cash and a litter of stuff from the Neely Street apartment, including my First Corn checkbook. Beneath this was a sheaf of manuscript bound by two rubber bands. THE MURDER PLACE was typed on the top sheet. No author’s name, but it was my work. Below it was a blue notebook: the Word of Al. I held it in my hands, filled with a terrible certainty that when I opened it, all the pages would be blank. The Yellow Card Man would have erased them.
I flipped it open. On the first page, a photograph looked back at me. Narrow, not-quite-handsome face. Lips curved in a smile I knew well — hadn’t I seen it with my own eyes? It was the kind of smile that says
Lee Harvey Oswald. The wretched waif who was going to change the world.
Memories came rushing in as I sat there in the cubicle, gasping for breath.
Ivy and Rosette on Mercedes Street. Last name Templeton, like Al’s.
The jump-rope girls:
Silent Mike (Holy Mike) at Satellite Electronics.
George de Mohrenschildt ripping open his shirt like Superman.
Billy James Hargis and General Edwin A. Walker.
Marina Oswald, the assassin’s beautiful hostage, standing on my doorstep at 214 West Neely:
The Texas School Book Depository.
Sixth floor, southeast window. The one with the best view of Dealey Plaza and Elm Street, where it curved toward the Triple Underpass.
I began shivering. I clutched my upper arms in my fists with my arms tightly locked over my chest. It made the left one — broken by the felt-wrapped pipe — ache, but I didn’t mind. I was glad. It tied me to the world.
When the shakes finally passed, I loaded the unfinished book manuscript, the precious blue notebook, and everything else into my briefcase. I reached for the button that would summon Melvin, then dummy-checked the very back of the box. There I found two more items. One was the cheap pawnshop wedding ring I’d purchased to support my cover story at Satellite Electronics. The other was the red baby rattle that had belonged to the Oswalds’ little girl (June, not April). The rattle went into the briefcase, the ring into the watch pocket of my slacks. I would throw it away on my drive home. If and when the time came, Sadie would have a much nicer one.
Knocking on glass. Then a voice: “—all right? Mister, are you all right?”
I opened my eyes, at first with no idea where I was. I looked to my left and saw a uniformed beat-cop knocking on the driver’s side window of my Chevy. Then it came. Halfway back to Eden Fallows, tired and exalted and terrified all at the same time, that
I cranked my window down and said, “Sorry, Officer. All at once I started to feel very sleepy, and it seemed safer to pull over.”
He nodded. “Yup, yup, booze’ll do that. How many did you have before you jumped into your car?”
“None. I suffered a head injury a few months ago.” I swiveled my neck so he could see the place where the hair hadn’t grown back.
He was halfway convinced, but still asked me to exhale in his face. That got him the rest of the way.
“Lemme see your ticket,” he said.
I showed him my Texas driver’s license.
“Not thinking of motoring all the way back to Jodie, are you?”
“No, Officer, just to North Dallas. I’m staying at a rehabilitation center called Eden Fallows.”
I was sweating. I hoped that if he saw it, he’d just put it down to a man who’d been snoozing in a closed car on a warmish November day. I also hoped — fervently — that he wouldn’t ask to see what was in the briefcase on the bench seat beside me. In 2011, I could refuse such a request, saying that sleeping in my car wasn’t probable cause. Hell, the parking space wasn’t even metered. In 1963, however, a cop might just start rummaging. He wouldn’t find drugs, but he
