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. I know it ain’t much, but then, you ain’t got much. Do you, podna? It had to be a hard scripture for a world traveler like Lee, who believed he was destined for fame, if not necessarily fortune.
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.
Oh yeah, this is great, I thought. This is just fucking brilliant. Thanks a pantload, Silent Mi-
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 blasted by voices. I tore the earphones off my head with a curse, turned the VOL knob to the halfway point, and tried again. The result was remarkable. Like binoculars for the ears.
“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.”
Lee and Robert glanced at each other.
“Might as well go in and have a look around,” Lee said.
“This a good place on a fam’ly street,” Snakeskin Boots said. “Y’all want to watch out for that first porch step, though, it needs a smidge of carpenterin. I got s’many of these places, and people is s’hard on them. That last bunch, law.”
Watch it, asshole, I thought. That’s Ivy’s people you’re talking about.
They went inside. I lost the voices, then got them again-faintly-when Snakeskin Boots ran up the front room window. It was the one Ivy had said the neighbors across the way could see into, and she was a hundred percent correct on that score.
Lee asked what his prospective landlord intended to do about the holes in the walls. There was no indignation in the query, no sarcasm, but no subservience, either, in spite of the sir appended to every sentence. It was a respectful yet flat mode of address he had probably learned in the Marines. Colorless was the best word for him. He had the face and voice of a man who was good at sliding through the cracks. In public, at least. It was Marina who saw his other face and heard his other voice.
Snakeskin Boots made vague promises, and absolutely guaranteed a new mattress for the big bedroom, on account of how “that last bunch had gone and stole” the one that had been in there. He reiterated that if Lee didn’t want the place someone else would (as if it hadn’t been standing vacant all year), then invited the brothers to inspect the bedrooms. I wondered how they would enjoy Rosette’s artistic efforts.
I lost their voices, then got them again as they toured the kitchen area. I was happy to see them pass the Leaning Lamp of Pisa without a glance.
“-basement?” Robert asked.
