Marina must have been watching for her, because she came clattering down the outside stairs with the baby in her arms, a blanket flipped up over June’s head to protect her from the drifting drizzle. Ruth Paine smiled tentatively and spoke carefully, putting a space between each word. “Hello, Mrs. Oswald, I’m Ruth Paine. Do you remember me?”
“Da,” Marina said. “Yes.” Then she added something in Russian. Ruth replied in the same language… although haltingly.
Marina invited her in. I waited until I heard the creak of their footsteps above me, then donned the earphones connected to the lamp bug. What I heard was a conversation in mixed English and Russian. Marina corrected Ruth several times, sometimes with laughter. I understood enough to figure out why Ruth Paine had come. Like Paul Gregory, she wanted Russian lessons. I understood something else from their frequent laughter and increasingly easy conversation: they liked each other.
I was glad for Marina. If I killed Oswald after his attempt on General Walker, the New Agey Ruth Paine might take her in. I could hope.
Ruth only came twice to Neely Street for her lessons. After that, Marina and June got in the station wagon and Ruth drove them away. Probably to her home in the posh (at least by Oak Cliff standards) suburb of Irving. That address wasn’t in Al’s notes-he seemed to care little about Marina’s relationship with Ruth, probably because he expected to finish Lee long before that rifle ended up in the Paines’ garage-but I found it in the phone directory: 2515 West Fifth Street.
One overcast March afternoon, about two hours after Marina and Ruth had departed, Lee and George de Mohrenschildt showed up in de Mohrenschildt’s car. Lee got out carrying a brown paper sack with a sombrero and PEPINO’S BEST MEXICAN printed on the side. De Mohrenschildt had a six-pack of Dos Equis. They went up the outside staircase, talking and laughing. I grabbed the earphones, heart pumping. At first there was nothing, but then one of them turned on the lamp. After that I might have been in the room with them, an unseen third.
Please don’t conspire to kill Walker, I thought. Please don’t make my job harder than it already is.
“Pardon the mess,” Lee said. “She doesn’t do anything much these days but sleep, watch TV, and talk about that woman she’s giving lessons to.”
De Mohrenschildt spoke for awhile about some oil leases he was trying to get hold of in Haiti, and spoke harshly of the repressive Duvalier regime. “At the end of the day, trucks drive through the marketplace and pick up the dead. Many of them are children who’ve starved to death.”
“Castro and the Front will put an end to that,” Lee said grimly.
“May providence hasten the day.” There was the clink of bottles, probably to toast the idea of providence hastening the day. “How is work, Comrade? And how is it you’re not there this afternoon?”
He wasn’t there, Lee said, because he wanted to be here. Simple as that. He’d just punched out and walked away. “What can they do about it? I’m the best damn photoprint technician ole Bobby Stovall’s got, and he knows it. The foreman, his name is (I couldn’t make it out-Graff? Grafe?) says ‘Quit trying to play labor organizer, Lee.’ You know what I do? I laugh and say ‘Okay, svinoyeb, ’ and walk away. He’s a pig’s dick, and ever’one knows it.”
Still, it was clear Lee liked his job, although he complained about the paternalistic attitude, and how seniority counted for more than talent. At one point he said, “You know, in Minsk, on a level playing field, I’d be running the place in a year.”
“I know you would, my son-it’s completely evident.”
Playing him up. Winding him up. I was sure of it. I didn’t like it.
“Did you see the paper this morning?” Lee asked.
“I saw nothing but telegrams and memos this morning. Why do you think I’m here, if not to get away from my desk?”
“Walker did it,” Lee said. “He joined up with Hargis’s crusade-or maybe it’s Walker’s crusade and Hargis joined up. I cain’t tell. That fucking Midnight Ride thing, anyway. Those two ninnies are going to tour the whole South, telling people that the N-double-A-C-P’s a communist front. They’ll set integration and voting rights back twenty years.”
“Sure! And fomenting hate. How long before the massacres start?”
“Or until someone shoots Ralph Abernathy and Dr. King!”
“Of course King will be shot,” de Mohrenschildt said, almost laughing. I was standing up, my hands pressing the earphones tight to the sides of my head, sweat trickling down my face. This was dangerous ground, indeed-the very edge of conspiracy. “It’s only a matter of time.”
One of them used the church key on another bottle of Mexican beer, and Lee said, “Someone should stop those two bastards.”
