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’m going to sleep feeling had drifted into my head. I’d pulled into a handy parking space immediately. That had been around two o’clock. Now, from the look of the lowering light, it had to be around four.
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 would find loose cash, a manuscript with the word murder in its title, and a notebook full of delusional weirdness about Dallas and JFK. Would I be taken either to the nearest police station for questioning, or back to Parkland for psychiatric evaluation? Did the Waltons take way too long to say goodnight?
He stood there a moment, big and red-faced, a Norman Rockwell cop who belonged on a Saturday Evening Post cover. Then he handed back my license. “Okay, Mr. Amberson. Go on back to this Fallows place, and I suggest you park your car for the night when you get there. You’re looking peaky, nap or no nap.”
“That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
I could see him in my rearview as I drove away, watching. I felt certain I was going to fall asleep again before I got out of his sight. There’d be no warning this time; I’d just veer off the street and onto the sidewalk, maybe mowing down a pedestrian or three before winding up in the show window of a furniture store.
When I finally parked in front of my little cottage with the ramp leading up to the front door, my head was aching, my eyes were watering, my knee was throbbing… but my memories of Oswald remained firm and clear. I slung my briefcase on the kitchen table and called Sadie.
“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.
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 Dunning. That gave me hope. I had the glimmerings of a plan that might allow me to stop Oswald without going to prison or the electric chair in Huntsville. I had excellent reasons to want to remain free. The best one of all was in Jodie this evening, probably feeding Deke Simmons chicken soup.
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 planning to come back on Tuesday night, I’d have to speed things up. And where would I hide out until my job was done? A very good question.
