Libra (55 page)

He was wishing he’d taken that Coke along.

The housekeeper was watching TV and it was all over the air waves. She said something but he went right by. In the toilet he pissed and pissed. It just kept coming.

Jangling in the air.

He went to his room and opened the dresser drawer for the .38. It was only common sense. He couldn’t go out there without a gun. This was the day of all days when he needed protection.

They’d find the Hidell rifle. He had Hidell documents in Ruth Paine’s garage. His wallet was full of Hidell. So it was only common sense to take the Hidell handgun. A dozen layers to strip away. It was everything, together, Hidell.

He scooped the loose cartridges out of the drawer. Bought off the street by Dupard. Would they even go bang?

He’d left his blue jacket at work. He took his gray one. Wherever he’d be spending the night, and the rest of his life, he might need a jacket. Plus it covered up the gun.

The room. The iron bed.

To anybody watching, what do I look like with the bulge at my hip under the jacket?

He went out the door and down the walk. He was having a little trouble figuring what to do. All the clarity was gone. There was a nervous static in the air.

What do I look like?

Do I stand out in the street, walking?

He went down Beckley figuring there was no choice but to go to the movie house where they were supposed to pick him up. He knew he couldn’t trust them but there was nowhere else to go. He had fourteen dollars and a bus transfer. They had him cold. He could be walking right into it. The lurking thought, the idea of others making the choice now. He wanted to believe it was out of his hands.

He saw a police car up ahead, coming this way, and he made a left onto Davis, knowing he’d turned too quick. The streets were nearly empty. He actually saw the cop watching him move down Davis, squeezed eyes peering, although the car was out of sight now.

Okay, he shot him once. But he didn’t kill him. To the best of his knowledge he hit him in the upper back or somewhere in the neck area, nonfatally. Then he missed and hit the Governor. Then he missed completely. There are circumstances they don’t know about. Are they sure it was him in that window? It could be different than they think. A setup.

The car came into view again, down Patton, and he walked halfway along the next block. Then he did an about-face and went back to Patton and walked south. To fake out the car. He figured if he went to where he’d seen the car, it would be somewhere else.

Do I look like a suspect fleeing?

Have they figured out who’s missing from the Book Depository?

What is my name if I am asked?

He went down Patton to Ninth Street. Nobody around this time of day. The idea was to make a quick move back to Beckley, across Beckley, down to Jefferson. A dozen old hair-drying machines stood along the curbside. A mattress on a lawn.

He wanted to write short stories about contemporary American life.

At Tenth and Patton he expected to see the car, if at all, moving away from him. But it was cruising east, to his right, coming at him. He crossed the street and began walking east and by this time the car was right behind him, tagging along, going ten to twelve miles an hour, the motorcade speed, teasing.

From the corner of his eye he could see the number on the door. A number ten. The car was marked number ten and this was Tenth Street.

He wasn’t sure if he stopped first or the car stopped. It was like they both had the same idea. He went over to the window on the passenger side.

They spoke at the same time. Lee said, “What’s the problem, officer?” And the cop, strong-featured, looking maybe one-eighth Indian, said something about “You live around here, buddy?”

Lee stuck his head right in the window, smelling stale cigarettes, and said, “Any reason to want to talk to me?”

“You look to me like you’re taking evasive tactics.”

“I’m walking in broad daylight.”

“To me, you’re doing every possible thing to evade being spotted. ”

There was a voice squawking on the radio.

“I’m just a citizen on foot.”

“Then maybe you’d like to tell me where you’re going to.”

“I don’t think I’m required to tell you that. I live in this area, which I’m telling you more than required by law.”

He took the position, the attitude, that he was being singled out for harassment. Even if they had a description, from witnesses looking up at the window, how specific could it be?

“I’m saying for your own good.”

“I’m only walking on the street.”

One other person in sight, a woman approaching the intersection of Tenth and Patton.

“You carrying ID or not?”

“I’m a resident here.”

“I’m saying for the last time.”

He did not like the way cops, had never liked it when cops sat in their car and you had to approach them with documents, bending all the time, leaning toward their windows.

“I’m only asking what’s the reason.”

“Better show me some paper real soon.”

“I hear you.”

“Then do it.”

“I’m a citizen on foot.”

“I’m saying one last time.”

They spoke at the same time again. The cop sat in his Ford getting a little testy. A voice on the radio said,
Disheveled hair.

We’re on Tenth Street and the car is number ten. All the factors are converging.

“Look. If I have to get out of this vehicle.”

“Harass.”

“I want to see your hands.”

“This is how we have misunderstandings.”

“Hands on the fucking hood.”

“I hear you.”

“Then fucking do it, pencil-neck.”

The cop reached for the door handle on his side, not taking his eyes off Oswald. They were going to another level now.

“I’m only asking what for.”

“Hands,
hands—where
I can see them.”

“I have a right I’m on the street without harassment.”

He began easing out the door. He said something else about “Go real slow,” and Lee said, “A man taking a walk in his own city.”

Talking at the same time.

The cop was on the other side of the car. A little traffic down the street. Lee pulled the .38 out of his belt and fired four times across the hood, blinking and muttering. Poor dumb cop. Opened his mouth and slid down the fender. Lee saw a woman ninety feet away and their eyes definitely met. She dropped some stuff she was carrying and put her hands in front of her face. He moved in a jog step to Patton and turned south, ejecting empty cartridges from the cylinder and reloading as he went.

Helen took her hands away from her eyes. She was all alone screaming in the street. The policeman’s cap was a little ways out from the body. He was on his side and gushing blood. She picked up her purse and work shoes and went toward him, calling for help and screaming. She walked bent over, actually screaming at the body.

Then there were some people in the street and a man climbing out of a pickup. Helen approached the body screaming. The man was in the police car saying, “Hello hello hello.” Helen saw the blood take oval shape in the street. She moved around the body and put her shoes on the hood of the car. She stood bent over, seeing wounds in the chest and head. She just could not believe the volume of blood.

The Mexican said into the dashboard, “Hello hello hello.”

Later there was an ambulance and many police cars with red lights and sirens, cars on the sidewalks and lawns and men taking pictures of the stains in the street. Helen stood in front of a frame house halfway down the block, where she’d somehow ended up, trying to tell a detective what she’d seen. She said she waitressed at the Eat Well downtown and was on her way to the bus stop to go to work. Three or four shots, real rapid fire.

Back at the scene there were two small white canvas shoes on the hood of Patrolman Tippit’s car. The men from Homicide stood around wondering. They discussed what these objects could possibly mean.

 

 

Wayne Elko sat in the last row of the Texas Theater, center section, watching a black-and-white movie called
Cry of Battle
with Van Heflin and a bunch of people he’d never seen before. It was about an hour into the movie and Van Heflin has just shot Atong, a Filipino bandit. This is taking place a little after Pearl Harbor and Wayne was pretty sure the Japanese were getting ready to pull a night raid on the Filipino guerrillas and their American friends. Under his jacket he carried a target pistol with the barrel tooled down to a nub and an eight-inch length of baffled tubing attached to it. There were seven other men scattered in the theater. The shot will sound like someone coughing.

There’s a female guerrilla in skintight jeans. Wayne was thinking how Hollywood invents these women just for afternoons like this, exposed and white, men at loose ends hiding in the dark. That’s when Leon appeared at the head of the aisle. He stood there a moment to accustom his eyes. His hair was messed up and his shirt was outside his pants and he looked scared and he looked wild. He took a seat three rows from the back. He was two rows in front of Wayne and four seats to the left.

Be cool, Wayne. Do not rush into this.

Wayne watched the silver faces show fear and desire. He was waiting for the noise on-screen to increase, for the Japs to swarm over the guerrilla camp with machine guns and grenades. He planned to ease out of the row, step in behind Leon, whisper a small
adiós,
then mash the grooved trigger, already walking backwards to the lobby.

But he would wait for the noise and cries.

He would let the tension build.

Because that’s the way they do it in the movies.

It didn’t get that far. Four or five minutes after Leon came in, an exit door opened near the stage, showing silhouetted figures. Then men appeared at the rear and there were voices in the lobby. Someone turned up the house lights and Wayne saw police sort of combing the aisles. Two cops on the stage, thumbing their gun butts and peering out.

The picture died away with a swoony sound.

They searched two men in the rows up front. They came up the aisles. Some more of them pushed through another exit. Sirens repeating in the street. A cop jumped down off the stage. Another drew his gun. Cool head, Wayne. There was a pie-face cop who approached Oswald. Leon got to his feet and said something. When the cop moved into the row, Leon took a swing at him. He hit him hard in the face. The hat spun around on the cop’s head. He punched Leon, who twisted away, grinning and hurt, then showed a pistol in his hand.

They fell all over him. Cops grunting, banging their knees on the seats. The first cop and Leon were in the seats struggling for the gun. Officers cursing. Wayne heard a click and thought the hammer snapped on someone’s hand. They were on Leon from the row behind him, grabbing his neck and hair. He almost ripped the nameplate off one man’s shirt. It was general grappling that went on and on, awkward and intense.

They worked the gun out of his hand and were trying to get the cuffs on. The rows were bursting with police. They gave him a little roughing up.

When they had him in handcuffs they moved him into the aisle. There were cops still banging their knees on the edges of seats, picking up their caps and flashlights. They took him out to the lobby, quick-time, pressing around him.

Wayne heard Leon’s voice going out the door, “Police, police brutality. ”

There was a moment when the patrons didn’t know what to do. Then the ones who were standing returned to their seats. Somebody called, up front, “Lights.” Another guy tilted his head sideways and up, saying, “Lights, lights.” They all waited in their seats, hearing the sirens go into the distance. They tried clapping hands. Then Wayne spoke up, “Lights, lights.” And in fifteen seconds the house lights went down and the picture shot onto the screen.

The men settled down contentedly. Wayne felt the mood close around them, the satisfied air of resumption. It wasn’t just this picture to see to the end. There was a second feature coming up, called
War Is Hell.

 

 

The prisoner stood inside the jail elevator, which was sealed to ordinary traffic. Four detectives edged in tight, rangy men in dark suits and ties, high-crowned Western hats, their faces closed to interpretation.

The media crowds collected and rocked in the corridors. They were waiting for the prisoner to come down to the interrogation room here on the third floor of the Police and Courts Building. TV cameras sat on dollies and there were cables slung over windowsills, trailing through the offices of deputy chiefs. Nobody checked credentials. Reporters took over the phones and pushed into toilets after police officials. Total unknowns walked the halls, defendants from other parts of the building, witnesses to other crimes, tourists, muttering men, drunks in torn shirts. It was a roughhouse, a con foundment. Every rumor flew. Disk jockeys arrived to fill in, blinking, flinching, wary. A reporter wrote notes on a pad he balanced on the back of the chief of police.

They set up a chant. “Let us see him, bring him down. Let us see him, bring him down.”

Hours going by. Blank faces arrayed against corridor walls. Men crouched near the elevators waiting. They sensed the incompleteness out there, gaps, spaces, vacant seats, lobbies emptied out, disconnections, dark cities, stopped lives. People were lonely for news. Only news could make them whole again, restore sensation. Three hundred reporters in a compact space, all pushing to extract a word. A word is a magic wish. A
word from anyone.
With a word they could begin to grid the world, make an instant surface that people can see and touch together. Ringing phones, near-brawls, smoke in their eyes, a deathliness, a hanging woe. Is Connally alive? Is Johnson safe? Has SAC gone to full alert? They began to feel isolated inside this old municipal lump of Texas gray granite. They were hearing their own reports on the radios and portable TVs. But what did they really know? The news was somewhere else, at Parkland Hospital or on Air Force One, in the mind of the prisoner on the fifth floor.