"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (51 page)

“What is it?” She kissed his cheek. “Tell me.”

“I now know what I must do next. In a word? Cuba.”

“You've been assigned to try and kill Castro again?”

He gasped. “How did you know I once attempted to do that?”

“I know everything. That's not important now.”

“You're right. All that's important—other than you and me and baby June—is what I've got to do. And it isn't kill him. Marina, I must be the one who makes Fidel see that now there's an opportunity to put the terrible past behind us ...”

Lee had been considering several things JFK said in recent weeks. Clearly, Kennedy had turned against the CIA: “I don't think the intelligence reports are all that hot. I get more out of the New York
Times
.” Several days later he also announced: “Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war, or corruption, or both.”

The president must be referring to Cuba. Castro turned left as a reaction to Batista's right-wing regime and the unannounced war the U.S. had unofficially declared. If such belligerence were to cease, might not Castro come around to a more democratic approach to government?

“But, Lee,” she wept. “You have no official power—”

“All the better. Any power I have comes from my will to do the right thing. This is about the great good a single person can achieve if only he believes in his own abilities to—”

“You heard that in some old film. John Wayne or Errol Flynn said something like that, and it got stuck in your mind. Yes?”

“Well? Shouldn't we strive to be like those heroes? Robin Hood, Davy Crockett. Righting the world's wrongs—”

“Lee, darling. Don't you understand? That's
only
a
movie!
”

“Shouldn't life be more like the movies?”

“Yes, But it isn't! That's the whole point. Why we go to movies. There, everything can work out wonderfully at the fade-out. This is reality. There are no happy endings.”

“I can't accept that.”

“But how would you even get there? It's illegal to travel from the U.S. to Cuba now.”

He cradled her in his arms. “I've thought that through. Mexico! If I travel down there, I can pick up a Visa—”

“What makes you believe the Cubans will approve it?”

Now, Lee grew excited. “I've figured that out, too. George ordered me to create a new ‘legend' in which I appear to be a pro-Castro activist so as to betray that cause? Well, I'm already ‘in.' Only I won't betray them. I'll betray George.”

“Lee,” Marina gasped. “He'd have you killed—”

“Not if I outsmart him.”

Thanks to a paper-thin beam of moonlight seeping in the window, Marina could see that Lee now grinned from ear to ear. As he did whenever he'd convinced himself he was the master.

“Don't underestimate George, Lee. He'll—”

He hadn't even heard her warning. “As he wants me to do, I'll attract as much attention as I can to myself with Fair Play, allowing George to believe this is all being done to bring them down. Instead, I'll head to Mexico, bringing evidence of my work for pro-Cuban forces with me. Once the people at Castro's embassy see that, they'll let me into the country. I can argue for a pro-American, pro-Democracy, pro-Kennedy and anti-Russian, anti-communist, anti-Khrushchev Cuba.”

“And you believe, you honestly believe, that you, acting on your own, with no back-up whatsoever, can achieve this?”

He turned to face her, out of his private zone, back in the world of one man and one woman, together in one bed. “I don't believe—I
know!
Marina, from when I was a child, I
sensed there had to be a purpose to my life. I've found it! Show the world that democracy and socialism can co-exist in a new order.”

“Who do you think you are: Jesus Christ?”

That was a difficult one to answer, but Lee did. “Yes. I guess I do. On some level, I always have.”

“Well, they'll crucify you, too, if you attempt this.”

“If that's the only way to bring The Word, so be it.”

Marina sobbed. “And, me? June? The baby yet to come?”

Lee kissed her head gently. “You must know I love you and our family more than anything else. But what I speak of reaches beyond that. A man must do what he must do.”

“So be it, then,” she said, capitulating. “But I won't watch you die. Tomorrow, I'll pack and return to Dallas.”

“Like me, you have to do what you consider best.”

“I'll always be waiting for you, Lee. I love you.”

“How can you? I'm not lovable. I never have been.”

*

In
The Manchurian Candidate,
Raymond Shaw also discovered his one true love. Like Marina, a beautiful child-woman, half naive fawn, half Earth Mother.
Joslyn
. She was played by Leslie Parrish, a young blonde who looked amazingly like Marilyn Monroe back in the early 1950s, still fresh and giddy, with that open smile which in time gave way to hard, cynical laughter.

“I'm not lovable,” Raymond wailed. “Yes, but I love you,” the blonde, insisted. At once innocent and experienced, however improbable that may sound, Joslyn reminded Lee of Marina.

Joslyn's father, a milk-toast liberal senator, finally found the courage to face off with Eleanor at a costume ball. She asked him to support her Johnny for the vice-presidential nomination; he railed at the terrible mischief these two caused for America in the name of right-wing causes.

“I think if Johnny were a paid Soviet agent,” the senator concluded, “he could not do more harm to this nation than he is now!” What irony, Lee thought. This arch Right Winger achieves precisely what the communists most desire: Americans turning against each other as during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s.

“The Queen of Diamonds,” a psychiatrist told Marco about the symbol employed to set the brainwashed Shaw off on one of his missions, “is reminiscent of Raymond's mother.”

A couple had entered and sat behind Lee. The man clearly was familiar with the Richard Connell novel on which this movie was based. He whispered to the woman beside him: “In the book the relationship between Raymond and mother is more extreme. The reason he's the way he is? They slept in the same bed until he was sixteen. That's what made him such an intense nut case.”

Until the age of sixteen? Longer even than Marguerite and me. It seemed so nourishing then. My mother consumed me in ways that I can't even begin to comprehend. Just like Raymond.

Both of us tragic figures, like Oedipus of old. What would I have done in life without that seventh grade English teacher?

During the party, Joslyn arrives wearing a Queen of Diamonds costume. Raymond crumbles into her arms, unable to resist her. As if he had found a socially acceptable way to sleep with Eleanor, the two women inseparable in his mind.

Is that true of me as well? Marguerite, Marina ...

Then, at his mother's command, Raymond Shaw, not realizing what he's doing, calmly kills Joslyn and her gentle father.

Now, the deceased liberal senator's words make sense, as does the film's title. Johnny, the right-wing crazy, is a plant by the communists. How better to destroy the U.S. than from the inside out, the McCarthy figure a tool of the Reds? They believe if such a man is elected president, after assuming the murdered nominee's place, the country will grow so dissatisfied with him, far to the right of, say, Batista, that America must experience a revolution in response, even as in Cuba. Then, communism wins.

“They can't make me doing
anything,
Ben. Can't they? Anything!?” Meaning that which is repellant to his human nature.

“We'll see, kid. We'll see what they can do and what they can't do.” Marco knows what Raymond does not; Eleanor and Johnny want Raymond to kill the presidential nominee when he addresses the convention in New York's Madison Square Garden. Precisely as this middle-of-the-road hopeful delivers his key line: “Nor would I ask my fellow Americans, in defense of our freedom, that which I would not gladly give myself—my life. My very life.”

A great statement. A
Kennedy
kind of statement.

Raymond is to hide above, shoot down with a rifle fitted with a telescopic sight. He became a marksman in the service.

Just like me! How complex the political game of chess can be. Only by supporting one's arch enemy can the checkmate move occur. I ought to know; I'm in this up to my neck.

Spotting the streak of light from his place in the vast auditorium, Marco rushed through the building's inner workings, hoping to arrive in time to stop Raymond.

What do I do now? Watch the rest of the film and find out.

When the major yanks open the door to that small booth, out of breath, Raymond brings the presidential candidate into his sights ... then swerves to the right, shooting his mother and father-in-law. Clearly, the Red Chinese agent was wrong. Raymond broke beyond bounds of brainwashing, turning the gun on them.

Yes. Now I understand what I must do ...

“You couldn't have stopped them,” Raymond wept to Marco before taking his life. “The army couldn't have stopped her. I had to!”

Suicide; which I have so often considered. Perhaps I'll do that as well, take my own life, once my purpose in life is, like Raymond's, fulfilled ...

*

Minutes later, Lee stumbled out of the louse-ridden movie house.
This can only be fate, bringing me around to where it all began. Sinatra again instructing me, reversing the message of
Suddenly
. If that were one bookend, this is its opposite.

I feel like all four Karamazov brothers rolled up into one. So lost was I after George's call. Do I still have any semblance left of free will? Am I fated to follow his command or might I, like Raymond, do precisely the opposite?

This wasn't only a movie. Like Raymond, I'll agree to go through with it, as George requested. Then, at the last minute, I'll take out the true enemies of the people.

Half an hour later, Lee called George and apologized for his earlier hesitancy, agreeing to kill JFK on 11/22/63.

*

“Lee called me,” George informed the committee members. “He apologized for his hesitation and has now accepted.”

“So?” the FBI man said, shrugging. “It's settled.”

“Not if I know Lee. Remember, I mentored him. Beyond that, you might even say ... I created him.”

“Like Frankenstein with his monster?” the blonde suggested.

“As you'll recall from that old story, the creature was supposed to carry out the doctor's orders. Instead, he turned on the man who had created him and destroyed Dr. Frankenstein.”

“As you now believe Oswald will?” The pro-Castro Cuban asked, his voice riddled with concern.

“I know him better than anyone else. Better than his wife, his mother. Perhaps I know Lee Harvey Oswald better even than Lee Harvey Oswald knows himself.”

“What's your concern?” the brunette chimed in. “Do you think he'll get cold feet at the last minute?”

“That's not Lee. The problem is more serious. Lately, He's been talking a lot about Kennedy, particularly the Civil Rights initiatives. Lee has always considered himself ... I think the term he employs is ‘a white Negro.' Any friend of the colored people is, therefore, ipso facto Lee's friend as well.”

“And any enemy ...” the anti-Castro Cuban added.

“... his enemy,” the State Department man concluded.

“My worry is that Lee agreed to carry out the assassination only after deciding against doing so.”

“Meaning,” the Mafioso in turn responded, “he's taking the job to make certain it doesn't get accomplished.”

“Lee once told me that, as a kid, his favorite TV show was called
I Led Three Lives
. I believe that's what he's doing now. Or at least attempting to achieve.”

“Meaning he'll double cross us?” the general asked.

“Not as Lee sees it. He'll do anything, including sacrifice himself if need be, to stop what he believes is wrong. It's more on the order of, I‘d say, a triple-cross.”

“But we're not wrong,” the former vice-president insisted.

“In our minds. Just as Lee, in his, is absolutely right. The point is, Lee is playing a kind of chess game. Well, I've played with him on occasion. Good as he is, I'm better. I know the strategies he always relies on to create a check, allowing me to checkmate him. I've come up with a way this can further benefit us.”

George then explained his plan. They would take Lee up on his offer while also assigning several other shooters to take down Kennedy. If George's guess as to Lee's reasoning proved inaccurate, no problem: with three marksmen firing from three different positions, chances of success were that much better. If Lee came through, he'd escape with the rest of the team.

If Lee refused to take a shot, likely one of the others would bring the president down. Then, when the moment of truth came around, George had a plan to pin the assassination on Lee.

“If Lee betrays us,” George concluded, “then he'll be our fall guy, making it easier for the team to escape.”

Everyone agreed on this course of action. They mapped out plans. Lee should be told that he was now one of three separate shooters. That would insure he arrived at the scene, to aid or try and avoid the assassination. When push came to shove, Lee revealing his true colors, George would take it from there.

“Is everyone agreed on this course of action?”

“Agreed,” the others chanted in unison.

*