"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (59 page)

He might also be the man who earlier shot the president, though that was not yet confirmed.

The man's name was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Marguerite wailed at the top of her lungs, threw herself down on the floor, kicking her legs, waving her arms.

When, after a half an hour she finally calmed down, as much as Marguerite ever did calm down, she couldn't be alone.

Robert? I could go to him ... Though, no, that doesn't seem exactly right. I know! Marina. I should be with her at this moment of crisis. Mama will go to ‘Mama.'

So she had come by, greeted at the door by an ashen Ruth Paine, who ushered Marguerite in. Neither she nor Marina were able to say anything to each other. They exchanged glances and sat still before the TV set, watching the world go by ...

And, on this dark day, understanding that they, two women together in a Texas suburb, were connected to the heart of the matter as no one, save only perhaps Mrs. Kennedy, could be.

“Is that a way of praying?” Marina asked, dumbfounded, when Ruth Paine and her little daughter stepped into the room. Each carried a candle they'd lit in the kitchen.

“Yes,” Ruth replied. “It's just my own way.”

She set the candles down carefully on a table and was about to ask the two Oswald women, Mar the younger and Mar the elder, as she had always thought of them, if Ruth could be of any help. Anything, however small or big, to relieve their shared horror.

Before Ruth could speak, Walter Cronkite on CBS announced that the president had officially been pronounced ‘dead.'

“Now the two children will have to grow up without a father,” Marina mumbled.

“I don't understand, dear,” Marguerite asked, speaking for the first time since her arrival. “Do you mean Mr. Kennedy's children or your own?”

Marina uttered a strange sort of noise but did not speak. At that moment there came a knocking at the door. Ruth rose and crossed the room to answer it, returning momentarily with six members of the Dallas police force.

They circled Marina and Marguerite. “Mrs. Oswald,” one policeman ventured.

“Yes?”

“Yes?

That took him off guard, for Marina and Marguerite had answered simultaneously, two voices merging into one. Like a chorus in some musical play. Or, for that matter, in a Greek tragedy.

“I would imagine you understand why we're here.”

“Whatever Lee did, he did for his country,” Marguerite announced in her best faux Southern-belle accent.

“Marguerite, for once in your life, shut up.”

“Why, what a terrible way to talk to your mother-in-law. And after all I've done for—”

“Just please shut the fuck up.”

“If Lee were here, he would never allow you to speak to me in such a manner.”

“Lee's not here, Marguerite. And, more likely than not, he never will be again.”

“By that, Ma'am, are you suggesting that your husband may indeed be the person who killed Tippet and Kennedy?”

“My boy? No such thing—”

“I said
shut up
! No, officer, I can assure you that Lee most certainly did not harm either of those gentlemen.”

“If you'll forgive me, all the evidence points his way.”

“Well, the cards will fall as they will fall. But I know in my heart Lee is innocent of both these crimes.”

“Why can you say that with such authority?”

“Officer, I hate to agree with Marguerite on anything. But it's as she put it: Lee Harvey Oswald loved his country.”

“More than anything else?”

“Yes, officer. Even more than me and our babies.”

“Perhaps. But right at this moment, the entire country perceives him as an enemy of the people.”

“Is that so? Well, here's one thing I learned from Lee. Perception and reality are usually two different things.”

“Is there anything else that you learned from him?”

“Yes,” Marina concluded after a long pause. “Just because you love something, doesn't mean it has to love you back.”

*

“There's nothing we can do now, nurse, to help him.” The doctor took a step back from Lee Harvey Oswald as life left the ruined frame on a table before him.

“He seems such a little man, doesn't he?”

“Short, certainly. Then again, so was Napoleon. If he truly is what they said on TV, even as the ambulance was delivering him to us, here, then I can assure you: Lee Harvey Oswald will figure greatly in American history from this day on.”

“Is he what people claim he is? The killer of Kennedy?”

They walked out of the sterile white room together as aids covered up Oswald's body. “All that's known for certain is that he was arrested for shooting a police officer who was trying to arrest him on the possibility that he might be JFK's assassin.”

“You said, doctor, that you were watching the TV in the lounge when somebody shot Oswald?”

“Yes. And a minute later I saw it again on instant replay.”

“Who possibly would have done such a thing?”

“Some local club owner named Jack Ruby. He stepped out of the shadows as Oswald was being brought to a car for transfer to the city jail. Ruby fired a gun and then they arrested him. As the authorities took Ruby away, he wept and said he did it for Mrs. Kennedy, and the children, and how terribly he felt for them.”

They proceeded down the long corridor, removing their cotton surgical masks and thin rubber gloves as, like zombies, the two trudged along. “That all sounds ...”

“Unbelievable?”

“Yes. That's the word I was searching for.”

“Well, I concur with you. It's all a bit ... much.”

“Almost as if ... Oh, I don't know, I'm just a nurse ... but ... as if this Jack Ruby wanted to silence Oswald.”

“That occurred to me, too. I imagine it will to many others as well. Today, and for a long time to come.”

“With Oswald dead, that will cloud things terribly. Make a full and thorough investigation nearly impossible.”

“It certainly will that.”

The nurse stopped in her tracks. “Will we ever find out the truth, doctor? If Lee Harvey Oswald really did kill Kennedy?”

The doctor halted, too. He thought her question over in his mind before answering. “That, nurse, may well turn out to be one of those things in life we never do know. Not for certain.”

“Good lord! And what were Oswald's final words?”

“Before Ruby shot him? He didn't have a chance to say much. He had a weird smile ... more a sneer ... on his face. I'll never forget this! He stared into the TV camera as if he were the star of his own show. Then, like on, oh, I don‘t know,
The Untouchables
maybe, that big Ruby guy came
up and just shot him. Right after Oswald spoke his last words.”

“Which were?”

“‘I'm a patsy.'”

 

POSTSCRIPTS

 

AADLAND, BEVERLY ELAINE
had appeared in the classic musical film
South Pacific
at age fourteen, playing one of the pretty nurses. Though she never did make another movie after
Cuban Rebel Girls,
Bev briefly toured as a singer. In 1960 she ran afoul of the police when her then-current boyfriend was found shot dead in his apartment, Bev unable to fully explain her own involvement. She was never arrested for a crime, though, and after two ugly divorces had a baby girl with her third husband. As to Errol Flynn's death, Bev always insisted that she could not reveal the actual circumstances out of fear for her own life. Once, though, while in Florida, she did tell all to a young man she met at a night club where she performed and, while under the influence of alcohol, spilled everything. Bev would not, when pressed, reveal that man's identity. Bev took all such secrets to the grave with her in 2010.

 

BISSELL, RICHARD M., JR.
necessarily stepped down as director of the CIA following the Bay of Pigs disaster. He was asked to head up a new Pentagon planning committee that would develop a replacement for the U2, rendered obsolete after Gary Powers was shot down over Soviet territory. He turned this offer down in order to join United Technologies, an independent company where he would prove instrumental in developing state-of-the-art weapons systems. Two years following Bissell's death in 1998,
Reflections of a Cold Warrior
, his autobiography, was published.

 

BUESA, MANUEL F. ARTIME
was captured shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and imprisoned, then returned with other Brigade members on Dec. 24, 1962. He stood beside Pres. and Mrs. Kennedy when the First Couple welcomed survivors home five days later at Florida's
Orange Bowl. Working on his own, Buesa attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1965. Following the Watergate breakin, Buesa became a key fund raiser for the defense of the “plumbers,” most of whom he had earlier known and worked with. Though his death in 1977 was ruled as “natural,” there are many who consider it highly suspicious in nature.

 

CAMPBELL, JUDITH INMOOR (EXNER
) called a press conference in 1975 when a senate committee, headed by Frank Church, set out to explore the Mob-CIA connections that may have led to the death of Pres. Kennedy. She announced to the press that she had never been Kennedy's mistress and, though she did know Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli, they were platonic friends. When Rosselli broke the Mafia “code of silence” by speaking out and was soon thereafter whacked, then Giancana killed before he could “sing,” Judy apparently wanted to say whatever might save her life. In 1977, she reversed her position in an “autobiography” claiming that while she had been JFK's mistress, never did she work with the Mafia, despite her close relationships with many Made Men. When Judy and her second husband, the famed golfer Dan Exner, separated in 1988, she hinted to friends that she was guilty of most of the accusations against her. She lived out her final years in Newport Beach and died of breast cancer in 1999.

 

GIANCANA, SAM
during the late 1960s pioneered Iran and Central America as possible places to build new casinos. However, his stinginess with the profits caused him to fall out of favor with the Mob and in time be replaced by Joey “Doves” Aiuppa. Exiled to Mexico, Giancana lived in luxury there for many years until the authorities chose to arrest him, sending Sam “Gold” back where he came from. Returning to America, Giancana announced his plans to tell all to the FBI during their long-overdue probe of organized crime in America. He was shot in the back of the head in his home in Oak Park, IL shortly thereafter. Between his coming home and passing on, Giancana confided to several close friends that his longtime mistress, Phyllis McGuire, knew all that was taking place between the racketeers and the CIA and that she too had been one of his “plants” in Pres. Kennedy's bed. However, those claims have never been substantiated.

 

JOHNSON, PRISCILLA (MacMILLAN)
reached out to Marina Oswald shortly after the assassination about collaborating on a book that would relate the entire story from the widow's point of view. Called
Marina and Lee,
it was first published in 1977. There are those who consider it the most honest and revealing book ever written about these historical figures. Others though claim that owing to Ms. Johnson's loyalty to JFK, her status as a CIA operative, and her personal knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald while
both were in Russia, her tome should be considered highly suspect, one more attempt to put the official spin on the tale.

 

KENNEDY, ROBERT
joined the race for the Democratic presidential nomination when Pres. Lyndon Johnson announced early in 1968 that he would not run for re-election. Initially, Kennedy lost primaries to another contender, Eugene J. McCarthy from MN. In the wee small hours of the morning on June 5, 1968, Kennedy, at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel, learned that he had just won the all-important California primary, pretty much cinching his grip on the ticket‘s top-spot. Moments later RFK was shot to death. The young Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan was arrested, charged with the crime, found guilty, and imprisoned.

 

LORENZ, MORITA
is the name of the actual woman on whom ‘Lorita Morenz,' a fictional character in this book, is based. Lorenz attempted to assassinate Castro with botulin pills for the CIA and Mob connection after her relationship with The Beard soured. Following that, Morita shifted back to dictators and began an affair with
Marcos Pérez Jiménez
,
former Venezuelan strong-arm, with whom she had one child. Later she worked as a spy for the FBI, informing on Eastern block diplomats who lived in the New York apartment building she and her then-husband
owned. In 2000 she attempted to reconnect with Fidel but he would have none of it.

 

MAHEU, ROBERT
served for several more years as Howard Hughes' “bagman,” a courier trusted to deliver large sums of cash from that billionaire businessman to his shadowy contacts. Among them was Bebe Rebozo, one of Richard Nixon's closest friends. This led to Maheu becoming involved in the Watergate conspiracy. Surviving that fiasco, he returned to Vegas where Maheu opened his own company, having been given the heave-ho by Hughes, who publicly announced Maheu had been robbing him blind all those years. Maheu sued over that; Hughes settled out of court.

 

OSWALD, MARINA (PORTER)
appeared four times before the Warren Commission, incriminating her husband for the assassination of Kennedy as well as his attempt on the life of Gen. Walker. She also announced that Oswald hoped to assassinate Richard Nixon. However, some Washington insiders insist that she bore witness against her husband only to avoid deportation to
Russia for herself and her children. Two years later, she married a man named Jess Porter and had a child by him. They were divorced in 1974. Since then, as a naturalized citizen of the U.S., she has on many occasions proclaimed, and explained in detail, her full belief in the absolute innocence of Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time of this writing she continues to live in the Dallas area.