Reclaiming History (52 page)

Though Duncan is getting ready to go with his two o’clock news bulletin, he chats a little with Ruby, who seems somewhat excited and happy that the case against Oswald is going well. He seems to get a real charge out of being close to the police and the news developments. Duncan is intrigued by Ruby’s description of Oswald—that he looks a little like the movie star Paul Newman.

Ruby stays right there in the newsroom for the bulletin, and after Duncan leads to Knight, the latter says, “I have just returned from a trip to the Dallas County Courthouse [actually City Hall] and, on a tip from Jack Ruby, local night club owner…”

Jack is tickled pink at the mention of his name on the air. After Ruby chats with the guys for a quarter of an hour or so, Knight walks Ruby down to his car, parked right in front of the door, the little dachshund, Sheba, patiently awaiting his return. Ruby wants him to urge Gordon McClendon to devote one of his on-the-air editorials to the assassination and the turgid, right-wing political atmosphere in Dallas that he feels led to it. He’s a great admirer of McClendon, a Kennedy supporter who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the senate and the only radio broadcaster in Dallas to do editorials, and outspoken ones at that. Ruby fishes a one-page flyer from the mess in his car and hands it to the disk jockey. “You look like a square guy, why don’t you look this over and read it?”

Ruby’s story about the flyer is complicated to Knight, but it has something to do with right-wing radicalism in Dallas, though Ruby doesn’t use those exact words.

Ruby had gotten the flyer when he was selling a contrivance called a twistboard out at the Texas Products Show at the Exhibit Hall off the Stemmons Freeway a couple of weeks ago. Ruby’s friend Ed Pullman, a furniture designer, had a booth there, and Ruby took some of his girls out there every night during the week the show was on to demonstrate and sell the device. One of them got her picture into the
Dallas Times Herald
. Ruby had stopped by the booth of H. L. Hunt, the right-wing Dallas oil tycoon, which was giving away free bags of groceries, and in his Ruby found the flyer, a script called “Heroism” for Hunt’s radio show,
Life Line
. He was outraged by the script and steamed back to Pullman’s booth on the mezzanine, George Senator in tow.

“I’m going to send this stuff to Kennedy,” Jack raged breathlessly. “I want to send this stuff to Kennedy. Nobody has the right to talk like this about our government.”

Pullman was philosophical. “Well, you just learned about it now, but
Life Line
has been out for some time, and that’s what he does and that’s how he gets his materials around.”

“I’m going to do something about this, I’m going to see that this is taken up in Washington,” Ruby insists. He even mentions the FBI. Pullman recalls to Ruby that Hunt had not been allowed to have a display at some New York fair because of that type of literature. “I’m sure that Kennedy knows all about this, and Washington knows about this.”

“Maybe they don’t. I’m going to send it in.”

“Well, you do what you want,” Pullman said.

It’s all a bit of a mystery to Knight, but he takes the broadsheet from Ruby and goes home.

It’s hard to figure out why Ruby had gotten so exercised about the flyer out at the fair. The flyer was all pretty harmless stuff, although it did contain this language:

Personal heroism is a vital part of the American character and the American dream…Nearly all nations,
when they do fail,
have forgotten what heroism is.

And,

A nation and a people which truly value their heroes
have no use for a paternal government which always claims to know best
. Such a nation cannot be coaxed or conned out of their fundamental liberties.

It’s bylined “Gene Scudder from Washington.” At the bottom of the back of the sheet is a list of two-dozen stations in the Dallas–Fort Worth area which carry the program, and a short list of “some of the other three hundred
Life Line
stations,” almost all in the South.
¹⁰²⁷

R
obert Donovan, Washington bureau chief for the
Los Angeles Times
, finally gets back to his Dallas hotel after an incredibly hectic day that went by without his eating since breakfast the previous morning in Fort Worth. He and some of his colleagues, equally famished and exhausted, were able to send out for food. They give the old black waiter, dressed in a young bellboy’s outfit, some extra money to also get them “a jug” of liquor, telling him they had worked for hours, were frazzled, and needed it. But you couldn’t buy liquor over the counter in Dallas, it being a “closed” city, and the waiter wasn’t about to find some other way, illicit, to get the hooch. “No,” he says evenly, “you couldn’t do that because that would be breaking the law.” He then adds in a voice that Donovan knows he will remember to his dying day, “There’ve been enough laws broken in Dallas today.”
¹⁰²⁸

2:00 a.m.

Eventually, in the early hours of Saturday morning, Dallas police headquarters begins to quiet down for the night. Captain Fritz sends his troops home, with instructions to be back by ten, but remains in his office conferring with Wade, Judge Johnston, and some of the other officers on the case until around 3:45 a.m., when they all go home. Deputy Chief Stevenson remains in his office on the third floor, where, with a couple of detectives, he continues to work, available for anything that might need to be investigated during the night. He doesn’t get home until around 12:30 Saturday afternoon.
¹⁰²⁹

2:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. EST)

At Bethesda Naval Hospital, the morticians are winding up the embalming and casketing of the president’s body.
¹⁰³⁰

2:45 a.m.

After leaving KLIF, Jack Ruby decides to drive over to the
Times Herald
building. He rarely goes there to place his weekend ad, because once he gets the ad into the
Morning News
, which comes out first, he just calls the afternoon newspaper to have the ad “transpired,” as he puts it, into the
Times Herald
, but he promised one of the boys over there on the night shift one of his twistboards. He had put off going there for some time, but since he hadn’t called in his ad today, he feels this might be a good time to take out an ad in the
Herald
that his clubs will be closed Saturday and Sunday nights.

As he drives past a parking garage at the corner of Jackson and Field, he hears a horn honk and sees a police officer he knows, Harry Olsen, sitting in a car. He’s sitting there with one of Jack’s girls, Kathy Kay. The thing with Kathy is supposed to be a secret, but Jack knows all about it. Kathy’s real name—most of the strippers use stage names—is Kay Coleman.

Harry’s divorce came through last month, and Kay has been divorced for a time, but it would be difficult for a police officer to marry a woman who is working as a stripper. Kay is from England and, young as she is—just twenty-seven—has two little girls, ages seven and nine. Jack likes Kay a lot, and he has stopped over at her place with a few other people for a late-night breakfast a couple of times—it’s only four or five blocks from his apartment out in Oak Cliff, on the same street, Ewing.

Jack climbs into the car with Harry and Kay. They had driven over to Dealey Plaza earlier, just to see where the president was shot, stopped in at the Sip and Nip on Commerce Street for a couple of drinks, and then went to see their friend Johnny Johnson, who works at the garage. They are drinking beer, ruminating on the day’s sad events, and glad to see Jack. They think he’s a great guy for closing his clubs. They are all upset about the assassination and find it hard to talk about much else. Harry’s leg is in a cast so he has been on light duty for a while. He was off that day and spent most of it moonlighting, guarding the estate of an elderly lady out in Oak Cliff near Kay’s place.

Earlier Kay had called Andy Armstrong at the Carousel from her house to find out whether the club would be open that night.

“What’s Jack doing?” she asked.

“Oh, he is all upset and he is crying,” Andy told her, adding, “We are closed tonight.”

Harry and Kay have known Jack for a couple of years and can see that he’s really upset. Harry used to work the downtown area and made routine checks of the Carousel. He’s seen Jack so mad that he would shake, usually at his employees, but sometimes at customers too. Jack can fly off the handle about almost anything. Harry would take him aside and get him to calm down, and Jack, with his respect for police officers, listened to Harry.

Jack tells them he saw Oswald down at the police station, calls him an “SOB,” and says, “It’s too bad that a peon could do something like that,” referring to the killing of Kennedy and Tippit. Kay thinks Jack is wild-eyed, with a sort of starey look. He is awfully tired, sits back, and stares off into space. He doesn’t cry or anything, but he just keeps saying over and over how terrible it is. He also keeps mentioning Jackie Kennedy and her children, whose plight especially touches him. Harry thinks they should cut Oswald into ribbons inch by inch, and Jack recalls all the citizens who went out that morning with banners and posters stirring up hate against the president. “I just wonder how they feel about that now.” The three commiserate about the death of Kennedy for over an hour.
¹⁰³¹

2:56 a.m. (3:56 a.m. EST)

At Bethesda Naval Hospital, Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman telephones the seventeenth-floor suite where the Kennedy family and friends have been waiting for almost nine hours.

“We’re ready,” he tells them.

Secret Service agents escort the Kennedy entourage—Mrs. Kennedy, Robert and Ted Kennedy and Robert’s wife, Ethel, the president’s sisters, Dave Powers, Kenneth O’Donnell, Larry O’Brien, Robert McNamara, and others—down to a small room near the rear loading dock.
¹⁰³²

In the morgue, the casket team, under the leadership of First Lieutenant Samuel R. Bird, conducts a small ceremony placing the American flag on the casket.
¹⁰³³
Finally, as a last sign of respect for the commander in chief, the Secret Service agents who have been present all night carry the casket out to the loading dock and toward the navy ambulance.
¹⁰³⁴
The marines who have been guarding the Bethesda morgue this night snap to attention and salute as the casket passes.
¹⁰³⁵
After the president’s body is secured in the ambulance, the Kennedy entourage emerges from the rear of the hospital. Mrs. Kennedy and the president’s brother Robert are helped into the rear of the ambulance. Jackie sits on a jump seat next to the coffin; Bobby crouches on the floor beside it. The others enter a bevy of limousines assembled near the loading dock.
¹⁰³⁶

Before leaving, Admiral Burkley turns to autopsy pathologist Jim Humes.

“I would like to have the [autopsy] report, if we could, by 6:00 p.m. Sunday [November 24] night,” he says.
¹⁰³⁷
Humes nods, in agreement.

Before the three pathologists leave the morgue, they confer on how to handle the task. It’s obvious to them that a committee cannot write it. One person will have to take charge and the others can critique and refine the final language. Commander Humes volunteers to write the initial draft. They plan to meet again in Admiral Galloway’s office on Sunday morning (November 24) to finalize the autopsy report.
¹⁰³⁸

In a few minutes, under very heavy security, the procession of cars makes its way at thirty miles an hour over the 9.5 miles toward the northwest gate of the White House.
¹⁰³⁹
An impromptu escort of hundreds of cars, driven by ordinary citizens, trails the procession as it slips silently through the streets of Washington in the early-morning darkness. Those in the official cars look out the windows and see ordinary men of every color on their way to work standing at attention as they pass, caps held over their hearts.
¹⁰⁴⁰

At the White House, the six members of the casket team reassemble at the rear of the navy ambulance, which has pulled up close to the portico steps. They seem to be straining as they carry the casket into the White House foyer. Their commander, Lieutenant Bird, steps up quickly and slides his hands under the back of the heavy casket. A soldier in front of him whispers, “Good God, don’t let go.” They shuffle across the marble floor, past Marine honor guards, and into the East Room, where the casket is placed on a replica of the catafalque on which Abraham Lincoln’s coffin rested.
*
As soon as the pallbearers step back, a Roman Catholic priest moves toward the casket and instructs an altar boy to light the candles that surround the catafalque. The priest sprinkles the coffin with holy water, kneels, and quietly reads from Psalm 130: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice!” At the end of the brief ceremony, the honor guards are inspected and posted at parade rest, near the casket.

Air Force Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh and Secret Service agent Clint Hill stand momentarily alongside the casket in the hushed and cavernous East Room. It is so quiet they can hear each other breathe. An usher comes up to Agent Hill and informs him that Mrs. Kennedy, who had gone to her room, will come down shortly and would like the casket opened for a few minutes. The flag is removed from the coffin in anticipation of her arrival and the casket lid unsealed, though kept closed. In a moment, the First Lady appears, escorted by Bobby Kennedy. Several members of Kennedy’s inner circle are also present, bunched together at one end of the room. Jackie looks exhausted, still wearing her “strawberry dress” caked with the president’s dried blood. General McHugh orders the honor guards to leave the room. The men do a quick about-face and start to leave, when Mrs. Kennedy pleads, “No, they can stay.” The guards freeze in place, their backs to the coffin. As the First Lady steps to the side of the casket, the lid is opened. She stands gazing for a moment upon her husband’s face, then turns to Secret Service agent Clint Hill, the one who had sprung to her aid seconds after the shots, and asks for a pair of scissors. He gets them for her. She reaches in and snips a lock of the president’s hair. She then turns away, saying “It isn’t Jack.”