The Day Kennedy Was Shot (29 page)

They headed for an escalator. A police officer told them that the press room was on the fourth floor. The escalator was sedately slow. They hurried and, at the fourth floor, they scrambled looking for the proper desks and the right phones. Marianne Means of Hearst Headline Service found one, talked into it a moment, and hung up staring like an alabaster statue. She stood looking vacantly at a wall. “The President has been shot,” she said matter-of-factly. “He's at Parkland Hospital.”

The scramble reversed itself. None of them could believe it, but all of them ran. They ran downstairs, knowing that they had no car, no taxi, to get to Parkland, and most of them didn't know where the hospital was. If Kennedy was shot, even superficially, it was going to be the biggest story Dallas ever saw. They ran and ran, and when they got to the ground floor they broke for various exits, and the hearty laughter of the diners began again, louder this time, as might be expected when a ridiculous situation is seen for the second time. A waiter, carrying a tray of steaks and vegetables on his fingertips, was caught and spun by a reporter and the dishes clattered and the steaks skidded across the floor. Outside, the journalists begged rides from anyone. Some were lucky. Some were not. The hospital was one mile west.

Inside, the diners moved on to dessert. The handsome head of Eric Johnson, president of Texas Industries and chairman of the luncheon, was alone at the head table. There was a rapping of a spoon for silence. The music faded in mid-tune and the chatter eased until silence prevailed. Mr. Johnson stared with controlled shock at the waves of faces and then began: “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you . . .”

Dealey Plaza was no-man's-land. The police stopped running. The sightseers began to gather. Little groups told over and over, with succeeding amendments, what had happened. Listeners
retold the stories to policemen who grabbed witnesses who, in turn, denied their boasts. Deputy sheriffs, whose duties were not related to the Dallas Police Department, interrogated witnesses who had already been interrogated. Sergeant Harkness was the ranking police officer at the scene for seven minutes. Uniformed men with drawn guns searched the building, rooted through the parking lot behind the grassy knoll, ranged over the underpass, and questioned citizens waiting on the grass for something to happen.

Inspector Herbert Sawyer, who had been a mile north of Dealey Plaza, heard Chief Curry and Sheriff Decker order men to search the railroad trestle, and, without orders, Sawyer inched down through the crowds until he parked his car in front of the Texas School Book Depository. When he found that there was no one present who outranked him, the inspector, a veteran cop of the old school, took charge. He saw that witnesses were being questioned and turned loose. A deputy sheriff volunteered to make an office available across the street in the county building for interrogation, typing of affidavits, and holding prisoners.

Sawyer took advantage of it and started a chain of command, so that cops who found persons with something tangible to contribute could escort them over to Commerce Street. He asked Harkness if the Depository had been searched and sealed. It had been searched and was being searched by new groups of officers as they arrived. No one had ordered it sealed. At 12:37
P.M.
Sawyer ordered two guards posted at the front door and guards at the loading platform behind the building. The orders were simple: “No one is to enter; nobody is allowed to leave.”

Someone put in a call for fire engines, and they fought their way downtown—hook and ladder and pumpers—to further block traffic in the plaza. The firemen raced around, uncoupling hose lines, but Sawyer told them they were not needed. Deputy Constable Weitzman saw a man lift something out of the gutter
of Elm Street. It was the missing part of President Kennedy's head. The deputy constable was mystified, because he did not know that anyone had been hurt.

Officer Clyde Haygood, at the rear of the Depository, saw a Negro standing near the loading dock. “How long have you been here?” the cop said. “Five minutes or so.” “See anyone come out this door?” “No, sir. Nobody has come out that door.” Out front, Sawyer called to newly arrived detectives and ordered them to go to the sheriff's office to type the statements of witnesses. In all, there would be thirty-seven in the first group. Sergeant Gerald Hill arrived and he asked Sawyer: “Are you ready for us to go in and shake it down?” The inspector said: “Yes, let's go in and check it out.”

This time the search of the building would be done floor by floor, counter by counter, box by box.

The daily run was not difficult until Cecil McWatters left St. Paul. Coming down from the Lakewood section, he had kept his bus on time all the way, but now he hit a cloud of cars and pedestrians who appeared to be choking Elm Street. All he saw ahead of his Dallas Transit Company bus was a field of red lights. Pedestrians were filtering through them like lava on a bed of coals. Mr. McWatters, an eighteen-year veteran, was headed for Oak Cliff. He had four or five passengers, and he moved his bus slowly down Elm, the brakes sighing, McWatters leaning over the wheel.

He could see the policemen in the middle of the street, whistles blowing and arms waving like symphony conductors. They weren't getting much music. In time, the Marsalis bus made it to Field Street. He was seven blocks from Dealey Plaza, but it might as well have been seven miles. The density of cars and people was like the end of a game at the Cotton Bowl. McWatters got to Griffin, and the bus stopped halfway across the intersection.

Someone rapped on the front door. There is a city ordinance against picking up a passenger anywhere except a bus stop, but traffic was stalled, so the driver opened the door. He didn't pay much attention to the passenger. He watched him drop the coin in the box, and McWatters saw that he was young and wore “work clothes” and sat next to the window in the second seat on the right.

Lee Harvey Oswald looked out at the people passing. The man with the enormous tolerance for silence was heading back into the danger zone. The bus would eventually negotiate the few streets to Dealey Plaza, and then make the fast run across the Trinity River to Oak Cliff. No one would stop the bus, of course. He was safe, even if the bus paused at Houston, and Oswald stared out at the excitement around the Depository.

The time was 12:40. The assassin was interested in time. Wherever he was going, whatever he planned for himself, time was a factor. It would appear that he was heading to his little room on North Beckley. It would not be a refuge, because, within an hour or two, the police would either discover the rifle and bullets or discover that one employee had not returned from lunch. Either way, the fragments of evidence would be sifted and resifted until someone said: “Now that Oswald fella. Lemme see. That Oswald boy he lives at 1026 North Beckley. Yep.”

After the furnished room, what? A change of clothes, a chase leading to where? To Irving? To the arms of Marina? To get there he would have to get on Davis and hitch a ride all the way to Loop Twelve and then make a right turn and get out to Walton Walker Boulevard. No, this would be a long chase for nothing. By the time Mr. Oswald arrived, the police would be waiting. He could remain on the bus and go south out of Dallas along Zangs Boulevard, but wouldn't the word be out, wouldn't the police perhaps have roadblocks out of Dallas, wouldn't they be at the airport soon and the bus terminal? Where to?

Could a man continue to hide in Dallas? Yes he could for an hour or two. Once the identity of the assassin was known, and the police put a photograph on television, the task of remaining free would square itself with difficulty. A day, perhaps? Two? Then what? Then the assassin might have to make a choice: go out in a blaze of glorious gunfire, or contact a left-wing attorney and walk into police headquarters saying: “Are you looking for me?”

McWatters stopped the bus between Poydras and Lamar, four blocks from the School Book Depository. A woman with a suitcase got up from her seat. She had to make a one o'clock train at Union Terminal. She was fretful about missing it. Would the driver give her a transfer, please? She could start walking from here and, if the bus caught up to her, she could reboard. McWatters said he was sorry he couldn't make it any faster, but she could have a transfer. A man got out of the car ahead and walked back and knocked on the bus door. The driver opened it. The stranger was excited. “I just heard over the car radio that the President has been shot,” he said.

Oswald moved up behind the harassed woman. “Transfer,” he said. Cecil McWatters looked up and gave it automatically. The assassin got off the bus, crossed in front of it, but there was a flaw in his anonymity. Mrs. Mary Bledsoe was one of the five passengers on that bus. Before he took the room on North Beckley, Lee Harvey Oswald had been a roomer in Mrs. Bledsoe's house.

She was a woman with strong feelings for and against people. Within two days, she knew that she did not like Lee Harvey Oswald, although she could not put her dislike into words. She permitted him to finish out his time and then she put it to him bluntly: “I am not going to rent to you anymore.” The slender young man with the icy eyes and the pout had stared at her without rancor, and then he left. Now, from a front seat, she had watched him board the bus and her venomous assessment be
gan anew: “He looks like a maniac. His sleeve is out to here . . . His shirt is undone. Is a hole in it, hole, and he is dirty, and I won't look at him. I don't want to know I even seen him. . . .”

The little bells in the wire rooms tinkled again. This time editors—not copy boys—came running. They had seen Merriman Smith's first flash, and it could be a mistake. Editors scanned the Associated Press machine, dreading to place credence in one wire service against the other, but while the AP was rippling through run-of-the-mill stories. . . .

In the same minute, the Cabinet plane was fleeing the morning sun over the Pacific Ocean. Far below, the men of Kennedy's government could see the white fleece of clouds and the occasional inky glimpse of the sea. Breakfast was over. Some of the wives changed seats and talked of shopping in Tokyo. Some of the Cabinet ministers sat together and chatted; others, like Pierre Salinger, studied the briefing manuals so that they
would better understand the functions and purposes of the trip. Robert Manning, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, came out of the forward cabin and told Salinger that Mr. Rusk would like to see him at once.

He looked up from his reading to find that only the wives were still in their seats. Udall of Interior was with Rusk; so was Agriculture's Freeman, Commerce's Hodges, Labor's Wirtz. Salinger required time to leave a comfortable seat. He went forward and was told that they were waiting for Myer Feldman of Kennedy's staff and Walter Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Pierre Salinger did not understand why anyone was summoned, but he bent over Secretary of State Dean Rusk's polished head to read a sheet of paper which appeared to be badly scrambled in transmission. It was a teletype bulletin but the operator who sent it must have been confused or upset:

Mr. Rusk glanced up and saw Feldman and Heller come into the cabin. In his crisp, flat baritone, he read the last two bulletins. Salinger, who had worked as an investigator when John Kennedy was a member of the McClellan Rackets Committee, felt the shock race across his mind, numbing it. Orville Freeman gasped and murmured: “My God!” Luther Hodges grasped the edge of the desk and began to sag to the floor. Hands helped
him to an easy chair. Empty faces stared at empty faces. The tragedy was so enormous, so unexpected, so fraught with danger to the country, that the role of these gentlemen became obvious to all. We . . . have . . . got . . . to . . . turn . . . back . . . right. . . now.

Rusk entertained a small hope. “We have to verify this, somehow,” he said. “Get us in communication with the White House and see if you can get Admiral Felt at CINCPAC.” The communications men on the presidential special were Sergeant Darrel Skinner and Sergeant Walter Baughman. Within forty seconds, they had the Situation Room in the White House. Salinger, his voice breaking, took the phone and said: “Situation Room, this is Wayside. Can you give me the lastest situation on Lancer?” The voice was clear: “He and Governor Connally have been hit in a car in which they were riding.”

That was it. The last doubt died. It was official. The President had been wounded. The White House didn't say he was dead. The fat, jolly man of the Kennedy group said: “Please keep us advised. Secretary Rusk is on this plane headed for Japan. We are returning to Honolulu. Will be there in about two hours. We will need to be advised to determine whether some members should go direct to Dallas.” The heart began to drag a little. Salinger had been a clever and adroit jester for John F. Kennedy; he had been a buffer between the President and the press; he had been a good cigar smoker, a poor poker player, a moon of a man who beamed on the Chief Executive he had helped to create. Now, in a matter of two minutes, high over the Pacific Ocean, all of it was swirling down the drain in Dallas.