A Secret Service man stood outside the seventeenth-floor suite with two cases. There was an overnight bag with fresh clothing for Mrs. John F. Kennedy. The small one was a makeup case. Both carried the monogram JBK. They had been packed by Providencia Parades, an attractive darkskinned maid from Santo Domingo. Miss Parades knew that Mrs. Kennedy required a change of clothing. The bags were taken into the suite. Mrs. Kennedy had them placed in the bedroom and left them unopened.
The guests tried to become accustomed to the blood and brains. It was impossible. The glances were masked. In spite of the several conversations going on in the sitting room, the kitchen and the bedroom, the sight of this remarkable young woman emerging from a room constricted throats and hurt eyes. It was as though they were looking at a murder. Part of the President of the United States was in the room. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara sat on the kitchen floor, his back against a counter, as Mrs. Kennedy chatted.
The conversation drifted. He saw the “bloody skirt and blood all over her stockings” and he, the most composed of men, thought of it as “fantastic.” “Where am I going to live?” she asked, at one time. This was specious and small-girlish. No one who lives in the White House has ever regarded it as a permanent residence. It was not as though she were being evicted, nor even as though she had no place to go. She had inherited a fine home at Hyannis Port; her mother had a big home in Georgetown; Mrs. Kennedy had riches. It is possible that she intended the question to mean “What place would be best for me?”
An hour had passed since Godfrey McHugh came upstairs with news about the President’s remains. Mrs. Kennedy, alert with the energy which nature lends to those most deeply hurt, noticed that some of the women looked fatigued. She suggested that they all go home and “get some rest.” The ladies declined. Some pointed out that she was the one who needed rest, that there would be much for her to do, many decisions to make, and that she should consider lying down. She too declined. The widow had promised herself that she would remain at her husband’s side until she brought him “home.” It was a sacrifice for Mrs. Kennedy to remain on the seventeenth floor while he was in the autopsy room.
Charles and Mary Bartlett arrived, and this brought a freshet of tears. Mr. Bartlett was a Washington columnist. Twelve years ago, when Jacqueline Bouvier had been an inquiring photographer for a local newspaper, the Bartletts had introduced her to the young and dashing Congressman from Massachusetts, Jack Kennedy. He was a ladies’ man indeed, with an eccentricity, he seldom carried cash. Often, at a motion picture house, he fanned his pockets and had to borrow money from his dates. For a young man who was granted a trust fund of one million dollars before he earned one, it was embarrassing to watch the lady of his choice hold up a queue while she delved into her purse.
The tears came. The tears dried. Often, the mind of the widow regressed to the good days. She remembered and remembered and remembered. In some of the sad, sweet recollections, a joy suffused her wan face. The eyes became enormous pools of dusky light, the graceful hands augmented the stories, Dallas didn’t happen. Her relatives and friends nodded and smiled and added some anecdotes of their own. Then she would speak of how she planned to conduct herself, and the doleful word “funeral” was uttered, and suddenly all the happy days lay shattered in the silence and on the stunned faces.
America would be watching this funeral; of that she was certain. And Mrs. Kennedy said that she was going to hold her head high. She would not break down because she would not permit it. Everything that she would do, or permit to be done, would have to conform with what she thought her husband would approve. She recalled that, as a former naval officer, he had looked forward with pleasure to the forthcoming Army-Navy game. That is why she had asked for a Navy ambulance and a naval hospital. The Navy, she felt, would remove the bullets from his body and dress it for burial. She was not told that the procedure involved a full autopsy.
Morgan Gies waved the car into the White House garage. He took it to the back and had the driver place it in a deep alcove. Hickey shut the ignition off and said: “Look at this.” He pointed to a star-shaped crack on the windshield. Gies looked. He did not touch. Orders had come down from Chief Rowley to cover SS-100-X without touching it. Hickey said: “I noticed it coming in from Andrews. It isn’t much, but it keeps spidering.” The motion of the car seemed to spread it in radiation.
Gies looked across the hood of the car. “Whatever it is,” he said, “the crack isn’t on the outside. This side is smooth.” Two agents were backing the other Secret Service car into a bin. The President’s limousine had a huge plastic cover drawn over its length. Two men guarded it. They took their posts in the alcove. Deputy Chief Paul Paterni of the Secret Service and Floyd Boring, assistant Agent-in-Charge of the White House detail, were on the other side of the street in front of Blackie’s Beef House, waiting for a traffic light before crossing. They wanted to see this automobile at once. With them were Chief Petty Officers William Martinell and Thomas Mills of the White House medical staff.
Paterni walked in and asked that the cover be removed. Additional lights were turned on. He and Boring walked slowly around opposite sides of the car, leaning forward to look in. The other agents stood back. No marks or scratches or indentations were on the front of the car. Both saw the small star-shaped crack on the inside of the windshield and assessed it as new. The deputy chief also noticed a dent in the chrome plating at the top of the windshield. This was old, but he did not know it. Suitable notes were made. Observations were made orally, so that everyone present could testify to them. The sides of the car were examined, and no marks were found. The outside of the trunk was scrutinized. There wasn’t a discernible scratch to show that Clint Hill had climbed painfully up that back to push Mrs. Kennedy to safety as Greer jammed the accelerator to the floor.
They glanced inside the back. The first thing they saw were red and yellow petals. They were scattered across the black leather seat and on the rug. Governor Connally’s jump seat was folded down. Mrs. Connally’s was still up. Dry blood was everywhere. It had congealed on the seat and it shone on the rug. Great gouts of it must have pumped out of the President’s head on the way to the hospital. Splashes of gray-white had dried on the upholstery. Where the brain tissue was absent, someone had sat. It was also heavy across the rear of the front seat. On the rug, they picked up a three-inch piece of skull and hair.
The men moved to opposite sides of the car and looked in the front seat. Paterni spotted the dull gleam of metal. He called attention to it and reached in at the spot where Roy Kellerman had been sitting. What he picked up was the rear half of a bullet. It was intact, and the lead core was exposed. A moment later, another was discovered on the driver’s side. This was a good find. When Paterni held the two parts together, it was obvious that this constituted one bullet. The middle sections, where the bullet broke, matched pretty well. It was possible that, if the bullet found on Governor Connally’s stretcher was the one which went through Mr. Kennedy’s neck unimpeded except by muscle to hit the Governor and stop inside his trouser leg, then this one could be the shot which hit the President in the back of the head, exploded his brain, tumbled forward, hit the windshield, and broke into two fragments, both falling on the front seat. It was possible. No one would know whether the reasoning was accurate.
The hum of an air conditioner in the autopsy room breathed on the silence. Commander James J. Humes executed his tasks with professional detachment, but it was impossible for a man to forget that this assortment of organic clay had been, until a few hours ago, the most powerful man on earth. Humes made notes on pads; sometimes Boswell made notes on the same sheets; Colonel Finck, the most experienced, knew very little of the actual circumstances of the assassination, but he noticed many small things which had a cumulative effect on his knowledge.
For example, the entry hole in the back of the skull was one quarter of an inch across by five eighths of an inch vertically. The bullet can be assumed to be round. It was 6.5-millimeter. The 7-millimeter side of the measurement showed that the missile had gone through the bone and that the skull and scalp had puckered slightly after it passed inside. This was normal. The 15-millimeter up-and-down measurement of the same wound told Colonel Finck that the head had been bent forward when hit. The missile had struck the skull on a downward tangent, skidding a trifle before boring through the head and out the top.
Boswell made a schematic drawing of the back of a head on a pad and, at the entry point, added an arrow pointed to the left side of the head. The true path was to the right. The doctors, aware that they were not in possession of the findings already established in Dallas, assumed that they were working on impressions tonight, impressions which, when all the facts were ascertained from Parkland Hospital, would be corrected.
The men looked inside the cranial vault. It was easy to do because a third of the skull was missing, and at least 25 percent of the brain was gone. Tenderly, the head was turned so that full light shone inside. Two fragments of skull fell off and rolled on the table. The fissure fractures around the massive defect were brittle. To touch the hair along the edge courted more fragmentation. The X-rays of the skull were studied again and again. Gloved hands moved inside the brain and began to emerge with bits of metal. The pieces were small. The X-rays showed where they could be found. Humes traced as many bits as he could. After a half hour of work he had a total weight of 12 grains on the table. The original bullet weighed 158.6 grains; Humes had recovered 7.5 percent.*
At The Elms, Liz Carpenter wrung her hands as she answered the ringing telephone. She wished that the telephone linesmen would change the number quickly. People who knew the phone number at The Elms were calling to ask Mrs. Johnson, “When you movin’ into the White House, honey?” It was sickening. The new First Lady asked Liz to please make excuses to the callers. Either they wanted to know the sickening details of the assassination, or they were anxious to know how quickly “Lyndon” would take over. Under normal circumstances, Mrs. Johnson was a creature of patience and tact. She huddled deeper into the bed, with the television loudly tolling the oratorio of the dead and the phone buzzing insistently.
Mrs. Carpenter hurried downstairs and back up. “The press is out front,” she said cautiously. “They would like to have you say something, Mrs. Johnson. Anything.” The First Lady stared at the ceiling. “It has all been a dreadful nightmare,” she murmured. “Somehow we must have the courage to go on.” She was talking to her secretary, her friend. But Mrs. Carpenter thought that the words covered the situation. She went back downstairs and, at the gate to The Elms, repeated them to the reporters.
When she returned to Mrs. Johnson, the woman was out of bed. It seemed painful to lie down, to stand, to sit, to watch that infernal machine repeat the horrifying story over and over. Mrs. Johnson reminded Mrs. Carpenter that Zephyr Wright, the family cook, was not at home. She suggested that they both go to the kitchen and make fried chicken.
“It will keep us busy,” Mrs. Johnson said, “and he will probably bring some people in with him. Men forget to eat. Then when they come in they want to know what’s ready now.” A few minutes later, Ray Scherer was on the air announcing: “Acting Press Secretary Andrew Hatcher reported at a news conference that President Johnson met with leaders of Congress for forty-five minutes and asked for their support in this time of tragedy. The congressional leaders assured President Johnson of their bipartisan support. . . Mrs. Kennedy has left the White House. Her children are with her.”
Shortly after, another commentator intoned: “President Johnson left about an hour ago for his home in Washington. . . .”
“You don’t have to talk to those people,” Captain Fritz said. Oswald sat, crossed his legs, and placed the handcuffed wrists on his thigh. “I know,” he said. The reporters in the hall had stopped shouting. Fritz phoned Lieutenant J. C. Day again. When he arrived, he said: “We’re going to make a few paraffin tests.” Oswald nodded. He had no objection. Sergeant E. E. Barnes arrived, carrying portable equipment. The order to do this work in Fritz’s office surprised the sergeant. Prisoners were usually taken to the fourth-floor laboratory.
Barnes nodded to Detectives Dhority and Leavelle. Oswald watched as the equipment was unpacked. He seemed to be interested in the procedure. The paraffin was melted to a warm softness and the sergeant said: “I’m going to make a paraffin cast of your hand.” Oswald shrugged. “It’s okay with me.” The handcuffs were removed. The prisoner said: “What are you trying to prove? That I fired a gun?”
The sergeant applied the stuff to one hand and kept firming it. “I am not trying to prove you fired a gun,” he murmured. “We make the test. The chemical people at the laboratory will determine the rest of it.”
The firing of a gun causes a small amount of recoil. From the ammunition, bits of nitrate are sometimes forced backward out of the chamber. In the case of a rifle, the specks sometimes lodge on the face and on the hands of the person firing the weapon. This test is so unreliable that laboratories have reported positive nitrate results from persons who have not fired a gun and negative results from hunters who have used guns all day. The Dallas Police Department used these tests and sent them to Parkland Hospital for evaluation.
Barnes dipped a brush into warm paraffin and painted the gluey hand of Oswald. It was done a layer at a time until a quarter of an inch of waxy substance had been built up. When it cooled, Barnes and Day wrapped the hand in cotton gauze and painted an additional layer of paraffin on top. When it hardened, it was cut off with scissors and marked “Right hand, Lee H. Oswald.” The work began on the left hand.
Captain Fritz went to his outer office. He told Dhority: “When they finish, take him upstairs.” The second hand was paraffined and peeled like a tight glove. Lieutenant Day said: “I have to make palm prints of your hand.” Oswald was patient. He neither protested nor struggled. An additional test was made of the right cheek. The material went up to the laboratory. Officer J. B. Hicks assisted in making fingerprints and palm prints on an inkless pad.
When the work was concluded, Barnes presented the fingerprints to Oswald on a police sheet and asked him to sign his name across the bottom. This, Oswald thought, was carrying cooperation too far. “No,” he said. “I’m not signing anything until I see a lawyer.” A policeman snatched the card. “Makes no difference to me,” he said. Fritz returned and told Oswald, in the toneless, almost sleepy, manner he had used all day, that the police had found a map of Dallas in his room.
Oswald was unmoved. He wore the expression of a man who senses neither surprise nor significance. “I marked that thing,” he said, “for places to look for work.” Fritz, still standing and waiting to talk to his detectives, said: “There was an X on the School Depository building.” Oswald showed surprise. “My God,” he said, “don’t tell me there was a mark where this thing happened?” Fritz shook his head affirmatively. To ameliorate the effect of the one X, Oswald said: “What about the other marks on the map?” The captain didn’t answer. Oswald was taken to the jail.
The FBI wing of the Justice Department building was ablaze with light. Authority had been delegated; compartmentalized investigation was under way. Off-duty agents had already reported for service. In Dallas, Gordon Shanklin was relaying evidence and bits of information as it came to him from agents at police headquarters. The New York office was already “in progress” on locating all mail order houses which sold rifles and revolvers. The background file on Lee Harvey Oswald began to build. An inspector reread the statute called “Assaulting a Federal Officer” and found that it did not include bodily harm to the President or the Vice-President. This placed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the unwanted outside position with no legal jurisdiction in the assassination.
The Director, J. Edgar Hoover, had the express order of President Lyndon Johnson to take complete charge of the case but the Chief Executive, except for the majesty of his office, was powerless to do anything legally. The crime was against the peace of the state of Texas, county of Dallas. The man in charge would be Henry Wade, district attorney. His investigative body was the Dallas Police Department. This hamstrung the FBI, which, from 12:45 P.M. could do no more than pledge complete cooperation to Captain Fritz and Chief Curry. Across the inner courtyard of the Department of Justice, Assistant Attorney General Herbert J. Miller, Jr., called the FBI to advise that there was no federal statute applicable to the assassination of a President of the United States and that all legality in the case reverted to the state of Texas.
The situation was more delicate than dangerous. The FBI, with resources far superior to a city police department, phoned Chief Curry to offer the “assistance” of all their manpower in addition to the excellent facilities of their laboratory. Curry’s attitude was detached and cool. In his desk he had a report from one of his officers that the FBI had a live file on Lee Harvey Oswald, a report which charged an FBI agent with stating that the bureau knew the potential danger of this man. It is possible that the chief saw this as an excellent document to release to the surging, shouting press—a document calculated to take his department off the hook of responsibility and put the FBI on it.
He said that it was his understanding that a couple of FBI men were already in Fritz’s office. Everybody was cooperating with everybody else. The Secret Service had men in there, too. Texas Rangers were there, and the whole thing cluttered up the office and didn’t give Fritz much of an opportunity to work. So far as the FBI laboratory was concerned, Dallas had one of its own on the fourth floor. It might not compare with the Bureau laboratory in Washington, but Curry would talk to Fritz and ask him about it. Possibly Fritz wanted all evidence to remain in Dallas.
The captain of Homicide found himself in agreement with his chief. He was unimpressed by the offer. “I need the evidence here,” he said. “I need to get some people to identify the gun, to try to identify this pistol and these things. If it is in Washington, how can I do it?” Essentially, it was the same dispute which had occurred at 1:15 P.M. over the body. All the legalities favored Dallas; all the power was in Washington. There were other phone calls. Some came from officials in Dallas. They asked Chief Curry to complete his laboratory work and permit the FBI to take the evidence for a day or two and return it. “Who,” said Chief Curry, “is making these calls from Washington?” The response was always the same. “Just say I got a call from Washington and they want this evidence up there.”
Hoover phoned Rowley in Washington and offered assistance. The Chief of the Secret Service said that Shanklin had been cooperating with the Service. Alan Belmont, in charge of the FBI investigation, called Shanklin for progress reports and ordered him to funnel all information through the main office. Shanklin said he had men at the School Book Depository, the hospital, and police headquarters. Congressman Ed Edmondson called the FBI to remind the Bureau of something of which it was painfully aware—that Speaker John McCormack of Massachusetts, next in line of succession to the presidency, should have protection. Edmondson said that he and Representative Carl B. Albert had phoned Rowley and asked for guards, but that none had arrived at the Speaker’s office.
The FBI and the Secret Service appreciated the crotchety Speaker’s wishes, which were that he would not tolerate agents shadowing his gait. Edmondson said that the shooting of the President could be but the first act in an overall conspiracy to murder the heads of government. Cartha DeLoach, administrative assistant to the Director, phoned Dr. Martin Sweig of McCormack’s office. The FBI had no jurisdiction in the field of personal protection, but DeLoach was glad he called, because Dr. Sweig said that McCormack wanted no protection and had ordered him to “remove” two Secret Service men waiting quietly in a room next to the Speaker’s suite in the old Washington Hotel. Mr. McCormack, a stubborn second-generation Irishman, said that the city was full of fear and hysteria and he was not going to add to it.
In the file section, an FBI agent dug up James Hosty’s reports on Lee Harvey Oswald. Another agent went through the identification files and found fingerprints on Lee Harvey Oswald made by the Marine Corps on October 24, 1956. The same record revealed that he had been honorably discharged on September 13, 1960, and had been arrested for disturbing the peace while distributing Free Cuba pamphlets on the streets of New Orleans on August 9, 1963.
Calls were coming in from all over the country. The FBI switchboards were alive with winking lights. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach phoned to ask that he be kept informed if anyone was arrested for the assassination. He was aware that Oswald had been charged with the murder of Tippit, but his interest centered on the President. Belmont had a man in the State Department with Abram Chayes, examining the Soviet side of Oswald. State asked the FBI to forward copies of anything it had in the files on the suspect. Norbert A. Schlei, another assistant attorney general, called the Bureau to ask what kind of people killed Kennedy. He was drafting a proclamation for President Johnson and the phrasing would depend upon whether “they” were madmen, office seekers, political malcontents, segregationalists, or so forth. Schlei was told that there was no definite information; the suspect in hand proclaimed himself a Marxist and had once sought citizenship in Russia, but no one could yet say that he had plotted the assassination or carried it out. Further, no one knew whether this man had acted alone or in concert with others.
Word reached Washington that a police official in Dallas claimed that there was “proof” that the FBI was aware of Oswald as a potential assassin. Washington correspondents phoned the FBI. The word they got was: “We are rendering every possible assistance in Dallas.” Out of Washington went some highly placed phone calls demanding that Curry retract the statement and rephrase it properly: “. . . that the FBI had a file on Oswald as a defector but nothing that would point to him as a violent person.” If Curry wanted to say that one of his lieutenants “claimed” that an FBI agent had stated otherwise, that would be all right provided that the Chief also announced that Agent James Hosty denied making the statement. The next phone call, from an embassy, announced that the Mexican government had closed its border to the United States and was screening all passengers at international airports. No plotter would get into Mexico.
Chayes was studying his State Department files and duplications of Central Intelligence Agency and FBI files on Oswald. The more he studied them—after the assassination the most innocuous reports appeared portentous—he wondered if his department had a “lookout” card on the accused. He got a man named Johnson, in charge of the Passport Office, to report in and open the door to the “lookout” section. This is an area of special files on persons who, for one reason or another, are, in the view of the United States government, “sensitive personages.”
The room itself was so sensitive that the door had a combination safe lock on it. Chayes, with assistants and FBI men numbering five in all, admonished each man to recall each step he made in this room and to report it. Assistant Secretary of State Schwartz accompanied the party and Johnson went to the “O” section. There was no mention of Lee Harvey Oswald. “Why isn’t there a card on this man?” said Chayes. No one knew. No one could say whose responsibility it would be to have a “lookout” card on a man who wanted to renounce his citizenship.
In the autopsy room at Bethesda Hospital, Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman received a phone call and tiptoed out. It was Chief Rowley. “In Dallas someone found a bullet practically intact on a stretcher. It was flown up here and I ordered it turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” “Yes, sir.” “I don’t know what the doctors are looking for, but they should be told that a pristine bullet has been found.”
The disorder of the apartment seldom irritated Jack Ruby. He was dressed to go to services, but the spirit flagged. He phoned his friend Ralph Paul and said: “Meet me and we’ll go to services together.” Mr. Paul felt no inspiration. Ruby hung up. He was dressed in a gray single-breasted suit, a white shirt and a blue tie. He was ready, but he hesitated, as though whatever good would come from attending services for President Kennedy had already arrived on the wings of self-serving phone calls and speeches to his sister.
The single bed with the off-white headboard was rumpled. The sheets were gathered in the middle of the bed. The drapes behind the bed were pulled back and there was nothing outside that window except blackness. A late newspaper was on the floor. A pair of cheap bedroom slippers lay on their sides. A carton marked “Johnson’s Baby Oil” occupied one night table. His private phone book and a telephone were on the other one. The dowdy broadloom was white with lint and bits of paper. The atmosphere was cheap and depressing.
It was time to leave for the temple, but Jack Ruby permitted the time to pass. Rather than listen, he preferred to be heard. He sat on the bed and phoned his brother Hyman in Chicago. Jack told how awful it was. A terrible thing. Such a fine man. “I’m thinking of selling the business and going back to Chicago,” he said. In each phone call, he appeared to be anxious to establish his prior right to mourn because the tragedy had occurred in his town. Ruby could make it appear that he felt like a Kennedy. There was a slowly welling emotion which had to be wrung dry. He phoned his sister, Marion Carroll, also in Chicago. This was followed by one to another sister, Ann Volpert. He busied himself with the telephone.
This was, in truth, the busiest day in the history of the telephone. The attorney general of the state of Texas, Mr. Waggoner Carr, swore he had received a phone call from someone in the White House but could not recall who it was, although he called the party back. The Kennedy crowd would hardly call Mr. Carr, so the forgotten man was limited to such names as Johnson, Valenti, Moyers, and Carter. The mystery caller asked Waggoner Carr if he had heard a rumor that the Dallas County authorities were going to draw up an indictment alleging an “international conspiracy.” The White House would be interested in having this eliminated unless there was proof of a conspiracy. Carr said he hadn’t heard the rumor but he would phone Henry Wade and find out. The caller said that the White House would not want to influence Dallas County, but if they were thinking of dropping a charge like that loosely, then the White House would like to know about it.
Mr. Carr phoned Mr. Wade. The Dallas district attorney said he hadn’t heard such a thing and wouldn’t be a party to it unless there was some proof more tangible than high emotion. From what Wade had heard at police headquarters, the evidence appeared to be following a pattern which would implicate Lee Harvey Oswald and, so far, no one else. “It won’t be in there unless it belongs in there,” said Wade. A call came in for Wade from his old friend, Cliff Carter, who was now at the side of President Johnson. “Are they making any progress on the case?” Carter said. “I don’t know,” said the prosecutor. “I have heard they got some pretty good evidence.” It pointed to Lee Harvey Oswald. Cliff thanked his friend.
At headquarters, Captain Will Fritz kept his men to the task of clearing the case up. Slowly, the captain was reaching an opinion: it was Lee Harvey Oswald and, quite possibly, nobody else. Mr. Fritz had a second opinion: this boy would never confess. He would play with the interrogations as a musical prodigy might with a piano. The Homicide Bureau was going to have to secure enough evidence to lock this case up without a confession. The boy talked quietly enough, mannerly at times. But he anticipated the meaningful questions and refused to answer them. Anything that would tend to clear the case up, or add to the evidence, was blocked or sidetracked.
The captain sat at his desk and wondered if Oswald had training in these matters. He had asked him once: “When you got to Minsk, what did you do, get some training, go to school?” The prisoner said: “No, I worked in a radio factory.” The captain suspected that Oswald might have been trained in sabotage.
On the fifth floor, Oswald was complaining. He wanted to take a shower. “I have hygienic rights, too,” he was shouting. The jailers paid no attention to him. They had word that his brother Robert had returned to headquarters and asked to see Lee. Captain Fritz had no objection, so it was being arranged in a room with a huge pane of glass bisecting the space. Robert Oswald sat in a miniature booth with a telephone on a shelf in front of him. His brother would come through a door on the other side of the glass and would pick up a phone and talk. It was the instrument of the day.
Robert watched that door through the dusty glass. He looked away, and, when his glance returned, the door was slamming closed, and Lee was walking toward him. Robert remarked to himself that the door was made of steel and so was its casing, but he had heard no sound. It seemed unreal that Lee strolled toward the other side of that glass so slowly, so carelessly, almost a lounging stride; he looked at his brother blankly, bereft of affection or rancor. Lee sat in the cubicle opposite Robert and motioned for the older one to pick up a phone.
The voice was flatly calm as he said: “This is taped.” Up close, the bruise around the eye was plain. “Well,” said Robert, “it may or may not be.” Robert leaned forward. He could see iodine or Mercurochrome on the bruise. “What have they been doing to you?” he said. “They haven’t bothered me. They’re treating me all right.” Robert, in his personal agony, hoped to get an unequivocal statement of innocence or guilt from his brother—if not by word, then by some sign.
To the contrary, Lee Harvey Oswald was relaxed and was willing to talk of other matters, other days, but not about the crime which had convulsed a nation. Robert thought that his brother acted as though all of the frenzy in Dallas and all over the United States swirled around his feet but did not touch him. Lee would neither deny nor confess. Robert no longer occupied the privileged position of confidant. The little boy had seldom wept his problems to the big boy.
The family situation had worsened. Robert, the only one to meet Lee and Marina at Love Field when they returned from Russia, was an outsider. Lee could be civil. And yet he appeared to be conscious that he, not Robert, was in the headlines of the world. They spoke a few minutes about nothing. Sadly, the thing they had in common this day was that both noticed that little June Oswald had a toe sticking out of one of her red sneakers.
Down the street, taverns blazed with light. The signs winked on and off. Inside, the jukeboxes blared their sad ballads of love. Men and women who had cheered and emitted rebel yells for the handsome man from Boston and his gorgeous wife now sat and sipped their drinks. In the half light of the bars, the dancers moved slowly in shades of charcoal; the glasses glistened; ice cubes collided in small clinks; beer rose to the top of steins, foamed, and slid like lace down the sides. Steer horns adorned the walls; cocktail waitresses in hiplength black stockings rotated their hips as they carried trays and wore revolvers in big belts. The conversation was not on Kennedy. It was on football and women and Indian summer.
The barflies brooded over the assassination but, when it was mentioned, someone said: “Yeah” or “Too bad” or “Why the hell did he have to come where he wasn’t wanted?” The topic was delicate, not to be mixed with whiskey. A middle-aged man bent forward, his forehead glistening like his cowboy boots, dropped three dimes into the jukebox and played “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” This changed the drinkers’ moods momentarily. The customers sang loudly and poorly and fell back on that old Southern game of coy and meaningless flirtation.
Down Commerce or Main, between the tall office buildings, assortments of traffic lights flicked their colors against the few cars and buses which defied the gloom. A broad well-lighted window near the Statler Hilton Hotel proclaimed “Dallas Public Library.” It was closed. Knowledge and culture could wait until morning. The city was in no mood for a book or a lecture. There were many more people indoors than out. From Richardson to Oak Cliff, from Mesquite to Irving, the enormity of the event began to seep darkly into the municipal conscience. The man who, after lunch, said: “It ain’t gonna cause me to lose no sleep” would not repeat the remark at this hour.
Violent death was not as harsh an event in the West as in the East. The state of Texas averaged a thousand murders per year. The men were earthy and carried guns as phallic symbols of manhood. They talked tough and had a contempt for the soft emotions. Tears were for women. Little boys, at the grave sites of their mothers, were taught to stand tall and manly. Pride in being a Texan born and bred could be exceeded only by a municipal pride which pitted Dallas against Forth Worth; Houston against Galveston; San Antonio against Austin; Abilene against Wichita Falls.
Dallas was not callous. A shock wave went through the city at noon. Regret and sorrow were genuine. The metropolis would have been content to apprehend the guilty at once and hang him and be done with it. The grievous wound to the city was felt at once by Mayor Cabell and police officials and Jack Ruby and newspaper editors, but it was not until night that the people had time to absorb from their network television shows the nationwide indictment of Dallas as a “climate of extremists.” The world was making much more of a fuss over the President’s death than had been anticipated, and it was pointing a finger of scorn at Dallas.
The average householder did not worry about “what this will do to business in Dallas” because the average householder had no stake in business. He began to wonder, sickened, if his city was going to become a tourist attraction for those who desired to see the place where Kennedy was shot. In his heart, he knew that Dallas was bigger, better, and worthier than that, and, collectively, the Dallasite listened to the pundits in New York and Washington with sinking heart. “It could have happened anywhere” was his impotent response. It could, but it had not.
At one point in the interviews between Captain Will Fritz and his composed prisoner, the officer said: “You know you have killed the President and this is a very serious charge.” “I did not,” said Oswald. The captain unlaced his fingers and spread the palms apart. “He has been killed,” he said. Oswald sat back. “The people will forget in a few days and there will be another President.” In that statement, he spoke for Dallas at lunchtime but not for Dallas at 8:30 P.M. The city, helpless in its horror, began to realize that the world was saying that Dallas had shot a great man in the back.
What had to be done had been done. President Johnson stood behind his desk, a sign that he was ready to leave. He told Walter Jenkins, an overworked aide and friend, that Jenkins would be responsible for setting up the meeting of the cabinet at 10 A.M. “That plane from Hawaii is coming in sometime tonight,” the President told Jenkins, “and I want someone out at Andrews to tell them that we’ll meet in the Cabinet Room at 10. There is going to be no gap in this government.” He stared through the gleaming spectacles at Jenkins. “No excuses either.”
He would not permit himself to dwell on the assassination; he knew that if he opened that topic, the young men who stood around offering suggestions and executing orders would fall into melancholy soliloquies. The event had brought its own dark thoughts. Frozen in the little first aid cubicle at Parkland Memorial, Johnson had been convinced by the Secret Service that he too might be marked for death. It was shameful to think of a new President as a prisoner in a tiled room hardly bigger than a shower stall. The crouching run to get into an automobile, the race to Love Field and sanctuary were, at best, degrading images in a great democracy, even though the attitude of the Secret Service, “maximum possible danger as part of a massive plot,” was the correct attitude.
“You know,” the President said, “Rufe did a brave thing today.” The man with the honey-sweet Georgia accent had folded the new President onto the seat and had exposed himself to rifle fire by sitting high on the shoulder of Mr. Johnson. The act was more than brave; it was dutiful. In a manner of speaking, Rufus Youngblood had taken charge of the President before Mr. Johnson had taken charge of the country. “You will follow me . . .” “We will stay right here . . .” “Our best bet is to get aboard Air Force One and get you back to the White House at once . . .” For an hour, the President who did not like to take orders accepted them from the agent who did not like to issue them.
The oaken door marked “The Vice-President” opened, and Lyndon Johnson stood in the light. “Come on, Jack,” he said to Mr. Valenti. “You come home with me.” He told Juanita Roberts and Marie Fehmer to finish up and go home for some rest, because tomorrow would be a big day. Emory Roberts and Rufus Youngblood fell into step ahead of the President. Behind him, Cliff Carter, Bill Moyers, and Jack Valenti hurried to keep pace. This was the new O’Donnell, O’Brien, and Powers group. The corridor was empty. The office where a White House secretary had condemned Lyndon Johnson’s soul was dark.
The party emerged from the side entrance. Rufus Youngblood was on the sidewalk first, waving the limousine into position and studying both sides of the closed street. Johnson walked around the car and occupied the right rear seat. Valenti came in the other door and sat with the President. The other two folded the jump seats back and sat sideward so that they could see the President. The car started and, on the right, the pale lighting of the White House brought it into view between the trees. Lyndon Johnson took a look and sat back. He had known this ghostly mansion for thirty-five years; it, too, was his. The government of the country was his, but, like the house, the tantalizing role of caretaker could be unrewarding. The government, the house, the fortunes of the country were more Johnson’s responsibility than his proprietary right. For the next fifty weeks he must work to preserve them and enhance their value. Then the electorate would tell him whether he would be permitted to continue or send him away to let another man do the work.
The witnesses were in attitudes of fatigue. For them, too, time was slow. The brain examination was almost complete. The curiosity of science was almost satiated. The doctors stood behind the head, peering, whispering, making notes. The cerebellum was fixed with formaldehyde because the brain, in its common state within the skull, does not lend itself to adequate examination. Like an intact walnut, the brain forms two complete hemispheres. The flocculus cerebri—a tuft of wool-like fibers—had been smashed. More than half the right hemisphere was gone.
When the brain was removed, more photos were taken. The disruption of the tissue moved from a medium-low position in the back of the head to an increasingly shallow depth as it ran toward the top of the head. The path of injury was parasagittal about 2.5 centimeters to the right of the midline, which connects the hemispheres. The parietal lobe was missing. Such lacerations as could be traced had a center which was jagged and irregular and which radiated into smaller lateral lacerations. The corpus callosum—a thicket of fibers which connects the hemispheres of the brain—was cut. By looking down, Humes, Boswell, and Finck could see parts of the ventricular system, where spinal fluid is normally stored. The smashing speed of the bullet had jammed the front portion of the brain against the right orb, causing a black eye.
The witnesses watched rheumy-eyed. The FBI men and Kellerman continued to make notes, but, as none had been medically trained or oriented, the notes amounted to personal observations reinforced by whatever opinions they could hear from the doctors. The rest sat stupefied. No one had a desire to study this event, and yet the tan, lean body on the table was compelling in its surrender. No one became ill. Men looked or turned away. The doctors may have been a little more zealous than usual, a little slower, but this was understandable.
Humes and Boswell cut the scalp down to both ears. Bits of the skull continued to fall off, and fissure fractures ran like tributaries to a deep lake on top. The doctors required little saw work to remove the top of the skull. Studying the X-rays, they were able to locate and lift two bullet fragments in the front of the brain. As they worked, the doctors must have reasoned that death from this wound would be practically instantaneous. On the X-rays, they counted between thirty and forty bits of metallic “dust,” too small for a search but large enough to be visible on the plate.
Kellerman waited until the doctors appeared to be taking a rest. Then he told them that an almost whole bullet had been found. His chief, James Rowley, ordered him to report it to them. One of the doctors made a note. After a brief respite, they continued with their work. The government and the people had to know, but the work and the findings were dreary. The solemn thought which gripped the laymen sitting across the room was that early this morning this had been a working body and an intelligent brain, both buoyant and integrated, and on the table they lay destroyed. The driver, William Greer, who felt a personal affection for the President, was beset by a feeling that what was left on the table was no longer Kennedy.
Lee Harvey Oswald never had a friend. He had not been able to comprehend the concomitants of friendship—confidence, affection, and loyalty. He was born with the pout of the discontented. There was his mother—slavish, domineering, complaining—and there was nobody. A snapshot of him as a boy, smiling among his classmates, gives the impression that he was obedient to the whim of the photographer. His impatience with a world of three billion people who would not recognize his greatness was borne silently for years, eventually inducing an explosion of the brain second only to that which President Kennedy sustained.
People remembered him. They murmured: “Lee Oswald” and rubbed their chins or shook their heads. “A loner.” “He could be polite, but he was far away.” “Braggart . . . a liar.” “Dreamer.” “Didn’t dance, date, play cards, never had a hobby. Never laughed.” “You could say hello, but Lee wouldn’t answer.” People remembered him in Dallas and Irving and New Orleans and Fort Worth and El Toro, California. They were remembering tonight, as his face stared sullenly in their living rooms, but they were troubled about what to remember. Some said: “Yes, he would do a thing like that.”
A few career sergeants of the Marine Corps snorted: “Ossie Rabbit? Not him.” An intelligent liar is difficult to read. He is secretive and presents the face he wants one to see, whether it is a real face or a spurious one. To a few old buddies in the Marine Corps, he was an okay guy who kept his gear clean, studied radarscopes for landing patterns, and enjoyed arguing politics. To a librarian, he was a bookworm. To a boss, lazy and disinterested. To a wife, weak on sex drive and strong on despotic domination. To a doting mother, an all-American boy. To God, an atheist. To the Russians, a potential suicide. To a New York psychologist, a neurotic with overtones of paranoia. To the women of an orphanage, a silent child who sat in one place with one toy all day.
He lived in a concrete cocoon. Lee Oswald was fifteen years old when he found room inside it for Karl Marx. He read Das Kapital, but he did not understand it. The boy enjoyed the dogmatic and doctrinaire phrases of communism. They had a ring of mystery; they were incontrovertible. They could be tossed into conversations and people would rage futilely against them without knowing, anymore than he, what they were fighting. The world struggle of the working classes was not appreciated in Texas or Louisiana so Lee Harvey Oswald could identify with it and feel himself part of a small secret band.
School was anathema because school was regimented knowledge. Lee was superior to this. He could attain passing grades, but he had to work hard to achieve them. A dispute with a teacher was a better thing than study. Someday, he said, he would go to Russia. The Soviet system would not permit his poor mother to suffer the way she had when jobs were difficult to find. The Soviets took care of everyone according to his needs. And yet he found it increasingly difficult to tolerate the presence of his mother. When he was thwarted, sometimes he would lash out with his fists.
He accepted the drudgery and degradation of being a “boot” in the Marine Corps. His marksmanship on the rifle range was not as good as his drill instructors expected. Some called his work “sloppy.” When other recruits enjoyed liberty, Lee Oswald was in the rifle pits firing. “Come on, scum!” they shouted. “Drill that target.” Little by little, he improved. In time, he was given a test “for the record” and he scored 212 points. The gradations were “Marskman,” “Sharpshooter,” “Expert.” Lee Oswald became a Sharpshooter. He became proficient in the use of pistols. His battalion went to Japan, to the Philippines, but Lee Oswald did not feel captivated by alien culture or hospitable people. He called himself an instrument of imperialism.
Sometimes he hopped into his “rack” to read. At others, he might be persuaded to go to the nearest town with his comrades and drink beer. Once, he hit a sergeant on the head with a mug and was court-martialed. On other occasions, when the boys went to a house of prostitution, “Ossie Rabbit” waited outside. Some marines said Oswald hated the Corps. He argued that Nikita Khrushchev was a great man and stated that he would like to kill President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Nobody knew the nobody. Except for peeps at the world, he lived inside the cocoon. Marine Peter Connor said: “When the fellows were heading out for a night on the town, Oswald would either remain behind or leave before they did. Nobody knew what he did.” The cocoon, in time, becomes a warm womb. It is self-sustaining and requires no fuel. It resists the hand of friendship, the pressure of soft lips. Sentiment and affection are threats to the cocoon.
Many were pondering what they knew of this man. On Fifth Street, Ruth Paine was trying to unravel her skein of thoughts about Lee Oswald. She asked her husband to go out and get some hamburgers. No one was in a mood for cooking. Marina came out of the bathroom and said wistfully: “Last night Lee said he hoped we could get an apartment together soon.” Another thought, another thread which matched none of the others. Mrs. Oswald was hurt, as though she wondered how he could have held out such a bright promise to her and the babies if he planned a dark deed. There was no proof that he planned anything. Casually, Ruth said: “Do you think Lee killed the President?” The Russian girl frowned. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. Marguerite Oswald swept out of the bathroom, proclaiming that if the Oswalds were prominent people there would be three lawyers down in police headquarters right now to defend that boy. “This is not a small case, Mrs. Oswald,” Ruth said. “The authorities will give it careful attention—you’ll see.” Marguerite didn’t see.
Mrs. Paine was perplexed. None are so blind as Good Samaritans. She, too, remembered last night. Lee had arrived before dark unexpectedly. To her, he was always a strange and aloof man. She had befriended this little family, had given it sustenance and a roof when it had neither, but Lee Oswald felt no gratitude. He had ordered the Russian community of Dallas to stop offering gifts to his children and his wife; Lee Oswald would provide. The dependency he required from his wife was so complete that he forbade her to learn to speak English.
Ruth had watched him at play with little June on the lawn. The little girl came the closest to teaching love to the man. He did not understand the emotion and ridiculed it in action, but the expression on his face approached pure joy when the child ran to his enfolding arms. Ruth had seen it. Marina had seen it. Wesley Frazier had heard about it. In innocence, the chubby little girl was tiptoeing on the cocoon and almost put one foot in it.
The thoughts of these people on this night were like recollections of the dead. They run at top speed and are not connective, darting in this direction and that, as though searching for a reason for a tragedy. Still the remembrances were dissimilar. At nine o’clock last night, Mrs. Paine was aware that Lee Oswald, crouching before the television set, had tried to reestablish himself with his wife and had failed. It was not a pleasant situation, but it had occurred under her roof and she could not turn her ears off. He had followed his wife back and forth as the babies had been fed, arguing huskily in atrocious Russian, but Marina had decided to keep him on parole. At times he seemed desperate to establish a rapport with his wife, as though it must be tonight or never. Marina rejected the ultimatum. By 9 P.M. Lee Oswald was in bed alone.
Michael would return soon with the hamburgers. Mrs. Paine recalled that, as Lee retired, she went out into the garage to set some toy blocks on the deep freeze for repainting. The naked bulb in the garage was lit. Irritably Ruth Paine wondered who had left it on. Bills for services were always high enough without wasting power. This was waste. Who would come out into the garage after dark and for what purpose?
She remembered, late this morning, that Marina said she had retired around 10 P.M. When she had crept into her side of the bed, Mrs. Oswald was aware that Lee was awake. She couldn’t explain it; she knew. He said nothing. He did not try to touch her. She was certain that he was lying awake in the dark. It was a strange feeling. Sleep had never been a problem to Lee. Sometimes, she felt that she did not know this man. In her mind, he became “my crazy one.” She did not mean it to indicate insanity; it was synonymous with unpredictability.
He had worked at the radio factory in Minsk, ignoring the summons of the commissar to attend party meetings and complaining that the doctrines were dull and repetitious. Lee Oswald was unteachable. The city was too big and too cold. He would prefer Moscow, but he could not get a permit to go there. His apartment, because he was a foreigner, was better than that of comparable craftsmen in the Soviet Union, and his earnings were augmented by a monthly check from an organization ironically called the “Russian Red Cross.” He was a worker who was being “kept” until the foreign office could decide what to do with him.
Overnight he fell in love. Miss Ella German was dark and attractive. It is possible, when Mr. Oswald’s restrictive emotions are understood, that he could not fall in love but rather that he condescended to offer himself to Miss German as a husband. The lady was unimpressed with the foreigner. She declined. Lee Oswald could not believe that, once he had decided to take a wife, that he could be spurned. He was an oddity, a rarity, an American. Ella German said no. He walked the deep snows of February 1961 pondering this crushing blow, barely seeing the stony bones of the great museums and libraries and, in venomous retaliation, proposed marriage to Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova.
The blonde pharmacist toyed with the notion and said yes. They married, moved to a larger apartment granted by the government, and, within a month, Lee Oswald was writing in his English diary:
“The transition of changing full love from Ella to Marina was very painful esp. as I saw Ella almost every day at the factory but as the days & weeks went by I adjusted more and more to my wife mentally . . . she is madly in love with me from the start.” Lee Oswald was fascinated with the thought of owning a domesticated animal which would lick his hand. He could take, but he could not give. Oswald was making love through a pane of glass. He could see her, but he could feel no tenderness.
He switched his energies to getting out of Russia with his wife. He appealed to the Soviet government, which looked upon the rights of the individual as an oddity. Oswald wrote to the United States embassy. He appealed to Senator John Tower of Texas by mail: “I beseech you. Senator Tower, to rise the question of holding by the Soviet Union of a citizen of the U.S. against his will and expressed desires.” This was a change in political direction from his fist-pounding rage of October 31, 1959, when he had shouted at the American consul in Moscow that no one could stop him from renouncing his American citizenship and becoming a Russian. The best the consul had been able to do was to postpone the renunciation, and Lee Oswald later changed his mind. He didn’t want to become a Soviet citizen, but he didn’t know whether charges had been filed against him in America. He wanted the State Department to lend him money to return to Texas, and he demanded a pledge that he would not be prosecuted for any fancied crime.
A letter went to John Connally, former Secretary of the Navy. Oswald was never known to flinch in the face of an outrageous lie; all he asked of himself was that it be palatable and close to being credible. The note to Connally protested that after he had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps the record had been altered to “undesirable” as the result of a visit to the Soviet Union. As a fellow Texan, Oswald wanted Connally to know that he had been a good and true U.S. marine and he wanted that record to be changed back to “honorable.”
The defector hoped that Connally had not seen the two interviews he gave to correspondents in Moscow, one in which he said he “hated” the United States, the other in which he said that the Soviets were about to accord citizenship to him. “In November 1959,” he wrote, “an event was well-publicized in the Fort Worth newspapers concerning a person who had gone to the Soviet Union to reside for a short time. (much in the same way E. Hemingway resided in Paris.)” In the middle of the letter, he became a flag-waving Marine. “I shall employ all means to right this gross mistake or injustice to a bona fide U.S. citizen and ex-serviceman.” Two years earlier, he had offered the Soviet government all the Marine Corps “secrets” about radar. He was crushed when the authorities displayed no interest.
Marina could remember a great deal. A woman, she felt, could work a little harder to make a success of marriage. She did not understand the Americans but, when she arrived in Texas, she began to appreciate what they had. For the first time, she saw supermarkets with small mountains of food. There was no rationing on merchandise or clothing or rooms. She saw sleek cars and buses which could go anywhere without permits. The government could be criticized; there were people in Dallas who spoke her native tongue and who offered hearts and help. Marina could not understand why her husband denounced the institutions of this country. Still, she worked to keep the marriage intact.
Six months ago Lee had come home pale. He admitted that he had tried to kill Major General Edwin Walker. In Russian her husband told her: “He is very bad man. A fascist.” The girl was astounded. “This does not give you the right to kill him. . . .” He shook his head. “If someone had killed Hitler,” he said, “millions of lives would have been saved.” Earlier on that day in April 1963 he had left a note for her in Russian. It told her what to do in case he was suddenly taken from her.
One part said: “Send the information as to what has happened to me to the embassy and include newspaper clippings (should there be anything about me in the papers.)” The only embassy Marina knew was the Soviet embassy. Her head ached when she read: “If I am alive and taken prisoner . . .” Marina kept the document and threatened to show it to police if he attempted an assassination again. A short time later, he tried to leave the little apartment with a pistol in his belt to “kill the Vice-President.” On this occasion, Marina had locked him in the bathroom until he promised to behave.
The cocoon became crowded. Lee Oswald was too big for it. The wild threshing inside his mind increased. Picayune jobs at a dollar an hour became impossible to hold. Marina was on a ration of ten dollars a week to maintain her little family. Her husband ran off to Mexico, ostensibly to head for Havana and join Fidel Castro. The defeat rankled deep when he learned that the socialist world had no place for him. The Cuban embassy refused a visa; the Soviet embassy said that such a document would require three months of waiting.
Oswald had slammed doors and had shouted insults. Again he had offered marriage to his love and had been spurned. No one appreciated his great worth. If they thought that Lee Harvey Oswald was a nothing—a cipher—he would have to do something to revise their estimates. Including Marina’s.
The long black car came down the street slowly and turned in at The Elms. Hurriedly the television cameramen snapped their big lights on and a knot of neighbors set up a faint cheer. There was no acknowledgment from inside the car. The big man in back hunched forward to search among the faces, but the one he wore was long and dour. A few journalists shouted questions at the car, but it rolled through the gates, bumping a little on the hard stones.
Secret Service men were out front, looking over the heads of the curious, curious themselves. They had lost a big man today, and now they overreacted to situations. They pushed people back, and shouted harshly to step aside. Each of them knew that solitary lesson: in any crowd, one madman is enough. All their adult lives they were sifting people with their eyes, waiting for the suspicious reach into a pocket, the tossed bouquet, the rifle on a roof. Two agents at the wrought iron gates drew their revolvers. They wanted to get their man indoors, that’s all. And that’s what they did, with Youngblood and Roberts watching him come out of the car and them walking backward behind him.
Lyndon Johnson was surprised to see people in the living room. They were surprised to see him, and even though they were old friends and neighbors, no one said: “Hi, Lyndon!” He wore a new mantle. They knew it and they were abashed. Some said: “We must be going” and no one said: “Please stay.” It had been a long day, a day of evil rather than triumph, and it had worn all the central characters down so that the spirit sank in fatigue but the body spurned sleep.
The President hung a gray hat on a rack. He looked up the staircase in time to see Mrs. Johnson coming down. She knew he was depressed, and she pasted a smile on her face. He didn’t say hello. Johnson leaned down and wrapped his huge arms around her back. He held his cheek close to hers and she said that she had made a lot of nice chicken. Her man had simple tastes in food: chicken, beef, lamb, and pork, lots of it—and two helpings of tapioca pudding. He had the hearty appetite of the Texas rancher. Lyndon Johnson enjoyed eating for its own sake.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have phoned you, honey. I had a hamburger at the office.” Mrs. Johnson said she was going to keep the chicken hot anyway; the men with him would want to pick at something. The President walked into the ground-floor den, idly waving his hand for Valenti, Moyers, and Carter to follow him. It was a small room with books and a desk, a cold fireplace, and the leathery atmosphere of a man’s sanctum.
Someone made a brace of drinks. “All right,” the President said. “I think I’ll take a Scotch tonight. Put a lot of water in it.” The drinks were made and he sat in a winged fabric chair, sagging in it like a man who has just walked offstage and doesn’t have to pretend anymore. Jack Valenti knew that Johnson would not quit working, so he opened drawers until he found a pen and a white pad. Ideas would be tossed in air, some to be discarded, some to be acted upon, and Valenti wanted to record them all.
On the wall opposite the President’s easy chair was an oil portrait of Sam Rayburn, master politician of Texas, the little bald man who had taken the freshman Congressman from Texas under his wing and taught him how to win, how to compromise, how to get bills through the House, how to lose. Mr. Johnson rotated the glass in his hand and heard the clink of ice. He was staring at the portrait of the dead Speaker of the House. Then he lifted the glass and said: “I wish to God you were here” and drank deeply.