“Who are these people?” the press asked. The detectives said: “See Captain King. We can’t give statements.” Rose and Stovall and Adamcik assisted Wesley Frazier into a glass cubicle with his minister, the Reverend Campble of the Irving Baptist Church. Mr. Frazier’s sister, Linnie Mae Randall, was shown into another part of the office. The pile of sworn statements was thickening. There were so many that no enforcement officer had been able to read all of them. And yet each was a tiny piece of information ready to be set into place in an ugly puzzle.
Detective G. F. Rose could see that the big, skinny kid was nervous. “Relax,” he said. “You have nothing to hide. Right?” Wesley Frazier sat and placed his elbows on his knees. “Right,” he said in a small voice. In another part of the office, Mrs. Randall was reminding the people that it was she who had volunteered the information that her young brother drove Lee Oswald to work this morning with a long package on the back seat. She had been washing breakfast dishes at the window . . .
The innocent, in panic, make themselves suspect. Matters which appear to be bright and simple, on recollection, assume a darker hue. The young man began to answer questions, first about himself, then about his relationship to Lee Oswald. He recalled how he asked Lee why he was going to Irving on a Thursday instead of the usual Friday. Vaguely he remembered Lee saying something about missing a visit the previous week because the Paines had a birthday or something. Oswald wanted to pick up some curtain rods for his rented room.
Lee wasn’t the kind of man a fellow asked questions. Sometimes he just kept looking out the windshield, saying nothing. Other times he might say something, but he wasn’t a talker. This morning, when Wesley parked in the freight yard behind the School Book Depository, he wanted to rev his car engine a little because the battery was low. His friend Lee didn’t even wait for him—just took his curtain rods and walked ahead. He didn’t even wait and hold the plant door for Wesley.
The boy’s minister told him to tell the whole truth and no harm would befall him. Frazier nodded. He understood. He had no desire to get into trouble of any kind; at work he was known to be amiable, obliging, a boy who seldom disagreed with anybody. At another desk, his sister watched the pen of a detective spell the words she spoke, about the Russian woman who lived up the street with the Paines, the surly face of Lee Harvey Oswald getting in her brother’s old car, getting out of it, waiting for Wesley in the driveway—a peculiar man who never smiled, seldom spoke, an assortment of features which formed themselves into an everlasting grudge.
Wesley was certain of his answers until the detectives asked them a second or third time; the more he meditated, the less sure he was. The curtain rods were “about this long” [twenty-six inches]. “How long?” “This long” [indicating about twenty-eight inches]. “Does he bring his lunch from home?” “All the time, except today.” “Why except today?” “I don’t know. Lee never buys lunch, but this morning he said he was going to buy his lunch and eat in the domino room.” “Why do you call it the domino room?” “Some of the fellas, when they have lunch and there is still time, they play dominos.” “Did Oswald ever talk politics?” “Not with me.” “Did you ever see him with a rifle?” “No, sir.” “Ever talk about one?” “Not to me.” “Did he discuss the visit of President Kennedy?” “Not that I remember.” “Ever see him with a pistol?” “No, sir.” “Do you have any objections to having your fingerprints taken?” “No, sir.” “Ever been arrested?” “Yes, sir. In Irving tonight.” “Besides that?” “No, sir, never have. . . .”
On the fourth floor, Lieutenant Day looked at the side of the rifle, smiled, and murmured: “Yes, sir.” It wasn’t much of a print, and it was coming up slowly, but there it was as plain as a slap mark on a tender cheek. “The metal is rough,” he said to an assistant. “If it was smooth, this print would be sharper.” It was part of a palm of a hand, on the underside of the wood stock. The screws of the stock were loosened, and the print seemed clear. The police photographer took several closeup shots of it. Day took Scotch tape, carefully applied, and slowly lifted the print free. It was faint, but it was discernible.
He had a palm print on a carton taken from the sixth-floor window. If both were of the same hand and they matched, the lieutenant would put them on a projector beside some he had taken from Oswald. If all three matched, then Oswald handled this gun and also sat in that window. Vincent Drain of the FBI came up to the laboratory to see how the lieutenant was doing. Day showed him the material. The FBI man reminded Day that headquarters in Washington was prepared to lend any assistance required. The lieutenant said he appreciated it, but the chief would have to handle matters like that.
The tall, good-natured Drain left. The men on the fourth floor continued their work. They knew that the FBI wanted all this material. Day had orders to process it, and that’s what he was doing. The room smelled of developer. Lights went on and off as negatives were fixed. The men worked in silence, at microscopes, cameras, acid baths, calipers, projectors, spectroscopes. There were hairs on the blanket which housed the rifle, but they were short and kinky. They were pubic. Someone had once slept in this thing nude.
A clear palm print was thrown up on the projector. The smudged print from the underside of the rifle went up beside it. The officers stopped work to look. The one from the rifle wasn’t clear enough. Still, the swirls which could be defined appeared to match the ones taken from Oswald’s left hand tonight. The photos were reversed, and the eyes of the men scanned them again. It wasn’t the best of evidence, but both appeared to be made from the same hand.
“Be back in a minute,” the lieutenant said. He ran down the stairs and into the chief’s office. “I make a tentative identification from a palm print on the rifle which matches one I got from Oswald,” he said. The chief smiled and looked up from his desk. “Good,” he said. Day fought his way down the center hall into Fritz’s outer office. He called the captain out. Fritz said that the prisoner was on his way down again. He was making a couple of phone calls. The lieutenant whispered the story of the print match. Fritz smiled a little. “Give me a report on it when you have it,” he said. “We’re moving along—a little at a time.” “It’s tentative,” Day said. “It looks pretty good.”
America was beset by an anguished desire to be punished for the crime. It was on family faces in Oklahoma and Oregon, in Salem, Sioux City, San Antonio, and San Francisco. The shock wave had leveled off into a mass what-did-we-do? guilt. Psychologically, the nation was on its knees. This morning it had been rich, powerful, and unafraid. Within nine hours, the self-appraisal had been revised downward. There was a subterranean violence in the national character, one which few suspected. Some remembered the abortive attack by Puerto Ricans on the life of President Harry Truman. Others, older, recalled that a madman named Zangara had fired at President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Bayfront Park, Miami, and had hit Mayor Charles Cermak of Chicago. Cermak had died. In time so had Zangara.
The sense of guilt was felt everywhere. A man named Oswald may have pulled the trigger, but what kind of a country had bred him? America was a sophisticated land where even the common union laborer owned a television set and a car and perhaps played golf on Sundays. Passions seldom rose high enough for the people to use any weapon other than a ballot or a fist to show displeasure with a politician. This image had been broken. The people looked into a mirror and the glass was intact but the face was cracked. By 9 P.M. Central Standard Time, millions of people were prepared to believe the worst about themselves. It was easy to blame the whole thing on a nut named Oswald. Too easy. The guilt could be shoved off on Dallas too. Or even the whole state of Texas. For once, something was too big for Texas.
The dark, lined face of Edwin Newman was picked up by the National Broadcasting Company and he was prepared to tell the people what they wanted to hear: “This event is unreal,” he said, “absurd—one of the things we just don’t let happen. But if one in one hundred ninety million wants to kill the President, he will. The unpleasant truth about America is that it is a country of violence.” There, it had been said.
“Violence plays a part in our very lives—yet what we worry about is our image abroad. Today, America does not appear to be an adult country. Emotions run high—regional, religious, and economic. We must begin at the top, for the political climate is set by the President. In the days to come we will hear much of how we must stick together. It is within our power to take our public life more seriously than we have. Americans tonight are a grossly diminished people.”
The camera left Newman and, in Washington, D.C., the lopsided, boyish face of David Brinkley came on: “If we have come to the point where a President cannot appear in public without fear of being shot,” he said, “then we are less civilized than we think we are.” As a mark of its sincere sorrow, the three major television networks canceled the sandwiches of advertising which are their meat more than the public’s and fasted.
The city of Dallas was anxious to dust its municipal cloak of Lee Harvey Oswald at once. Mayor Earle Cabell did it before the cameras at eighteen minutes after 10 P.M.: “. . . It is hard to believe,” he said, “but I don’t believe this event will hurt Dallas as a city. This was the act of a maniac who could have lived anywhere—a man who belonged to no city.” It probably did not occur to the excited mayor that a statement of that type hurt Oswald’s chances of securing a fair trial in Dallas County.
Chief Petty Officers William Martinell and Thomas Mills watched as the Secret Service men completed the examination of the President’s limousine. They knew why they had been brought from Admiral George Burkley’s office. On the way in from Andrews Air Force Base, Special Agent Kinney thought he had seen some hair and skull under a jump seat. If it was true, the petty officers would be charged with taking it to Bethesda Hospital.
The examination was near its end when Deputy Chief Paterni of the Secret Service said softly: “Here it is.” It was a three-inch triangular piece of skull and hair lying under what had been Mrs. Connally’s seat. Martinell lifted it on a piece of paper and dropped it into an envelope. He asked if he could remove some of the whitish tissue from the back seat. The deputy chief and Floyd Boring had no objection. Martinell took his piece of paper, curved it into a small shovel, and removed chunks of tissue from the back of the seat and the area between the jump seats.
It was placed in a separate envelope. Mills, running his hand across the rug under the windshield, found a metallic fragment and turned it over to the Secret Service. The plastic cover was placed over the car. The petty officers signed receipts for the material and started out for the hospital. The three-inch piece of skull they carried, in addition to the piece found in the road on Elm Street, Dallas, represented about two thirds of the massive fracture in the President’s head.
The doctors had completed that part of their work. A few of the witnesses were escorted to the naval commissary for food. The notes kept by the doctors were in scribbles, sometimes only a phrase to remind them of an entire event: “Blood & hair upper medias” “only a few in size 3—5 mm.” “no missile in the wound” . . . Doctor Humes leaned across the chest and made a Y incision. It extended from both shoulders down to the center of the sternum, then cut straight down to the pelvis.
The rib cage was lifted open, exposing the thoracic cavity. The lower flaps were pulled back, opening the abdomen. The three doctors studied the torso. The final report would state: “CAUSE OF DEATH: Gunshot wound, head,” but pathology decrees that an autopsy should be complete, even when the cause of death is obvious. The organs should be examined for grossness and disease.
On the seventeenth floor, the impatient young Attorney General was accelerating his pace. The phone was in constant use. Shriver told him that the President’s office was now empty of Kennedy keepsakes. From the desk had been taken the coconut shell in which he had sent a message that a Japanese destroyer had sunk his PT 109. The phone calls continued and at last Robert Kennedy became irritated.
He asked the Secret Service where Dr. Burkley was. The rear admiral had made several trips up to the suite, advising that the Navy doctors would not require much more time to complete the autopsy. But the hours kept grinding onward. Kennedy looked at his watch. It was after 10 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. Clint Hill phoned the autopsy room and spoke to Kellerman. He spoke to Burkley, who said: “It’s taking longer than they thought.” The Attorney General hoped that the doctors would get on with it.
In the White House, Sargent Shriver completed a call to Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston, hung up, and clapped a hand to his handsome forehead. “My God!” he said. “We forgot to invite Truman, Ike, and Hoover!” Ralph Dungan, whose office was being used for the massive funeral campaign, leafed through a copy of State, Official and Special Funeral Policies and Plans. Major General Ted Clifton kept calling Godfrey McHugh at the hospital to ask, within reason, when the President was coming home. He had to know for several reasons: artist Walton had to complete the funeral atmosphere of the East Room. Clifton had displayed an etching of the Lincoln catafalque to the White House carpenters and demanded that they duplicate it at once (someone had neglected to pass the word that the original Lincoln catafalque had been located in the basement of the Capitol building).
General McHugh kept saying that no one knew when the doctors would be finished. An embalmer hadn’t been summoned. Originally, without consultation, most of the autopsy observers had figured that the body would be in the East Room by midnight. Well, it would be later than that. One o’clock? said Clifton. No one could be sure. Maybe two. Maybe even later. Time had dragged all day. Now events were dragging.
At the Library of Congress, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Dick Goodwin could not believe that, after authorities opened the place for them, they would have to hunt for Lincolniana up and down the musty aisles with flashlights. The interior lights of the library were on time clocks. The White House aides were guided in their literary voyages by two competent men: David C. Mearns and James I. Robertson. They picked up pertinent books and copies of old magazines and newspapers. No one would be able to read, absorb, and appropriate the ideas entombed within these publications, but the men thought that it would be better to bring back too much than too little.
A new officer sat listening to Fritz and Oswald. He was fiftyish, a man with blue eyes, a high, freckled forehead, and spectacles. He was Inspector Thomas Kelley of the Secret Service and he had been in Memphis, Tennessee, when the crime occurred. Rowley had called him and asked him to hurry to Dallas to supervise the Secret Service aspect of the investigation. Kelley was a low-key man. The first assignment he gave himself was to sit quietly and try to assess the prisoner and Captain Will Fritz. Earlier, in the outer office, Forrest V. Sorrels had given the inspector a summary of all that had happened up to 9 P.M. Kelley had asked numerous questions.
As he sat in the crowded office, he had a fairly good idea of the game. He felt that Fritz was on solid ground with this young man. He watched Oswald closely and he became impressed with the fact that, unless he was misjudging the gigantic ego of the prisoner, Lee Harvey Oswald was the type who wouldn’t share the credit for the assassination with anyone.
Kelley was also impressed with the slow, deliberate manner of Will Fritz. He liked an officer who didn’t press the quarry too closely or harshly. For seven hours in elapsed time these two men had fenced carefully, almost with respect. The captain’s best weapon was that he knew how much evidence was already in, how many persons had already identified Oswald at the lineups. His questions led from strength. Oswald’s weapon was that he could maintain a quiet conversation with the captain until a sensitive one surfaced; at that point he could refuse to respond.
The Secret Service inspector was satisfied that this case would be cleared up. He crossed his leg, placed his clasped hands on the top knee, and listened. A small smile puckered his eyes. He had the impression that Oswald was lying and knew that Fritz knew that he was lying. In this game, when two men are playing for one more life to follow the one destroyed, there is not time for bickering and charges of untruth. Both appeared to understand this, and Oswald followed his road of innocence, slightly hurt that Fritz could think a young fellow at a movie could be involved in a thing like murder.
“Now how about that Alex Hidell thing?” Fritz said patiently. “We find three cards on you with that name.” All day long, the prisoner had maintained that he knew nothing about it and had refused to discuss it. His attitude shifted. He wanted to toss a small bone to his captor. “I picked that up in New Orleans,” he said. “Where?” “It was part of the Free Cuba Committee.” “Was it a name you used?” The tone switched to surly. “I’ve talked about that enough. I don’t want to discuss it anymore.” Fritz asked a few unimportant questions. Oswald recognized that they were on safe ground and began to prattle. Will Fritz permitted him to talk. The captain kept glancing at his desk blotter, turning a Ticonderoga pencil this way and that, listening until the prisoner was completely unwound.
He opened another field. Both men knew the delicate areas of interrogation. “Do you belong to any other organizations?” “American Civil Liberties Union.” Fritz raised his brows. “How much dues do you pay?” “Five dollars.” Fritz wanted to ask about the curtain rods. He kept trembling on the edge of the question, then pulling back. The captain’s reasoning was that if there really were curtain rods in that package, he didn’t want to stumble into being surprised by that fact. Fritz had heard about Wesley Frazier and the long package in the back of the car; he had also asked Mrs. Paine if Mrs. Oswald had sent her husband for curtain rods or needed curtain rods. The answer was “No.” The men who had questioned Earlene Roberts at the North Beckley furnished room had been told bluntly that Oswald was not bringing curtain rods to his room and wouldn’t be permitted to use them if he did. The owner, Mrs. Johnson, furnished every room with curtains and Earlene had never heard of a roomer bringing curtain rods or curtains.
Fritz decided to take the chance. He was as certain as he could be that there were no curtain rods, just a disassembled rifle. “Somebody told me you had a package in the back seat of the car,” Fritz said. The prisoner sat a little more upright. “No package except my lunch,” he said. The captain nodded. “Did you go toward that building carrying a long package?” Oswald shook his head vigorously. “No. I didn’t carry anything but my lunch.” “Where did you get that pistol?” Oswald relaxed. “I bought it about six or seven months ago.” “Is that so? Where?” “In Fort Worth, I think.” “Where in Fort Worth?” “That’s all I’m going to say about that.”
“Did you make your phone call?” “Yes, sir. Thank you.” “Did you get your party?” “No.”* “You can try again. You don’t have to thank me. We do this for all prisoners.” “I don’t have any money.” “You don’t need it. Call collect.” “That’s right. I hadn’t thought of that.” “What kind of a lunch did you carry?” “Cheese sandwich and an apple.” “What do you give Mrs. Paine for taking care of your family?” “Nothing. It comes to a good arrangement for her because my wife speaks Russian and Ruth Paine is a student of Russian.”
“Did you keep a rifle in the garage there?” “No rifle. I have a couple of old seabags there, some kitchen articles in boxes—that’s about it—no, a couple of suitcases with clothes.” “Do you have a receipt for a rifle?” “I never owned a rifle.” “Are you a member of the Communist Party?” Oswald smiled faintly. “I have never been a member of the Communist Party.” “You know what a polygraph test is?” “Yes, but I wouldn’t take one without the advice of counsel.” “That Selective Service card with the name Alex James Hidell on it, isn’t that your signature?” “I carried the card, that’s all. I told you I don’t want to discuss it.” “I’m just trying to find out why you carried it.” “I won’t talk about it.”
“Who were your friends over on North Beckley?” “Never had a visitor at North Beckley.” “Can you tell me something about that address book we found on you?” “Yes. It contains names of Russian immigrants who live around Dallas. Sort of friends of ours.”
Inspector Kelley, who had been a party to such interrogations for twenty-five years, marveled at the interplay of the two men. He became convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was engaged in a contest he relished. At one point, when Fritz and some of the other officers left the inner office for a moment, the inspector walked over to Oswald. Kelley wore his most engaging smile. “I just wanted to say,” he said politely, “that I’m an inspector with the Secret Service. As you know, we’re charged with the protection of the President. If you didn’t do this thing, I wish you would tell us so we can find who did.” Lee Harvey Oswald glanced up at a new and slightly more subtle antagonist. “I won’t do it now,” he said, “but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. After I see my lawyer, I’ll talk to you.”*
Kelley stuck a hand in his pocket and walked back to his chair. He was positive that this young man had an ardent desire to let the world know, in time, that he, Lee Harvey Oswald, had done the thing that no other man dared to do and had done it alone. To die, to serve a lifetime in prison, or even to go free without scratching his name on the granite face of history would be, the inspector felt, contrary to the aspirations of the ego and to the conceit and the superiority Lee Harvey Oswald felt in relation with the rest of mankind.
Too many people were talking, too many were foaming with too many notions, and all things had to be dealt with at once. The western edge of the White House had aspects of a solemn football game, with young men running in and out of a jammed doorway, older men walking, heads down, to an office with a free telephone. Two would troop in with books and magazines relating to the funeral of Abraham Lincoln, while two others would debate the delicacy of inviting Senator George Smathers of Florida to the funeral. “He was a close friend of the boss.” “I know, but he is also a Senator and he’ll come in with the Senate group.” An elder statesman, Averell Harriman, sat bowed like a scarecrow in a perverse wind. A young government press agent, David Pearson, asked: “Mr. Ambassador, aren’t you a good friend of President Truman’s?” The long, lined face lifted; the head nodded. “Would you please contact President Truman, President Eisenhower, and President Hoover and invite them to come tomorrow morning?”
Without a word, the old one got to his feet and walked to another office to make the calls, issue the invitations. It had already been done by President Lyndon Johnson, but those in Dungan’s office were not aware of it. Eisenhower and Truman would be in Washington tomorrow, to pay their respects to Mr. Kennedy and to confer with Mr. Johnson. Mr. Hoover was too ill to attend. It would take two hours of Harriman’s time to ascertain this.
The Kennedy group had swift and accurate reflexes, but the death of their leader thrust upon them an unexpected event of magnitude. His death undermined the power structure and, as it crashed in chaos this evening, they planned a funeral which only the most callous would forget. The sunburst vision of charisma which the young man had displayed in all his political battles must, somehow, be made to shine for three additional days, when the bright light would be extinguished forever. As they had planned the best, the biggest, the most dramatic battles in the political wars, so too the final homage to his remains must be enormously tragic. He was a lot more than Jack Kennedy, rich bon vivant; he was President of the United States.
Shriver cut off the phones for a moment to draw up a draft of a plan. “Let’s call 10 A.M. tomorrow,” he said, “the first hour.” He wrote “Saturday 10 A.M.” on foolscap and, beside it, “President’s Family.” It was a start. He wanted a priest there for prayers for the dead at that time. At 11 A.M.—who?—ex-Presidents, maybe the Supreme Court. Noon—noon, perhaps the diplomatic corps. One P.M.—the United States Senate. But what about burial?
Where? What city? What cemetery? Brookline, Massachusetts? Did anyone recall where the baby had been buried last summer—Patrick Bouvier Kennedy? Somewhere near Boston. A family plot probably. On the other hand, Mrs. Kennedy may have thought of a place—certainly she would express her wishes. Two of the volunteers recalled that in March 1963 the President had strolled from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier down the green cascading hill of Arlington National Cemetery. It was a sparkling day. The capital, stretched below, was a geometry of broad boulevards and impressive buildings and monuments.
Three hundred feet below the Custis-Lee Mansion, he had paused to drink the exquisite view. He stood among the ranks of small white headstones, the military dead of several wars, and he said: “I could stay here forever.” This, thought Sargent Shriver, might be the last opportunity to grant him a wish. At Bethesda Hospital, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had already remembered that day, that stroll, that wish. Mrs. Kennedy had greeted the recollection with an approximation of joy. It is rare to know a young man’s last wish. The decision was made.
The hour was late, but the caretakers at Arlington were summoned. They consulted plans of the cemetery. They, too, were grief-stricken and, even though the average soldier-citizen gets no more than a four feet by eight feet section of the cemetery, they found an unused area on the spot where John F. Kennedy had stood and offered three acres of ground. Someone announced it to the press, and there was resentment among the people at anyone getting that much ground. President Kennedy could settle for less.
Shriver marked off Sunday afternoon for the lying-in-state in the Capitol of the United States. Here the people could form into long queues and file past the box. Monday, the funeral. That would be Monday morning. Probably 10 A.M. There would be a Mass of requiem in either the newly completed Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception or Saint Matthew’s Procathedral. Mustn’t forget a naval guard of honor. Lieutenant John Fitzgerald Kennedy was United States Naval Reserve. Mustn’t forget many things and many people. How many chiefs of state would fly to Washington? The time was 3:30 A.M. Saturday in western Europe; there would be no point in using the so-called “hot lines” at this hour. Still a note could be made to start phoning at 5 A.M. Eastern Time.
A funeral doesn’t accord time to its planners. No one could guess how many people could be accommodated in either of Washington’s Roman Catholic cathedrals. Someone could call Bob Kennedy at once, at least, and find out what the family wishes were? Then, once the capacity of the pews was known, space could be reserved for the family, the personal friends, the chiefs of state, the diplomatic corps, the Senate and House committees, the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the three pool men of the newspaper wire services.
At the hospital, the Attorney General placed an arm around his sister-in-law. He walked her away from the conversational groups, looking at the rug under his feet. Robert Kennedy knew how to “handle” Jacqueline Kennedy. She reposed great confidence in him. He knew that each decision she made tonight represented an additional wrench of the heart. But she had to keep making decisions. “We should get some clothes for Jack,” he said softly. She had not thought of it. What kind? Mrs. Kennedy thought it over. She remembered that he had a dark blue pinstripe suit, a plain blue tie with a small pale figure in it, a white shirt, of course, and a pair of black shoes.
A Roman Catholic would want a rosary entwined in his hands. The President had beads in his room. On the other hand, Prince Stanislaus Radziwill, married to Mrs. Kennedy’s sister, offered his rosary. It was accepted. Mrs. Kennedy remembered that her husband cherished a solid gold Saint Christopher medal which she had given him. Mrs. Kennedy wanted that medal in the casket with Jack. It was a girlish sentiment. She had others: she planned to write a final note to her husband and to seal it in the casket with him.
The Attorney General walked out into the hall and asked Clint Hill to telephone the White House for the clothes and medal. The Secret Service agent phoned George Thomas, the valet, and listed each item. “Just get them together with underwear and give them to a driver on the South Grounds. Tell him to deliver them to the autopsy room at Bethesda.”
The medal could not be found. It was in the President’s wallet, twenty feet from his body. William Greer had it.
The two Secret Service agents had breakfast at 6:30 A.M. in Fort Worth. They had come a long hard way, so when an officer whispered: “I’ll have a man take you up to the commissary,” Roy Kellerman and William Greer looked guiltily at each other and said: “Thank you.” It had been fifteen hours since they had coffee, and yet the requirements of the stomach seemed out of place in an autopsy room. An enlisted man took them from the room and, when they got to the restaurant, they asked what was ready to eat. “Chicken, rolls, and coffee,” was the response.
“All right,” said Kellerman. They sat, working their broad fingers on the formica tabletop. The stomachs were hungry, but the thoughts negated food. Kellerman and Greer had been with the “boss” from the start, and with other Presidents before him, but there was nothing to talk about. They glanced around the room, smelled the steam-heated chicken, and mouthed safe words about nothing in particular. Both were tough law enforcement officers. Since losing their man, it seemed heavy for the spirit to see and watch his autopsy, too.
Neither knew much about the afternoon and evening events in Dallas, except that Robert Kennedy had told Kellerman that a young self-professed communist had been arrested. The plates of steaming chicken arrived, and both men looked at them and decided to try the coffee. They sipped and stirred and ate two rolls. In fifteen minutes, they were back in the autopsy room.
Outside the room, Greer found two men in medical coats trying to get into the room. A check showed that they were newspaper reporters. They left without dispute. Inside, Sibert and O’Neill of the FBI were receipting a glass container with metal slivers taken from the brain. At the same time, Dr. Burkley’s enlisted men were delivering a piece of skull. Burkley gave it to Dr. Humes, who made a sketch of it, examined it, and, with Boswell and Finck watching, found where it fitted.
Not far away, President Johnson sat in the dining room picking at chicken. It was something to do. This was going to be a long night for him—it already was—and he looked around at the young faces: Jack Valenti, Bill Moyers, Cliff Carter, and an old friend who had just arrived, chubby Horace Busby. One of the characteristics the President had managed to hide from most people—except his wife and daughters—was a deep-set loneliness which he denied. He felt it now. It came over him at night and he would call friends at unreasonable hours and say: “Aw, come on over and sit with us awhile.” He noticed that no one this evening called him “Lyndon.” He was “Mister President” to everybody except his wife.
It brought no pleasure. The feeling was one of remoteness imposed upon him. The man who enjoyed friendship and loyalty and the rough-and-tough game of party politics was on a solitary eminence in the dark. Briefly he chewed on the chicken and listened to the conversation and kept the rheumy brown eyes on the television set. The screen switched to Dallas, and there was John F. Kennedy, the graceful, grinning chief, strolling along the Love Field fence in a forest of arms. Mrs. Kennedy, in the nubby pink suit, was behind her husband, smiling graciously and being yanked almost off her feet by the hearty Texas handshakes.
“Shut it off!” Johnson snapped. Then, more softly, “I just can’t take that.” He was trying hard to think of things which would keep him from remembering. He wiped his hands carefully on a napkin and called Secret Service Chief James Rowley. “Rufe did a brave thing today,” he said. “He jumped on me and kept me down. I want you to do whatever you can, the best that can be done, for that boy.” He hung up. It had not occurred to him that Rowley, too, was lonely. If there was any blame, any official laxness, it didn’t matter that the planning of the Texas trip had been in the capable hands of Floyd Boring; it meant nothing that Roy Kellerman was in charge, along with Emory Roberts; no one wanted to weigh the possibilities that, if a Secret Service man had been on the left rear bumper going down Elm Street, it would have been difficult to hit President Kennedy. All indictments filter upward, and Rowley was the man at the top of the Secret Service. He was pleased to hear a praiseworthy report about one of his men, but Rowley knew that he was going to be every critic’s target.
The car was at the curb. The bulky figure came downstairs from the apartment. Under his arm he carried a small female dog. He got in on the driver’s side and deposited the dog on the other side of the seat. It was 9:30 P.M.—late. Jack Ruby had said that he would attend services for the President and they would soon be concluded. He had bragged to everybody. Now he would drive to 9401 Douglas and try to make the boast good.
The car jerked down the road, the little dog braced against the turns. Ruby kept his eye on the road and switched the radio on. His favorite station was KLIF. They had Joe Long at police headquarters. He was giving a summary of all the information the police had of Oswald. In the car, Jack Ruby felt a psychological block against uttering the name “Lee Harvey Oswald.” Although Oswald had not been indicted or tried, the nightclub owner began to think of him as “the person that committed the act.” Jack Ruby frequently felt blocks in his mind against people and names. He saw himself as a good, wholesome person with strong religious beliefs, one who loved law and order and law enforcement officials—one who, perhaps, was guilty of a few minor things like traffic summonses and fist fights—but a true child of God withal.
Reprehensible people did not deserve to have names or faces. “The person who committed the act” was the newest on a long list. Ruby had no trouble detecting good men from bad; he could do it instantaneously. His keen intelligence told him, as a weather vane swings to the new wind. He knew that Joe Long of KLIF was a good man because Ruby recalled that Long had given his club free plugs on the air. Russ Knight was another good man. He was a disc jockey on KLIF, a man who could enunciate his thoughts in swift, sure words. Joe and Russ—good guys.
Cars were parked around Temple Shearith Israel. Ruby switched his lights off, reassured the little dog as he always did, and locked the car. He hurried inside in time for the conclusion of the ceremony. A bar mitzvah was announced for Saturday and the communicants were invited to remain, at the conclusion of tonight’s services, for cake and coffee. The jowly face of Jack Ruby hunted among the features of dedicated Jews for friends. He envied these people; they were regulars. They felt their Jewishness as a freezing man feels the warmth of fire. They were here because the spirit told them to be here. It was not fellowship which brought them, but an atavistic emotion of belonging to the true faith of God. In the temple they heard the true words of all the prophets, the warnings and promises of God himself.
The nightclub owner felt cold. He saw no fire, felt no warmth. The temple and the replica of the Ark of the Covenant, the scrolls of the Talmud, all brought memories of an unhappy childhood. Among the goyim of the Chicago ghetto, Jack Ruby had been a Jew bastard, a Christ killer, before he understood the terms. His father’s divorce from the family left Jack Ruby without an anchor. His mother’s renunciation of reality placed her in a world apart from his, where the true test of strength was in hoodlum gangs and fists.
The temple was disturbing. All the bad memories of long ago swelled to flood in his mind. In the long ago, the beards, the curls, the black hats were a mockery to the unbeliever. How could a strong growing boy protect these ancients from attack among the tenements and still judge them as ridiculous? It was easy if the young man could subscribe to the thesis that the Jews were helpless, poor, and persecuted. Think of them, not as strong and righteous, a people with a heritage of culture and learning, but as the downtrodden. He could turn his electrifyingly swift mind in that direction, but then he could no longer admire them. No matter what the prophets said, this world could not be inherited by the meek. Never the meek. Looking at his parents, his temple, his heritage, Jack Ruby bent the golden rule so that it spake: Do it to him before he does it to you. A man can inflict this cruelty on his world if, in addition, he persuades himself that he is noble and generous and compassionate to the afflicted.
The service was over. The nightclub owner had endured fifteen minutes of it. The worshipers stood in groups, whispering, and some moved on to another room where the ladies cut plain cake and poured cups of steaming coffee and punch. Rabbi Hillel Silverman had more important things to do. His job was not only to preach the word of God but also to hold the people of his temple together in unity of purpose. The coffee and cake could wait. He walked back toward the exit, exchanging greetings, listening to questions, offering counsel, shaking hands, tapping the satin yarmulke on his head to make certain that the badge of the male had not slipped.
Ruby went to the refreshment room and had a glass of punch. Mrs. Leona Lane, with her mother and growing sons, paused to say hello. The woman reminded Jack that they had had Passover dinner together four years ago at Sam Ruby’s house. He was vague. She said that the assassination was a terrible thing. “It’s worse than that,” he said. The rabbi knew Ruby as a man ruled by emotion rather than reason. Silverman recalled that Ruby had not attended services until 1958. The senior Rubenstein died, and Jack appeared in the temple, shaking and weeping. For eleven successive days he sought a minyan and recited kaddish. The display of the spirit died as quickly as it was born. To some, everything is “worse than that.”
Only two months ago Ruby had returned to temple services for the high holy days. This time he burst into tears and told the rabbi that his sister Eva refused to sit with him. They had had a disagreement. Eva Grant disapproved of her brother’s behavior in dating a girl “too young for him.” Jack said that “at a time like this, families should be together.” The rabbi was in an awkward position. He phoned Mrs. Grant and, by coaxing, arranged for her to have lunch with her brother.
Silverman made a mental note to exchange greetings with Ruby tonight. The rabbi’s spirit was crushed, and he found it difficult to raise others. His President had been assassinated in this city of riches and splendor. The Jewish community, perhaps more sensitive to violence than others, was stunned. The dreadful thing which had happened to the most powerful could therefore happen to anyone. At the door, the Jews sought comfort from their teacher, an explanation of how such a thing could happen, but he had little to offer. He, too, was confused and depressed.
Jack Ruby went to the rabbi and shook hands. Silverman was certain that he was about to listen to an emotional dissertation on the assassination. Jack Ruby did not mention it. He sought the rabbi’s sympathy through the illness of his sister. He told what she had gone through in the hospital and of how she was now at home trying to regain her strength. He thanked the rabbi for stopping in the hospital to see Eva. In a moment the nightclub owner was gone.
The dark of the city matched Ruby’s mood. It was a blackness which could be relieved by the miraculous flick of an electrical switch. Dark, bright, dark again. Big bare roads in the night chalked with warm light and, in the fields beyond them, nothing. Moods, too, had an electrical switch—high, low, on, off. Near the downtown area, the colored neons flirted with the mind. “Girls, Girls, Girls.” “Strippers.” “Sensational.” “First time anywhere . . .” “Fresh from New York!” “Treasure Chest.”
He kept the radio on. The Dallas Police Department was working overtime. The radio stations were working overtime. Civic, righteous, church-going Dallas would expunge this obscene graffiti from its conscience with swift, sure Texas justice. No stone would be left what? Bali-Hai was open. Jack Ruby, driving through the garish lights, took note that his clubs—Carousel and Vegas—were closed in memorial to the President of the United States, a mark of respect. But not Bali-Hai. The lights were on; the people were there. Ruby took note.
The Gay Nineties was closed. Note, closed. That is class. The trade would be forced to patronize the open places. The big sweaty men would sit at dark tables with their setups, their brown paper bags of liquor, and the more they drank the more courageous they would become, and they would stare with reptilian fascination at the soft white skin on the little box of talcum called a stage and chant hoarsely: “Take it off. Take it off.” The memorial mood could not tolerate this. This was a night for putting it all back on, from neck to ankles; a night for men to weep for each other because of what had happened to him. The baggy pants comics would crack dirty jokes and the customers would laugh the louder, to prove that they understood. Who could laugh? Somewhere far off that poor woman huddled with those two babies, crying their innocent hearts out. Who could laugh tonight?
There was nothing else to do. The duties of motherhood were complete. The little ones slept; the house was quiet. Marina said in Russian: “May I borrow the hair dryer?” Ruth Paine got it. “I am not sleepy yet,” Mrs. Oswald said. “A shower lifts my spirits. I will take a shower and set my hair.” A vigorous shampoo would kill time. She wandered around the living room, carrying the dryer, and asking aloud what Lee could have “against” President Kennedy. Nothing.
That was the strange thing. He had read articles to her, translating into Russian as the avalanche of phrases and sentences tripped from the mind in English to the tongue in Russian, and she knew that he always injected his opinions. Marina tried to remember his rendition of these articles about John F. Kennedy. He had said nothing critical about the man. If he felt no hatred for the man, then he could not have killed him. The motive, the pressure, the compulsion were not present. Unless, of course, a man was willing to kill any great man who passed that close to the window that day—Khrushchev, Johnson, De Gaulle, Adenauer, Harold Wilson, Erhard, or Mao. Then it becomes motiveless, and the mind retreats from the field of reason.
Ruth Paine said good night. They might have felt a compulsive interest, not in dryers but in television. Both women were helpless, swinging in the orbital perimeter of the assassination, but they switched it off and another light was extinguished. Marguerite Oswald made a place for herself on the couch in the living room. There would be time to think in the morning, time to propagate a mother’s views on what mysterious and secretive force had assigned her son to kill Kennedy. Her mind was made up, as it always was. All she had to do was to hammer the facts into shape to fit the jigsaw which told her that her poor son was under orders to do this thing. Assuming, of course, that he did it.
There were three women in this small house at 2515 Fifth Street in Irving. The night hours brought no tears, no beating of breasts. There was regret without understanding; curiosity without mourning; self-interest embodied in a hair dryer. Like anti-magnetic satellites, the closer these women drew the faster they would fly apart. For Marina, there was the Slavic sense of gloom encompassed by possible deportation. Whatever flashes of sorrow she felt for her husband were brief and bright. Whether he was guilty or not, he had hurt her world—hers and her babies’.
For Ruth Paine it was a new and exciting existence. Within the span of one afternoon, she had been whirled up and out of the drab life of dirty diapers and high chairs and the Book-of-the-Month Club and set onto the edges of the story of the century. She was a celebrity. Policemen, reporters, and photographers hung on her words, her opinions, and she, Ruth Paine, Quaker, was the umbilical cord between Marina Oswald and the U.S. government. Everything would turn out good in the end, because, to a dedicated Christian, it always does. To a woman hitherto stranded on the sandbars of marital discord, this was an exciting ride down the rapids.
Robert Oswald understood Marguerite. The dear, sweet, protective mother would fall asleep on time and wake up on time. Guilt or innocence could be secondary to the last, the final chance to stand before a derisive world and take a bow. All of the earlier bitterness, the lack of understanding by others, the snubs of the fine ladies in the shops where she worked, the marrying and losing of men, the teenage loss of three sons—all of it might be prelude leading to this great shining moment when once more she could storm into the capital city of Washington demanding to see the high and mighty and assert herself as a mother. If, in addition, there was a dollar to be earned, it might be a most attractive buck.
Marina felt pity for the grandmother tonight. The poor thing hadn’t known that she was a grandmother again until she arrived at the police station. The first vague distrust of Ruth Paine was in Marina’s mind. The young Mrs. Oswald, in her muteness, felt that she had been thrust aside. Ruth was too gay and buoyant a mouthpiece for Marina. Her personal opinions were strong and sometimes meticulous, as in her verdict that all guns were black or dark brown; they all looked alike in their deadly venom; one could not differentiate between one with a telescopic sight and one without—nor could any amount of interrogation alter that opinion.
There was female accommodation in the hair dryer, but, underlying it was Marguerite’s determination that the euphoric Mrs. Paine would not be permitted to answer the questions and resolve the mystery. Grandma would cultivate the confidence of her daughter-in-law only so long as both of them agreed upon who was running the show. Disagreement, which was bound to occur, would cause Marguerite to revert to her original notion that Marina was nothing more than a “foreign person.”
In a little while, all the lights would go out in that house. All of them.
There was irritation in Jesse Curry’s telephone ear. For a couple of hours he had been receiving calls from men of importance in Dallas County which began: “I received a call from Washington . . .” or “I got a call from the White House . . .” The message was the same: please turn the evidence over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a day or two. The chief did not think he should. His captain of Homicide did not think he should. Who called from Washington? “Well, somebody pretty high up . . .” or “I’m not at liberty to disclose a name . . .”
What most people did not seem to understand, Curry kept saying with exaggerated patience, was that this was a Dallas County case. “It is a straight homicide as far as I’m concerned. Fritz says we need the evidence here. I have to back my men.” The calls kept coming. They came to Captain Fritz, who deferred to his chief, and to Curry, who deferred to the captain. One call came in to Fritz from Henry Wade asking whether the prisoner was to be transferred to the county jail for security. Justice of the Peace Johnston had ordered him handed over to Sheriff Decker.
Fritz understood the order but had no intention of complying. “We don’t want to transfer him yet,” he said. “We want to talk to him some more.” His opinion was that Oswald would neither crack nor confess. And yet, as the man in charge of the police work, he owed it to his department to keep tapping at what he could see of the iceberg in the other chair in hopes that one final rap would split it.
The district attorney backed off. He was pleased that the department had made so much progress in the face of official confusion. Wade was seldom sure who was in charge: Dallas Police Department, Secret Service, FBI, Texas Rangers, the United States Department of Justice. All of them were busy asking questions, exercising prerogatives, assuming responsibility. Each had an interest a priori which was not to be denied. There was no hostility between the groups, although the Dallas department felt frustrated and irritated with outside attention. Some, in ironic tones, asked if Governor Connally was strong enough to call out the National Guard.
Progress on the case was steady and inexorable, a masterful amount of minutiae which kept growing, kept pointing directly at Lee Harvey Oswald. Fritz didn’t need help to pin this case on this man. He was convinced that, in a day or so, he would have sufficient evidence to convict him of either or both of the murders. The captain emitted an aura of shaggy modesty, but he would be foolish to want to share this one with any other agency. All he asked, at this hour, in addition to the evidence he had, was to connect the spent bullets to that rifle and that revolver, to prove that A. Hidell had bought both guns, and that Alex Hidell and Lee Harvey Oswald were the same person.
Fritz was an old-line, experienced officer. All the other homicides were preparatory to this one. He would like to have wrung a confession from Oswald, but it wouldn’t be necessary, he thought, to the successful prosecution of the case. He had his man “coming and going.” As soon as he could get a justice of the peace, Fritz would formally charge Oswald with the assassination. The captain had confidence in himself and in his men.
Additional help might have been welcome. A naïve police department, beset by sectional jealousy, would decline the services of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Curry and Fritz were aware that, after they had catalogued and tested evidence, there would be no use for it in Dallas until the day of trial. They had no intention of lending it to any agency. They resisted the phone calls in concert, and this represented one of the times they were in agreement.