Fatigue was not obvious on the faces of the three doctors. The work was exacting, and weariness was there as they strode around the corpse, making their observations, nodding agreement, trying too strenuously not to overlook any aspect of the body and its wounds. The trio of white ghosts walked the post of the dead with such infinite care that their signed conclusions were predestined toward error. When mistakes are most costly, careful craftsmen are the first to pay.
With the chest and belly open, Humes, Boswell, and Finck examined the lining of the thoracic cavity and found it “unremarkable.” The organs were removed one at a time to be washed, weighed, and examined for grossness. The man on the table, in spite of his chronic back pain, was a healthy human. The coronary arteries were smooth-walled and elastic. In the abdomen there was no increase in peritoneal fluid. An old appendectomy displayed a few minor adhesions between the cecum and the ventral abdominal wall.
Fresh bruises were found on the upper tip of the right pleural area near the bottom of the throat. There were also contusions in the lower neck. Humes called his doctors away from the table and asked the Navy photographer to shoot additional Kodachrome pictures. The lens picked up a bruise in the form of an inverted pyramid. It was a fraction short of two inches across the top, coming to a point at the bottom. A few of the contused neck muscles were removed for further examination.
The autopsy was complete. The men of medicine had been on their feet a long time. The outer covering of the body was sewed in place again. The Navy passed the polite word—this time to Admiral Burkley—that it had completed the autopsy and declined to do the embalming. The Navy photographer passed the cassettes of film to Roy Kellerman and waited for a receipt. A long sheet was floated across the body. Enlisted men began to untie the backs of medical gowns and the doctors peeled gossamer-thin gloves from their fingers.*
Witnesses stood. They stretched their limbs. The last act was over, but the spotlight remained focused on the long sheet. The long bony feet stuck out. Greer looked and remarked that they were amazingly white. The toes turned slightly outward. He wondered why the vision struck an echo in his mind. He had seen those feet looking like this at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Trauma One. A man could be forgiven for asking himself how long ago that might be. No one noticed the enlisted men hosing down the floor.
The dead man was scarred, but so were the living. He would not remember his scars, but they could not forget theirs. Greer, solid, strong, middle-aged, had years of dependable work in him but the thought had crossed his mind to get out of the Secret Service and spend more time with Mrs. Greer, who was not strong, and a growing son, who would appreciate male guidance. Kellerman was granite, but for years to come his mind would freeze in immobility when he thought of November 22, 1963. He could not force himself to discuss the day.
Some Federal officers would quit within the next month. Others would ask for other assignments. A few became embittered. Rowley, the Chief, would remain on to defend his men and expand the Secret Service, even though he had sustained the greatest loss—losing “the boss”—and the private knowledge that, at home, a most attractive daughter was losing her sight.
In the nation’s capital, the day began its final hour by collecting the ticking seconds and forming them into sedate minutes. They were stacked neatly, one on top of the other, and they should have brought a resignation to the people, but the country remained in a continuing trance, shaken and disbelieving. In Lafayette Park a bronze general stared across the broad boulevard to the big light on the portico of the White House. Beneath him people stood in groups, staring as he stared.
It was now a blustery night. Gusts combed the crisp leaves from the branches. Behind the White House, a claret-colored light winked solemnly near the top of the Washington Monument. The people remained in Lafayette Park, and more passersby paused to look, to whisper questions, to wait. They knew, even if he came home now, they would see a vehicle, perhaps a box lifted from the back of it, but the people remained steadfast and cold, not in morbid curiosity, but to get a glimpse of the box and convince themselves that it had really happened. This would tell them that he was dead.
The salads glistened under glass. The ham, the corned beef, the imported salami reposed on wooden boards. In wells, the potato salad, the cole slaw, the tuna fish salad reposed. Behind the counter, John Frickstad waited for the customers who sit and talk and nibble. This, of all nights, was a time when Dallas could be expected to frequent the neighborhood restaurants—the pizza-pie pickups, the short-order beaneries, and the German-Jewish delicatessens. The housewives were too depressed for full-scale work in the kitchens.
A few people sat at tables, sipping coffee, chewing on Danish pastry, but most of the orders tonight came by phone. Phil’s Delicatessen at 3531 Oaklawn was patronized by those who enjoyed a thick meaty sandwich on Jewish rye bread. The tables were peopled, but business was not overwhelming. The counterman glanced at a table where five young people sat idling the time away. They had a Dallas News and Robert Sindelar read parts of the big story aloud. He was a student at Southern Methodist University, and he and his friends, having no other place to go, had spent two hours dissecting the crime. Dennis Martin had an opinion; so did Rita Silberman, Bill Nikolis, and Marguerite Riegler. The repeated phrase—even after the dishes had been removed—was “. . . but here in Dallas!”
A stout, middle-aged man walked in, but they did not notice him. Frickstad did, because he had filled orders for Jack Ruby for two years. The nightclub owner appeared to be in a hurry. He walked over to the table where the five young people were in conversation and yanked the newspaper from Sindelar’s hand. “Excuse me,” the stranger said. “May I borrow the paper?” Young Mr. Sindelar was thinking of something to say when he saw the stranger riffle through the pages, study something, and set the News back on the table.
The five stopped talking. The man shoved a gray fedora back off his forehead and walked into a phone booth. A coin clinked and he sat with the door open, dialing. He asked someone a question, then said: “I’m at Phil’s Delicatessen. If you need me, I’ll be here a few minutes.” He came out and turned to the counter. Johnny Frickstad said hello and asked if Mr. Ruby didn’t think the assassination was a terrible thing. The nightclub owner was giving the counterman part of his attention. Yes, he said. It was terrible. Terrible.
Then he strode back into the phone booth and dialed RI 8—9711. The city hall operator came on and Ruby said: “Homicide and Robbery.” The phone was picked up by Detective Richard Sims. “This is Jack Ruby,” the voice said. “I know you guys are working late. I have some sandwiches for you.” Sims said: “Thanks, Jack. We have been eating in relays, but we’re wrapping it up now.” “Oh.” “Yeah, Jack. We won’t need any sandwiches now.” “All right,” Ruby said and hung up.
The entrepreneur bounced out of the booth and said to Frickstad: “Give me eight corned beef sandwiches with mustard. Give me eight black cherries cold and two celery tonics. Also I want three cups of butter, a half loaf of Jewish rye, and some extra pickles.” The counterman went to work. Pickles and potato salad were supplied free with each sandwich. Jack Ruby watched a moment as Frickstad began to slice the corned beef, the slices curling away from the electric knife onto a piece of paper. “I’m taking this to the disc jockeys at KLIF,” Ruby said. “They’re working late.” The counterman kept working. “I still don’t know how I’ll get in; they lock the station up. But I’ll get in with the sandwiches.”
He went back to the phone and dialed someone and said: “If you want me, I’ll be at KLIF. If anything should come up . . .” There was a pretension toward busyness, an important man with important connections. Mr. Ruby returned to the students’ table and asked if he might see the paper again. Mutely it was given to him. The pages were flipped, and the stranger murmured: “I own the Carousel and Vegas clubs. I want to see if the ads appear as I ordered them.” The students sat around the big table, looking up at the man. “My clubs,” he said, “are the only two closed on account of the assassination.”
He found the page, turned the paper inside out, and displayed the one-column advertisements enclosed with black borders, which said:
Closed
tonight and Sunday
CAROUSEL
Closed
Vegas Club
The customers took a look. “Nobody else closed,” Ruby said. The tone was modestly triumphant. It might have meant more to Mr. Ruby than “class”; he had personally checked the competitive strip joints which were open. He had outmaneuvered his competitors. Ruby’s mood was warm and friendly. He returned the newspaper for the second time and said: “Maybe I’ll give you people free passes to my club.” This generosity covered a small cover charge payable at the door. Bill Nikolis asked if the assassination would affect Dallas. “It will affect the convention business,” the businessman said. “No doubt about it.” Bill Nikolis said that he knew a girl who had entertained at the Vegas.
Ruby didn’t ask for a name. He put on a paternal smile and said: “I don’t think you people are old enough to go to my clubs.” There were no free passes. He swept away from the table, adjusting his black-rimmed glasses and pulling the felt hat down. His finger beckoned to the counterman. Frickstad had the order in two big bags. “That will be $9.50 plus tax,” he said. Ruby dug in a pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. He paid and took his change.
The counterman followed the customer out into the parking lot. A cringing dog sat on the front seat. The bags were placed in the trunk. Frickstad waited a moment, and Mr. Ruby took a card from his pocket and scribbled something. “Here,” he said. “This card will admit you free to either of my clubs.”
The White House rested, gathering strength for the trial to come. In the kitchen, a few waiters and chefs smoked and talked. The mounds of sandwiches had been prepared, and slightly damp napkins made them appear glacial. Someone had to stop the sandwich-making. The smell of rich Navy-style coffee permeated the kitchen. In the chief usher’s office, between floors, a Negro with a neatly trimmed white mustache dozed on folded arms. The State Dining Room was dark. So was the Blue Room and the Red Room. On the second floor, the Yellow Oval Room was alight; it was assumed that the family would meet there.
On the walk around the White House, uniformed patrolmen made their rounds. The big fountain on the South Lawn still tossed colored prisms of water toward the sky. Secret Service men stood in the shadows. A man came out of the diplomatic reception room with a box. A carpool number was called hollowly on the loudspeaker and an automobile drew up and the man with the box got in. John F. Kennedy’s clothing was en route to Bethesda.
The rheostat was turned down in the President’s office, and the light was faint, almost dim, from the little pitching green which Dwight D. Eisenhower had left. On the second floor, Maude Shaw slept in the little room between the children’s quarters. Near the elevator, a Secret Service man sat at a desk with a shaded lamp. The late papers had been stacked against the President’s bedroom door. In the sitting room, the smiling, confident faces of the Kennedys gleamed from silver frames. On the left, the door to Mrs. Kennedy’s bedroom was shut, but then so too were the doors on the other side which led to the intimate Kennedy dining room and the service kitchen.
The center of action remained where it had been—Ralph Dungan’s office. There, in a blaze of light, the men chipped the details from the ugly rock of a funeral. There were responsibilities to being part of the Clan Kennedy: intense illogical loyalty; the swift flight of youth which owes nothing to its predecessors; a world of instant “Yes” or “No”; a private planet of “Us” versus “Them.” There was a premium on intelligence, of knowing that all hands were “on the ball.”
The clan never shone to better advantage. Within a few hours, a vast and nebulous situation was being resolved. Orders were shouted; suggestions were negated; the elder statesmen limped through the door to speak, to sit, to leave. The polished head of Adlai Stevenson came in, the pouched eyes defeated for the last time. The younger men swept around Sargent Shriver’s desk with speed. Some said: “Hello, ambassador.” Others said: ”Hello, governor.” John K. Galbraith, tall and stooped, came in to finger the faces with his poetic eyes and leave.
The minority leader of the United States Senate, Everett Dirksen, walked into the office shaking his leonine head and, intoning like a church organ, said: “I still can’t believe it has happened. I am stunned, shaken.” There was no response. “Thank God there are those like you who are carrying the burden at this terrible time. Is there anything at all I can do to help?”
Nothing. He could leave. Stevenson worked his way toward the front of the couch and stood. He left. Dirksen left. In the outer office, four young women typed and retyped the decisions of the Clan Kennedy. The precise hours and days were resplit to accommodate every homage due a President. To remain on the list of those invited to the funeral became a matter of surviving a sifter. Some who were on the list were wiped off. Names were shouted and decisions made. Dungan read the list once more; if he heard the word “Yes,” the name remained. If someone yelled “No” and gave a reason, or if Shriver said “No” and gave none, a line was drawn through it.
“Barney Ross?” This was a comrade from the President’s PT 109 days. “Yes.” “How about Billy Graham?” “Billy considers himself a close friend of the President.” Dungan said: “No.” Shriver remained silent. The well-nourished, jaded figure of John Bailey, chairman of the National Democratic Committee, a Connecticut politician, suggested names. They were old-line wheelhorses who had helped elect John F. Kennedy.
Each name in turn was shot down by the word “No.” At last, Sargent Shriver’s patience became lacerated. “John,” he said, staring at Bailey, “we are not trying to return political favors here tonight. We are trying to ask only those people who we know were personal friends of the President.” It was done in simple, cutting words. Ordinarily, no one would address a national chairman in any manner except the deferential. Without brutish practical politics, no dreamer can be elected. Without election, the noblest aspirations of the candidate lie in a dark part of a desk drawer. Bailey had helped elect Kennedy, but Bailey was one of “them.” Listening to the words, David Pearson, a journalist from Florida, thought of Bailey: “A magical facility for saying wrong things at right times.”
The names are barked without favor or sentiment and they fly circuitously around the office waiting for one of “us” to shoot it down. Each name must be prepared to submit to this screening and rescreening. Eight justices of the United States Supreme Court—all “them” are to receive a blanket invitation to arrive in a body; one, Byron White, a former football player (an “us”), will receive a personal invitation.
The car was on Stemmons westbound, and there was relief in the back seat. Wesley Frazier had answered all the questions of the police as honestly as he could, and he and Linnie Mae were homeward bound to Irving. The detectives sat in the front, and they were tired. Rose and Stovall had been working since 8 A.M., and it was becoming difficult to concentrate. The Reverend Campble knew that Frazier and Mrs. Randall had done their duty as good citizens, telling what they knew about Oswald, adding nothing.
The young man was happy to be free. He realized that just being friendly with a man like Oswald could lead to trouble. For a young man who had specialized in minding his own business, it was a frightening experience to be taken to headquarters, to be asked about curtain rods which might turn out to be a rifle, to be regarded as a buddy of Oswald’s when the facts pointed to the neighborly Linnie Mae helping Oswald to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository. Wesley Frazier had added free rides on the weekend.
The car was approaching the Irving Boulevard exit when headquarters called. Detective G. F. Rose picked up the microphone and acknowledged call letters. Headquarters asked that the car turn around at once and bring Wesley Frazier and his sister back to Dallas. The driver slowed and made a U turn. No one asked why. Frazier and Linnie Mae couldn’t think of any questions which the police might have forgotten to ask them. There was always a vague danger that Lee Oswald might have implicated Frazier in some way, but no one wanted to dwell on that. Wesley couldn’t see how anyone could implicate him in anything, but Oswald was such a strange person—even more frightening now—that no one discounted the notion that he might try to drag his benefactor down with him.
Rose said he was sorry. It was an order; he didn’t think it would amount to much. The car seemed to get back into the basement of City Hall much faster than it got out. The witnesses were taken up to the bedlam of the third floor, and detectives helped to pry a path for them. The two people sat with their Baptist minister. He, too, was trying to dissipate the gloom by reminding them that they had nothing to fear.
A detective came in, looked at Wesley Frazier, and said: “You got any objections to a polygraph test?” Another policeman explained that it was nothing; you sit in a chair with a blood pressure cuff on and they ask some questions. If you’re telling the truth, the blood pressure remains pretty steady; if you’re lying, it goes up. Frazier looked at his sister. He said he had nothing to hide.
“Good,” Rose said. “It won’t take long.” They led the boy up the stairs to the Identification Bureau. Captain Dowdy said that the man who conducts the polygraph tests was at home. They might have to wait. He phoned Detective R. D. Lewis. The policeman was willing to come in, but it would take an hour to get back to headquarters. Dowdy told him to come in. A policeman was placed with Wesley Frazier. “Son,” a cop said, “I think you’re going to have to wait an hour. You might as well relax.” “What’s this test like?” Wesley Frazier said. Nothing to it, he was told. You just relax and tell the truth. He thought he already had told the truth. He couldn’t imagine anything further he could tell the police, but it was obvious that whoever wanted him back here wouldn’t want a truth test unless he was suspected of not telling it.
On the third floor, Frazier’s friend was submitting to the last of the special interviews. Word had come to the Dallas office of the FBI that, so far, a biography and a physical description of Lee Harvey Oswald had been omitted. Washington would like to have this material. A twenty-three-year veteran, Manning C. Clements, asked Agent James Bookhout about the matter. Bookhout had been around all day, and he couldn’t recall anyone asking for the vital statistics of Oswald’s life or drawing up a physical description.
Clements, who lived in Dallas, asked Captain Fritz if he had any objection. The answer was no. Manning Clements introduced himself to Lee Harvey Oswald, and the prisoner had no objection. The interrogation about personal detail started, and it was obvious to anyone peeking through the glass partitions that the prisoner had outlasted the police. He was still calm, in control, and they were worn. At times, he seemed cordial. He was willing to assist Mr. Clements to draw up a family portrait with vital statistics and street addresses, cities and schools and jobs all tossed in.
The questioning went on for a half hour, when the prisoner was taken out to the restroom. When he left with two detectives, Manning Clements looked over the desk of Captain Fritz and saw a wallet. He flipped it open. It belonged to the prisoner. Mr. Clements removed the cards, one by one, and copied the information. By the time Oswald returned, the wallet was back on the desk. The prisoner had lost his desire to cooperate. He became peevish and argumentative. The FBI men remained polite, but the interview was over.
Down the street a few hundred yards, Robert Oswald emerged from the coffee shop of the Statler Hilton Hotel. He walked through the bright lobby, vaguely seeing the small group of guests clustered in front of a television set. There was a newsstand which featured black headlines. Some newspapers carried black-bordered photos of the President and, nearby, a photo of Lee with a bruise under his eye and his mouth wide open. There were souvenir shops, too. Perhaps a hundred years from now, some such shop might feature a miniature rifle with the words “Souvenir of Dallas.”
Robert didn’t feel that he was Abel to Lee’s Cain. The thought had not occurred to him because it wasn’t in his nature to equate matters that way. He decided to remain in Dallas tonight. There was a sickening feeling in his belly that his brother was in deep trouble, deep trouble. An older and protective brother can afford to address justice in a demanding tone when he is certain that a mistake has been made, but Robert had left Fort Worth this afternoon whimpering and afraid.
Nothing that had happened since ameliorated that sensation. In that glassy room, Lee’s sauntering, carefree attitude worried him. His brother was enjoying his predicament. Lee could have asked for help when they spoke. He had not. Even the civility was cool, as though Lee felt that he was in a different sphere from the rest of the family and might be pleased if he drew no further attention from them.
Robert Oswald strode to the desk. He asked for a single room. The clerk swung the register around. The pen was ready. A man with no baggage, a man who will be asked to pay for a room in advance, such a man can afford, for a moment, to seek respite in signing “John Smith” on the register or “James Jones.” Robert Oswald decided not to retreat. He signed Robert Oswald, placed his home address underneath, and took his room key. He didn’t even bother to examine the expression on the clerk’s face when the man looked at the signature and said: “Good night, Mr. Oswald.”
One question remained: the wound in the back of the neck. It could not be resolved now. Humes knew this, and he was in no hurry. The hour was late and he was half-persuaded that a bullet, reported found on a stretcher in Dallas, could be the one which had inflicted this wound and, that when manual respiration of the chest had been instituted, the pellet had fallen out. It was a possibility. Neither Humes nor Boswell nor Finck could be sure tonight what had happened.
They had used a lot of time making certain of their findings. They had studied that body with great and minute care. The X-rays were more than would normally be taken; the color photographs; the black and white photographs; each doctor had placed a finger into that small hole at the base of the neck; resistance was felt between the first and second knuckle. The FBI men, Sibert and O’Neill, had been ordered to draw up a summary of their observations and, even though they had no medical qualifications, they could not wait for word from Parkland Hospital.
Their report would state: “This opening was probed by Dr. Humes with the finger, at which time it was determined that the trajectory of the missile entering at this point had entered at a downward position of 45 to 60 degrees. Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger.” The use of the phrase “end of the opening” was a conclusion. No one had called it “the end of an opening.”
It is one thing to draw attention to a mystery; it is another to resolve the mystery without qualification. Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman followed the agents to a similar conclusion as a result of the superficial findings of the physicians. “There were three gentlemen who were performing the autopsy,” he wrote. “A Colonel Finck—during the examination of the President, from the hole that was in his shoulder, and with a probe, and we were standing right alongside of him, he is probing inside the shoulder with his instrument, and I said: ‘Colonel, where did it go?’ He said: “There are no lanes for an outlet of this entry in this man’s shoulder.’”
Doctor Humes, in his preliminary notes, courted the same easy conclusion: “The pattern was clear,” he stated. “One bullet had entered the President’s back and had worked its way out of the body during external cardiac massage, and a second high-velocity bullet had entered the rear of the skull and had fragmentized prior to exit through the top of the skull.” By the time Humes was ready to write his official findings, to be signed by Boswell and Finck as well, his opinion of that neck wound had been reversed by information from Parkland Hospital:
“. . . The missile contused the strap muscles of the right side of the neck, damaged the trachea, and made its exit through the anterior surface of the neck. As far as can be ascertained this missile struck no bony structures in its path through the body.” The important phrase, this time, is “through the body.” It is to be doubted that any physician, encountering strap muscles which had reclosed the lane after opening it for the neck bullet, could have divined that the tracheostomy, so plainly surgical on the front of the neck, could have started out as a small exit wound. But then it is doubtful that many physicians would have permitted themselves to be badgered into a summary opinion.
The event is rare, but it sometimes happens that animals can, if they persevere, overcome their keepers. The reporters had been pressed back against the corridor walls to form an open lane, and they had closed it at once. The situation had an element of danger. The writers were being pressed hard by editors for a story on Lee Harvey Oswald. The police knew that it would be poor tactics to reveal the case they had against Oswald; they had no right to try the case in the newspapers. The reporters pressed the police with louder and louder demands. The target of their venom had been the prisoner; now it was the police.
No detective shouldered his way down that hall without being pelted with a hail of questions. Captain Glen King, in charge of security at police headquarters, realized that cooperation had been too complete; Assistant Chief Batchelor had ordered police at the foot of the elevator to check newspaper identification cards and to issue Dallas cards because, in the morning, a man without a Dallas card would not be admitted. Curry had bucked the line several times and been mauled orally by the tigers of the press. A local reporter apologized to the city manager: “It isn’t us; it’s the out-of-town press.” Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service had the sober impression that the press had taken over police headquarters.
The editors of the morning newspapers were on solid ground. They could assume that all readers were aware of the death of the President. In the parlance of the trade, he had died “for the afternoon papers.” The morning newspapers could not headline: “KENNEDY ASSASSINATED!” They required an overnight lead, something akin to:
DALLAS COMMUNIST ARRESTED
FOR MURDER OF PRESIDENT!
The small bits and pieces of material filtering into newspaper offices all over the world supported this story, but the reporters could not find enough quotable material to support it. Many did not know that Lee Harvey Oswald already had been arrested for the killing of Officer J. D. Tippit. Nor were they interested. The killing of a Dallas policeman was a local story; Kennedy and Oswald were the big news and, as the hour passed 10 P.M. and morning editions went to press, the reporters became louder, more unruly. Either the police had a case against Oswald or they didn’t. They demanded a statement. They demanded to know if he was charged with the assassination—yes or no. The reporters were caught between the inexorable pressure from the city desk and the immovable Will Fritz.
The Dallas Police Department, especially the upper echelons, was imbued with an ardent desire to cooperate with the press. These officers knew how succinctly the man behind the typewriter could make a law enforcement body appear ridiculous. Curry, King, and a privately hired press agent labored to divert the animals by feeding them scraps. It didn’t work. Henry Wade returned to headquarters after dinner to make certain that no one would charge “international conspiracy” unless there was one. Wade could not believe that a man as big as he was would struggle to walk fifty feet. He had another fear: that the Dallas police, in their anxiety to remove this horrifying crime from its shoulders, would file a murder charge against Lee Harvey Oswald without having sufficient evidence for Wade to prosecute successfully.
Wade got to Fritz and brought him into an anteroom. The district attorney towered over the chief of Homicide. Fritz began to recite the case he had on the Tippit murder and Henry Wade said he wasn’t interested. If Fritz was going to file a charge in the Kennedy case, Wade wanted to know just what evidence was in the hopper. The captain would have been in an excellent position if he had ordered someone like Jack Revill to summarize the material in a written report, but the best he could do was to rely on his memory. He explained the curtain rod story; the affidavit of Mrs. Oswald that her husband kept a rifle in the garage; three witnesses on the fifth floor who heard the rifle blasts overhead; the cop who caught Oswald in the commissary; Brennan and Euins and others who had identified Oswald as the man in the sixth-floor window; the testimony of Earlene Roberts that he had hurried to his room to change his jacket; the revolver; the shooting of Tippit; the capture in the Texas Theatre; the finding of the rifle on the sixth floor, the—“All right,” said Wade. “Do you have anything that hooks him up to anybody else?”
No, the captain said. They had a neighbor up on the fourth floor, waiting to take a polygraph test, but Fritz didn’t feel that this boy was part of a conspiracy; he just wanted to make sure he was telling the truth. Was it possible that Oswald was a member of a Dallas Communist Party cell? No, the FBI had been cooperating on the case, and it was possible they had a plant in that cell, and the word was that Oswald never joined anything. He was a little bit unbalanced on Fidel Castro, and Fritz believed that Oswald may have organized his own unit of a Fair Play for Cuba Committee; he may even have signed the membership cards with the name Alex Hidell.
The district attorney was satisfied. The Dallas Police Department was not dumping a weak case into his big lap. He conferred with his assistant district attorney, William Alexander. Wade heard that there was a map, found in Oswald’s furnished room, depicting the parade route in relation to an X marked at the School Books Depository building.* The cops had the blanket in which the rifle had been wrapped. They also had a palm print on the rifle which seemed to match the grooves and loops of Oswald’s right hand.
At the elevator a reporter stalked a detective for information. The cop said he had spent the day running from Sheriff Decker’s office back to headquarters with signed affidavits. The writer said that a little information had been dribbling from Glen King’s office but it was not the stuff about which leads are written. The assassination had, in effect, brought all the nuts out of the woodwork. They phoned by the score from all over the country, and everyone had a means of finding out if Oswald had really done it. The funniest was the old lady who reminded the police that a partly eaten chicken sandwich had been found on the windowsill of the sixth floor. The suggestion was to examine Oswald’s stool for the next few days and, if chemical analysis detected chicken, they could be sure they had the right man. The policeman who took the call said that this would make Oswald the chicken-shit assassin.
Curry learned that Wade was conferring with Fritz. He left his office and lunged through the hall. The chief was not a big man, but he had a big voice. “When are we going to see Oswald?” one man shouted, backing in front of the officer. “When are you going to let us talk to him?” someone else shouted. “Has he admitted anything yet?” “Come on, chief. We don’t have all night. What’s the story?” They retreated before him, the microphones nodding like holy water censers. This time, he offered no information. He was on his way to discuss the press and publicity.
The exchange of ideas did not require much time. The men in the hall could see the three, inside Fritz’s anteroom, debating the matter. Fritz entertained the least interest in the plight of the press. He and his men were plodding with secrecy and luck up and down this case, and they desired to continue to walk alone. An observer might surmise that they would prefer to dispense with all assistance—from Sheriff Decker to Secret Service and FBI. They ignored their own chief of police to a marked degree. Fritz was in favor of sitting tight on the whole case. The chief felt that he had to “live” with the press and it was up to him to decide how much information could be given out at this hour without prejudicing the case. Something would have to be done. The hour was late.
The district attorney was in favor of making some sort of statement to keep the “boys” happy. He was not inclined to publicize the items of evidence but, if Fritz was about to file against Oswald in the assassination, there could be no harm in announcing it.
The three walked into the hall together. The reporters in front began to shout to those far in the rear. Floodlights switched on. Sound gear began to whir. Humans began to press down from both ends of the hall toward the center. Thayer Waldo, a veteran reporter of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, glanced around and assured himself that there must be two hundred and fifty men crushed in this space.
Fritz, laconic, blinking behind those trademark glasses, began to speak in a deep whisper. A wave of shouts swept backward: “We can’t hear you! We can’t hear you!” The captain glanced at the district attorney. Henry Wade, who had a booming courtroom manner, announced that Lee Harvey Oswald had been formally charged with the assassination of President Kennedy. The news was electrifying, and some of the stringers left at once to file the flash. Others shouted: “Henry, we can’t hear you! We can’t hear you! Can’t we hold this someplace else?”
There was a whispered conference. The chief faced the microphones and the sea of heads peering over a sea of heads. Someone asked: “Has he confessed, sir? Has he made a statement?” The chief, who had planned to offer a sop to the press by suggesting the police assembly room as a spacious place in which to make the announcement, found himself responding to questions. He listened to each one, looked down to think, then squinted into the lights with an answer. Curry was caught in a dress rehearsal to a press conference. Although Fritz had maintained his independence and had worked the case alone, it was the chief who was now seizing public relations by the horns, and it was Curry whose face would adorn millions of television sets tonight. “He has not confessed. He has made no statement. Charges of murder have been accepted against him.”
The voices, of different pitch, different intent, piped up from all over the hall. There were polite questions, incisive ones, sarcastically framed queries, inane enigmas. “Any particular thing that he said that caused you to file the charges regarding the President’s death against him?” “No, sir,” said the chief. “Physical evidence is the main thing that we are relying upon.” “Can you name that physical evidence?” Before Curry could respond, another question was flying his way. “When will he appear before the grand jury, sir?” “I don’t know.”
“Is that the next step?” Curry nodded. “The next step would be that.” Henry Wade stepped back to listen, to stand by in case Curry began to impinge on Oswald’s right to a fair trial. Fritz looked at all the faces as though he had not seen such a collection before. The chief was at stage center. An old reportorial axiom is that if you keep asking questions long enough, the victim will respond to an explosive one. The legal watchdog, Henry Wade, was sucked into the oral vortex and disappeared without a trace.
“Do you think you have a good case?” Wade brazened the big lights and said: “I figure we have sufficient evidence to convict him.” In a community where the utterances of the district attorney are accorded more respect than the denials of the prisoner, this could be considered prejudicial. “Was this, was there any indication that this was an organized plot or was there just one man?” The questions were being fired like rocks, and they hit just as hard. “We believe,” said Wade, “there is no one else but him.”
The caged animals were devouring the keepers. “Do you know whether he will be tried in federal court, county court, or where he will be tried because this was a presidential murder? Do you care to comment on the jurisdictional dispute which has been arising?” No jurisdictional dispute arose. Each agency which checked the statutes arrived at the same quotient: the case belonged to Dallas County and no one else. Wade set them straight: “He has been charged in the State Court with murder with malice. The charge carries the death penalty, which my office will ask in both cases.”
The journalists realized that the long-awaited morning story was coming rich and pure. “Mr. Wade, within forty-eight hours do you think he might be before the jury?” The chief growled: “Let Mr. Wade make a statement.” The district attorney mulled it for a moment. “There are still some more ends that we’re working on. This will be presented to the grand jury just as soon as some of the evidence is examined. It will be examined today, tonight, and tomorrow. He has been filed before, filed in Judge David Johnston’s, justice of the peace, Precinct Two of Dallas, and been held without bond on this case and the other case too.* It will probably be the middle of next week before it goes to the grand jury because of some more evidence that has to be examined by the laboratory.”
Officials are swept through a press conference by exuberance. A difficult case well handled, on the way to solution within a few hours, sometimes establishes a rapport between the hunter and the hounds of the press. It sometimes results in an editorial lynching. The law enforcement element joins forces with the press to overstate the case. “Mr. Wade, can you tell us if he has engaged a lawyer?” The chief decided to field that question. “We don’t know that,” he said. “His people have been here but we don’t—”
It was a snide response because Fritz—listening—knew that Oswald had not been able to contact the counsel of his choice. The captain did not correct the chief; Curry should have known whether Oswald had a lawyer. It would be Wade’s business to know the name of his adversary. “His people have been here” constitutes verbiage which could give the impression that the prisoner had a lawyer; it could also be interpreted as meaning that his family had been with Oswald and that they were taking good care of the matter. The questions began to come faster; they tumbled over each other so that a man might hear three before he could frame words to answer one. “Are there any fingerprints on the gun?” “Mr. Wade, can we get a picture of him?” “Are you going to bring him out?”
The district attorney said “I . . .” “Could we get a room where we could get a picture of him?” “Can we get a press conference where he could stand against a wall and we could talk to him?” “Has where he will be tried been determined yet?” Wade was beginning to weary. “It will be in the Dallas County Grand Jury,” he said. “Where did he say he was when the President was killed?”
The interrogators, under interrogation, became confused. Fritz, Wade, and Curry turned their faces inward and whispered. The situation in the corridor was out of control. “Wade! Henry!” “Captain Fritz, can we go to the assembly room, sir?” The district attorney stood tall and ran his hand through the wavy gray hair. “We will get in a larger room here,” he shouted. “That’s what we’re talking about.” The three men returned to the sotto voce conference.
“What about the assembly room?” Wade looked at the mass of crushed faces. “Is that all right?” Captain Fritz said: “That’s . . .” “Let’s go down there,” Wade said. This opened the door to new questions. “Will there be a way to make any pictures?” “—make pictures right then and there?” Wade became helpless again. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know where it is.” Someone asked if pictures could be made of Lee Harvey Oswald. This triggered an uproar of shouts. “I don’t see any reason to take any picture of him,” the district attorney said.
“Of Lee?” a television man said, incredulity dripping in the tone. “Yes,” said Wade. The newsman looked behind him for confirmation. “Well,” he said, “the whole world’s only waiting to see what he looks like.” The district attorney began to lose patience. “Oh,” he snapped, “is that all? The whole world?” “That’s all,” the reporter said. “Just the world.” An edge of acrimony set in. The chief, perhaps to continue an amiable relationship with the press, held up both hands and announced: “All right. We’ll set it up in the police assembly hall in the basement for Mr. Wade to make his announcement if that’s what you want.” The three men returned to their whispering attitude, and Curry broke away to say: “And I’ll have the prisoner brought down for you, too, if you like.”
The television cameramen shouted: “Not right away! We have to get these cameras downstairs!” Others pleaded for additional time. In the rear some began an exodus by stairwell and elevator to stake out the best positions in the assembly room. Curry shouted over the bedlam: “We can do it in about twenty minutes!” It was too important to be rushed. Some shouted back: “We need more time. Don’t rush it.”
No one asked the prisoner if he was willing to participate. He had been told by Will Fritz that he need not respond to questions from the press nor pose for pictures. Whether Fritz was overruled by Curry or agreed to the press conference, the fact was that Lee Harvey Oswald had been promised to the press. He would be delivered when the newspapermen were ready. If the thought had occurred to the conferees, they might have guessed that any restrictions placed upon the press would be violated, once Oswald got into that room. It bordered on the ridiculous to ask the press to stand mutely and look at the prisoner. Conversely the prisoner could be expected to use the press conference as a propaganda platform for himself and his political notions. It is possible that Oswald looked forward to this confrontation with satisfaction. It was the keyhole through which he could squeeze from jail to the outside world.
The press scattered like the pigeons on the roof of the School Book Depository and, for a time, it became possible to walk through the third-floor corridor. The elevator door near the press room opened and three men stepped off. The flankers wore big red press badges on their lapels: “President’s Visit to Dallas—PRESS.” The man between them had none. He crouched low, pencil applied to pad, writing industriously as they strode past the policeman who was asking for credentials. They were not stopped, and Jack Ruby, the harmless aficionado of law and order, was once again on the edge of excitement. In the corridor he was not challenged. Now and then he heard a friendly call: “Hey, Jack. What are you doing here?” The rumpled figure smiled apologetically and pointed to the notes and said he was translating for the press of Israel.
No one believed it. He inspired no rancor. To the police he was Jack Ruby, the suppliant Jew who bought police goodwill with free passes, free drinks, good sandwiches, and hot coffee. Sometimes, when a policeman sat in the charcoal darkness of the musty nightclub, Ruby would try to set him up with one of the strippers. Like the sandwiches, it was a service.
The friends in the living room began to melt off. No one suggested that they leave. The clock on the mantle had two gold hands which began the slow climb toward twelve. The people said it was late. If they thought that the President and Mrs. Johnson might sit among them and discuss the grave events, they misjudged their hosts. Mrs. Johnson, in nightgown and dressing robe, slid into the big bed in the master bedroom on the second floor. With the blankets over the small body, Liz Carpenter could see the intermittent spasms of shivering. They hit and went away. They hit again.
Mrs. Carpenter had hurried home to get some nightclothes in case she was asked to stay at The Elms. The new First Lady didn’t think it was necessary. She was “freezing,” but she would be all right. She wished that Lyndon would get some rest, but she knew he wouldn’t. Across the room, the television set repeated the assassination over and over, as though, by infantile logic, it might become more understandable or come out differently. Every few minutes the bright, good voice of John F. Kennedy could be heard, telling the crowd that no one cared how he and Lyndon dressed but that, when Mrs. Kennedy arrived late, she looked better than “we do.” Mrs. Johnson pulled the quilted blanket over her head. Liz Carpenter departed.
The President stepped away from the dining room table, and his young friends came to their feet. There was a sharp thud outside the window. Mr. Johnson stopped. “What was that?” he said. From the doorway, Rufus Youngblood said: “They’re out there changing the house lines over to the White House number. I expect they’re having a little trouble.” The tall Texan shook his head. He could not believe that he was living in an era when someone would have to explain a noise in the dark. He had not time to think that he was the only President ever to have witnessed an assassination, and, no matter how high his courageous resolves, an unexpected noise from any quarter would trigger tension the rest of his life.
There were other factors. In the United States, a Vice-President lives in the silent womb of history. He is not expected to hear or feel or understand—only to grow. A sudden propulsion from darkness to light, from sufferance to power, from ridicule to majesty is too much for the intellect and the neurological aspects of a man. “We really have a big job to do now,” Johnson said. He started upstairs and waved Valenti and Moyers and Carter to follow. The soft protests that they had no clothes, not a toothbrush between them, did not impress the President. His response to all such excuses remained the same: “We can talk about that tomorrow.”
They were led into the bedroom, hearing the voice on television. The President began to remove his jacket and tie. He hung them on a wooden clothes tree in the center of the room. The three men noticed a small mass huddled on the right side of the big bed. They began to retreat. Mr. Johnson called them back. “We won’t bother Mrs. Johnson,” he said. His tone was pleading. “There is so much to do, so much to talk about. Sit with me for awhile.”
The trousers were draped over the valet. The big form disappeared into the bathroom. The waiting men were apprehensive. They watched the carousel of catastrophe on the television set. The President came out in loose striped pajamas and slippers. “Let’s get one thing settled,” he said. At the door he pointed. “Bill,” he said to Moyers, “you may use the bedroom on the third floor. Cliff, there’s a second bedroom down this hall. It’s Lynda’s room.” This brought a smile to Moyers and Valenti, who envisioned this huge Texan reclining under a frilly canopy, with pandas and dolls on the counterpane and Carter’s ham-sized feet hanging in midair at the foot of the bed. “Jack, you take the bedroom next to mine.”
Having secured the night arrangements, the President slipped into the left side of the bed. Adjacent to it was a night table with a lamp and a telephone. Valenti found a chair and placed it near the phone. He sat, continuing his notes as the others talked. Bill Moyers stood. Cliff Carter was on the edge of the right side of the bed at the foot. The President placed a pillow halfway up the head of the bed and composed himself with both hands clasped behind his head. Sometimes he listened to the television; at others he exchanged ideas and refined them. He asked Jack to please make a note to remind him tomorrow to get in touch with the Governors of the states, perhaps suggest a conference in Washington.
The address to the Congress would be important. Someone suggested that the emergency had such anarchistic possibilities that perhaps Mr. Johnson should make the talk before the Kennedy funeral. This, he thought, could be interpreted as unseemly haste, even panic. However, it was another note for Valenti’s pages to be cleared with congressional leaders in the morning. He would accede to their decision on this.
None of the Johnson group was sure when the funeral would be held, even though Johnson had phoned his condolences to Sargent Shriver. Moyers had been Johnson’s liaison all evening between the Executive Office Building and the White House, and it was Moyers’ impression that the services would be held on Monday. If that were so, the new President could not address both houses of Congress until Tuesday or Wednesday, a long time to keep the nation waiting. Moyers thought that a press conference tomorrow, or a presidential statement, might cover the intervening days and build confidence among the people.
The bedclothes on the right side were turned back and Mrs. Johnson, still huddled in robes, stood with a pillow in her hand and murmured: “Good night, all” and left the room. Before she did, the President leaned across the bed for his nightly kiss, murmuring: “God bless you, honey” and returned to the conversation. “The important things now,” he said, emphasizing with a finger hitting an opposite palm, “are a Cabinet meeting, a Security Council meeting, a White House staff meeting—maybe we ought to call those boys together at nine tomorrow morning, before the Cabinet meeting—and the address to both Houses.”
“. . . and now,” the voice of television said, “we bring you some biographical film clips of the new President of the United States—Lyndon Baines Johnson.” Conversation stopped. The men studied the film material, dissected the commentary. The man watching from the pillow had a huge face, lined vertically so that the features tended to melt toward the chin. A stranger, unconscious of the true state of affairs, might assess the scene as a middle-aged man getting bad news from a consultation of young doctors.
On screen, they saw a skinny Texan with a big grin mounting the steps of the Capitol, a Congressman with a message. They saw him campaign at home for a seat in the United States Senate and go down to defeat by a fistful of votes; he made speeches in the Senate well; he posed with Franklin D. Roosevelt, his idol; he was with bald Sam Rayburn, the teacher; he worked in an office with his dark and modest young wife beside him; he took a dangerous step for a Texan by espousing civil rights legislation; he became a majority leader, the youngest in history; a myocardial infarction brought him down, and he was shown in Bethesda Naval Hospital; the mean and vicious fight between Kennedy and Johnson for the Democratic Party nomination; the need of each for the other on a winning election ticket.
All of it evoked memories. The man on the pillow was silent. The cameras were now at Hyannis Port, in Massachusetts, a hedge and some homes on the edge of a surly sea. Had the President’s father been told? No one knew. His mother knew. She said she would attend early Mass tomorrow. The camera switched to that cold day in January when the young man announced, at his inauguration, that the torch had been passed to a new generation. With confidence, he prepared to lead mankind to the stars.
The recollections had run out. The conversations were desultory. At this hour no one could think of anyone to call on a telephone. The Attorney General was relieved when word reached the seventeenth floor that the autopsy was over. He asked about the medical findings but was told that they were tentative, mostly involving a big head wound and a shot in the back of the neck. The White House already had the news.
Shriver reminded Robert Kennedy that the family had to go to Gawler’s and select a casket and bring an embalmer to Bethesda. This was an integral step which had been overlooked. Mrs. Kennedy saw her brother-in-law approach, and she must have known that another decision would have to be made. He began by reminding her that the Secret Service had damaged a handle on the Oneal casket. She said that she had no intention of using that casket anyway. Mrs. Kennedy did not want to be reminded of Dallas. She would not use that casket; she could still see herself running after it, holding her fingertips on the top, as official Dallas shouted that the President’s body would have to remain for an autopsy. The terror had been lodged within her from the sound of the first shot, and nothing since had lessened the pain.
Kennedy told her that Shriver had asked about funeral directors, and three names had been submitted as establishments of good taste. Sarge had selected Gawler’s, and, if she agreed, someone would have to go there and select a casket. Did she have any ideas? She did not. Did she want any special person to select it? Before she could answer, the Attorney General said: “Kenny and Larry and Dave were very close to him. Why not send them?” Mrs. Kennedy agreed.
The three men were ready to leave. All they asked was some guidance on what kind of casket the family would like. And how about that embalmer? They were told not to worry; the embalmer should be waiting. He had been on notice for a couple of hours. They asked Clint Hill to have a car ready at the front entrance and have the driver find out how to get to Gawler’s.