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CHAPTER 18
1
I got a phone put in, and the first person I called was Ellen Dockerty, who was happy to give me
Sadie’s Reno address. “I have the telephone number of the rooming house where she’s staying, too,”
Ellen said. “If you want it.”
Of course I did, but if I had it, I would eventually give in to temptation and call. Something told
me that would be a mistake.
“Just the address will be fine.”
I wrote her a letter as soon as I hung up, hating the stilted, artificially chatty tone but not knowing
how to get past it. The goddam broom was still between us. And what if she met some high-rolling
sugar daddy out there and forgot all about me? Wasn’t it possible? She’d certainly know how to give
him a good time in bed; she had been a fast learner and was as agile there as she was on the dance
floor. That was the jealous-bone again, and I finished the letter in a rush, knowing I probably sounded
plaintive and not caring. Anything to tear through the artificiality and say something honest.
I miss you, and I’m sorry as hell for the way we left things. I just don’t know how to make it better
now. I have a job to do, and it won’t be done until next spring. Maybe not even then, but I think it will
be. I hope it will be. Please don’t forget me. I love you, Sadie.
I signed it George, which seemed to cancel out any poor honesty I’d managed. Beneath it I added
Just in case you want to call, and my new telephone number. Then I walked down to the Benbrook
Library and posted the letter into the big blue mailbox out front. For the time being it was the best I
could do.
2
There were three pictures clipped into Al’s notebook, printed off various computer sites. One was of
George de Mohrenschildt, wearing a banker-gray suit with a white hankie in the breast pocket. His
hair was combed away from his brow and neatly parted in the accepted executive style of the time.
The smile that creased his thickish lips reminded me of Baby Bear’s bed: not too hard, not too soft,
just right. There was no trace of the authentic crazy I would soon observe ripping his shirt open on the
porch of 2703 Mercedes Street. Or maybe there was a trace. Something in the dark eyes. An arrogance.
A touch of the old fuck-you.
The second picture was of the infamous shooter’s nest, constructed of book cartons, on the sixth
floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
The third was of Oswald, dressed in black, holding his mail-order rifle in one hand and a couple of
leftist magazines in the other. The revolver he would use to kill Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit
during his fucked-up getaway—unless I stopped him—was tucked in Ozzie’s belt. This picture would
be taken by Marina less than two weeks before the attempt on General Walker’s life. The location was
the enclosed side yard of a two-apartment building at 214 West Neely Street in Dallas.
While I marked time waiting for the Oswalds to move into the shack across the street from mine
in Fort Worth, I visited 214 West Neely often. Dallas most assuredly sucked the big one, as my 2011