5432852385743

was seriously crushing on Marina.
According to the short-order cook who’d gotten me into this, Bouhe was the one who persuaded
Peter Gregory to throw the get-acquainted party. George de Mohrenschildt wasn’t there, but he’d hear
about it shortly thereafter. Bouhe would tell de Mohrenschildt about the Oswalds and their peculiar
marriage. He would also tell de Mohrenschildt that Lee Oswald had made a scene at the party,
praising socialism and the Russian collectives. The young man strikes me as crazy, Bouhe would say. De
Mohrenschildt, a lifelong connoisseur of crazy, would decide he had to meet this odd couple for
himself.
Why did Oswald blow his top at Peter Gregory’s party, offending the well-meaning expats who
might otherwise have helped him? I didn’t know for sure, but I had a pretty good idea. There’s
Marina, charming them all (especially the men) in her blue dress. There’s June, pretty as a
Woolworth’s baby picture in her charity jumper with the sewn-on flowers. And there’s Lee, sweating
in his ugly suit. He’s keeping up with the rapid ebb and flow of Russian better than young Paul
Gregory, but in the end, he’s still left behind. It must have infuriated him to have to kowtow to these
people, and to eat their salt. I hope it did. I hope it hurt.
I didn’t linger. What I cared about was de Mohrenschildt, the next link in the chain. He would
arrive onstage soon. Meanwhile, all three Oswalds were finally out of 2703, and would be until at least
ten o’clock. Given that the following day was Sunday, maybe even later.
I drove back to activate the bug in their living room.
11
Mercedes Street was partying hearty that Saturday night, but the field behind chez Oswald was silent
and deserted. I thought my key would work on the back door as well as the front, but that was a
theory I never had to test, because the back door was unlocked. During my time in Fort Worth, I
never once used the key I’d purchased from Ivy Templeton. Life is full of ironies.
The place was heartbreakingly neat. The high chair had been placed between the parents’ seats at
the little table in the kitchen where they took their meals, the tray wiped gleaming-clean. The same
was true of the peeling surface of the counter and the sink with its rusty hard-water ring. I made a bet
with myself that Marina would have left Rosette’s jumper-clad girls and went into what was now
June’s room to check. I had brought a penlight and shined it around the walls. Yes, they were still
there, although in the dark they were more ghostly than cheerful. June probably looked at them as she
lay in her crib, sucking her bokkie. I wondered if she would remember them later, on some deep level
of her mind. Crayola ghost-girls.
Jimla, I thought for no reason at all, and shivered.
I moved the bureau, attached the tapwire to the lamp’s plug, and fed it through the hole I’d drilled
in the wall. All fine, but then I had a bad moment. Very bad. When I moved the bureau back into
place, it bumped against the wall and the Leaning Lamp of Pisa toppled.
If I’d had time to think, I would have frozen in place and the damn thing would have shattered on
the floor. Then what? Remove the bug and leave the pieces? Hope they’d accept the idea that the
lamp, unsteady to begin with, had fallen on its own? Most people would buy that, but most people
don’t have reason to be paranoid about the FBI. Lee might find the hole I’d drilled in the wall. If he
did, the butterfly would spread its wings.
But I didn’t have time to think. I reached out and caught the lamp on the way down. Then I just
stood there, holding it and shaking. It was hot as an oven in the little house, and I could smell the
stink of my own sweat. Would they smell it when they came back? How could they not?