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set integration and voting rights back twenty years.”
“Sure! And fomenting hate. How long before the massacres start?”
“Or until someone shoots Ralph Abernathy and Dr. King!”
“Of course King will be shot,” de Mohrenschildt said, almost laughing. I was standing up, my hands
pressing the earphones tight to the sides of my head, sweat trickling down my face. This was
dangerous ground, indeed—the very edge of conspiracy. “It’s only a matter of time.”
One of them used the church key on another bottle of Mexican beer, and Lee said, “Someone should
stop those two bastards.”
“You’re wrong to call our General Walker a ninny,” de Mohrenschildt said in a lecturely tone.
“Hargis, yes, okay. Hargis is a joke. What I hear is that he is—like so many of his ilk—a man of
twisted sexual appetites, willing to diddle a little girl’s cunt in the morning and a little boy’s asshole
in the afternoon.”
“Man, that’s sick!” Lee’s voice broke like an adolescent’s on the last word. Then he laughed.
“But Walker, ah, there’s a very different kettle of shrimp. He’s high in the John Birch Society—”
“Those Jew-hating fascists!”
“—and I can see a day, not long hence, when he may run it. Once he has the confidence and
approval of the other right-wing nut groups, he may even run for office again . . . but this time not for
governor of Texas. I suspect he has his sights aimed higher. The Senate? Perhaps. Even the White
House?”
“That could never happen.” But Lee sounded unsure.
“It’s unlikely to happen,” de Mohrenschildt corrected. “But never underestimate the American
bourgeoisie’s capacity to embrace fascism under the name of populism. Or the power of television.
Without TV, Kennedy would never have beaten Nixon.”
“Kennedy and his iron fist,” Lee said. His approval of the current president seemed to have gone
the way of blue suede shoes. “He won’t never rest as long as Fidel’s shitting in Batista’s commode.”
“And never underestimate the terror white America feels at the idea of a society in which racial
equality has become the law of the land.”
“Nigger, nigger, nigger, beaner, beaner, beaner!” Lee burst out, with a rage so great it was nearly
anguish. “That’s all I hear at work!”
“I’m sure. When the Morning News says ‘the great state of Texas,’ what they mean is ‘the hate state
of Texas.’ And people listen! For a man like Walker—a war hero like Walker—a buffoon like Hargis
is nothing but a stepping-stone. The way von Hindenberg was a stepping-stone for Hitler. With the
right public relations people to smooth him out, Walker could go far. Do you know what I think?
That the man who knocked off General Edwin Racist America Walker would be doing society a
favor.”
I dropped heavily into a chair beside the table where the little tape recorder sat, its reels spinning.
“If you really believe—” Lee began, and then there was a loud buzz that made me snatch the
headphones off. There were no cries of alarm or outrage from upstairs, no swift movement of feet, so—
unless they were very good at covering up on the spur of the moment—I thought I could assume the
lamp bug hadn’t been discovered. I put the headphones back on. Nothing. I tried the distance mike,
standing on a chair and holding the Tupperware bowl almost against the ceiling. With it I could hear
Lee talking and de Mohrenschildt’s occasional replies, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
My ear in the Oswald apartment had gone deaf.
The past is obdurate.
After another ten minutes of conversation—maybe about politics, maybe about the annoying
nature of wives, maybe about newly hatching plans to kill General Edwin Walker—de Mohrenschildt
bounded down the outside stairs and drove away.