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I stared at the shoes and boots in the show window with sweat dampening the nape of my neck and
rolling down my back. When I finally took a chance and shifted my eyes to the left, Lee was gone. It
was like a magic trick.
I sauntered up the street. I wished I’d put on a cap, maybe even some sunglasses—why hadn’t I?
What kind of half-assed secret agent was I, anyway?
I came to a coffee shop about halfway along the block, the sign in the window advertising
BREAKFAST ALL DAY. Lee wasn’t inside. Beyond the coffee shop was the mouth of an alley. I walked
slowly across it, glanced to my right, and saw him. His back was to me. He had taken his camera out
of the paper sack but wasn’t shooting with it, at least not yet. He was examining trash cans. He pulled
off the lids, looked inside, then replaced them.
Every bone in my body—by which I mean every instinct in my brain, I suppose—was urging me to
move on before he turned and saw me, but a powerful fascination held me in place a little longer. I
think it would have held most people. How many opportunities do we have, after all, to watch a guy
as he goes about the business of planning a cold-blooded murder?
He moved a little deeper into the alley, then stopped at a circular iron plate set in a plug of
concrete. He tried to lift it. No go.
The alley was unpaved, badly potholed, and about two hundred yards long. Halfway down its
length, the chain link guarding weedy backyards and vacant lots gave way to high board fences draped
in ivy that looked less than vibrant after a cold and dismal winter. Lee pushed a mat of it aside, and
tried a board. It swung out and he peered into the hole behind it.
Axioms about how you have to break eggs to make an omelet were all very fine, but I felt I had
pressed my luck enough. I walked on. At the end of the block I stopped at the church that had caught
Lee’s interest. It was the Oak Lawn Church of Latter-day Saints. The noticeboard said there were
regular services every Sunday morning and special newcomers’ services every Wednesday night at 7
PM, with a social hour to follow. Refreshments would be served.
April 10 was a Wednesday and Lee’s plan (assuming it wasn’t de Mohrenschildt’s) now seemed
clear enough: hide the gun in the alley ahead of time, then wait until the newcomers’ service—and the
social hour, of course—was over. He’d be able to hear the worshippers when they came out, laughing
and talking as they headed for the bus stop. The buses ran on the quarter hour; there was always one
coming along. Lee would take his shot, hide the gun behind the loose board again (not near the train
tracks), then mingle with the church folk. When the next bus came, he’d be gone.
I glanced to my right just in time to see him emerging from the alley. The camera was back in the
paper sack. He went to the bus stop and leaned against the post. A man came along and asked him
something. Soon they were in conversation. Batting the breeze with a stranger, or was this perhaps
another friend of de Mohrenschildt’s? Just some guy on the street, or a co-conspirator? Maybe even the
famous Unknown Shooter who—according to the conspiracy theorists—had been lurking on the
grassy knoll near Dealey Plaza when Kennedy’s motorcade approached? I told myself that was crazy,
but it was impossible to know for sure. That was the hell of it.
There was no way of knowing anything for sure, and wouldn’t be until I saw with my own eyes that
Oswald was alone on April 10. Even that wouldn’t be enough to put all my doubts to rest, but it
would be enough to proceed on.
Enough to kill Junie’s father.
The bus came growling up to the stop. Secret Agent X-19—also known as Lee Harvey Oswald, the
renowned Marxist and wife-beater—got on. When the bus was out of sight, I went back to the alley
and walked its length. At the end, it widened out into a big unfenced backyard. There was a ’57 or ’58
Chevy Biscayne parked beside a natural gas pumping station. There was a barbecue pot standing on a
tripod. Beyond the barbie was the backside of a big dark brown house. The general’s house.