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defense, if there was ever a man who deserved a salutary scare, it was this one. Marguerite was
partially responsible for what her youngest son had become, and there was plenty of responsibility for
Lee himself—all those half-formed dreams of glory—but de Mohrenschildt had played a part. And
was it some complicated plot hatched deep in the bowels of the CIA? No. Slumming simply amused
him. So did the rage and disappointment baking up from the plugged oven of Lee’s disturbed
personality.
“Please,” de Mohrenschildt whispered.
“I’m satisfied. But listen to me, you windbag: you’re never going to meet with Lee Oswald again.
You’re never going to talk to him on the phone. You’re never going to mention a word of this
conversation to his wife, to his mother, to George Bouhe, to any of the other émigrés. Do you
understand that?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I was growing bored with him, anyway.”
“Not half as bored as I am with you. If I find out you’ve talked to Lee, I’ll kill you. Capisce?”
“Yes. And the leases . . . ?”
“Someone will be in touch. Now get the fuck out of my car.”
He did so, posthaste. When he was behind the wheel of the Caddy, I reached out again with my left
hand. Instead of beckoning, this time I used my index finger to point at Mercedes Street. He went.
I sat where I was a little while longer, looking at the clipping, which he in his haste had forgotten
to take with him. The de Mohrenschildts and Jack Ruby, glasses raised. Was it a signpost pointing
toward a conspiracy, after all? The tin-hat crew who believed in things like shooters popping up from
sewers and Oswald doppelgängers probably would have thought so, but I knew better. It was just
another harmonic. This was the Land of Ago, where everything echoed.
I felt I had closed Al Templeton’s window of uncertainty to the merest draft. Oswald was going to
return to Dallas on the third of October. According to Al’s notes, he would get hired as a common
laborer at the Texas School Book Depository in the middle of October. Except that wasn’t going to
happen, because sometime between the third and the sixteenth, I was going to end his miserable,
dangerous life.
5
I was allowed to spring Sadie from the hospital on the morning of August seventh. She was quiet on
the ride back to Jodie. I could tell she was still in considerable pain, but she rested a companionable
hand on my thigh for most of the drive. When we turned off Highway 77 at the big Denholm Lions
billboard, she said: “I’m going back to school in September.”
“Sure?”
“Yes. If I could stand up in front of the whole town at the Grange, I guess I can manage it in front
of a bunch of kids in the school library. Besides, I have a feeling we’re going to need the money.
Unless you have some source of income I don’t know about, you’ve got to be almost broke. Thanks to
me.”
“I should have some money coming in at the end of the month.”
“The fight?”
I nodded.
“Good. And I’ll only have to listen to the whispers and the giggles for a little while, anyway.
Because when you go, I’m going with you.” She paused. “If it’s still what you want.”
“Sadie, it’s all I want.”
We turned onto Main Street. Jem Needham was just finishing his rounds in his milk truck. Bill