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said just before she passed from this world. I could close my eyes and see her in line with the other
girls, shaking her shoulders and doing the Madison. In this memory she was laughing, her hair was
flying, and her face was perfect. 2011 surgical techniques could do a lot to fix what John Clayton had
done to that face, but I thought I had an even better technique. If I got a chance to use it, that was.
4
I was allowed to baste in my own painful juices for two hours before the door of the interview room
opened again. Two men came in. The one with the basset-hound face beneath a white Stetson hat
introduced himself as Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police. He had a briefcase—but not my
briefcase, so that was all right.
The other guy had heavy jowls, a drinker’s complexion, and short dark hair that gleamed with hair
tonic. His eyes were sharp, inquisitive, and a little worried. From the inside pocket of his suit coat he
produced an ID folder and flipped it open. “James Hosty, Mr. Amberson. Federal Bureau of
Investigation.”
You have good reason to look worried, I thought. You were the man in charge of monitoring Lee, weren’t
you, Agent Hosty?
Will Fritz said, “Like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Amberson.”
“Yes,” I said. “And I’d like to get out of here. People who save the President of the United States
generally don’t get treated like criminals.”
“Now, now,” Agent Hosty said. “We sent you a doc, didn’t we? And not just any doc; your doc.”
“Ask your questions,” I said.
And got ready to dance.
5
Fritz opened his briefcase and brought out a plastic bag with an evidence tag taped to it. Inside it was
my .38. “We found this lying against the barricade of boxes Oswald set up, Mr. Amberson. Was it his,
do you think?”
“No, that’s a Police Special. It’s mine. Lee had a .38, but it was a Victory model. If it wasn’t on his
body, you’ll probably find it wherever he was staying.”
Fritz and Hosty looked at each other in surprise, then back at me.
“So you admit you knew Oswald,” Fritz said.
“Yes, although not well. I didn’t know where he was living, or I would have gone there.”
“As it happens,” Hosty said, “he had a room on Beckley Street. He was registered under the name
O. H. Lee. He seems to have had another alias, too. Alek Hidell. He used it to get mail.”
“Wife and kiddo not with him?” I asked.
Hosty smiled. It spread his jowls approximately half a mile in either direction. “Who’s asking the
questions here, Mr. Amberson?”
“Both of us,” I said. “I risked my life to save the president, and my fiancée gave hers, so I think I
have a right to ask questions.”
Then I waited to see how tough they’d get. If real tough, they actually believed I’d been in on it.
Real easy, they didn’t but wanted to be sure. It turned out to be somewhere in the middle.
Fritz used a blunt finger to spin the bag with the gun in it. “I’ll tell you what might have