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had to stretch my savings. When I got depressed about the neighborhood, I tried to pretend I was
living in a garret on the Left Bank.”
Fritz: “Did your savings include money you won from bookies?”
Me: “I’m going to take the Fifth on that one.”
At this, Will Fritz actually laughed.
Hosty: “So you met Oswald and became friendly with him.”
“Relatively friendly. You don’t become close buddies with crazy people. At least I don’t.”
“Go on.”
Lee and his family moved out; I stayed. Then one day, out of the blue, I got a call from him saying
he and Marina were living on Elsbeth Street in Dallas. He said it was a better neighborhood and the
rents were cheap and plentiful. I told Fritz and Hosty that I was tired of Mercedes Street by then, so I
came on over to Dallas, had lunch with Lee at the Woolworth’s counter, then took a walk around the
neighborhood. I rented the ground-floor apartment at 214 West Neely Street, and when the upstairs
apartment went vacant, I told Lee. Kind of returning the favor.
“His wife didn’t like the place on Elsbeth,” I said. “The West Neely Street building was just
around the corner, and much nicer. So they moved in.”
I had no idea how closely they would check this story, how well the chronology would hold up, or
what Marina might tell them, but those things weren’t important to me. I only needed time. A story
that was even halfway plausible might give it to me, especially since Agent Hosty had good reason to
treat me with kid gloves. If I told what I knew about his relationship with Oswald, he might spend
the rest of his career freezing his ass off in Fargo.
“Then something happened that put my ears up. Last April, this was. Right around Easter. I was
sitting at the kitchen table, working on my book, when this fancy car—a Cadillac, I think—pulled
up, and two people got out. A man and a woman. Well-dressed. They had a stuffed toy for Junie. She’s
—”
Fritz: “We know who June Oswald is.”
“They went up the stairs, and I heard the guy—he had kind of a German accent and a big booming
voice—I heard him say, ‘Lee, how did you miss?’”
Hosty leaned forward, eyes as wide as they could get in that fleshy face. “What?”
“You heard me. So I checked the paper, and guess what? Someone took a shot at some retired
general four or five days before. Big right-winger. Just the kind of guy Lee hated.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I knew he had a pistol—he showed it to me one day—but the paper said the guy who
shot at Walker used a rifle. Besides, most of my attention was taken up by my girlfriend by then. You
asked why she had a knife in her purse. The answer is simple—she was scared. She was also attacked,
only not by Mr. Roth. It was her ex-husband. He disfigured her pretty badly.”
“We saw the scar,” Hosty said, “and we’re sorry for your loss, Amberson.”
“Thank you.” You don’t look sorry enough, I thought. “The knife she was carrying was the same one
her ex—John Clayton was his name—used on her. She carried it everywhere.” I thought of her saying,
Just in case. I thought of her saying, This is an in-case if there ever was one.
I put my hands over my face for a minute. They waited. I dropped them into my lap and went on in
a toneless Joe Friday voice. Just the facts, ma’am.
“I kept the place on West Neely, but I spent most of the summer in Jodie, taking care of Sadie. I’d
pretty much given up on the book idea, was thinking about reapplying at Denholm Consolidated.
Then I ran into Akiva Roth and his goons. Wound up in the hospital myself. When they let me out, I
went to a rehab center called Eden Fallows.”
“I know it,” Fritz said. “Kind of an assisted living thing.”