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The flush returned to Hosty’s jowls full force. “Son, we’re doing an interrogation here. I don’t care
if it’s the President of the United States calling.”
The cop swallowed. His Adam’s apple went up and down like a monkey on a stick. “Uh, sirs . . . it
is the President of the United States.”
It seemed they cared, after all.
7
They took me down the hall to Chief Curry’s office. Fritz had me under one arm and Hosty had the
other. With them supporting sixty or seventy pounds of my weight between them, I hardly limped at
all. There were reporters, TV cameras, and huge lights that must have raised the temperature to a
hundred degrees. These people—one step above paparazzi—had no place in a police station in the
wake of an assassination attempt, but I wasn’t surprised. Along another timeline, they had crowded in
after Oswald’s arrest and no one had kicked them out. As far as I knew, no one had even suggested it.
Hosty and Fritz bulled their way through the scrum, stone-faced. Questions were hurled at them
and at me. Hosty shouted: “Mr. Amberson will have a statement after he has been fully debriefed by
the authorities!”
“When?” someone shouted.
“Tomorrow, the day after, maybe next week!”
There were groans. They made Hosty smile.
“Maybe next month. Right now he’s got President Kennedy waiting on the line, so y’all fall back!”
They fell back, chattering like magpies.
The only cooling device in Chief Curry’s office was a fan on a bookshelf, but the moving air felt
blessed after the interrogation room and the media microwave in the hall. A big black telephone
handset lay on the blotter. Beside it was a file with LEE H. OSWALD printed on the tab. It was thin.
I picked up the phone. “Hello?”
The nasal New England voice that responded sent a chill up my back. This was a man who would
have now been lying on a morgue slab, if not for Sadie and me. “Mister Amberson? Jack Kennedy
here. I . . . ah . . . understand that my wife and I owe you . . . ah . . . our lives. I also understand that
you lost someone very dear to you.” Dear came out deah, the way I’d grown up hearing it.
“Her name was Sadie Dunhill, Mr. President. Oswald shot her.”
“I’m so sorry for your . . . ah . . . loss, Mr. Amberson. May I call you . . . ah . . . George?”
“If you like.” Thinking: I’m not having this conversation. It’s a dream.
“Her country will give her a great outpouring of thanks . . . and you a great outpouring of
condolence, I’m sure. Let me . . . ah . . . be the first to offer both.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” My throat was closing and I could hardly speak above a whisper. I saw
her eyes, so bright as she lay dying in my arms. Jake, how we danced. Do presidents care about things
like that? Do they even know about them? Maybe the best ones do. Maybe it’s why they serve.
“There’s . . . ah . . . someone else who wants to thank you, George. My wife’s not here right now,
but she . . . ah . . . plans to call you tonight.”
“Mr. President, I’m not sure where I’ll be tonight.”
“She’ll find you. She’s very . . . ah . . . determined when she wants to thank someone. Now tell me,
George, how are you?”
I told him I was all right, which I was not. He promised to see me at the White House very
shortly, and I thanked him, but I didn’t think any White House visit was going to happen. All during