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I said nothing.
Hosty seated himself in one of the room’s two armchairs and gave a long sigh of relief. He set his
briefcase between his feet, then turned the bottle so he could read the label. “Nineteen fifty-eight.
Wine fanciers would probably know if that was a good year, but I’m more of a beer man, myself.”
“So am I.”
“Then you might enjoy the Lone Star they’re holding for you downstairs. There’s a case of the stuff,
and a framed letter promising you a case a month for the rest of your life. More champagne, too. I saw
at least a dozen bottles. Everyone from the Dallas Chamber of Commerce to the City Board of
Tourism sent them. You have a Zenith color television still in the carton, a solid gold signet ring with
a picture of the president in it from Calloway’s Fine Jewelry, a certificate for three new suits from
Dallas Menswear, and all kinds of other stuff, including a key to the city. The management has set
aside a room on the first floor for your swag, and I’m guessing that by dawn tomorrow they’ll have to
set aside another. And the food! People are bringing cakes, pies, casseroles, roasts of beef, barbecue
chicken, and enough Mexican to give you the runs for five years. We’re turning them away, and they
hate to go, let me tell you. There are women out there in front of the hotel that . . . well, let’s just say
Jack Kennedy himself would be envious, and he’s a legendary cocksman. If you knew what the director
has in his files on that man’s sex life, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“My capacity for belief might surprise you.”
“Dallas loves you, Amberson. Hell, the whole country loves you.” He laughed. The laugh turned
into a cough. When it passed, he lit a cigarette. Then he looked at his watch. “As of nine-oh-seven
Central Standard Time on the evening of November twenty-second, 1963, you are America’s fairhaired
boy.”
“What about you, Hosty? Do you love me? Does Director Hoover?”
He set his cigarette aside in the ashtray after a single drag, then leaned forward and pinned me
with his eyes. They were deep-set in folds of flesh, and they were tired, but they were nonetheless very
bright and aware.
“Look at me, Amberson. Dead in the eyes. Then tell me if you were or weren’t in on it with
Oswald. And make it the truth, because I’ll know a lie.”
Given his egregious mishandling of Oswald, I didn’t believe that, but I believed that he believed it.
So I locked onto his gaze and said: “I was not.”
For a moment he said nothing. Then he sighed, settled back, and picked up his cigarette. “No. You
weren’t.” He jetted smoke from his nostrils. “Who do you work for, then? The CIA? The Russians,
maybe? I don’t see it myself, but the director believes the Russians would gladly burn a deep-cover
asset in order to stop an assassination that would spark an international incident. Maybe even World
War III. Especially when folks find out about Oswald’s time in Russia.” He said it Roosha, the way the
televangelist Hargis did on his broadcasts. Maybe it was Hosty’s idea of a jest.
I said, “I work for no one. I’m just a guy, Hosty.”
He pointed his cigarette at me. “Hold that thought.” He unstrapped his briefcase and took out a
file even thinner than the one on Oswald I’d spied in Curry’s office. This file would be mine, and it
would thicken . . . but not as quickly as it would have done in the computer-driven twenty-first
century.
“Before Dallas, you were in Florida. The town of Sunset Point.”
“Yes.”
“You substitute-taught in the Sarasota school system.”
“Correct.”
“Before that, we believe you spent some time in . . . was it Derren? Derren, Maine?”
“Derry.”