Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Douglas Brode

  The well-intentioned lady took one look at this child-woman and the poor baby resting in Marina’s arms and readily agreed.

  Perfect! I’ll be in their home, the home of former director of Naval Communications; the man who not long ago reorganized the global system which the U.S. Navy employs to choreograph the movements of submarines, battleships, aircraft carriers, jets, even nuclear missile bases. Information the KGB hungers for!

  “When your husband returns,” Marina said, having picked up some everyday usage of English, “I hope he won’t mind—”

  So I will play the dear, abused ‘adopted-daughter’ figure, with access to this home while the admiral is off in Richardson. I will discover Bruton’s copy of the codes and relay them to the embassy in Washington, the information then going from there to Moscow. I will alter the course of history, thanks to my natural gifts: my beautiful face, this perfect body, and a brilliant brain.

  “You let me take care of him. Make yourself at home.”

  If all of this works out as I believe it will, Lee Harvey Oswald can crawl off and fuck himself for all I care. And if not then I can always take him back for the sake of our baby.

  “I hardly knew my own mother. Oh, can I consider you my mother? That would be so wonderful.”

  Either way ... I win! Me. ‘Marina’ ...

  “What the name of God do you think you’re doing?”

  The small group in the Brutons’ living room had become so intense in their discussion they did not realize someone stood at the screen door. Lee: unshaven, his hair slicked back in a retro-1950s greaser style, wearing a dirty T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He slammed the door open and entered, like an angry beast. A skinny real-life incarnation of Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams’ brute likewise hailing from New Orleans.

  A Streetcar Named Desire one more film Lee had loved.

  “We thought it best for Marina if we—”

  De Mohrenschildt didn’t have an opportunity to finish before Lee grabbed Marina’s left arm and pulled the woman, her baby cradled in the right, out onto the street.

  “I know what’s best for my wife! You all stay out of it.”

  Shit! My idiot of a husband had to show up and ruin all these carefully laid plans. In only a few days I’d have—

  *

  Back to the apartment on Mercedes Street in Fort Worth. But if De Mohrenschildt had failed to slip his new protégée into the home of a recently retired Naval officer, he had but begun his mission to bring the Oswalds to Dallas, What De Mohrenschildt didn’t know was that the CIA understood what he was up to, planning to manipulate his manipulation for their own good.

  George had contacted J. Walter Moore, top CIA operative in the Dallas area. George instructed him to approach Lee directly about this upcoming attempted abduction. As the Company hoped to set a trap and snare both De Mohrenschildt and Marina, such a move was as imperative to “our side” as to “theirs.” Moore’s message was clear. When De Mohrenschildt visited the Oswalds a few days later, acting as if the incident at the Bruton’s home never occurred, again encouraging Lee to take a better job and relocate, Lee played his role and agreed, saying it was all for Marina’s sake. Still bruised and battered, she came alongside her husband and kissed him gently.

  “It’s set, then? Wonderful. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  Asshole! While Marina is spying on me, I’ll be spying on her. In Japan, I learned the oldest of Asian curses: May you get your heart’s deepest desire. That’s about to happen to you, my phony-aristocratic ‘friend.’ And you will pay dearly for it!

  The Oswalds would live at the home of De Mohrenschildt’s daughter and her husband for the time being. This would allow him to keep them under constant surveillance. Only it didn’t work out that way. While Marina did move in with the Taylors, Lee insisted, for reasons he would not explain, on taking an apartment of his own. Also, he set up a post office box so that his mail would not have to pass through others’ hands.

  Lee did, however, allow De Mohrenschildt’s influential friends to arrange for a job at Jaggers Chiles-Stovall, one of Dallas’ largest typesetting firms, located downtown. There Lee used his photographic skills to create layouts for varied advertising displays.

  “Hey, Lee. Very good work. We’re lucky to have found you.”

  Shortly, however, Lee noticed that Jaggers did other jobs, too, including projects for the U.S. military. Here, those raw pictures taken by U2 surveillance planes of the Russian terrain were transformed into accurate maps that could then be used to pinpoint Soviet military and industrial locations. Though these were supposed to be kept Top Secret, Jaggers contracted for this work only if they guaranteed the military brass such stuff would be considered Confidential, clearly that wasn’t the case.

  Important papers were left out in the open, spread across desks, the company clearly lax. Their attitude must have been: Come on, we’re all good Americans here. Right?

  Okay, I’m beginning to get it. De Mohrenschildt is a Soviet spy. So far as he knows, I’m still on their side, having never renounced my Marxist beliefs. He will ask me to photograph those maps and turn the pictures over to him so he can relay them to the U.S.S.R. Then they will know how much the U.S. knows.

  My guess is, George will want me to go along with this.

  “So that’s why De Mohrenschildt wanted you in Dallas so badly. Strong ‘check’ move on his part. Here’s how we’ll ‘checkmate’ him. Alter the ‘legend’ again. Start expressing second thoughts about Russia. Maybe you were too hard on the system. You’re thinking maybe it’s time to reconsider, arrange for you, Marina, and June to go back. Make sure De Mohrenschildt hears this.”

  “Listen, before you hang up, one other thing. While in the darkroom, and using the film drying machine, I noticed something else. In addition to the Soviet Union, a large number of the U2 photos appearing daily now feature images of Cuba.”

  “Huh! The military didn’t tell us about that. Maybe they think there are secrets too secret even to share with the CIA.”

  “Well, I thought you ought to know. Lots of Cuban place-names. It appears they’re constructing concrete bunkers in hidden enclaves. My take? They’re installing some sort of electronic equipment in the eastern area near San Cristobal.”

  A long pause at the other end. Then: “The Cubans aren’t sophisticated enough for that. My guess? The Russians are in this up to their necks. What we feared most: Soviets in Cuba.”

  “Creating observation posts to detect our U2 flights?”

  “Could be even worse than that. Missile launchers, atomic warheads pointed directly at the U.S.”

  “Oh, shit. Just a hop, skip and a jump south of Florida? What a terrible advantage that would give them if war—”

  “Can you re-photograph all the Cuban stuff, send it on directly to me? We’ll then get it to the president.”

  “Of course. Maybe that’ll repair things between Kennedy and the Company after that ugly mess at Bay of Pigs.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t trust him, ever since he laid the blame for that fiasco on us. I gotta say, though, Lee, who I do trust. You! You’ve proven yourself our very best operative.”

  This time, a pause at Lee’s end. “Thank you!”

  “One last thing. It would be opportune for us to know what sort of information De Mohrenschildt already possesses. You ready to put some of your expert marine training into effect?”

  A week later, De Mohrenschildt left Dallas for a three-day business trip. As always, he remained mum about precisely where he was headed, even to his wife Jeanne. To keep her mind off any growing concerns, repressing her fear that she might be married to a traitor, Jeanne flew off to New York for upscale shopping.

  When De Mohrenschildt returned, he knew at once that the papers in his office were not in the same arrangements he had left them. Reports about his expedition to Mexico and Central America had clearly been marked in pencil. This had to mean that someone slipped in, photographed everything,
those half-erased pencil marks employed to focus a camera.

  The CIA did this! Lee Harvey Oswald can’t be ruled out. These are the very kinds of skills I was going to ask him to employ in copying maps at Jaggers for us. Might he be a triple threat? If so, he and I have more in common than I realized.

  *

  Lee broke and entered De Mohrenschildt’s home under orders from George. Shortly, he would attempt a more serious crime on his own. To a degree Lee’s appetite for blood had been whetted by the killing of that taunting marine in the South Pacific. Then he had been involved in personal revenge on a bully.

  Now, another plan took form, one he knew George would not approve of. Lee devised a plan to assassinate an American military officer. Slowly, the idea developed in his unique mind.

  “Lee? What’s wrong?” In the wee small hours of the morning, Marina emerged from a deep sleep, filled with nightmares.

  She had been drawn to consciousness by a realization that her husband sat, rather than laying beside her. She could feel his intensity, smell his cold sweat, sense the wild emotions now possessing him. On some level she realized that, for at least a moment, performance was no longer the order of the day.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Lee whispered. “Everything’s right. I understand now what I was born to achieve.”

  “What?” she asked, rising up naked from beneath the sheets. Marina seized the shivering youth in her arms.

  Whoever she is, whatever her name may be ... at this moment, I so want to believe her love for me is sincere ...

  “I must assassinate an enemy of the people,” Lee confided.

  He felt as she did. George’s words of warning about her true status, their marriage a charade, mattered not a whit, to him or to her. They were man and woman in the most primal sense.

  Come morning, all of that might be lost, dawn’s light bringing reality back into play. At this moment, they existed in near-darkness, the black enormity cut by moonlight, sneaking through the window, carrying lunacy into their shadow-world.

  “What?” Marina gasped, cradling Lee like a child, he as much a baby for the moment as June. “Have you gone mad?”

  They were in Dallas now, together again, at the apartment in an old house on Elsbeth Street in Oakcliff, a Tudor-style building with handsome brick which Lee rented for $68 a month.

  A month later, they would move to yet another apartment, a mere two blocks away, on Neely Street, a considerably downscale piece of property with shingles falling off its façade and a strange smell in the hallways. This would mark their eleventh residence in less than half a year.

  She sensed that her husband, for reasons unclear to her, perhaps even to him, now repeated the pattern of his youth.

  “How can I tell you anything?” he sobbed. “I know you are not who you claim to be. Marina is only a myth.”

  She drew Lee down on the bed, crawling over on top.

  “Forgive me,” she cried, her words emanating from some deep space inside her, from the heart, not the head, as she had no control over their flow. “It’s true. Can you forgive me, Lee?”

  “Yes, and I’m truly sorry I hit you. I was so shocked—”

  “I understand. The sense of betrayal you must have felt—”

  “But I betrayed you, too. Pretending to be what I was not.”

  Her mouth shushed him with kisses. “Listen to me. None of that matters now. Not who you were, or are. Me neither. At this moment, we are man and woman, husband and wife. Nothing matters but the two of us. Not country, not values, not politics—”

  “How I wish I could believe that.”

  “Believe it!” She then proceeded to fuck him in a way that Lee had never been fucked before. This was not pleasure-fucking or power-fucking; not ego-fucking, fantasy-fucking, manipulative fucking, mercy-fucking, or procreation-fucking. Not any kind of fucking other than the purest fucking that exists, fucking which is instinctual rather than conscious. Their fucking alternately gentle and crude. Fucking that felt creative, fucking as the world’s original art form, long before humankind diverted such passion into philosophy, painting, poetry. They fucked as if their lives depended on how hard each could fuck the other.

  Neither fucked for him or herself, only for the mate. They fucked their brains out. Their hearts, souls, and bodies, too. They fucked until they couldn’t fuck anymore. Then they fucked some more. They fucked until the sensuality of fucking gave way to something far more profound. Spiritual, even.

  They fucked as ancient Celts fucked, in the moonlight. Fucking as a form of worship to some dark pre-Judeo-Christian goddess. Fucking not as civilized religions perceive fucking, as original sin; rather, as a form of prayer, a full surrender to nature within the self as a means of absolutely surrendering to the greater, outer nature around them. They said nothing to one another the entire time, for that would have broken the spell.

  They fucked as a means of communication that eons earlier preceded language; a primitive, pure means of revealing all to another person. And when, finally, they finished fucking, each felt born again. Their lives would start over; a clean slate.

  “From now on,” Marina whispered into Lee’s ear, “it’s you and me against the world.”

  “I knew that before you told me.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “This is real, then?”

  “As real as it gets. As real as it can ever be.”

  “They can’t beat us. Not now that we have each other.”

  “We do, don’t we? We didn’t. Until tonight.”

  “Now, tell me what consumes you so. Your secret is safe with me. That was not true before. It is now. You must believe.”

  “I do! Marina ...if that is indeed your name ...”

  “Shakespeare said: ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”

  “So you’re smart. And educated.”

  “Yes. From now on, I will always be the real me with you, whatever you choose to call me. Now, share the real you.”

  “Since I was little, I believed I had a special purpose in life. Never once did I feel normal, another ordinary person. I was an invisible man, worthless; or I had some higher function to perform. For me, there could be no in-between. Either Lee Harvey Oswald was nothing at all or a truly great man.”

  Marina gasped, sincerely weeping, “You are frightening me!” She held him tighter than before, as if his life, and her own, depended on her assuming the strength of an Earth Mother.

  “I’m frightening myself,” he answered, kissing her hair, cheeks, mouth. “I was born to take another man’s life—”

  “You’ll go to jail,” she cried. “Maybe be executed—”

  “Not,” he insisted, recalling Nietzsche, “if I truly am what I believe myself to be: beyond good and evil.”

  The Superman. A supreme being. Unrestricted by morality.

  Not that I can’t be wounded, even killed. Only that such a thing would not mark the end of Lee Oswald. Only the beginning.

  *

  If Dwight D. Eisenhower was the kindly Dr. Jekyll of those generals who commanded our military during World War II, then Edwin ‘Ted’ Walker provided his dark doppelgonger, an evil Mr. Hyde. Ike, according to those who worked with him, performed a spontaneous victory dance after learning that President Harry Truman would follow through on the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to integrate the military and begin the end of racism in society; Ted, as members of his command recall, spat.

  He complied, only because as a general he could not disobey orders. A dozen years later, President Eisenhower put Walker in charge of the forced desegregation of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Again, the general followed his commands.

  Eventually, Walker retired from the military in protest. As a civilian, and by entering politics, he could defend everything he held most dear: a white Protestant ruling class, lording it over what he referred to as “the mongrel races”: blacks, Jews, Italians, Spanish, Asian
s, the Irish. Catholics constituted in his mind an “impure” breed of Christians.

  “Hitler had the right idea,” he told his supporters. “We can’t put the ethnics in camps, this being America. But we sure ought to go back to the good ol’ days when we didn’t let them sit next to us on buses or use public toilets.”

  For Walker, the breaking point came when an Irish-Catholic was elected president of the United States. Ted could no longer take pride in saluting the flag. His anger turned to rage.

  “We have to take our country back before it’s too late,” he howled. A small minority of Americans agreed with him.

  When JFK announced that the army would be deployed to Mississippi in September, 1962, to assure an African-American, James Meredith, be admitted as student at the state university, Walker decried JFK represented an even more clear and present danger than Ike. This, despite JFK’s secretive leadership in the attempt to overthrow Castro during the CIA led Bay of Pigs, and the president’s upcoming face-off with Khrushchev over Russia’s deployment of missiles in Cuba. Working from classified data referred to him by the CIA, these military secrets had been uncovered by a top agent working out of Dallas, Texas.

  What did George say so long ago now? ‘Keep this in mind, Lee: John Fitzgerald Kennedy will become the most important person in your life ...’

  To a moral monster like Walker, none of this mattered. A common belief that all Americans ought to be equal, regardless of skin color, qualified Ike and JFK as part of the problem in Walker's patently racist mind.

  “I only wish someone would shoot him,” Walker confided to his closest friends about JFK. He dare not say something like this in public for fear of being branded a traitor ...

  To Lee Harvey Oswald, a fervent supporter of Eisenhower’s 1957 effort at desegregation and JFK’s 1962 follow-up, such statements qualified Gen. Walker as an enemy of the people. If America were ever to move forward, become the great land it had the potential to be, such a fascist must be silenced.