The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  He was ingratiating himself with men he regarded as big-time reporters from New York, Chicago, and Washington when a phone rang in a nearby office. Lieutenant T. P. Wells picked up the receiver. A woman announced that she was Mrs. Barbara Jeanette Davis. He listened. She lived at 400 East Tenth Street. Her sister-in-law, Virginia Davis, had found an empty .38 shell on the lawn.

  Wells knew that the address was close to the spot where Tippit had been killed. He checked the name and address and asked if her sister-in-law would mind coming down to police headquarters to make a statement. Mrs. Davis said that she and her sister-in-law had seen the shooting of the policeman from their screen door. They saw the man walk off fast, holding his gun up in the air and emptying it.

  “I’ll be right there,” Wells said. “We’ll pick you up.”

  There was a desk outside the suite on the seventeenth floor. Behind it sat the handsome man with the wavy hair, Clint Hill. Although the Kennedy family would be at Bethesda only a matter of hours, the Secret Service man ordered direct lines to the White House. A naval officer came up from the main deck with a blank, ordering an autopsy on John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It was typed, and the name Mrs. John F. Kennedy was typed where her signature was to go. Hill had used good judgment all day. He was not going to ask Mrs. Kennedy to sign the order.

  It was shown to Paul Landis, who stood leaning against the suite door. He was sent inside to ask the Attorney General to step out for a moment. Robert F. Kennedy left the group and came outside. He, too, realized that it would be distressing to ask Mrs. Kennedy to sign such an order, so he took his pen and scrawled “Robert F. Kennedy” on the left side.

  It was an improper signature, but the United States Navy would not quarrel with the Kennedys. They had tried to convince the family that the medical and surgical complex did not perform embalming, but this had led to mass frowns and acidulous barks from O’Donnell and McHugh. The autopsy order was returned to Captain R. O. Canada, commanding officer. Robert Kennedy returned to the suite, where he crouched on the kitchen floor, chatting with Robert McNamara.

  Grief, like ecstasy, is impossible to maintain at a high level for considerable periods of time. Tears, shock, hysterics are concomitants of grief, but they fall like thunderous waves on a beach, slide quietly up the sands of memory, and recede in ripples. There were tears in that sacrosanct suite. There was laughter too. There was a wistful penchant for “Remember-the-time-Jack-said . . .” There was speculation about Lyndon Johnson. His name, mentioned among the men, wrung no applause. It is doubtful that any successor to Kennedy could have won the endorsement of the people on the seventeenth floor. Johnson stood less of a chance because Robert Kennedy had never bothered to mask his animosity from the moment his brother had picked Johnson as his running mate.

  Among the women, someone recalled that Caroline and John-John would have birthdays within a few days, but this was stifled. It is difficult to say whether the sight of the bloody Mrs. Kennedy was more of a shock to the women or the men. Now and then she repaired to the bedroom to watch the television set and, when she turned the corner to return to the living room, conversation sometimes died in mid-phrase. It seemed that everybody wanted to make a phone call.

  This led to the disclosure by the Washingtonians that the District of Columbia lines had been so tied up that afternoon that panic ensued. Edward Kennedy, for example, jumped into his car and tried to use the phones of other residents because he could not get an outside line on his own phone. He did not realize, at first, that the situation was common everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of people were calling other hundreds of thousands with the shocking news, and these in turn were calling mothers, brothers, cousins, and uncles. Trunk lines were exhausted throughout the city and most of the Eastern Seaboard. Even emergency calls could not get through.

  At dusk the situation had eased. The Kennedys and their friends had many calls to make. Until the tie lines with the White House were established, many calls were dialed to NA8-1414. Most of them were “idea” calls. Sargent Shriver, working in Dungan’s office, took them one by one. An invitation list to the funeral was being drawn up, and names of the great and near-great, crowned heads and premiers, were being bandied as though the personages were divided into two sharp camps: grata and non grata. The funeral would be held Monday. This was a fixed point from which to work. There would be a mass, probably at St. Matthew’s Procathedral.

  How many would it hold? Who would be invited? How about diplomatic cables tonight? De Gaulle? Yes. Queen Elizabeth? Yes. Harold Wilson? Yes. Richard Cardinal Cushing? Oh yes. He would say the Mass; it didn’t matter that Archbishop O’Boyle was the ranking Roman Catholic churchman in Washington. He would step aside for a family friend. Who else? Barry Goldwater? Who said that? Governors? Indeed. The Senate would send a delegation. So would the House. Did anyone know why the Church of Rome insisted on five conditional absolutions over the casket? No one knew. How about the apostolic delegate? What was his name? Something Italian.

  The diplomatic corps? Well, not the whole group. Those ambassadors could fill a church. The Supreme Court? Now why didn’t somebody think of them before? The Supreme Court, of course. Who from the United Nations? Who from civil rights? Did the State Department have a list of its own? It would have to pass family scrutiny. Was General Wehle taking care of the military side? There would be a big military side, with honor guard, caisson, muffled drums, a horse with reversed stirrups, representatives of each of the branches of the armed services. Musn’t forget the Green Berets—they were Jack’s favorites. How about the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

  Casket opened or closed? Closed. How about the lying-in-state at the Capitol? Time had to be made for the people to file past the bier in the rotunda. Saturday or Sunday? Let Jackie make that decision. All over the White House men were thinking. And, because the death had come when death was least expected, no one was prepared. Notions, ideas, and suggestions were being tossed in air to be shot down or caught delicately and approved. For a proper funeral everyone was going to have to think at top speed because something, or someone, was certain to be overlooked.

  Down in the big stainless steel kitchen of the White House, sad-eyed cooks and assistants, lugubrious in white puffy hats, made sandwiches by the score. A lot of distinguished ladies and gentlemen probably would be coming to the mansion tonight with the body, and sandwiches and rich hot coffee would be in order. The personnel, domestic and official, invented tasks. A Secret Service man in Evelyn Lincoln’s office stood looking through an open door into the President’s private office. The new rug, a surprise from a doting wife, was on the floor. The desk, a gift from Queen Victoria and fashioned from the ribs of a British polar icebreaker, gleamed in the half light of the empty office. The drapes were new and the office had an empty majesty. It was waiting for a man worthy of grandeur. A special man. He would not enter this office again, shoes gleaming, a hand jauntily in the pocket of the jacket, the back a little too straight, the face youthful and tilted, ready for the tasks as though he had been born for this particular office. As though all else had been orchestral overture, the difficult days, the indenture, behind him. No man had been this young in this place; no man had been as remorseless in purpose; no man, no matter how untried and naïve, felt more attuned to the problems—not merely of his nation—but of the world.

  The Secret Service man guarded the emptiness of the place. The rocker between the couches was already gone. The book of mementos of the trip to Ireland had been taken from the table behind his desk. The American flag flanked the window, but no breeze stirred the folds. The silver stand-up appointment calendar said “White House.” No name was on it, no time. All the people and all the minutes had run out in a shattering sound of shots.

  On a lower floor, Chief James Rowley sat in the Navy mess with Secret Service agents who had flown in from Texas. The white hair, the scrubbed Irish face, was tilted toward the table. The questions were uttered softly, but they were endless. He wanted to know everything a
bout everything. Step by step, he took them over the entire trip, the work of the advance men with the Dallas Police Department, the PRS file of dangerous persons in the area. He asked each man what he did, what hours he worked, where he was stationed. He wanted to know what orders Jerry Behn had issued as agent-in-charge of the White House. Could this thing have been prevented? Did any agency have any record on the suspect who was arrested?

  The men knew how Rowley felt. His administration of the Secret Service had sustained the worst possible blow—it had lost a President of the United States. No matter how well the service had done its work, it had lost the man. Rowley clasped his fingers behind the coffee cup on the table. He realized that some of the politicians would demand his head for the deed. The defense, that every precaution had been taken, that no one but God could have foreseen and prevented it, would be discounted in some places. Someone would have to pay, and who is a better target than the chief of the Secret Service? He made no excuses to his men; he asked none. “I want every one of you to make a detailed report now—tonight—before you go home. I know you’ve all worked long hours, and I know every man feels depressed. But I want those reports on my desk tonight.”

  Upstairs on the main floor, artist William Walton consulted the book on the Lincoln funeral. It was replete with old-fashioned steel-point engravings. The catafalque looked bigger than it should in the East Room, but that was probably artistic license. In the White House warehouse, the dustbin of many administrations, the Lincoln catafalque had been found. Walton would have it set up in the East Room. The drapes, the wall candelabra, the huge center chandelier, he noted, had been draped in deepest black.

  Well, that was a little too much black for this century and this man. Some small tiebacks of black could adorn the drapes, perhaps even the candelabra. But it would be gauche to blacken that crystal chandelier with dusty black. As he pored over the drawings and some old daguerreotypes of the Lincoln funeral train, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Richard Goodwin passed by on their way to the Library of Congress. Someone had been found who had keys to the enormous collection of history. The place would be opened for the two men, who would seek the books on Lincoln and make notes on how the final rites had been conducted for America’s sixteenth President and first martyr.

  At Andrews Air Force Base, a huge C-130 plane stopped on the ramp and the pilot killed the big engines. The back of it opened as though it would lay an egg. Washington motorcycle police gathered expectantly. Slowly down the ramp came SS-100-X, the big Lincoln in which Kennedy had been killed. Behind it the heavy convertible follow-up car bumped easily to the concrete. Secret Service agents Hickey, Taylor, and Kinney started the motors.

  The police escort asked the route. Both cars were going to the White House garage. Agents were waiting to cover both cars with plastic and to guard them. The motorcycles started from Andrews in an inverted V. By short wave, Secret Service headquarters knew that both cars were on their way. The presidential car was the one they wanted to examine carefully. Unknown to them, the FBI also wanted to take an unhurried look at that automobile tonight.

  On the other side of the city a military guard of honor drew up before the pale brick façade of Gawler’s Funeral Home. Someone in the White House had said that the President’s body would be brought there. Joseph Gawler was surprised. So was his manager, Joseph Hagan. They had been contacted by the White House and asked to handle the dressing of the body and to help in the selection of the casket, but no one had told them when or where or even who. There was a double line of servicemen in dress uniform, and perhaps they knew more than Gawler.

  Clients were entering and leaving the funeral home, paying their respects to less noted dead. It was embarrassing to have that military braid outside the door. Along Wisconsin Avenue, automobiles began to slow down, some to stop. Neighborhood people collected. The word passed from lip to lip: “They’re bringing Kennedy here. Let’s wait awhile.” It wasn’t true. The military order was countermanded, and the men were told to board their waiting bus and return to the White House.

  In far-off Ireland, the lateness of the hour found solemn men drinking and thinking. Television was rare in the southern tier of counties, but some had paid it “more mind” that night than before. John F. Kennedy was dead indeed but they had seen him on the opaque screen as he had visited the villages of Wexford and tipped a cup of tea with his cousins. Scores of millions of Americans had seen him on television, but none had thought to phrase it in the manner of an old man in Dublin: “Ah,” he said, “it would make you lonesome to see him talking and him being dead.”

  Three automobiles paused at the head of the concrete ramp, then idled down to the basement of Dallas police headquarters. The lead driver waved the others into a corner. Marina Oswald had dark thoughts. “Isn’t it true,” she said in Russian to Ruth Paine, “that the penalty for shooting someone is the electric chair?” “Yes,” Mrs. Paine said. “That is true.” The answer wasn’t sufficiently detailed. “Your Russian has suddenly become no good at all,” she said.

  The detectives herded the witnesses into a group. A detective told Michael R. Paine that he would be taken to a separate office for questioning. His wife, tall and stately, helped Mrs. Oswald to take care of the babies. A policeman gathered the evidence from the car. Marina pointed to Adamcik, the Czech-descent policeman. “Translate to English for him.” Guy Rose phoned from the jail office to ask Captain Fritz where to take these people. Fritz said that they would have to find space in Forgery or elsewhere; the third floor was crawling with humanity. He did not want Oswald to see his wife or the children. Rose was advised to detail one man to guard the evidence and to take it to Day on the fourth floor and remain with it.

  Marina submitted to the ordeal with little grace. It is possible that her chronically deprecating assessment of her husband was on her mind. In the Soviet Union, she had had a small and secure place in the society of Minsk. She was a qualified pharmacist and the niece of a man who was a colonel in the security police. No matter what one’s private opinions might be, members of her family did not say or do things which would draw the attention of the police. To be picked up for questioning was debasing. There was a standing to be maintained in the community. Had she been slightly more callous—or more practical, perhaps—she might have been relieved that her husband had been arrested, that he stood an excellent chance (if guilty) of dying in the electric chair and freeing her. There was always the odd chance that, in the process, the United States government might choose to deport her to the Soviet Union. If she had a poignant regret, it was embraced in the prospect of having to take the children and “go home.” She had written the letters which Lee demanded that she pen to the Soviet embassy in Washington, asking to be repatriated. But Marina Oswald did this because of her European notion that the wife must always be subservient to the wishes of the husband.

  A room in Forgery was cleared, and Mrs. Oswald, in plaid slacks and a head kerchief, sat with Rachel on her knee. Outside, reporters yelled: “Who are these people? Is this Oswald’s family? Which woman? How about an interview?” Ruth Paine sat on the opposite side of the desk, but she couldn’t hold June. The little one kept breaking away and running back to her mother.

  A dignified middle-aged Russian stepped into the room. He was Ilya A. Mamantov. He bowed, smiled, extended his hand. It would be impossible for Mrs. Paine to serve as interpreter for Mrs. Oswald, he explained, because Mrs. Paine was also a witness. Therefore he, a geologist living in Dallas with a Latvian wife and mother-in-law, had been summoned by friendly policemen with shrieking sirens and revolving red lights to attend Mrs. Oswald. He hoped the ladies would not be nervous—as he was. He assured Marina that he would do his best to translate her thoughts into impeccable English.

  A stenographer was called and the interrogation started. Mrs. Oswald’s life stood at its true crossroads in this room. She could, if she chose, protect Lee by lying, lying which would be difficult to disprove. She could say that her husband admir
ed few politicians but that John F. Kennedy was one. She could say that, to her knowledge, he never owned a rifle. She could say that her Russian was misunderstood when she pointed to the blanket in the garage as the storage space of his rifle. She meant to say that the blanket “looked” like a rifle, had the conformation of a rifle. They had disagreed, yes, but they had made up this morning, and he had left $170 with her and had promised to return to her tonight.

  The other road was to tell the truth as Marina saw it. It would help the police to hang her husband. If she chose this road, the marriage would die in this room at this hour. Her little girls would bear a stigma as daughters of an assassin all their lives. The American government might return them to Russia. She could hardly support the children in the United States even if the government was favorably inclined toward her. She could not work because her husband had prevented her from learning any English.

  Mr. Mamantov listened to each response, stared at the ceiling in silence, and tried to think it out in precise English. The work was difficult because he also had to translate the questions of the police—sometimes spoken in idioms—to Russian. Captain Will Fritz stepped into the office and closed the door behind him. He told the detectives that Lieutenant Day was coming down with the rifle. Paine, he said, was being questioned across the hall in a room with Robert Oswald.

  Day came down the corridor holding the rifle high with a finger inside the leather sling. The press was upon him, shooting pictures and demanding to know if this was the gun which had killed the President. Day shouted, “Out of my way!” He had been testing this weapon when Fritz asked for it to be brought down for identification. The lieutenant did not like to stop in the middle of his work, but the captain ranked him.