Prologue

by Greg Ahlgren

  He checked his watch again, and then cursed himself for doing so. Was he coming apart? On the street, passers-by ignored him. A good sign.

  He turned and got in the driver’s seat as Pamela circled around and got in on the passenger side.

  “I’ll drive,” was all he said before gobbling the cool hot dog. He ignored the offered soda.

  It took them eight minutes to reach the corner of Canal and St. Charles. He pulled into a parking space with a clear view of the street corner. He switched off the engine and used his left elbow to subtly check beneath his oversized brown cotton sport coat. He shook his head. Nerves, Lewis. He wondered when the last time was that he had checked for a sidearm. Greece, it was Greece.

  No one was at the corner. Ginter’s heart sank. Had he arrived too late, or too early, or did the weasel have the wrong date after all?

  I always knew Lee was an idiot, he thought. He considered that the incident might never have happened but had simply been manufactured for the memoirs. How am I going to track him then? Where can I pick him up?

  And then, diagonally across the intersection, he saw him, dressed in a white short sleeve shirt, a placard hanging around his neck. He was approaching pedestrians, offering them small white pamphlets. He tried to read the placard when the man turned toward him, but he was too far away. “The Hero of Acapulco,” Ginter mumbled disgustedly. Got you.

  For a moment he considered approaching the pamphleteer and making contact but decided against blowing his cover. He contemplated removing the loaded Colt from under his arm, dashing across the street, and blowing out the man’s brains-what there were of them.

  Pamela stared at him apprehensively. He was sweating profusely and could feel the stickiness under his starched white collar.

  “Damn, no air conditioning,” he joked, but she didn’t smile. She kept looking at him.

  Pamela reached down to the floor and lifted her pocketbook up into her lap. Ginter looked at her quizzically.

  “Well, she asked, “are we getting out or not?”

  He turned back to the intersection. “No,” he said. “You’re right. That won’t do. I won’t kill him. At least, not here. I need a better plan.”

  Pamela turned her gaze to the pamphleteer. Three Hispanic men approached him. The man seemed to recognize them as he smiled and extended his right hand. But one of the Hispanic men began yelling and calling the pamphleteer names. “You son of a bitch. Why, you are a Communist!”

  Another shouted, “What are you doing?”

  Ginter checked the men again. Only three. Not the ten to twelve as claimed in the memoirs.

  Several pedestrians paused on the sidewalk as the confrontation continued. The three men were screaming, “Communist!” and “Liar!”

  Others took up the shout and began jeering, telling the man to go back to Russia.

  Ginter saw one of the Hispanic men remove his own eyeglasses and hand them to a companion. The pamphleteer lowered his own arms and yelled, “Hey Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me.” Another of the three grabbed the pamphleteer and then grabbed the pamphlets and threw them into the air. They scattered in the light breeze.

  The pamphleteer began yelling in the face of one of his tormenters. When a New Orleans patrol car approached the intersection Ginter slouched down in his seat.

  A second cruiser pulled up and after a brief conversation all four men were handcuffed and shoved into the back of the second cruiser. Lights off, the two cruisers pulled away.

  Well, Mr. Lee Harvey Oswald, not an auspicious beginning for the Hero of Acapulco, is it? Ginter mused.

  “Still not there?” Amanda asked.

  Paul deVere replaced the receiver on its cradle. “Still on vacation.”

  “You think he really is?”

  DeVere shrugged. “Hey, it’s mid-August. Didn’t all these New York people go out to the Hamptons or something every summer?”

  It was Amanda’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know. They were never my crowd.”

  She lay back on her bed at the New York Waldorf and gazed at Paul deVere who stood, looking down at the telephone as if expecting it to ring. The two weeks since they had tumbled unconscious in Manchester, New Hampshire, had passed in a blur. Their hurried train trip to New York through Boston had led to an extended stay at the Waldorf. They stuck to their rooms during the day, venturing out at night.

  Amanda suggested that going out together was risky lest one of them slipped and made a conversational reference to their situation. Further, she urged they take separate rooms, decreasing the likelihood people might link them. Paul had not argued.

  Other than Amanda’s quick trip to the beauty parlor for a more contemporary hairstyle, they worked on reformulating their plan. Calls to Harrison Salisbury at the New York Times were intercepted by a variety of secretaries who dutifully checked before informing them that he was still on vacation.

  Frustrated, Amanda urged that they do something productive while waiting. They purchased two typewriters, reams of paper, and envelopes, and began an aggressive letter writing campaign to every newspaper they could find, warning of “The Coming Communist Menace.” Neither had illusions that the campaign would amount to a hill of beans, but it couldn’t hurt. They had time to fill while waiting for Salisbury’s vacation to end, or for Lewis to turn up. They took solace that calls to the Manchester Police Department, New Hampshire jails, and the New Hampshire State Hospital, revealed that neither Lewis Ginter nor Pamela Rhodes were in custody. Somehow, they had gotten away.

  “If we get to see Salisbury, what will we say?” Paul asked.

  “Tell him the truth?” Amanda suggested.

  “Yeah, right,” Paul scoffed. “How are we now going to prove that we’re from 2026?”

  “You have a better idea?” Amanda challenged testily.

  “No,” he said apologetically. “I’m just wondering if there is something else we can do. We seem to be just sitting around waiting for him to come back from vacation.” He looked at the street below.

  “I don’t know where they can be either,” Amanda said to his back.

  He turned. “They should have called by now. I mean, if they could. He mentioned the Waldorf at my house. He should think of that.

  “I think he was wrong that someone else came back,” deVere continued. “I think those cops were just checking for kids drinking. If someone wanted to kill us, they would have been waiting with guns when we arrived and blasted away. Why send cops to poke around? What could they have done? Arrested us for loitering?”

  He turned back to the window. “No one followed us. I haven’t seen anything suspicious. It’s just the four of us and we’ve split up for no reason.”

  Amanda didn’t answer.

  “Suppose Salisbury never gets back?” he asked. “Suppose he goes to Europe on a story and isn’t around until December? Is there something else we can do?”

  “Such as?” Amanda asked.

  “I don’t know,” Paul said. “You’re the history professor. What else can we do to convince Kennedy to invade Cuba, or step up in Southeast Asia?”

  “We could try to see him,” she offered.

  “I’m serious, Amanda, what other options do we have?’

  “I’m serious too. We can try to see the President.” She raised herself up on one elbow, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “And just how do we do that?” Paul asked cautiously.

  “Well, let’s see,” Amanda said, “the most powerful men in Washington are probably J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, and Senator Strom Thurmond, of South Carolina. Either of those two might get us in.”

  “Why would they?” deVere asked. “What would we say to Kennedy?”

  “Hmm,” she said, sitting straight up. “Why would it be any different from what we’d tell Salisbury? Hey, if we’re going to strike out it might as well be with the President. If we’re going to fail we might as well fail at the top.”

  Paul pondered. “Didn’t Kennedy have a
girlfriend? That actress who committed suicide?”

  Amanda groaned. “You mean Marilyn Monroe?”

  Paul nodded. “Could we approach her and get her to sign an affidavit or something and then blackmail our way into the Oval Office?”

  Amanda got up off the bed and began pacing. “She died last year. It’s too late for that.”

  Paul frowned in disappointment. “Any other girlfriends?”

  Excitement grew in Amanda’s face. She quickened her pacing. “Yeah, Exline, no not Exline, Exner. Judith Exner. She’s also the girlfriend of Sam Giancana.”

  “Who?” Paul asked.

  Amanda waved him off. “But the others. The others.”

  “What others?” he asked.

  Amanda frowned. “J. Edgar Hoover. Hah!” She smiled broadly and began moving her hands as she paced. “Of course! What an idiot I’ve been! J. Edgar Hoover has a penchant for dressing up in women’s clothes. There are pictures of him at a party that some people in Organized Crime have.”

  Paul appeared doubtful. “I don’t know, Amanda. We don’t have those pictures and if we did, how would we get in to see Hoover to tell him we know that he’s a cross-dresser? He’d just call in some goons and charge us with some sort of crime for threatening him.”

  Amanda stopped and stared straight ahead. Her lips mouthed her thoughts. Paul remembered that pose from Ithaca, mouth twitching, the stare, fists clenching and unclenching. She was on the historical hunt.

  “You may be right,” she said. “But Thurmond, we could get in to see Thurmond. And I bet he could get us into the White House.”

  “And how do we get a United States Senator to help us?” deVere asked.

  “Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul,” she said, beaming. For the first time since she had gotten off the bed, she looked right at him. Her eyes blazed and he stepped back.

  “Because, my dear Paul,” she laughed, “Senator Thurmond, the beloved segregationist of the 20th century, has a daughter.”

  Paul shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, not comprehending, “so do I.”

  “Yes,” she answered, “but the Senator’s is black.”

  Chapter 19

  “Here it is,” Ginter said, pulling up in front of 107 Decatur Street. A red sign with blue letters over the door proclaimed, “Casa Roca.” Through the plate glass store front, Lewis Ginter and Pamela Rhodes could see bolts of cloth piled on the right side of a center aisle that extended back from the front door. Other housewares were arranged on the left.

  “Cuban owned general goods store circa 1963,” Ginter added.

  “Not exactly Wal-Mart,” Pamela mused.

  “Let’s go shopping,” he said, getting out of the Corvette. “Coming?”

  Since his moment of uncertainty in New Orleans two weeks earlier, Lewis Ginter had slowly re-acquired his confidence and self-assurance. “Getting my sea legs,” he had explained. In doing so, the pair had given the Corvette a workout. They traveled to Dallas to survey Oswald’s wife’s apartment in an effort to spot Collinson or Pomeroy. After a week of snooping came up empty, they had raced back to New Orleans. Only a quirky radiator hose marred the trip.

  He was becoming more comfortable in the South now. He had learned to look down when he passed a policeman and away from approaching whites. But he still found himself pressing his left elbow against his armpit, just in case.

  As he and Pamela walked across the bare wooden floor of Casa Roca, Ginter smelled mustiness.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the mustached man behind the counter. Ginter estimated him to be in his early thirties, and obviously Cuban.

  “My name is Alex Johnson,” Ginter began. “I am looking for some people who may have tried to contact you a few weeks ago about the time of that incident on Canal Street between Mr. Oswald and the owner of this store, Señor Bringuer.”

  The man eyed him suspiciously and then shifted his attention to Pamela. “Carlos?” the man asked in a thick Spanish accent. “What is your relationship with Carlos?”

  “It is not with Carlos,” Ginter said. “It is with Mr. Oswald. Mr. Oswald is not the anti-Castro activist he says he is, and Señor Bringuer needs to know that. Would you be Carlos Bringuer?”

  The man shook his head. “Carlos is not here. We know all about Señor Oswald. He was in here a few days before the fight telling us that he was an ex-Marine who wanted to fight against Castro. He left his training manual here as proof. But Carlos has no interest in fighting. That is not his way to bring down Fidel. After they got arrested, Carlos debated the man on the radio.”

  The man gestured out the door. “Let those who run the camp across the river plan their street fighting in Havana.”

  Ginter nodded. “I am concerned with two of Oswald’s friends who may be spies for Castro.”

  “Spies?” The man’s eyes narrowed. “You walk in here and I don’t even know you and you talk of spies? How do I know you are not a spy?” The man looked past Ginter to the deserted street.

  “You don’t,” Ginter said blandly. “But what does it hurt to listen?”

  Before the man could respond Ginter continued. “The men we are looking for are two white men.” He turned to Pamela. “One is older, about mid-fifties, very light skinned, white hair, balding, medium build. The other is short, stocky, messed up hair,” he finished as he pictured Arthur Pomeroy at the meeting in April.

  Ginter turned back to the clerk. The man pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “I would remember such men, Señor,” he said slowly. “Carlos does not meet with anyone I do not know. I know well this Señor Oswald. But no men like you describe have met with Carlos or with any of the others who are with us.”

  Ginter looked hard at the Cuban before nodding.

  “Thank you,” Ginter finally said. “If you see them please tell Carlos for us that they are not to be trusted.”

  “I will tell him, Señor,” the man said as Lewis and Pamela walked back outside.

  In the car Pamela asked, “Do you believe him?”

  “Yeah,” Ginter answered, turning the key and starting the Corvette. “Collinson and Pomeroy haven’t been around here either.”

  Paul deVere answered the telephone on the first ring.

  “Dr. deVere?” the female voice asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “This is Charlotte from the New York Times. I know you have been calling to see Mr. Salisbury. I just found out he’ll be out of town all next week. He’s going to be giving a speech up at Syracuse University Tuesday night and from there he’s flying to Kansas City. His first available appointment would be in two weeks.”

  “Syracuse University?” deVere asked. “What kind of speech is he giving up there?”

  “He’s going to be speaking to the journalism school about the church bombings story from last winter.”

  “I see,” deVere answered. “No, that will be all right. If we still need to see him in two weeks we’ll get back to you then,” he said and hung up.

  Paul deVere dialed the front desk and asked to be connected to Amanda’s room. How long is the train ride to Syracuse? he wondered.

  Chapter 20

  Paul and Amanda sat in the back row of Hendrick’s Chapel on the campus of Syracuse University. It was mid-September, and the school had been back in session only a few weeks. The lecture by Harrison Salisbury was well attended. In the aftermath, Salisbury stood at the front of the chapel chatting with a few students. One by one, they peeled off. Paul knew from his own teaching experience, Salisbury would soon be alone.