Prologue

by Greg Ahlgren

She shoved her change purse into her pocketbook and slung the bag over her shoulder. She felt so alone. She’d just have to wing it.

  Paul deVere hoisted both suitcases and carried them through the Love Field concourse. How long before they start putting wheels on these things? he wondered. He pushed through the crowd.

  At the far side he turned and searched for Amanda. She was not by the exit. He began to turn away when she emerged from a newsstand, a newspaper under her arm.

  “Taxis are out here,” he called, and pushed his way outside. In the fresh air, a skycap hailed a cab. DeVere gave the driver the address for the downtown Holiday Inn while the skycap put their bags in the trunk. When they were settled in the rear seat deVere waved his hand back and forth in front of his face.

  “I can’t believe that they let you smoke like that on the plane,” he groused.

  “Hey, tough, it’s the times,” Amanda said, looking out the window. “You know what they say, when in Rome...”

  DeVere blew his nose. “Yeah well, just because one is in Roman times shouldn’t mean there are no rules.” He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and smelled his shirt.

  Hutch shot him a warning look.

  DeVere ignored the rebuke and nodded toward the newspaper.

  “Anything in there?” he asked.

  Amanda unfurled the newspaper in her lap. It was the Dallas Times Herald and the date, November 19, 1963, was displayed across the top of the front page.

  “The President’s coming to town,” she answered.

  DeVere nodded and gazed out the window.

  “His trip is outlined in here,” Amanda said. She unfolded the paper and shoved it at deVere who turned and looked at it.

  She pointed to a map that diagramed a motorcade route.

  DeVere resisted asking what she thought Lewis was up to. They put their constant mutual questioning on hold whenever a third person was present.

  Pamela Rhodes paid her cab driver, ignoring his stare, and walked briskly to the front entrance of Cazzie’s. She moved past the billiard parlor entrance and entered through the same door she had seen Ginter use. The lobby was a tiny, dimly lit space dominated by an oversized counter. Behind it stood a black man in his mid-sixties who stared at an open magazine.

  He started when he looked up. Pamela smiled, hoping that she appeared disarming. The clerk’s eyes narrowed and he glanced over her shoulder.

  “Yes, missy?” he asked, still looking behind her.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Ginter. Could you tell me what room he’s in?”

  “Two Twenty-eight,” the man said without checking anything. “But he’s not in now. Can I help you?”

  “He applied to do some work for me and I wanted to hire him and find out when he could begin.”

  “You came all the way down here for that?” the clerk asked.

  “Well, I tried to call, but there are no phones in the rooms.”

  The clerk hesitated. “Mr. Ginter already got a job at the Book Depository,” he said.

  Shit! What the hell is the Book Depository? She kept her smile.

  “Yes, I know. He told me that. But Mr. Ginter was going to do some additional work for me.”

  The old man’s eyes bored into her and she hoped that her nervousness wasn’t showing. She put her left hand on the counter, palm downward, to prevent him from seeing her shake.

  “In any event,” she said glibly, “I need to leave something for Mr. Ginter.”

  “I can take it,” the man offered, extending his hand.

  She had thought of this. She glanced at the wooden mail cubbies behind the desk and extracted a large flat manila envelope from her pocketbook. “I’m afraid it’s rather big. It’s the plans for the job along with his cash deposit,” she said, not handing him the envelope. “Maybe I should just slip it under his door?”

  The man considered before dropping his hand and shrugging.

  “Stairs to the left.” He returned to his magazine.

  At the top of the stairs she proceeded down the hall to room 228. Music was playing from a record player on a floor above her, but no sounds came from any of the adjacent rooms on the second floor. The hallway was deserted.

  Pamela’s knock on 228 went unanswered. A faint stench of stale urine reached her nostrils.

  I wonder what this neighborhood is like today, she thought. I hope they tore this place down.

  She checked her watch. It was a little after 3:30. She checked the hallway again, concerned that the desk clerk might wander up after her. She worried that he seemed suspicious, but she ignored the feeling.

  In the dim light, she looked at the door to room 228. To her dismay there were two locks, a key-in-knob privacy lock and a deadbolt. Shit! She had hoped that this would be easy, that there would only be the privacy lock which she could by-pass with a credit card or plastic driver’s license-that is, if she had a credit card or driver’s license, she reminded herself ruefully.

  On a hunch she tried the knob. It wiggled but didn’t turn. She bent and peered in between the door and the jamb. The lock itself appeared to be a basic pin-and-tumbler. She could see the bolt slid into the doorframe. She stood back up and looked across the hall. The other rooms didn’t have any deadbolts. Apparently Ginter wasn’t taking any chances.

  She checked the hallway again. From her pocketbook she extracted the thin flathead screwdriver and pick she had purchased that morning. She inserted the tip of the screwdriver into the deadbolt’s keyhole and turned it slightly clockwise until the plug was minimally offset from its housing.

  She assumed that the lock was a five-pin pin-and-tumbler, but even so she knew that there were still over a million pin combinations. She kept the pressure on the plug and inserted the pick behind it into the keyhole. Bent at the end, the pick slid in until Pamela felt it hit the first pin. Then she lifted the pin until she felt the slight click when the top pin slid into the housing as if pushed by the correct key. She knew the pin falling into place on the ledge in the shaft caused the click, and that once on the ledge it would remain wedged in the housing and not fall back into the plug.

  She repeated the process five times until all of the upper pins were secured in the housing and all of the lower pins rested inside the plug. She turned the screwdriver and the plug spun freely, sliding back the bolt.

  She smiled. Not bad training in Portland, she thought. Arthur would be proud of her. If only he knew.

  Pamela took a thick piece of cardboard from her pocketbook and wedged it between the door and the frame just above the knob. Now, for the privacy lock in the knob. She pointed it downwards and slid it down along the jamb until it caught behind the spring-loaded latch. As she pulled it back, the door released and swung in. She listened for a moment and then pushed the door open wider, stepped inside, and softly closed it behind her. She stood inside the room listening. From somewhere above the record player continued to drone, although muffled now behind the wooden door.

  So far, so good.

  The room was dark. She resisted the urge to turn on a light and waited for her eyes to adjust. The wide Venetian blinds on the opposite facing windows were drawn. A tattered couch stood opposite a small television set which was propped on a metal stand. To the left, an open doorway led into a bedroom area. To the right, an archway opened onto a pantry. Pamela guessed that the bathroom was off the pantry. Apparently Lewis hadn’t been spending money on lavish accommodations. But then again, he had little choice.

  Pamela moved to the far wall. She carefully inserted her fingers between two of the slats of the blinds and gently pried them apart. Five feet away the brick wall of the next building stared back at her. She reached for the string and tugged open the blinds.

  Turning back into the room she saw a series of large paper drawings strewn over a maple kitchen table. She crossed the bare wooden floor and stared down at the sketches. She lifted the top drawing and studied the one underneath, and then repeated the process.

  On the third drawing two d
otted lines extended from a small box positioned inside a larger rectangle which resembled a two-dimensional building facade. The dotted lines ended at a profile of an automobile. The drawings were referenced with distances, angles, and times. Underneath the large rectangle the words “Book Depository” appeared in block lettering. One of the inner boxes five rows up had an arrow pointed to it with “Oswald” printed neatly at the right edge, also in block letters. The guy from New Orleans? Across the row of boxes the word “PATSY” had been impetuously scribbled with what must have been a red pen, as if in disgust. Ginter’s anger, she mused. The next page contained additional cryptic notes.

  She flipped back to the top drawing and then moved around to the side of the table, her head tilted to one side. It was a map of city streets with “Houston” and “Elm” scrawled in.

  The fourth drawing diagramed a metal bullet jacket showing a 6.5-millimeter jacket with what appeared to be a hand-packed charge.

  She flipped through the drawings again. The references to Elm and Houston Streets were familiar. Where had she...? Of course!

  She let the drawings fall back on the table and scanned the other two rooms. From a wastebasket she pulled out that morning’s Times Herald. She ripped through the pages until she found it.

  “Oh, Lewis,” she whispered.

  She refolded the newspaper and returned it to the trash. She had her own copy back at her hotel. She looked down at the drawings to make sure that they were positioned as she found them, but then flipped through them again to see if there was any further identifying information. Finding none, she completed her search of the rooms, closed the blinds, and let herself out into the hallway. Using the flathead screwdriver she moved the deadbolt back into the casing and picked the tumbler pins off their shelf. She turned left and walked down the back stairway.

  DeVere dumped the suitcases on the double bed at the Holiday Inn and sat beside them. He grabbed the newspaper from Hutch’s hands.

  “Why is Kennedy coming here if he has to be in Washington on Sunday? Do you think it’s a coincidence? Kennedy here two days before his meeting in D.C.?”

  “No,” Amanda answered.

  DeVere studied the parade route. “It’s like you said. He’s in and out in one day. A motorcade. A speech at the Trade Mart. Then back to Washington. The Vice-President will be with him. Hey, Johnson used to be Governor of Texas, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t think he was ever governor,” Amanda said. “But he was from Texas. He was a congressman, I believe. No, a senator. Actually both,” she said, frowning. “He ran against Kennedy in the 1960 primaries. After he left the Vice Presidency in 1968 he ended up getting indicted over some radio station thing. The governor of Texas, John Connolly, will also be with him.”

  DeVere nodded absently.

  “By the way,” Amanda asked, leaning back against the pillows, “did you happen to notice the man in first class sitting on the right side of the plane when we boarded?”

  DeVere looked up. Amanda looked so, so, so like she had in Ithaca. Lying back on the pillows like that…

  ”What?” he asked.

  “When we boarded. The guy with the big jowls sitting by himself. Grey suit.”

  DeVere shrugged. “Don’t remember anyone on the plane.”

  Amanda nodded. “I couldn’t place him at first. I just caught a quick glimpse in New York. Hadn’t noticed him at the departure gate. Saw him again when we got off and finally figured out who he was when we were in the taxi.”

  “And?”

  “Nixon.”

  “Who? The baseball player?”

  Amanda sighed and rolled her eyes. “Richard Nixon.”

  When Paul continued to stare at her blankly she continued. “Checkers dog speech? Anti-Communist zealot from the 1950s? Eisenhower’s vice-president?”

  “Richard Nixon? I’m not good on vice presidents. You sure it was him?”

  Amanda sat up suddenly and curled her legs under her. “Yuppa’, I am. Dead sure. Was the Republican nominee against Kennedy in 1960. They had a series of debates on TV. The first televised presidential debates. I’ve seen the films. That’s how I recognized him. That would have been three years ago. He’s put on a little weight but not much. It was Nixon who Kennedy beat in a close race. Later ran for governor of California. Lost again. Then he retired into oblivion.”

  “So the man who ran against Kennedy in 1960 is in Dallas when Kennedy will be here.” DeVere shrugged. “So what?”

  “So, maybe nothing. Bit of a coincidence though, with us here, Lewis here, Nixon here and Kennedy coming.”

  “You think Ginter is going to do something with Kennedy and Nixon both?” deVere asked.

  “I figure he’s angling on approaching Kennedy at the Trade Mart on Friday. Somehow getting information to him about Southeast Asia. Trying to change Kennedy’s mind one last time.”

  “Do you think it will work?” deVere asked.

  Hutch scoffed. “Has it worked for us? It’s absurd. No one gets close enough to the President of the United States to talk to him. And what would Lewis say?”

  “We didn’t do well with Salisbury,” deVere sighed. “But the baseball thing softened him. Our time window is too short. We should have come back earlier.”

  Amanda took a deep breath. “Salisbury later wrote that the United States should have intervened in Southeast Asia. He was a hawk in the 1970's. As for coming back earlier-what choice did we have?”

  “Yeah, the best laid plans,” deVere scoffed. “Too bad there aren’t any games between now and Sunday that I remember the score of. I can still picture Salisbury’s face when we told him that the Soviet Union and China would fight a war.”

  Amanda snickered. “That’s when he tried to run out the door. So, how is Ginter going to have any better luck?” she asked, turning serious.

  DeVere scanned the newspaper. “I don’t know. There is going to be a motorcade from Love Field to the Trade Mart where he’ll talk.”

  “It will have to be at the Trade Mart then,” Amanda answered. “I guess Lewis will have us rushing up to Jack Kennedy with open arms and empty hands yelling, ‘Watch out for Communism in South and Central America and don’t pull out of Southeast Asia.”

  DeVere glanced at his watch. “Lewis said he’d be gone all day but would be here about 5:15 or so. What do you say we head down for a late lunch?”

  As the pair stood up they were surprised by a knock at the door. Paul hesitated while Amanda reached out and flung it open. It was Lewis Ginter.

  Chapter 27

  Lewis Ginter stepped inside and closed the door.

  “Jesus, Lewis, how the hell have you been?” deVere asked.

  Ginter pulled out a chair and sat down. “Busy. You might as well sit down. This could take awhile. Hey, how’s New York? Been watching Joe Willie throw the football?”

  “He’s still in college,” deVere answered, sitting down on the bed. Hutch followed suit.

  Ginter nodded. “So, how was your flight? Uneventful, I hope?”

  Hutch and deVere exchanged glances but didn’t answer.

  Ginter changed the subject. “Any luck with Salinger last night?”

  DeVere shook his head. “We’ve come up with zip, Lewis.” He recounted their efforts in New York, and the results of their approaches to Salisbury, Thurmond and Salinger. Ginter nodded at all the appropriate junctures but appeared to be only half listening.

  When Paul finished Amanda spoke up. “O.K., Lewis. We’re five days away from decision day. What do you have?”

  “I’ve got something going,” he said. “Something I started putting together back at the Carpenter Hotel.” Lewis took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “You kept saying that the key is Sunday’s decision to pull out of Vietnam,” he said, turning to Amanda. “You said we should work on Southeast Asia. Stay in Vietnam and the United States draws the proverbial line in the sand that lets the East know that the West will fight. Once stopped, the East begins to slowly crumbl
e from within.”

  Amanda nodded. “I believe that. There are computer models-”