by Wil Mara
Hammond thought she might start crying then. But no tears came. She was all cried out—or so he imagined. “And what’s next for you?”
“When I was sitting there in captivity, wondering if I would ever see sunlight again, I got to do some serious thinking. When your life’s on the line, you suddenly see things very clearly. I made a promise to God that I intend to keep. I asked him to save my life, and here I am. It’s funny—so many of us have it so good when we’re young, but then we abandon certain things because we feel we’ve outgrown them or because we think it’s time for a change or we have to change or whatever. One of the things I really liked as a kid was when I went to church with my parents. And I have to admit, I’ve been pretty inspired by Galeno Clemente’s story too.”
“No doubt,” Hammond said, nodding.
“There’s a pastor in my complex back home, and he’s asked me a few times if I’d be interested in attending services on Sundays. Maybe it’s time I took him up on his offer.”
“And what about your fitness centers?”
“I’m just about out of debt, like I said before. Once that’s out of the way, I’m going to sell the—”
“It is out of the way.”
“Hmm?”
Hammond turned to her and smiled. “It’s already out of the way. The debt’s been satisfied.”
“What do you mean?”
“Noah and I took care of it this morning.”
At first she seemed confused; then her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. “No . . . Jason!”
“Yes, Sheila.”
“Jason, no . . . seriously. I can’t allow you to—”
“It’s already done. Can’t undo it; sorry.”
The smile that was spreading across her face gave him boundless pleasure.
“Jason!” She reached over and slapped him on the shoulder. “How could you do something like that!”
“It wasn’t a big deal, really.”
“I can’t believe you!” A few more whacks, and then she settled back into her seat and started shaking her head. “I’m going to pay you back. Every penny.”
“You absolutely are not. You are going to go on with your life without this millstone around your neck anymore. You’ve been through enough in the last few years, don’t you think? Sell the property where your mom’s house used to stand, then take the money and run.”
Now the tears did come, but Hammond was reasonably sure they weren’t the by-product of grief.
“I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
“Also, I think you said you had a love of children?”
“Yes . . . ?”
“And a passion to give rather than take?”
“Yes?”
“And to make a meaningful difference?”
“Yes?”
“Well, if you want it, there’s a job waiting for you in the Hammond Guiding Light Organization. I set it up three years ago to provide basic necessities and medicine for youngsters in the most impoverished areas of the world. We have twenty-two locations, but we’d like to have a few more. That said, we could use someone who knows how to get a business up and running.” He pulled into the hotel parking lot and turned off the engine. “So what do you say? Do you think charity work would be your—?”
As he turned to face her, she gave him a hug with such force it almost drove him against the door.
Laughing and hugging her back, he said, “I’ll take that as another yes.”
As they began walking toward the hotel, Hammond said, “You realize, of course, this means I’ll be your boss.”
Sheila made a face. “Dream on.”
“Mmm . . . I didn’t think so.”
“No.”
48
NOAH THOUGHT David Weldon might just be the happiest man in the world. Hammond gave the reporter as many details as possible during the flight back to New Hampshire, avoiding only those topic areas that had been forbidden by Chip Frazier. “I might be called in to testify,” Hammond said. “At some point, though, I’ll fill in all the gaps for you.” Weldon said he was plenty satisfied with the information he already had. Every major journalist wanted the exclusive, after all, and he was having it handed to him.
Noah expected Hammond to have his customary emotional meltdown as soon as he got behind the controls of the plane, but it didn’t happen. There’s something different this time, Noah thought. He’s more pensive, more meditative. He’s withdrawn, yes. But he doesn’t seem like a caged animal. Noah wasn’t sure what to make of this. “We have some matters to tend to when we get back,” he said.
“I know,” Hammond replied with a nod. Before Noah even had time to register his shock at what sounded like willingness, Hammond continued with “And what’s the damage?”
“Damage?”
“For everything I’ve done. I’m sure I’ve got some trouble coming my way. I evaded the Coast Guard; I didn’t go to the police after Ben was shot; I went to Cuba without written permission from the Treasury Department. . . .”
“Are you sure you want to discuss it now?”
“Now, later, no real difference. Let me have it, minus any candy coating.”
“Well, the Dallas police are willing to forget about the issue with Ben since he wasn’t actually killed. You voluntarily left a crime scene, but I don’t think they’ll pursue that. I can talk to Chip to make s—”
“No, don’t do that. If they decide to come after me, let them. I’m guilty. What else?”
“You’re going to have to appear in court concerning the Coast Guard evasion. It’s unlikely that incarceration will even be considered, mainly since they were looking for drug smugglers and not you. But you’re still going to get a fine for not stopping. That’s pretty much guaranteed.”
“And?”
“And you’ll probably lose your boating license for a year, maybe two.”
“I figured as much. What about the lawsuit Vallick was going to launch?”
“All things considered, Chip doesn’t think they’ll bother now. Not with Rydell in custody.”
“And what about Cuba?”
“Well, that’s pretty serious. That’s federal. You can count on a fine there, too. A big one, reaching into six figures. And if you ever want to go down there again, regardless of the reason, it’ll take a miracle for the government to give you the green light.”
“Is that all?”
Noah took a deep breath and let it out. “No. They’re going to review possible revocation of your company’s humanitarian license. Even if they don’t take it away, you just slid the company way down the list for early consideration when the Cuban market reopens to American businesses. Your father worked like mad to get a head start on those opportunities. In the long run, that’ll hit us pretty hard. And you’ll be lucky if they allow you to keep your passport too.”
Hammond sat quiet for a long time. The engines droned and the oxygen hissed. Then he nodded again. “Yeah, okay.”
They landed on the estate shortly after ten and took the Ford Expedition to the main house. Hammond made sandwiches for both of them, and they ate in silence. When Noah went back to the kitchen to set his plate in the sink, he considered opening the conversation that neither wanted to have—once again, certain business matters were reaching a critical point and required decisions. He opted to wait until morning, as that was the time of day when Hammond seemed happiest. He said good night and left for his cottage.
Hammond took a quick shower and got into bed. The book he’d been reading before Sheila’s call, Paris-London Connection: The Assassination of Princess Diana, was still on the nightstand. He picked it up and continued where he’d left off, as if the events of the last few weeks hadn’t even occurred. A few pages in, however, he found he was having trouble concentrating. He set the book on his sheet-covered chest and stared aimlessly forward for a time. In this powered-down mental mode, he heard a voice in his head—Galeno Clemente, in a rewind of the conversation they’d had on the boat
ride from Cuba. Bits and pieces had been echoing all along—
“You cannot do the deed yourself, so you put yourself in danger in the hope of having someone else do it.”
“You have not yet destroyed yourself as I did, but you will in time.”
“Do not waste your opportunities. Do not waste yourself.”
And finally:
“God did not take my parents from me, Mr. Hammond. And he did not take your family from you.”
He looked to the little Bible on the bookshelf, and his gaze remained there for a while. He closed the Princess Diana book, set it aside, and got up. The Bible felt cool in his hand—a comforting kind of cool that comes from a book for which one has genuine affection.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to read. This time, he found he had no trouble concentrating at all.
The hallway was soundless, the sconce lights dim. When he reached the door that led to his family’s suite of rooms, he opened it. It was like opening the door on a carnival scene, except these sights and sounds, vivid though they were, existed only in his mind.
There was Joanie in one of her long nightshirts, in this case the one with the black-and-white stripes that he thought of as her “burglar’s uniform.” And his mother, resplendent in her baby-blue robe and matching slippers, on her way to the sitting room to watch reruns of Frasier or Designing Women. And there was his father, shoeless and tieless but still in his wool trousers and dress shirt—his definition of “casual”—striding between his bedroom and his office as more ideas dropped into his tireless brain in a never-ending hailstorm of business wizardry. No matter how busy the man was, though, he found time every night to stop in and have a brief end-of-the-day chat with each of his children. He wanted them to know that they were important to him, that their lives were important to him. Hammond would have given anything to have just one more of those talks. And one more kiss on the cheek from his mother. And one more hug from Joanie. And to feel the warmth of simply knowing that they were there.
He moved forward until he came to the paired office doors. Every emotion was in play now. He reached for the knob as he had weeks earlier, sliding his fingers around its cool surface. The urge to let go was powerful, but he turned it and pushed the door open. Then another voice spoke up in his mind, this time his own from a verse he had memorized in his teenage years: “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”
There was no light inside the office, only formless shadows and the suggestion of things unseen. He came alongside his father’s desk and turned on the lamp. The shadows fled, and the shapes became things—the antique furniture, the framed family photos, the telephone, the stacks of books and newspapers. He could still smell his father’s cologne and his beloved hazelnut coffee. One of his navy blazers hung from the back of the chair, and a silver pen—his favorite—lay on the blotter exactly where he had left it. Hammond could see him there, doing paperwork with his sleeves rolled up. And his mother coming into the room to fill her cup at the water cooler. And he could hear Joanie’s radio going in her bedroom down the hall.
He took a deep breath, and all the ghost images vanished. Now only the reality remained.
49
NOAH WAS lying on his side and snoring like a longshoreman when the phone on the nightstand rang. He jerked awake, confused, and waited to see if more would come; perhaps he had only dreamed it. The second ring dashed this notion, and he snatched the handset from its base. He checked the caller ID—the main house—and then the clock radio—2:33 a.m. This can’t be good, he thought.
The anxious voice of Valeria, the housekeeper, chattered through the line. Noah became more awake with every word.
He dressed quickly and went out.
When he reached the hallway intersection, he found Val in the same outfit he was wearing—a robe and slippers—standing a few cautious paces back from the entrance to Alan Hammond’s office. The doors were open, and the light inside spilled across the pink carpeting.
As Noah came forward, he saw the fearful look on the woman’s face. His instinct was to be comforting, to tell her not to panic, everything was going to be fine. But that might not be the truth here.
When he reached the open doors, he was confronted by a scene that he never, in a billion centuries, would have thought possible—Jason sitting behind his father’s desk, going through paperwork. Two filing cabinet drawers were open, and folders were stacked around him in sloppy piles.
Noah could only stare, fascinated. He felt like a child watching a magic trick, seeing it clearly but still unable to believe it.
“Jason?”
There was no response. Hammond was reviewing a spreadsheet, working his way down the columns with his father’s silver pen.
Again—“Jason?”
This time Hammond, shaken out of his concentration, looked up. “Huh? Oh, hi, Noah.”
“Hi. Er . . . are you all right?”
The question seemed to baffle him, and a few moments ticked away without a sound. Noah didn’t mind; he was willing to wait all night.
Hammond let out a breath that seemed to carry all the strength from his body. “No, not really,” he said. Then he did something else Noah would not have expected in an eternity—he smiled.
“But I think it’s time I tried to be.”
Afterword
THIS IS A TALE of fantasy, of course. The core concept came in a bright moment of inspiration in November of 2003 while I was watching a documentary about the Kennedy assassination on—what else?—the History Channel. Long before then, however, and certainly many times since, I have been asked the pivotal question: “Do you think Oswald acted alone?” My answer is an unequivocal yes. Of this I no longer possess a shred of doubt.
For those of you who are already steadfast disciples of the lone-gunman theory, this should come as a welcome admission, as you now have one more member among your flock.
For those who are determinedly fixated on the notion that the shooting was, in fact, the work of surreptitious, comic-book hooligans who then managed to veil a conspiracy of such startling proportion for half a century, I doubt there’s anything that I or anyone else can say of a rational, reasonable nature that will move you off your position. I apologize for making the conscious choice not to play on your team anymore, but I’ve tried it and grew tired of never gaining an edge on my opponents.
And for those of you who truly remain undecided, I would like to suggest the two books that enabled me to finally reach a point of closure on the subject. The first is Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History. If you are old enough, you may recognize the author’s name already—Bugliosi was the prosecutor in the trial of Charles Manson et al for the Tate-LaBianca murders of 1969, and then coauthor of a popular book about it called Helter Skelter. In Reclaiming History, he draws upon his considerable legal skills to examine, in brain-overloading detail, every conceivable perspective of the event. His second-by-second account of the actual shooting is so thorough you’d think he was there that day, armed with camcorders, microphones, and a small cadre of stenographers. He also takes aim at the many alternate theories that have so entertained the public through the years, blowing each out of the sky like the clay pigeon it is. It took him over twenty years to research and write the book, which boasts an elephantine 1,600-plus page count—not including the endnotes, which are so voluminous they had to be included on a CD—and weighs in at nearly six pounds (also making it a serviceable weapon). First published in 2007, Reclaiming History is still widely available and, mercifully, can now be digested in e-book format.
The second title is a bit more elusive, as it has been out of print since 1967. Copies are sometimes available from antiquarian dealers, albeit at prohibitive prices, and I certainly hope a paperback or digital edition (or both) is put forth by the rights holder at some point. The book in question, Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother was written by the assassin’s older brother, Robert. Robert Oswal
d had a better fly-on-the-wall perspective of the assassin than anyone. He was able to observe Lee, up close and personal, during every stage of his brother’s brief and troubled life. This is why I venture the opinion that his book is the singular most important piece of evidence supporting the lone-gunman theory that we have. (If you try and really can’t find a copy, then Norman Mailer’s 1995 work Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery is a very suitable substitute.) To truly understand the horrific act that was carried out in Dealey Plaza that day, you must familiarize yourself with the psyche of the person responsible. Robert Oswald—with tremendous courage and generosity, in my view—provided the raw material to do this and, in turn, gave the definitive testimony on the assassination. While thousands have poured their time and energy into examining grainy photographs, interpreting inconsistent eyewitness accounts, and performing costly reenactments, the key that turned the lock all along has been sitting in the pages of this unjustly forgotten publication, which affords the reader the unparalleled privilege of getting behind the eyes of the man who envisioned the crime, forged the plan, and pulled the trigger.
About the Author
WIL MARA has been writing books for the last twenty-five years. He began in the school-library market, where he has contributed more than seventy-five educational titles for young readers. He entered the fiction world with five ghostwritten titles for the popular Boxcar Children Mysteries series. Wil’s first novel for adults was the 2005 disaster thriller Wave, which sold through its first printing in less than two months and won the New Jersey Notable Book Award. His next disaster novel, The Gemini Virus, was released in October 2012 to rave reviews by critics and consumers alike. Wil also spent twenty years as an editor, working for Scholastic, Harcourt Brace, Prentice Hall, and other publishers. Frame 232 is the first book in an ongoing suspense series featuring hero Jason Hammond. It is also Wil’s first title for Tyndale House.