Ask Not

by Max Allan Collins

  On the edge of downtown Dallas, west of Houston Street, was the landscaped triangular city park called Dealey Plaza; there Elm, Main, and Commerce Streets converged at a triple underpass, Elm turning into Stemmons Freeway, while at the south, east, and north, like battlement walls, tall buildings loomed over this grassy oasis in a modern city. Where Main Street entered the Plaza, and at the outer edges of Commerce and Elm, decorative colonnades with fountains and basins stood on either side, dispassionate observers from another age. The grassy slope within the Plaza that had been above and to the President’s right was bounded by a seven-story turn-of-the-century rust-brick building—the Texas School Book Depository—on the corner of Elm and Houston. A sidewalk to the south, a parking lot to the north and east, and a railroad bridge over the triple bypass completed the crime-scene picture.

  The President’s motorcade eased down Main, turning right at the Criminal Courts Building, going one block west past the Dallas County Records Building, just south of the Dal-Tex Building, finally turning left on Elm, heading toward the underpass on the way to Trade Mart, where Jack Kennedy’s next event awaited. Of course another event had intervened.

  The President’s car had been second in line, making it only a third of the way to the underpass before the first shot came, one of at least three. Officially, all the gunfire had emanated from the east corner window of the sixth floor of the book depository, supposedly the work of a malcontent with a blurry grudge against society.

  I parked my rental Galaxie in the lot behind what the press had dubbed the Grassy Knoll. Flush with the parking lot was a wooden picket fence; at our right, past the parking lot, were train tracks, and behind us the lot was bordered by the train-switching station, while at our left rose a scuffed-looking white WPA-era monument to the memory of newspaper publisher G. B. Dealey.

  From the corner of the fence where its left side met its front, the view was blocked at far right by a tree, but otherwise provided a clear shot, so to speak, across the three lanes of Elm Street. At left two flights of cement steps rose from the sidewalk to that memorial that had provided citizens perches from which to watch the motorcade, and a path for police and brave bystanders to run up to try to spot and even stop the shooter they thought they’d heard, and seen by way of white puffs of smoke from his gun.

  Flo stood at that picket-fence corner and pointed a pretend rifle toward Elm Street. “A sniper shot from here.”

  “You sound sure of that.”

  My girl reporter looked touristy and not immediately recognizable as the famous regular on What’s My Line?, dark wispy bangs hiding some of that high forehead, a ponytail utilizing the hair that usually made up a bouffant, her sunglasses large with white frames. She was in a light-pink blouse and dark-pink slacks with red shoes, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, only not glittery.

  And there was no doubt we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Wonderland, maybe.

  Me, I was a tourist type myself, in Ray-Bans and a black-banded straw Stetson (this Texas sun had me back in hats again), a white-and-shades-of-gray vertical-striped seersucker sport shirt, charcoal Leesure slacks, and Italian loafers. Stetson yes, cowboy boots never.

  “I am sure,” Flo said, leaning an arm between pickets. “This is where any number of witnesses say they heard the shot coming from. One of those witnesses was an army man home from basic training, taking pictures of the President to show his buddies back at the base.”

  “Is this somebody you talked to you, or was it your pal Lane and his bunch?”

  She had been working, off and on, with a lawyer from New York, Mark Lane, who had associates investigating the assassination. He was writing a book, which made me skeptical. Of course, Flo was writing one, too. But she was paying me.

  “I talked to the soldier,” she said. “His name is Gordon Arnold. He was standing right over there.”

  She indicated the grassy incline, maybe three feet from where we stood.

  She was saying, “Said he felt a bullet whiz past his ear, heard the crack of a rifle, and that it was like standing under the muzzle. He hit the dirt and another shot flew over him.”

  “Okay. So where’s his film?”

  “A Dallas uniformed police officer, or somebody dressed as one, came around from behind the fence and grabbed his camera and ripped out his film. Then the officer headed back here to the parking lot and was gone.”

  “Well, it’s no surprise the Dallas police had a man posted in this lot.”

  “Actually, it is, because they didn’t, according to their log. Nate, no uniformed man was assigned to this spot.”

  “So you’re saying there was a fake cop back here? That maybe a shooter was dressed as a cop?”

  “I can’t think of a benign reason for it,” she said. “There were fake Secret Service agents up here, too.”

  “According to Arnold?”

  “And four others, one of them a Dallas police officer. But Arnold won’t go on the record because of the witness deaths.”

  Couldn’t blame him.

  I asked, “How did he know they were fake Secret Service agents?”

  “He didn’t,” Flo said. “I found that out myself—the Secret Service didn’t have anybody posted up here. They didn’t have anybody posted anywhere except in the motorcade.”

  Sounded like Jack Kennedy could have used Bill Queen’s security advice, too.

  She aimed her pretend rifle at Elm Street through the space between pickets. “Pow. That’s the shot that knocked Kennedy’s head back. Just like in the Zapruder film.”

  Amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder had stood on a pillar of the retaining wall of the nearby Dealey monument and filmed the President’s motorcade with his little Bell & Howell Zoomatic as the limo rolled by into carnage and history. Life magazine had published grisly frames from the home movie, making Zapruder rich and the public sick. But they hadn’t seen the worst of it: Flo’s Warren Commission source told her the complete film graphically depicted Kennedy’s head being thrown back, indicating a shot from the front, not from behind the President, where Oswald would have been, in a book depository window.

  She pointed to her red shoes and my Italian loafers. “Just here, by the fence, were footprints, and cigarette butts, like one or two people had been standing a long time.”

  “This is according to the cops?”

  “According to railroad workers on the overpass, who heard shots and saw puffs of smoke, and came running. Nate, the smell of cordite was in the air—Senator Yarborough said so, and any number of bystanders. People thought somebody was shooting at Kennedy from those bushes.”

  “Then how did the book depository get the attention?”

  “It didn’t at first. Cops right away focused on this parking lot. Dozens of police and bystanders rushed up here.”

  We walked around the fence at left and past the monument, and started down the two flights of steps that led to the wide sidewalk along Elm. Pausing at the cement landing between flights, Flo pointed to the center lane where an X quite literally marked the spot, like the ones superimposed on crime scene photos in the old true detective magazines.

  “That’s the head shot,” she said.

  “That’s a hell of distance from the book depository,” I said.

  “Something like eighty-five yards,” she said. She pointed down the street, toward the depository, to another X. “That’s the first shot, the neck shot. But it may have come from the Grassy Knoll, right where we were standing.”

  I gestured farther down. “Why didn’t Oswald shoot when the limo made that slow turn at the intersection?”

  “There are workers at the depository who say Oswald was downstairs in the second floor break room, so maybe he didn’t shoot at all.”

  “Well, I presume the cops gave him a paraffin test.” That was the process by which gunshot residue on skin and clothing was determined.

  She nodded. “They did, and it came out positive on his hands, and negative on his cheek.”

  “In
dicating he fired a handgun recently, but not a rifle. That suggests guilt in the Tippit shooting but not the assassination.”

  “So it would seem, but I’m told the FBI considers the paraffin test unreliable.”

  Then why had they been using it for decades?

  I cast my eyes around. Tall buildings, fences, and sewers—carte blanche for snipers. “If you’re right about the Grassy Knoll shooter, that means there were multiple shooters … and this is a perfect spot for triangular fire. What’s that building there?”

  “The Dal-Tex.”

  “That rooftop would be ideal.”

  “Prisoners in the jail, overlooking the Dal-Tex, saw a man on that roof … but I’m told they weren’t interviewed by the Commission.”

  I pointed here and there and around. “We’re looking at a kill zone where multiple shooters could fire from all sides. And the least likely source of a fatal shot is that book depository.”

  “Oswald claimed he was a patsy,” she said, smiling. “Maybe he was.”

  She’d obviously already made up her mind about that, but I now knew that whatever Oswald had been, he was just a cog in the complex wheel of a military-style operation.

  I said, “You’re sure you can get us in the book depository?”

  “This will be my third trip. The office manager loves me, Nate. It’s all about serious journalistic credibility.… That, and identifying the occasional ‘mystery guest’ on What’s My Line?” As she said that last bit, she was laughing.

  Someone was sobbing.

  We glanced toward the sound coming from the monument behind us and saw a young couple in their early twenties, the boy’s expression grave as he hugged the weeping girl to his chest. They were dressed like tourists, too. I hoped they would have more fun at the next attraction they took in.

  “Am I terrible, Nate?” Flo whispered, grabbing my arm. “Making light of this?”

  “You aren’t making light of this,” I said, patting her hand where it gripped me, “and I’m not, either. We’re just a pair of old pros at a crime scene. Anyway, there’s no ghosts here. It’s too goddamn sunny.”

  That seemed the only haunting aspect of the place—that it was just a small, rather spare-looking sun-washed park with a handful of cold-looking monuments and a patch of green cut through by traffic lanes, a humdrum city scene that in no way said Texas, much less tragedy.

  The Texas School Book Depository entrance on Elm was up six or seven steps to glass doors and a sign that said:

  NO ADMITTANCE

  EXCEPT ON

  OFFICIAL BUSINESS

  Those doors were unlocked, however, and took us into a very nondescript, wood-paneled reception area. We put our sunglasses away, and Flo checked in with the receptionist. Soon we were met by a manager—about forty, in horn-rimmed glasses and an off-the-rack brown suit—who was pleased and impressed to see his “friend” from TV stop by again. Flo introduced me, by name, as her assistant.

  Chatting with Flo about last night’s show (Henry Fonda was the “mystery guest”), he walked us cheerfully through typical drop-ceiling office space where young women and a few young men sat at metal desks, making phone calls or pounding typewriters, the din not unlike that of a newsroom. The manager walked us up several flights of stairs at the rear of the building, past the lunchroom where Oswald had been controversially spotted immediately after the shooting.

  On the ride up the service-type elevator, I asked the manager, “Is it true the original window in the sniper’s nest was taken out, as a sort of souvenir, by the building’s owner?”

  “Yes, sir, it is. Colonel Byrd displays it in his home.”

  “To what purpose?”

  He shrugged, and no trace of opinion could be discerned from his tone. “As a conversation piece, I assume.”

  With a grin, I asked, “This Colonel Byrd is one of your Texas oil tycoons?”

  “You could say that. He’s a co-owner of Ling Electronics, among other things. Admiral Byrd’s nephew, you know.”

  The elevator shuddered. We had reached the sixth floor, just as it was occurring to me that if this building had been controlled by a conspirator, that would provide an assassin (or assassins) easy access.

  To America this floor was history, but to the book depository, just warehouse space still in use (though no one was around right now but us) with boxes of books piled high and making corridors among the open rafters and beams and brick walls. Arched windows let in plenty of dust-mote-streaming light to reveal that the place was a fairly disorganized-looking, messy affair, the building a dingy nonentity, particularly considering its celebrity status among other American edifices.

  “Old building,” I said to the manager, as he led us toward the Elm Street side. “I assume the School Book Depository’s been here a good long while.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Heller. We only moved in last year. A few months before the tragedy, actually.”

  Wasn’t that interesting?

  The area near the window from which Oswald was said to have shot—the “sniper’s nest”—was literally roped off, with metal folding chairs as occasional hitching posts. Flo had told the manager we just wanted a brief look and he stood by patiently, a respectful distance away, while we stepped over the rope like gate-crashers.

  There wasn’t much to the nest—just a wall of books blocking any view of someone standing, or crouching, at the window, plus a two-box stack by a box propped on the sill, an apparent arrangement for a sniper to steady a rifle against them. Nearby was another book box that could have been used as a seat by Oswald, as he waited for his target to roll by.

  Flo was watching me; she’d seen all this before. “What do you think, Nate?”

  “I think it’s a farce. The idea of trying to shoot out that window with those boxes in the way, plus that water pipe by the window? Nuts.” I jerked a thumb to the left. “Can we check out the next window over?”

  “Of course.”

  It was just as I’d thought. This window was a view onto Houston meeting Elm, where the President’s limo had slowed almost to a stop. I pointed my finger where the car would have made its slow curving turn, thirty-five yards below.

  Bang.

  Oswald wouldn’t have needed a second shot from this perch. Or at least, I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have needed a rifle with a scope, either—I could have used my goddamn nine-millimeter Browning automatic. If it hadn’t been tucked away in the trunk of the Galaxie, I might have used it for a little dramatic show-and-tell for Flo’s benefit, although the depository office manager might not have dug it.

  “You may be right,” I told her, “about Oswald being a patsy. He sure as hell didn’t shoot Kennedy from that supposed nest—or if he did shoot, he sure as hell didn’t hit him.”

  She frowned at me in thought. “So that sniper’s nest—it’s all theatrics? To cover what the real murderers were up to in the … kill zone, you called it?”

  I nodded. “Oswald may have been a conspirator, and he may have been a nut, too, for all I know. But he was not a lone nut.”

  She was nodding slowly.

  Still at the window, I pointed down. “Anyone positioned in this building, intent on killing Kennedy, would have shot him when that limo made its left turn, with the target facing the shooter. You don’t wait till a target is going away from you, and nearly out of sight, before shooting.”

  “Somebody was seen shooting from the other window, by a number of witnesses. One or two identified Oswald.”

  “Well, I’m not saying Oswald or somebody didn’t shoot from that window. It only makes sense, though, one way.”

  “Which is?”

  “Multiple shooters. Your Grassy Knoll, for sure. Dal-Tex maybe, or some other tall-building rooftop.… Let’s let your nice friend over there get back to work.”

  We headed toward him, smiling. He smiled back.

  Quietly, Flo asked, “What do you suggest we do next, Nate?”

  I gave the sniper’s nest a dirty look as we p
assed it. “Something more worthwhile.”

  “Such as?”

  “Talk to some strippers.”

  * * *

  “Janet Mole Adams Bonney Cuffari Smallwood Conforto,” Janet said with a shrug, in response to Flo’s request for her full name. “What can I say? I been married a few times.”

  She tapped her cigarette into a tray and released twin dragon fumes of smoke from her nostrils. The redhead, who—like her questioner—had her pile of hair pulled back in a ponytail, was sitting in a booth in the Colony Club, well before opening … just two closer to the restrooms than Mac Wallace’s booth had been.

  Janet had agreed to talk to Flo and me, as well as to arrange for several other Carousel Club veterans to do the same, one of whom was due here later.

  I was on the other side of the booth sitting next to Flo, across from the lovely if slightly ill at ease Janet, and between us on the tabletop was a silver-and-black Sanyo micro-pack portable tape recorder, with reel-loaded cassettes that recorded twenty minutes, then flipped over for another twenty. It was like something out of James Bond.

  Janet was in a pale green blouse and darker green shorts, wearing minimal makeup. She looked good that way, but like the club around us, wasn’t done any favors by the lights being up. She was twenty-seven or -eight, and looked ten years older. She was smoking Salems.

  Flo asked, “How long have you known Jack Ruby?”

  “I never met Ruby before June of last year,” she said. “He came and caught my act at the Sho-Bar in New Orleans, and offered me a gig on the spot. Said he’d never seen a sexier act. Said he’d pay big money for me to headline for him, twice what he paid any other dancer.”

  I asked, “Doesn’t Carlos Marcello own the Sho-Bar?”