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.”
“Indicating 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.”