He went across the street and filled out the form to send the money. The clerk time-stamped the receipt 11:17. Jack was even later than he thought. For the first time he put a little hurry in his day and in less than four minutes he stood in the dark garage below police headquarters.
If I get in this easy, it means they want me to do it.
He walked across the deserted parking area toward a pair of unmarked Fords waiting in the space between the ramps. He heard voices saying, "Here he comes, here he comes," and at first he thought they meant him. He walked up a slight incline and stood at the edge of a group of reporters. Vault noises, voices, hollow bouncing sounds filled the areaway, car engines, clanking equipment. There were plainclothes cops and white-hatted brass everywhere. Detectives lined the walls leading from the jail office to the ramps. Russell was standing right there but Jack didn't have time to catch his eye. Most of the newsmen and three TV cameras were clustered on the ramp to Jack's right, leading to Main Street. An armored bank truck waited at the top of the other ramp.
"Here he comes."
"Here he comes."
"Here he comes."
The timing was split-second, the location was pinpoint. Spotlights came on. Everything was black and white, highlights and heavy shadows. He saw a cluster of police come out of the jail office escorting the prisoner, who wore a dark sweater and looked like nobody from nowhere.
There was a movement of reporters. Then flashbulbs, shouts echoing off the walls, and it all seemed strange to Jack, already seen, and he stood in the artificial glare in the dank basement with the ramps stained by exhaust smoke and a charge of octane in the air.
Here he comes.
Jack came out of the crowd, seeing everything happen in advance. He took the revolver out of his pocket, bootlegging it, palming it on his hip. A path opened up, There was no one between him and Oswald. Jack showed the gun. He took a last long stride and fired once, a mid-body shot from inches away. Oswald's arms crossed on his body and his eyes went tight. He made a sound, a deep grunt, heavy and desolate. He began his fall through the world of hurt.
A tumble of bodies over the gunman, all these men in Stetsons heavy-breathing, struggling for the weapon, someone's knee em-placed in Jack's gut. He was at a loss to understand their attitude. None of this was necessary if they knew him. He felt even worse, hearing Russell Shively's voice pitch above a dozen other noises, saying, "Jack, Jack, you son of a bitch."
A shot.
There's a shot. Oswald has been shot. Oswald has been shot. A shot rang out. Mass confusion here. All the doors have been locked. Holy mackerel.
A shot rang out as he was led to the car. A shot.
Mass confusion here. Rolling and fighting. • As he was being led out. Now he's being led back. Oswald shot.
The police have the entire area blocked off. Everybody stay back is the yell, is the yell. A stocky man with a hat on. Oswald doubled over. One of the wildest scenes. Screaming red lights. A man in a gray hat. Somehow he got in. The police protection and the police cordons.
People. Policemen.
Here is young Oswald now.
He is being hustled out.
He is lying flat.
There is a gunshot wound in his lower abdomen.
He is white.
Oswald white.
Lying in the ambulance.
His head is back.
He is unconscious.
Dangling.
His hand is dangling over the edge of the stretcher.
And now the ambulance is moving out.
Flashing red lights.
Young Oswald rushed out.
He is white, white.
Remember the ambulance in Atsugi, camouflage-green, wavering in the heat haze on the tarmac, and the pilot climbing out?
Lee didn't feel real good. First they shot him, then they tried to give him artificial respiration. He learned in Marine training this is the last thing you do for a man with abdominal injuries.
He could see himself shot as the camera caught it. Through the pain he watched TV. The siren made that panicky sound of high speed in the streets, although he had no sense of movement. A man spoke close to him, saying if he had anything he wanted to say he was going to have to say it now. Through the pain, through the losing of sensation except where it hurt, Lee watched himself react to the augering heat of the bullet.
Remember how the pilot looked, a spaceman in a helmet and rubber suit?
Everything was leaving him, all sensation at the edges breaking up in space. He knew he was still in the ambulance but couldn't hear the siren any longer or the voice of the man who wanted him to speak, a friendly type Texan by the sound of him. The only thing left was the mocking pain, the picture of the twisted face on TV. Die and hell in Hidell. He watched in a darkish room, someone's TV den.
The falling away of things we carry around with us, twilight and chimney smoke. What is metal doing in his body?
He was in pain. He knew what it meant to be in pain. All you had to do was see TV. Arm over his chest, mouth in a knowing oh. The pain obliterated words, then thought. There was nothing left to him but the pathway of the bullet. Penetration of the spleen, stomach, aorta, kidney, liver and diaphragm. There was nothing left but the barest consciousness of bullet. Then the bullet itself, the copper, lead and antimony. They'd introduced metal into his body. This is what caused the pain.
But remember the men watching the jet take off? Could hardly believe how quick it lost itself in mist.
They logged him in at Parkland at 11:42. Chief complaint, gunshot wound.
The heart was seen to be flabby and not beating at all. No effective heartbeat could be instituted. The pupils were fixed and dilated. There was no retinal blood flow. There was no respiratory effort. No effective pulse could be maintained. Expired: 13:07. Two sponges missing when body closed.
Aerospace.
It is the white nightmare of noon, high in the sky over Russia. Me-too and you-too. He is a stranger, in a mask, falling.
If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act. But maybe not. Nicholas Branch thinks he knows better. He has learned enough about the days and months preceding November 22, and enough about the twenty-second itself, to reach a determination that the conspiracy against the President was a rambling affair that succeeded in the short term due mainly to chance. Deft men and fools, ambivalence and fixed will and what the weather was like. Branch not only has material resulting from the Agency's internal investigations-Everett and Parmenter cooperated to varying degrees-but he also has key information about the last stages of the plot derived from sources inside Alpha 66.