In his cell he thought about the ways he could play it. He could play it either way. It all depended on what they knew.
He had the middle cell in the maximum-security block in the jail area. They kept the cells on either side of him empty. There were two guards on constant watch in the locked corridor.
Every time they brought him back to the cell, they made him take off his clothes. He sat in the cell in his underwear. They were afraid he'd use his clothes to harm himself.
A bunk bed, a chipped sink, a sloped hole in the floor. No flush toilet. He had to use a hole.
They stared up his ass. They came and shaved some hair from his genitals, two men from the FBI, placing the samples carefully in plastic baggies.
The revolution must be a school of unfettered thought.
In the interrogation room there were Dallas police, Secret Service, FBI, Texas Rangers, county sheriffs, postal inspectors, a U.S. marshal. No tape recorder or stenographer.
No, he didn't own a rifle.
No, he hadn't shot anyone.
He was not the man in the photograph they'd found in Ruth Paine's garage-the man with a rifle, a pistol and left-wing journals. The photograph was obviously doctored. They'd taken his head and superimposed it on someone else's body. He told them he'd worked for a graphic-arts firm and had personal knowledge of these techniques. The only thing in the picture that belonged to him was the face and they'd gotten it somewhere else.
He denied knowing an A. J. Hidell.
No, he'd never been to Mexico City.
No, he wouldn't take a polygraph.
They asked him if he believed in a deity. He told them he was a Marxist. But not a Marxist-Leninist.
It was pretty clear they didn't get the distinction. Whenever they took him down, he heard his name on the radios and TVs. Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded extremely strange. He didn't recognize himself in the full intonation of the name. The only time he used his middle name was to write it on a form that had a space for that purpose. No one called him by that name. Now it was everywhere. He heard it coming from the walls. Reporters called it out. Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded odd and dumb and made up. They were talking about somebody else.
The men in Stetsons took him back through the crowds to the jail elevator. He held his cuffed hands high, making a fist. Flashbulbs and hoarse cries. They kept shouting questions, shouting right over his answers. The elevator climbed to the cell block.
In the clink. Back in stir. Up the river. In the big house. Lights flicker when they pull the switch. So long, Ma.
Rain-slick streets.
Courses at night in economic theory.
He sat in the cell and waited for the next event. He knew it was late. He pictured Ruth Paine's street, the lawns and sycamores. Was Marina in bed, scared, sorry, thinking she might have shown him more respect, seen the seriousness of his ideas? He wanted to call her. He pictured her reaching for the phone, a drowsy arm warm from the sheets, and the trustful mumbled hello, her eyes still closed.
Never think it is your fault when I am the one. I am always the one.
Now they were coming to take him down again. He believed they would release him once he settled on the right story to tell them. The way the Russians released Francis Gary Powers. The way they released the Yale professor they arrested for spying. Trumped-up charges. Screw is slang for prison guard.
They took him to the assembly room in the basement. This was the fourth time today they'd brought the prisoner down. Three times for lineups. Now it was midnight and they wanted him to meet the press in a formal and controlled exchange.
Hell and bedlam. Crowds jammed clear back out to the hall. Reporters still trying to press in, just arrived from the East Coast and Europe, faces leaking sweat, ties undone. The prisoner stood on the stage in front of the one-way screen used for lineups. His hands were cuffed behind him. Photographers closed in, crab-walking beneath him. Reporters shouting out to him. A moan of obscure sounds that resembled charismatic speech. The chief of police could not get into the room. He tried to edge his way, prying people apart with his hands. He was concerned for the safety of his prisoner.
A burly man moved through the crowd introducing out-of-town reporters to Dallas cops. He handed out a brand-new card he'd printed for his club. Who could it be but Jack Ruby? It was a card he was proud of, with a line drawing of a champagne glass and a bare-ass girl in black stockings. It was a come-on to the average patron, but with class. Nobody challenged Jack's presence in the assembly room. He had the ability to carry a domineering look into a building. He was looking for a radio reporter named Joe Long because he had a dozen corned-beef sandwiches out in the car which he planned to take to the crew at KLIF working into the night to report this frantic tale to the unbelieving city. Instead he spotted Russ Knight, the Weird Beard, and even arranged an interview, clearing the way for Russ so he could tape the District Attorney for local radio. Jack was playing newsman and tipster tonight. He was in complete charge of mentally reacting. He had a pencil and pad at the ready, just in case he caught a remark he could give to NBC.
That's it, boys, take the little rat's picture.
It mulled over him that he might go to the Times Herald later and see how things were going in the composing room. He had a sample twistboard in the car and he thought he might treat the people to a demonstration, just for the frolic of the moment. It was always a popular sight, Jack doing a rolling rumba to show off the board.
7
The horror of the day swept over him. He began to sob, talking to a newsman by the back wall.
Ask the weasel why he did it, boys.
The reporters wouldn't stop shouting. The prisoner tried to answer a question or make a statement but no one could hear him. It was a riot in a police station. Too crowded here, a danger, and the detectives moved in to end the session before it even started.
They took him back to the cell. He stripped to his underwear and sat on the bunk, thinking, feeling the noise of the assembly room still resonating in his body. A cell is the basic state, the crude truth of the world.
He could play it either way, depending on what they could prove or couldn't prove. He wasn't on the sixth floor at all. He was in the lunchroom eating lunch. The victim of a total frame. They'd been rigging the thing for years, watching him, using him, creating a chain of evidence with the innocent facts of his life. Or he could say he was only partly guilty, set up to take the blame for the real conspirators. Okay, he fired some shots from the window. But he didn't kill anyone. He never meant to fire a fatal shot. It was never his intention to cause an actual fatality. He was only trying to make a political point. Other people were responsible for the actual killing. They fixed it so he would seem the lone gunman. They superimposed his head on someone else's body. Forged his name on documents. Made him a dupe of history.
He would name every name if he had to.
In Dallas
Dealey Plaza is symmetrical. A matching pair of colonnades, stockade fences, triangle lawns and reflecting pools-split down the middle by Main Street, which shoots straight out of the triple underpass into downtown Dallas. To one side of Main, Elm Street curves out of the underpass and proceeds at a gradual elevation past the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Oswald stood in the sixth-floor window with a rifle in his hands. To the other side of Main, Commerce Street carries incoming traffic eastward past the Carousel Club, six blocks into the downtown core, where Jack Ruby sits in his office at 4:00 A. M. cursing the smirky bastard who killed our President.
He was alone and vomiting. He vomited the meals of the last three weeks. Crying for five minutes, vomiting for five minutes. He couldn't bear to hear the name Oswald one more time. Even off in his own rnind the name was waiting at the end of every shrunken thought.