“Mr. President, I’ve been unable to change my thinking on this matter…”
“Look here, Earl,” said Johnson, his demeanor radically different from the day before. “I don’t know who the fuck killed Jack Kennedy. I’d swear it was those goddamn Cuban sonsofbitches, if somebody could get me anything on it, any evidence at all. Kennedy tried to kill him-Castro, you know that? More than once as I hear it. Shit, too bad it didn’t work. And I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that damn sonofabitch Castro just had enough of it. You know-fuck me? Fuck you! And just had him blown away, shot down. The President of the United States. And in Texas to boot, just to make me look bad!” President Johnson grumbled, something Warren couldn’t make out, then he took a deep breath and appeared to gain control of himself once more. “Like I said, Earl, I just plain don’t know. It could have been anybody, from anywhere, for any damn reason. Christ, ain’t nobody knows who did it! I’ve asked. I’ve asked ’em all-FBI, CIA, Joint Chiefs. I’d ask the damn tooth fairy if I thought she could tell me something. No one’s got an answer worth shit. I’ll tell you what we do know. What we do know is that Lee Harvey Oswald is taking the fall on this and he’s already put dead and gone. The American people will be reassured that the man who killed their President was caught and that he acted alone. You got that? I mean A-L-O-N-E, alone, by hisself! Maybe he was crazy, maybe not. I don’t give a flying fuck. But he was alone! Do you hear me?” Earl Warren heard him. He heard him loud and clear. “I ain’t taking the country down that road to ruin,” the President continued. He rose from his chair and walked around the desk and right over to where Warren sat. He stood directly above him, looking straight down into his face. “If people can’t be told what happened-by their government-and damn well believe it, then how the fuck are we gonna make them believe anything else? Goddamnit, Earl, we run this country because people think we know what the fuck we’re doing! And you’re gonna help make sure it stays that way. Do you understand me?”
Earl Warren took a deep breath and agreed to head a Commission that would bear his name. He thought about Judge Sarah Hughes for just a moment. Maybe she didn’t get such a bad deal after all. My God! read the entry in his diary. Did Oswald act alone? As Johnson spoke to me, a chill ran up my back. My heart beat so fast I thought it would burst. Oswald may have had nothing to do with this!
In a private conversation eight and a half years later, preserved on a tape from May 1972, and never meant for public disclosure, President Johnson’s successor, Richard M. Nixon, said of the Warren Commission report, “It was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated.”
PART ONE
Well searching/Yeah I’m gonna searching/
Searching every which-a-way yeh yeh.
“It’s my nephew,” she said.
Walter and Conchita Crystal had strolled to the end of the pier. No ferry was in dock. No crowd of tourists waited for their return trip to St. Thomas. They were alone. The sun was high in the sky, very hot. Walter wore a plain, brown baseball cap, one without writing or a logo. It was a soft cap. It hugged the contours of his head closely. The brim kept the sun from his eyes and his long hair covered his neck. Conchita looked at him. Sensitive as she already suspected him to be, she saw too a roughness about Walter Sherman, an appealing and attractive independence to his personality, a streak of unpredictability coinciding amicably enough with an obvious strength of character.
“Do you remember Charles Bronson?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“You remind me of him.” She smiled, this time almost as an afterthought, and sheepishly looked away, giggling. Had she known Bronson? Had she liked him? Walter didn’t know if she meant it as a compliment or not. He wasn’t sure himself. Charles Bronson?
“What about your nephew?” he asked.
“He’s not safe. He’s in great danger.”
“I thought you said this was a matter of your life and death, Ms. Crystal.”
“Please call me Chita.”
“I’m not sure I know you well enough, yet.”
“Well, whatever you prefer. It is a matter of life or death for me. I’d die if anything happened to him.”
“That doesn’t exactly qualify, you know. But I’m already here, aren’t I? Why don’t you tell me what it is that’s on your mind. Maybe you’ll find a way after all to make it fit.”
She began at the beginning-her beginning. At first, Walter wasn’t sure why. Conchita Crystal, she told him, was born Linda Morales, to a single mother in Puerto Rico. Her mother gave her up at birth. She had been a sickly baby. Particularly disturbing was a skin condition that looked awful and smelled worse. When she told him that, Walter was hard pressed not to blurt out how beautiful her skin was now, like creamy caramel or cafe latte, and how wonderful she smelled. He almost did, nearly started to, but caught himself just in time. Her skin, she said, did not begin to clear up until she was almost nine years old. Thus, the youngster Linda Morales was not an attractive product on the adoption market. She kicked around foster homes until landing in an orphanage, that passed for a Catholic Church school, near Ponce, Puerto Rico. Four years later, at fifteen, she ran away, somehow survived on the streets, and found her way into the music and club scene of San Juan. It went without saying-and she didn’t say it to Walter-that Linda Morales must have been quite a beauty, easily able to look grown-up even at that tender age.
The rest Walter knew as well as anyone who ever read a paper, looked at a fashion magazine, saw a movie, watched TV or listened to the radio. By seventeen, the girl who had been Linda Morales had become Conchita Crystal, Latin pop singing idol. By twenty she was a leading model, admired by teenage girls and young women the world over and dreamed of by teenage boys and many men much older. The little girl no one wanted, the one who looked terrible and smelled bad, was now desired by everyone. She married twice, both times in her twenties, and over the years Conchita Crystal was publicly involved with at least a dozen movie and rock stars. She was a favorite of the show business tabloids. For three decades they proclaimed exclusive, inside information about her rumored affairs, broken marriages, secret marriages, and painful disappointments. If she had been pregnant half as many times as they said she was, it would have been a miracle, much of it immaculately conceived. Almost nothing written about her was true. The fact was she had never been pregnant and never had a child. Of the men she was publicly involved with, many were strictly business, all done for the publicity. Of course, some relationships were real. Telling the difference, in the press, was a task. Her most private attachments, including one that began in her late twenties and continued to this day, were just that-private. She worked hard and spent a lot of money to keep them that way. Walter assumed she had a private, personal social life and further assumed neither he nor the press knew anything about it. Whoever he was, lucky man, he thought.
The movies made her a superstar at barely twenty, and despite the remark she made to Walter back in Billy’s, he knew her popularity was still extraordinary. Sure, she didn’t work as often or as hard as she used to, but after all, he figured, she’s no kid anymore. Plus, the stories of her wealth were legendary. And while the stories of her spending were also, surely she didn’t have to work at the pace she once did.
“Very impressive,” said Walter, when it appeared she was finished. “And a story I’m not surprised to hear. Even from a distance you’ve always seemed like a strong woman. You must have been a strong girl too.”
“I looked for my mother,” Conchita Crystal said. “I searched everywhere. I hired people who combed records, anything, anything at all, to tell me about my mother. I should have known about you then.” Walter saw tears dripping from her right eye, sliding down the bridge of her nose. Another tear swelled up in the corner of her left eye. She sniffled, the back of her index finger rubbing across her upper lip. It brushed gently against her nostrils.