Things Don’t Add Up

Peter stared at the sixth-floor window. It was dark inside. He couldn’t tell whether he saw the outline of the book cartons used in reconstructing the sniper’s nest exhibit in the museum the county organized in the Depository—the outline could have been the corrugations of stains in the glass rather than in the cardboard. He couldn’t imagine shooting a man in cold blood, a man seated within inches of his wife. Not even the Mafia kill a man in the presence of family. Maybe he could kill if he were provoked and beside himself with passion. But he didn’t think he could hurt another person even if he were provoked. Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t provoked the morning of November 22—all the witnesses said Oswald conducted himself in his usual sullen manner. Peter immediately corrected himself. It wasn’t Oswald in the window that day. But someone most definitely fired a rifle from that window. Someone who was truly and thoroughly despicable stained the building with a permanent shame the sear of sunlight couldn’t scour.
 He walked along the Elm St. lawn toward the triple underpass. The declination in the street was deeper than the photographs in the books showed—as he descended, the School Book Depository rose in elevation behind him. He located the spot where Charles Brehm and his son watched the motorcade—the assassination was an awful event for a child to observe. He located the spot where Mary Moorman snapped the famous photograph of the Grassy Knoll at the moment of the fatal head shot—astute critics located an assassin in the shadows of her photograph. He aimed his camera and snapped photographs of the Knoll from the same perspective. He walked a little farther to the spot where James Altgens took a similarly famous photograph—in this photograph President Kennedy’s hands are clenched and his arms are raised at shoulder level. A bullet has ripped through his throat and he has three seconds of life left.
 When the light at the corner turned to red Peter crossed Elm St. at the exact place the limousine reached when the third shot took the president’s life. He wondered what sight President Kennedy saw as consciousness poured out the side of his head. Was it the back of Governor Connolly’s seat? Was it Nellie Connelly reaching to her husband? Was it the train overpass? Did the president see the shock and surprise that contorted the faces of the eyewitnesses on the tracks? Was it the Grassy Knoll? Did President Kennedy see the assassin behind the picket fence? But that wasn’t possible—the muzzle blast and the arrival of the bullet would have been instantaneous. Was it Jacqueline’s face?  Did he leave life with his wife’s face closing the light in his eyes?
 Peter paused in the street for a moment—it was only for a moment as the light changed to green and the traffic charged to obliterate foolhardy pedestrians. The last sight the president saw of life was likely the traffic sign that advised drivers to “Keep Right” for “Fort Worth” and the “Turnpike.” The message listed a location considerably closer than where the president was going.
 Peter stepped on the curb and onto the lip of the sewer at the base of the Grassy Knoll. He bent and grabbed a folded paper from the street before the wake of the traffic swept it into the drain. The content of the paper surprised him as he unfolded it and smoothed the creases. The paper announced notice of a Catholic Mass for the repose of the soul of President Kennedy. The Mass was to be held that evening at 7:30 at St. Jude’s Chapel on Main St. He was moved by the notice and remembered a faith he lost in college. Warren Commission critics cared deeply about solving the president’s murder. He doubted any critic considered President Kennedy’s soul or said a prayer that it rested in peace. He remembered the Latin was requiescat in pace. It embarrassed him to realize he never said a prayer for the president in the months he studied the case.
 He thought he would attend. It had been a long time since he was inside a church. First he would have to find out what was going on in the convention at 7:30. If there was something important he would have to postpone attending evening Mass. He would have to find out the morning schedule. He was sure he could make Mass in the morning.
 Coming to Dallas President Kennedy gave up the most precious possession. Peter gave up a lot as well. It wasn’t life, it was his better life with Aretha. He was a book person and a book had led him to stand by his lonesome on a sewer grating in Dealey Plaza. All his life he had been surrounded by books. He owned a thousand. He gave away double that number. Finally, it happened. A book changed his life. It wasn’t a great book, it wasn’t a great genre, but it made a fatal difference.
 The Black Hand in Dealey Plaza was the title. The subtitle left no doubt of the theme—The Mafia Murdered President Kennedy. The author was Maximilian Glosory, who he subsequently learned was a prominent researcher and lifetime critic of the Warren Commission. He liked the title. He liked the author’s name even better. He thought the author’s name sold the book. He found the book in a rolling cart outside the Strand on 12th St. in Manhattan. It cost 48 cents. The pages of the book had yellowed. There were corner pieces missing and price stickers from several bookstores pasted on the cover. Aretha was with him the evening he bought the book. He recalled how amused she was. Neither of them predicted that the book would ruin their lives.
 He read The Black Hand in Dealey Plaza from cover-to-cover. He regretted he never read Aretha’s master’s thesis. She would have earned her master’s by now. She would have found a good position in a college. He was sure she found another boyfriend—she was an ebullient type who wouldn’t stay single for long. He thought he should look her up and send her a card or a gift. A gift of flowers at the least. He spent a lot of time studying with her the first year she was in the graduate program at Richmond University on Staten Island. She owed him a lot. He owed her even more. Maybe he could make it up to her.
 Peter slowly walked up the stairs of the Grassy Knoll. Large bushes grew on both sides of the stockade fence. Trees cast the path in shadow. It was darker on the Knoll than on the sidewalk. He paused midway on the path where three men stood at the moment of the assassination. The Moorman photograph captured their surprise. Their hands are raised. They’re bent forward in disbelief. The photograph doesn’t show details, but it’s not difficult to impress startles on their faces.
 He stepped behind the fence and squeezed between cars. He forgot that the site was a parking lot for railroad employees. It was a weekday and the lot was full. It wasn’t empty like in the pictures in the books—those pictures must have been taken on a weekend. He walked to the rear of the stockade fence. If the critics were right, he stood in the place where the assassin stood. But which assassin? Some critics claimed that the Grassy Knoll assassin was a Dallas policeman. Other critics claimed that he was a renegade intelligence officer. Still other critics claimed that he was an intelligence officer who wasn’t renegade but acting in the line of duty. For that matter the assassin might have been a Mafia soldato from New Orleans or a hit man from Marseilles or a seriously vengeful Cuban operative from the Bay of Pigs debacle. Peter was alone behind the fence—the multitude of ghostly assassins made it a crowded place.