Max Collins - Ask Not

“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.”

“That rooftop would be ideal.”

“Prisoners in the jail, overlooking the Dal-Tex, saw a man on that roof... but I’m told they weren’t interviewed by the Commission.”

I pointed here and there and around. “We’re looking at a kill zone where multiple shooters could fire from all sides. And the least likely source of a fatal shot is that book depository.”

“Oswald claimed he was a patsy,” she said, smiling. “Maybe he was.”

She’d obviously already made up her mind about that, but I now knew that whatever Oswald had been, he was just a cog in the complex wheel of a military-style operation.

I said, “You’re sure you can get us in the book depository?”

“This will be my third trip. The office manager loves me, Nate. It’s all about serious journalistic credibility... That, and identifying the occasional ‘mystery guest’ on What’s My Line? ” As she said that last bit, she was laughing.

Someone was sobbing.

We glanced toward the sound coming from the monument behind us and saw a young couple in their early twenties, the boy’s expression grave as he hugged the weeping girl to his chest. They were dressed like tourists, too. I hoped they would have more fun at the next attraction they took in.

“Am I terrible, Nate?” Flo whispered, grabbing my arm. “Making light of this?”

“You aren’t making light of this,” I said, patting her hand where it gripped me, “and I’m not, either. We’re just a pair of old pros at a crime scene. Anyway, there’s no ghosts here. It’s too goddamn sunny.”

That seemed the only haunting aspect of the place — that it was just a small, rather spare-looking sun-washed park with a handful of cold-looking monuments and a patch of green cut through by traffic lanes, a humdrum city scene that in no way said Texas, much less tragedy.

The Texas School Book Depository entrance on Elm was up six or seven steps to glass doors and a sign that said:

Those doors were unlocked, however, and took us into a very nondescript, wood-paneled reception area. We put our sunglasses away, and Flo checked in with the receptionist. Soon we were met by a manager — about forty, in horn-rimmed glasses and an off-the-rack brown suit — who was pleased and impressed to see his “friend” from TV stop by again. Flo introduced me, by name, as her assistant.

Chatting with Flo about last night’s show (Henry Fonda was the “mystery guest”), he walked us cheerfully through typical drop-ceiling office space where young women and a few young men sat at metal desks, making phone calls or pounding typewriters, the din not unlike that of a newsroom. The manager walked us up several flights of stairs at the rear of the building, past the lunchroom where Oswald had been controversially spotted immediately after the shooting.

On the ride up the service-type elevator, I asked the manager, “Is it true the original window in the sniper’s nest was taken out, as a sort of souvenir, by the building’s owner?”

“Yes, sir, it is. Colonel Byrd displays it in his home.”

“To what purpose?”

He shrugged, and no trace of opinion could be discerned from his tone. “As a conversation piece, I assume.”