Max Collins - Ask Not

“Sure,” I said. I turned to Flo. “See if you can reclaim our booth, or find a new one.”

Flo nodded and went back inside.

Janet took my hand and walked me around the building, skirting cabanas curved around one side of the pool, and across manicured grounds overlooking the wooded view of the nearby park. The parking lot was filled with luxury vehicles, including her white Caddy convertible, which awaited, its top up. I opened the driver-side door for her and she got behind the wheel.

“You really do care about me, don’t you?” she said, looking up at me, the paleness of her pretty face emphasized by moon- and starlight. Her blue eyes, with their oriental cast, seemed to stroke my face.

“I do,” I admitted.

She reached over and unzipped me and fished out the part of me that was most interested. I glanced around. The parking lot was empty but for a couple on the other side, drunkenly stumbling toward their car. I was still looking in that direction when her mouth slowly, moist and warm, slid down the shaft, about halfway, and then began an increasing tempo, as she went deeper and faster.

I was almost there when she grinned up at me and asked, “Would you like to get in back of the Caddy? Nice and roomy.”

What did she think I was, some high-school kid?

She slipped off the shoulder straps of her fringed go-go dress and tugged the thing to her waist and her small, pert breasts, thrust toward me by her prominent rib cage, met the cool air with a sharpening of their points, which were almost as red as her lipsticked mouth.

“I wouldn’t mind,” I said.

I wasn’t gone long enough to be suspicious — fifteen minutes maybe, and it wasn’t like Flo and I were having a thing. It was strictly a working relationship, although admittedly with a certain intimacy suggestive of what we had once been to each other.

We didn’t dance again and conversation slowed. I’d risked a third gimlet, and she was on maybe her fifth martini, when I suggested we head back to the Statler. The first half of the drive back was silent, until she stopped pouting about whatever she imagined had happened (even if it had) and apparently started thinking about her story again.

She said, “Could somebody have been impersonating Oswald, at some of these sightings?”

She was referring to a handful of stories we’d heard from witnesses, in which the supposed assassin appeared to be purposefully attracting attention prior to the killing.

Albert Bogard, car salesman at Downtown Lincoln-Mercury, said that on November 9, Oswald test-drove a vehicle, Bogard riding along, as was customary. Oswald zoomed around the freeway at seventy MPH in a new Mercury Comet, as if trying to make an impression. Back at the showroom, Oswald — he wrote “Lee Oswald” on the back of a business card of Bogard’s — said he was interested but didn’t have the money right now. But a job coming up soon would make him flush, and he’d be back. (On the other hand, Oswald’s widow, Marina, had told the authorities that her late husband did not know how to drive.)

Wednesday morning, November 20, a heavyset young man and a young woman entered the office of American Aviation Company at Red Bird Air Field, on the Dallas outskirts; waiting in their car, in the passenger seat, was a man in his early twenties. They approached American Aviation’s owner, Wayne January, wanting to rent a small plane for Friday afternoon. They would be flying to southeast Mexico, near Cuba, and asked detailed questions about the available Cessna — how far could it go without refueling, what was its speed, how did it perform in certain wind conditions? It sounded like a recipe more for hijacking than rental, and January refused their business. He watched the irritated couple join the man in the car, January’s suspicions (perhaps purposefully) aroused. He took a good hard look at the sullen young man who hadn’t come in. Later he recognized that man as Lee Harvey Oswald, or someone who closely resembled him.

Several employees and patrons of the Sports Drome Rifle Range reported seeing Oswald behaving (in the words of one) in a “loud and obnoxious” manner. In early October, Malcolm Price helped Oswald adjust the scope on an Italian Mauser rifle. On November 17, Garland Slack said Oswald was next to him on the range, and Oswald suddenly began shooting at Slack’s target instead of his own, in a rapid-fire fashion. When Slack objected, Oswald gave him “a dirty look I’ll never forget.”

On the morning of November 21, a hitchhiker carrying a brown-paper-wrapped package (about four by four and a half, containing “curtain rods”) was picked up by refrigeration repair man Ralph Yates. Conversationally, he asked if Yates had ever been to the Carousel Club, and later wondered aloud if the President on his upcoming visit could be assassinated by a sniper in a high window. The passenger got off at the corner of Elm and Houston. Yates discussed the disturbing incident with a co-worker before the assassination, after which he took his tale to the FBI.

“It’s possible someone was trying to incriminate Oswald,” I said, “before the fact.”

“With a double ? That’s crazy.”

“LBJ has a double, if Madeleine Brown is to be believed. Worked for Mussolini and Hitler, didn’t it?”

“Nate, that’s spy stuff. How would a nobody like Lee Harvey Oswald get caught up in something like that?”

“Who knows?” I said. “It’s a conspiracy involving some high-level people. Anything is possible, I guess.”

I couldn’t tell her what Bobby Kennedy had confirmed: that Oswald was an asset of both the FBI and CIA, and that the latter agency was eminently capable of such a deception.

“Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, very coherent for a woman who’d downed five martinis, “it explains how Deputy Craig could see Oswald getting picked up in a station wagon when other witnesses put him on a bus and then a taxi.”

“And maybe,” I said, wishing I could say more, “it explains how an assassin resembling Oswald could be at a window on the sixth floor of the book depository when the real Lee H. was sitting in the lunchroom, sipping a Coke.”

“Did you have sex with her?”

“Huh?”

“That vulgar stripper! Don’t deny it. I can smell her on you.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said.

Guess I should have washed up before joining her back at the club.

I dropped Flo at the front of the Statler without a word, expecting her to have gone up to her room by the time I got back from the parking lot across the street, but she was waiting just inside.

“You walked her to her car,” she said. Her big blue eyes were wide in a porcelain face as emotionless as a bisque baby’s. “You were worried about her. Can’t you at least show me to my room?”

“Sure.”

We got on the elevator and she stepped away from me, putting some distance between us. We were alone in the car.

We’d passed a few floors when she said, “Take me to your room... not for sex! I told you there’s a man in my life. I don’t want you and I don’t need you, understand? But... please?”

Wasn’t this the goddamnedest argument I’d ever had?

“Sure,” I said.

She came over and grabbed on to my arm with both of hers and pressed herself close. “I’m afraid. All this talk of... I’m afraid. You were afraid for her, weren’t you? Don’t you think that, that... cleanup crew of yours might want to do me harm?”

“Could,” I admitted.

So we went to my room. She sat on the twin bed currently in its couch formation, with cushions propped against the wall. I turned on a table lamp, giving us not much more light than Club 3525.

“What do you have to drink?” she asked. She was sitting with her legs tucked up under her, heels kicked off, her polka-dot dress hiked, plenty of nice leg showing. But at my age, if she was here for sex, she’d better be prepared to wait a while.