Don DeLillo - Libra

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.

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.

Some of the clubs stayed open Friday night. Jack closed the Carousel and Vegas. He was committed to closing for the weekend in honor of the President being shot. He vomited into a polyethylene bag he had somebody manufacture for his twistboards. Then he picked up the phone and called his roommate, George Senator.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"What am I doing? I'm sleeping."

"Schmuckhead. They killed our President."

"Jack, that was yesterday."

"We're going out to take pictures. Where's the Polaroid?"

"At the club."

"You know those Impeach signs? There's one around here someplace. I'm coming to pick you up."

"I want you to know. There's this constant interference of the time that I wake up and the time that you go to bed. Which don't match."

"Get dressed fast," Jack told him.

He found the camera and drove out to his apartment building. It was located over a freeway and looked like a motel that changed its mind. The whole scene was removable. George was sitting on the iron stairway in baggy clothes and slippers. They headed back downtown.

Jack explained the nature of the assignment.

First there was the ad in the Morning News. It said, Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas. A series of lies and smears. Not that Jack fully absorbed the points in the ad. It was the nasty tone he noticed most. And of course the black border. And of course the fact that the ad was signed by someone Bernard Weissman. A Jew or someone posing as a Jew to blacken the name of the Jews. Then it just happened that he drove past a billboard with three towering words on it. Impeach Earl Warren. The ad had a post-office box number. So did the billboard. Thinking about it in his mind, as he went over both incidents, Jack believed the number was the same.

"So I am trying to put the two together."

"You think the same person."

"Whereby the same person or group is behind both incidents. And since it is against the President, I am trying to take a crime reporter's frame of mind."

They drove all over the downtown fringe trying to find the Earl Warren billboard and check out the box number. Jack was sure there was conspiracy here. The John Birch Society or the Communist Party were the suspects uppermost. He had his pad and pencil to take down particulars.

That clean but lonely feeling when there are no other cars. The traffic lights changing just for you.

He started vomiting again on the Central Expressway. The way he did it was to open the door, right hand clamped on the steering wheel, and drop his head down to vomit on the road. He could tell where they were going by his view of the white line, which was only inches away. George was screaming at him to stop the car or give up the steering to him. Jack straightened up. He said don't worry, he'd done this as a kid growing up in the toughest streets of Chicago. It was part of how you survived. Then he leaned way over to vomit some more. He vomited half his life out the car door, due to these assaults on his emotions.

They found the billboard on Hall Street. George got out of the car and took three pictures with the flash. To Jack Ruby this was hunting down a major clue and acquiring physical evidence. Now they had to find a copy of the ad so they could compare the box numbers. Jack didn't know where he'd left his newspaper. They drove to the coffee shop at the Southland Hotel just to take a break from these excitements. The place was either just closing or just opening. An old bent Negro working a mop. They sat at the counter and there's a copy of the Morning News lying right there waiting. They looked at each other. Jack ripped through the pages and found the ad. George took out the Polaroids.