"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (33 page)

“Who sent you?” Captain Valle screeched into Lee's ear, he seated in a rough wooden frame chair, hands bound behind his back, unable to even wriggle when the lash came down again.

“No one. I swear, it was our own crazy idea—“

Once more, Valle slashed the whip against Lee's naked back.

I must not break, I must not break, I must not ...

*

To keep from screaming while incarcerated, particularly on occasions when Johnny Handsome and Dick Tracy were escorted out for joint interrogation and torture, Lee made conversation with the Cubans. The red-bearded shrimper, an odd fellow, marched around his cell's borders, reciting poetry. He introduced himself as ‘Cavarez,' an ardent anti-Castro democrat. Though he now worked as a cleaner of fish at the docks, he'd been educated at university and briefly employed as a grade-school teacher before the revolution. Cavarez, if that was his name, insisted anyone whose eyes and mind had been opened by a wide array of books could never be seduced by simplistic Red propaganda.

“And you? I hear your companions refer to you as Lee. I thought you might be Chinese
.
What brought you here, my friend?”

Even as Lee opened his mouth to speak his mind he realized what was going on. These men were plants! The coincidence of them brought to El Principe precisely as the three Americans were interred strained credulity. At that moment when they were at their most vulnerable, these Cubans—doubtless spies for Castro, so loyal they were willing to undergo torture if that proved necessary to cultivate the attempted assassins and seduce one into spilling the beans—were government agents.

His eyes filling with anger, Lee turned and stepped away. When his companions returned, Lee disclosed his suspicions.

“Of course. How did I not see spot that at once?”

“Great goin', Lee. You just saved our friggin' necks!”

They rolled over and went to sleep. When the Americans woke the next morning, each privately wondering how he could possibly make it through another day here, all noticed that the adjoining cell was now empty. Whether the Cubans really had been anti-Castro and were taken away for execution, or as spies for Castro they had passed on word to Captain Valle that their cover was blown and so excused, Lee would never know for certain.

Shortly eight guards, wielding rifles, arrived. The leader unlocked the cell door, signaling for all to follow. Out they went, back down the hallway, then the huge corridor, finally out of the fortress into the morning air. They marched back down the path, crossing both drawbridges, then were loaded into a canvas-covered police truck similar to the one they'd arrived in.

This is it! Either they take us out to a field and shoot us down or they bring us to the Cessna and let us go. Hey, I'd even prefer the former if it means leaving this prison forever.

It proved to be the latter. They were ordered to step out of the truck in the field where Dick Tracy had left the plane a week earlier. At gunpoint they were ordered to board. The Cessna had been refueled. Their pilot started up the engine.

“Goodbye,” the squad leader waved with an ironic smile that made clear it would not be wise for them ever to return.

Two hours later they descended to Miami's Tamiami airport.

During the flight, Lee wondered if either Dick Tracy or Johnny Handsome had during their previous joint interrogation broken down and admitted they were CIA and Mafia, this reported to Castro who, fearful of both, decided that discretion had to be the better part of valor, as the Bard had written 350 years earlier, and set them free out of fear. Still, if Lee learned anything at all from the ordeal, it was to keep his mouth shut.

They reported to George, apologizing for the mission's failure. He poo-poohed such talk, insisting their attempt had been noble and had been considered unlikely to succeed if well worth the try. They were heroes and would be treated as such.

*

Following five days of R and R in Miami, during which time Lee fell in love with the city, particularly after making the rounds with Johnny Rosselli, he began his trek back to Russia. This time he followed precisely the same round-about route that brought him here only in reverse. Late at night on April 19, 1961, he secretly entered his apartment. Everything appeared normal, his double having effectively covered for him, apparently leaving shortly before Lee arrived. Exhausted, he slept soundly.

The following morning, Lee woke to a loud knocking at the door. He pulled himself together, opened it, and saw his current girlfriend Marina, laughing and crying at the same time, all excited, her body shaking, apparently with joy.

“Yes!” she shouted.

“Yes, what?” he yawned.

“Yes, silly, I'll marry you.”

As Marina leaped forward and threw her arms around him, kissing Lee on his cheeks, his lips, his forehead, he silently cursed his double, who had indeed left Lee returning to a big surprise! What did that jerk do? Propose to her while assuming my place in the hospital? Then, Lee realized that perhaps the twin had been ordered to do so by George as part of a CIA plan.

Marina, meanwhile, rambled on about wanting to stop by here ever since Lee's release on April 11, though she had to be absolutely certain this was the right thing. That's why she'd stayed away until now, when it came to her all at once:
I want to be his bride more than anything in the whole wide world
.

She entered, they locked the door, and the couple made love with great passion and a touch of fury. Ten days later, on April 30, they were officially married. In between, the two barely left his rooms. In addition to the sex, they spent a great deal of time together, he on the couch, listening to radio reports concerning the then-underway Bay of Pigs invasion.

Wow! So that's what 'Dick Tracy' meant when he used the phrase 'by D-Day' back in Miami!

“When it comes to leisure reading, I prefer the

James Bond novels of Ian Fleming.”

—John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1962

 

Miami had always been a contradiction in terms, a point noted by Pedro Menendez de Aviles when he first discovered the area, claiming it for Spain in 1566. How could a single stretch of land alter so drastically, from mellow Biscayne Bay just off the east coast to the treacherous Everglade swamplands near the western border? By the mid-20th century, even the architecture featured not one style but two: ancient stone buildings dating back nearly 400 years in tandem with steel-and-glass needles stretching upward as if longing to touch the clouds.

Such a contrast held true for the population: half Anglo, half Cuban, this mix salted by Tequesta Indians, peppered with African-Americans, spiced too by assorted people of color.

To the city's immediate east, separated from Miami proper by the Bay and from there edging toward the Atlantic, sat the community of Miami Beach. Incorporated and independent, here was a demi-monde with its own unique appearance, people, and values.

Structured over a set of strangely shaped barrier islands, some natural, others man-made, there one discovered a smaller world within the self-contained universe of Miami. Most unique among its neighborhoods: South Beach (SoBo as locals called it).

This area overwhelmed Lee with its odd, appealing buildings, described by the ever-knowing George as Art Deco: a throwback to the late 1920s and early thirties. The New Yorker Hotel, where Lee stayed (courtesy of the U.S. government) during those heady five days in early April,
1961, captured the spirit of this playground for adults. The building's extended horizon gradually curved so as to give the impression of a large land-bound leisure-boat of the type Cole Porter envisioned for his long-ago musical
Anything Goes.

Of course, Lee had never seen the lavish show performed onstage. As a boy he had watched the movie on TV, imagining himself transported to such an alternative domain in which men wore tuxedoes, women elegant gowns; everyone was beautiful, the surroundings lavish. Always soft jazz played in the background.

I did it. I made it. I'm here! At this moment, I'm living inside a Hollywood film ... Three days ago I ate garbage in a filthy Cuban prison cell. Last night I dined on lobster ...

Hot chicks were twisting on the corner of 79th Street as Lee roared by in Johnny Handsome's Corvette, The Muse seated in-between them. They were off for a drive as Johnny and his young beauty, who appeared as if out of nowhere, informed Lee. He detected a European accent when the young woman spoke, likely from Germany. He couldn't be sure. She said little as they drove west from Miami, as if this 'muse' were a beauty object, not some real person with a history, feelings and ideas all her own.

It's as if I'm living out a scene from some fantasy ...

The trio enjoyed their quick passing glance at the girls, none over the age of seventeen, breaking into the latest dance craze, The Hully-Gully. These real-life Lolitas wore bathing suits so brief that, had they dare appear in public so flimsily attired two years earlier, the authorities would have had them arrested.

That was then; this, now. The Eisenhower era, dominated by such solidly old-fashioned icons as
I Love Lucy
and the Davy Crockett Craze, had given way to the Kennedy Years: a jet-set sensibility that incorporated something called The Sexual Revolution.

Motored by everything from the advent of The Pill, which freed casual sex from the stigma of unwanted pregnancy, to
Playboy
, around since 1954, suddenly part of the mainstream.

*

The political scene had altered, too. Cuban exiles living in Florida, for the past year busying themselves with handing out anti-Castro literature, had turned militant. Lee could detect that in their eyes and body language as the Corvette cruised down Biscayne Boulevard. All along the main drag he observed a striking contrast. For each street corner peopled with giddy, wild, oblivious kids arriving from all over the country for their annual spring break, on the next there would be a plank table, manned by refugees from the revolution.

Angry, intense, ever more open and aggressive, the Cubans and a smaller coterie of Anglo supporters wanted to share with passersby what they considered the absolute need for America to join them in opposition to that bearded tyrant, Castro. As Johnny pulled to a halt at a stop-light, Lee heard the talk between pamphleteers and the locals and tourists who happened by. What had once been a carefully kept secret could now be spoken of openly: an armed invasion of their homeland.

"Shortly a secret brigade, ‘Freedom Forever!,' will launch an attack,” one man insisted to Lee, leaning close to Johnny's sleek Corvette, before the light changed and they drove off.

The trio zipped onto the highway. Everything struck Lee as clean, fresh; palm trees, soft green at the top, dark brown on the base, swaying slightly in the mid-morning breeze.

It doesn't get any better than this! If they could see me now ...

*

The city now behind them, Johnny explained to Lee and The Muse what George and Dick Tracy had told him: there had until recently been more than fifty organizations, each with a small membership, between five to twenty volunteers tops. That old adage—too many chefs, too few cooks—applied. Not only did the groups fail to unite; some expressed hostility toward others.

To George's disappointment, the leaders mostly turned out to be egomaniacs, jealously viewing counterparts as competitors. Angry statements from any one patriotic group were more often directed at neighbors than Castro.

Clearly, they could never get together to achieve something of value until a single leader emerged. Representing the CIA, George initially assumed that role. He knew, though, that only a fellow Cuban, one with much charisma, could fill the bill.

Meanwhile, George had ordered an ongoing series of B-26 raids, kept secret from the American public, assigned to drop bombs over Cuba. Once, for kicks, The Muse flew alongside the pilot, she dazzled by the yellow, orange, red explosions below.

“How beautiful it looked, Lee. Like fireworks—”

“But people on the ground ... were killed?”

“Hmmm? Oh, yes. Of course.”

When Castro screeched over Havana's radio network that such illegal, immoral actions were taking place, and that some of his citizens died, the U.S. government denied any involvement.

Who would people in the heartlands believe: JFK's Secretary of State, or the ugly, swarthy bearded giant down south? They believed their movie-star handsome president to be a hero. Cliff Robertson even now prepared to play JFK in a film.

It's as if we're all at once living in a movie. Let's call this film The Sixties. A Beach Party flick. Beautiful girls in bikinis, twisting away their afternoons. Political activists, readying for a Crusade in Cuba. Our gorgeous leader in his American Camelot with that perfect queen-like wife beside him.

The bearded, unclean enemy, whom most Americans hoped would drop dead, howling somewhere to the south.

We, the good guys; about to wipe out the bad guy. Then “the End” appears over a screen as we live happily ever after.

But that's only in The Movies. Life isn't like that. JFK can't be as perfect as everybody wants to believe. Nor can Fidel Castro be the simplistic villain he's made out to be.

This is real-life. Complex, not simple. Which means sooner or later, the shit must hit the fan. It's only a matter of time.

*

Without warning, the highway ended. They passed onto an old road. That in time gave way to a dirt and pebble path. No others were traveling in this direction today. Lee recalled the back-roads George once drove him down. Now, in a different part of the country; yet everything looked the same as it did then.

The Everglades! We're approaching the swamps. But why head here? Not exactly right for a spring afternoon picnic, what with all the snakes and other beasts crawling about ...