The Third Bullet (49 page)

Back in my room, I tried to think things through. Suppose they’d nabbed Jimmy and the rifle? Suppose they’d offered him a deal, no execution if he rolled over fast. Though it was against his principles, maybe he’d seen that taking the rap alone was no bargain, so he’d talked.

It went on. Maybe even now, police raiders were assembling to swoop us up, men with tommy guns and shotguns, hell-bent on justice and retribution. I wished I’d brought my .45 with me. The best thing, under those circumstances—though tantamount to an admission of guilt—would have been the swift application of 230 grains of hardball suicide to the head. But that would leave Peggy and the boys and poor Lon to face alone the mess I’d made. I knew I couldn’t do that. If caught, I’d also have to absolve the Agency of any blame, make certain all knew it was my ploy and my ploy alone, that I’d coerced Lon into it against his will, that I had done it for what I believed were sound moral policy reasons, confess, take my sentence, and face my executioners with dignity and grace, leaving a legacy for my sons and the Agency.

There was nothing to be done. I called the desk to see if the bar was still open, and it was not, and inquired if I could have a bottle sent to my room and was told it was too late. So I just sat there, waiting for—Godot, I suppose. The knock on the door. The explosive entry of the raid team. Mr. Dulles, so disappointed? Cord, even more disappointed. I saw myself saying, “But Cord, it was your wife he was screwing,” and Cord answering, “He was the president of the United States, you fool!”

Then there was a knock on the door, soft but firm.

Oh, Jesus, I thought, for it was the climax to the day. Live or die would be decided upon the opening of the door. I glanced at my watch. Good Christ, it was nearly five.

I walked over.

Smiling sheepishly, Jimmy Costello, with something wrapped and bundled in his suit coat, was standing there. “Sorry I’m late, Mr. Meachum,” he said. “Hope you wasn’t worried.”

“I only had three heart attacks and finished my bottle and tried to order another.”

“Very sorry.”

“No, no, God, man, not your fault, mine. I should have been tougher. The leader hangs together in the bleak moments, and I didn’t. Thank God for that Irish rascal Jimmy Costello. Bet you’ve got a story to tell.”

“No heroics. Just me sitting in the dark for twelve hours until the night became wee and I was able to make a dash.”

“Tell me.”

“Sure, but can I go to my own room first and get myself my own bottle?”

“Absolutely. Enough for a glass for the boss?”

“Count on it, Mr. Meachum.”

He laid the bundle down on the bed, where it fell open. I was happy to see the rifle, in parts, still in its odd canvas holster straps. The man himself returned in a few seconds, undid his tie, poured us each a couple of fingers, and commenced with the tale. I can’t capture the trace of Irish brogue that underlay his account because it was more a thing of
rhythms and lightly alternative syllabic emphasis, so I won’t even try. It would be blarney. But here’s the gist of it, as I recall.

“You leave, I get the gun disassembled and holstered, I snatch up the coat and I’m out the door maybe thirty seconds after you. I hear it click and head down the hall when I remember the damned window. The window. I give it a second. Maybe the old man won’t notice his window open where it was closed before. But he’s a Jew, smart as a tack, with a gift for details if he’s in the garment trade, because that’s the biggest of big business games, so I duck back, pop the lock, flee across the outer office to the inner, and get the window down as it was. So I’m maybe a minute and a half behind you as I hit the hallway, and lo and behold, ahead of me, the elevators open and a couple of birds pop out. They’s all concerned about the president, but more so about not being able to leave the office because of that damn cop. What, did he think a haberdasher gunned down the president? They were so taken with it, I know they didn’t pay a hair’s attention to me, so I figured I was okay.

“But when I get to the elevator and push down, the doors didn’t open. I figure there’s been another call and check the indicator above the doors and see both cars are downstairs in the lobby and ain’t budging. I figure that means the cops have put the kibosh on them for a bit while they check out the real estate.

“I go to the stairwell and can hear commotion on the flights below. Not sure if it’s cops coming up or citizens going down, whatever, but it’s not good. I slip off my shoes and, in my stocking feet, head up a flight to the top, me with the death rifle hanging around my neck, heart beating like a drum.”

He took a pull of his bourbon, and I joined him.

“I make it up and then run out of building. I’m hard against the roof. Fortunately, the stairway does lead up to a door set horizontal in the roof. Using my picks, I pop the door in a second, roll to the roof, and let the door slip shut behind me, hearing it lock. I look about. The roof is empty, and no building stands taller to give vantage. The only structure would be the elevator machinery house twenty-five yards away. I ease
my way to it, feeling naked as a jaybird and worried about helicopters or low-flying planes, but the sky is empty too. I’ve got my jimmy keys and I’m in in a flash. I squint and can see there’s not much but space for the greasy lifting and lowering machines. I get past the machinery to the far end of the house, where some quirk in design has left a platform in the wall so it forms a shelf or space or something.

“Fortunately, Jimmy’s a strong boy, and he gets himself up there and wedges himself way back to the wall, so he’s not visible to flashlight beam from the doorway. A searcher’d have to come by the motor works, go to the rear, and shine a beam directly in.

“I squeeze this way and have to do some squirming to get more or less comfortable, pushing my coat this way, fixing it so I’m not lying on the gunstock, or got a lump of coat under my ass, because I’ve decided my best bet is to stay still till the middle of the night, then ease out. I committed myself to the long haul in the dark.

“A few hours later, I hear noises, and sure enough, the door into the machine room is opened, lights are turned on, and I hear a couple of detectives and a janitor. The janitor is saying, ‘See, nobody’s been up here since the last inspection in July. Besides, you got the guy.’ The cop answers, ‘We have to check everything, bud.’

“I hear them poking around, and some light beams shoot around the machinery. Nobody wants to go in any farther. They dip out in a second, and that’s that for another twelve hours.”

“Very good,” I said. My Jimmy! I knew he could outsmart a couple of buckram Texas detectives.

“Well, not so good,” he said. “I haven’t told you of my problem.”

“How can it be a problem, Jimmy? You’re here, poor Alek has been nabbed, and everything’s as it should be.”

“I’m hoping so. Anyway, here’s what happened. I lay flat after that and let the time pass. After a bit, they okay the elevator, and so I’m close to the huffing and humming of that motor and can hear the cables winding and unwinding, the whole elevator cycle, the doors opening and closing, the cars going up and down and on and on. By ten it’s settled,
and by eleven it’s gone away. I figure a few more hours. But around two, I’m suddenly smelling something, and I don’t recognize it. Acrid-like, industrial, for some reason I’d say it smells brown, if that makes any sense, smells of machines and such, and here’s the funny thing, I know I’ve smelled it before, but I don’t know where or when.

“The smell continues, and I realize it’s rising out of my own clothes. I feel around with my fingers and come across a spot on my overcoat upon which the rifle has lain, and it’s damp, and I bring it to my nose, and that smell nearly knocks me out. I’ve got the picture. Somehow I arranged myself in a certain position, and the rifle action had slid out of its pouch a bit. It laid on its side over a long time, and whatever Mr. Scott used in cleaning and lubricating it—”

“Hoppe’s 9,” I said. “It’s a bore solvent and lubricant. He uses it to clean, then he lightly coats everything with it as a lube. Yeah, it’s pungent.”

“That’s it, then. Anyhow, this stuff has to obey gravity. It begins to seep downward, and it starts dripping out. This happens over and over as I’m lying there, and a stain is spreading. Fortunately, from the way I’ve got my things arranged, it’s all on the overcoat and none on the suit coat, which I’d pushed back so it didn’t get lumpy on me.

“Now I’ve got a problem. It’s not just the stain but it’s the smell. Suppose, as I’m heading back to the car, I’m stopped. The cops are sure to be about. I can talk my way out of anything, and I’ve got my James Delahanty O’Neill card and Massachusetts license to get me out. But that stain’s standing out like a bull’s-eye on my chest, and maybe these Texas coppers know guns and can ID the smell. Not good.

“After I climb down, I take the coat off and fold it. It turns out they used that shelf to store carpeting, so I slide the coat into the carpeting so that it’s covered by a lot of weight. I smooth the carpeting over it. You can’t tell from looking at it that the old carpeting pile contains a coat, and it’s so heavy that I’m thinking it’ll contain that smell forever, at least until it evaporates.

“That leaves me with only my suit coat to hide the strap with the
rifle parts, and it’s not long enough. I figure I can make it out of the building unseen, and then I’ll dump the rifle behind some garbage cans. I’ll go to the car, come back, drive around a bit to make sure no cop car is patrolling, and jump out and secure the rifle. That’s my plan, and that’s what I did, and I didn’t have no problem. It seems there’s lots of folks out, they keep going down to the depository, which is all lit up, and they’re placing wreaths and bunches of flowers on the hill. Anyway, sir, that’s the story.”

“I think we’re okay,” I said. “They’re so convinced it’s Alek and only Alek, and he’s probably beginning to think that way himself, they’ll never do the kind of search that would uncover the coat.”

“Possibly in a year, when all this settles down, you’d want me to return and revisit and remove that piece of evidence.”

“I wouldn’t do it too soon, Jimmy. I’d wait to see how the trial goes, I’d wait to see if the investigation stays with Alek or they tire of him and branch out. If the government commits to Alek and history commits to Alek, nobody’ll ever look any further. It could lie there for fifty years and never be seen and never tell its story. In the meantime, get some sleep, and I will too, and there’s nothing left for us to do here except make a low-profile exit from Dallas and return to our lives. You’ve done great, Jimmy.”

I shook his hand. For the first time in twenty-four hours, I felt the weight of dread come off my shoulders, and the air tasted clean on the way down. I took a last sip of the bourbon and this time enjoyed the mallet. It amplified the feeling. I realized then: we’d done it.

And that’s the way it happened. I have to laugh anytime I encounter the “deep plot” theory with various government (ours, theirs, anybody’s) manipulating forces, making exquisite plans based on surgical precision and split-second timing (the clandestine operation on JFK’s body on the tarmac at Andrews being the most hilarious). It happened the way everything happens; it was part of the world, not an exception to it. We had a plan for something else, and from that basic text we improvised, we adapted, we bluffed and lied and risked, and we brought it off. We
were given an opportunity and maximized it, but we couldn’t have done it if we weren’t already there, on the ground, in midoperation, on another mission. It changed its essence and the scope of its ambition, seizing on the one-in-a-billion happenstance that put JFK seventy-five feet outside the Book Depository, and even that opportunity Alek the Idiot blew. Still, we prevailed. It was, like everything, ramshackle, clumsy, full of mistakes, and unconscionably lucky. We threw it together, that’s all, because it seemed right and moral, at least to me, and because it was, I believed, my duty.

I won’t argue the morality and I won’t—can’t—argue the strategic outcome in the next years. I will say this: as espionage, it was a masterpiece.

T
he lawyers—Adams’s in Hartford, Connecticut, and Bob’s, actually a recruited FBI surrogate in Boise, Idaho—dickered for a couple of weeks on issues that lawyers find fascinating: share of profits (equal), share of expenses (equal), no first-class travel (a major concession for Marty), equal exposure in the case of lawsuits for libel, misrepresentation, the expropriation of intellectual property, and so forth.

Meanwhile, Swagger heard from Kathy Reilly in Moscow that his friend and ally Stronski had been released from the hospital, with no charges filed, and had promptly disappeared, figuring he was on an Izzy hit list. A day later, Stronski himself checked in: “Am fine, brother. You saved my life. One second later on that shot, Stronski is dead. I owe all. See you soon.”

Then word came from the “lawyer” that the contract, basically boilerplate with a filigree or two, was okay. Swagger arranged to have it sent to him at the Adolphus, where he stayed in the open as Jack Brophy. Richard was witness to his signing, and it was sent off to Marty for countersigning along with Bob’s hastily written notebook, recording all his late-night ideas, for Marty’s perusal.

The word came back quickly, via an e-mail.

“This is brilliant. Much more than I expected, and it seems to dovetail exactly with what I have suspected but was unable to articulate. I especially like your focus on Oswald’s behavior in the two hours of freedom he had left. It seems you’ve noticed things nobody else has, and all point to a conspiracy of the sort that could easily involve our friends, the happy cousins Hugh and Lon and maybe
a few others. Let me come to Dallas and meet with you, and I will tell you what my contribution to our cause is to be. I think you’ll be impressed. French Room again. On me! No need to split expenses on this one, I’m so happy!”

They met in the French Room three days later, ate more sliced carrots, filigreed celery, thigh of rabbit marinated for three weeks in squid broth, and plum-banana tart under a glaze of honey and strawberry, all to Marty’s narration, which was complete to all apostrophes and something he called an aperçu. There wasn’t even a Richard Monk along to absorb some of Marty’s excess attention and keep the conversation from becoming too Marty to bear.