The Day Kennedy Was Shot (41 page)

O'Donnell was radioing the same instructions from the second car. Let the ambulance and one other through the fence. Then lock the place up. Tell Colonel Swindal to get ready for takeoff at once. The party would be aboard in ten minutes.

The sun used
Air Force One
as an aluminum oven. It was unbearably hot inside, and yet people were running toward the front or the back with imperative instructions from someone else. Both entrances were sealed tight. President Johnson received a return phone call from Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach with the precise wording of the oath of office. Johnson asked a secretary, Miss Marie Fehmer, to please take it down and type it. Mr. Johnson looked at the television
set in time to hear a commentator say that the Dallas Police Department had just arrested a suspect in the assassination.

The President, on another phone, thought of Federal Judge Sarah Hughes, a Kennedy appointee. The communications people required a couple of minutes to find out her local office number. Then Johnson called, but her office said she was out. He asked that she be found at once and to call him through the White House number in Dallas. He paced the little bedroom, thought of other phone calls, and made them. Mrs. Johnson understood this reaction better than anyone else. Her husband was a man of action; inaction could kill him, but not work.

The day was so horrifying, so beyond belief, that she had to keep reminding herself that it had really happened; then when the reality crushed her, she tried to think of other things. Sometimes, she was seen with a fixed half smile on her face as though people were watching and she had to put up a front. She had been reassured that her daughters were now under the protection of the Secret Service; she wondered what they were thinking. She thought of the two little Kennedy children, and it was a thought impossible to sustain.

Judge Sarah Hughes phoned, and Johnson briefly explained the tragedy and asked if she could come right out to Love Field; he would send Secret Service agents to escort her. No, the judge said, she knew quicker ways of getting to the airport than the White House detail, and she would be there in ten minutes. That would bring her to
Air Force One
by 2:20. The President said to please hurry, that they desired to take off for Washington. He hung up and told Agent Youngblood to radio clearance for the judge. She would be along in a few minutes. “Check on the location of Mrs. Kennedy, too,” Johnson said. “Let me know when she will arrive.”

Fritz could hear the noise from the corridor, and he asked two of his detectives to tell the newsmen to hold the noise down.
An agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Bookhout, phoned his office in Dallas and said that a suspect in the Tippit killing had been picked up. His name was Lee Harvey Oswald. In the office, Agent James Hosty was still running through the old files, trying to dig up anyone who might be a suspect in the assassination, and, when he heard the name Oswald, he felt the chill that comes to all law officers who find themselves on the wrong end of a gigantic surprise.

At once Hosty reported to his boss, Gordon Shanklin, that he had been handling the case of a Lee Harvey Oswald, that he was a defector who had fled to Russia, returned to Texas with a Russian bride, left Texas for his native home in New Orleans, fled to Mexico recently in an attempt to get to Cuba, been turned down, and come home to Irving, Texas. Shanklin demanded a quick rundown, and Hosty said that Oswald could not, on his performance chart, be regarded as a potential cop killer. He wasn't even a member of the local Communist Party. Hosty knew, because the FBI had a man in it who kept him well-informed.

Shanklin got on the phone. He spoke to Will Fritz. Again he offered the services and facilities of the FBI—in Dallas and in Washington—to the Dallas Police Department. He also asked if he could send Agent Jim Hosty as the bureau representative to listen in on the interrogation of the prisoner. The FBI knew a little about Oswald. The police captain said to send Hosty on over.

The disparate work of the law enforcement agencies began to spread and dissolve, then congeal, only to dissolve again. Three detectives were en route to Oswald's home in Irving. Stovall phoned ahead to the Irving police and asked to have some local officers meet them at the city line. Their assignment was to find out who lived with the suspect and to search the premises and take with them anything which might be regarded as evidence.

At the Trade Mart, there were several anti-Kennedy pickets who had not heard the news. Lieutenant Jack Revill and his In
telligence unit arrested them to protect them from possible mob violence. At the Texas School Book Depository, policemen continued to work looking for an assassin. V. J. Brian and his officers had found some acoustical tile in the ceiling on the second floor. They were ripping it out because someone had suggested that an assassin could be hiding in the space above it.

Lee Harvey Oswald gave Captain Fritz his right name. The prisoner had a lump and a laceration over his right eye and another underneath the left eye. The captain sat at his desk, rolling a pen back and forth across the blotter, looking up at his man now and then. How, he asked, were the bruises acquired? Oswald said that he had punched a police officer and the cop had punched him back—“which was right and proper.”

“Do you work for the Texas School Depository?” Fritz asked. He had a deep, deliberate tone, the manner of a man who is never in a hurry. An accent touched by the South and by the West. “Yes,” said Oswald, and he too knew that now the forces had joined battle. It was important for him to know when to answer, when to lie, when to evade, when to lapse into sullen silence. He had to know these things, because it was a whole police department pitted against one man. He might tire; they wouldn't. Nor was he lulled by the soft, easy manner of the captain. That had its own built-in danger. Oswald's greatest asset was that he enjoyed this game; he knew that the innocuous questions could be answered glibly, as though he were an innocent person trying hard to cooperate; the difficult ones could be blocked by a display of anger or impenetrable silence.

“What floor do you work on?” “The second, usually, but my work takes me to all floors.” “Where would you say you were when the President was shot?” “I was on the first, having my lunch.” “Where were you when the police officer stopped you?” “On the second floor, having a Coke.” “Tell me, why did you leave the building?” Oswald permitted himself a little smile. “There was so much excitement all around, I figured that there
would be no more work. Mr. Truly isn't particular about the hours; we don't even punch a clock. I thought it would be all right to leave.”

“Do you own a rifle?” “No, sir.” “You don't own one?” “I saw one at the building a few days ago. Mr. Truly and some of the fellows were looking at it.” “Where did you go when you left work?” “I have a room over on North Beckley.” “Where on Beckley?” “1026.” “North or South?” “North or South?” “Yes.” “I couldn't say, but it is 1026 Beckley.” “What's the area look like?” “Oh, a couple of streets come together at that point, and there is a filling station across from the boarding house—.” The captain nodded. “That's North Beckley.”

Fritz excused himself. He went out into the hall and told a couple of detectives to run over to 1026 North Beckley and search a room rented by Lee Harvey Oswald. “All I did,” Oswald was saying, “was go over to Beckley and change my pants. I got my pistol and went to the pictures. That's all.” He knew the next question, and he was prepared. “Why do you find it necessary to carry a gun?” The prisoner waved his manacles in an explanatory gesture. “You know how boys do when they have a gun.” He shrugged. “They just carry it.” In Texas, this is good rationale. Young men in large numbers carry pistols not to use them, but to establish manhood, perhaps even virility.

“Can I get a lawyer?” The question was not unusual nor unexpected. The captain nodded. “You can call one anytime you want,” he said. Oswald said the one he wanted was in New York. His name was John Abt. Fritz shrugged. “You can have anyone you want.” Oswald seemed to be calmer. “I don't know him personally,” he said, “but that's the attorney I want.” He remembered a case Mr. Abt had handled involving the Smith Act. “If I can't get him,” he said, “then I may get the American Civil Liberties Union to get me an attorney.”

Fritz said that Oswald would find a phone in the jail on the fifth floor. He would have to make the call himself, at his ex
pense. The captain asked him why he lived on Beckley and his wife lived in Irving. Oswald appeared to be faintly amused, as though, a man among men, the incongruities of women were beyond understanding. He explained that Marina was living with a friend, Mrs. Ruth Paine. Marina was teaching Mrs. Paine to speak Russian, and in return Mrs. Paine gave Marina and the babies a room. Oswald suggested that it worked out all right for all parties; he stayed in town, except on weekends, because he worked in town.

The men in the room—Fritz, Detectives Boyd and Sims, FBI Agent Bookhout—blinked at him. “Why don't you stay out there with them?” Fritz said. “Well,” Oswald said, the Paines didn't get along well. They were separated a lot of the time. “Don't you have a car?” “No, I don't. The Paines have two cars, but they don't use them.”

“What kind of politics you believe in?” Fritz said. Oswald required no time for a response. “I don't have any,” he said. “I am a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. They have offices in New York, but I was a secretary of the New Orleans chapter when I lived there.” Fritz leaned back in his broad straight chair. “I support the Castro revolution,” Oswald said, without being asked. “Do you belong to the Communist Party?” “No, I never had a card. I belong to the American Civil Liberties Union and I paid five dollars dues.”

“Why did you carry that pistol into the show?” “I told you why. I don't want to talk about it anymore. I bought it several months ago in Forth Worth and that's all.” “You answer pretty quick. Ever been questioned before?” In a trice, the cipher felt himself become an intelligent man to be reckoned with. “Oh yes. I've been questioned by the FBI”—he nodded toward Bookhout—“for a long time. They use different methods. There is the hard way, the soft way, the buddy method—I'm familiar with all of them. Right now, I don't have to answer any questions until I speak to my attorney.”

“Oswald, you can have one any time you want.” “I don't have the money to call Mr. Abt.” “Call him collect or you can have another lawyer if you want. You can arrange it upstairs.” “Thanks.” “Ever been arrested before?” Oswald nodded. “I was in a little trouble with the Fair Play for Cuba thing in New Orleans. I had a street fight with some anti-Castro Cubans. We had a debate on a New Orleans radio station.”

“What do you think of President Kennedy and his family?” “I like the President's family very well. I have my own views about national politics.” “How about clearing this thing up with a polygraph test?” “Oh, no. I turned one down with the FBI and I certainly won't take one now.” The captain realized that this was not an easy subject. This man, whatever he was, communist, nut, socialist, malcontent, Marxist, was about to show off his knowledge of how to fence with the law without getting hurt. Fritz swung around to face the FBI man. “Any questions?” he said.

The men in Love Field tower had a respite. The empty runways, with one long diagonal, looked like a crooked capital H.
Air Force One
had twice asked for taxi instructions, but the generator was still standing under its nose, breathing power into the bird. There was time to stand up and stretch. The men walked around the glass enclosure, commenting on the Dallas catastrophe and listening to the local gossip. There was a story that a Secret Service man had been killed with President Kennedy. No one had heard about it officially, but the story went that the government was keeping it quiet and had carried the body away secretly because the agent was part of the plot to kill the President.

“Look,” one of the tower men said. An ambulance with red blinker showing was coming off Mockingbird Lane into the airport. It was followed by two cars, all at high speed. Two Dallas officers and some Secret Service men ran to the fence
and watched the small motorcade return John F. Kennedy to the place where he had shaken many hands. The ambulance made the turn through the fence. So did the second car. The third was stopped by the bodies of the lawmen. Vernon Oneal, middle-aged and proud, got out to protest.

That was his ambulance inside the fence. It was supposed to lead him to his own mortuary at 3206 Oaklawn. Something wrong was going on because the driver had come to the airport. It was his ambulance and he had a right to be inside the fence. The President was in an Oneal casket.
^*
The Secret Service men glanced at him and walked away. They left him to the mercies of the local police. Mr. Oneal was told firmly that he could not get inside the fence. In time the ambulance would be returned. He could wait if he pleased.

The rear ramp of
AF-1
was opened briefly and a host of Secret Service men performed a final service for a dead chieftain. They carried the bronze casket up. It weighed 400 pounds. The body weighed 180. The men staggered and stepped forward and tilted the big box and, halfway up, appeared about to drop it. Two crewmen came down the steps and tried to wedge themselves along the sides. At last it got to the top, and a group of Dallas citizens stood behind the fence, unable to contain the tears. Clint Hill saw a photographer, “I'll get him” he said to Mrs. Kennedy. “No,” she said. “I want them to see what they have done.”

The door slammed shut. The casket was dragged across the floor. O'Brien noticed that a space had been made for the casket. He told the agents to secure it on the left side of the plane barely inside the rear door. Mrs. Kennedy dropped into a seat at the breakfast nook opposite. She appeared to be spent.
The woman slumped as though lifeless. Kenneth O'Donnell motioned for the rear door to be secured and guarded. He requested that the ramp be pulled away.