The Day Kennedy Was Shot (62 page)

Coming back, he whispered: “The short one.” “Which one is that?” “The short one—number two.” He pointed to Lee Harvey Oswald. Guinyard nodded vigorously. “That's the one,” he said. “Same one. I saw him running.” Leavelle asked if he was positive. Both said yes. He asked them to return to his office and furnish a sworn statement. The showup room was dark again.

Six hours after the assassination, the Dallas Police Department had control of the case. The men had worked hard running down leads. There was an element of luck. It was the shoe store manager who told them where to find their man. Without his assistance, Oswald might have sat through the show—perhaps several of them. At night he could have emerged, but he had no place to go. No money to speak of, no refuge.

He could not return to his room. He knew that the police would check every employee of the School Book Depository. It
was an automatic move. Ironically Oswald had made certain that he could not survive a police screening. He had spread the word that he was a “pure Marxist” and was eager to explain to anyone what it meant. He was in the newspaper files and the FBI and State Department records as a defector who fled to Russia and tried to renounce his American citizenship. To make himself conspicuously suspicious, he continued to carry his Fair Play for Cuba identification card on his person.

When he faced capture in the Texas Theatre, why did he shout: “It's all over!” What was all over? Why try to shoot a policeman with scores of them in the aisles ready to gun down such a gunman? Was this a quick exit he had designed for himself? He drew a gun and a hammer clicked. Is this the behavior of a man who is innocent? Is this the behavior of a man who is guilty but is certain that the state has no case against him? Or is this the philosophy of a man who feels that one more murder might bring merciful darkness to him and historic recognition?

The accidental discovery that the prisoner sitting in police headquarters was the missing employee from the Book Depository was of enormous help in redeeming the day for Dallas. For several hours, the police work seemed to be scattered and ineffectual. By 6:30
P.M.
all of the loose pieces began to fall together. Two crimes overlapped their focus onto one face: Oswald's.

Superior officers were so busy that they didn't have time to assess the work of the men. In the murder of Tippit, they had affidavits from Helen Markham, Callaway, Scoggins the cab driver, Sam Guinyard, and the shoe store manager, Johnny Calvin Brewer. They also had a statement from stout Earlene Roberts, the rooming house housekeeper. They had others from witnesses at the scene of the shooting—sworn statements—which had not yet been typed.

In the Kennedy murder, they had affidavits from a dozen employees placing Oswald on the sixth floor; they had Brennan and Amos Euins pointing the finger at him with a rifle in the
window; they had his rifle and his revolver and were tracing the ownership of both to him; they had a palm print taken from a cardboard box in the sixth-floor window; they had a cop who saw him in the second-floor commissary three minutes after the assassination; Roy Truly also swore to this. They had a woman clerk who spoke to him on the way out of the building; there was a bus driver who could identify a transfer; a cab driver who suffered a silent young man to sit up in front with him en route to North Beckley; Earlene Roberts in the matter of rushing in, changing clothes, and rushing out again. There was a statement from his wife that he owned a rifle; Wesley Frazier was ready to swear to a long, thin package called “curtain rods” carried to work that morning. Linnie Mae Randall saw the package, too. The pieces of bullets recovered—from the rifle as well as the revolver shots in Tippit's body—would be traced to Oswald's firearms. There were three employees who would testify that all three shots came from over their heads as they stood on the fifth floor, and they would swear that they heard the empty shells bounce on the floor above.

Considering the magnitude of the case and the weakness of motive, Captain Will Fritz and his men had achieved remarkable results within six hours.

A closed road separated the pristine luminosity of the White House from the dismal gray of the Executive Office Building. A bright light from an office in each of the buildings mingled on the old Belgian blocks in the middle of the street. Sargent Shriver sat in Ralph Dungan's office in the extreme west end of the White House, burying one administration. On the second floor across the street, the light from Johnson's office poured downward as he brought an administration to life.

In the outer office, Jack Valenti knew that the President was beginning to feel sure of himself, because the orders to “get me Averell Harriman”; “I want to talk to the ranch”; “Let
me speak to Shriver” were enunciated patiently. The strident fever was gone from his voice. “Cliff,” the President said to Mr. Carter, “go down the hall and you will find a White House secretary. Ask her for two sheets of White House letterhead and two envelopes.”

He was going to pause in his labors to write personal notes to Caroline Kennedy and John Kennedy, Jr. The mute and welling grief which he had fought all day gained an ascendancy only when the work pace slowed. The new President would tell them how he felt about their father, how proud they should be of him. Lyndon Johnson did not expect that the notes would mean much to the children now; he was thinking that, when the children matured, they might like to know that his successor thought of the Kennedy children on the day that their father had been cut down.

Cliff Carter walked down the high-ceilinged hall. He found the office. A middle-aged woman was sitting behind a silent typewriter. He asked for the two letterheads and the envelopes. Her mouth became firm. “Who are they for?” she said. The Texan said: “President Johnson.” The woman stared at him in disbelief. Then she opened a drawer and took the stationery out. “Goddamn that man!” she shouted. “The President isn't even cold in his grave yet and he wants to use White House stationery. Goddamn him!”

Carter was a big man with a colorless face. He was big enough to afford good manners in trying situations. He said thank you and departed. The sheets were handed to Mr. Johnson. Carter went on to the next duty without telling the President what had happened. Mr. Johnson wrote the notes and asked that they be delivered to the White House at once. It left him depressed. He sat behind the desk, staring at the blotter. The President was thinking of Mrs. Kennedy. He looked up at Moyers and Carter and shook his head negatively. “I wish,” he said, “that I could reach up and bring down a handful of stars and give them to that woman.”

The doorbell rang and Mrs. Grant opened it. Jack Ruby was back again. He was behind a huge grocery bag. “Here's twenty-two dollars in groceries,” he said cheerfully. He put them in the kitchen. Eva may have wondered what she was going to do with all these cold cuts and delicatessen salads. Her brother bought cold cuts as some gallants buy flowers. She watched him pick up the phone to call Dr. Coleman Jacobson. Two old friends—Jacobson and Stanley Kauffman—often upbraided Ruby for not attending temple services on Friday nights. He wanted to tell Dr. Jacobson, and Mr. Kauffman, too, that tonight he would attend. He did not want to appear boastful, so his excuse for each phone call was to ask what time services would begin.

Eva, looking at the groceries, murmured: “I never thought in my lifetime I would ever hear of a President being assassinated.” She said that barbarians were running around. She went out into the kitchen and made some scrambled eggs and salmon for her brother. Ruby got off the phone and went out into the kitchen and ate hurriedly and silently.

“Really,” he said to his sister, “he was crazy.” Then he rushed into the bathroom and was swept by waves of nausea. When he came out, Mrs. Grant said: “That lousy commie. Don't worry, the commie, we will get him.” Her brother wiped his eyes. Eva Grant had watched the story of the assassination unfold on television. She knew more about it than her brother. “This guy could have been sent here to do this,” Eva said. Her brother said: “What a creep!” He had to leave to go back to his apartment and change his clothes. The departure was as abrupt as the arrival. Eva Grant sat alone in her kitchen and finished eating the eggs.

The Secret Service man waited inside the door. “Miss Shaw,” he had said, “I'm sorry but we have to go back to the White House immediately.” The bags had not been unpacked. Mrs.
Auchincloss was distressed at parting with the children. The little ones, still in the dining room, were disappointed. “Children,” Maude Shaw said. “Mummy wants us. Caroline, be my bestest friend and help John on with his coat.” The little girl began to play mother. She got the coat and held it. “Come on, John-John,” she said patiently. “Put your coat on. We're going home again.”

In a few moments, the children punctuated their goodbye kisses with
Grand-mère
and were driven quickly from the elegant old streets of Georgetown to the broad boulevards of Washington. In the dark, they could see the crowds of people, like deeper shadows, clustered in Lafayette Park. They saw others like ink blots along the White House fence on Pennsylvania Avenue. White House police were asking the people, quietly, to keep moving. In the driveway, flashbulbs winked like giant fireflies, and Caroline said: “What are all these people for?”

The nurse was saddened. “To see you,” she said. The car moved slowly around to the South Grounds. The little party alighted at the Diplomatic Entrance. White House police, in uniform, nodded at the children and Miss Shaw. A Secret Service agent on a portable phone announced that the Kennedy children and nurse were returning to the mansion.

The back of the building was bright with light. Inside, the ushers nodded gravely to the children and tried to look cheerful. In the downstairs lobby, Chief Usher Bernard West, who had served several Presidents, sat on a chair staring blankly at a wall. Men and women were trotting in opposite directions. There was a sound of many murmuring voices, as in a vaulted cathedral. For the first time, Caroline and John paused in their childish flight to look upward at the faces of adults. A secretary stared at them and burst into tears.

The little faces became grave. So much activity at night was unusual. This was their house, the only one they remembered. They had become accustomed to seeing many strange faces in it—walking, sitting, crouching to hug them, faces fine and faces
fat and sweaty, some of which became familiar in time, others seen but once. It was an unusual house, but they knew no other existence and therefore the unusual was usual. This was a new experience. Some, whom they regarded as old friends, turned away. One or two wept. Others stared at them and shook their heads. Most people didn't want to see them.

The party was led across the corridor and up the elevator to the second floor. This, the private section of the mansion, the living quarters of Presidents, was full of people. The girl and the boy looked up at the faces, many of them dear friends, but a search showed no parents. Maude Shaw whispered to a few of these people, and they told her, “She's expected here soon.”

In the small suite of rooms, Maude Shaw closed the door. The British woman felt more fatigued and more nervous than she remembered. The phone rang and she asked the children to be quiet. It was an usher. He said that Mrs. Kennedy might go to Bethesda first with the President and return later to the mansion. Maude Shaw, far from resenting it, appreciated it. She could get John-John to bed and then have a moment to speak to Caroline.

She undressed John and bathed him and put him in his nighties. The nurse kept reminding herself that the children were good, so good. The phone rang several times. Each message was different from the last. Mrs. Kennedy was on her way to the White House. Mrs. Kennedy expected to be home soon. Mrs. Kennedy might not get home until late. Mrs. Kennedy . . . Mrs. Kennedy . . . Mrs. Kennedy.

A depression engulfed Maude Shaw. She could no longer act the happy playlet of bedtime. There were no stories, no bright promises for tomorrow. As Caroline was bathing happily, the nurse returned to her small room and looked out the front window. The stately trees were still there, dark branches of arteries against the night sky. The people out front seemed to be gathering, as though grief were a vigil of many eyes. In
the hall, she could hear running feet; sometimes there were muffled voices.

It was a night of running panic. A bad time. To her, John F. Kennedy was more than a President. He was a magnificent man, a powerful friend. More than anything else, he was a father. More a father, perhaps, than a husband. Maude Shaw knew these innocents as well as anyone. She could not imagine how anyone, in the kindest manner, could inflict such cruel news upon them. John-John might not comprehend, but he would miss the big, affectionate hero who took him on helicopter rides, who teased him and made small man jokes. Caroline would be conscious of the permanence of death. She would understand that the tall, loving man who studied her printed alphabet and who always said in exaggerated surprise: “Caroline! Did you do this?” would not be seen again. She could not rationalize death, but she could understand the permanence of forever.

As the nurse watched them, her spirit became oppressed. They noticed that she did not play with them, so they played with each other—John-John running big skidding circles around the room as Caroline removed the dolls from her pillows. Miss Shaw helped John-John recite his night prayers and tucked him in bed. He would squirm for a few moments and maybe call her on one pretext or another, but then he would fall asleep and, for one more day, he would not know.

She went across the little foyer to Caroline's room and sat on the edge of the bed as Caroline primly turned down the bedclothes. The big girl, at six, had a special privilege. Every night she was permitted to read a page or two from a child's book. Miss Shaw took the book from her and began to read. The sound of her voice was unreal, and the tears came.