Libra - Don Delillo [130]
He’d never been so late. Something told her to look in his study. She found a note in Russian on the small table he used as a desk. There were eleven points listed by number, with certain words underlined.
She read quickly, in a blur.
He told her not to worry about the rent. He’d paid the rent on the second. He’d paid the water and gas. He told her to send newspaper clippings (if there was anything about him in the papers) to the Soviet embassy. He said the embassy would come to her aid once they knew everything. He said the Red Cross would help her. He told her money was due from work. Go to the bank and cash the check. He asked her to hold on to his personal papers. But throw out his clothes or give them away.
Number eleven was, If I am alive and taken prisoner, the city jail is located at the end of the bridge we always cross when we go downtown.
She stood a moment in the small room. Then she moved softly to the kitchen, where she folded the note and hid it in a Russian volume called The Book of Useful Advice.
Lee was back at the Gulf station drinking another Coke, his shirt sticking to him. He edged closer to the office, where a radio was playing. He figured it wouldn’t take long before a report came in. Every time a song ended and someone on the radio started to speak, he moved a little closer to the office door, listening for urgent words, for shot, dead, dying, that excitement riding high in the chest when there is news of important violence. Both weapons were in the car, with the green slicker, about three miles away by now, somewhere in the West Dallas ghetto. He’d get them in a day or two, or when it was safe.
He took a deep swallow, then let the bottle dangle between his index and middle fingers. Things were slow. Two men in grease suits talked inside the office. The room was brightly lit, with stacked cans of motor oil, a sexy wall calendar. Lee moved closer. He tried to look like an idler on some weedy edge of town.
Late. The cars stopped coming. There was nothing on the radio but rock ’n’ roll. He finished the Coke, put the bottle in the case of empties and walked home in the head-splitting heat.
George de Mohrenschildt listened to the car radio, changing stations often. He was trying to get some fresh news on the Walker affair. The attempt fascinated him. Evidently it was the nearest of misses. The bullet changed course when it nicked the window frame. The police weren’t saying much else. It was frustrating. He was hungry for developments. He didn’t want the episode to slip into oblivion.
He drove the Galaxie convertible into Oak Cliff. Next to him on the seat was a big pink rabbit for Baby June.
He hadn’t seen Lee for some time. Lee undoubtedly felt used and badly handled and abandoned. All the sad words in the beggar’s dictionary. But it was his own fault. All he had to do was talk to Collings, man to man. George half admired his resistance. There was a purity of sorts. But it was boring too.
There was a new abandonment in the works. George was going to Haiti and he knew Lee would feel that the one man who took an interest in him was scramming out the door. George wanted to open up the country of Haiti. He knew the number-one banker there, which meant many things were possible. Oil surveying, resorts, holding companies. There was also a weapons shipment in the works, deep deep in the dark. Front companies were rising out of desk drawers. There were numbered bank accounts, untraceable ship charters. A fellow at the Pentagon wanted George to help provide cover for an anti-Castro operation centered in Haiti.
He found Neely Street. He thought about people spending their lives in a place like this. Lee sat in this hole reading obscure economics, mumbo-jumbo theory of the left. It was sad, interesting, boring, stupid. It was also infuriating. It hadn’t occurred to George that seeing where Lee and Marina lived would make him angry. There was something serious and unsettling about this kind of squalor. Everything was rickety, makeshift, slanting. Everything slanted. It was repellent,