Libra - Don Delillo [16]
Laurence Parmenter drove toward Love Field in his rented Dodge Dart. He preferred to avoid thinking about Everett’s plan for the time being. He listened to the radio,’to an evangelist talking about retail prayer and wholesale prayer. Pray for yourself, pray for the world. Win was a bright man, dedicated, loyal to the cause, bright, very bright, but he’d suffered some kind of nervous collapse. Happens all the time. He seemed well now, alert, in full control, but an idea needs time to reveal its facets, its shifting lights and fires. Not that Larry meant to let the matter drag. He wanted Cuba back and the sooner the better. He had interests there. He had rights, claims, hidden financial involvement in a leasing company that had been working toward a huge land deal to facilitate oil drilling. This was before the plucky rebels came out of the hills.
He would begin to think about Everett’s plan on the flight back to Washington. Sip a Beefeater martini, nibble salted nuts, pray for himself, pray for the world. A line from an old drinking song popped into his head. But where from? From Cairo, 1944, morale operations, Office of Strategic Services. Larry was part of the Groton-Yale-OSS network of so-called gentlemen spies, many of them now in important Agency positions. He was not old money, not quite elect, but still a member, ready to accede to the will of the leadership. They were the pure line, a natural extension of schoolboy societies, secret oaths and initiations, the body of assumptions common to young men of a certain discernible dash. He sang aloud, “Oh we are the jolly coverts, we lie and we spy till it hurts.” He was trying to recall the next line when the first of the airport signs appeared.
On the radio a news announcer said that police were still keeping watch over Major General Edwin A. Walker’s home and grounds following a gunman’s attempt to kill the controversial right-wing figure one week earlier. There were no new leads in the case.
After dark the stillness falls, the hour of withdrawal, houses in shadow, the street a private place, a set of mysteries. Whatever we know about our neighbors is hushed and lulled by the deep repose. It becomes a form of intimacy, jasmine-scented, that deceives us into trustfulness.
Win was in the living room turning the pages of a book. This is what he did, according to his wife, instead of reading. Turned pages until there were no more. He wondered whether the two men realized he’d called them here specifically for April 17, the second anniversary of the Bay of Pigs. A thought for bedtime. He turned another page.
Upstairs Mary Frances was in bed. She worried about the worn-out rug, thought about breakfast, thought about lunch, tried not to be too foolishly proud of the renovated kitchen, large, handsome, efficient, with its frostless freezer and color-matched appliances, on the quiet street of oak and pecan trees, forty miles north of Dallas.
In New Orleans
A classmate, Robert Sproul, watched him cross the street. He carried his books over his shoulder, tied together in a green web belt with brass buckle. U.S. Marines. His shirt was torn along a seam. There was smeared blood at the corner of his mouth, a grassy bruise on his cheek. He came through the traffic and walked right past Robert, who hurried alongside, looking steadily at Lee to draw a comment.
They walked along North Rampart, on the edge of the Quarter, where a few iron-balconied homes still stood among the sheet-metal works and parking lots.