Libra - Don Delillo [168]
He sat at the wheel of Ruth Paine’s station wagon. Dust blew across the gravel surface of the huge parking lot. It was Sunday and the lot was empty.
Ruth Paine was tall and slender, a long-jawed woman in her thirties with wavy doll’s hair and librarian’s glasses. She turned in her seat, looking straight back.
“Slow, slow, slow,” she said. “Take it very slow.”
He went in reverse for thirty yards, then hit the brake too hard, jolting them both. They sat looking out at the windswept lot.
“Did you tell him where I live?”
“I don’t know where you live,” she said. “It wasn’t until he asked that I realized I didn’t know. Even Marina doesn’t know. Put it in forward and we’ll do some turns.”
“Did he say how he found you? How he knew Marina is staying with you?”
“He seemed a very reasonable man. I don’t think he’ll cause you any trouble at work. He said he wouldn’t do that and I believe him.”
“He knows where I work?”
“I told him. I didn’t see what else I could do. They’re the government, Lee.”
He stared through the windshield.
“Put it in forward. Drive toward that litter basket. Then make a left around it.”
He remembered now. He’d left a forwarding address at the post office in New Orleans before he went to Mexico City. Ruth Paine’s address. But why are they looking for him? Because they know he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies. They have him on film. They have recordings of his voice. What is it called, electronic eavesdropping?
“Ease up on the accelerator,” Ruth said.
A broadsheet was fastened around the litter basket. THE VATICAN IS THE WHORE OF REVELATION. He made the turn nicely and straightened out.
“He wanted to know about anyone visiting or calling. I told him your social contact at the Paine house consisted mainly of dialing the number that says what time it is. He thought that was fairly funny.”
If the Feebees could find him, so could Guy Banister. Whatever the Feebees knew, Banister could find out. A whole Sunday paper scattered in the wind, pages skipping past. He brought the car to a stop and stared through the windshield.
Ruth Paine said softly, “Let’s try it in reverse one more time.”
He saw something in the Morning News about JFK coming to Dallas. A noon luncheon. November 21 or 22. He barely scanned the story. He barely ran his eyes over the surface of the words. It was a bright cool day. He saw a shopping cart roll slowly out of an alley.
Marina slipped out of the house during the FBI man’s second visit there. She walked around and around his car, trying to figure out what make it was. She couldn’t read the raised metal lettering but she did memorize the license number, as Lee had ordered, and wrote it on a slip of paper when she got back to the house, getting one digit wrong.
Lee wrote a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington, using Ruth Paine’s typewriter. He had to type the letter several times and had trouble with the envelope as well, getting the address and return address mixed up and leaving out numbers and whole words. But it was worthwhile to see the sentences emerge so clear and solid with the authority his handwriting could not convey. He complained about the notorious FBI. He tried to tell the embassy between the lines that he was known to the KGB. He asked about Soviet entry visas and announced the birth of his daughter. He blamed Mexico City on the Cubans.
Then he wrote a note to the FBI man and took it on his lunch hour to the local office of the Bureau, where he handed it to a receptionist and walked out. He understood the agent’s name to be Hardy and this is the single word he wrote on the envelope. He did not sign or date the note. The note said he was tired of the FBI bothering his wife and if they didn’t stop he would take action. It also said he was affiliated with the New Orleans FBI, including being assigned an official code number, and that could be verified.
He practiced parking on the weekend with Ruth.
The nosebleeds started again.
He played with little Rachel, who had dimples just like Papa. It was David Ferrie who’d told him months before that