Libra - Don Delillo [172]
Raymo, Wayne and Frank had never been to Dallas and they wondered what this creep could mean.
Wednesday. Lee walked out of the rooming house and went up the street to a diner where he had breakfast most mornings. He checked the license plates on cars parked along North Beckley, looking for Agent Hardy’s number.
They’d get their own furniture, modern pieces, and a washing machine for Marina.
He had eggs over light. He ate with a folded-up newspaper under his left elbow. The noise and talk fell around him. He kept his head close to the page, reading the fourth or fifth story in the last week about a Yale professor of political science arrested in the Soviet Union as a spy. Arrested outside the Metropole Hotel, one of the places Lee had stayed. Arrested and then released. The story was really about him. Everything he heard and saw and read these days was really about him. They were running messages into his skin.
He walked to the bus stop, checking license plates along the way. A coppertone Mercury eased alongside and moved at Lee’s pace down the street. It had those smoked-over windows. He was prepared to give his name as O. H. Lee and tell them nothing else. He knew his rights. He had his guaranteed rights. He would not stand for harassment.
The window slid down and David Ferrie rested an elbow on the door, then turned to look at him.
Lee said, “I can’t be late for work.”
They drove to the Book Depository. Lee interrupted the talk several times to give directions, concerned that they’d miss a turn.
“Been reading the papers?” Ferrie said. “I understand they’ve had a story every couple of days. First he’s coming. Then he’s having lunch at the Trade Mart. Then there’s a motorcade looping through the downtown area. Then yesterday’s papers, both papers, which I saw myself. A street-by-street outline of the motorcade route. Harwood to Main. Main to Houston. Houston to Elm. Down Elm to Stemmons Freeway. I thought to myself, Old Leon’s looking at this. What’s he feeling right now? What were you feeling, Leon? It must have been an incredible moment. Like a vision in the sky. Must have froze your blood.”
“I’m only aware five cities, two days. He’ll be here a couple of hours.”
“They know where you live and they know where you work.”
“I didn’t see yesterday’s paper as a matter of fact.”
“Of course you saw it. It said the President’s passing under your fucking window. The fucking building faces Elm Street, doesn’t it? You spend most of the day on the sixth floor, don’t you? His car is coming along Houston right straight at you. Then dipping away down Elm. Moving slowly and grandly past. The one place in the world where Lee Oswald works. The one time of day when he sits alone in a window and eats his lunch. There’s no such thing as coincidence. We don’t know what to call it, so we say coincidence. It happens because you make it happen.”
Ferrie was pink-faced, nearly shouting. Lee gave a direction to turn left. Ferrie gripped the steering wheel hard.
“You see what this means. How it shows what you’ve got to do. We didn’t arrange your job in that building or set up the motorcade route. We don’t have that kind of reach or power. There’s something else