Libra - Don Delillo [191]
He had to be guilty, she thought, to look so bad.
He told her not to cry. His voice was gentle and sad. He told her they were taping every word.
So she could not tell him about the pictures in her shoe. Or about the other thing she’d discovered after the police had left last night. This was his wedding ring in a demitasse cup on the bedroom bureau. He’d left it behind with the money, early Friday morning.
The money, the photographs, the wedding ring.
Three times he’d asked her to live with him in Dallas. She said no, no, no.
He told her now to buy shoes for June. Don’t worry, he said. And kiss the babies for me.
The guards got him out of the chair and he walked backwards to the door, watching her until he was gone.
Home, Aunt Valya would be putting up sauerkraut, polishing copper, busy with the usual things, going with Uncle Ilya to visit the Andrianovs, a life without sudden turns and interruptions, and waiting for the first heavy snows.
She didn’t even know about the policeman. She didn’t know about Governor Connally. No one told her until later in the day that Lee was accused of wounding one of them and cold-bloodedly killing the other.
They led him back to the cell. He took off his clothes and gave them to the guard. He ate a lunch of beans, boiled potatoes and some kind of meat.
Nothing about this place bewildered him or set him to wondering what would happen next. The reporters did not surprise him, uproar in the halls. The lawmen asked the obvious questions and even when he failed to anticipate what they’d ask, it was still everyday obvious stuff. The cell was the same room he’d known all his life. Sitting in his underwear on a wooden bunk. A sink with a dripping tap. Nothing new here. He was ready to take it day by day, growing into the role as it developed. He didn’t fear a thing. There was strength for him here. Everything about this place and situation was set up to make him stronger.
Even his appetite was back. This was the first meal he could really dig into. There was coffee in a mug. He drank it slowly. He thought. He listened to the guards talk softly in the narrow hall.
There was a third way he could play it. He could tell them he was the lone gunman. He did it on his own, the only one. It was the culmination of a life of struggle. He did it to protest the anti-Castro aims of the government, to advance the Marxist cause into the heart of the American empire. He had no help. It was his plan, his weapon. Three shots. All struck home. He was an expert shot with a rifle.
Saturday night. David Ferrie was driving in circles through the city of Galveston, Texas. His monkey fur was askew on his head. His mind had reached the stage of hysteroid extremes.
When the President was shot he was in a federal courtroom in New Orleans, where Carmine Latta’s tax evasion case was being decided in the old man’s favor.
When Leon was picked up by the police he was in his apartment packing for the trip to Galveston. He had his old Eastern captain’s hat, gold-braided, that he was putting in an overnight bag. He heard the capture on the radio.
This was cause for panic. He gave in to it at once. Ferrie believed panic was an animal action of the body to ensure that the species survives. It was far older than logic. He kept on packing, only faster, and hurried down to his car.
He drove in circles around New Orleans for hours, listening to news reports. Then he filled the tank and headed west through a black storm, one of those sky bursts full of slanting coastal fury, and seven hours later he was in Houston.
He drove in circles around Houston. At 4:30 A.M. he checked into a place called the Alamotel. He was in no mood for patriotic puns. He spoke Spanish to the desk clerk, went to his room and made a series of calls to people in New Orleans, friends, lovers, clergy. He sought comfort in these calls and spoke Spanish even to those who didn’t know a word.
He was afraid Leon would give the police his name.
He was afraid Leon would be killed.
He was afraid Leon, alive or dead, had his library