Libra - Don Delillo [195]
“Not tomorrow you can’t walk down a ramp. They are letting in reporters with press cards and that’s it. A limited number, mainly picture-taking. This transfer is very delicate. They have extra men coming in. They’re determined it goes off without a hitch.”
“Then how do I get in?”
“I’m saying, Jack. There’s an alley that runs along the east side of the building. You’re inconspicuous here. Halfway down there’s a door to the new part of the building, the municipal annex. This door is always locked except tomorrow we arrange it’s open. There is no guard on the door. You go in the building. Once you’re inside you see elevators and stairs. You take the stairs down. They’re fire stairs. This is how you get in the basement.”
“How do they bring him out?”
“Handcuffed to a detective. Another detective on the other side. What kind of gun do you have?”
“Snub-nose .38. Fits in a pants pocket.”
“You’ll have the heaviest hard-on in America.”
Karlinsky laughed bleakly, a growl down in the throat. Jack sat behind the desk, looking blank. The conversation ended here.
Jack was alone for an hour figuring out how to meet recent wages and bills without the weekend receipts. This kind of petty arithmetic tightened his skull.
He looked in his address book for a number. Then he called Russell Shively, his detective friend, at home. It was after 3:00 A.M. Jack listened to the lonely phone ringing.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Hello Russell.”
“Who the hell is this?”
Jack paused.
“They are going to kill that bastard Oswald in the police basement tomorrow during the transfer to the county jail.”
He paused again, then put down the phone.
Lee Harvey Oswald was awake in his cell. It was beginning to occur to him that he’d found his life’s work. After the crime comes the reconstruction. He will have motives to analyze, the whole rich question of truth and guilt. Time to reflect, time to turn this thing in his mind. Here is a crime that clearly yields material for deep interpretation. He will be able to bend the light of that heightened moment, shadows fixed on the lawn, the limousine shimmering and still. Time to grow in self-knowledge, to explore the meaning of what he’s done. He will vary the act a hundred ways, speed it up and slow it down, shift emphasis, find shadings, see his whole life change.
This was the true beginning.
They will, give him writing paper and books. He will fill his cell with books about the case. He will have time to educate himself in criminal law, ballistics, acoustics, photography. Whatever pertains to the case he will examine and consume. People will come to see him, the lawyers first, then psychologists, historians, biographers. His life had a single clear subject now, called Lee Harvey Oswald.
He and Kennedy were partners. The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live.
The more time he spent in a cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now. This charged him with strength. There was clearly a better time beginning, a time of deep reading in the case, of self-analysis and reconstruction. He no longer saw confinement as a lifetime curse. He’d found the truth about a room. He could easily live in a cell half this size.
Sunday morning. Jack did the normal shuffling, getting the day going. It took him a certain time to beam in on things. He drank some grapefruit juice and paced the living room. George was on the sofa reading a newspaper and Jack kept going by with that stare of his that reached only a foot into the world.
“Jack, for me to express a facial nature, you know it’s hard with words, but I don’t think you look so good.”
Jack turned on TV. He washed and shaved, using a Wilkinson sword blade for the name appeal and smacking on aftershave so it hurt. He made scrambled eggs and coffee and looked at the first section of the Times Herald, still in his shorts, while he ate. There was an open letter to Caroline Kennedy that was so emotional it choked off his ability