Dunning Was Prominent in Many Charity Drives 14 страница

Marina pushed Lee in front of her and pointed at the bell. He rang it. Peter Gregory and his son came out, and when June put her arms out to Paul, the young man laughed and took her. Lee’s mouth twitched downward when he saw this.

Another man came out. I recognized him from the group that had arrived on the day of Paul Gregory’s first language lesson, and he had been back to the Oswald place three or four times since, bringing groceries, toys for June, or both. I was pretty sure his name was George Bouhe (yes, another George, the past harmonizes in all sorts of ways), and although he was pushing sixty, I had an idea he was seriously crushing on Marina.

According to the short-order cook who’d gotten me into this, Bouhe was the one who persuaded Peter Gregory to throw the get-acquainted party. George de Mohrenschildt wasn’t there, but he’d hear about it shortly thereafter. Bouhe would tell de Mohrenschildt about the Oswalds and their peculiar marriage. He would also tell de Mohrenschildt that Lee Oswald had made a scene at the party, praising socialism and the Russian collectives. The young man strikes me as crazy, Bouhe would say. De Mohrenschildt, a lifelong connoisseur of crazy, would decide he had to meet this odd couple for himself.

Why did Oswald blow his top at Peter Gregory’s party, offending the well-meaning expats who might otherwise have helped him? I didn’t know for sure, but I had a pretty good idea. There’s Marina, charming them all (especially the men) in her blue dress. There’s June, pretty as a Woolworth’s baby picture in her charity jumper with the sewn-on flowers. And there’s Lee, sweating in his ugly suit. He’s keeping up with the rapid ebb and flow of Russian better than young Paul Gregory, but in the end, he’s still left behind. It must have infuriated him to have to kowtow to these people, and to eat their salt. I hope it did. I hope it hurt.

I didn’t linger. What I cared about was de Mohrenschildt, the next link in the chain. He would arrive onstage soon. Meanwhile, all three Oswalds were finally out of 2703, and would be until at least ten o’clock. Given that the following day was Sunday, maybe even later.

I drove back to activate the bug in their living room.

Mercedes Street was partying hearty that Saturday night, but the field behind chez Oswald was silent and deserted. I thought my key would work on the back door as well as the front, but that was a theory I never had to test, because the back door was unlocked. During my time in Fort Worth, I never once used the key I’d purchased from Ivy Templeton. Life is full of ironies.

The place was heartbreakingly neat. The high chair had been placed between the parents’ seats at the little table in the kitchen where they took their meals, the tray wiped gleaming-clean. The same was true of the peeling surface of the counter and the sink with its rusty hard-water ring. I made a bet with myself that Marina would have left Rosette’s jumper-clad girls and went into what was now June’s room to check. I had brought a penlight and shined it around the walls. Yes, they were still there, although in the dark they were more ghostly than cheerful. June probably looked at them as she lay in her crib, sucking her bokkie. I wondered if she would remember them later, on some deep level of her mind. Crayola ghost-girls.

Jimla, I thought for no reason at all, and shivered.

I moved the bureau, attached the tapwire to the lamp’s plug, and fed it through the hole I’d drilled in the wall. All fine, but then I had a bad moment. Very bad. When I moved the bureau back into place, it bumped against the wall and the Leaning Lamp of Pisa toppled.

If I’d had time to think, I would have frozen in place and the damn thing would have shattered on the floor. Then what? Remove the bug and leave the pieces? Hope they’d accept the idea that the lamp, unsteady to begin with, had fallen on its own? Most people would buy that, but most people don’t have reason to be paranoid about the FBI. Lee might find the hole I’d drilled in the wall. If he did, the butterfly would spread its wings.

But I didn’t have time to think. I reached out and caught the lamp on the way down. Then I just stood there, holding it and shaking. It was hot as an oven in the little house, and I could smell the stink of my own sweat. Would they smell it when they came back? How could they not?

I wondered if I were mad. Surely the smart thing would be to remove the bug… and then remove myself. I could reconnect with Oswald on April tenth of next year, watch him try to assassinate General Edwin Walker, and if he was on his own, I could then kill him just as I had Frank Dunning. KISS, as they say in Christy’s AA meetings; keep it simple, stupid. Why in God’s name was I fucking with a bugged thriftshop lamp when the future of the world was at stake?

It was Al Templeton who answered. You’re here because the window of uncertainty is still open. You’re here because if George de Mohrenschildt is more than he appears, then maybe Oswald wasn’t the one. You’re here to save Kennedy, and making sure starts now. So put that fucking lamp back where it belongs.

I put the lamp back where it belonged, although its unsteadiness worried me. What if Lee knocked it off the bureau himself, and saw the bug inside when the ceramic base shattered? For that matter, what if Lee and de Mohrenschildt conversed in this room, but with the lamp off and in tones too low for my long-distance mike to pick up? Then it all would have been for nothing.

You’ll never make an omelet thinking that way, buddy.

What convinced me was the thought of Sadie. I loved her and she loved me—at least she had—and I’d thrown that away to come here to this shitty street. And by Christ, I wasn’t going to leave without at least trying to hear what George de Mohrenschildt had to say for himself.

I slipped through the back door, and with the penlight clamped in my teeth, connected the tapwire to the tape recorder. I slid the recorder into a rusty Crisco can to protect it from the elements, then concealed it in the little nest of bricks and boards I had already prepared.

Then I went back to my own shitty little house on that shitty little street and began to wait.

They never used the lamp until it got almost too dark to see. Saving on the electricity bill, I suppose. Besides, Lee was a workingman. He went to bed early, and she went when he did. The first time I checked the tape, what I had was mostly Russian—and draggy Russian at that, given the super-slow speed of the recorder. If Marina tried out her English vocabulary, Lee would reprimand her. Nevertheless, he sometimes spoke to June in English if the baby was fussy, always in low, soothing tones. Sometimes he even sang to her. The super-slow recordings made him sound like an orc trying its hand at “Rockabye, Baby.”

Twice I heard him hit Marina, and the second time, Russian wasn’t good enough to express his rage. “You worthless, nagging cunt! I guess maybe my ma was right about you!” This was followed by the slam of a door, and the sound of Marina crying. It cut out abruptly as she turned off the lamp.

On the evening of September fourth, I saw a kid, thirteen or so, come to the Oswalds’ door with a canvas sack over his shoulder. Lee, barefoot and dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans, opened up. They spoke. Lee invited him inside. They spoke some more. At one point Lee picked up a book and showed it to the kid, who looked at it dubiously. There was no chance of using the directional mike, because the weather had turned cool and the windows over there were shut. But the Leaning Lamp of Pisa was on, and when I retrieved the second tape late the following night, I was treated to an amusing conversation. By the third time I played it, I hardly heard the slow drag of the voices.

The kid was selling subscriptions to a newspaper—or maybe it was a magazine—called Grit. He informed the Oswalds that it had all sorts of interesting stuff the New York papers couldn’t be bothered with (he labeled this “country news”), plus sports and gardening tips. It also had what he called “fiction stories” and comic strips. “You won’t get Dixie Dugan in the Times Herald,” he informed them. “My mama loves Dixie.”

“Well son, that’s fine,” Lee said. “You’re quite the little businessman, aren’t you?”

“Uh… yessir?”

“Tell me how much you make.”

“I don’t get but four cents on every dime, but that ain’t the big thing, sir. Mostly what I like is the prizes. They’re way better than the ones you get selling Cloverine Salve. Nuts to that! I goan get me a.22! My dad said I could have it.”

“Son, do you know you’re being exploited?”

“Huh?”

“They take the dimes. You get pennies and the promise of a rifle.”

“Lee, he nice boy,” Marina said. “Be nice. Leave alone.”

Lee ignored her. “You need to know what’s in this book, son. Can you read what’s on the front?”

“Oh, yessir. It says The Condition of the Working Class, by Fried-rik… Ing-gulls?”

“Engels. It’s all about what happens to boys who think they’re going to wind up millionaires by selling stuff door-to-door.”

“I don’t want to be no millionaire,” the boy objected. “I just want a.22 so I can plink rats at the dump like my friend Hank.”

“You make pennies selling their newspapers; they make dollars selling your sweat, and the sweat of a million boys like you. The free market isn’t free. You need to educate yourself, son. I did, and I started when I was just your age.”

Lee gave the Grit newsboy a ten-minute lecture on the evils of capitalism, complete with choice quotes from Karl Marx. The boy listened patiently, then asked: “So you goan buy a sup-scription?”

“Son, have you listened to a single word I’ve said?”

“Yessir!”

“Then you should know that this system has stolen from me just as it’s stealing from you and your family.”

“You broke? Why didn’t you say so?”

“What I’ve been trying to do is explain to you why I’m broke.”

“Well, gol-lee! I could’ve tried three more houses, but now I have to go home because it’s almost my curfew!”

“Good luck,” Marina said.

The front door squalled open on its old hinges, then rattled shut (it was too tired to thump). There was a long silence. Then Lee said, in a flat voice: “You see. That’s what we’re up against.”

Not long after, the lamp went out.

My new phone stayed mostly silent. Deke called once—one of those quick howya doin duty-calls—but that was all. I told myself I couldn’t expect more. School was back in, and the first few weeks were always harum-scarum. Deke was busy because Miz Ellie had unretired him. He told me that, after some grumbling, he had allowed her to put his name on the substitute list. Ellie wasn’t calling because she had five thousand things to do and probably five hundred little brushfires to put out.

I realized only after Deke hung up that he hadn’t mentioned Sadie… and two nights after Lee’s lecture to the newsboy, I decided I had to talk to her. I had to hear her voice, even if all she had to say was Please don’t call me, George, it’s over.

As I reached for the phone, it rang. I picked it up and said—with complete certainty: “Hello, Sadie. Hello, honey.”

There was a moment of silence long enough for me to think I had been wrong after all, that someone was going to say I’m not Sadie, I’m just some putz who dialed a wrong number. Then she said: “How did you know it was me?”

I almost said harmonics, and she might have understood that. But might wasn’t good enough. This was an important call, and I didn’t want to screw it up. Desperately didn’t want to screw it up. Through most of what followed there were two of me on the phone, George who was speaking out loud and Jake on the inside, saying all the things George couldn’t. Maybe there are always two on each end of the conversation when good love hangs in the balance.

“Because I’ve been thinking about you all day,” I said. (I’ve been thinking of you all summer.)

“How are you?”

“I’m fine.” (I’m lonely.) “How about you? How was your summer? Did you get it done?” (Have you cut your legal ties to your weird husband?)

“Yes,” she said. “Done deal. Isn’t that one of the things you say, George? Done deal?”

“I guess so. How’s school? How’s the library?”

“George? Are we going to talk like this, or are we going to talk?”

“All right.” I sat down on my lumpy secondhand couch. “Let’s talk. Are you okay?”

“Yes, but I’m unhappy. And I’m very confused.” She hesitated, then said: “I was working at Harrah’s, you probably know that. As a cocktail waitress. And I met somebody.”

“Oh?” (Oh, shit.)

“Yes. A very nice man. Charming. A gentleman. Just shy of forty. His name is Roger Beaton. He’s an aide to the Republican senator from California, Tom Kuchel. He’s the minority whip in the Senate, you know. Kuchel, I mean, not Roger.” She laughed, but not the way you do when something’s funny.

“Should I be glad you met someone nice?”

“I don’t know, George… are you glad?”

“No.” (I want to kill him.)

“Roger is handsome,” she said in a flat just-the-facts voice. “He’s pleasant. He went to Yale. He knows how to show a girl a good time. And he’s tall.”

The second me would no longer keep silent. “I want to kill him.”

That made her laugh, and the sound of it was a relief. “I’m not telling you this to hurt you, or make you feel bad.”

“Really? Then why are you telling me?”

“We went out three or four times. He kissed me… we made out a little… just necking, like kids… ”

(I not only want to kill him, I want to do it slowly.)

“But it wasn’t the same. Maybe it could be, in time; maybe not. He gave me his number in Washington, and told me to call him if I… how did he put it? ‘If you get tired of shelving books and carrying a torch for the one that got away.’ I think that was the gist of it. He says he’s going places, and that he needs a good woman to go with him. He thought I might be that woman. Of course, men say stuff like that. I’m not as naïve as I once was. But sometimes they mean it.”

“Sadie…”

“Still, it wasn’t quite the same.” She sounded thoughtful, absent, and for the first time I wondered if something other than doubt about her personal life might be wrong with her. If she might be sick. “On the plus side, there was no broom in evidence. Of course, sometimes men hide the broom, don’t they? Johnny did. You did, too, George.”

“Sadie?”

“Yes?”

“Are you hiding a broom?”

There was a long moment of silence. Much longer than the one when I had answered the phone with her name, and much longer than I expected. At last she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You don’t sound like yourself, that’s all.”

“I told you, I’m very confused. And I’m sad. Because you’re still not ready to tell me the truth, are you?”

“If I could, I would.”

“You know something interesting? You have good friends in Jodie—not just me—and none of them know where you live.”

“Sadie—”

“You say it’s Dallas, but you’re on the Elmhurst exchange, and Elmhurst is Fort Worth.”

I’d never thought of that. What else hadn’t I thought of?

“Sadie, all I can tell you is that what I’m doing is very impor—”

“Oh, I’m sure it is. And what Senator Kuchel’s doing is very important, too. Roger was at pains to tell me that, and to tell me that if I… I joined him in Washington, I would be more or less sitting at the feet of greatnesss… or in the doorway to history… or something like that. Power excites him. It was one of the few things it was hard to like about him. What I thought—what I still think—is, who am I to sit at the feet of greatness? I’m just a divorced librarian.”

“Who am I to stand in the doorway to history?” I said.

“What? What did you say, George?”

“Nothing, hon.”

“Maybe you better not call me that.”

“Sorry.” (I’m not.) “What exactly are we talking about?”

“You and me and whether or not that still makes an us. It would help if you could tell me why you’re in Texas. Because I know you didn’t come to write a book or teach school.”

“Telling you could be dangerous.”

“We’re all in danger,” she said. “Johnny’s right about that. Will I tell you something Roger told me?”

“All right.” (Where did he tell you, Sadie? And were the two of you vertical or horizontal when the conversation took place?)

“He’d had a drink or two, and he got gossipy. We were in his hotel room, but don’t worry—I kept my feet on the floor and all my clothes on.”

“I wasn’t worrying.”

“If you weren’t, I’m disappointed in you.”

“All right, I was worried. What did he say?”

“He said there’s a rumor that there’s going to be some sort of major deal in the Caribbean this fall or winter. A flashpoint, he called it. I’m assuming he meant Cuba. He said, ‘That idiot JFK is going to put us all in the soup just to show he’s got balls.’”

I remembered all the end-of-the-world crap her former husband had poured into her ears. Anyone who reads the paper can see it coming, he’d told her. We’ll die with sores all over our bodies, and coughing up our lungs. Stuff like that leaves an impression, especially when spoken in tones of dry scientific certainty. Leaves an impression? A scar, more like it.

“Sadie, that’s crap.”

“Oh?” She sounded nettled. “I suppose you have the inside scoop and Senator Kuchel doesn’t?”

“Let’s say I do.”

“Let’s not. I’ll wait for you to come clean a little longer, but not much. Maybe just because you’re a good dancer.”

“Then let’s go dancing!” I said a little wildly.

“Goodnight, George.”

And before I could say anything else, she hung up.

I started to call her back, but when the operator said “Number, please?” sanity reasserted itself. I put the phone back in its cradle. She had said what she needed to say. Trying to get her to say more would only make things worse.

I tried to tell myself that her call had been nothing but a stratagem to get me off the dime, a speak for yourself, John Alden kind of thing. It wouldn’t work because that wasn’t Sadie. It had seemed more like a cry for help.

I picked up the phone again, and this time when the operator asked for a number, I gave her one. The phone rang twice on the other end, and then Ellen Dockerty said, “Yes? Who is it, please?”

“Hi, Miz Ellie. It’s me. George.”

Maybe that moment-of-silence thing was catching. I waited. Then she said, “Hello, George. I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I? It’s just that I’ve been awfully—”

“Busy, sure. I know what the first week or two’s like, Ellie. I called because Sadie just called me.”

“Oh?” She sounded very cautious.

“If you told her my number was on a Fort Worth exchange instead of Dallas, it’s okay.”

“I wasn’t gossiping. I hope you understand that. I thought she had a right to know. I care for Sadie. Of course I care for you, too, George… but you’re gone. She’s not.”

I did understand, although it hurt. The feeling of being in a space capsule bound for the outer depths recurred. “I’m fine with that, Ellie, and it really wasn’t much of a fib. I expect to be moving to Dallas soon.”

No response, and what could she say? Perhaps you are, but we both know you’re a bit of a liar?

“I didn’t like the way she sounded. Does she seem all right to you?”

“I’m not sure I want to answer that question. If I said no, you might come roaring down to see her, and she doesn’t want to see you. Not as things stand.”

Actually she had answered my question. “Was she okay when she came back?”

“She was fine. Glad to see us all.”

“But now she sounds distracted and says she feels sad.”

“Is that so surprising?” Miz Ellie spoke with asperity. “There are lots of memories here for Sadie, many of them connected to a man she still has feelings for. A nice man and a lovely teacher, but one who arrived flying false colors.”

That one really hurt.

“It seemed like something else. She spoke about some sort of coming crisis that she heard about from—” From the Yalie who was sitting in the doorway of history? “From someone she met in Nevada. Her husband filled her head with a lot of nonsense—”

“Her head? Her pretty little head?” Not just asperity now; outright anger. It made me feel small and mean. “George, I have a stack of folders a mile high in front of me, and I need to get to them. You cannot psychoanalyze Sadie Dunhill at long distance, and I cannot help you with your love life. The only thing I can do is to advise you to come clean if you care for her. Sooner rather than later.”

“You haven’t seen her husband around, I suppose?”

“No! Goodnight, George!”

For the second time that night, a woman I cared about hung up on me. That was a new personal record.

I went into the bedroom and began to undress. Fine when she arrived. Glad to be back with all her Jodie friends. Not so fine now. Because she was torn between the handsome, on-the-fast-track-to-success new guy and the tall dark stranger with the invisible past? That would probably be the case in a romance novel, but if it was the case here, why hadn’t she been down at the mouth when she came back?

An unpleasant thought occurred to me: maybe she was drinking. A lot. Secretly. Wasn’t it possible? My wife had been a secret heavy drinker for years—before I married her, in fact—and the past harmonizes with itself. It would be easy to dismiss that, to say that Miz Ellie would have spotted the signs, but drunks can be clever. Sometimes it’s years before people start to get wise. If Sadie was showing up for work on time, Ellie might not notice that she was doing so with bloodshot eyes and mints on her breath.

The idea was probably ridiculous. All my suppositions were suspect, each one colored by how much I still cared for Sadie.

I lay back on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. In the living room, the oil stove gurgled—it was another cool night.

Let it go, buddy, Al said. You have to. Remember, you’re not here to get—

The girl, the gold watch, and everything. Yeah, Al, got it.

Besides, she’s probably fine. You’re the one with the problem.

More than just one, actually, and it was a long time before I fell asleep.

The following Monday, when I made one of my regular drive-bys of 214 West Neely Street in Dallas, I observed a long gray funeral hack parked in the driveway. The two fat ladies were standing on the porch, watching a couple of men in dark suits lift a stretcher into the rear. On it was a sheeted form. On the tottery-looking balcony above the porch, the young couple from the upstairs apartment was also watching. Their youngest child was sleeping in his mother’s arms.

The wheelchair with the ashtray clamped to the arm stood orphaned under the tree where the old man had spent most of his days last summer.

I pulled over and stood by my car until the hearse left. Then (although I realized the timing was rather, shall we say, crass) I crossed the street and walked up the path to the porch. At the foot of the stairs, I tipped my hat. “Ladies, I’m very sorry for your loss.”

The older of the two—the wife who was now a widow, I assumed—said: “You’ve been here before.”

Indeed I have, I thought of saying. This thing is bigger than pro football.

“He saw you.” Not accusing; just stating a fact.

“I’ve been looking for an apartment in this neighborhood. Will you be keeping this one?”

“No,” the younger one said. “He had some in-surance. Bout the only thing he did have. ’Cept for some medals in a box.” She sniffed. I tell you, it broke my heart a little to see how grief-stricken those two ladies were.

“He said you was a ghost,” the widow told me. “He said he could see right through you. Accourse he was as crazy as a shithouse mouse. Last three years, ever since he had his stroke and they put him on that peebag. Me n Ida’s goin back to Oklahoma.”

Try Mozelle, I thought. That’s where you’re supposed to go when you give up your apartment.

“What do you want?” the younger one asked. “We got to take him a suit on down to the funeary home.”

“I’d like the number of your landlord,” I said.

The widow’s eyes gleamed. “What’d it be worth to you, mister?”

“I’ll give it to you for free!” said the young woman on the second-floor balcony.

The bereaved daughter looked up and told her to shut her fucking mouth. That was the thing about Dallas. Derry, too.

Neighborly.

CHAPTER 19

George de Mohrenschildt made his grand entrance on the afternoon of September fifteenth, a dark and rainy Saturday. He was behind the wheel of a coffee-colored Cadillac right out of a Chuck Berry song. With him was a man I knew, George Bouhe, and one I didn’t—a skinny whip of a guy with a fuzz of white hair and the ramrod back of a fellow who’s spent a good deal of time in the military and is still happy about it. De Mohrenschildt went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. I dashed to get the distance mike.

When I came back with my gear, Bouhe had a folded-up playpen under his arm, and the military-looking guy had an armload of toys. De Mohrenschildt was empty-handed, and mounted the steps in front of the other two with his head up and his chest thrown out. He was tall and powerfully built. His graying hair was combed slantwise back from his broad forehead in a way that said—to me, at least—look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. For I am GEORGE.

I plugged in the tape recorder, put on the headphones, and tilted the mike-equipped bowl across the street.

Marina was out of sight. Lee was sitting on the couch, reading a thick paperback by the light of the lamp on the bureau. When he heard footsteps on the porch, he looked up with a frown and tossed his book on the coffee table. More goddam expats, he might have been thinking.

But he went to answer the knock. He held out his hand to the silver-haired stranger on his porch, but de Mohrenschildt surprised him—and me—by pulling Lee into his arms and bussing him on both cheeks. Then he held him back by the shoulders. His voice was deep and accented—German rather than Russian, I thought. “Let me look at a young man who has journeyed so far and come back with his ideals intact!” Then he pulled Lee into another hug. Oswald’s head just showed above the bigger man’s shoulder, and I saw something even more surprising: Lee Harvey Oswald was smiling.

Marina came out of the baby’s room with June in her arms. She exclaimed with pleasure when she saw Bouhe, and thanked him for the playpen and what she called, in her stilted English, the “child’s playings.” Bouhe introduced the skinny man as Lawrence Orlov—Colonel Lawrence Orlov, if you please—and de Mohrenschildt as “a friend of the Russian community.”

Bouhe and Orlov went to work setting the playpen up in the middle of the floor. Marina stood with them, chatting in Russian. Like Bouhe, Orlov couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the young Russian mother. Marina was wearing a smock top and shorts showcasing legs that went up forever. Lee’s smile was gone. He was retreating into his usual gloom.

Only de Mohrenschildt wouldn’t let him. He spotted Lee’s paperback, sprang to the coffee table, and picked it up. “Atlas Shrugged?” Speaking just to Lee. Completely ignoring the others, who were admiring the new playpen. “Ayn Rand? What is a young revolutionary doing with this?”

“Know your enemy,” Lee said, and when de Mohrenschildt burst into a hearty roar of laughter, Lee’s smile resurfaced.

“And what do you make of Miss Rand’s cri de coeur?” That struck a cord when I played the tape back. I listened to the comment twice before it clicked: it was almost exactly the same phrase Mimi Corcoran had used when asking me about The Catcher in the Rye.

“I think she’s swallowed the poison bait,” Oswald said. “Now she’s making money by selling it to other people.”

“Exactly, my friend. I’ve never heard it put better. There will come a day when the Rands of the world will answer for their crimes. Do you believe that?”

“I know it,” Lee said. He spoke matter-of-factly.

De Mohrenschildt patted the couch. “Sit by me. I want to hear of your adventures in the homeland.”

But first Bouhe and Orlov approached Lee and de Mohrenschildt. There was a lot of back and forth in Russian. Lee looked dubious, but when de Mohrenschildt said something to him, also in Russian, Lee nodded and spoke briefly to Marina. The way he flicked his hand at the door made it pretty clear: Go on, then, go.

De Mohrenschildt tossed his car keys to Bouhe, who fumbled them. De Mohrenschildt and Lee exchanged a look of shared amusement as Bouhe grubbed them off the dirty green carpet. Then they left, Marina carrying the baby in her arms, and drove off in de Mohrenschildt’s boat of a Cadillac.

“Now we have peace, my friend,” de Mohrenschildt said. “And the men will open their wallets, which is good, yes?”