Bev said, “But Jack was always trying. He wanted to bring Candy Barr back, for instance, when she got out of prison.”
Janet smirked. “That tells you something, Nate — Candy Barr is Ruby’s idea of class.”
“Jack’s always been a guy in search of class,” Bev said reflectively. “He thinks that things bring you class and that the people you know give you class. He’s never figured out that class isn’t something you can buy.”
I asked, “Did you ever see Cubans in the club?”
“Funny you should say that,” Bev said, with an odd expression, as if I’d just guessed her weight. 105. “My boyfriend, Larry, got into a conversation about Cuba once with this weird guy named Ferrie.” She thought for a while. “His first was David, I think. I probably only remember it because... this is terrible, but he was a fairy. He liked boys, I mean.”
“Okay,” I said. “But ‘David Ferrie’ isn’t a Cuban name.”
“No, no, but I’m getting to that. Well, Larry and this Ferrie character start talking about Cuba, how dangerously close to America that Communism is all of a sudden, and how we ought to take it over again, and start the gambling back up, and that somebody ought to do something about Castro.”
“All right,” I said, interested.
“Larry and Ferrie... ha. I’m a poet and don’t know it.” She gave me a little-girl grin, then got serious again. “Larry and Ferrie were agreeing about this subject. But Ferrie starts getting agitated, raving and ranting and all.”
She shook her head and the platinum hair damn near moved.
“That Ferrie was strange,” she said, and shivered. Might have been the air-conditioning but I didn’t think so. “By strange, I don’t mean dumb or stupid, no — he was very, very intelligent but... an odd duck.”
Janet said, “Ferrie was in the Carousel a bunch of times. He’s from New Orleans. You see him sometimes over there in the Sho-Bar. A first-class oddball.”
Flo asked, “In appearance or behavior?”
“Both,” the two women said, and then Bev giggled and so did Janet, the younger girl turning the hardened stripper into a momentary teenager.
Bev said, “He’s a good-sized guy, around six feet, maybe a hundred ninety pounds. He had some kind of disease where he lost all of his hair. So he wears this crazy reddish fright wig and he paints on black eyebrows.”
“Like a stripper,” Janet said, pointing to her own similarly painted-on eyebrows. I felt sure they looked better on her. “He’s got this kind of anteater look.”
“Anyway,” Bev said, “getting back to Larry and the Cuba conversation. Out of the blue, maybe kidding, maybe not, Ferrie says to Larry, ‘How would you like fifty grand to go to Cuba and kill that bastard?’ Excuse my language, but that’s what he said, or anyway Larry said that’s what he said. So Larry says no thanks and just gets up and drifts away.”
I asked, “Was this Ferrie guy drunk?”
“No,” Bev said. “He’s just a nut. There was an after-hours party I was working, the week of the assassination. The Monday night before. There were some Cubans there, and Ferrie, too.”
“How about Oswald?” I asked.
“No. But Ferrie got into a shouting match with one of the Cubans, and took out a gun and was waving it around! Jack went over and wrestled it away from Ferrie and called him an SOB, said someday somebody would shove that little gun up where the sun don’t shine. Funny thing, though — Jack didn’t toss Ferrie out, like he did with most people making a ruckus. Things quieted down, then I went over to Jack and said, ‘I don’t like this at all, I’m sorry, but I’m out of here. Things are getting too hot for this little blonde.’ Jack said he understood and I left.”
Janet said, looking from me to Flo, “There’s another reason I asked Bev to talk to you. Something that doesn’t have to do with the Carousel Club. She was there.”
I said, “Where?”
“At Dealey Plaza. She saw the assassination, Nate. Right there on Elm Street. Ringside seat.”
Bev was nodding, and Flo’s eyes were so wide, I thought they’d fall out of their sockets.
“Tell us, please,” I said.
“It happened right in front of me,” Bev said quietly. Her eyes were looking into the memory. “I had a brand-new movie camera that my boyfriend gave me — Larry worked for Eastman Kodak — and I wanted to make sure I could get some really good pictures of the President. I’d been to a party the night before and took a cab over there that morning. My car was already in the parking garage next door, here.”
She gestured with a thumb.
“Anyway, I start walking up Commerce, looking down the side streets to see if I could get a place close to the curb. It was just absolutely packed. There’s no way to even get up close enough to see him, let alone take film of him. I keep walking and walking, oh at least ten blocks to Dealey Plaza, across from what they’re calling the Grassy Knoll now.”
She shifted in the booth, sighed, and Janet gave her a supportive little nod. The girl was trembling but her voice was strong, clear.
“I got lucky and found this area where almost nobody was standing — by a father and his little boy — and I thought, ‘This is gonna be a great place to get pictures!’ And I start filming as soon as the motorcade turns onto Elm Street.”
Flo asked, “When you heard the first shot, did you react? Did the camera shake?”
“No, I never even knew that Mr. Kennedy had been shot until the... the fatal shot. That was definitely a different sound. There was a bang, bang, bang and then a buh-boom. The bang, bang, bang sounded like those little firecrackers people throw on the sidewalk. Then I saw the whole back of his head come off, and the blood flying everywhere.” She swallowed. “I guess I went into a state of shock, then. Everybody else is on the ground, and I’m still standing there, frozen, with my camera in my hand, like a doofus.”
I asked, “Did you think the shots had come from the book depository?”
“No,” she said firmly. “But there was smoke drifting over the picket fence. At the time, frankly, it never occurred to me it was gun smoke. I figured there was a car in that lot that started up. But people went running up the hill. You mentioned the book depository, and even people from there, they were running down to that Grassy Knoll.”
The girl paused, as if shock was settling in yet again.
Flo asked, “What did you do next?”
“I... I walked across the street to the little slope, where everybody was gathering. I saw some people who kind of looked official, taking people and talking to them. I thought, ‘They’re gonna want to talk to me in a minute,’ and I hung around a while, but nobody approached me. I made eye contact with a Dallas cop I knew from the Carousel. I could tell he recognized me and figured, if they needed me, he’d know where to find me. So I left, without anybody questioning me, and went to my car. I didn’t hear that the President had died until I got out on North Central Expressway.”
Janet said, “Tell them about the two men who came to see you at the club the next day.”
“Actually,” Bev said, “it wasn’t the next day. I didn’t go to work Friday night — I don’t think the Colony was even open, but I didn’t go. I didn’t come here to work Saturday night, either, and of course I didn’t go to work Sunday night, after what Jack did to Oswald.”
She sipped at a glass of water we’d provided.
Then she picked up: “Monday night, I got here at my normal time, a quarter till eight, and there were two men waiting at the landing halfway up the stairs. I wasn’t concerned because a lot of times people going to the Colony would wait there for the rest of their party to catch up. As I got to the landing, the taller of the two men stepped forward. He showed me FBI identification. Said, ‘Young lady, we understand you were taking pictures when the President was killed.’ I said, ‘Yes sir, I was.’ Said, ‘Have you had the film developed yet?’ I said, ‘No sir, I haven’t.’ Said, ‘Where’s the film?’ I said, ‘Still in my camera.’ Said, ‘Where is your camera?’ I said, ‘In my makeup kit, right here in my hand.’ It was a train case, and I held it up. He said, ‘Well, we want to take that film and develop it and look at it for evidence, and we’ll get it back to you in a few days.’ That was November 25, of last year, and that’s the last I heard of it.”