Flo was watching and listening with the rapt attention you might give a Hitchcock thriller.
Craig continued: “I made the ID, and Fritz and I went in together. He told Oswald, ‘This officer saw you leave the crime scene,’ and Oswald, real defensive and sullen, said that he’d already told them that. Fritz then said, ‘He saw a Latin fella pick you up in a station wagon,’ and Oswald replied, leaning forward on Fritz’s desk, forceful as hell, ‘That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine’... who was apparently a friend of his wife’s, and he didn’t want to see her ‘dragged into this.’ Oswald seemed disgusted, like he’d been let down or even betrayed, and Fritz was sort of playing ‘good cop,’ because he almost seemed like he was consoling Oswald, who said, real depressed, ‘Now everybody will know who I am.’”
That sounded to me like an undercover agent whose cover had been blown.
“Miss Kilgore,” he said, sitting forward, firm but pleasant, “I will be glad to cooperate with you any way I can. This has smelled like a cover-up to me since the day it happened, and because I have refused to be part of it, my career has hit a dead end. I expect any day to be fired over one trumped-up thing or another. Just four years ago, I was named Officer of the Year. I nailed an international jewel thief. Do you know that? Officer of the Year.”
His voice was steady, but his eyes were moist.
Beyond the Dealey Plaza underpass — through which an assassinated president had been whisked away into history books that would one day be boxed and stacked in the nearby depository — stretched the city-within-the-city known as Oak Cliff. The boardinghouse where Lee Harvey Oswald had roomed, and the street where he possibly shot J. D. Tippit, and the movie theater where he was arrested, were all in Oak Cliff.
Two hundred seventy-five thousand of Dallas’s citizens also lived there, in the small, older homes close to downtown, and newer houses and apartments farther out. Chiefly a blue-collar community, with considerable natural beauty — in particular the woods and hills of Kessler Park — Oak Cliff was convenient for those working downtown. Young men on their way up would have a home in Oak Cliff only temporarily, relocating their families to more status-friendly North Dallas when raises allowed.
On a quiet side street in Oak Cliff’s newer section lived a young woman who was not on her way up, having already realized her dreams. Most likely she owned the modern six-room bungalow. Unlike much of Texas, the oak tree in her modest front yard realized this was autumn and was spilling leaves. A knock at an antique oval front door quickly summoned the lady of the house, petite, curvy, in her thirties, with a pixie-ish reddish-brown hairdo. Her prettiness was on the pixie side, too, heart-shaped face, wide-set brown eyes, pert nose, and dimpling smile.
“Well, look who’s on my doorstep,” our hostess said, in a lazy, Scarlett O’Hara — ish way. She looked primly festive in a brown-and-orange flower-print cotton dress with flounce sleeves and a full skirt. “Why, when I heard Flo Kilgore wanted to chat with me, I was simply flabbergasted. Come in, come in.”
We did, into a living room arrayed with Early American antiques. Only a few framed family photos on one wall — our hostess with two young boys at various ages — were indicative of this century. She had apparently cleaned the room to perfection, knowing a TV star was coming by.
Flo, looking chic in a royal-blue crepe dress with A-line skirt, gestured toward me with a white-gloved hand. “Mrs. West, this is my investigator, Nathan Heller, from Chicago.”
Mrs. West nodded with a smile that had turned forced as she said, “Mr. Heller, welcome to my home,” and I wondered if I’d somehow already managed to get off on the wrong foot with her. Probably she hadn’t expected Flo to bring anyone along.
“Miss Kilgore,” she said, her hands fig-leafed before her, “I would much prefer you call me Madeleine, or if you favor the formality, make it Mrs. Brown — my name by my late, first husband. I do not live with my present husband.”
“Certainly, Madeleine,” Flo said. “And call me Flo, please.”
“And I’m Nate,” I said with a smile that she returned without anything forced about it this time.
“I generally don’t indulge in alcohol in the afternoon,” she said, “but I can get you something, if you like. Or iced tea, perhaps?”
Flo said iced tea would be fine and I agreed.
“Shall we sit on the patio?” Madeleine asked, and led us through a modern kitchen to a sun-dappled cement slab on a backyard given over to flowers, vines, shrubs, and small trees. Flo and I were directed to black wrought-iron chairs with all-weather floral cushions at a matching round table under an umbrella. We sat as Madeleine returned to the kitchen to fetch glasses of iced tea.
When all three of us were settled, Flo removed the recording gizmo from her purse and Madeleine shook her finger in a gently scolding fashion. “I’m sorry, Miss Kilgore... Flo... but I won’t be recorded. You will, I’m afraid, have to take notes.”
“Well, that will be fine,” Flo said, and her smile was as forced as Madeleine’s earlier one had been.
As Flo dug in her purse, Madeleine said, businesslike, “Now, perhaps Mr. Lane didn’t make it clear, but I cannot at this time be quoted. Perhaps in the future. But not at this time.”
Flo, settling in with her spiral pad and ballpoint, said, “I understand. For the present, you’ll be an unnamed source, close to President Johnson.”
“That will be fine,” she said, and sipped at a straw as long as her tall narrow glass. “That will be fine.”
Since 1948, Madeleine West, or Brown, had been the mistress of Lyndon Baines Johnson. They had a son together, one who closely resembled his father (that had been clear in my glance at those family portraits). Senator Johnson had bought her this house in 1950, and seemed to support her well if not quite lavishly. Apparently she had married a man named Brown for cover purposes. Flo knew all of this going in, and knew as well that Mrs. Brown was irritated with her lover/provider, for spending so little time with her since assuming the presidency. Whether Mrs. Brown knew of another LBJ relationship with a White House secretary — which had also resulted in a child — was unknown.
I had already cautioned Flo that Mrs. Brown’s current irritation with her longtime benefactor might color what she shared with us this afternoon. Or — and this was more likely — that her sharing it with us was at once a blackmail threat and a life-insurance policy.
Flo asked, “When did you meet Lyndon Johnson?”
“Right after the Box 13 scandal, in the election of ’48 — perhaps you’ll recall the ballot-box stuffing accusations that dogged Lyndon?”
“So they were just accusations, then?”
“Oh, my no, Lyndon and his people did that, all right. Well, they were celebrating, and I must say that night is engraved in my memory. When that tall Texan walked into that ballroom, so charismatic and handsome... why, everyone there gravitated towards him, including this little girl. I was seduced by the very sight of him.”
I sipped my iced tea and managed not to make a face, either at the sugared Southern style of the drink or at Madeleine Brown’s True Romance magazine twaddle.
“At the time,” she was saying, “a girl just starting out, I was working for the Glenn Advertising agency, only a few steps away from the Adolphus Hotel, where the party was held... in the Crystal Ballroom?”
Was she asking me? I wasn’t there.
“He was just a typical Texan — both feet on the ground, smiling, warm, just terribly sexy. We were introduced by someone who did business with the agency, and I danced with the man of the hour, and it was so overwhelming, just to be in his arms.”