Jack went back down the street. When he reached the line of people outside the other club, he started shaking hands and giving out cards with the Carousel name and hours. Then he got into his white Olds and drove off to clear his head.
Jack's car was a movable slum. His dogs had chewed up the seat covers and mats. They'd eaten the stuffing inside the rear seat, exposing the springs. There were paw marks on the windows. There were eight empty liquor cartons tilted and wedged across the rear seat. He had jars of diet food rolling across the floor when he stopped or turned. He had a couple of hundred dollars on top of the dashboard, folded in butcher wrap stained with lamb-chop blood. There were extra Preludins in the glove compartment plus a bathing cap, a number of unpaid tickets, a number of address books, some loose condoms, a set of brass knuckles and a TV Guide.
He tuned in KLIF, looking for a disc jockey called the Weird Beard. He needed a familiar voice to calm him down.
He drove around downtown Dallas. It happens a few times where I have to pummel one of these guys who causes trouble in the club. Once they get you cowered to that extent, you are physically doomed. He felt his jacket for the. 38, which was tucked into a Merchants State Bank moneybag along with three thousand dollars in recent receipts tightly rolled in pink rubber bands.
It was the talk with Jack Karlinsky that probably got him inflamed with the guy who put his hand on what's-her-name. He had to get the money. He had no other source. There were debts and harassments in every direction. Even with forty thousand dollars in his hands tomorrow, the problems were not solved. He had to get the business built up. He had this union thing with the girls. He had an extortionist of long standing on the West Coast who'd already turned down his request for a loan and now Karlinsky was leaning the same way.
So the jacket is mohair. You should have bought two. One to shit on; one to cover it up.
He had a deal going where you put a token in a machine and it washes your car. His brother Sam sold one of his two washaterias and was looking with interest at this machine. It would never happen but it could. He'd tried different things with different brothers, from selling salt and pepper shakers to nice-looking busts of FDR. He sold costume jewelry, sewing machine attachments and cures for arthritis from Chicago to San Francisco.
Thirty years with a fishbone in her throat.
Weird Beard said, "I know what you think. You think I'm making it up. I'm not making it up. If it gets from me to you, it's true. We are for real, kids. And this is the question I want to leave with you tonight. Who is for real and who is sent to take notes? You're out there in the depths of the night, listening in secret, and the reason you're listening in secret is because you don't know who to trust except me. We're the only ones who aren't them. This narrow little radio band is a route to the troot. I'm not making it up. There are only two things in the world. Things that are true. And things that are truer than true. We need this little private alley where we can meet. Because this is Big D, which stands for Don't be Dissimilar. Am I coming in all right? Is my signal clear? We're the sneaky little secret they're trying to uncover. Do you think I'm making it up? I'm not making it up. Weird Beard says, Eat your cereal with a fork. Do your homework in the dark. And trust your radio before you trust your mother."
Jack had no idea what the guy was saying. He squeezed a
Preludin down his throat. It takes away your procrastination about what you want to do next.
He drove to the Ritz Delicatessen and parked outside. He opened the trunk and threw in the moneybag with the gun and heavy cash so he wouldn't forget to do it later. The trunk was a little overflowing with barbells, weights, a summer suit, a can of paint, a roll of toilet paper, dog toys and dog biscuits, a holster for his gun, a golf shoe with a dollar bill in it and about a hundred glossies of Randi Ryder that he'd brought back from New Orleans. You might as well call it my life because it's not any neater at home.
He walked into the Ritz and ordered everything with extra mustard and extra mayonnaise, a dozen sandwiches. Roast beef, corned beef, sliced turkey, tongue, dill pickles, cole slaw, relish, potato salad, black-cherry soda, ginger ale, etc. He told the man to give these sandwiches special handling because they were going to police headquarters.
He got back in the car. These cops of ours deserve the best because they put their lives on the line every time they walk out the door. This is a homicidal town. Bam. He had to remember to go back to the club later to get his dachshund Sheba and clear the register and grab his hat. He didn't like being without his hat because the balding head is here for all to see. He took scalp treatments that he felt were doing some good although he doubted it.
He drove to the Police and Courts Building, feeling a sharp sting in his left knee and hiking up his pants leg as he drove. A nice ripe gash. A street fight takes up your attention to the point where you don't know you're bleeding for an hour. He drove with his left pants leg raised above the knee. No responsible party would finance him because he gave away drinks to nobodies and brought in people and dogs off the street. He got out of the car, lowered his pants leg and went into the old part of the building, walking between the tall columns.
He took the elevator to three, holding the carton with the food and drinks, thinking that if he doesn't do something soon he will be running a business out of his pants pockets forever, if they let him run it at all, if they don't turn him into a nothing person completely. He got off the elevator and went down the corridor to the juvenile bureau. He felt blood seeping into his shoe. But just seeing these men in uniform, clean shaven, he wanted to say it is the proudest feeling of my life being a friend of the police in the most pro-American city anywhere in the world.
His rabbi told him many times, "Don't be so emotional."
In Dallas
Lee Oswald sat in Sleight's Speed Wash at midnight, waiting for his clothes to dry and reading H. G. Wells. One other customer was in the place, an obese and scary-looking man who wore slippers cut open near the front to give his swollen feet some room. The air had a sour reek. Lee was slumped over volume one of The Outline of History, biting the skin of his thumb, the book spread open in his lap.
He was living apart, off and on, from Marina and Baby June.
The night attendant came around, a lanky Negro saying in a kind of singsong, "Closing time, closing time, y'all go home." He carried somebody's sheets in a red mesh basket.
The other customer got up and went to a dryer to collect his things. Lee sat reading, folded over the book, chewing a knuckle now. The customer hobbled out.
About three minutes passed. The dryer with Lee's clothes stopped running. He sat with his head in the book. He knew the attendant was shooting him a very level look from fifteen feet. He turned a page and read toward the end of the chapter, which was at the bottom of the facing page. He read slowly, concentrating hard to get the meaning, the small raw truth inside those syllables.
"Hey, Jim. You are wearing me thin, okay."
The Greeks and the Persians. He looked up. The attendant had a droopy lower lip, a rust-tone complexion with a spatter of freckles across the cheekbones, those dangling hands, and Lee thought Japan before he was able to supply a name or set of circumstances. In an instant he knew. This was Bobby Dupard, his cellmate in the brig in Atsugi.
It took him a while to get Dupard to remember who he was. Bobby stared hard, taking in Oswald's hair, receding on the left side, where the part was; taking in the haggard look, the three-day stubble, the shirt with a popped seam near the collar; taking in a lot actually, four years plus of manhood and exile and hard times. Ozzie the Rabbit. Remembrance entered Dupard's face in a complicated way.