The light was an eerie neon rouge.
"Isn't that a neat thing to know? I love being in a position where I can exchange fascinating stuff with someone. Like you tell me, I tell you. U-2s. When I first heard this stuff, around Eisenhower, I thought they were saying you-toos, like there's me-too and you-too."
It was a Saturday and they were getting time and a half. Lee put in for Saturdays whenever possible because he knew this job was doomed the minute Marion Collings gave the word.
"Do you like the people here?" Dale said. "I saw you with that Russian magazine you were reading. There's been a little comment. The people here are friendly up to a point. Not that it matters to me, what anyone reads. Do you remember what it was like, being under the blankets, sweating, as a kid? A fever is a secret thing. It's like falling down a hole where no one can follow but there's no terror or pain because you don't even feel like yourself. I love huddling in sweat."
"I had an ear operation when I was little. I still remember the dreams after they put on the mask."
"I had four operations! I loved going under!"
Dale was gesturing in the glow, with fluid dripping off his hands into the tray.
"What kind of mind do you have, Lee? One day I heard my mother say, 'He'll never be brilliant, Tom.' She was talking to Tom, my brother. I have used that sentence at dinner a hundred thousand times."
The mysterious U-2. It followed him from Japan to Russia and now it was here in Dallas. He remembered how it came to earth, sweet-falling, almost feathery, dependent on winds, sailing on winds. That was how it seemed. And the pilot's voice coming down to them in fragments, with the growl and fuzz of a blown speaker. He heard that voice sometimes on the edge of a shaky sleep.
Dale Fitzke said, "I'll listen for things, you listen for things. Then we'll meet here and talk some more."
His typing class was at Crozier, the same school where Dupard was taking a course, and they met in an empty classroom whenever they could work out the timing. They talked strategy and philosophy, waiting for the gun to arrive in the mail.
Bobby said, "You think it's some coincidence this Walker come to live in Dallas? Get off, man. He is here because the fury and the hate is here. This is the city he made up in his mind."
"Did you see today's paper? He's going out of town on a speaking tour. Twenty-nine cities. He won't be back till April."
"What's he doing, the kill-a-nigger tour?"
"Operation Midnight Ride. The dangers of communism here and abroad. It's going to be pure Cuba. He loves to hit at Cuba. If we have to wait till April, let's make it worthwhile. We get him on the seventeenth. The second anniversary of the Bay of Pigs."
"Who is the shooter?"
"I am," Oswald said.
"You sure about that."
"I am the one that does it."
"If it's the seventeenth, I have to see if there's class."
"What do you mean?"
"It's a question do I want to cut class."
"I will need an accomplice, Bobby. This is not just walk in and shoot him. The house is located in such a way. There's an alley. We may need a car."
"I can get a car. I can always borrow a car. I don't know about dependable running. Just so we put him on the ground. That man got to taste some blood."
"They have a phrase they use in Russian for assassinations that involve blood being spilled. Mokrie dela. Which is wet affairs. Like the ice pick they used on Trotsky."
"Just so we do it to him," Bobby said.
They moved to Neely Street, nearby, another furnished apartment, two rooms in a frame house with a concrete porch and a balcony with sagging posts. They could put out flowerpots and pretend it's Minsk. There was a small additional room, the size of a walk-in closet, where Lee could work on his notebook and keep his correspondence and other writings.
They moved their belongings in Junie's stroller. They made six or seven trips, dishes, baby things, letters from Russia. Lee made the last trip alone, pushing the stroller west on Neely wearing most of the clothes he owned, to save another trip.
The little room could be entered from the living room and from the staircase outside their flat. Both doors could be locked from inside. It was like an airtight compartment, part of the building but also separate from it. He called the room his study. He squeezed a lamp table and chair in there and set to work on his notes for the death of the general.
He began taking photographs of Walker's house. He had a box camera he carried in a paper bag on the bus back and forth. He photographed the lattice fence behind the house, the alleyway that extended from the parking lot of the Mormon church to Avondale Street. He took some pictures of the railroad tracks where he could hide the gun if necessary.
There is a world inside the world.
He made detailed notes on the location of windows at the rear of the house. He studied maps of Dallas. He put the finishing touches on the false documents he'd made after hours at work. When the Hidell gun arrived at the post office, he'd have Hidell identification to claim the package. He did the typing for the documents on his machine at school.
He felt good about having Dupard behind him. Downtrodden. Dupard was the force of history, the show of a solid front against the far-right surge.
He used Hidell again, March 12, sending a money order for $21.45 to Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago for a 6.5-millimeter Italian military rifle, the Mannlicher-Carcano, equipped with a four-power scope.
The rain fell on empty streets.
What a sense of destiny he had, locked in the miniature room, creating a design, a network of connections. It was a second existence, the private world floating out to three dimensions.
He went to a gun shop and bought an ammunition clip that would fit the Mannlicher, so he could fire up to seven rounds before reloading.
Rain-slick streets. He walked to the speed wash and talked excitedly with Dupard about the logic of a long-range shot, given the layout of the house and grounds. Then he let himself back into the study and no one even knew he'd been gone.
He stood barefoot in the living room in his pajamas, working the bolt. He jerked the handle, brought the bolt rearward, then drove it forward, jerking the handle down. He turned up the handle, drew the bolt back, drove it forward, jerking the handle down. He turned toward the mirror over the sofa. He jerked the bolt handle, drew the bolt back, then drove it forward, jerking the handle down. Marina was out at the store. Junie sat in the high chair near the window, rolling a marble back and forth across the tray.
There was a yard behind the house, a small dirt enclosure with a couple of forsythia shrubs. A clothesline ran parallel to the back fence and Marina stood there hanging diapers. The ground-floor tenants were away.
Ten minutes passed. Lee came down the exterior wooden steps. He carried the rifle in one hand, a couple of magazines in the other. He wore a black pullover shirt, short-sleeve, and a pair of dark chinos. The revolver was snug on his hip.
Marina watched him set the rifle against the stairway and climb back up. He returned seconds later with his box camera, an Imperial Reflex he'd bought cheap in Japan.
"Why do you want to do this?" she said. "If we are seen by a neighbor."
"It's for Junie, to remember me by."
"Does she want her father in a picture with guns? I don't know how to take a picture."
"You hold the camera at your waist."
"I've never taken a picture in my life."
"No matter what. I want you to keep a print for my little girl."
"Dressed all black. It's foolish, Lee. Who are you hunting with that gun? The forces of evil? I want to laugh. It's stupid. It impresses no one. It's pure and simple show."