Mantkowski chose after a month on St. John, bought Frogman’s and as an extra bonus, he got his two best friends in the deal.
Ike now served as overseer, the wise elder, CEO emeritus of a family conglomerate of small enterprises. Together with his sons and their sons, he founded and guided everything from taxis to rental cars, charter boats to gourmet catering, specialty construction and a little politics mixed in. A widower for twenty years since his wife Sissy died, he was fiercely devoted to his family. One of Ike’s sons was a senator in the Virgin Island’s government. Over the years, the family businesses, which supported a large extended clan, enjoyed a warm and beneficial relationship with both local and federal government agencies. With the help of his sons and now his grandsons, Ike held court at the same table in Billy’s even longer than Walter occupied the last two barstools near the kitchen.
Billy Smith had arrived on St. John unheralded and alone. It was obvious he was eager to stay that way. Finally, a few years ago Billy met someone, a bushwhacker about his age, not a bad looking woman either. She had something going for her-spunk, spirit, a take-charge attitude mixed with a straightforward friendly nature and a strong appetite for sex. Whatever it was, Helen Mavidies captivated Billy. She was just a middle-aged schoolmarm from New Bedford, Massachusetts, on a Caribbean holiday by herself, but she was certainly a woman. One day she came into Billy’s for lunch and, like Ike and Walter before her, stayed. At first she was just there, Billy’s sort of girlfriend. Then she began to help Billy behind the bar and in the kitchen. It wasn’t long before she was pretty much running the place. Helen had moved into a small rental house, a cheap one as far from the water as a person could get on St. John. She didn’t live there long. One morning Walter arrived for breakfast and there she was. Billy and Helen were an item. She moved in with him and they seemed quite happy with that arrangement. Ike told Walter he thought it was a very good thing Billy was getting some on a regular basis. “Man needs that kind of thing, you know,” he said. Walter wholeheartedly agreed, thinking, “Here’s the two of us who haven’t got laid in so long we can’t remember, talking about how ‘good’ it is Billy’s getting some.”
Billy was at least ten years younger than Walter and just a kid compared to Ike. Despite the age difference, the three men became attached to each other, tied together with a twine destined to form an unbreakable bond. Everyone knew what Ike did. His life on St. John was an open book. Everyone knew what Billy did-not necessarily what he had done or where he had come from-but they knew what he did now. And everyone had his or her own theory about Walter. Over the course of his years on the island, there had been hints, the occasional glimmer of light thrown upon his activities, enough so that Ike and Billy could worry about him and take pleasure and comfort every time he returned from wherever he went, doing whatever it was he did. They remembered Isobel Gitlin and her famous connection to the notorious Leonard Martin. All things considered, Walter’s friends were very happy to see him retire.
Now, Conchita Crystal, of all people, had waltzed right into the picture, upsetting everything.
BEFORE THE BEGINNING
I can tell the wind is risin’
The leaves tremblin’ on the tree.
November 22, 1963
The Czech-the one who had made himself known in America as Stephen Hecht-was a tall, thin man with a sallow complexion that because of his high cheek bones made him look rather sickly. On top of that, he rarely smiled. He brought the rifle with him. He carried it in a small bag, in pieces. He was recommended not only for his expertise, but also for his attention to detail. It was a certainty that many times he had put the weapon together in just a few seconds, each piece clicking neatly and swiftly into place. With only minutes remaining before the motorcade would enter the street below, he sent his new friend away. He said, “I know you are hungry. Go down and get something to eat. It’s okay, I’ll stay here.”
“Do you want me to bring back anything for you?” the other man responded.
“No, Lee. Thank you. Just go now.”
Alone, the man whose name was not Hecht at all, but whose real name was Josef Gambrinus, calmly assembled the rifle, loaded it and placed it on the floor under the open window, the one he had chosen carefully the day before. He stacked three shipping boxes, boxes once filled with textbooks but now empty, one on top of the other and maneuvered them into position between the open window and the door leading onto the sixth floor. He meant to hide sight of the rifle from anyone who might happen to pass by. The noise of the crowd gathering below filtered up to him. He hoped the murmur of anticipation, followed by the expectant cheers, would erupt at the proper moment. The Czech would have liked it as loud as possible, but he realized, as he knew he must, there are some things beyond our control. It was not realistic to expect every detail to fall exactly into place. They rarely did. Nevertheless, he was ready. And he waited.
The middle-aged man from Amman, short and stocky, always looked like he needed a shave. He called himself Namdar, but his real name was unknown to anyone outside Jordan. Not even his European associate knew-especially him. Namdar assumed, quite correctly, that Stephen Hecht was also a made-up name. As the sound of the crowd grew louder, Namdar passed along the rail tracks and approached a location on the fence. He too had chosen this spot the day before, just after learning the altered route the motorcade would take. Had anyone seen him they would have taken him for a railroad worker or perhaps the sort of man Americans called a hobo, men so commonly seen in rail yards and along the tracks. He was dressed in old, gray, shabby clothes and carried with him a long, thin, beat-up cardboard box. Inside the box was a rifle, exactly like the one now resting at the ready beneath the window on the sixth floor of the building across the street, down past the embankment lined with spectators, beyond the gentle bend in the road separating him from his associate, a spot he was certain would slow the speed of the car making his task a simple one. Like the Czech had done, the Jordanian assembled the contents of his box quickly. Then he held the loaded weapon against his leg, hidden under his long coat, and he too waited.
There was a third man, another eastern European, waiting on the curb just where the street began its slow turn toward the upcoming highway underpass. Although he was the third member of a team, Daniel Ondnok was unknown to his teammates. Neither his compatriot on the sixth floor nor his Jordanian accomplice peering down from above the grassy knoll were aware of Ondnok’s presence. Unlike them he had no rifle. Yet his role in this plan might be the most dangerous and his risk the greatest. For nearly a half-hour he had wandered among the crowd as they gathered in the plaza. He was a young man; clean cut, shorthaired, wearing a simple blue suit, white shirt and a skinny navy blue tie. In his jacket pocket he held an Italian pistol packed with nine rounds. Unlikely as it was that the man in the window and the one behind the grassy knoll would both miss their target, if they did, the Slovakian would finish the job up close. He prayed the night before and once again standing in the plaza-if things went just as planned-he would actually do nothing, earn a great deal of money and go on his way unseen. If, however, it went badly, he would do his job. No doubt he would be killed, but he would die certain his family would be well provided for. He asked Jesus the son, and God the father, for victory and a good aim for his comrades.
When the Presidential motorcade rolled into Dealey Plaza, Lee Harvey Oswald was still eating, alone in the lunchroom, nowhere near the window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. He had no idea how badly the cards were stacked against him. As the President’s open car approached the plaza, it slowed- just as the Jordanian knew it would. At that moment the Czech fired the first shot from the open window six floors above. The bullet struck the second son of Joseph P. Kennedy in the upper back just below the neck. Ripping through his chest, it exited his throat and tumbled in the air at more than 500 miles per hour, smashing into the Governor of Texas riding in the front seat. Startled by the sound, Governor Connally had quickly turned around to look behind him. The bullet hit his wrist. Kennedy was already in shock. Instinctively, he tried to raise his hands to his face. His upper body tipped forward, propelled by the force of the bullet’s blow to his back.
The assassin Gambrinus had shot many people-men, women, even children-so he knew the hit was not fatal. In the quickest fraction of a second, angry with himself and thoroughly dissatisfied with the accuracy of his weapon,
