In a private conversation eight and a half years later, preserved on a tape from May 1972, and never meant for public disclosure, President Johnson’s successor, Richard M. Nixon, said of the Warren Commission report, “It was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated.”
PART ONE
Well searching/Yeah I’m gonna searching/
Searching every which-a-way yeh yeh.
“It’s my nephew,” she said.
Walter and Conchita Crystal had strolled to the end of the pier. No ferry was in dock. No crowd of tourists waited for their return trip to St. Thomas. They were alone. The sun was high in the sky, very hot. Walter wore a plain, brown baseball cap, one without writing or a logo. It was a soft cap. It hugged the contours of his head closely. The brim kept the sun from his eyes and his long hair covered his neck. Conchita looked at him. Sensitive as she already suspected him to be, she saw too a roughness about Walter Sherman, an appealing and attractive independence to his personality, a streak of unpredictability coinciding amicably enough with an obvious strength of character.
“Do you remember Charles Bronson?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“You remind me of him.” She smiled, this time almost as an afterthought, and sheepishly looked away, giggling. Had she known Bronson? Had she liked him? Walter didn’t know if she meant it as a compliment or not. He wasn’t sure himself. Charles Bronson?
“What about your nephew?” he asked.
“He’s not safe. He’s in great danger.”
“I thought you said this was a matter of your life and death, Ms. Crystal.”
“Please call me Chita.”
“I’m not sure I know you well enough, yet.”
“Well, whatever you prefer. It is a matter of life or death for me. I’d die if anything happened to him.”
“That doesn’t exactly qualify, you know. But I’m already here, aren’t I? Why don’t you tell me what it is that’s on your mind. Maybe you’ll find a way after all to make it fit.”
She began at the beginning-her beginning. At first, Walter wasn’t sure why. Conchita Crystal, she told him, was born Linda Morales, to a single mother in Puerto Rico. Her mother gave her up at birth. She had been a sickly baby. Particularly disturbing was a skin condition that looked awful and smelled worse. When she told him that, Walter was hard pressed not to blurt out how beautiful her skin was now, like creamy caramel or cafe latte, and how wonderful she smelled. He almost did, nearly started to, but caught himself just in time. Her skin, she said, did not begin to clear up until she was almost nine years old. Thus, the youngster Linda Morales was not an attractive product on the adoption market. She kicked around foster homes until landing in an orphanage, that passed for a Catholic Church school, near Ponce, Puerto Rico. Four years later, at fifteen, she ran away, somehow survived on the streets, and found her way into the music and club scene of San Juan. It went without saying-and she didn’t say it to Walter-that Linda Morales must have been quite a beauty, easily able to look grown-up even at that tender age.
The rest Walter knew as well as anyone who ever read a paper, looked at a fashion magazine, saw a movie, watched TV or listened to the radio. By seventeen, the girl who had been Linda Morales had become Conchita Crystal, Latin pop singing idol. By twenty she was a leading model, admired by teenage girls and young women the world over and dreamed of by teenage boys and many men much older. The little girl no one wanted, the one who looked terrible and smelled bad, was now desired by everyone. She married twice, both times in her twenties, and over the years Conchita Crystal was publicly involved with at least a dozen movie and rock stars. She was a favorite of the show business tabloids. For three decades they proclaimed exclusive, inside information about her rumored affairs, broken marriages, secret marriages, and painful disappointments. If she had been pregnant half as many times as they said she was, it would have been a miracle, much of it immaculately conceived. Almost nothing written about her was true. The fact was she had never been pregnant and never had a child. Of the men she was publicly involved with, many were strictly business, all done for the publicity. Of course, some relationships were real. Telling the difference, in the press, was a task. Her most private attachments, including one that began in her late twenties and continued to this day, were just that-private. She worked hard and spent a lot of money to keep them that way. Walter assumed she had a private, personal social life and further assumed neither he nor the press knew anything about it. Whoever he was, lucky man, he thought.
The movies made her a superstar at barely twenty, and despite the remark she made to Walter back in Billy’s, he knew her popularity was still extraordinary. Sure, she didn’t work as often or as hard as she used to, but after all, he figured, she’s no kid anymore. Plus, the stories of her wealth were legendary. And while the stories of her spending were also, surely she didn’t have to work at the pace she once did.
“Very impressive,” said Walter, when it appeared she was finished. “And a story I’m not surprised to hear. Even from a distance you’ve always seemed like a strong woman. You must have been a strong girl too.”
“I looked for my mother,” Conchita Crystal said. “I searched everywhere. I hired people who combed records, anything, anything at all, to tell me about my mother. I should have known about you then.” Walter saw tears dripping from her right eye, sliding down the bridge of her nose. Another tear swelled up in the corner of her left eye. She sniffled, the back of her index finger rubbing across her upper lip. It brushed gently against her nostrils.
My God, he said to himself, temporarily oblivious to the seriousness of the moment. This is one beautiful woman.
She never found her mother, she said. Perhaps she died. Perhaps not. But Linda Morales did discover who her mother was and along with that revelation came the knowledge she had an older brother and two older sisters-all of whom had been abandoned as well. Chita spent years tracking them down. She found her brother first and then one sister. Both have been well taken care of and she remained close with each of them, she told Walter. The last one Conchita Crystal finally located was her oldest sister, Elana Morales.
“She died,” said Chita. “Actually, that’s what made it possible for me to find her. That’s how we found her. When she died one of the people helping me came to me with the information. I never got to see her, to meet her. And she was my sister.” Once more there were tears. This time Walter reached into his pocket and handed her one of Billy’s bar napkins he had there.
“Thank you,” she said. “Elana never married, but she had a son. She took the father’s name, for her son too, of course. Levine. Not easy for me to find. Levine. Lots of them and they’re not supposed to be Puerto Rican, if you know what I mean.”
“I do,” Walter said.
“He’s a nice young man, a wonderful person. He’s my sister’s boy and I love him as I would have loved her. Now, he needs my help. That’s why I’ve come to you.”
Walter did not ask how she found him. They all found him the same way. Who she reached out to was of no interest to him. They knew he was here for them. Until he retired, that is. Conchita Crystal was not the richest, certainly not the most powerful person to ever seek him out. And, as well known as she was-worldwide-even she might have been surprised to learn, not the most famous either. But Walter was sure she was the most beautiful.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
With that most simple of invitations, Conchita Crystal proceeded to tell Walter a story so absurd and incomplete, so filled with holes he had to remind himself several times not to completely dismiss its credibility before she finished. Her nephew, Harry Levine, had the written confession, she said, of the man who killed John F. Kennedy.
Sadie Fagan had a moustache. Not a thick one, dark and heavy, but noticeable nonetheless. It didn’t bother
