'Yeah, the word is soon. Crane's all excited about going to speak to the Democratic caucus, he thinks that'll help.'
Ziller looked startled. 'He's going to what?'
'Speak to the Dems. Why, what's wrong? Apparently they invited him.'
'I bet they did. You realize Flores is gonna go ballistic over this.'
'Why? Isn't he a Democrat?'
'Sure,' said Ziller, 'and he's just going to love having somebody he regards as his personal employee speak to his own leadership and, probably, ask them for a shitload of money, for something ninety percent of them wish would crawl back under a rock. It's a neat scam, though. I wonder who thought it up.'
'Scam? You think it's a setup of some kind?'
'Most assuredly,' replied Ziller with confidence.
'But why would Bert…,' Karp began and then stopped with a curse. He'd had exactly the same thought. 'No, I'm not going to get started on this shit. Crane's the political guru; let him do it his way. Meanwhile, let's go back for a minute to J. Edgar here. Okay, it's a day after Kennedy's shot. The FBI and the CIA are going crazy, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Who is this schlemiel who just shot the president? The FBI says, 'Oh, my God, he's on our list! One of our guys visited him in Dallas. How do we cover our ass? Oh, yeah, he must be a lone nut, no politics, no spying-that's the story, stick to it!' Now over to the CIA. They're going, 'Oh, my God, we got a contract with this little fucker. Bury it! Uh-oh, he showed up in Mexico, we got him on tape. No, it wasn't really him!' There's chaos. Helms and the big boys are trying to find out what really happened at the same time they're trying to cover up the Oswald connection, and cut the trail that leads back to the Cubans and the Mob business with Castro. They're going crazy and they start to fuck up. A picture of some short, stocky guy who's obviously not Oswald gets sent to Washington. Then a tape gets sent to the FBI that's not Oswald either. But Oswald has to be in Mexico-that's right away part of the legend, he has to be this marginal commie trying to get back to Cuba. Besides, if he wasn't down there, where the fuck was he? Who was in Mexico City pretending to be Oswald, and why? So all this stuff gets buried. The bus ticket is conveniently found in his stuff by the amazing Marina. It goes into the Warren Report as gospel: Yeah, boss, Ozzie was south of the border.'
'You think he wasn't?' asked Ziller.
'The fuck I know!' snapped Karp. 'But V.T. said that Oswald is the key, and it's true whether it's the real one or the fake one, if any. This whole cover-up is designed to do just two things: one, make it impossible to determine exactly how and why and by whom JFK was shot, and two, to obscure who and what Oswald was. The things're connected, and they're connected through the Central Intelligence Agency. Crane just told me he plans to blitz the Agency for starters, so let's do it.'
Ziller nodded after a moment's hesitation, and asked, 'Starting where?'
'With whoever it was at the CIA who supplied the phony picture and the tape to the FBI. That guy, what's his name? Two first names. You know-he testified to the Warrens back then.'
'Paul Ashton David,' said Ziller.
'Yeah, him. Let's get him in here and talk to him. Crane wanted something to show to the committee; let's show them Mr. David.'
The fourth week in purgatory, thought Marlene as she pushed the stroller down the rutted sidewalk alongside Wilson Boulevard; only a thousand years to go.
After that evening with Bloom, she had dragged herself to work for a few days, increasingly depressed and ineffective. Of course, she was no longer invited to nice meetings in the DA's office, and she could not tell anyone why. Not Karp. Not any of the women in the office. Not her relatives. Friends? Well, did she really have any friends? Who would want to be friends with such a degraded slimeball as Marlene? She had called in sick for a day, then a week, and then she cleaned out her desk. Let Luisa run the unit. Let him try and get into her pants.
On this morning, Marlene was in her full crazy-lady regalia, wearing her brother's old army field jacket over a red T-shirt she had slept in, and a misbuttoned tan acrylic cardigan. Below this were gray sweatpants and ragged black high-top Converse sneakers. On her head was a venerable New York Yankees hat. Her hair was unwashed and pulled back with a rubber band, and she wore, as she had for some weeks now, the black patch over her missing eye.
The child in the stroller, in contrast, was immaculately turned out, in a darling lined and belted cherry-colored raincoat, a soft felt hat with a fabric rose in its band, a rust turtleneck jersey with little birdies embroidered on it, nut brown corduroys, red Mary Janes, and fuzzy woolen leg warmers. Lucy's hair shone and her face was scrubbed pink. The message was clear to anyone with the faintest grasp of sidewalk semiotics: I may be a wreck, but I am not a Bad Mother.
The two of them were going to a playground Marlene had discovered during an earlier expedition. The playground at Federal Gardens was in her opinion unsuitable even for a kid raised in New York, its equipment rusty and covered with lethal surfaces and its sandbox full of cat turds. Besides that, it was frequented by chain-smoking women in their twenties who came out in hair curlers and tatty bathrobes, and talked with one another about daytime TV and about how dumb their husbands were, and screamed in harpy voices at their grubby kids. Marlene had rediscovered the difference between being Bohemian and being white-trash poor.
As mother and daughter rumbled along they sang, or rather Marlene sang and Lucy pitched in when she knew the lyrics. They sang Lucy's favorite rock classics: 'Heart of Gold,' 'One-Trick Pony,' and 'Hotel California,' all of which Marlene considered to be superior to 'Itsy-Bitsy Spider.'
They arrived at the playground, which was built off a side street to the main boulevard, and which served a newish middle-class district of large wooden or brick homes, the kind that have black metal carriage lamps in front of them, to indicate that the owners could afford a coach-and-four if they so desired. The playground equipment was new and artistically woody. Big aircraft tires were also used, for climbing and swinging, and to contribute the proper environmentally responsible effect.
There were several women and children in the playground when Marlene and Lucy arrived. Unlike the women in Federal Gardens, these were either well dressed in conservative sweater and slacks combos or obvious nannies: one black woman and two Latinas. The nannies sat separately and stared dully at their charges. The four mothers chatted on a bench. Marlene sat on a bench with the black woman, who was young, thin, and wore a pale green uniform with a pink cardigan draped over her shoulders. A baby slept wrapped in woolens in a large gleaming maroon baby carriage, which the nanny jiggled from time to time with a white-shod foot.
Marlene stretched out her legs gratefully and pulled a cigarette pack out of her bag. It was turning into a fairly nice day. The sun was a bright coin shining down through the leafless maples and there was no wind. Lucy had gone immediately to the sandbox and was playing happily there with her Barbie and her lavender My Little Pony. Two husky boys of five or so were constructing piles and ditches with Tonka trucks and shovels. They ignored her, and she them.
Marlene lit her Marlboro, blew out a cloud of smoke, and gradually became conscious that the nanny on the other end of the bench was looking at her.
Marlene nodded. 'Nice day,' she observed.
'Sure is. I can't stand it when it rains all day and you get cooped up in the house. Say, I left mine back at the house… would you…?' She gestured toward her mouth.
Marlene moved closer to her and handed her the pack and matches.
'I ain't seen you around here,' the nanny said after lighting up. 'Where you work?'
'I'm sorry, work…?'
'Yeah.' The nanny cocked a hand toward the sandbox. 'Where's the kid live?'
Marlene pointed vaguely. 'Oh, east of here. Off Wilson.'
The woman looked Marlene over and chuckled. 'How you get away with that? They cut me loose I showed up dressed like y'all.'
Marlene shrugged. 'Different strokes. I guess it makes them feel liberal, I dress like I want.'
'You lucky, girl. People I work for-they like, Lincoln didn't free no niggers. But they pay pretty good. How about y'all? You makin' it?'
'Barely,' said Marlene. 'My husband got a job down here and we just moved.'
'Yeah, I'd move too, but I ain't got the coins yet. Good thing, though: I got my mama here. She watches my two, and I watch the white folkses'. But not for long. Jerome, that's my husband? He got a job in a factory down in Raleigh. I save up enough, we gonna all move down there, get me a good job, maybe a house.'
