Shift: A Novel (46 page)

Chandler looked down at Melchior’s hand. At first he thought Melchior was holding a ball of blood. A ball of blood connected to a silver loop of tissue. But then he realized the ball was actually a ruby—Naz’s ruby—and the loop was the ring on which it was mounted, and the ring was still on—still on—

It was still on her finger.

“This is just a taste of what I’ll do to her,” Melchior said. “Now,
shoot
him.”

Chandler stared at the finger. Sixty feet above him, Caspar saw it—
saw a finger stained with blood at any rate, and knew it to be his own. He looked down at his father in the limousine.

“Lee’s dead,” he whispered. “He died when you did.” And then his severed finger squeezed the trigger.

Chandler felt
Caspar’s finger pull the trigger. The president’s thoughts vanished from Chandler’s brain like light disappearing from a shattered bulb. A thousand other minds rushed in to fill the vacuum. The First Lady’s, and the agents in the car, and the sheriffs on their motorcycles, and the hundreds and hundreds of spectators all staring with horror at the fleeing limousine, but over it all came Melchior’s voice.

“Good job, son. I knew I could count on you.”

Chandler whirled
on him. He was about to throw himself on him but he was overcome by a fit of dizziness and almost fell over.

“Why don’t you sit down for a spell?” Melchior said as everyone began running—after the limousine, away from the shots, toward anything that would pass for cover. Everywhere Chandler looked he saw open mouths, but the roar of the gunning motorcycles drowned out all the other sounds, so it seemed that the people around him were screaming silently. On the trunk of the president’s car Jackie was crawling toward something that looked like a bloody toupee.

Melchior pulled a small zippered case from his pants. He held it up to his face for a moment as though it were a walkie-talkie, but when he took it back down Chandler saw a man running past him, a camera stuck to his eye. Melchior unzipped the case, and Chandler saw that it was empty save for a single cigar, which Melchior pulled out and unwrapped casually, as though he were in a drawing room rather than at the scene of an assassination.

The familiar exhaustion was setting in now. An immense tiredness that seemed to leech the marrow from Chandler’s bones, leaving him as helpless as a marionette whose strings have been cut off.

“What—what is that?”

“This?” Melchior brought the cigar to his lips, lit it with a series of
lip-smacking puffs. “As Dr. Freud says, Chandler, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

He stood up then, glanced at the Triple Underpass through which the last of the motorcade had disappeared, then reached down and pulled Chandler to his feet.

“You—you killed him.”

Melchior puffed ruminatively at his cigar. “Who can say who really killed JFK? Was it me? Was it Caspar? Was it you? Was it that guy up on that grassy knoll?”

Melchior pointed. Chandler looked. He didn’t see anything, but Jean Hill and Tom Tilson and Ed Hoffman did. The figure was blurry and disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared. Who knows, maybe their own minds made it up, but they would all swear till their dying day that they’d seen a man with a gun there.

The two men started walking up the grassy slope toward the rear parking lot where Melchior had parked BC’s Rambler. After only a few steps, though, Melchior stopped. He was staring at a small russet-haired man walking quickly out the front entrance of the depository. His hands were clenched in fists and his small, nearly lipless mouth was set in a hard line; it was obvious he was doing his best not to run. He looked neither left nor right but Chandler thought he saw his eyes flicker in their direction, a glance filled with a combination of fear and confusion and pride. His face, too, winked across Dealey Plaza. For most people, it merged with the image that showed up on their televisions later that night, but for some—for Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig especially—it would haunt them for years. Craig swore he saw a man matching the description of Lee Harvey Oswald
¹⁴
get into a car on the far side of the grassy knoll, a light green Nash Rambler driven by a dark-complected man.
¹⁵

“Where are you taking me?” Chandler said as he slumped in the car.

“Into the future,” Melchior said as he climbed behind the wheel. “Into the brave new world that you and I made together.”

On the television, a middle-aged woman and an old man sip
from ornately patterned coffee cups. Despite the seriousness of the situation, BC can’t help but think of J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson and their talk of gravy boats and butter dishes. He stares at the TV out of one eye even as he continues to try to work his right arm free of the duct tape binding it to the chair. The tape has bunched into a gooey, fibrous strand, making it stronger than ever, but also slightly looser. BC has yanked so hard his skin has torn, and a trickle of blood encircles his wrist like a bracelet. He wiggles even more, using the blood as lubricant.

“I have some
very
interesting information,” the woman says even as the old man slurps his coffee like someone who’s just wandered out of a desert. “Your great-grandson and his mother are going to have Thanksgiving dinner with us.”

“I must say, I’m surprised,” the old man responds, although all his attention seems focused on his cup. Maybe his lines are written there? He’s lowering his face for another slurp when the whine of feedback shrieks from the TV’s single speaker, and the picture fades to a black screen emblazoned with white letters.

A moment later, the articulate, assertive voice of Walter Cronkite takes shape out of the black screen like God speaking from the void. But it’s not the beginning of the world Cronkite is narrating. It’s the end.

“Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.”

For a moment BC has the distinct thought that his mouth would be hanging open if it weren’t taped closed. He stares at the screen, but there are just the white letters, the black background, the preternaturally calm voice of the nation’s first anchorman.

“More details just arrived. These details about the same as previously. President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy. She called, ‘Oh no!’ The motorcade sped on. United Press says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal. Repeating, a bulletin from CBS News: President Kennedy has been shot by a would-be assassin in Dallas, Texas. Stay tuned to CBS News for further details.”

In the background another voice is heard—“Connally, too”—and then the screen cuts to a spoon swinging back and forth like a pendulum, a heart beating with the regularity of a metronome—or, rather, a metronome beating with the regularity of a heart. “It takes more than an instant to make a real cup of coffee.”

A commercial for Nescafé. Behind his gag, BC finds himself giggling. Maybe that’s what the old man was drinking. A promo for that evening’s episode of
Route 66
follows. BC stares at the face of George Maharis, his dark hair rippling as he sits behind the wheel of the famous red Corvette, and then for some reason he remembers hearing that the car Buz and Tod drive is really light blue. Apparently it photographs better in black-and-white than an actual red car. Just one more sign, if you still needed it, that things aren’t always what they seem.

Be that as it may, BC thinks as he resumes his struggle to get free, it’s doubtful
Route 66
is going to be on the air tonight.
¹

The apartment’s right on the Moskva. Picture-postcard views
, even if the wind off the river comes colder and harder than bullets, and reeks of rotten fish besides. Four rooms, each practically as big as a swimming pool. Fourteen-foot ceilings, eighteen-karat gold detailing on the paneling, marquetry on the floor so intricate that it looks more like embroidery than oak and sandalwood and mother-of-pearl. It’s the kind of place that would have belonged to a minor noble or major bureaucrat under the tsars, and now only goes to one of the Party faithful—or a prominent defector.

“Caspar’s apartment in Minsk wasn’t half as nice as this, I can tell you that much,” Ivelitsch says when he shows it to Melchior. “And it’s a hell of a lot nicer than my place.”

“I’m not a defector,” Melchior growls. “Neither was Caspar.”

“Yeah, yeah, tell that to your neighbor, Kim Philby.”

Right now, though, Melchior’s less concerned with his new home than the man he’s sharing it with. He’s asleep right now, on a hospital bed outfitted with shackles at wrist, ankle, and waist, and enclosed inside a big steel cage to boot. He’s been asleep for two solid days.

“Why isn’t he waking up?”

“I don’t understand,” Keller says, flipping pages on his clipboard, flitting from one instrument to the next. “I’ve given him Preludin, epinephrine, methamphetamine. I even gave him cocaine—enough to give an elephant a heart attack. But his pulse is barely ten beats per minute. Are you sure you didn’t give him too much sedative?”

“I told you, I didn’t give him anything. He collapsed in the car on the way to Song’s—on the way to the plane. Hasn’t woken up since.”

“Melchior.” Ivelitsch is standing in the living room doorway. “You might want to look at this.”

“I’m not letting you out of that cage until you figure out what’s wrong, Doctor,” Melchior says, striding into the other room. “Either you wake that man up or you die in there with him.”

The living room is empty save for a huge console television and a massive broken chandelier hanging over it like a glacier punching a hole in the sky. Beneath it, the TV looks more like Pandora’s box than a modern technological conveyance. It even sounds creepy, voices from six thousand miles away booming out of the shot speaker like ghosts looking for a way out of hell. The tiny screen shows a shallow brick alcove crammed with people. Flashing lights, garbled voices, an air of eager, almost greedy expectation so palpable you can almost see it, although it’s probably just static.

An announcer is speaking, but Melchior concentrates on the noises coming from the alcove itself. Suddenly the pitch heightens several notches, the camera flashes grow even more frenetic; a moment later Caspar melts out of the shadows. His hands are cuffed in front of him, his hair is mussed, and there are bruises on his forehead and lip. He walks slowly, as though dazed or drugged. His right elbow is held by a man dressed all in white, his left by a man dressed all in black, the two men towering over him like a pair of angels bickering over the soul of a little boy.

“It’s a police station,” Ivelitsch says. “What the hell can—”

“There,” Melchior says, pointing to a flicker of movement from the right side of the screen even as a voice rises above the din of the crowd:

“Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

A gunshot rings out. The crowd yells, but Caspar’s groans are louder. The men holding him try to support him, but he falls to the floor.

“He’s been shot!” the announcer says. “He’s been shot!”

“I told you,” Melchior says, heading back to the other room. “We don’t have to worry about Caspar.”
²

It’s been a long pregnancy. Eleven months, maybe more, yet
the mother has borne it stoically. Indeed, she doesn’t seem to have suffered at all, and, despite the worries of the women in the village, who dote on her like one of their own daughters, she insists her baby will be fine. She refuses their gifts of spicy food, warm rum, doses of castor oil. He will come when he’s ready, she tells them, not a moment before.

He is ready now.

Louie Garza stands at the back of the room, leaning on his cane more out of habit than necessity. Tropical Storm Isbell is gathering strength off the western coast of the island, pushing cold damp winds ahead of it that aggravate the old injury to his hip. A stiff breeze whips the curtains, the bed skirts, Naz’s hair, but she has insisted the windows be left open.