Top Down (15 page)

I felt exactly the same way about the vantage point now, looking down from the Lindenwald tower portico. The angles and distance were nearly identical. There were even some light tree branches in both lines of sight. It was spooky.

“You were right, it really is perfect,” I said to Marti.

She threw her arms around me and held on tight. “Thank you, Jack,” she said. “Let’s go shake Dad some more.”

M
Y NEW REPORT
to Van Walters had his attention from the beginning. I couldn’t tell if it was sinking in, but there was a new, brighter light in his eyes. A light of life? Of interest? I couldn’t tell.

“The same angle and distance?” he said to me.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Almost exactly.”

He said: “I know Lindenwald from back when I was a kid. I played up there in the tower … threw rocks, shot BB guns down from there at birds and squirrels. Wasn’t supposed to, of course, but we did it. Got caught a few times but nothing came of it. The Secret Service would have never hired me if I had a juvenile record. Did Marti ever tell you about Martin Van Buren Bates?”

I shook my head and said, “No, sir.”

Marti rolled her eyes and said quickly: “Dad told me about him. He was the tallest man in the world—seven feet eleven inches tall, married a woman seven feet. They met in a freak show while on tour in England. Love at giant sight. Now let’s get on to the business at hand …”

But I had question. And out of simple curiosity, I asked: “Why did his parents name him Martin Van Buren? Was he from Kinderhook?”

Van Walters laughed—for the first time ever in my presence—and answered: “No, Kentucky. Van Buren was president when their son was born so they named their own big man for the biggest man of the day.”

That was enough of that for Marti. “Let’s forget the freaks
now, Dad. Jack says the view downward from the Lindenwald tower really is a perfect match for Dallas,” she said sternly, underlining my earlier point, and then adding a very important new one. “You’ll be able to see that for yourself, of course.”

The light in Van Walters dimmed slightly.

“You’re coming to Lindenwald, Dad, with us—that’s the plan and that is what you will do,” said his daughter. “I don’t know about that,” he mumbled. “Yes, you do. I just told you.”

The next step in the Marti-directed show-and-tell was the rifle that would be used. She motioned to me.

“Take a look at this,” I said, holding the Finnish sport rifle across my chest with both hands. “You want to hold it, sir?”

Walters tossed his head to the side.
No thank you, reporter/friend, whoever you are
. But he did give the rifle a steady look from the tip of the barrel down through the sight and bolt to the wooden stock.

“Some weapon,” said Walters.

“Almost identical to the one Oswald used, sir,” I said.

“How do you know that?” Walters said. There was a snap to it. Maybe all of this was, in fact, getting to him.

“A marine firearms expert told me, sir.”

Van Walters moved his body straight forward as if he was going to stand up. “What is your time line, Marti, for this reenactment of yours?” he asked, turning directly to his daughter.

“Two days from today, Dad—Tuesday morning,” she said.
She was about to burst with energy and something close to pleasure.

“It’s going to be cold out there, isn’t it?” Van Walters said.

“Yes, but we’ll bundle you up well.”

That annoyed him. “I was thinking about the shooting, not my physical comfort,” he snapped. “Cold weather can affect the accuracy of a bullet’s trajectory.”

Another sign of real life from this man!

“I must do some walking over the next two days … and maybe even outside … to get myself ready,” he said, as if he was talking to himself.

Then to me: “Those fools at the Warren Commission should have done a reenactment on that bubble top. They would’ve seen what difference it would have made. God knows the FBI idiots wouldn’t have done such a thing. All they were interested in was protecting themselves. You know, the FBI knew Oswald was in Dallas but they never told us. He wasn’t on any threat list. If we had known he was there and was a commie defector with marine rifle training now working at the book depository building, we’d have gotten him out of there—put him in some kind of protective custody or done something ahead of time. There’d never have been an assassination. Kennedy would still be alive right now, maybe serving a second term. I so wish he were still alive. I hate it that we let him die. I hate it that I let him die.”

Former Secret Service special agent Martin Van Walters stood up under his own power and wandered out of the room.

Afterward, amid flowing tears of absolute joy, his daughter
said to me: “He has not talked that much like that since … since I don’t know how long ago. I need to tell Mom.”

I went with her to give the good news to Rosemary, who was in a small sewing room on the other side of the house. She was reading a copy of
McCall’s
magazine. The smell of alcohol was everywhere.

Marti told her what her dad had just done—and said.

“Great,” she said, in a slight slur. “But if those bullets don’t do the right thing when they hit that glass, won’t it only make it worse for him?”

Marti frowned and angrily motioned for me to join her in getting the hell out of there.

Outside, I made no comment on the truth that Rosemary Walters, drunk or not, had just uttered. Neither did Marti.

That remained the unspoken cloud over all that we were doing and what was to come on Tuesday morning.

The good news was that the weather forecast called for a high in the mid-forties the day we chose for the reenactment. At this time of year, that was considered a heat wave by the locals of Kinderhook. Also, the sky was clear and sunny with no rain or any other weather on the horizon for the day—a monumental day for a former Secret Service agent and his family, no matter the result.

There were monumental possibilities for me, too, frankly. Confused feelings of guilt and anxiety were rising with the passing of every second, the speaking of every word.

I had been on the phone twice with Bernie Shapiro since my arrival at Kinderhook. “Okay, whattya got?” That’s how he started both of our conversations, as he did with almost every
Tribune
reporter, no matter his or her location or story. I often wondered if he said that when his wife or kids called:
Whattya got, sweetheart? Whattya got, Bernie Junior?

“It’s coming together,” I said to Bernie, more or less, both times.

“A little more specific, please, Young Jack,” he answered, more or less, both times.

“Can’t talk now, Bernie. Sorry.”

“We on the record yet?” he asked.

“Not quite.”

“What does that mean?”

Both times I ended the conversation with a phony excuse that someone was coming into the room where the telephone was. I had to dispense with my burning desire to follow up on his earlier talk about a possible new assignment that would require a passport. One thing—story, assignment—at a time. I was very busy right now.

Since arriving, I had, of course, taken complete notes on everything that had been said and done in Kinderhook by everybody. They were rapidly filling up my reporter’s spiral notebook, which I hid between the mattress and box spring of the bed after each nightly writing session in my freezing third-floor room. Marti had not made a second late-night visit here. I didn’t expect her to. But I didn’t want to take any chance of the notebook’s being found.

The anxiety was coming with the knowledge that my moment of truth—literally—was fast approaching. Was I a hungry, ambitious reporter about to figure out a way to violate (or ignore) a confidence in order to break a big story? Or was I a wonderful, selfless new friend who arrived, like Superman, to rescue the lives and happiness of a sick man and his desperate young daughter?

I was certain I would have to answer the question no matter what the three rounds I fired from the Finnish sniper rifle did to the Plexiglas. The glass shatters. A probable step toward a dramatic cure for former agent Walters? The glass deflects the bullets. Agent Walters either remains down and sick or begins to get even worse? Either way, a good story for
The Dallas Tribune
and all ships at sea. Or, no story at all because of the off-the-record deal?

Marti and I had no choice but to include Rosemary Walters in the operation, because we realized that we might need some additional help getting our show on—and off—the road. One of the reasons for staging the event in the morning was to mitigate the certainty that Marti’s mother would come to the task lubricated with alcohol. Managing how much she could consume by nine o’clock in the morning was a lot easier than keeping her away from the stuff any longer.

I’d had an unplanned private conversation with Rosemary just before dinner. We happened to run into each other in a small second-floor sitting room off to one side of the house. She was sitting by herself with a glass of something and an
Atlantic
magazine. And she was smoking a cigarette. So be it. It was her turf.
I
wasn’t going to do that here.

“You’re not really Marti’s boyfriend, are you?” she asked without preamble.

“Maybe more of a future possibility than a present reality,” I said, not having really thought about what I was saying. Was it a future possibility? Not if I broke the off-the-record agreement.

“One thing you should know,” she said, her magazine now in her lap, her glass on the table. I was still standing in front of her. “I seldom drank before November twenty-second, before Van got sick about what he believed he did, before we went to Singapore in search of cures and salvation.”

“I understand, Mrs. Walters,” I said.

“No, I don’t think you do. You think I’m a worthless drunk who has left my husband and daughter for the bottle.”

“No, ma’am. I do not think that …”

“I’m a ricochet in this little family drama, Jack. That’s what I am. The shrapnel hit Van front and center and then glanced off and came right at me. Thank God, we—
I
—had sense enough to get Marti out of the line of fire or she’d probably have taken even worse hits than she has.”

“I hear you loud and clear, ma’am. I really do understand what you’re saying.”

As I moved away, I did everything I could to memorize exactly what Rosemary Walters had just said. That “ricochet” quote cried out to have a prominent place in what I would eventually write.

T
HINGS DID NOT
start well the next morning. In fact, we almost lost control of the whole thing before it really began.

“I am not going,” Van Walters announced at eight fifteen. He was once again slouched in the sitting room chaise, having made no effort to dress for the mission ahead. He was still wearing a dark brown robe over wrinkled pajamas. “This is not going to work. I just know this is not going to work.”

We had assembled downstairs in Van’s room to begin our final preparations. Marti had warned us that something like this might happen despite all the good signs since we’d laid out our plan. He said this to Marti and me and her mother, who, joy of joys, gave off not even a whiff of a drink.

Her father, over the last two days, had in fact become slightly stronger physically. He had increased the size and number of meals he ate and took two “practice” walks outside accompanied once by Marti, the other time by Rosemary. But Marti reminded me repeatedly that her dad was still a very sick man and it was unrealistic to think he was going to suddenly get better. Even if the Plexiglas did shatter, it would at best be only the beginning of his very long recovery, not the ending. Dr. Reynolds, with whom Marti had stayed in steady contact by phone, agreed.

Now, after her father’s balking statements, Marti calmly signaled me with a head motion. Without a word, I dutifully followed her to the front door of the house and waved to the car outside.

It was Reynolds—our safety valve. He had agreed to be present for our reenactment but only to observe and stand by in case of an emergency. He had driven over from Boston last night and stayed in a motel near Kinderhook.