Jack Ruby & Me
BY
Mollie C. Bloome
______________________________________________
After Dad had been here twenty or more years and people got to know him and because of his history in law enforcement, someone suggested he run for sheriff. The sheriff we had at the time died asleep at his desk and the chief deputy, who wanted the job pretty bad, was already sixty and people thought the office needed new blood.
Dad wouldn’t do it. We were just starting to get a wave of Hispanics moving into Swisher County and part of the sheriff’s duties as they were explained to my father was “keeping the Mexicans in their place,” and that just wasn’t him.
Most nights, if we had company at dinner, the guests included blacks and Spanish without regard to anyone’s skin color or accent. Dad’s best friend in Plainview was Mr. Blum who owned the department store and Mr. Blum’s daughter Rachel was my best friend in school until she went away for college to California and we lost touch. There weren’t enough Jews in Plainview to sit a synagogue and the Blums had to ride in their car to Lubbock for services and once I went with them, Dad insisted I accept the invitation to see what it was like with people that weren’t Southern Baptist, which is mostly what I knew up to that time in my life.
My father said it wasn’t that people in West Texas were mean-spirited, or racists, it was just that they were conservative and not that well-acquainted with other parts of the country because new ways traveled so slow across the Plains. Black people were still “niggers” in Swisher County long after they stopped being “niggers” in Minnesota where Dad was born and the Spanish in our county were still Mexicans or “dirty Mexicans” and Jews were still “them that killed Christ,” as our pastor put it, not “people of the Jewish faith,” the way Dad called the Blums with great courtesy and respect. Besides, my father said, he couldn’t exclude anybody from his acquaintanceship, he needed so much help when he first arrived out west. “Everybody I meet,” he said, “knows more about farming than I do.”
That was the truth.
Dad wasn’t much of a farmer when he first got to the county. He had tried his hand at agriculture before he joined the Dallas police, and he wasn’t much of a farmer then either, before he went to the P.D. You would have thought he learned his lesson, but one day, a few weeks after that scornful day that saw the death of President Kennedy, my dad quit the Dallas police force. He brought my mother out to the Panhandle where he made his second try at farming. I appeared on the scene exactly two years later.
My father struggled to make a living here, eating up his bank savings and causing my mother no end of distress—until a Hispanic gentleman, Mr. Memo Salinas who was also in the agriculture business explained to Dad that the secret of success on a modern American farm was not what you planted but what you didn’t plant and how much of a subsidy the government gave you for not planting it. After that, Dad did fine.
He even turned his farming success into a little joke.
“I think I’m not growing corn next year, if I can get a good enough price not to grow it,” he said, and Mother and I, or whoever he was talking to, laughed.
Dad was basically a shy man, mostly quiet, but he always had a great sense of humor, always laughing and joking with people if he could, and it was his good temperament that kept him well through the long years in the Panhandle. Good humor made his life as blessed as it was, despite long and difficult health problems.
There was only one subject that took the smile off my father’s face: the Dallas police or, more accurately, his time on the Dallas police force. He never talked about his time in any uniform, the army or the police, and he made it clear to my mother and me that he did not want to be asked. 1952 to 1963, when he left the police, especially, was a closed subject for him—unless the question was about home life, life with my mother, which he was always willing to talk about. On this subject he was too communicative: I used to ask him why he and Mom waited so long to have children and he smiled and said because he knew trouble was coming and he wanted to get ready.
How could you get angry at a man like that?
Once, I was watching a documentary on TV and they had a retrospective about Dallas and Dad walked into my room. The narrator was interviewing Detective McDonald who—if you know anything about Lee Oswald, and I have learned more that I would have bothered since history mostly bores me, unless it’s recent history and preferably someone I know something about, like a celebrity, or an actress—and if I hadn’t been upset by Daddy’s deafening silence on the subject of what happened at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963—well, the man being interviewed, Detective McDonald, was the one slapped the pistol out of Oswald’s hand during the arrest in the Texas Theater.
Also interviewed in the old video was Captain J.W. Fritz, who was chief of the Dallas Homicide Squad in November 1963. Daddy must have known these men, Fritz and McDonald, or men like them. But he never gave a hint. He never said a word.
He watched the television interview for about two minutes, in silence, without sitting down, and then he said “sons of bitches”—that’s all, “sons of bitches,” without making clear who was the son, or of what bitch.
He walked over and turned off the television. This, I might add, was in my room where he was only visiting. It was a television I bought out of my own wages for work on a tractor, or on a cutting horse, and it was a program I had chosen to watch.
After all, I was already at the age of consent, driving myself fifty miles to and from high school everyday. I was almost ready to vote, as one of the last Democrats in Swisher County. But the look on my dad’s face made clear there would be no argument and there was none.
We buried Dad near the well on the south side of the property next to Tulia Road. The well never produced any water but Dad dug the hole himself and was always proud of it.
At graveside was half the county, seems like. After the ceremony though you’re always alone and it’s best to get used to it quick, at least that’s my theory. It was just me and Mother going back to the house. She was trembling in the car the whole ride and when we got home she couldn’t wait for me to turn off the engine. She dropped her church hat in the gravel and was running through the dust knocked in the air by the car tires. She was too old to move that fast but she did.
I was in no hurry because I already knew where she was going. I stopped and lit a cigarette, which Dad wouldn't have approved of, but with him gone I was now the only adult in the house. I am my father’s daughter but my relationship with my mother was always more problematic. Dad married my mother for her beauty—a thin, delicate frame, and fine features, none of which I inherited but which she kept through the years: looks that never “faded” and I presumed never would, at least not in life. For that she was fortunate.
Her character was another matter and neither Dad nor me, not from my earliest years when I first discovered the differences between people, the important differences, not how they look but what they’re like inside, was ever under any illusion about what kind of woman Mom was. She had many failings but they could all be summed up under one heading, “Insecurity.” Women of great beauty live lives of great insecurity, that’s a generalization I like, but it was also true if my mother was any guide.
I took a single puff of the cigarette to establish my independence so to speak, not because I like the taste of tobacco, which I don't. I picked up Mother's hat from the gravel and followed her inside. I found her in the workshop where Dad kept everything he used to repair farm tools, a complete hardware store worth of blades and drills and wrenches, everything clean and gleaming with oil, a testament to the kind of workman he was. This was, mostly, where Dad went if he wanted to escape my mother or me. When I walked in she was on her knees next to his rocking chair, in front of a footlocker, the padlock in her hand, spinning the dial—wildly, like she wasn't even really looking at the numbers. There was blood on the combination wheel because she’d torn the pads on her fingers trying to crack the lock. My mother's skin was like tissue paper but she had escaped the curse of liver spots and even the wrinkles on the backs of the hands were mostly inconspicuous. Still, as I said, her skin was famously thin.
I had known where she would be, because I knew the locker would attract her.
I had seen that locker before, both in my parent’s house and in the houses of my friends, military-issue, real G.I., and over the years of living together my father had never permitted my mother or later, me, to see inside, to know what it contained. He had caught Mother once trying to force the lock and he threatened to leave if she ever tried again. The same restriction applied to me but the difference was I didn’t care. Fear kept my mother honest while he lived, and I kept her honest until he was buried, but now that Dad was gone it was impossible to hold back, for either of us.
She and I both “knew” what the locker contained.
As it turned out we were both wrong.
I got an empty aerosol can and a length of copper tubing from odds and ends in Dad’s workbench drawers. In the garage, there was an old refrigerator my parents had taken out of the kitchen a decade or more earlier. I transferred the freon gas in the refrigerator cooling unit to the aerosol can and went back to Dad’s workshop and sprayed the padlock with the gas, to freeze it, then hit it with a hammer. The lock neck broke like ice. We were in. Or, rather, my mother was in—since my curiosity didn’t need to be satisfied an hour after my father’s burial.
As I said, my mother and I both "knew" what was in the locker and we were both wrong. We were also both right.
I had already helped girlfriends clean up after deaths of parents twice before, once in Austin and once in Lubbock, and in both cases there were military lockers. So I knew the contents before I lifted the lid. Those other dads were the same generation as my father, the so-called “greatest generation” and as such they had souvenirs of the time that made them great, uniforms, medals, Luger pistols, Samurai swords, even decades-old condoms in still-unopened aluminum foil pouches. That’s what I figured I would find in my Dad’s locker, memorabilia, souvenirs, remains of his past life like the inside of a pyramid without the mummies. But driven by her fears my mother knew the locker would contain something completely different: proof of infidelity.
My father had insisted on packing up and leaving Dallas so quick, so sudden, that she was sure that only one thing could have prompted such an abrupt move: a failed love affair.
Her only “proof” was that the lock did not go on the footlocker until after they left Dallas. Up until that point my father had no secrets from my mom. There were no drawers she could not open. Likewise, opening my father's old footlocker never interested her—until a lock appeared on the latch.
Lifting that lid, it turned out we were both wrong and we were both right. She was probably more right than I was. Dad had been hiding a secret involving a personal relationship and betrayal.
Two uniforms, a gunbelt and some official papers. That was the sum total inside.
On top of the pile was the dress uniform of an army sergeant, decorated by a European Theater combat ribbon and paratrooper’s wings. The cloth was surprisingly well-preserved, you would say if you saw it, but the air in West Texas is dry as hell, and insects would have had a job getting under the lockbox lid.
The other uniform was Dad’s patrol outfit from the Dallas police, before he made detective, an incredibly heavy dark blue wool that, back then, I’ve seen in old photos, Dallas patrol officers wore even in summer.
I put aside his gunbelt and looked over my shoulder to find Mother hovering behind me, her neck extended and bent just below the head like a deer trying to reach a awkward branch. There, on the back of her neck, the skin was loose like she had climbed into somebody else’s body.
She hadn’t touched the tea I’d made her.
“Is that all?”
“There are some papers, mother. Why don’t you sit down and relax?”
I led her back to the armchair where Dad had examined pesticide instruction booklets and tool manuals for hours on end. He always tried to be prepared, bless his heart. He knew everything there was to know about wheat except how to grow it.
“I’ll read everything to you.”
The top sheet was labeled “Page #1,” although there didn’t seem to be a page 2.
It was dated July 17, 1949, and addressed to Mr. C.F. Hansson, Chief of Police, City Hall, Dallas. “’Subject: R.C. Andrews, Police Applicant,’” I read aloud.
“Are you ready, Mother?”
“Can’t you just get on with it? You turn everything into a Hollywood production.”
“It’s a background report quoting a Mr. H.E. Bryson, Farmer, Route 2, Bogata, Texas.”
“I know who H.E. Bryson is. Who he was, he's long dead now.” She looked suspicious, as if she was trying to figure out how this man Bryson was connected to "the other woman."
“I have known R.C. Andrews for almost two years,” the report quoted Mr. Bryson. “He was renting a farm from me in 1947 and 1948. In 1947 he raised a fair crop but in 1948 it was very dry and we didn’t get to plant until June. R.C. left here about June 1, 1948 before planting time. He is an honest boy, pays his bills, and takes care of his wife. R.C. is a fairly good worker and takes care of his equipment. The Andrews had no family trouble while they lived here. The boy has a temper but knows how to control it. R.C. is a likeable boy but never has a great deal to say to anyone.”
Mother was unmoved.
My eyes began to tear up. That was so my dad.
There were about a dozen more sheets of paper held together by a brass clip. Like the first sheet these were part of a carbon copy. The pages were brittle, also from the heat, and the ink was blurry but that appeared to be the result of bad typing not years.
I settled down on Dad’s trunk across from my mother. She was suffering. This was what she was waiting for, these pages. We both knew it. There was nothing else in the locker. The last page was signed by Dad with his title as Detective.
“Dated December 6, 1963,” I read from the front, “addressed to Mr. J.E. Curry, Chief of Police, Dallas, Texas."
I asked, "Are you ready, Mother?”
She nodded as if the hangman was ready to pull the lever.
“Sir:
“The subject of this letter is to inform you of an interview/interrogation conducted by two FBI Agents involving my acquaintance with Jack Leon Ruby (aka Rubenstein). This interview took place in the Identification Bureau from about 3:50 pm until about 5:15 pm. It also involved the Agents and myself going to the Records Bureau, and the Jail Office.
“The Agents showed me their identification. I did not think to copy their names on paper, but I believe one was named ‘Canady’ and the other ‘Carlton.’ I called the FBI office and tried to determine their names in full, later. I was told they were not in at that time, but would be back in the morning. I do remember that they said they were called in from the San Antonio office. I can describe them as follows:
“#1 About 5-9. Red-brown hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, medium build, about 45 years old. Said he was born in South Carolina.
“#2 About 5-10, balding grey-brown hair, brown eyes, medium-heavy build, about 50 years old. Appeared to be the Senior Agent, by his conduct.
“They began by informing me that I did not have to answer any of their questions, and that my answers were subject to review for truthfulness. We went to the Identification Bureau dark room for the interview. They told me that they were investigating Jack Ruby and were speaking to several officers about the man.
“They read me a statement alleged to have been taken from the Dallas County prosecutor’s files pertaining to an arrest I made of Ruby for a liquor law violation. In the alleged statement, they stated that the case was dismissed against Ruby because the arresting officers were unable to state that they definitively saw a patron drinking from a partly consumed bottle of beer on the table after hours. The case involved permitting consumption of alcohol at 1:30 am on a Sunday morning.
“I advised them that we should look at the case report, wherein I should be able to tell them if I typed the report, because I believed I could recognize my own typing, due to certain particularities in the form and language. I left them in the dark room and I went to get my coat. As I started back to the dark room I asked Lt. Knight if he knew I was being interrogated by the F.B.I. I told him they were asking me about Jack Ruby and I asked him if I was allowed to make any statements. Lt. Knight informed me I was to cooperate with the Agents but not to give them anything from our files unless I got permission from the Chief.
“I went back to the dark room and showed them the case report, and identified it as my typing. They asked me if I was instrumental in any way in having the case dismissed. I informed them that I did not recall. Agent One asked me if there was any way a case could have been filed against my wishes.
“I told him, ‘No sir, not likely.’
“I did inform them that on the face of the case report it indicated that the report was filed by a ‘Johnson’ with an ‘Andrews.’ The Andrews was almost certainly myself and I elaborated on this and suggested that the Johnson was probably Sgt. E.T. Johnson, who was working in the Vice Squad at that time.
“A check of the Records Bureau files showed nothing on the two girls, named Schultz and O’Brien, who were the ones drinking beer after hours. I then took the Agents to the Jail Office, where I obtained the Jail Copy of Texas Criminal Statutes. I looked up the specific code with which Ruby was charged. It is the ‘catch-all’ code in the Brewed Beverage Act, in which it states a bar owner can be charged for violating any section of the Act including religious offenses. They copied the information from the book.
“I stated that it appeared to me that myself or my partner observed the beer on the table at 1:30 am on a Sunday morning, which was a violation of the Act. I stated that it was possible my partner saw the girl consuming, or holding the glass to her lips, with beer in it, but the actions alleged to have been a violation appeared to me to be covered by the particular statute, or at least we must have thought so at the time or we would have never made the arrest.
“The Agents and I returned to the Identification Bureau dark room. They had asked me before, while conducting our ‘tour,’ about how well I knew Jack Ruby. I told them I met him when I was first assigned to the Vice Squad. This appeared to be what they were really interested in, not the dropped charges.
“They asked me how I met him. I told them that to the best of my recollection Sgt. R.J. Blankenship introduced me to Jack Ruby during a routine check of Ruby’s businesses, either at the Silver Club or the Club Vegas. This was when Ruby owned the Vegas on his own but was partnered in the Silver Club with the gambler Feldstone who later went to federal prison. They asked me about the degree of friendship I had with Ruby, and whether or not I accepted anything from him. I supposed they were asking whether or not I was ‘free-loading’ on him. I asked them if this is what they meant. They said that this was exactly what they meant.
“I explained to them that I did not look for his friendship, and that the record clearly reflects I arrested him when I believed he had broken the law, and that I never led Ruby to assume I would do otherwise, if I caught him in violation of the Act. I told them that I rechecked Ruby’s record after his arrest for killing Lee Harvey Oswald. I saw where Ruby had had no prior criminal record at the time I first brought him in. I explained to the Agents that this satisfied me that he was not a ‘criminal’ when I first came in contact with him.
"I told them that, yes, I sometimes dropped in on Ruby as part of my official duty, during routine checks of his business, and I occasionally dropped by his place and drank a beer. He served good beer, cold, and had pretty waitresses. Some also saw talent in the exotic dancers he employed. I stated that when I was not on duty or there on official business I visited Ruby, and he would not allow me to pay for my beer, which amounted to one or two at most. I explained that I would have offered Jack Ruby the same courtesy if he were a guest in my home, which he never was, but which I would not have objected to if he was. I told them they could draw their own conclusions as to my relationship with the man.
"I told that Ruby’s subsequent arrests for a misdemeanor or two was not sufficient for me to break all association with the man, the same as it would not be for any other of my friends or acquaintances. They asked me if I ever paid the cover charge while I was a guest in Ruby’s establishment. I stated I did not pay a cover charge to visit with Jack. I considered it a social affair. I was not interested in the show as much as I was in visiting him. I further amplified this explanation by telling the Agents that one night while Blankenship and I were making a routine check of the Silver Club, at its old location on South Ervay, a fight broke out which Jack Ruby helped us to stop, and which could have been serious because the participants attempted to attack us with bottles. I told the Agents that’s when I first started to like Jack Ruby.
“They asked me how many times I visited him. I told them about two or three times in all in the past five or more years. They asked me when the last time was. I told them about two weeks before the death of John Kennedy. They requested that I tell them what I observed at that time
“I told them I took a friend of mine to the Silver Club on a Saturday night about 11:30 pm, after I got off duty. When I got there I asked for Jack and identified myself as an old friend, and a police officer, in that order. The doorman told me to pass with my guest, that Jack was in the back. We went downstairs behind the stage and found Jack talking to some of his dancers, some of them I knew, others part of a group of girls we’d heard at the office had just arrived on the train from St. Louis. I introduced my friend to Jack.
“Ruby, in his customary manner, was in a hurry to go and eat, and apologized for having to leave. He stated he hadn’t eaten all day and wanted to get something in his stomach before it was too late to find an open restaurant.
"He took us out to the club area and instructed a waitress to seat us at a table and get us what we wanted to drink. ‘These guys are my guests,’ Jack said, and then he apologized again and left, he said to get a chicken-fried steak at Polunsky’s Cafe, which was open until midnight and much-frequented by people who worked late, especially the Texas Rangers and Dallas sheriff’s deputies. My friend and I drank two beers each, watched the show and left when Jack did not come back by 2 am.
“My friend Lewis Mulhonney is a professor of psychology at North Texas State University in Denton, and we had been discussing certain personality types previously, me and Professor Mulhonney, and I invited him to Dallas to observe the workings of our department and to meet certain people I knew who I felt illustrated a certain type of personality. Jack Ruby was one of those people.
"When Jack didn’t return I and Lewis Mulhonney left the Silver Club and went to various other establishments and dives, until closing time, in search of Jack. In the end we went to the El Fenix Bar on McKinney Avenue and sat with Al Martinez, the owner, until sunrise. Al had a double-barrel shotgun across the knees and said he was afraid to be robbed of his Saturday night receipts but he acted to me like a man that wouldn’t mind the opportunity to shoot someone and not go to prison for it. He said we had just missed Jack, who was going to get something to eat ‘before the Sunday morning holy-rollers clog all the restaurants,’ Al didn’t make clear if that was him talking or Jack. I was too tired to chase Ruby anymore. I had worked the 3 to 11 shift, and so me and Al Martinez and my friend Lewis just sat and discussed the people we had met that night, and the nature of their behavior, on the off-chance that Jack would re-trace his steps and appear.
"The Agents asked some questions about Ruby’s personality. I told them I considered him unique. They asked me if I believed he was mentally ill. I told them I had made no observation which would lead me to this conclusion, but that I felt he was very aggressive and might be very interesting as a scientific study. They asked me about his aggressiveness and I told them his fighting record, as a bar brawler, speaks for itself.
“The Agents continued to ask more questions about Ruby’s personality. I told them that working on the Vice Squad I had met many different kinds of people but I considered Jack Ruby unlike anyone I had ever known, in Minnesota or in the Army or in Dallas. They said something about or relating to Jack that led to a conversation in which I told them I had investigated Jack Ruby from the aspect of whether or not he was a Zionist, on the instruction of the Chief's Office. After I received the order I looked up this word in a dictionary, because I was not familiar with it, and discussed this subject directly with Jack Ruby and with his Rabbi. Me and Jack then sat down again and talked after I ran down all the leads on this subject I could get. I did this as a last resort to satisfy my own mind, and to observe Ruby's reaction to the question. I came away reasonably certain that Jack Ruby was not a Zionist, as could be determined from my investigation and in lieu of any evidence of other Vice-Related Practices.
“They asked me if I believed an officer had passed Jack into the building where Oswald was killed. I told them it was not in my power to even speculate on this subject. They asked me where I was when the fatal Oswald-Ruby interaction took place. I told them I was at home and heard it on the news. Later, at three o’clock, I reported on duty. The Agents then changed the subject to security measures around the department after Oswald’s arrest for shooting the President, and more specifically while he was being transferred to County Jail. I told them that Dallas City Hall is a public building, freely accessible to citizens, and that I had no knowledge of what the orders to the officers assigned to secure the building were.
“They asked me, ‘If the orders were to prevent entrance,’ or words to this effect, did I know of any officer who would allow Ruby to enter?
"I got pretty hot under the collar at this inquiry. I told them this was not in my power to answer, but that I believed no officer would knowingly violate the order. I expressed displeasure at this line of questioning. I felt it was out of order, and in any case beyond my ability to answer.
“Agent Two made an apology for having to ask this and certain other questions, but stated he was asking all the officers he interviewed the same questions and considering the seriousness of the matter felt it was a necessary duty, etc. Then I was asked if I knew of any other officers friendly with or acquainted with Jack Ruby.
“I refused to answer.
“I told them I would tell them anything they asked me pertaining to my relationship with the suspect Ruby, and about incidents involving people I was with, my partner for instance, but that I would not tell them of any other officer I may have seen talking to him. I didn’t like the question as it was presented. I told them that if I had the remotest suspicion naming anyone would be vitally important to helping the Agents, I would not hesitate to name the individual. But to imply a relationship based upon a chance observation would be improper.
“I did state that Jack was known by many police officers in Dallas, and by the Dallas sheriff’s men, as well as most of Company B of the Texas Rangers, stationed in Garland, and by many lawyers and judges, and to name some and not name others would be unfair to those concerned, whose duty is to come forward if they have any information to give, but not to be named just because I happened to see them talking to a killer before he killed. The Agents restated the question, but it was essentially the same meaning. I told them I would tell them anything about me and Jack Ruby and our friendship but it was the duty of the other officers to present themselves for questioning if they know something that might be of interest to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“They asked me if there was anything about the case of the President's Murder that I observed and wished to comment on. I told them I was interested in the advisability of a lie detector test for Ruby to determine whether or not he was part of a conspiracy or acted on his own impulses. They said that was what everyone was suggesting and that the Agents were awaiting instructions from the Director in Washington.
“They commented upon my interest in this matter. I said Ruby's actions surprised me because I had never heard Jack Ruby discuss politics or any public policy subject of a deeper nature than the price of beer. If he was part of some sinister conspiracy it was professionally interesting to me to learn, I said, since I would have misjudged his character, and working on the Vice Squad you need to know such things, for instance what people are really like, or what really makes them do the things they do.
“As the Agents finished taking notes, and were preparing to leave, I apologized for not being able to recall more facts about the arrest I made of Ruby back in ’57. I also apologized for not feeling it proper to answer the one question I refused to comment on. The Agents stated they were satisfied at this time. It is here that I made a mistake by not shaking hands and walking away sooner.
“I continued to talk small with the FBI, chit chat if you will, which should never be done since Agents tend to read significance in every word. In the dark room the federal men became argumentative, that is the only word to describe it, like the whole safety of the nation depends on the FBI and you’re not a good citizen if you don’t put the handcuffs on yourself. They said that my future in law enforcement was ‘in doubt.’ Agent Two said they would speak to my supervisors about my choice of friends, and I said that I had the trust of my superiors, earned during years of loyal duty to the People of Dallas and the FBI could speak to whoever they wanted.
“It was with this conversation in mind that I reported to Assistant Police Chief Lumpkin what happened with the Agents. He said that my career in the Dallas Police Department was not in jeopardy just because Jack Ruby was a friend of mine. Chief Lumpkin further ordered me to make this report to you immediately. He said that I could expect the full support and protection of the Department.
“There were other things said by the Agents, which I cannot recall at this time. They were all about Jack Ruby, some facts, some guesses, some critical of him, some not. There were so many questions I cannot remember them all, at this time.
“I asked as the Agents were leaving if anything that was said was contradicting to my statement to please contact me for clarification since I did not completely trust my memory on some of the details relating to the time immediately before and after the Death of the President.
“Respectfully Submitted,” I read to mother, who looked as if she was half-asleep, “Detective R.C. Andrews, Vicious Crimes Squad.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s everything, Mother. R.C. just knew some of the wrong people, I guess.”
I closed the trunk and latched it. Our garage was pretty big and we could just put the whole damn thing in a corner until we decided what to do with it.
By the time I had closed the lid and dragged the trunk to the door, Mother was fully awake and smiling like she had just won the lottery.
“I’ve been telling him that our whole married life,” she said. “He knew the wrong people!”
She acted like she was angry but you could tell she was really pretty happy to find out Daddy hadn't been fooling around.
