11:10 P.M., SAME NIGHT—BRUNEI
There was a parking space in front of the hospital. They waited in the air-conditioned lobby. "Enjoy the cool while you can," Keifetz said. "The air-conditioning breaks down here every hour on the hour."
"What are we waiting for?"
"Fletcher is going to be able to go through this only once," Keifetz said, "so I borrowed a lawyer from Shell to take a deposition."
The lawyer brought a stenographer with him. The lawyer's name was Chandler Tate. The stenographer was a Javanese girl named Sis Ryan. Keifetz led them to Fletcher's room. There was a screen around the bed and two chairs on either side of it. Keifetz leaned over and spoke directly into Fletcher's ear. "President Kegan's brother is here, Turk," he said. Fletcher opened his eyes, but he didn't look at anybody.
"We are going to swear you in, Turk," Keifetz said. Sis Ryan moved a Bible under Fletcher's hand on the bed. Tate read the formula to Fletcher from a typewritten slip. Fletcher repeated that what he was about to say was the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help him God.
The iodoform smell was sweet and heavy. The flat fluorescent light poured age down on all of them except Sis Ryan. Fletcher's face was as lined as a phonograph record. His voice was a hoarse whisper.
"State your full name, please," Tate said.
"Arthur Turkus Fletcher."
"Your address, please."
"Dallas. Texas."
"How old are you?"
"Fifty-eight years."
"We will hear your testimony now."
"I shot President Kegan."
"How?" Nick asked the question involuntarily.
"I was second rifle in Hunt Plaza on February 22, 1960. I hit with both shots." His voice had no color because he was saving everything. "First rifle missed with his second shot. I fired from the sixth floor of the Engelson Building, from behind the President's car."
Nick corrected Fletcher. "You mean you shot from the TV Center warehouse," he said.
"There never was any shot from there," Fletcher whispered, sweating like a mollusk. The people around the bed glistened. Keifetz' thousand-mile blue shirt had dark loops under each arm. "That room up there was just a decoy. They left the phony rifle there. A mail-order Carcano, fercrissake. I couldn't hit you from here with no Carcano."
"Where was the Number One rifle?" Keifetz asked.
"I shot on a line with him," Fletcher said. "At a high angle where you gotta watch your azimuth and you gotta figure your lead time with a big car that's bound to pick up speed after them first two shots. Number One shot from behind the fence with the bushes in front—up on the grassy knoll to the right of the car and a little above. I shot three seconds—about thirty yards—behind him."
Tim loomed up in Nick's mind wearing a dark jacket with a yellow silk lining that had horses printed on it. He could smell the smoke from Tim's Cuban cigar. He could see Tim's eyes mocking him. Tim's eyes could either use you or you were useless. If you were useless, the eyes were indifferent, but if there was something else seen there that could possibly hoist Tim, the eyes sparkled with attention and flattering concern.
Fletcher gasped with surprise at the intensity of a serial pain that had just scampered through him. Then he continued to speak slowly, leaning against the ramp of the pain. "First shot to the back of his head. Second shot beside the spine. Near side. I went into history. The way the fortune teller told my momma I would, two hours before I was born."
Keifetz looked at Nick. Nick seemed to be trying to memorize the square inches of Fletcher's face. This man killed Tim, Nick was telling himself incredulously. He could reach out and touch Tim's murderer, but he couldn't see anything evil in his face.
Pa had made Tim the President. This man had unmade him. Between the two stood an odd stranger, a shimmering figure of memory in TV newsreels. A zero called The Wit and Wisdom of President Kegan. Teeth. Ellamae Irving and her orogenic brassiere. All that red hair. The man who had stared down the Russian Chairman. Women. All sizes of women. A rusty-haired man in white pajamas. A head on a celluloid button. Vietnam.
This exhausted, dying, staring body on the hospital bed, whose face had less expression than a baseball glove, had exploded all of it, had made the wlonk presidential cartoon disappear. It was ridiculous.
Fletcher stared upward as though the ceiling were a crowded movie screen that was offering a spectacular starring himself back in the days when he had never bothered to think about dying.