Free Ken Grimwood by Replay Page B

circumstance, and Jeff turned off the machine. Kennedy alive, he thought, as he had thought so often in the past few weeks. Kennedy leading the nation toward who knew what—continued prosperity, racial harmony, an early disengagement from Vietnam?
    John F. Kennedy alive. Until three weeks from now.
    Unless, unless … what? The fantasy was irresistible, outlandish and even clichéd though it might be.
    But this was no television drama, no science-fiction plot; Jeff was here, in this as-yet-unshattered world of 1963, with the greatest tragedy of the era about to unfold before his too-knowing eyes. Was it possible that he might intervene, and would it be proper? He had already begun to wreak major changes in the economic realities of the time, merely by establishing the existence of Future, Inc., and the space-time continuum had not yet shown any signs of unbearable strain.
    Surely, Jeff thought, there must be something he could do about the imminent assassination, short of actually confronting the killer himself in that sixth-floor room of the Texas School Book Depository on November twenty-second. A phone call to the FBI, a letter to the Secret Service? But of course no one in authority would take his warnings seriously, and even if someone did, he'd probably be arrested as a suspected conspirator.
    He poured himself a drink from the wet bar by the patio entrance and considered the problem.
    Anyone he spoke to about it would dismiss him as a lunatic; until, that is, after the president's motorcade had passed through Dealey Plaza, had entered and so tragically departed the killing ground. Then there'd be hell to pay, and too late to do the world a bit of good.
    So what should he do, just sit back and watch the murder happen? Let history brutally repeat itself because he was afraid of appearing foolish?
    Jeff looked around the tastefully appointed town house, so far superior to any residence he or Linda had ever hoped to occupy. It had taken him only six months to acquire all this, with almost no effort at all.
    Now he could spend a lifetime limitlessly expanding his comfort and his wealth because of what he knew; but those achievements would stick in his craw forever if he failed to act on what else he knew.
    Something, somehow, must be done.
    He flew to Dallas on the fifteenth, and stopped at the first phone booth he came to in the airport. He thumbed through the O's and there it was, a listing like any other, though to his eyes the letters stood out from the page as if they had been inscribed in flames:
    Oswald, Lee H … 1026 N. Beckley … 555-4821
    Jeff wrote down the address, then rented a plain blue Plymouth from Avis. The girl at the counter told him how to find the part of town he was looking for.
    He drove past the white frame house in Oak Cliff six times. He pictured himself walking to the door, ringing the bell, speaking to the soft-voiced young Russian woman, Marina, who would answer. What would he say to her? "Your husband is going to kill the president; you have to stop him"? What if the assassin himself came to the door? What would he do then?
    Jeff drove slowly past the ordinary little house once more, thinking of the man who dwelt within it, who waited and plotted to shatter the world's complacency.
    He left the neighborhood without stopping. At a K-Mart in Fort Worth he bought a cheap portable typewriter, some typing paper, and a pair of gloves. Back in his anonymous Holiday Inn room off the East Airport Expressway he put on the gloves, opened the sheaf of paper, and began composing a letter that it sickened him to write:
    President John F. Kennedy
    The White House
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
    Washington, D.C.
    President Kennedy:
    It is you who have alienated Premier Fidel Castro and the liberated peoples of Cuba.
    You are the oppressor, the enemy of free men throughout Latin America and the world.
    If you come to Dallas I will kill you. I will shoot you in the head with a high-powered rifle, and in your