Free "Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald by Douglas Brode

to be.
    I did sense right off that I didn’t happen to wander into this theatre by accident. This is part of some master plan. My job is to figure out my role in that great invisible book.
    "Don’t play God,” the sheriff had begged Sinatra.
    â€œBut that’s the way it is,” Johnny informed him. “When you got a gun, you are a kind of God.” Lee had gulped hard, sitting in the semi-deserted, depressingly sordid auditorium, listening as Sinatra summed it all up: “Without the gun, I’m nobody.”
    Got you! Time to move on. Stop being Johnny Nobody. Become Johnny Barrows. I must get into the service, just like Sinatra up there. What had some director once said that I read in the newspaper? “It’s only a movie ...”
    No, it isn’t. Not in some cases. This, for instance.
    Only a movie? For everyone else, maybe. They can head home, have dinner and a beer, flip on the TV, fade into oblivion until tomorrow, early morning, then get up and do everything all over again. Next week they’ll be another film to see. Color, perhaps.
    Normalcy! Not for L.H.O. This movie defines me. And my future. All at once, everything feels as if it’s set in cement.
    *
    For a while, Lee stepped aimlessly through the early evening mist. Then he found himself standing in front of a Marine recruiting center. Delighted, he hurried in.
    â€œYou’re too young,” a straight-as-a-ramrod lieutenant told him. “Come back in two years. Maybe then—”
    Rejected. Again! Precisely what I most didn’t need today. Two friggin’ years ? What’ll I do to fill the hours? Alright, I’ll find menial work. Bide my time. Practice shooting whenever possible. Read a lot. History, politics, bus station books .
    Hours later, before falling asleep, Lee listened to the Sinatra album again. Mellow, morose. Capturing the loneliness, the emptiness, the abiding sense of isolation for life's losers.
    He sings the way I feel.
    Best of all, he whispered into my ear earlier today, via that film. Told me what I must someday do.
    I must, in time, kill some sitting president of the U.S.
    Thank you, Mr. Sinatra. Frank forever!
    Â 

CHAPTER THREE:
THE MAIN EVENT
    â€œRumors that I pal around with known
    criminals are nothing but dirty lies.”
    â€”Frank Sinatra, 1947
    Â 
    On February 14, 1947, thirteen years before Frank Sturgis visited Havana to oversee the proposed 'Operation: Lolita' assassination of Fidel Castro, seven years previous to Lee Harvey Oswald’s stepping into a Big Easy grind-house to catch Suddenly , the star of that eventual film majestically positioned himself on a sprawling wood-panel stage before an adoring crowd composed of American Mafiosos, Cuban politicos, and Hollywood celebrities.
    Frank Sinatra beamed at those arrayed before him in the cavernous banquet hall of Havana’s Hotel Nacional. The then-32-year-old singing-sensation had flown into Jose Marti airport four days earlier, learning after arrival from his host, Charles Luciano, the supposed reason for this requested visit would be a full-scale gig by a man now known as The Voice.
    That would easily be accepted by the authorities in both countries, as well as the media. The true motivation provided a more pressing excuse for this hastily arranged trip. A small suitcase which Sinatra had carried on board and clutched tight during the ninety-seven minute flight didn’t transport his fresh underwear and socks but a special delivery for The Mob.
    Now, this impromptu show for friends and family (in every sense of that term) drew down the curtain on Frank’s whirlwind visit. All present oooohed! and aaaahed! as he casually crooned about the joys of “drinkin’ rum and Coca-Cola.” Performed to what would soon become known in the States as the lilting Mamba beat, that song encoded the about-to-be-realized dream of a financial union between Havana’s longstanding if dormant raw