Things Don’t Add Up: A Novel of Kennedy Assassination Research

By Dennis Ford

On November 22, 1963, curtain rod salesman Sam Vincent takes lunch in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, and awaits the arrival of President Kennedy. Sam eats his lunch while standing on a sewer grate, with no idea the president’s true assassin crouches below, gun at the ready. This coincidence earns Sam a place in the “Outfit That Has No Name” and a new identity as Professor Vincent Samuel, publisher of The Magic Bulletin.

Thirty years later, brokerage clerk Peter Hokes attends a convention of assassination enthusiasts. In the midst of wild theories and a couple crazies, Peter remains fascinated with the Kennedy assassination and the mystery surrounding the president’s death. He realizes appearances can be deceiving just as deceptions begin appearing all around him.

In Manhattan Peter’s obsession with the assassination cost him Aretha Nally, the single lustrous person in his life. In Dallas his obsession carries additional costs. His innocuous research on the Red White and Blue Curtain Rod Company earns him a life-changing encounter with the mysterious Professor Samuel and permanent citizenship in the vast chaotic cauldron that constitutes conspiracy land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475976885

Dennis Ford

Dennis Ford is the author of twenty-one books, including seven novels and three books of lectures on psychology. He lives on the New Jersey Shore, where he walks the beaches and thinks about everything.

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Copyright © 2013 Dennis Ford.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-7687-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7689-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7688-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013902866

iUniverse rev. date: 10/29/2020

Contents

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Chapter One ~ November 22, 1963

Chapter Two ~ November 22, 1993

Chapter Three ~ The Great Dubiety

Chapter Four ~ The River

Chapter Five ~ The Pompous Boobery

Chapter Six ~ Where the River Leads

Chapter Seven ~ Paranerds in Dweebdom

Chapter Eight ~ Where the River Ends

Chapter Nine ~ Curtains

Epilogue ~ An Open Letter to the Research Community

to the Kennedy assassination researchers who escaped conspiracy land

with half their wits intact

Chapter One ~ November 22, 1963

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S am Vincent was having a bad day. He lost an important customer of the Red White and Blue Curtain Rod Company headquartered in Irving, verticals a specialty. His son Sam Jr. had been called into the vice principal’s office for brawling. Worst of all, Mrs. Ackerman, his widowed mother-in-law, announced her intention of moving in.

He wasn’t concerned about losing customers. He lost plenty of customers in his career. He was sure he could scramble to find new customers to make up the loss—Dallas was a city of windows in need of curtains. And he wasn’t concerned about Sam Jr. It wasn’t unusual that boys got into scrapes in the fourth grade. He intended to blister Junior’s ears for fighting in a schoolhouse and not in a public place and after-hours when he couldn’t get into trouble with the vice principal. He was concerned about Mrs. Ackerman, deeply concerned. The possibility that his mother-in-law intended to move in was a catastrophe of a world-ending order. He didn’t know how to keep the catastrophe from happening.

Mrs. Ackerman was a blunt and querulous woman. She was a hard-handed shrew of the old school—and she lived across town. He hated to think how she would carry on if she lived in the next bedroom. She found constant fault with him. She castigated him for what she considered his reckless spending. He heard hell over his most recent acquisition, a nineteen-inch portable television mounted on an attractively styled rolling cart. He bought the television for $149.98 in Chandler’s Department Store on Jefferson Blvd. Their old set was on the blink and the credit terms were good. He didn’t understand why Mrs. Ackerman made the purchase her business and complained. It didn’t cost her a cent. She could watch whatever shows she wanted when she visited—he corrected himself and choked on the words when she moved in.

He had been out of sorts with Mrs. Ackerman since the first day he knocked on her door and introduced himself as Gloria’s suitor. He bought one bouquet of roses for her and one for Gloria. He had been unfailingly polite that visit. Yes, Ma’am. No, Ma’am. Right away, Ma’am. You stay put, Ma’am, I’ll fetch the pail. Nothing worked. Nothing put him in good standing. He had given up trying. It was impossible to please her. Mrs. Ackerman remained unfriendly, unpleasant, and opinionated—she was most opinionated about the things she knew least. For ten years he abided her rancor with the scowl of silence. The occasions of their family visits had grown few and far between. Christmas and Easter were the obligatory visits. He stopped visiting on her birthday—Gloria and Sam Jr. went with excuses in his stead. And now he had to suffer her odious presence in his home day-after-hateful day. Her moving in brought the promise of inclement weather that would never break.

What irked him most was that Gloria sided with her mother. He couldn’t understand Gloria’s motivation. Didn’t she want the better things in life? Didn’t she want the finer things? Mrs. Ackerman was a half step up from hillbilly status. She was content to sit on porches in a house dress and fan herself with yesterday’s newspaper while she exchanged gossip with her fellow hick widows. Indoor plumbing was an innovation for her. Air conditioning was unknown. Electric lights were a novelty. But Gloria should know better. Gloria was a high-school graduate. Gloria had shared in his aspirations and in his purchases. Gloria had experienced middle-class amenities like an electric vacuum cleaner and a washer and dryer and portable televisions with screens that made squinting unnecessary. These appliances were not extravagances like Mrs. Ackerman insisted. They were necessities. They made life enjoyable.

He understood he carried a lot of debt. He accepted the burden. He could manage the monthly payments so long as he kept his job. He wasn’t born rich. He didn’t inherit money. He didn’t earn much in the way of a salary. Credit cost, but if credit was the only way his wife and son could live comfortably, then credit was the only way to go.

He waited for the traffic to pass and crossed Houston St. in a hurry. He walked alongside the reflecting pools toward the corner at Elm St. He saw the coins people tossed in the pools for luck—they wouldn’t amount to much if he rolled up his sleeves and scooped them up. He was a tall man, well over six feet, but the crowd was thick at the intersection of Houston and Elm and he wouldn’t see much of the presidential motorcade from that vantage. He intended to eat lunch while the motorcade passed, so he needed an isolated place where he wouldn’t be jostled. The crowds were sparse lower in Dealey Plaza near the triple underpass, so he walked in that direction. He didn’t want to walk too far down, since he parked his car in town and needed to get back to work as soon as the motorcade passed. There would be a lot of traffic and he didn’t want to take advantage of the lunch break or dally in the pursuit of clients. He noted the time on the Hertz Rent-a-Car billboard atop the Texas School Book Depository—12:15.

He passed a short and somewhat stout black-haired man midway on the field. The man was with a young boy—he was sorry he didn’t bring Sam Jr. to see President Kennedy. There was another and much older man a few paces downward. The old man held a large camera, so he was likely a reporter or professional photographer. Sam regretted not bringing his camera—he purchased a Bell and Howell model on credit in Chandler’s—but he supposed he couldn’t snap pictures and eat lunch at the same time. Besides, there would be plenty of pictures in the next day’s Morning News.

He passed two young women who stood at the curb. One wore a red raincoat, the other a black raincoat. A heavyset woman in a long tan raincoat and kerchief stood behind the two. He shuddered—the heavyset woman reminded him of Mrs. Ackerman. He wondered why the women wore raincoats. The sun was shining gloriously and the temperature had turned warm. He had opened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. He should have left his tweed jacket in the Impala.

Their glances were subtle, but he noticed that the two young women looked at him as he passed. He nodded at them in a half-confident, half-bashful manner. If it didn’t mean tapping his forehead with the lunch sack he would raise his hand to his brow in a friendly salute. He had turned thirty the previous month, but looked younger. He was a young man really. Thirty is a good age. At thirty a man is ripe with experience and still a fledging not done with youth. He had thick blond hair and a block of a chin that was on the verge of craggy. He had a ruddy outdoors complexion and broad shoulders that disclosed an athletic build. He was too busy to work out, but playing two sports for four high school years kept him trim long after he boxed the cleats in the basement.

He wasn’t a fan of President Kennedy. He believed the president was soft on Communism and had been bamboozled by Khrushchev when they met in Vienna. He couldn’t accept the ignominy that a Communist state ninety miles off the Florida coast ruled by a former sandlot baseball player thumbed its Latino nose at the mightiest nation on earth. And Kennedy was too cozy with the Negroes, giving into their demands for civil rights while law-abiding white folk had trouble getting credit.

He had voted for Dick Nixon. He was certain Nixon would have made a better president. Kennedy was too young, too inexperienced, and too much of an East Coast liberal type. He heard how the president’s father bought the 1960 election and how Old Man Kennedy made his fortune stockpiling rum during Prohibition. And he heard how Old Man Kennedy made shady deals with Mafia-connected tycoons and how he shacked up with Hollywood starlets. But he couldn’t hold the crimes of the Old Man against his sons. It was their great luck to be born rich. President Kennedy didn’t have credit problems. President Kennedy didn’t have mother-in-law problems. He wished his old man had the temerity to run moonshine. He wished his old man stopped guzzling the rum President Kennedy’s father trucked across the Canadian border.

He didn’t have anything against President Kennedy. The president was an attractive man, being husband, father, and leader of the Free World. Most of the disreputable things he heard about the president originated with Alphonse Gonzalez, manager of the Red White and Blue Curtain Rod Company. Mr. Gonzalez loathed Fidel Castro and he inveighed against President Kennedy for failing to invade Cuba and dumping the dictator into the blue Caribbean. Sam knew the copy of the Wanted for Treason advertisement cut out of the morning paper would please Mr. Gonzalez. It could even excuse the lengthy lunch if by some chance another salesman caught him standing on the parade route waiting for the hated president to ride by.

If he were observed idling the afternoon rather than selling curtain rods he intended to argue that he was on company business. He wasn’t goofing off or cheating the company of time. He scoped the windows of the buildings in Dealey Plaza. There were hundreds of windows, each needing curtains or shades. Behind every gleaming pane stood a customer. Behind every twinkling glass lurked a sale. He closed one eye and counted stories in the School Book Depository. He saw women at the windows in the lower stories and Negroes in the windows a few floors above them. The upper floors looked to be vacant. The right corner window on the sixth floor was open—it was definitely in need of a shade. He understood the building was a warehouse, but he thought to make an appointment with the manager. Warehouse windows don’t ordinarily require shades, but the Red White and Blue produced a line of items that helped control the temperature of a building. Their product lines reduced heating and cooling costs. As he told customers, One twirl of the finger and you send the sun reeling.

The smaller red brick building across Houston St. from the Depository appeared to house offices rather than boxes of schoolbooks. It looked like a better candidate for the products he sold. He wasn’t sure of the county buildings along Houston St. The buildings held prisons and the last things lawmen want in prisons are windows. They also held courtrooms and law offices. Lawyers might prefer to conduct trials in cool courtrooms and jurors might not be so quick to vote the death penalty if the Red White and Blue Curtain Rod Company sent the sun reeling.

If Mr. Gonzalez complained how he spent the afternoon he intended to inform him that seeing President Kennedy and the First Lady was no impediment to the sales pitch delivered to Roman Catholic clients. For that matter it was no impediment to sales pitches delivered to Protestants on his route. The president looked me straight in the eye when I saluted him. What a guy! Did you know that a flick of the wrist can outperform cumulus in providing shade? And Mrs. Kennedy. What a classy lady! Consider that a pull of the hand works better than nimbostratus in blocking the sunshine. He thought to suggest to Mr. Gonzalez that they might increase business by creating a presidential line of Venetian blinds. They might tint the blinds green in honor of the president’s Tipperary ancestry.

He was confident that Mr. Gonzalez wouldn’t chastise the employee who thought up the company slogan—The sun never blinds the proud owner of a Red White and Blue curtain rod. If Mr. Gonzalez gave him too difficult a time he would put in applications at competitor firms. His reputation as a salesman was widely appreciated. He had contacts at the Armadillio Curtain Rod Company located across town in Irving—he knew for a fact they would hire him if he left the Red White and Blue.

Sam crossed Elm St. and walked a few steps toward the train overpass. Three men stood on the steps that led to the parking lot behind the stockade fence on the knoll behind them. A teenage couple sat on a rickety bench atop the stairs. A family waited impatiently up the street—the father kept imploring the children not to play too close to the curb. Behind them a man was doing a Buster Keaton impression holding an umbrella in an outstretched hand. Another man climbed on a pedestal. A lady stood behind him and held him by the pants leg so he could stay balanced while he filmed the motorcade. Sam was disappointed he didn’t bring the Bell and Howell. From where he stood he had a clear line of fire.

Sam noted that the traffic on Elm St. had vanished. The motorcade must be near. He better hurry and eat his lunch before it passed. He walked to the curb and stepped to the edge of the sewer grating. He opened the paper sack and, without knowing it, became the second most targeted man in America. Colonel Tim, ranking member of the Outfit That Has No Name and the designated assassin of President Kennedy, crouched in the sewer below him.

Sam unwrapped the chili sandwich Hymie prepared at Chollo’s curbside stand. He joked with Hymie that the meaty flavor of the chili corresponded with the disappearance of another Dallas citizen. It’s all right, Hymie, I’m not a vegetarian. For sure and for certain Chollo’s chili was the best in Texas. And it was the sloppiest. As usual, Hymie poured more chili than the bread could hold. He thought he was doing a favor to his regular customers—he was also doing a favor to dry cleaners.

Sam held the overstuffed sandwich over the grating and let the excess chili drip into the sewer. The pebbly mix of meat, beans, and a secret ingredient splashed Colonel Tim at the moment he screwed the scope into the barrel of the rifle. The colonel quickly reached in his windbreaker and took out a handful of tissues. He no sooner wiped the lens than a second slurp of chili splattered the glass with pimples of chop meat.

Sam ate what was left of the now under-stuffed sandwich. He wiped his hands and lips and dropped the tissue balls into the sewer. Colonel Tim flicked the gooey epaulets off his shoulders. Sam reached in the sack and took out a candy bar. He opened the wrapper and licked his hands to clean them. Chocolate was a poor choice on a warm day. He bit half the candy and tossed what was left in the sewer.

Sam reached in the sack and twisted open a bottle of lemon flavored seltzer water. He took a sip. Another bad choice. There is nothing more refreshing than cold seltzer. The seltzer in the bottle was warmer than room temperature. He turned the bottle upside down and poured the water into the sewer, carefully aiming the wire of seltzer in the holes rather than against the metal grating. Once the bottle was empty he bent over the sewer and hurled it against the forehead of the most dangerous man in America.

Colonel Tim was the senior operative and assassin in the Wet OPS Department of the Outfit That Has No Name. He was a melon bald and muscled man of fifty years. His entire life was spent in the spy trade. He had been orphaned as a child. His foster family happened to have connections with the OSS, the precursor organization to the CIA. When he came of age they donated him to the intelligence community. His athletic proclivity and genius-level intelligence promptly advanced him to the first tier of operative. He played a surreptitious role in nearly every clandestine event from World War Two forward. He dropped behind enemy lines in Italy at the end of that conflict. He hobnobbed with Allen Dulles and SS Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff as they negotiated a separate peace. He served on Douglas MacArthur’s staff in Korea. He was a key player in the overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran and of Guzman in Guatemala. He was the single American ashore in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. He was among the first American advisors in Vietnam. Between such historic assignments he assassinated innumerable men. And he had received the distinction of executing the most delicate operation, the assassination of an American president. To achieve that goal he starved himself so he could fit inside a sewer.

Colonel Tim had been through hell advancing the Outfit’s causes. He had been tortured, stabbed, clubbed, and shot three times—once in the hip, once in the shoulder, and once in the left buttock. He roamed the world as an elite agent provocateur. He parachuted behind enemy lines in Tuscany. He suffered frostbite in the mountains of Korea and third-degree sunburns in the desert in Persia. He swam with barracuda in the Caribbean. He splashed through booby traps in the rice swamps of Southeast Asia. And now at the pinnacle of his career he crouched in a sewer in Dallas waiting to assassinate President Kennedy—and he endured a junk food rain of grainy chili, drippy chocolate and warm seltzer.

It took the iron will forged in a lifetime of ferocious self-discipline to resist shooting the man who stood on the sidewalk above him. The mission had priority. Whatever indignities he suffered in the sewer, the mission must be preserved.

Colonel Tim angled a hand mirror under the grating to see the source of the food. The man above him was dressed in a tan tweed jacket, black trousers with cuffs and creases, and white shirt with an unknotted red tie. The civilian was well-built with broad shoulders. His face was firm with a solid jaw and high cheekbones. His hair was light and longish. Colonel Tim immediately identified the man as a pinko-liberal. And then the leather bottoms of two size eleven brown loafers landed on the grating, rattling the metal. Taken by surprise, Colonel Tim dropped the mirror, which broke on the bricks, and fell back against the moldy black wall of the sewer.

Sam walked a few steps into the street. The motorcade was not in sight. The time read 12:25 on the Hertz billboard. He checked the time with his wristwatch—it was right—and stepped back on the sidewalk.

Sam realized he was still hungry. He shouldn’t have been so generous throwing lunch away. All he had left in the sack was a stained Styrofoam cup of boiled peanuts. He bit open the lid of the cup and sent it into the sewer with a quick downward jerk of the wrist. It flicked off the colonel’s chest. He crushed the sack in his palm and flipped it into the sewer. It ricocheted off the colonel’s chin. He didn’t know how they were going to manage. They had a two-bedroom apartment. They needed three bedrooms if