Columbo: Grassy Knoll Read online

  The studio audience dutifully laughed.

  “Tonight we are doing our forty-eighth show relating to some element of the continuing controversy over the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As I’ve said on the air many times, I was a witness to the assassination, standing on Dealey Plaza that fateful day, a boy of nineteen, a university student. Some people say I am obsessed with it. But if I am, apparently you are, too, since our shows about the assassination have always been among our most popular. And it’s difficult, isn’t it, to realize that this year will mark the thirtieth anniversary of that fateful day. It’s difficult, too, isn’t it, to realize that if President Kennedy were alive today—which God grant he could be—he would be seventy-six years old!”

  The studio audience and television audience didn’t guess where Drury’s eyes went as they shifted, but Tim and Alicia behind the glass in the control booth knew very well. Drury had glanced at the director, Marvin Goldschmidt, who was making circling motions with both hands, indicating that Drury should go on a little faster, so as to get his guests introduced before it would be necessary to take a break for commercials. Poor Goldschmidt had begun to learn, but it had not yet entirely soaked in, that for the most part Drury was his own director and would not vary his pace, even if it meant they had to skip one or two commercials. It took a strong, secure television personality to survive causing commercials to be skipped, but Drury had done it more than once.

  To this point Drury had ad-libbed, glancing at his own notes in his ring binder, but now he signaled for the TelePrompTer to roll, and he began to read—

  “We have with us tonight three men who have interesting perspectives on the Kennedy assassination. I would like to introduce first Mr. Blake Emory, who has devoted countless hours to reviewing every aspect of the events of November 22, 1963. A retired detective lieutenant of the Kansas City police force, he made the assassination his avocation from the day it occurred, his vocation since his retirement. He is the author of six articles on the assassination and this year will publish a book outlining what an experienced investigator has concluded from his extensive review of the evidence. Welcome Mr. Blake Emory!”

  Emory walked onto the set. He was short and solid, conspicuously a man who had been tough and wiry in his time. His white hair was brush-cut. His face was flushed. It was also flat, as though he had boxed and had his nose crushed more than once. He went to the couch, sat down, and frowned at the young woman who came over to attach his microphone.

  “Mr. Jackson McGinnis was on Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, as I was. He witnessed the assassination, and his story remains to be told. Welcome, please, Mr. Jackson McGinnis!”

  Almost as tall as Drury, wearing a coffee-with-cream-colored suit and yellow socks, McGinnis came onto the set with the bouncy air of a boxer entering a ring. His yellowish-gray hairpiece was obviously a wig. Maybe seventy years old, he held his mouth open to get breath. He smiled at the studio audience.

  “Finally, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. John Trabue, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, and a fellow of the Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs. Professor Trabue is this year a visiting professor at the University of Southern California. Welcome, please. Professor Trabue!” The slight, apparently timid professor walked out and went to the couch, glancing neither at Drury nor at the studio audience. He held his mouth in a controlled little smile. His dark hair covered little of his pate. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, tinted green; and he carried with him a folder of papers. He wore a dark-blue three-piece suit, and his shoes we*e brown.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, these three men, each of them an expert in his own way on the mysteries surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy, will talk to us, and we will take your telephone calls—immediately following these… Commercial… Announcements!”

  Drury beckoned to Marvin Goldschmidt to come over to him, and he gesticulated, giving the director instructions. He had shaken hands and chatted with his guests in the waiting room, and now he all but ignored them. Unsure of themselves, they did not chat with one another, but sat staring at Drury and the lights and cameras.

  Tim and Alicia sat on stools behind the panels in the control room. “How do you like that?” he said to her, nodding at one of the monitors where the commercial now airing was on display. “Ford. A real breakthrough to get an automobile company as a sponsor.”

  “Much good may it do us,” she muttered.

  “Well…”

  A door opened and Charles Bell came into the control room and took the third tall steel-and-black-vinyl stool. Bell was a heavy investor in Paul Drury Productions. In effect, he owned the show, though his ownership meant little, since PDP would be worthless if Paul Drury should ever decide to leave.

  Bell nudged Alicia with his elbow. “Tonight?” he murmured without turning to look at her. She did not answer, and he raised his voice slightly. “Tonight?”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “For damn sure,” said Bell through clenched teeth.

  She shrugged.

  Bell was a Texan, but he was nobody’s image of a Texan. He did not look like the caricature Texan, did not dress the part, and did not speak like the parodied Texan. He was ruddy of complexion, jowly, and graying in his fifties. He was short. His exquisitely tailored dark blue suit draped gracefully over his ample figure.

  “Live,” said Goldschmidt’s voice over the speaker in the control room.

  4

  Drury began to speak. “Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we have with us three people who may be described as experts on the Kennedy assassination. Many of you will remember Professor Trabue. This is his fourth appearance on this show. You may remember Mr. Blake Emory, who has appeared with us twice before. New to us tonight is Mr. Jackson McGinnis.

  “Mr. McGinnis, you were present on Dealey Plaza when President Kennedy was assassinated. You say you saw something that has nowhere been reported. Why don’t you tell us what that was?” McGinnis swallowed and nodded. “Well, sir,” he said. “I worked at that time for the City of Dallas. In fact, I worked all my life for the City of Dallas. I was the foreman of a crew that would clean up the area after the President went by. There was lots of folks out to see the President go by, and my fellers would pick up what trash they dropped, so’s the place would look nice, the way it’s supposed to. You know the county buildings are there, and the monuments and fountains, and we always tried to keep the grass clear of trash.

  “Anyway, where I was, I was on the south side of Elm Street, that is, between Elm and Main, in the little triangle-shaped park there. I was pretty near to the curb, just one little girl standin’ in front of me, and I could see over her without no trouble. So I had a good place to see the President go by.”

  McGinnis, though he was conspicuously nervous and kept rubbing his hands on his suit jacket as if he were rubbing the sweat off his palms, spoke with bouncy self-confidence, showing a toothy smile to the studio audience and the cameras.

  “And just before he got to where I was, I saw him jerk his hands up and grab his throat, and I heard a shot. There wasn’t no question where that shot come from. It come from the School Book Depository Building. I mean, you could hear where it come from plain as anything. I looked up at the building, but you couldn’t see no rifleman. He’d ducked back in. I looked back at the President. He had his hands up to his throat, and he looked awful. Then the whole top of his head blew off, just blew off. And there was no doubt where that shot come from. If that shot had missed Mr. Kennedy, it might of kilt me, or somebody standin’ close to me.

  “Where did that shot come from, Mr. McGinnis?” asked Drury, who until now had said nothing. His face had filled the screen half the time McGinnis was talking: a study in intent skepticism.

  “Up there on the north side of Elm Street there’s what they call a pergola,” said McGinnis. “It’s another one of the monuments. You know, a half circle, like, closed behind, open in front, made of concrete. Sort
of like a bandstand, only not. It was a perfect place to shoot from. Close to the street. High up, so you could shoot over the crowd. And a feller with a rifle fired from up there. I happened to be right in line. I seen him.”

  “After he fired, what did he do?” asked Drury. “Couple of fellers took the rifle from him, and they walked off, out of the pergola and I figure down into the parking lot behind it.”

  “Mr. McGinnis,” said Drury, “if the pergola was a perfect vantage point from which to shoot President Kennedy, wouldn’t that have been apparent to the Secret Service and the Dallas police, too; and wouldn’t the pergola have been guarded?”

  “It wuz,” said McGinnis. “Guarded fer him, so’s he could get off his shot. See, I figured those fellers that took the gun and led the rifleman away was police of some kind. But they wasn’t. There was never a word said about it. That was all covered up.”

  “Thank you,” said Drury. He reached for his glass and took a sip of Scotch. It was a gesture of skepticism, as his regular audience knew, and the group in the studio tittered. “Mr. Blake Emory, you were a police detective in Kansas City at the time of the assassination. You took an immediate interest in the crime, read everything you could about it, went down to Dallas to visit the site, and interviewed witnesses. When you retired seven years ago, you made research into the assassination of President Kennedy your full-time work. You are a detective experienced in criminal investigation. You are the author of six articles on the assassination, and this year, the thirtieth year since the assassination, you will publish a book on the crime. After a short break, we will hear what you think of Mr. McGinnis’s story.”

  In the control booth, Bell turned to Tim and Alicia and said, “Bullshit.”

  “Fortunately,” said Alicia.

  “Sooner or later—”

  Bell interrupted Tim. “No. Tonight.”

  Tim nodded. “If we can. There are a thousand ways he could screw us up.”

  “My part’s in place,” said Bell.

  Tim looked through the glass and nodded toward Paul Drury. “The goose that laid golden eggs,” he said.

  5

  When the commercials were over, Blake Emory began. “In all the research I have done on the assassination,” he said, “I never before heard of a shot fired from the pergola. I firmly believe that a shot, maybe two, came from the Grassy Knoll, maybe one or two from the underpass. But, as you said, Mr. Drury, the pergola was a perfect place from which to fire a shot, and it was guarded by Secret Service agents as well as plainclothes detectives of the Dallas force.”

  “That there’s just the point,” said McGinnis. “The cops was in on it, the Secret Service was in on it, and lord knows who all else.”

  “Professor Trabue,” said Drury, “you’ve made a specialty of the Kennedy assassination, as a professional historian. Has anything you have read or heard suggested shots fired from the pergola?”

  “Well, as you know, Mr. Drury,” said Professor Trabue, “I am a firm believer in the accuracy and completeness of the Warren Commission Report. In the twenty-nine years since it was published, I have not seen a shred of credible evidence that supports any alternative theory. Commission bashing and conspiracy theories have become a lucrative industry. I am willing to take any alternative theory you wish, from the Garrison charges in New Orleans to the Oliver Stone movie, and I will show you where they depend on facts that are not facts and make quantum leaps in logic. People are obsessed with conspiracy. They don’t want to believe anything inexplicable happens except by some deep, dark conspiracy. Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy, Mr. Drury. I am sorry that spoils some people’s fun and other people’s livelihoods, but that’s it, plain and simple.”

  “I got a question for the professor,” said McGinnis.

  “Ask it,” said Drury.

  “Where’d you say you’re a professor at?” asked McGinnis.

  “The Lyndon Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas,” said the professor. “This year I’m a visiting professor at USC.”

  McGinnis smirked. “Lyndon Johnson School,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk. “That explains that.”

  “What does it explain, exactly?” said Drury, reaching for his Scotch.

  “He works for the Lyndon Johnson School,” said McGinnis confidently. “I don’t s’pose there’s a grown-up person in this country doesn’t know Johnson was one of them that wanted Kennedy killed and done what he could to make it happen.”

  “Mr. McGinnis,” said Drury. “I am curious about something. President Kennedy was assassinated thirty years ago, almost, and only now are you telling us you saw the rifleman fire the shot. Why didn’t you report what you saw to the Dallas police, to the Secret Service, to the FBI, or even to the newspapers?”

  “I done,” said McGinnis. “Working for the City of Dallas, I knew enough about the Dallas police not to go to them. I figured the Secret Service had to be in on it. So I went to the FBI. I figured Mr. Hoover’d be interested. The agent there in Dallas, he took my statement, and I never heard no more about it.”

  “As a matter of fact, Mr. McGinnis,” said Drury, “you did go to the Dallas police.” He flipped pages in his ring binder. “On March 4, 1964, almost four months after the assassination, you went to the Dallas police. Their report says—and I quote— ‘Jackson McGinnis, 864 San Diego Street, claims to have seen shot fired from concrete pergola north of Elm Street. Claim inconsistent with statements of numerous other witnesses. Sergeant Chaney, Officers Gilchrist and Temple were in concrete pergola at time of assassination, saw no rifleman.’”

  “Well, I forgot that. I guess I did go to the Dallas cops and tell them what I seen,” said McGinnis.

  “Why did you wait until March to report what you saw?”

  “You got no idea what it was like in Dallas right after the assassination—”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” said Drury. “I lived there. I was going to school there.”

  “Well— I don’t think that date on that report is right. That’s another thing they’d do, make up a different date so’s to make it look like I didn’t come in right off.”

  “The FBI agent who interviewed you reported that your account was contradicted by the statements of too many other witnesses.”

  “Well, who wuz they?”

  “Mr. Emory,” said Drury, “how many shots do you conclude were fired on Dealey Plaza that day?” Emory, as much as McGinnis, was startled by the abrupt change of subject. “I can identify six,” he said. He spoke irresolutely, though whether it was from being so surprised or because he was not entirely sure of his statement was impossible for the audience to tell. “You know, a bullet plowed into the ground there in that park where Mr. McGinnis says he was standing. A Dallas police officer guarded that spot until an FBI agent came and dug out that bullet. But that bullet’s missing. The FBI claims it doesn’t have it.”

  The conversation went on, mostly now among Drury, Emory, and the professor. McGinnis was subdued, even sullen. Emory asserted that Oswald could not have fired the two shots that hit Kennedy —one maybe but not two. He described it as an impossible feat of marksmanship.

  “You’ve changed your mind on that,” said Drury.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you were interviewed by a Dan Paccinelli, a reporter for the Kansas City Star, in 1968 and you said, I quote—‘That would have been a difficult shot, sure, but not impossible.’ So which is it, Mr. Emory, difficult or impossible?”

  In the control booth, Alicia turned to Bell and said, “That damned computer. He can pull out anything anybody ever said.”

  Emory was not fazed. He smiled. “Let’s call it ‘nearly impossible,’” he said.

  After the next commercial break, Drury began to receive telephone calls.

  A woman from Seattle: “The fact is, you’re completely off the track, all of you. President Kennedy is not dead. In the summer of 1963 he was diagnosed as suffering progressive brain damage from
the syphilis he’d had since about 1938. The assassination was staged. He’s alive today in a hospital in England. Of course he doesn’t know who he is or where he is, and—”

  “Thank you, Seattle,” said Drury as he cut off the call, letting the audience see a chopping motion and a flash of impatience on his face.

  A man from Baton Rouge: “I have a question for Professor Trabue. Do you fear that the work of careful historians like yourself will be lost in the public mind? I mean, a movie like the Oliver Stone thing has a hundred times bigger audience than you can ever have; and, in spite of the fact that it’s all based on speculation, it’s the only version of the assassination that a lot of people are ever going to have.”

  “That troubles me very deeply,” said Professor Trabue.

  “Question for our caller in Baton Rouge,” said Drury. “This is the forty-eighth show we’ve done on the assassination. We try to give time for every point of view. Do you think we’re part of the solution or part of the problem?”

  “I’m not sure,” said the man in Baton Rouge. “I believe Professor Trabue is correct, that the Warren Commission was thorough and accurate, but there’s so much money to be made from playing loose with the facts—”

  “Can I ask you to keep watching us?” Drury interrupted. “This is only the forty-eighth show. We’ve got more to reveal. We may have some surprises for you.”

  A young woman from Columbus, Ohio: “I’d like to know what each of your guests thinks about the proposition that Kennedy had to be killed because he was about to order a withdrawal of our troops from Vietnam.”

  Drury signaled Professor Trabue to answer first, and the professor said, “There is no evidence whatever of that. None whatever. In the absence of evidence, I am not prepared to believe any such preposterous accusation.”

  Drury pointed at McGinnis, who said, “That’s my whole point. Lyndon Johnson wanted Kennedy killed so’s he’d get the presidency and could keep the war goin’—from which he and a lot of others were making tons of money. It’s simple as that,” he concluded, confidence restored and self-satisfied.