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

expected to arrive in New Orleans for a top-level meeting with mob boss Meyer Lansky, where this current problem would be discussed. The Big Easy! Sturgis’ favorite city, other than what he had discovered in Havana, for daylight decisions and late-night debauchery. How he loved Bourbon Street.
    In truth, the top candidate on George’s list had often walked that street in his youth. Feeling worthless, powerless. Dreaming of greatness, with not a clue how it might be achieved. Eager to be found, fearful that he would forever remain obscure.

CHAPTER TWO:
THE LATE MATINEE
    â€œI lost it at the movies.”
    â€”film critic Pauline Kael, 1966
    Â 
    One clammy afternoon in late April 1954, six years before Frank Sturgis returned from Cuba and, while in New Orleans, set about deciding on the right person to kill Castro, the nowhere man 'George' ultimately picked wandered aimlessly along Bourbon Street. Head bowed low, eyes on the concrete, Lee Oswald drifted past Po’ Boy shops, Dixieland dens, and sleazy strip clubs.
    Above the rickety door to each, neon lights blazed like electric-rainbows in the warm afternoon drizzle. The time: just before three p.m., after the lunch crowd abandoned such declasse havens from the real world; before the early evening clientele trickled in. At this awkward juncture in the daily pattern, few frequented the garbage-laden streets, where blues and jazz poured out of shabby, timeworn, ever-enticing buildings.
    That explained why this particular visitor arrived now. Lee hated crowds, more than almost anything. Except perhaps being alone. That made no sense at all. Then again, little about Lee Harvey Oswald ever seemed ‘right’ to those whom he, in the privacy of his mind, dismissed as The Normals.
    Others sensed this in the youth's personality on meeting him. For all of his fifteen years, strangers had made it a point to keep their distance. Here, other stragglers passing through the dreary weather, soft rain on neon transforming urban decay into a lurid phantasmagoria, drifted past without making eye contact. Lee turned up his jacket-collar and pushed on, if with no particular place to go. As was always the case.
    In his vision—that bizarre, unique way in which L.H.O. always had and, for the remainder of his brief life, would perceive the world—he’d brought the lousy weather down on this part of The Big Easy simply by showing up. He was cursed, carrying an invisible mark of Cain wherever he went. This rain, that ruined a potentially pleasant day for others, had been summoned by Lee’s immense capacity for negativity. Or so he believed.
    A scrawny kid, oblivious now to the rich Creole culture and Cajun lifestyle surrounding him, Lee had only a single thought on this even grayer day than usual: why had he been born? In all truth, he wished that event never occurred. As Lee had done several times previous in in his miserable excuse for a life, the youth considered purchasing a pistol at one of those seedy pawn-shops located on side-streets, then pointing the barrel at his head, bringing the dark farce to an end.
    Why not? All that awaited him on the morrow was more of the same. Lee despised his existence, perceiving himself one of nature’s mistakes. Maybe there was, as his mother Marguerite insisted, a better place up there. If not, oblivion would likely prove preferable to more of this .
    Lee had spent the morning seated in a cramped apartment he shared with his mother at 1454 Saint Mary Street, listening to an album of heartbreaking songs that touched him in a way current pop hits by performers such as Patti Page and Doris Day, popular with The Normals, did not. The selection of mournful saloon-ballads was performed by Frank Sinatra. The disc, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” had been released by Capitol. After catching the title tune on the radio, Lee had hurried out to purchase his own copy. During the past week he’d listened to