Reclaiming History (173 page)

Early the next morning, Friday, August 9, came the news that baby Patrick Kennedy had died during the night. Marina wept. Lee tried to reassure her by noting that Jacqueline Kennedy was frail and had lost other babies, while Marina was strong and was already the mother of a healthy, thriving child.
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Later that same day, three days after Lee had delivered the Marine manual to the Casa Roca, around two in the afternoon he started passing out leaflets in the seven hundred block of Canal Street, not far from Bringuier’s store. He attracted the attention of Celso Hernandez, a recently arrived refuge from Cuba. Hernandez spoke no English, but he understood very well two of the words on the sign Oswald was carrying:
Viva Fidel
. Hernandez tried to speak to Oswald, but the language barrier between them was impenetrable. Hernandez hurried off to Decatur Street to find Bringuier.

He found him at his store with another recently arrived, teenage Cuban, Miguel Cruz. The three of them decided on a counterdemonstration. Taking a sign Bringuier had in the store, they went back to Canal Street in search of the man passing out pro-Castro leaflets. The sign depicted the Statue of Liberty, with a hand, labeled “Soviet Union,” plunging a knife in her back. The caption read, “Danger. Only 90 Miles From The United States Cuba Lies In Chains.”

The man was nowhere to be found, so Bringuier, after taking a streetcar the length of Canal Street to scout for him, went back to his store. A few minutes later Cruz came in and said the man was again on Canal Street. Bringuier and Cruz hurried back to the scene. The excitable Bringuier was not just surprised to find that the man he was looking for was Oswald, he was outraged. Oswald smiled and offered Bringuier his hand, which only made Bringuier angrier. A crowd gathered, and Bringuier tried to explain to them that this man with his sign reading “Hands Off Cuba” had been presenting himself only four days earlier as a dedicated anti-Castroist. He warned the crowd that Oswald was a pro-Communist who wanted to kill them and send their children to the execution wall. The three excited Cubans found some allies in the crowd, people shouting at Oswald, “Traitor! Communist! Go back to Cuba! Kill him!” Someone gave Oswald a shove.

A policeman appeared and asked Bringuier and his friends to move on and allow Oswald to pass out his leaflets in peace. He was breaking no law. Bringuier tried to explain Oswald’s treachery, but the policeman wasn’t interested and went off to phone for help. In the officer’s absence, Hernandez grabbed a stack of Oswald’s yellow leaflets and threw them into the air, where they blew all over the place. Bringuier was ready to punch Oswald but stopped when Oswald crossed his arms in front of himself and said, “Okay, Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me.” Carlos held his punch. He wasn’t going to make a martyr of Oswald.
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A few minutes later two squad cars full of police arrived and arrested all four of them, Oswald as well as the three Cubans, for “disturbing the peace by creating a scene.” They were taken to the station house of the First District, New Orleans Police Department, on North Rampart Street.
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Each of them was questioned by police officers in the same room and Bringuier was impressed by Oswald’s cool self-possession. He was not nervous, not out of control, confident of himself, even when he was asked if he was a Communist. He obliged the police by showing them his literature and explaining that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was not some weird fringe group but a national organization with offices in New York. About the extent and membership of the organization in New Orleans, Lee was understandably more cagey. He did not want to discuss that in the presence of Bringuier and the other Cubans. The police took Oswald out of the room and Bringuier did not see him again that day. The Cubans put up twenty-five dollars each for bail and were released until a court appearance on Monday morning. Oswald, who did not have the money for bail, spent the night in jail.
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About ten the next morning, New Orleans police lieutenant Francis L. Martello interviewed Oswald. Martello was currently a platoon commander at the First District station. As such, he routinely checked the preceding day’s arrest records, and today he was struck by Oswald’s police report. The police like to know what fringe groups are in the city and what their politics are, but the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a new one to Martello. Martello had Oswald brought into an interview room, where he sorted through the contents of Oswald’s wallet, making note of his Social Security number, Selective Service draft card, and two membership cards of the FPCC—one from New York and another from New Orleans signed A. J. Hidell.
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Martello was friendly. His purpose was to establish a rapport with Oswald, and he found Lee easy to talk to, nonchalant, and obviously well read if not well educated, with a sort of “academic approach” to the Cuban problem. Oswald told him he had been born and raised in New Orleans, served in the U.S. Marines, lived for several years in Fort Worth, and moved from there to New Orleans only about four months ago. Martello had no reason to notice that Russia and Dallas had been entirely edited out of Oswald’s biography, and his general impression was that Oswald was telling the truth, even though Oswald became evasive when the conversation turned to the New Orleans chapter of the FPCC. Oswald claimed about thirty-five members, whose names he declined to give, and said that about five of them might attend each regular meeting, whose location he likewise declined to give. Martello found this information surprising, since it seemed unlikely that a group with thirty-five members would have escaped the notice of the police department, but he did not make an issue of it. Curiously, Lee also asked to see an agent of the FBI,
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and Martello obliged him by calling the local office of the bureau.
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Lee turned to the Murrets for help to get out of jail. Unfortunately, only his cousin Joyce, home from Beaumont, Texas, for a visit, was at the house when Lee called from a jail phone. His Aunt Lillian was in the hospital, having undergone a minor ear operation, and his Uncle Dutz was away on a weekend Catholic religious retreat in Manresa, Louisiana, a place where people only go to pray and whose strict rules require that you can’t talk to anyone for twenty-four hours. Joyce not only was encumbered by her two small children, but also had to go to the hospital to bring Lillian home and could ill afford the time to come down to Rampart Street to bail him out. But she promised to do so if she could manage.
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For the time being, Oswald had better luck with his request to see a representative of the FBI. It was Saturday and the local office of the FBI was manned only by a skeleton crew. John Lester Quigley was the agent assigned the task. Neither the name nor the person of Lee Harvey Oswald rang any bells when Lee was shown into the police commander’s office, where Quigley was looking over the FPCC materials Lieutenant Martello had given him. Quigley knew of the committee as a national organization but had not yet encountered any signs of it in New Orleans. He did know that the bureau had an open file on Oswald and somehow had completely forgotten that about a year and a half before he had gone over to the naval station at Algiers, a suburb across the river from the city, to check Oswald’s naval intelligence records in response to a request from the bureau’s office in Dallas.
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Quigley took down some basic information about Oswald’s background, which he seemed to be fairly forthcoming about. Again, Lee was less forthcoming when the conversation turned to details of the local chapter of the FPCC, although he was willing enough to lecture the agent on patriotism. He had been distributing these throwaways for the FPCC as “a patriotic duty, as a patriotic American citizen.” The United States should not, Oswald said, attack Cuba or interfere with Cuban political affairs. The philosophy of the FPCC was that the American people should better understand internal conditions in Cuba and be given opportunities to go there to make up their own minds about it. As to the identity of A. J. Hidell,
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whose signature appeared on the FPCC membership card, Oswald said he had never met Hidell personally but had spoken with him on the telephone on several occasions. He could not recall Hidell’s telephone number but remembered it was now disconnected anyway. He said he had received a note in the mail from Hidell on August 7 asking him to distribute some FPCC literature in the downtown area of New Orleans. FPCC meetings were held, he said, in various members’ residences, but he had attended only two of them and everyone there had been introduced by their first name only. He couldn’t recall any of the first names. One meeting had been held at his own home, but he declined to say how he had managed to get in touch with these other FPCC members whose names and addresses he did not know. In short, it was obvious that Oswald was not going to provide Quigley with information of any real interest to him or the bureau.
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Late that Saturday, Joyce Murret finally showed up at the police station, ready to put up the twenty-five-dollar bail for Oswald’s release. When she saw the “Viva Fidel” sign Oswald had been carrying and the leaflet with its bold heading “HANDS OFF CUBA!” she flinched. “Oh, my God,” she said, realizing she did not want to be a part of his being released from jail. Martello told her that Lee’s offense wasn’t particularly grave, and if she didn’t want to put up the twenty-five-dollar bail, she could contact one of the city or state officials who had the “power of parole,” and on his instruction Oswald would be released until his case was heard. Not sure what to do, she left and went to bring her mother home from the hospital, but not before she filled in some of the gaps Lee had left in his interview with Martello, telling the lieutenant about Lee’s trip to Russia and his poor Russian wife whom Lee did not even allow to speak English.
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Martello, intrigued, had Lee brought out of his cell to talk with him again. He asked Lee whether he was a Communist and Lee said he was not, relying on his increasingly familiar mantra that he was a Marxist but not a Soviet-style Marxist-Leninist. Lee, given the opportunity to talk about his favorite subject, political philosophy, grew expansive. He said he was in full accord with Karl Marx’s book
Das Kapital
, but true Communism did not exist in Russia. Marx, he said, was never a true Communist anyway; he was a socialist, as, Lee said, he himself was. Soviet Communism “stunk.” Russia had, he said, “fat, stinking politicians over there just like we have over here,” and that while the leaders have everything, the people are still poor and depressed. When Martello asked why he did not allow members of his family to learn English, Lee said that he hated America and didn’t want them to become “Americanized” and that he planned to return to Russia. As for his views of Khrushchev and Kennedy, he said he thought they got along very well together. There was no other mention of the president, but they did talk about Castro again. Martello asked whether he knew that Castro had recently admitted he was a Marxist-Leninist. Lee did, but he was not going to discuss the merits and demerits of the Cuban premier; he was mainly concerned with the people of Cuba and said the situation in Cuba would be a lot better “if this country would have better relations with the poor people of Cuba and quit worrying about Castro.”
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After, Martello had Lee returned to his cell, he stuck his notes and several copies of the evidence—Oswald’s leaflets—in a file folder, put them away, and forgot about them. He did not consider Lee Oswald anyone who would be likely to resort to violence. In fact, he found him rather the opposite, rather passive. He hadn’t even tried to defend himself when Bringuier had threatened him. When Martello thought about the events of the day before, it seemed to him that Oswald may have set the Cubans up.
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Lee languished in jail—no sign of cousin Joyce and the bail money. Irritated, and not knowing that Joyce had already been to the jail, he called again and found that Joyce had just returned from the hospital with his Aunt Lillian. He was quite rude to Joyce on the phone, wanting to know why she hadn’t come to bail him out. When she told him she didn’t have any money, he told her to go to Magazine Street and get it from Marina, who should have about seventy dollars in cash. But Joyce absolutely did not want to make yet another trip to Rampart Street or get involved in any way. She told Lillian what Martello had told her about getting an official to “parole” Lee, and Lillian came up with the solution. She had Joyce get in touch with someone the Murrets knew, a local liquor store owner and state boxing commissioner, Emile Bruneau, who called her back later to say he had contacted a local official (A. Heckman, a New Orleans jury commissioner) and that Oswald had been released.
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When Lee finally got home on Saturday evening, he was tired and dirty but quietly jubilant as he informed Marina where and why he had been detained. She had lain awake until three that morning worrying about him and had even gone to check to be sure he did not have the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with him. He told her that he enjoyed a philosophical conversation with a sympathetic police officer who had been like “a kindly uncle”—no doubt Martello. “He listened to my ideas,” Lee told her, “and let me out.”
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When Dutz came home from his retreat on Sunday evening and Lillian told him what had happened, he was horrified by the whole story. He drove over to the Oswalds’ place on Magazine Street, where he took note of the photograph of Fidel Castro on the mantle. He gave Lee a good talking to, suggesting that he get a job and start taking his family responsibilities seriously.

“You be sure you show up at that courthouse for the trial,” he warned Lee.

Lee said, “Don’t worry, I’ll show up.”
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Come Monday morning, August 12, Bringuier, Hernandez, and Cruz arrived early, joining some other Cubans who had taken seats in the half of the small Rampart Street courthouse reserved for white folks. Moments later Oswald arrived and ostentatiously took a seat on the other side, the one reserved for colored people. Bringuier seethed. The Cuban immediately understood what Oswald was up to. He meant to win the blacks over when he made a stirring defense of the villainous Fidel Castro. This would be “a tremendous work of propaganda for his side,” Bringuier realized, one of the things that caused him to think “that he was really a smart guy and not a nut.”
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