Chapter 36: A Long, Hot, Boring Summer

From April to September Billie and I pulled research--and I managed to avoid killing anybody! We stayed in different hotels each night until we moved into a squalid little apartment on Magazine Street on May 1, 1963. Mae and Gem moved in a mile away. Simone visited from time to time. My primary mission was mapping out safe houses and who was using them. When I wasn’t doing that, I was tasked to surveil a slew of colorful personalities. I was surprised to find that one of my surveillance subjects was working with that Hidell character, a retired FBI man turned private investigator named Guy Banister. This was while Hidell, working under the alias of Lee Oswald, was holding down a job at the Reily Coffee Company. When I reported this development, I was told to go to an obscure motel on Interstate 10 east of Baton Rouge--and come alone.

“What the goddamned fuck do you think you’re doing?” Colonel Stafford thundered. “Drop Banister. Ignore that Hidell fellow. I don’t want you to report on them!”

“Acknowledge, Colonel Stafford,” I replied. I’ve been through that routine before. Colonel Stafford was no General Patton--and Stafford wasn’t in my chain of command anyway. “May I inform my team to suspend the Banister operation?”

“What do you mean? Just lay off Banister.”

“Wilco, sir.”

There were problems with the Banister assignment starting with the work I had done there earlier. His office address was in a wedge-shaped building at 531 Lafayette in the Newman Building--which was also 544 Camp Street on the other side of the Newman Building. Banister had been in non the Dillinger killing, investigated a Fu-Go balloon bomb that landed in Montana, and even made a report on a flying saucer that landed in Twin Falls, Montana during 1947. Banister had been Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago FBI field office from 1953 to 1955--when he retired, he moved to New Orleans and was Assistant Superintendent. I found out all that during the winter months--and was more careful around Banister than a long-tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I wasn’t careful enough, obviously.

Hidell/Oswald moved in down the street from the apartment I shared with Billie. That made it difficult to avoid the man. A woman and a small child joined him on May 11--which I kept to myself. It is amazing how much bored housewives know about their neighbors. Just in case you didn’t read the classified intelligence manual, intelligence work is based on rumor, gossip and lies--and police work is similar. There were complaints that Oswald was stuffing his neighbor’s trash cans. A few recovered documents proved to me that Hidell was gunrunning--and that his Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a front organization for the naval intelligence office near the Newman Building. Interesting but officially none of my business.