“But we don’t hit Kennedy. We miss him.”
Everett is one of the conspirators at work in the novel. The brilliant turn that DeLillo puts on the ridiculous conspiracy theory notions behind the JFK assassination that the whole thing starts out as a fake-out. The plan begins with the motivation not to do that which is both improbable and unnecessary (not to mention so ludicrous as to verge on insane)—namely, killing a sitting President—but to create the illusion that the President was attacked by enemies who will the naturally feel the full force of retaliation.
This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track.
The novel begins with a focus on Lee Oswald before he became forever known to the world with his middle name intact. The novel tells three different stories with one being that of the conspirators and another taking place after the assassination when a CIA operative is trying to piece the facts together. The most compelling section from the perspective of answering the question who killed Kennedy, however, is the most obvious. Oswald is by far the most fascinating character because he is by far the only character in the story likely to have done the deed.
He wears white jail coveralls and scribbles notes when his lawyers come to the interview room, where the walls are bugged. He insists on taking a lie-detector test because the sincerity and authenticity of the truth are precious qualities to Americans.
In contrast to Oswald, Jack Ruby seems like a character in a novel. Although DeLillo drew on the available research as to portray Ruby that he did Oswald—and there is much more information available about Ruby—he seems fictional and unreal. His claims to being set-up and ramblings about being targeted forever as unjust victim unfairly sucked into a massive conspiracy ring distinctly false with return to the portrait of his lingering in a jail cell; a far more vulnerable target than was allegedly made for him of Oswald. As the reader dives into the rapidly disintegrating mind of Ruby, they cannot but inevitably wonder why, if he is a man who knows too much, he managed to survive alone in a jail cell when other far less dangerous figures in the conspiracy were disposed of with much more extreme prejudice.
There were pigeons, suddenly, everywhere, cracking down from the eaves and beating west. The report sounded over the plaza, flat and clear.
The description of the actual shooting from the Texas Bookstore Depository. The imagery here describes the second shot actually, from the perspective of that cramped space behind the window high above the action. The dry quality of the simple declarative description makes the scene all the more chilling and brings the reality of just how really very simple killing the President of the United States was in 1963.
