Al tells Jake the owner of the property where the diner sits has decided to build a retail store there. After a month, the diner will be removed and construction will begin, destroying whatever phenomenon caused the time portal, or “rabbit-hole” (89), as Al calls it. Before that happens, Al wants to stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He believes that by stopping that assassination, it will also stop a series of race riots and assassinations that followed.

Al tells Jake he went the through the rabbit-hole and waited as long as he could to stop the assassination, but he got too sick to stay. When Jake asks why he didn’t just kill Lee Harvey before he left, Al said that he wasn’t convinced enough that Lee Harvey was the lone shooter to take the chance that he was wrong. Al then tells Jake that someone shot at General Edwin Walker in April 1963 with the same gun that killed Kennedy. If Jake can prove Lee Harvey fired at Walker, then he can be confident Lee Harvey was the lone shooter. Al has written everything he knows about Lee Harvey in a notebook he gives to Jake.