So Oswald has lots of time and is no hurry, but he can't wait on a bus, like everyone else did? Oswald's not even interested in returning to the epicentre of world attention to find out more about what happened. Oswald's down to about $15, with no pay check for another week (was rent due?) and spends almost $1 on a cab ride. Remember he's in no hurry and he has lots of time and he should be economizing.
How many people in America with access to a TV, breaking news of such a monumental event, that afternoon would pass that up to go to a movie? How many people where such a huge incident happened at their workplace would have no interest in what happened there or if his coworkers were involved or killed?
$15 bucks was worth about $150 bucks today. You could buy a week's worth of groceries for about $25 bucks.
You're kind of missing my point about the hurried manner I mentioned. If he did all of the things I mentioned above, it seems highly unlikely if he did them all and made it down to get his soft drink in time. Unless, of course, he was never involved in the first place. And as Martin mentions, if he was hurried, why not just zip on out of the building to make his grand escape? He didn't though. None of it makes sense.
It's important to not look at Oswald as just some nobody who was constantly broke. There's some evidence that he may have been a lowly paid informant and was making a little bit of cash on the side. But yeah, he did pay $1 a buck for the cab, just like he paid whatever it was he paid for the rifle, for the pistol [but no record to date of any ammunition for the rife. Hmm, I wonder how he pulled that off?]. Yet, he was also worried about his daughter getting new shoes.
My hunch is that he was told to go to the theater. This is why he later said he was nothing but a patsy. He knew that as he was arrested and brought down to DPD, it was slowly dawning on him. If he was a madman, he would have said something at the midnight conference. He says absolutely nothing about either murder.
Walt Cakebread has a theory that he was down in Mexico cavorting with the Russian assassin. I don't think he was ever down there, which is why we've never seen any photo of him down there, despite that being a real Commie hotspot.
I don't think he was "rushing" to go to the theater, but that's where he was heading. Hence, the bus, giving up on that and taking the cab. The roundabout way through that neighborhood makes no sense at all.
I have no answers about why he didn't want to stick around at the building wondering what was going on. If he was the designated patsy, it makes sense for them to clear him out of the area, to send him back to Irving as if he's making a grand escape by "hiding out" in the theater. Further, that's why it makes no sense for him to have taken the roundabout way to it. Which, to me, makes sense that they wanted to get him for the cop killing first. It's almost as if they were laying breadcrumbs:
Theater - Tippit - rooming house - TSBD - assassin
