ME: But why would Oswald have agreed to kill Kennedy for Ferrie? It may seem an obvious question, but I’m not sure I understand his motive.
STONE: This is where the psychologists are right. Lee strongly prefigured the later killers such as John Hinckley, Mark David Chapman, and the school shooters. His life had been one long string of failures. Emigrating to Cuba was his final fantasy. The Russians didn’t want him, employers didn’t want him, his wife had left him. When the Cubans said no to his defection, he basically had nothing left. Three weeks before the black hole weekend, Lee actually attended a rally where General Walker spoke, almost as if he was planning to try once more to assassinate him. Lee was truly ready for anything at that point, so long as it was sensational.
KAISER: In behavioral science parlance, Oswald was decompensating. He’d endured stressor after stressor. Killing Kennedy—who had been actively trying to overthrow and even kill Castro—would have made Lee a hero to Castro and the Cuban people. I’m sure Oswald could see himself driving along the Malecón with Fidel in a big convertible, waving to the adoring crowds.
ME: What about the Cuban student, Cruz? The one who bought the Carcano that was in Brody’s house?
STONE: I think Ferrie came up with that angle the night he thought of the Oswald plan. If the goal was to sell the world on a Cuban plot—and Marcello on his plan—then they needed a Cuban conspiracy. The way to create that was to pin a rifle like Oswald’s to another loyal Communist—ideally, a native Cuban.
KAISER: One with a criminal record, so his prints would be on file.
ME: You make Ferrie sound like a criminal genius.
KAISER: Some Cuban exiles actually called him “the master of intrigue.” His brilliance is exaggerated, but he was a devious guy. In any case, all Ferrie had to do to get that second Carcano was walk into a Texas gun shop and buy one.
STONE: And two boxes of ammunition. Western Cartridge Company 6.58-millimeter, manufactured in the U.S. for Italy during the war.
KAISER: Right. The ammunition’s key.
ME: So how did they frame Eladio Cruz? They killed him and put his prints on the rifle?
KAISER: And dumped him in the swamp. You nailed it. Probably on the night of Tuesday, November nineteenth.
STONE: But first Ferrie had to carry the revised mission order to Frank Knox. He probably flew out of Dallas on the Sunday after seeing Oswald. We’re trying to check his movements during that period, but access to a Marcello plane means he could have traveled as his schedule allowed, with no one the wiser.
ME: You think Frank Knox just went along with the Oswald scheme?
STONE: Frank was a soldier. He would have seen the advantages. He simply went from being the primary shooter to the backup.
ME: But that second Carcano was never found. It was never associated with the assassination in any way. What was the point in getting it? Was Knox supposed to use it against Kennedy?
STONE: I think he was. But Frank would have known better than to trust a critical shot to a junk rifle. My guess is that he told Ferrie he’d leave the Carcano at the scene, but he wasn’t going to shoot with it. Otherwise, Marcello might have gotten angry when things didn’t go the way he expected.
ME: Then why wasn’t the rifle found?
KAISER: Maybe Frank didn’t want to risk carrying two rifles into the Dal-Tex Building. That’s a serious tactical challenge.
STONE: Or maybe he worried that the FBI or CIA had forensic abilities he knew nothing about. Frank would have known that a presidential assassin’s rifle would be subjected to more scrutiny than any weapon in history.
KAISER: Or he might have kept it as insurance. Frank knew he was dealing with the mob, and he knew how those guys handled loose ends. Maybe he figured he could use the Carcano as leverage later.
ME: So why didn’t Marcello blow up when Frank didn’t leave the rifle at Dealey Plaza?
STONE: [chuckles] When we think about mobsters like Carlos Marcello, we inflate their powers in our minds. We see them as fearless. But Carlos had watched Frank Knox train Cuban exiles at his camp. He’d heard the stories of what Frank had done in the Pacific. The medal-winning assaults, the mutilation of prisoners, the black market skulls. Compared to Frank Knox, a Mafia hit man with a snubnose .38 was a clown.
KAISER: There are some guys it doesn’t pay to go to war with. Especially when they only live three hours away from you.
ME: But the ballistics . . . How could the bullet fired from Frank’s Remington match the bullets fired from Oswald’s Carcano?
STONE: Ferrie would have provided ammunition to both Oswald and Knox. That would further tie the two shooters in an apparent conspiracy. Lee was poor as dirt, so he wouldn’t have bought new ammo if he didn’t have to.
ME: You’re missing my point. If Frank didn’t use that second Carcano, then he couldn’t have used the bullets that matched Oswald’s lot. You said he needed a rifle that fired a super-fast round, didn’t you? How did the metallurgy of Frank’s bullets—fired from a Remington 700—match the bullets Oswald fired from his 6.58 Mannlicher-Carcano?
STONE: That’s where Frank Knox proved his genius. Frank’s bullet was designed to explode on impact with Kennedy’s skull, remember? It left very little trace. But the metallurgy of the fragments did match Oswald’s bullet. New tests were done only a few months ago. There are a couple of ways that this match could have been accomplished. You get into complex gunsmithing work and reloading issues, but Frank was an old hand at all that stuff. All the Knoxes were. The only requirement would have been that Frank had a sample of the ammo Oswald used, and he did. With that, he could have used any rifle he wanted. Trust me, Penn—it can be done.
ME: I’d rather hear the explanation.
Leaning forward, I fast-forward past the complex ballistics and stop on the revelation that floored me. I dread hearing it again, but I want to evaluate it once more before Caitlin arrives and distracts me.
STONE: Tell him, John. He’s gone beyond the call for us.
KAISER: I told you I sent two agents up to the Mississippi field office today. That’s how I found the Triton medical excuse. But once the director was on board, I also put out a Bureau-wide request for any and all files of any type on all the principals in this case. Late this afternoon, a clerk at the Jackson field office sent me a digitized copy of one more file.
ME: Which was?
KAISER: In 1993, a file clerk at the Triton Battery Corporation requested the return of Frank Knox’s personnel record.
ME: So?
KAISER: They didn’t do that out of the blue. They’d been contacted by a former company physician who wanted to see the record. You know who that was.
ME: Bullshit.
STONE: It was your father, Penn. About a month after Carlos Marcello died in New Orleans, Tom requested Frank Knox’s Triton personnel record from the company. You see, he had no idea that the Bureau would have the file.
ME: And what do you conclude from that?
STONE: Well. Either Tom had just figured out what he’d been a part of, and wanted to check it, or . . .
KAISER: That’s not it, guys. I know you don’t want to hear it, but he wouldn’t risk asking for that file out of simple curiosity. Dr. Cage knew what he’d done back in ’63. And once Marcello was dead, he did what he could to wipe out the traces. He just didn’t count on the Bureau having that record.
STONE: John—
KAISER: He nearly got away with it, too. Because nobody at the Bureau could find the file when Triton Battery made their request. They simply reported back to Triton that the file couldn’t be found. If a conscientious Bureau clerk hadn’t decided to open a file to note the unfulfilled request, the whole event would have been lost in the sands of time.
As I listen to Stone try to ameliorate the effects of Kaiser’s accusation, my cell phone vibrates on Caitlin’s desk. The incoming text reads: I just pulled into the lot. I see your car. Be inside in a sec. Love you!
I switch off the recorder, glad to be spared
the last two minutes of conversation. My argument with Kaiser was as intense as it was pointless. I won’t know what prompted Dad to request that medical record until I can question him directly, and until he’ll tell me the truth. But what lingers in my mind is the lump in my throat as I took leave of Stone. Though the old agent put on a brave face, and I tried to match it, I couldn’t suppress the conviction that I would never see him again. And though he’d brought me unwelcome news, I knew that Stone’s heart had always been in the right place. The tragedy was that his news had made me confront even more starkly the question of whether the same was true of my father.
I’ve barely gotten my recorder back into my pocket when Caitlin’s office door flies open and she steps inside, obviously looking for me.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Yeah. Where have you been? I’ve been worried.”
It’s instantly obvious my tone has angered her. “I went to see a couple of my contacts in the black community,” she says, setting her purse down on the desk.
I try to make eye contact, but she turns away and begins heating water for tea. She speaks with her back to me.
“The Jackson radio station has been running that Lincoln Turner interview all day, and I heard he’s been swaying some people—persuading them I’ve been protecting Tom in the Examiner. As I told you this afternoon, some of my own reporters seem to believe the same thing.”
“And what did you find out?”
“Reverend Ransom says most of his flock still love your father, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think he’s human. What they call ‘outside children’ are a fact of life, especially from white fathers, so they have no problem buying that Lincoln could be Tom’s son. That obviously might have led to some real problems between Tom and Viola.”
“Great.”
Caitlin finally turns back to me, her arms folded across her chest almost defensively. “How’s Dwight Stone doing?”
“Worse than I expected. I don’t think he has long. Days, at the most.”
“God. I should go see him.”
Not wanting to encourage this, I say nothing.
“If he’s that sick, what’s he doing here?” she asks, fixing me with her gaze.
And here we come to it: do I lie or tell the truth? After all I heard in room 406, I’ve got no desire to tease through every new fact with Caitlin, especially those dealing with Dad’s possible complicity in crimes. Nor do I want her hounding a dying man for a scoop on the JFK assassination. “After Henry’s death and all John’s discovered, he couldn’t stay away. I think this trip was Dwight’s last hurrah on the unsolved cases from his past. That’s probably all that’s keeping him going now.”
“The JFK thing? Or the civil rights cases?”
“The Double Eagle stuff, mostly.”
Caitlin looks almost disappointed by my answer. She turns and drops a tea bag into her mug, then looks over her shoulder and says, “So . . . what’s this big surprise you wanted to show me?”
“You’ll see, sooner or later. It’s really too dark now.”
She shrugs. “Your car has headlights, doesn’t it? What is it we’re trying to see?”
Since Edelweiss stands atop the bluff facing the Mississippi, the combination of streetlamps, the house lights, my headlights, and the moon might be enough to create quite a dramatic reveal. And since the last thing I want to do is sit in this office while she probes me about my meeting with Kaiser and Stone . . .
“Come on!” I say, bouncing up from the chair and taking her hand. “Let’s get our minds off all this bullshit for half an hour.”
The sound of her sudden laugher is almost a shock after the last couple of days. “Where are we going?” she screeches as I try to drag her into the hall. “Wait!”
She darts back into the office long enough to turn off her teapot, then follows me down the hall. Hand in hand, we run through newsroom together, laughing with near hysterical relief, not knowing why, only sensing that the terrible weight of the past few days has been lifted for a few precious moments. Caitlin’s reporters and staff people look up openmouthed, but a few of them smile. For them, the Double Eagle murders are just a story—a big one, to be sure, but only a way station on the long careers they see ahead. Whereas for Caitlin and me . . .
The stakes are life and death.
CHAPTER 39
SHADRACH JOHNSON AND Sheriff Billy Byrd had been talking in the DA’s office since Byrd walked over at 5:45 P.M. Neither man could quite believe the turns that the Tom Cage matter had taken, or the casualties that had swiftly mounted in and near their jurisdictions. Together, they had worried every thread of the Viola Turner case until Sheriff Byrd pulled a flask of bourbon from his pocket and started drinking.
For Shad, meeting with Billy Byrd was always a little uncomfortable. For while they shared common cause against the Cage family, Billy was no good old boy with his heart in the right place. He was an unreconstructed redneck who—if it were thirty years earlier—would have liked nothing better than to horsewhip Shad for daring to walk on the same sidewalk with him. Beyond that, Byrd wouldn’t have been able to get hired as a janitor at Harvard Law, while Shad had the school’s diploma hanging on his wall. Yet in the present circumstances, Shad was forced to treat the corpulent, Skoal-dipping sheriff like an equal.
Shad was about to suggest that Byrd continue his drinking elsewhere when he heard pounding feet on his staircase. Five seconds later, someone threw open the door with such force that Billy Byrd grabbed for his gun.
“Goddamn it, don’t do that!” the sheriff cried, pointing his flask at Lincoln Turner, who stood in the door like an angry juke-joint bouncer.
Lincoln ignored Byrd and looked straight at Shad. “I think I’ve found Tom Cage.”
“Where?”
“That big green house at the top of Silver Street, looking over the river? Looks like a Swiss chalet or something.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Shad said. “Nobody lives there.”
“Maybe not. But I just followed Penn Cage and that Masters girl to it, and they walked right up on the porch like they were playing a scene in a movie.”
Shad couldn’t believe the speed with which Sheriff Byrd heaved his bulk from the chair and bolted through the door.
“Wait!” Shad cried, yanking open his top drawer in search of his car keys. “Wait for me, damn it! A lot of people go up there to look at the river! Don’t do anything crazy, Billy!”
CAITLIN FELT AS THOUGH she were trapped in a surreal romantic comedy, or even a farcical one. Penn had driven her down Canal Street, then turned onto Broadway and parked just past the head of Silver Street, where tourists often stopped to gaze over the Mississippi River before driving down to the Natchez Under-the-Hill district. Penn’s city car smelled stale, and it nauseated her. She looked to her left, at Edelweiss, which had been her favorite house since she’d first visited Natchez seven years earlier. In a city filled with Greek Revival mansions, the three-story chalet with its wraparound gallery on the second floor seemed to float above the bluff like a clean-lined ship. The mere sight of it usually lifted her mood, and tonight was no exception. Owned by an elderly woman in a nursing home, the 1883 gem had been falling into disrepair for years. Only recently had some mystery buyer begun restoring it to its former splendor.
“What are we doing here?” Caitlin asked, perplexed to be parked in the dark.
“I want to show you something down on the river,” Penn said.
“At night? That’s my surprise?”
“Mm-hm.”
She could tell he was suppressing a smile. “Well, why don’t you drive down Silver Street?”
“You have to be up here to see it. Let’s get out.”
He opened the driver’s door of the smelly car. With a tired groan, Caitlin got out and started toward the fence at the edge of the bluff.
“No, over here,” Penn said, walking halfway across the street and beckoning to her. “Let’s go up on the porch o
f Edelweiss. It’s a lot higher up.”
“Are you sure the house is empty? Somebody bought it, didn’t they?”
“I don’t think the restoration’s finished. Come on.”
She crossed the street and followed him up one of the twin staircases to the broad gallery of the chalet. The cold wind racing up the face of the bluff cut mercilessly through her clothes. Penn went to the rail and looked westward, toward Louisiana. She stood shivering beside him, gazing out over the distant lights, trying to guess where in that dark landscape Brody Royal’s house had stood. From here you could see more than ten miles of the Mississippi River during the day, but all she could think about now was the Jericho Hole, the burned-out ruins of the Concordia Beacon, and the hospital where Henry had died.
“Some view, isn’t it?” Penn said. “Even at night.”
She lowered her gaze a little. Two strings of barges were making their way along the river in a delicate ballet of drifts and pauses. The twin bridges blazed with light, and Highway 84 twinkled like a line of Christmas lights fading into the distance.
“Yes, but it’s the one I’m used to. What am I supposed to be looking for?”
Penn shrugged. “What are you looking for?”
She pulled her coat tighter and tried to keep her face calm. Had he brought her up here to interrogate her? Did he have some idea that she’d seen Tom? “What are you asking me?”
“Take it easy. Nothing weird. We’ve just been in full-on panic mode since Monday morning. After the insanity of last night, I felt like we needed to remember what our lives are really about. Because tomorrow the craziness is going to start all over again.”
He took her hand and squeezed, and after a couple of seconds, she squeezed back. But one phrase replayed in her mind: what our lives are really about. Though she would never voice the thought, it was during tumultuous times like these that Caitlin felt most alive. What they had endured last night might be terrible from an objective point of view, but she had spent much of her life dreaming about working on stories like the Double Eagle murders, and she wasn’t sure she would undo that suffering even if she could. Penn was different. While trying capital cases in Texas, he’d experienced triumphs and losses she couldn’t begin to match, yet he’d walked away from that life and never looked back, except to analyze some of his experiences in the novels he’d written later.