Текст книги "The Bone Tree"
Автор книги: Greg Iles
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 40 (всего у книги 58 страниц)
“I love you!” Caitlin shouts.
“Okay . . . okay. I love you, too.”
And then she’s gone.
I look down at my hand, and a shock of revulsion goes through me. I’d thought Kaiser was squeezing my wrist, but the hand wrapped around my arm belongs to Sonny Thornfield.
“I’m glad for you,” the old man says.
Yanking my arm free, I shake my head and speak with open disgust. “You knew who was in that swamp. You killed Whelan, didn’t you? Or you saw it done. I saw it in your face just now.”
Thornfield’s watery eyes go wide. Then he shuts them tight and covers his face with his hands. Kaiser jerks me away from the old man and shoves me toward the door.
“Get out, Penn. You’ve had some luck just now, but don’t push it.”
I plant my feet at the door and stop us. “Luck is for fools, John. Are you going to give Thornfield his deal?”
He looks anxiously back at the old man.
“You’ve got to get him back to the cellblock soon. You already kept him longer than you did Snake.”
“Hold Penn here,” Kaiser say to his agents. Then he walks back and squats beside Thornfield, just as I did earlier. “Why didn’t you put your name by those victims, Sonny? The only way you could know who killed them was to be there yourself. Come on, man. Take the final step.”
The old man’s body is trembling like a scarecrow in a rainstorm.
“Give me something I can believe,” Kaiser pleads. “Then your family can have a new lease on life. New names, a new town, far out of Forrest’s reach.”
Thornfield’s bloodshot eyes slowly focus on Kaiser. “Something you can believe? How about Jimmy Revels’s last words?”
Kaiser glances back at me. “How do you know them?”
Thornfield shakes his head like a sinner facing his maker. “They’ve haunted me for the last forty years . . . that’s how. That boy whispers in my ears when I sleep.”
Kaiser swallows in anticipation. True detectives live for these moments. “What were they, Sonny?”
“‘I forgive you,’” Thornfield says with utter desolation. “Can you believe that?”
When Kaiser bows his head, I know Sonny’s confession has rung the bell of truth within him.
“Jimmy tried to forgive me with them words,” Sonny says, weeping openly now. “But he damned me forever.”
TWO MINUTES AFTER THORNFIELD’S confession, Kaiser and I stand alone in the observation room while two agents flank him at the interrogation table.
“You’ve broken him,” I say. “But you’ve spent too long with him. If you’re going to fly his family in, you’ll have to send him back to the cellblock in the meantime. Send him in with one mission, John. Find out where my father is.”
Kaiser shakes his head. “Not yet, Penn.”
“You’re going to blow it, man. Don’t get greedy. I know what you want, but you can’t spend another hour in there with Sonny asking about the Kennedy assassination. Snake will realize that he’s flipping. You’ve got to question the other Eagles to keep Sonny safe.”
Kaiser shakes his head, his expression adamant. “I can have other agents question the other Eagles. I’ve already separated them from one another. None of them knows what’s going on in here. Snake sure as hell doesn’t know. I’ve got one of my agents questioning him right now to throw him off.”
“But Snake will know. You know he will.”
It seems incomprehensible, but Kaiser is deaf to my appeals.
“You’ll get the Kennedy stuff with all the rest of it. There’s no deadline on that stuff. Why is it more important than half a dozen civil rights murders? Why is it more important than my father?”
Kaiser clenches his jaw, and for a moment I believe I’ve shamed him back to sanity. But then he grabs my shoulders, his eyes blazing with passion.
“Why do you think, Penn? Dwight Stone is going under the knife in ninety minutes. Once they put him under, he may never wake up again. If I can give him the peace of the answer he’s sought for twenty years, I’m going to give it to him.”
“At the cost of all the other cases? Of Sonny’s life?”
“Sonny’s not going to die.”
“My father might. He’s stuck somewhere without his medicine, if he’s alive at all. He doesn’t have nitro or insulin . . .”
“Fifteen minutes, Penn. That’s all I need. In fifteen minutes Sonny can confirm or deny every critical detail of the assassination. I just want to know whether Marcello was behind it, and whether Frank Knox fired the kill shot.”
“That’s a sixty-second conversation.”
“Christ, can’t you see? After this session, the director will authorize total protection for Sonny’s family, and I’ll bet any amount of money he’ll do the same for your father.”
“Like that matters now?”
Kaiser clutches my arm. “Don’t you want to know whether your father was complicit or not in writing that medical excuse for Frank Knox? Sonny might know that.”
I pull my arm free. “I already know. Whatever’s at the root of my dad’s behavior, it isn’t evil. I know that, even if you don’t.”
“Then at least let’s do this for Dwight. After that, we’ll see if Sonny can wheedle your dad’s location out of Snake.”
At this point, I surrender. Nothing is going to stop him anyway.
CHAPTER 62
WILMA DEEN TURNED the stolen pickup right on Auburn Avenue, cruised for a quarter mile, then turned left on Duncan Avenue. This took her once more past the house that Penn Cage had pulled out of this morning, and where Forrest Knox had told her Tom Cage might be hiding. For the second time she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in blue jeans walking in the front yard of the two-story house. Wilma was sure he was a guard, and she’d wanted to know if there was another in back. After she crossed over a rise in the street, she pulled over to a tall stand of hedges and stopped.
A blond, wiry twenty-five-year-old roustabout named Alois Engel stepped out of the hedge and climbed into the backseat of the truck. All Wilma knew about Alois was that Snake Knox had fathered him by some honky-tonk slut, and he worked for the Double Eagles in some capacity. She thought she remembered Sonny Thornfield once telling her the kid was into white supremacy, but he didn’t look like much to her. The most distinctive thing about Engel was the anger that bled steadily from his eyes. He looked hungry for retribution, but Wilma had no idea for what. Nor did she care. She was here for one reason: to make sure her brother had not died for nothing.
“Any guards in back?” Wilma asked, accelerating down State Street, which was lined with expensive cars.
“One,” said Alois. “An old nigger. I think he’s a city cop, or used to be. The guy out front looks like an old hippie or something, doesn’t he?”
“He looks pretty tough to me. I think I’ve seen him doing dirt work across the river.”
“Fuck him. We just need a diversion to make sure we can get the bombs to the door.”
“We don’t have a go order yet, do we?”
“We will. I heard it in the colonel’s voice.”
Alois jerked a dirty towel off the box sitting beside him on the backseat. In the box were three sealed wine bottles filled to the neck with a mixture of gasoline, kerosene, tar, and potassium chlorate. Taped to the side of each bottle were two windproof matches.
“Who did you say designed these things?” Wilma asked. “The Russians?”
“The Finns,” Alois said irritably. The kid fancied himself a connoisseur of World War II weaponology. “They used them in the Winter War.”
“Against the Russians?”
“Against the Germans.”
“Okay, okay, BF deal. Somehow they don’t look like real Molotov cocktails without the rag hanging out.”
Alois grunted. “Do you want to look cool while you set yourself on fire, or really hurt the people who wasted your brother?”
Wilma said nothing. This kid had no idea what was really going on. To him Glenn Morehouse had been just a fat old guy who’d lived in her house, not an unstoppable force that could be pointed at a target like a tank.
“How well do you know Forrest?” Wilma asked.
“Well enough to know that when he asks you to do him a favor, you do it. He’s about the baddest son of a bitch I ever met, and I’ve met some.”
Wilma laughed. “I just bet you have, blondie.”
The truck jounced over a speed bump, and the bottles clanked ominously in the box.
“Stuff that fucking towel in there!” Wilma snapped. “Wedge it between the bottles. I don’t plan on burning up in this truck.”
Alois obeyed with surprising delicacy. Then he reached down to the floor and brought up a heavy Sig Sauer pistol.
“You know, if that guy doesn’t go in for a break pretty soon, I’m just going to walk up and blow his shit away.”
“Forrest didn’t say anything about shooting guards,” Wilma said.
“Well, he doesn’t want us waiting on the street all day.”
“Just hold your water. He’ll have to take a leak soon. You got the masks?”
Alois lifted a Walmart bag from the floor. “You get the Harry Potter. I’m taking Spider-Man.”
She shook her head in derision. Kids.
ONLY ONCE IN HER life had Peggy Cage had her faith in her husband tested as it was being tested now, and she wasn’t sure she was up to the challenge. Still, she put the best possible face on things, as she’d been taught to do from birth. Despite her protestations to Penn, having Kirk Boisseau close by had improved her sense of security. Like a lot of Natchez men of his generation, Kirk had been taught English by Peggy at St. Stephen’s Prep back in the early 1970s. He’d grown up to be quite an imposing adult, and today she was glad of it. Tom’s elderly patient James Ervin was guarding the back of the house—unless it was his brother Elvin; Peggy could scarcely tell the difference between the retired cops. With both James and Kirk on guard, it seemed that physical security was not a problem, and yet Peggy felt deeply unsettled.
One reason was Annie. As the mayor’s daughter, Annie Cage had become even more adept than her grandmother at putting on a public face, but the girl couldn’t fool Peggy. Though she’d managed an animated discussion with Kirk, Annie was clearly worried about her father and Caitlin—and terrified for her grandfather. Annie had also suggested to Peggy that Penn and Caitlin were having “relationship trouble.” Though she had only her intuition and Caitlin’s continued absence to support this assertion, Peggy suspected she was right.
Early that morning, Annie had sat down in the den and made a great show of reading Caitlin’s most recent articles aloud from the newspaper Kirk had brought with him. Peggy tried to look interested, but the only stories that held her interest anymore were those dealing with the murder for which Tom had been indicted, and there had been precious little information printed on that case after the initial story.
“Gram!” Annie cried, getting to her feet with her cell phone held aloft. “Caitlin just texted me!”
Peggy clenched her abdomen in preparation for whatever might follow. “What does she say, honey?”
Annie read from the screen: “Hey punk, sorry I haven’t been around much. You can see from the paper I’m working around the clock. Today I’m doing Lara Croft meets Nancy Drew. I may be on CNN tonight, so watch the news. With any luck, I’ll be there to watch it with you. Love, Cait.”
“Who’s Lara Croft?” Peggy asked, relieved and thankful that Caitlin had thought to reassure Annie.
“Just a character from a video game,” Annie said, her face glowing. “I wish Dad and Papa would text us like Caitlin does.”
“Me, too. I’ll be right back, sweetie,” Peggy said, getting to her feet. “I’m going to check on Mr. Kirk.”
“He’s just plain Kirk,” Annie corrected her. “He told me not to call him mister. He was four years ahead of Dad in school, but they played football together.”
Peggy smiled and went into the den, where Kirk Boisseau was leaning against the wall and watching an old western in black and white.
“Are you all right, Kirk? Can I fix you a sandwich or something?”
“No, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “I’m good.”
Unable to think of any small talk—which was rare for her—Peggy looked at the television. On-screen she saw a black-clad cowboy brandishing a bullwhip, and the sight cut her to the quick. The actor was Lash LaRue, a Saturday matinee cowboy from the 1940s and ’50s. Peggy recognized him because she and Tom had once seen an impromptu performance by LaRue at New Orleans’ Dew Drop Inn, a Negro nightclub that Tom sometimes visited to hear certain black musicians. Tom and Peggy were allowed admittance because Tom had treated several employees while working as an extern. As a boy, Tom had worked as a theater usher during the 1940s, and he’d been ecstatic to find a star from his childhood onstage. He watched spellbound as the black-suited LaRue played his guitar with the Negro musicians, then cut paper from the mouth of a waitress with a bullwhip someone had produced from the back of the bar.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Cage?” Kirk asked.
“What?” Peggy asked, wiping a tear from her eyes. “Oh, yes. This has just been hard. I’m not used to doing without Tom.”
Boisseau smiled. “I’m sure it’s all going to work out.”
“Are you?” she said quietly. “Because I’m not.”
“Penn will get it worked out.”
Peggy somehow summoned a smile. “Do you feel like we’re pretty safe here?”
Kirk smiled back, and Peggy thought his eyes looked too gentle to belong to a real soldier. But when he spoke, his voice held the hard edge of steel.
“I won’t let anything happen to you or that girl. You can count on that. I gave Penn my word. You just try to relax.”
“Thank you. We’ll try.”
“I saw that pistol in your purse,” Kirk said. “You know how to use it?”
Peggy nodded. “Tom taught me. A long time ago. But I hope it won’t come to that.”
“What are you guys doing?” Annie asked from the door. “What won’t come to what?”
“Me eating healthy food!” Kirk said easily. “Your grandmother was trying to sell me on a salad. I want a big old skillet-fried grilled cheese sandwich.”
Annie looked suspicious for a second, but then she started laughing.
“I’m going to make another pass around the house,” said Kirk.
“And I’m going to make you that sandwich,” Peggy said. “Come help me, Annie.”
Annie looked longingly after Kirk as he went out the front door.
ALOIS ENGEL BRAKED AT the stop sign at the corner of Auburn and Duncan Avenues and depressed the electric cigarette lighter. The hippie who’d been guarding the front of the house was still nowhere to be seen. There were no cars behind Alois, and none on the intersecting streets. Duncan Avenue felt like it had been transplanted from the Garden District in New Orleans. Facing a golf course dotted with black and white men in their seventies, this sleepy lane was due for some excitement.
The cigarette light popped out, ready to go.
Alois removed the little metal plunger with its red-hot eye, then picked up the Molotov cocktail and carefully ignited the windproof match taped to the bottle’s side. Then he wedged the bottle between the passenger seat and the console of his pickup. The match burned with a snakelike hiss.
Alois scanned 360 degrees around the intersection. Still no traffic. Picking up his cell phone, he texted a question mark to Wilma Deen, whom he’d dropped off on Ratcliff Place, near a home whose yard abutted the yard of the mayor’s safe house. Ten seconds later, his phone pinged.
Wilma’s text read: Still in position. Ready 2 rock.
Alois picked up the Spider-Man mask from the passenger seat and pulled it over his head. Then he let his foot off the brake and rolled forward.
The mayor’s house was fifty yards away.
Alois had rolled only ten yards when the blond hippie walked out the front door and surveyed the street.
“Goddamn it,” Alois muttered. “I’m gonna blow your shit away.”
But he didn’t. He snapped off the head of the sizzling match and grabbed for his cell phone.
CHAPTER 63
I’M ABOUT TO observe the most surreal interrogation of my legal career, and I’m not even sure it’s legal. John Kaiser hasn’t set up this session to gather evidence for a court case. He wants to uncover a long-buried truth, one he believes to be bigger than any single case, and more important than the fate of my father. For this reason, Kaiser has allowed things I’ve only rarely seen in a sheriff’s office, and never during an FBI interrogation.
First, the video camcorder is unplugged. This occasionally happens, and for a variety of reasons (but not usually to help the suspect). Second, the bedsheet is still hanging over the observation window (a sensible precaution). But strangest of all, Kaiser has submitted to a physical search by his prisoner, so the Double Eagle can be sure the FBI agent isn’t wearing any recording device. I had to endure the same treatment in order to be present, and since I hold out some hope that Sonny might recant what he wrote about my father on the puzzle I created, I consented.
Sonny Thornfield has relaxed considerably since I was last in this room. The reason is simple. Kaiser’s agents have already tracked down his grandson, the one preparing to depart for his second tour in Iraq. Kaiser actually brought in an encrypted FBI phone and allowed Sonny to speak to the kid on it. By then I knew the backstory: the boy saw his best friend maimed during his first tour, and he has no interest in sharing the same fate. Kaiser promised Sonny that if his grandson agreed to go into federal witness protection, he would not have to return to Iraq. I have no idea whether this is true, but Kaiser’s confidently delivered answer—combined with the fact that he’s already arranged to fly three of Sonny’s family members here on FBI aircraft—told me that the FBI agent is pulling out all the stops for this case.
So . . . here we sit, watching a former Ku Klux Klansman and Double Eagle prepare to reveal a secret he’s carried for forty years, on pain of death, in order to save himself and his family. Among my regrets—and they are many—is that Henry Sexton did not live to sit beside me in this moment. Whatever Sonny Thornfield knows, it might mean more to Henry than even to Dwight Stone.
“I want to make one thing clear,” Sonny begins, licking his lips and glancing over at the bedsheet to make sure it’s still taped over the one-way mirror. “I’m not going to talk about any other case but the big one. Dallas. And when I say the name Frank, I’m referring to Frank Sinatra. Nobody else, got it? Frank Sinatra.”
“Got it,” says Kaiser. “Let’s hear what Old Blue Eyes did in Dallas in 1963. I always heard that he and JFK were friends.”
Sonny shrugs and turns up his palms. “What do you want to know? I can’t just start talking. Ask me something.”
“All right. To your knowledge, who was behind the assassination? I mean the man at the very top.”
Thornfield rubs his stubbled chin as though pondering what answering that question would have cost him forty years ago.
“Come on,” Kaiser urges. “Nobody can hear you.”
“It was Carlos Marcello’s show,” Sonny says finally. “All the way.”
When Kaiser turns to me, I see something like rapture in his eyes.
“Who fired the kill shot? The one that blew Kennedy’s brains out?”
“You already know. Frank Sinatra.”
Kaiser doesn’t react at first. But I can see from his frozen stillness how badly he wishes this were a legitimate interrogation. “How do you know that?” he asks.
“He told me.”
“Who did?”
“Frank.”
“When?”
Sonny shakes his head.
“What year, then?”
“Nineteen sixty-seven, I believe. About a year after he . . . had a family tragedy.”
Kaiser looks back at me. We’re both thinking the same thing. A year after Frank Knox lost his son in Vietnam.
“Was he sober when he told you this?” Kaiser asks.
“I don’t think Frank was ever sober after 1966.”
“Fair enough. How did Marcello approach Frank about that job? Or did someone else do that?”
“I think Marcello did it. We’d done a few jobs for him over the years, mostly in Florida. But Carlos knew Frank from the anti-Castro training camp in Morgan City. That’s how Frank knew, ah . . . the other guy, too.”
“What other guy?”
“The other guy who was in on it.”
“Oswald?” Kaiser asks, but I know this is a feint to test Thornfield.
“No. Frank didn’t know that nut job.”
“Who, then?”
Sonny practically whispers the name. “David Ferrie.”
Kaiser closes his eyes and exhales slowly. I have to admit, I feel a profound sense of satisfaction at hearing Dwight Stone’s theory confirmed, and since Stone can’t be here himself, I let myself enjoy it.
“What was Ferrie’s part in the operation?” Kaiser asks.
Sonny shrugs as though the answer is self-evident. “He’s the one who knew Oswald.”
“How?”
“They were both from New Orleans. Ferrie had known him since Oswald was a kid.”
“Known him how?”
“Frank told me they were queer. I don’t know if that’s true. But that’s what he said.”
Kaiser cuts his eyes at me again. So far, he and Dwight are batting a thousand.
“Did Frank know why Carlos wanted Kennedy dead?”
“He told me JFK and his brother were going to run the Little Man out of the country. Carlos had tried everything he knew to stop it, but nothing worked. This was the last chance.”
“Okay.” Kaiser glances at his watch. “Let’s talk about the actual hit. Dealey Plaza.”
Sonny scratches his nose and looks at the bedsheet once more. “You guys ain’t got some kind of X-ray camera or anything in there, have you?”
“No cameras,” Kaiser says, treating it as a serious question.
“Are you sure Snake don’t know what’s going on in here?”
“Positive. We’re questioning Snake in another interrogation room right now.”
Sonny clearly gets a fair dose of relief from this knowledge. “What else you want to know, then?”
“Tell us about the rifles, Sonny. The ones from Brody’s house. Penn says one was displayed in Brody’s basement as the assassination rifle, but that was a Remington Model 700. So why did we find an exact copy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle upstairs in Brody’s study?”
Sonny smiles strangely. “You can thank Frank for that. See, Carlos and Ferrie wanted him to use a rifle like Oswald’s for the hit, and then leave it at the scene. They wanted to sell a big Commie conspiracy and blame Castro.”
“To deflect suspicion from Carlos?”
“Sure, and to get Carlos’s casino action back. They figured if they could get the public mad enough at Castro, LBJ would invade.”
Kaiser happily clucks his tongue. “So, why didn’t Frank use the Carcano to kill Kennedy?”
“Because it was a piece of junk! The aftermarket Jap scope that came on it wasn’t good enough for a BB gun. Frank told ’em he’d use his own rifle for the hit but leave the Italian one at the scene. But Ferrie didn’t like that idea. He’d given Frank bullets from the same box as Oswald’s, and he said Frank had to use those. The bullets had to match, he said.”
I can only see Kaiser in profile, but an anticipatory smile has appeared on his face. “So what did Frank do?”
“He told Ferrie no problem. Frank was a genius with guns, see? Any kind of weapon, really. But guns were his specialty. He told Ferrie he could use his Remington and the bullets would still match—if the cops found any fragments at all.”
Kaiser’s face is practically glowing. “How could Frank manage that?”
Sonny chuckles with obvious admiration for his old sergeant. “First, he took those 6.58 Carcano bullets and removed them from the cartridges. Then he scraped the lead out of the copper jackets, so he’d have a lead-antimony mix that would match Oswald’s bullets to a T, or at least as well as could be done.”
“And then?”
“Then he used that lead to cast some .243 bullets to fit the cartridges for his Remington. He drilled out the cores so they’d blow apart on impact, and then he tested them to be sure.”
“How did he do that?”
“On some pigs.”
“Pigs. Did the bullets work as he wanted?”
“Hell, yeah. I told you he was a genius. The damn things exploded when they hit the skulls, and they hardly left a trace.”
Kaiser quietly considers all he has heard. “If Frank went to all that trouble, then why didn’t he leave the Carcano behind him after he made the shot, like he’d promised?”
Sonny settles back in his chair and folds his arms. “A couple of reasons. He said totin’ it around was too risky. He already had to carry the Remington—broke down, of course. Carrying two guns doubled the risk. But that wasn’t all. He was worried there might be forensic tests he didn’t know nothin’ about. Space-age stuff, you know? He’d handled that rifle himself, and he didn’t want it winding up in the Sandia National Lab or someplace like that.”
“Smart thinking.”
“Frank didn’t miss much, boy.” Sonny looks anxiously around the interrogation room. “Is that enough? Can I go back to the brig now?”
Kaiser shakes his head. “Not yet. You haven’t told us where he shot from. Was it the grassy knoll?”
Kaiser is testing Sonny again. There’s no way the kill shot could have been fired from the grassy knoll. In my view, this testing is a waste of time. Thornfield is obviously telling the truth as he knows it. The real question is, Was Frank Knox telling Sonny the truth when he told him all this?
“Sonny?” Kaiser prompts. “The grassy knoll?”
“Hell, no. That’s Hollywood bullshit. Frank shot from the building next to the Book Depository. Catty-corner to it. The Dal-Tex Building.”
“How do you remember the name?”
“I’ve seen some TV shows about it. Documentaries. Hell, I watch the History Channel. It’s pretty funny, the stuff they come up with, when you know what really happened. Everybody overthinks it, you know? Frank always took the shortest path between two points. I can’t tell you how many times he said to me, ‘Simplest is best, Son.’ From back when we were kids, all the way to the Pacific . . . he lived by the same rules.”
“How did he get into the Dal-Tex Building?”
Sonny chuckles again. “He went in as an elevator repairman, with a toolbox.”
Kaiser thinks this over. “And how did he get out? The Dal-Tex Building was one of the first to be shut down after the shots were fired.”
“As a cop,” Sonny says, amazement in his voice. “Isn’t that great? What could be simpler? He carried a Dallas police uniform in with him in the toolbox, wrapped around his rifle parts. Kept the gun from rattling. He put on the cop’s uniform as soon as he got to the office he shot from. After he fired, he just walked out carrying the rifle. Everybody assumed he was part of the security detail, hunting for the shooter. Even the Secret Service. Always hide in plain sight, right?”
“Did he carry the toolbox out?”
“Nope. He left it in the elevator machine room. Empty.” Sonny looks at me, then back to Kaiser. “Can’t I go? This is taking too long. And the mayor wants to know about his daddy, don’t he?”
“Yes, he does,” I say in a taut voice, my eyes on Kaiser.
“Just a little longer,” says Kaiser, not looking at me. “Tell me about Oswald, Sonny. Was Frank meant to fire the kill shot all along, or was he a backup for Oswald?”
“Backup. See, Ferrie thought Oswald could make the shot. Shows you how much he knew about rifles. Frank said the way that scope was attached, Oswald was lucky he hit anything. With only two mounting screws, you couldn’t even zero the damned thing.”
Yet another perfect correlation with Stone’s theory. “Did they mean for Oswald to be captured?”
“Found dead, more like.” A new light shines from Sonny’s eyes. “That was where the operation went wrong. Frank was supposed to kill the idiot right after the hit. Oswald was told to meet him in that stockyard parking lot behind the Book Depository, but on the day, he didn’t show up.”
“Why not?”
“Frank figured that when Oswald saw the president’s head explode in his scope, he knew he hadn’t made that shot. And that scared the shit out of him. That’s why he panicked and ran home to get the pistol he hadn’t even brought with him to Dealey Plaza. The one he used to shoot that cop later. Tippit.”
“If Oswald didn’t know anything about Frank, who did he think he was going to meet in the stockyard parking lot?”
“Ferrie, of course. That fool thought Ferrie was going to fly him to Havana! What a joke, right? But Frank told me Ferrie had actually run guns to Cuba, back before Castro allied with the Russians. And Oswald knew that. So maybe he wasn’t so dumb to believe it.”
“All right,” I say in the most conclusive tone I can. “You’ve got what you wanted. Time to get on with the next act of this show.”
Kaiser looks at his watch. “I think we’re okay, Penn.”
I try to mask my growing anger. “Sonny’s not. Wanting doesn’t make it so, John. Time’s passing. Send him back to the cellblock with Snake and give Dwight his victory call. That’s the gift you wanted to give him, and he deserves it. Then start interrogating all the other Eagles. Spend just as much time with each of them as you did with Sonny. And maybe—just maybe—you’ll get away with this.”
At this moment Kaiser regrets bringing me into this room. But at some level, he brought me in here to keep him from losing sight of his priorities.
“Then it’s time for the big question,” Kaiser says. “Sonny, you’ve given me a lot of details today, and I appreciate it. But do you have any way of proving anything you’ve told me? Anything besides what you say Frank told you?”
Sonny looks perplexed. “Like what? Like something physical?”
“Exactly.”
“You know . . . I think there was something he kept. Frank never told me about it, but Snake said something once.”
“What are you talking about? Something besides the rifles?”
“Yeah. A letter, maybe. Some kind of insurance.”
“A letter written by Frank?”
“No, no. Somebody else. Ferrie, maybe. Or even Oswald. It sure wouldn’t be Carlos. Carlos was like Frank. He never wrote nothing down. He was famous for that.”
“How would Frank get a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald?”
“I don’t know. But he followed the kid around for a while. A day or two, maybe. With Frank, you never know. I wouldn’t be surprised if he screwed Oswald’s Russkie wife while he was in town. That’s how Frank rolled.”
Kaiser isn’t laughing. “You’re joking, right? Because that’s just absurd.”
“Hey, I was just thinking out loud.” Sonny shrugs. “You had to know Frank. He was something else.”
Kaiser finally turns to me, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t you have a question for Sonny?”
I close my eyes and ask myself if I want to give Sonny another opportunity to implicate my father. But in the end, I guess I have no choice. Standing and moving into Thornfield’s sight line, I say, “Did my father have any connection at all to this plot?”
