Two thousand dollars, I think, switching off my BlackBerry. On a salary of fifteen dollars per week? My mother was teaching then, but by her own admission she knew nothing about the car, so she wasn’t helping save for it. Some very quick math tells me that, even allowing for some depreciation, it would be like buying a forty-thousand-dollar car on a salary of a thousand dollars per month. That’s a serious stretch, especially given the proposition that Dad somehow saved up that money without Mom feeling the pinch and realizing he was up to something. And I know from my father’s stories that none of my grandparents ever helped them buy a car or home.

With a queasy feeling in my belly, I walk up to the second-floor bathroom and sit on the commode. Where could Dad have gotten the money to buy a two-thousand-dollar car in 1959? I know how John Kaiser would answer that question.

Taking my tape recorder from my pocket, I look at the tiny reels behind its plastic window. After Caitlin interrupted me at her office, I never listened to the final minutes of the hotel conversation. I don’t want to hear my farewell to Stone, but the denouement of the assassination plot still haunts me. It’s got nothing to do with my parents’ Ford Fairlane—nothing overt, anyway—but the implications of that final act weigh upon me like a funeral shroud. When I press PLAY, Dwight Stone’s weary voice echoes through the tiled room like a voice from the grave. I turn the volume wheel to 1, then hold the little speaker to my right ear.

STONE: Carlos’s deportation trial was winding down fast. The lawyers were set to make closing arguments on the morning of November twenty-second. On that day in Washington, Bobby Kennedy was chairing a meeting of district attorneys from around the country. They were strategizing in their war against organized crime. Bobby hoped to come back from lunch and announce the conviction and imminent deportation of Carlos Marcello. Instead, a bailiff walked into the federal court in New Orleans and gave the judge a note. Judge Christenberry then announced that President Kennedy had been shot. Less than an hour later, the jury acquitted Carlos Marcello on all charges and allowed him to stay in America.

ME: Jesus.

STONE: Do you know who was sitting at the defendant’s table with Carlos and his lawyer? Guy Banister. I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

ME: Where was David Ferrie?

KAISER: About to leave for Houston, which was five hours from New Orleans, in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm. Supposedly to go ice skating.

ME: I remember that from the movie.

STONE: He went to a skating rink but didn’t skate at all. He spent the whole time on a pay phone. Calls untraceable. He died in New Orleans four years later, within days of Jim Garrison’s JFK investigation being made public. He may have died of a berry aneurysm, but we can’t rule out murder. In any case, although he told Garrison there was a conspiracy, there’s no question why he would have remained silent about the details while pushing the DA toward the CIA. No one alive knew better than David Ferrie that the price of betraying Marcello was death.

Here I said nothing. What could I say?

STONE: The last tragic act on November twenty-second was that Robert Kennedy canceled the afternoon session of his anti-crime unit, and it never met again. Once JFK’s funeral was over, J. Edgar Hoover never spoke to Bobby again in his capacity as attorney general. Not once. Robert Kennedy might as well have been a janitor at the Justice Department. His anti-mob crusade went nowhere. He’d lost all his fire, and he had no backing from the Bureau.

KAISER: Carlos’s strategy had proved sound. He’d cut the head off the dog, and the tail was dead forever after. At least until Bobby announced for president in 1968.

STONE: Without that second Carcano being found—which meant no link between Dealey Plaza, Eladio Cruz, and Castro—the picture that emerged of Oswald became the lone-nut theory. If that rifle had been found—a direct link to a Cuban agent—I think LBJ would have invaded Cuba within sixty days.

ME: You’re saying we might owe Frank Knox for saving us from nuclear war?

STONE: We just might.

I click off the recorder to avoid the final exchange. Dwight asked me once more to press my mother to reveal any line of communication she might have with Dad. If she denied it, he said, would I consider allowing either him or Kaiser to question her? I gave him a flat no, and he did his best to hide his disappointment. As I walk back to Annie’s room, Kaiser’s final words play in my mind. I had dropped Stone’s feverish hand and started for the door, and Kaiser said, “What about tomorrow? The Double Eagles coming in for questioning. What are you going to do?”

I stopped at the mouth of the little passage that led to the door, turned back, and said in a low voice: “I’m going to pin those bastards to the wall and squeeze their balls until they beg for mercy. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

Kaiser’s face darkened, but before he could say a word, I walked to the door and made my exit. I no longer cared what he had to say, and as for Stone . . . there’s no good way to say farewell to a dying friend.

As I leave the bathroom to return to Annie’s room, my mother calls my name from the landing halfway down the stairs. She stares up at me, her eyes freighted with deep concern. Could she have heard any of that tape? I wonder.

“What is it, Mom? Are you okay?”

“Why did you ask me about our old Fairlane? Is it something to do with Carlos Marcello?”

“I honestly don’t know. The thing that confuses me about Marcello is that you told me Dad treated him in the Orleans Parish Prison back in 1959, but as far as I can find out, Marcello didn’t serve a day in jail while you and Dad lived in New Orleans.”

Her eyes narrow, and she rubs her hand over her mouth, but even before she speaks I know my mother is not trying to deceive me. I’ve seen that look ten thousand times. She’s simply thinking back, trying to be sure of her memory.

“I guess I could have been mistaken,” she says finally. “But I don’t think so. Tom told me some story about treating Marcello at the jail, because when we saw him later on at those restaurants, Tom said that was the only reason ‘Uncle Carlos’ knew who he was.”

“It’s okay, Mom. Don’t keep worrying about it.”

The concern carved into her features tells me how little chance there is that she’ll follow my advice.

“Is Annie all right?” she asks.

“She’s doing good. We’re watching a movie.”

“You spend all the time with her you can. I think she’s more upset than she’s letting on.”

Aren’t we all?

“I will. You try to get some sleep. I’ll wake you up if I have to go out again.”

“Is there any chance of that?”

“I hope not. But if I have to, I’ll wake you. I promise.”

Mom nods, but her eyes are still troubled. “We needed that car, Penn,” she says softly. “But there was nothing improper about it. I’d tell you if there was.”

“I know you would.” If you knew about it. “Don’t sit up thinking about it. I know how you are.”

She sighs heavily, then turns and walks back toward the kitchen.

“Dad?” Annie calls from the top of the stairs.

CHAPTER 42

DESPITE TOM’S EDICT that they not watch any medical show, he and Melba were on their second episode of House, M.D., a program that his granddaughter had always begged him to watch. While some of the social situations were outrageous, Tom had to admit that the medical dilemmas were real enough, and Hugh Laurie’s sarcastic disdain for bureaucratic meddling was something every doctor in the world could relate to.