“John . . . goddamn it. If you really believe that, surely you can do something to protect Dad?”

The FBI agent shrugs helplessly. “My faith buys him nothing with the director. Your only currency is information we can use.”

“Information about the assassination?”

“That’s the gold standard today.”

As I look from him to Stone, I realize the time has come to gamble on the integrity of these two men. I don’t like risking my mother’s privacy or feelings, and I don’t want to implicate my father any further, but his survival is more important than his guilt or innocence.

Taking a seat on the edge of Stone’s bed, I say, “In 1959, my dad worked as a medical extern in the Orleans Parish Prison. At one point Carlos Marcello was a prisoner there, and my dad treated him. Later that year, in some Italian restaurant, Carlos came over to their table to make sure they were happy. He seemed to know Dad. I only just learned about this. My mother told me last night, when I asked her about Marcello. She thought it was funny, just a colorful story. The point is, Dad knew Carlos at least four years before the assassination. So he may very well know things you want to know.”

“Christ,” Kaiser exclaims. “I knew it. I mean, I believed there’d be something like this. I’ll bet the restaurant was Mosca’s.”

I think he’s right, but I don’t confirm it. I feel like a traitor for revealing any of this. Strangely, Dwight Stone’s face shows none of the excitement of the younger agent’s.

“What’s the matter?” Kaiser asks him. “Are you okay?”

Stone raises his hands and plows them through his wispy hair as though trying to force his brain to work better. “No. Because Carlos Marcello wasn’t incarcerated in the parish prison in 1959, or any year that Tom Cage was in medical school. By that time he was untouchable. The NOPD practically worked for him.”

Stone’s statement stuns me. The old agent obviously knows what he’s talking about, but then what does that say about my mother’s memory? Or her intent? Surely she could gain nothing by telling me a lie that tied Dad to a mobster?

Kaiser’s face has fallen. “Something must have got lost in translation in the story. Maybe Mrs. Cage was mistaken. Maybe one of Marcello’s guys was the prisoner, and Carlos was visiting him.”

“Maybe.”

“He still came to their table and treated Dr. Cage like he knew him. We need to talk to her.”

Stone nods silently.

“No way,” I say forcefully. “My mother’s off-limits. You want to know what Dad knows about Marcello, you get him protective custody.”

“What’s the harm in a conversation?” Kaiser asks.

“Forget it! She doesn’t know anything.”

“You don’t know that, Penn,” Stone says sadly. “We haven’t even talked about the deeper New Orleans dimension of the plot. And by that I mean Lee Oswald.”

“Is that what the ten minutes you wanted is about? Oswald?”

“And your father. And New Orleans. That’s the one thing Oliver Stone got right. The whole key to the JFK assassination was hidden in New Orleans.”

“In plain sight, I suppose?”

“No. This part was as secret as anything ever gets.”

They’ve got me, and they know it. Though I couldn’t care less about the Kennedy assassination right now, I can’t leave this room without knowing the full extent of my father’s exposure. Besides, I really have nowhere to go. Caitlin is busy for the next few hours, and while Annie would love to have me home, if I were there, all I would be thinking about is what Stone and Kaiser didn’t tell me. Before I agree to hear any more, however, I need to do one thing.

“Give me five minutes in the hall.”

“Take your time,” says Stone. “I’m afraid I need another trip to the bathroom. These drugs are killing me.”

Kaiser looks worried, but I don’t know whether it’s because he’s afraid I’ll take off, or because he’s dreading cleaning up more vomit from the bathroom floor.

Once in the hall, I move far enough down so that the peephole lens in the door won’t allow Kaiser to monitor my actions. Then I take out my tape recorder and check it. The tape ran out before I left the room. I only hope it recorded Kaiser saying that he believes that Forrest Knox, and not my father, killed Viola Turner.

Opening the machine’s cover, I flip the microcassette, hit RECORD, and then slip the Sony back into my inside coat pocket. It may not make a great recording, but I’ve used it in that pocket before and gotten usable tape. If Stone and Kaiser are about to reveal classified information about the Kennedy case—or make exculpatory statements about my father—I want a record of it. If they do the opposite, I can always toss the tape into the river as I cross the bridge back to Natchez.

As I walk back toward Stone’s door, Kaiser leans out and says, “Dwight’s back in the bed.”

“You thought I’d bolted,” I tell him, walking slowly back toward 406.

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“Mine, too.”

CHAPTER 37

CAITLIN PERCHED ON the edge of the coffee table, Tom’s hands in her own. He had told her a tale of love and hate and rape and murder that she could not begin to imagine living through.

“That’s why I could never speak to Henry,” Tom concluded. “Or the FBI, or anyone. I knew Brody Royal belonged in the gas chamber. The Knoxes, too. But I couldn’t risk trying to put him there—for the same reason Viola couldn’t. She had a child, and I had two. But there was something else. Because Frank Knox had carried out the worst of the killings, and because Viola and I had killed Frank, at times I felt like we’d done our part to balance the scales. Something, anyway. Sacrificing ourselves to try to do more wasn’t going to bring anybody back from the grave.”

Caitlin was almost overwhelmed by emotion. “I understand now,” she said, squeezing his crooked fingers softly.

Tom pulled back his hands and once again ran them through his white hair with frantic energy. “Earlier today, I think I passed out, from the pain meds or exhaustion. While I was out, I dreamed or hallucinated some things. I think I remembered something Ray Presley told me, years after all this happened. About Viola’s rapes.”

“What did Ray Presley know about that?”

“It was Ray who rescued Viola from the Knoxes. The second time, after Frank died. I didn’t know who else to go to.”

“I remember now. Brody told us that you and Ray Presley had saved Viola.”

Tom nodded. “Snake went mad with rage after Frank died. He ordered Viola kidnapped and taken to the machine shop where he was holding her brother and Luther Davis. They ran all kinds of rednecks through that machine shop, giving them a peek at the festivities. God only knows what horrors Viola suffered. She saw her brother shot, I know—wounded, not killed. And that tattoo cut off his arm.”

“Brody Royal was there, too,” Caitlin said. “He told us that. Bragged about it.”

Tom grimaced like a man suppressing bone-deep pain. “She never told me that. I’d have killed that son of a bitch, if she had. Maybe she knew that. . . . Anyway, Ray found the bastards somehow. He faced them down with a gun. He managed to get Viola out, but not her brother or Luther.” Tom shook his head. “Viola never forgave me for that.”

“You said you remembered something Ray said, when you passed out today?”

“Yes. Ray told me there was a kid in there when he went in to get Viola out. A teenager, maybe sixteen, with dark skin, like some Cajuns. Creole blood, you know?”

Caitlin felt a premonitory tingle on her neck. She reached out and took Tom’s hands again, trying to comfort him as he relived this terrible memory.

“And earlier, Walt told me he’d learned from a buddy of his that Forrest Knox is a dark-skinned man. As soon as I thought about the ages, it clicked in my head that the teenager Ray saw in that machine shop was Frank’s son. His second son. His first died in Vietnam in the midsixties.”