This idea has an appealing symmetry, but I have yet to be convinced. “Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis. Go.”
“Jimmy and Luther were last seen in Natchez, Mississippi, on March twenty-seventh, 1968. After that, they dropped off the planet. Two months earlier, they’d gotten into a brawl with three Double Eagles at a whites-only drive-in that resulted in a highway chase and a fight on the road. Shots were fired, but no one sought treatment at any area hospital. I suspect your father may have patched them up, but I can’t prove that. The FBI never classified these cases as murders, because they had no bodies. But everyone knew they’d been killed by the Double Eagles. I always assumed Jimmy was the main target, because he was a civil rights activist. He’d worked hard to register black voters, he played a role in the Natchez boycott, he led marches, and he played music at civil rights rallies.”
“Why did people assume the Double Eagles killed them, rather than the Klan? Because of the brawl?”
“Mostly. After the brawl, Jimmy and Luther went into hiding at a place called Freewoods, a kind of outlaw sanctuary. Nobody knew where they were. When the Eagles couldn’t locate those boys after six weeks, they decided to rape Viola.”
“To draw Jimmy out of hiding.”
“Exactly. The rumor started spreading on March twenty-seventh. I wasn’t sure it was more than a rumor until today. My Eagle source confirmed it.”
“So how were you wrong about the Revels case?”
Henry’s basset hound expression returns. “I was wrong about the most critical part—the motive behind it. Jimmy Revels wasn’t the real target.”
“Who was?”
Henry takes a long pull of coffee. “Hold on to your ass, bubba. The target was Robert Kennedy.”
I set down my cup and stare at him in shock. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. Are you familiar with the Ben Chester White case?”
“I think so. Three Klansmen murdered a harmless old black man in the Homochitto National Forest.”
“Do you remember their motive?”
My mind races back through endless case summaries. “The Klansmen asked the old man to help them find a lost dog. But …” The answer hits me like an unexpected blow. “They wanted to lure Martin Luther King to Natchez. To assassinate him.”
Henry’s cheeks have flushed red, and not from the whiskey. “They weren’t the only guys to have that idea.”
“But Robert Kennedy? Why would the Eagles want him dead?”
“The Double Eagles didn’t initiate the operation.”
“Who did? Brody Royal?”
Henry shakes his head. “Someone who hated Bobby Kennedy more than anyone on earth, and that’s saying something. Can you guess? This guy was the last son of a bitch you wanted to be on the bad side of.”
“Enough with the games, Henry. Who was it?”
“Carlos Marcello.”
The Little Sicilian. Mafia boss of New Orleans from the fifties through the seventies. “Ray Presley used to work as a bagman for Marcello while he was a cop in New Orleans. Was Presley Marcello’s connection to the Double Eagles?”
“No.” Henry takes a piece of paper from the table and hands it to me. It seems to be a real estate deed for a Metairie, Louisiana, motel, titled in the name MarYal Corporation. “MarYal?” I ask. “Marcello-Royal?”
Henry smiles. “Their relationship dated back to Royal’s days as a bootlegger in St. Bernard Parish. Marcello was clawing his way to the top of the New Orleans underworld at that time, and he was tight with Royal’s old man. Once Brody struck it rich in oil, he got into quite a few real estate deals with Carlos. Marcello sometimes used the Double Eagles as muscle in Florida deals. And listen to this: three years before he founded the Double Eagles, Frank Knox worked as a combat arms instructor at a South Louisiana training camp for Cuban cadres going into the Bay of Pigs. Carlos was helping to fund that camp. Frank was officially listed on the JMWAVE, Operation Mongoose payroll.”
“I wish I could say this sounds nuts, Henry. But it sounds all too familiar to an ex-prosecutor from Texas. So … Jimmy Revels was bait for Robert Kennedy. Obviously the RFK plan went ass-over-teakettle somehow. What went down?”
“Carlos’s motive for killing Bobby wasn’t just business. Bobby had aggressively pursued the mob since the mid-fifties, at a time when J. Edgar Hoover said there was no organized crime in America. As attorney general for his brother, Bobby went into high gear. Even JFK thought he was a zealot.”
Henry’s story is old news to me. “It’s no secret that the Mafia wanted Bobby Kennedy dead. Carlos Marcello was named by the House Select Committee on Assassinations as one of the men most likely to be involved in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK, along with Santo Trafficante and Sam Giancana. Two witnesses verified that while Carlos wanted Bobby dead, he said, ‘If you cut off a dog’s tail, he’ll keep biting you, but if you cut off its head … no more.’”
“You knew all that?” Henry asks. “I had to look it up.”
“A steady parade of JFK crackpots visited my office in Houston. Finish your story.”
“JFK was killed in November 1963. By sixty-four, Bobby was out on his ass. LBJ hated him. Bobby ran for senator in New York and won, no big deal. But in March of 1968, Eugene McCarthy entered a primary against LBJ and damn near won. There was blood in the water. Everybody knew Johnson was vulnerable because of Vietnam. Four days later, on March sixteenth, Bobby announced he was running for president. Can you imagine how Carlos Marcello reacted when he heard that?”