Tom wanted to ask whether there might be any way to extend the protection of Viola, but he didn’t want to start Ray thinking about her. Because that would give the crooked cop leverage he might try to exploit in the future.
A few miles passed in silence. All Tom wanted now was to get home as soon as possible, and home still lay nearly three hours up the Mississippi River.
“It’s fuckin’ hard to believe,” Ray said suddenly, “you know?”
“What’s that?”
“That lump of cauliflower we saw back there was about the most powerful boss who ever lived. To think he changed history like he did . . . changed the whole world. And now he ain’t no better than some gomer in a nursing home. Needs to be diapered like a damn baby.”
“What are you talking about?” Tom asked.
“What do you mean?” Ray asked.
“You said he ‘changed the whole world.’”
“What did you think I meant?” Ray asked, cutting his eyes at Tom. “I’m talking about Kennedy.”
“Kennedy?” Tom asked. “What Kennedy?”
“John Kennedy. Who else?”
“What about him?”
Presley drew back his head as if Tom were trying to play him. “Come on,” he said. “I know you know.”
“Know what?”
“What the Little Man did back in ’63.”
“I don’t know. Spit it out, Ray. What are you saying?”
“Shit. Don’t give me that. I know you know.”
“I don’t know anything. Why don’t you spell it out for me?”
Presley snorted and drove another mile. Then he said, “Carlos killed Kennedy, Doc. You know that. Why’re you making me say it?”
“Are you serious?”
“Am I fuckin’ serious? Sure he did.”
“Carlos himself?” Tom asked incredulously.
“Himself? That’s like asking if Patton kicked the Germans’ asses himself. ’Course not. Carlos didn’t kill anybody himself, not after about 1955, anyway. Unless he finished somebody off for the fun of it out at Churchill Farms.”
“Then who did it?”
“Shit,” Ray said, laughing uncomfortably. “I know you’re fucking with me now.”
“The hell I am!” Tom said angrily.
“Okay, then, okay. Play your games. I’ve said too much anyway. The Little Man ain’t dead yet, and he’s got damned big ears. Always has.”
“Ray. Are you telling me you know who assassinated President Kennedy?”
Presley turned to him then, peering deep into Tom’s eyes. “You know, too,” he said. “Unless you’re a lot dumber than I think you are.”
Tom shook his head. “How could I know?”
But Presley just looked straight down the highway. “If you want to know the answer to that, think about who you knew who had the balls, the brains, and the talent to kill a protected president. That’s gotta be a pretty short list.”
Tom stared back at Ray for a long time, but he asked no more questions, nor did he think too hard along the lines Ray had suggested. Some deep part of him had already realized he might not want to know the answer.
Two nights later, despite his best efforts to distract himself, Tom had come awake in the middle of the night with an image of Frank Knox in his head. Of all the men he knew—or had known—Frank was the one with “the balls, the brains, and the talent” required to kill a president. A few minutes later, Tom’s heart nearly seized in his chest when he remembered Knox asking a favor of him the first year that he’d joined Dr. Lucas’s Natchez practice. There’d been a story about a woman, a mistress threatening to ruin his marriage. Frank had told Tom he desperately needed to be excused from work for several days to calm the woman down. Tom might have balked at such a request from just any patient, but on more than one occasion Frank had mentioned training Cuban troops at a Marcello-owned camp in South Louisiana. Frank’s connection to the Little Man had been enough to tip the scale. Tom wasn’t sure about the exact dates, but an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that the time frame would match John Kennedy’s rendezvous with death in Dallas.
While Peggy snored, he’d put on his clothes, retrieved a flashlight, and climbed up to his attic to go through his old Triton Battery records. A steady current of fear ran through him as he breathed suffocating dust and flipped through yellowed files, but the thing he feared most he did not find. Frank Knox’s health file was not among his records.