Later that night, Tom decided he would heed Ray’s advice. Keeping such knowledge secret went against every principle he believed in, but the logic seemed inescapable: If he contacted the authorities about what he “knew,” what would really happen? First, he had no objective proof of anything. There was the medical excuse, of course, but all that proved was that Frank Knox had lied about why he’d skipped work during the week in question. That didn’t place him in Dealey Plaza, or even in Texas. Second, Ray Presley would never corroborate anything Tom said, and he might well kill Tom for dragging him into the mess. Third, the Corsican assassin remained an enigma who might or might not be out there somewhere, ready to silence anyone who talked. If Ray was scared of the guy, that was sufficient for Tom. Finally, who would see Tom’s tale as anything more than just another crackpot conspiracy theory?
Ethically, his dilemma wasn’t as thorny as some. Unlike the Albert Norris case, the perpetrators in the JFK assassination were as dead as the victim. No one had been wrongfully imprisoned. Nothing would bring the victim back. At the empirical level, Tom would be risking his family’s lives in order to set the historical record straight—and with only the slimmest circumstantial evidence to back up his accusations. Tom was far more concerned that with Carlos Marcello physically gone, Snake Knox and his old Double Eagle comrades would take the opportunity to silence the one person who could send them to death row for murdering her brother and Luther Davis.
But that did not happen.
Tom’s original deal with Marcello had stipulated that so long as Viola did not return to Natchez, she would be left alone, and it seemed that the Double Eagles were content to abide by that arrangement. Maybe they figured that since Viola had held her silence for that long, she never intended to speak. And until a few weeks ago, history had proved them right. But at some point during her journey toward death, Viola had decided to return home. In so doing, she had attracted the attention of Henry Sexton. And through Henry, she’d drawn the notice of the other local men who knew that Viola possessed information that could alter not only the perception of the past, but the reality of their futures. The Double Eagles.
Through the chemical fog that held him in his suspended state, Tom heard a distant voice calling his name. Tom? Tom . . . ?
“Tom,” said a voice in the dark. “Can you hear me?”
Someone shook him. Then Walt’s face appeared above his, eyes bleary in the weathered brown skin. “You were moaning something. Then you stopped breathing.”
“Did I?”
“Were you having a nightmare?”
“I don’t . . . Must be the drugs.”
Walt nodded, then took Tom’s pulse. “Not good,” he said. “But you can dance to it. Can I get you anything?”
Tom shook his head in exasperation. “I need the goddamn urinal again.”
“You and me both. Let me get enough light on to find it.”
While Walt searched the floor beside the bed, Tom lay back and remembered Viola in the year he’d first gone to work at the clinic. But then, flowing through and over those memories, came images of Peggy during those summers in New Orleans when they’d been as poor as Viola and her husband would be later, when a meal in Mosca’s Italian Restaurant and a tableside visit from Carlos Marcello had made Tom feel like he was more than a penniless student, and when the smooth rumble of the Ford Fairlane carrying his wife and him back to their apartment with good wine and food in their stomachs was as solid and comforting as anything he’d ever known. For it was only later—much later—that Tom realized the three-hundred-dollar Fairlane was the costliest possession he would ever own.
CHAPTER 80
JORDAN GLASS WALKED slowly along the Malecón in Havana, watching young couples stroll down the promenade while old men fished the surf along the seawall. The night air was warm, and Jordan could hardly believe she’d been in the chilly swamp of Lusahatcha County only hours ago. Her Nikon hung around her neck, but she hadn’t taken a single photo since the afternoon, when she’d shot Raúl Castro in his office in El Capitolio. The president had been too ill to be photographed, and Jordan had done a poor job of hiding her disappointment at being passed to his younger brother. Before the session was done, however, she’d had a brief encounter that from her husband’s point of view had made the trip worthwhile.
Jordan couldn’t agree, since she felt certain that had she not left Caitlin alone in Athens Point, the young newspaper publisher would still be alive. Even if Caitlin had insisted on the two of them pushing on to find the Bone Tree using Rambin’s map, with two guns they might have driven off the young man who had killed her. In fact, Jordan thought, if she’d stayed in Athens Point, Harold Wallis might never have summoned the courage to approach them. But maybe she was flattering herself. She’d survived many combat zones, but even a seasoned veteran could be killed by making assumptions about people. And in the end, that was what had killed Caitlin.
She’d been so hungry for that story—so ready to go to the end of the trail Henry Sexton had blazed, and then farther, making the story her own—that her normal defense mechanisms had been blunted. Where normally she might have felt suspicion of a stranger approaching her with information, the fact that the young man was African-American had lulled her into thinking he was naturally on her side. Caitlin probably assumed he’d heard of her quest through Carl Sims’s minister father, who’d put out the word for information on the Bone Tree the previous night. Caitlin would have known she stuck out like a TV actress in the dingy café at the Athens Point crossroads, so it was only natural that someone might recognize and approach her—
A burst of salsa music from the street startled Jordan, and she turned in time to see a gleaming relic of Detroit metal roar past, complete with tail fins and fisheye headlights. The laughing girl in the passenger seat was stunningly beautiful, as most young women down here seemed to be, and watching the antique car race past a dozen others like it gave Jordan the feeling of being lost on a film set. This feeling was magnified by the depressing fact that most of the occupants of the classic cars were tourists who’d paid locals to drive them around Old Havana. More disturbing still, she’d noticed that except for a couple of large ships visible in the harbor, the sea was empty of boats. The government knew that its citizens would not hesitate to strike out for Miami in even the flimsiest craft that offered the promise of a new life.