“I thought we didn’t have time to sleep,” I say.
“We don’t. This is the next best thing.”
She rolls on top of me and peers down into my eyes. “It’s been a long time,” she says, looking surprisingly awake. “Are you really that tired?”
In truth, I am. But she’s right. It has been a long time. As she straddles me and begins unbuttoning my shirt, it strikes me that the only respite I might find from my chaotic thoughts would be inside her. Caitlin clearly feels the same, and within a minute she’s put me there. As she labors purposefully above me, the world contracts to the boundaries of her eyes, and sensation blots out thought as surely as intravenous morphine.
HALF AN HOUR HAS passed since Caitlin climaxed and lay across my chest, her face buried in my neck. She’s sleeping as soundly as a child who’s stayed up past her bedtime. I haven’t had the heart to wake her, nor have I fallen asleep myself. My thoughts have been occupied with finding a truly safe haven for Annie and my mother.
In the past, I’ve moved them as far as Texas to get them out of danger, but this time I want them close enough that I can stay with them at night. No hotel would be safe, or any local B&B, though I know of several secluded ones. With Sheriff Billy Byrd and Forrest Knox on the hunt, any public or even semi-public accommodation will ultimately be traced. I’ve just about decided to leave them where they are when I remember that Sam Abrams, one of my best childhood friends, recently moved his parents to a retirement community in south Florida—Sea Haven Towers, or something like that. Sam was raised in Natchez’s once-thriving Jewish community, and he and I found we had a lot in common in high school. Like me, he’s one of the few successful members of our class who returned to Natchez as an adult. Sam has helped me during difficult times before, and most important, he makes the cut for what I call my “foxhole friends,” guys I’d trust with my life no matter what the circumstance. If I died tomorrow with no money to my name, Sam Abrams would make sure Annie made it through college with everything she needed. Since I’m now at war with Forrest Knox, that’s the kind of friend I need.
I’m about to prod Caitlin awake when I notice a Treo sticking out from behind the base of the lamp on her bedside table. Since Brody Royal destroyed her Treo last night, along with my BlackBerry, she must have gotten another. Moving smoothly, I reach over and slide the phone off the table, then enter her old passcode.
The phone rejects the code.
For a moment I lie staring at the screen, wondering why she would change her passcode. But since her previous phone was in the possession of more than one person before Royal destroyed it, perhaps she simply took the precaution of changing it when she got a new one.
Replacing the Treo on the bedside table, I get up and walk into the kitchen, where we keep a small laptop for recipes and shopping lists. The sweat on my skin evaporates quickly, chilling me enough to make me shiver. Booting up the computer, I check my e-mail, something I haven’t done nearly enough since losing my BlackBerry. My box contains more than thirty messages, but my quick scan stops instantly at the third most recent. The sender is [email protected]. Opening the mail, I wait several seconds for it to download, then read the following:
Penn,
We traced several fingerprints on Brody Royal’s M-C to a Cuban émigré from New Orleans. You’ll recall that this M-C was part of the lot shipped from Italy after the rifle LHO bought via mail from Klein’s in Chicago. It was wholesaled to a Dallas retail gun store, and the earliest it could have been sold was August 1963. Cuban émigré was one Eladio Cruz, a student reported missing on November 21, 1963. (Yes, you read that right.) Cruz was never seen in the U.S. again. We’re now trying to determine whether Cruz was pro-or anti-Castro. Don’t miss the meeting with Stone. I told him you were coming, and we may have a decision on getting protective custody for your father by then.
P.S. Keep your eyes open and stay indoors when possible. Caitlin, too. Snake Knox could shoot you both from 600 yards, maybe more, and we can’t be positive he’s in Texas. His flying skill gives him a lot of mobility.
Kaiser’s mention of Caitlin makes me wonder if he knows I’m with her now. Is there an FBI agent outside my house, giving Kaiser regular reports? Or possibly a static surveillance camera? Right now I don’t really care, but I don’t want to be followed all afternoon. Kaiser’s warning about the danger from the Double Eagles only strengthens my resolve to hide Annie and my mother somewhere safer. As soon as Caitlin and I separate, I’m going to call Sam Abrams and try to arrange a move.
Rereading Kaiser’s e-mail, I wonder why he bothered to code anything when the overall meaning of the message is so clear. Maybe he was in a hurry. “M-C” obviously refers to the Mannlicher-Carcano, and “LHO” is Lee Harvey Oswald. The six-month separation between the sale of the two rifles must have miffed Kaiser, but the fact that Cruz went missing one day before the Kennedy assassination would have more than made up for that. That the Carcano was purchased by a Cuban student living in New Orleans is doubly provocative. First, because New Orleans was the private preserve of Carlos Marcello, and second, it throws Cuba into sharp focus in relation to the assassination. The answer to whether Eladio Cruz was pro-or anti-Castro will push Kaiser’s theory either toward or away from Fidel Castro and Russia. Away from Castro would mean toward the Cuban exiles who landed in the Bay of Pigs, and their CIA and Mafia backers. John Kaiser—and Dwight Stone’s Working Group—must be salivating over this possibility.