Kaiser looks uncomfortable as we step into the elevator. “Look,” he says, pushing 4, “when it comes to the Kennedy case, it’s Stone’s show. Let him tell you his way.”
I don’t even try to hide my exasperation.
“By the way,” says Kaiser, as the car starts to rise, “Stone got the skinny on Eladio Cruz, the Cuban student who ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano Royal ended up with, and then disappeared in New Orleans. Somebody in the Working Group knew an old FBI informant who worked undercover against Castro in Havana. He said Eladio Cruz was a DRE agent for Castro. Cruz’s job was recruiting high school and college-age kids who’d come to America with their parents. He disappeared on November nineteenth, 1963, but he wasn’t reported missing until the twenty-first. At the time, his friends assumed that either exiles had killed him or he’d gone back to Cuba. But Cruz never returned to Cuba, not in 1963 or later. So he didn’t just disappear from New Orleans. He disappeared off the face of the earth.”
The elevator stops, and the doors open to the fourth floor.
“Where do you think he went?” I ask, motioning for John to walk ahead of me into the orange-carpeted corridor.
“Into the sixty-four hundred acres of swamps behind Marcello’s Churchill Farms,” he says, “just like a lot of other guys did.”
As Kaiser takes the lead, I slip my hand into my inside pocket and hit the RECORD button on my Sony. That’s one advantage of the old analog units; the buttons are big enough to operate by touch. “Did his disappearance have to do with the Carcano?”
Kaiser points to his right. “Room 406.”
“Come on, John,” I say, following him.
“Are you serious? A known pro-Castro agent buying a rifle exactly like the one that would be used to kill John Kennedy, then disappearing only days before the assassination?” Kaiser holds up his hand and stops me a few paces from Stone’s door. “Listen, you may not realize how bad Dwight—”
My TracFone is ringing. Kaiser pauses, waiting for me to answer.
“Go on in,” I tell him. “I’ll be right there.”
He sighs with frustration.
Retreating down the hall toward the elevators, I click SEND. “This is Penn.”
“It’s Walker Dennis. I’m headed out to another warehouse fire on Frogmore Road. But that’s not why I’m calling.”
My gut hitches in dread. “What’s happened?”
“I just got a call from Claude Devereux.”
“Brody Royal’s attorney? What did he want?”
“You won’t believe it. That old Cajun bastard told me that Snake Knox, Sonny Thornfield, and the other Double Eagles on my list will be at my office at seven A.M. tomorrow to surrender themselves for questioning.”
For several seconds I’m speechless. “That’s hard to believe.”
“Well, they’re coming. Devereux didn’t call them Double Eagles, of course. He claims they have nothing to hide, and that they want to clear their names as soon as possible.”
“Did he say Billy Knox would be with them?”
“Billy wasn’t on my list. We don’t have anything on him yet.”
“What do you have on the others?”
“Not much, to be honest. Leo Spivey’s home computer has turned up some suspicious accounting—coded stuff—and we’ve found a few suspect connections to the old guys. We still have a lot of evidence to go through, and I’m pressuring the hell out of the cookers and dealers we rounded up this morning.”
“Walker . . . those punks know that ratting out the Knoxes means a bullet in the head—if they’re lucky. Stay with the computers.”
“We will. I just wanted to make sure you’re gonna be at my office in the morning. If those fuckers have their high-dollar lawyer present, I want to make sure I’ve got mine.”
A rush of conflicting emotions floods through me. I still believe in my strategy of pressuring Forrest Knox so that he’ll have to turn his attention away from the hunt for my father. But something tells me Dwight Stone wouldn’t have traveled all the way here without having something important to say. And now Kaiser has hinted that it may be about my father. Until I hear Stone out, I’m reluctant to commit to what he may think is a serious mistake. In the silence of my thoughts, I hear Walker breathing impatiently.
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” he asks.
“No, no. I’m just thinking this may be more complicated than I first thought.”
“Tough shit. You’re the one who got me started on this drug war, and now I’ve got two dead deputies and the state police crawling up my ass. We’re fully committed. So make sure you’re standing outside my interrogation room at seven A.M. Otherwise, you get no more information or assistance from me henceforth.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there.”
He clicks off.
Looking back toward Stone’s room, I see Kaiser still standing in the hall, watching me. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have heard anything I said.
“Everything okay?” he asks as I approach.
If I related Walker’s news about the Double Eagles to Kaiser, he would blow his top, and probably upset Stone in the process. “Yeah, no problems.”
“About Dwight,” Kaiser says, blocking the door with his hand. “He looks pretty rough. He’s on the transplant list, but they haven’t found him a liver yet. His tumors are growing, and this operation tomorrow is sort of a last-ditch holding action. I gather his odds are about fifty-fifty going in. It was crazy for him to come here, but nothing was going to stop him. I lobbied the director to give him this last gift.”
I hadn’t realized things were quite that bad. “How’s his mental state?”
“Oh, he’s still sharp as a razor. That’s the tragedy of it. He may run on a little about the JFK stuff, but be patient with him. You’ll know a lot more about your father when you walk out of here than you did when you came in.”