But the connection had never been forgotten. That’s what had placed him in the passenger seat of Ray Presley’s truck in 1990 as it turned into a secluded section of Old Metairie, Louisiana, and then into the driveway of the white marble home of Carlos Marcello.

Despite what Ray had told him, Tom expected to find an older version of the saturnine boss he had met back in 1959. But the don he viewed on that day was a man beset by Alzheimer’s disease and fast regressing toward infancy. Tom had no idea why he’d been summoned, unless someone in the family had decided to humor a casual whim of the old boss.

Marcello’s disease, combined with the sequelae of several strokes, had left him unable to care for himself. A team of nurses tended him around the clock, and with more than thirty years of medical practice behind him, Tom knew that the deathwatch had begun. He’d been as kind as he could be to the family, then made his exit as rapidly as possible. He never found out whether Marcello himself had requested his presence, and the question would vex him greatly. Because thirty seconds after he left the godfather’s sickroom, he realized that the shield that had protected Viola since 1968 would soon crumble into dust.

As soon as he got back into Presley’s truck, he asked Ray what would happen when Carlos died. “Is it like a royal succession? Will his oldest son take over, or one of his brothers?”

“Neither,” Ray said. “They’ve already lost most of what they had. Frank Carraci and Nick Karno have controlled the French Quarter for a while now. But Carlos always knew his brothers could never hold his empire together without him. So he made sure that when the time came, the family would be legit enough to make it without the old part of the business. And they are. They own more land than the goddamn Catholic Church, and they’ve got all kinds of other businesses. So Carlos is going to do something not many mob bosses get to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Die free in his bed. And his brothers are gonna do the same. His kids, too. See? He was always smarter than the other bosses.”

Tom found no comfort in this. He’d hoped that the business would be passed down to a son or brother who would honor the don’s old commitments, including the protection of Viola Turner, but this was apparently not to be.

“All the new players have been trying to carve pieces off the carcass. The Asians, the Jamaicans, the Russians . . . there’s always a free-for-all for a couple of years, till things settle out. Lots of blood, lots of payback.”

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.

Tom didn’t sleep much after that night. He worried constantly about Viola in Chicago, and also about the favor he’d done for Frank back in ’63. He lost weight, hair, and his peace of mind. Peggy begged him to have one of his partners check his health, but Tom knew the source of his problem. What he didn’t know was what to do about it. Eventually, he crafted a request based on fabricated medical grounds, which he sent to the Triton Battery Corporation. Tom claimed to need information on Frank Knox’s medical history, in order to better treat one of his descendants. Though the Triton company had recently been sold, a clerk responded to Tom a month later, telling him that he’d been unable to locate Knox’s medical record. Tom initially felt relief, but then a second missive from the helpful clerk arrived, informing him that the bulk of Knox’s personnel file had been transferred to the FBI in 1965 and had never been returned to the company. The clerk forwarded a few photocopied sheets covering Frank’s employment from 1965 until his death in ’68, but this chronicle of suicidal alcoholism held no interest for Tom. The relevant year’s record was in the hands of the FBI, and this sent his paranoia into overdrive.