I always heard that he and JFK were friends.”
Sonny shrugs and turns up his palms. “What do you want to know? I can’t just start talking. Ask me something.”
“All right. To your knowledge, who was behind the assassination? I mean the man at the very top.”
Thornfield rubs his stubbled chin as though pondering what answering that question would have cost him forty years ago.
“Come on,” Kaiser urges. “Nobody can hear you.”
“It was Carlos Marcello’s show,” Sonny says finally. “All the way.”
When Kaiser turns to me, I see something like rapture in his eyes.
“Who fired the kill shot? The one that blew Kennedy’s brains out?”
“You already know. Frank Sinatra.”
Kaiser doesn’t react at first. But I can see from his frozen stillness how badly he wishes this were a legitimate interrogation. “How do you know that?” he asks.
“He told me.”
“Who did?”
“Frank.”
“When?”
Sonny shakes his head.
“What year, then?”
“Nineteen sixty-seven, I believe. About a year after he . . . had a family tragedy.”
Kaiser looks back at me. We’re both thinking the same thing. A year after Frank Knox lost his son in Vietnam.
“Was he sober when he told you this?” Kaiser asks.
“I don’t think Frank was ever sober after 1966.”
“Fair enough. How did Marcello approach Frank about that job? Or did someone else do that?”
“I think Marcello did it. We’d done a few jobs for him over the years, mostly in Florida. But Carlos knew Frank from the anti-Castro training camp in Morgan City. That’s how Frank knew, ah . . . the other guy, too.”
“What other guy?”
“The other guy who was in on it.”
“Oswald?” Kaiser asks, but I know this is a feint to test Thornfield.
“No. Frank didn’t know that nut job.”
“Who, then?”
Sonny practically whispers the name. “David Ferrie.”
Kaiser closes his eyes and exhales slowly. I have to admit, I feel a profound sense of satisfaction at hearing Dwight Stone’s theory confirmed, and since Stone can’t be here himself, I let myself enjoy it.
“What was Ferrie’s part in the operation?” Kaiser asks.
Sonny shrugs as though the answer is self-evident. “He’s the one who knew Oswald.”
“How?”
“They were both from New Orleans. Ferrie had known him since Oswald was a kid.”
“Known him how?”
“Frank told me they were queer. I don’t know if that’s true. But that’s what he said.”
Kaiser cuts his eyes at me again. So far, he and Dwight are batting a thousand.
“Did Frank know why Carlos wanted Kennedy dead?”
“He told me JFK and his brother were going to run the Little Man out of the country. Carlos had tried everything he knew to stop it, but nothing worked. This was the last chance.”
“Okay.” Kaiser glances at his watch. “Let’s talk about the actual hit. Dealey Plaza.”
Sonny scratches his nose and looks at the bedsheet once more. “You guys ain’t got some kind of X-ray camera or anything in there, have you?”
“No cameras,” Kaiser says, treating it as a serious question.
“Are you sure Snake don’t know what’s going on in here?”
“Positive. We’re questioning Snake in another interrogation room right now.”
Sonny clearly gets a fair dose of relief from this knowledge. “What else you want to know, then?”
“Tell us about the rifles, Sonny. The ones from Brody’s house. Penn says one was displayed in Brody’s basement as the assassination rifle, but that was a Remington Model 700. So why did we find an exact copy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle upstairs in Brody’s study?”
Sonny smiles strangely. “You can thank Frank for that. See, Carlos and Ferrie wanted him to use a rifle like Oswald’s for the hit, and then leave it at the scene. They wanted to sell a big Commie conspiracy and blame Castro.”
“To deflect suspicion from Carlos?”
“Sure, and to get Carlos’s casino action back. They figured if they could get the public mad enough at Castro, LBJ would invade.”
Kaiser happily clucks his tongue. “So, why didn’t Frank use the Carcano to kill Kennedy?”
“Because it was a piece of junk! The aftermarket Jap scope that came on it wasn’t good enough for a BB gun. Frank told ’em he’d use his own rifle for the hit but leave the Italian one at the scene. But Ferrie didn’t like that idea. He’d given Frank bullets from the same box as Oswald’s, and he said Frank had to use those. The bullets had to match, he said.”
I can only see Kaiser in profile, but an anticipatory smile has appeared on his face. “So what did Frank do?”
“He told Ferrie no problem. Frank was a genius with guns, see? Any kind of weapon, really. But guns were