Quentin looks out over the audience, and like him I see people sitting next to elderly men wondering if they might be shoulder to shoulder with members of the Double Eagle group.

“Mr. Devine,” Quentin says, turning back to his witness, “before we get into the specifics of what you came to say, do you have any proof that you actually belonged to this notorious group, the Double Eagles?”

The watery eyes blink several times. “Yes, sir, I do.”

“What do you have?”

“Got my gold piece.”

“Will you explain what you mean by that?”

Once again Devine goes through the breathing ritual with the mask. His breaths seem to be getting shallower.

At length, he says, “Frank wanted us all to carry some sign of membership. For us original guys it was a twenty-dollar gold piece, minted in the year of our birth. For the younger men, it was the 1964 JFK half-dollar, which the government minted after Kennedy was assassinated. They’d stopped making the gold pieces in the 1930s, but that’s where Frank took the name, the Double Eagles. I didn’t know why he wanted us to carry them, since we all knew each other, and since it might put us at risk from the FBI. But after a while, I understood. If you showed that coin around to a white man—even a cop—he’d do damned near anything you told him to. And if you showed it to a black man, he’d wet his pants or run for the woods. As for the FBI, I think Frank halfway wanted them to know who we were. In his mind, we was at war with the Bureau.”

Quentin nods slowly, giving the jury time to process the details. “I see. Well, Mr. Devine, would you show us your gold piece? I don’t doubt your word, but I think the jury might benefit by seeing something so historic firsthand.”

Will Devine takes a couple more theatrically labored breaths, then fishes in his shirt pocket and tugs out a dark leather cord with a dull flash of gold at the end of it. He stretches the cord between his fingers and holds it out so that the heavy gold coin is suspended between them. The gold piece gleams under the courtroom lights, and to me it exudes a palpable malice, as though someone had taken an SS badge from his pocket and admitted to wearing it in action.

As the old man’s hands start to shake, Quentin says, “You can put it away, Mr. Devine.”

As Devine does this, Quentin says, “Let’s talk about Viola Turner. Did you know her before she left Natchez in 1968?”