“The Double Eagles didn’t initiate the operation.”

“Who did? Brody Royal?”

Henry shakes his head. “Someone who hated Bobby Kennedy more than anyone on earth, and that’s saying something. Can you guess? This guy was the last son of a bitch you wanted to be on the bad side of.”

“Enough with the games, Henry. Who was it?”

“Carlos Marcello.”

The Little Sicilian. Mafia boss of New Orleans from the fifties through the seventies. “Ray Presley used to work as a bagman for Marcello while he was a cop in New Orleans. Was Presley Marcello’s connection to the Double Eagles?”

“No.” Henry takes a piece of paper from the table and hands it to me. It seems to be a real estate deed for a Metairie, Louisiana, motel, titled in the name MarYal Corporation. “MarYal?” I ask. “Marcello-Royal?”

Henry smiles. “Their relationship dated back to Royal’s days as a bootlegger in St. Bernard Parish. Marcello was clawing his way to the top of the New Orleans underworld at that time, and he was tight with Royal’s old man. Once Brody struck it rich in oil, he got into quite a few real estate deals with Carlos. Marcello sometimes used the Double Eagles as muscle in Florida deals. And listen to this: three years before he founded the Double Eagles, Frank Knox worked as a combat arms instructor at a South Louisiana training camp for Cuban cadres going into the Bay of Pigs. Carlos was helping to fund that camp. Frank was officially listed on the JMWAVE, Operation Mongoose payroll.”

“I wish I could say this sounds nuts, Henry. But it sounds all too familiar to an ex-prosecutor from Texas. So … Jimmy Revels was bait for Robert Kennedy. Obviously the RFK plan went ass-over-teakettle somehow. What went down?”

“Carlos’s motive for killing Bobby wasn’t just business. Bobby had aggressively pursued the mob since the mid-fifties, at a time when J. Edgar Hoover said there was no organized crime in America. As attorney general for his brother, Bobby went into high gear. Even JFK thought he was a zealot.”

Henry’s story is old news to me. “It’s no secret that the Mafia wanted Bobby Kennedy dead. Carlos Marcello was named by the House Select Committee on Assassinations as one of the men most likely to be involved in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK, along with Santo Trafficante and Sam Giancana. Two witnesses verified that while Carlos wanted Bobby dead, he said, ‘If you cut off a dog’s tail, he’ll keep biting you, but if you cut off its head … no more.’”

“You knew all that?” Henry asks. “I had to look it up.”

“A steady parade of JFK crackpots visited my office in Houston. Finish your story.”