The reporter’s eyes smolder with an emotion I can’t quite read. “Maybe. By the time the Eagles found her in Chicago, she was pregnant. What if they threatened her child? Her brother was already dead. Would a mother risk her infant’s life to put her trust in white men who’d failed to convict the Klan in almost every single murder case in Mississippi up to that time?”

Henry has a point. “But if the kid was a result of the gang rape?”

The reporter shrugs. “We don’t know enough to guess, Penn. What’s your second objection?”

“If Brody scrapped the RFK assassination plan, how did he square it with Marcello? Godfathers don’t generally take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“My source didn’t tell me. Maybe Brody told him straight: ‘Without Frank Knox in charge, we can’t take the risk.’ But the timeline suggests another answer. Del Payton was blown up just weeks after Revels and Davis disappeared, right? What if I told you that Brody Royal and Judge Leo Marston were occasional business partners back in the sixties?”

“I picture two rattlesnakes in a sack.” Leo Marston is the father of a woman I once thought I would marry. He now resides in Parchman Penitentiary.

“Brody and Leo lived on opposite sides of the river, but they had greed in common. Brody was far wealthier than Marston, but Leo had more political clout. He also had the blood pedigree that Royal didn’t. Leo invested in quite a few Royal Oil wells, and he made some real money. I think they were pretty tight.”

“Del Payton was murdered to intimidate black union members,” I think aloud. “You’re thinking Brody Royal had advance knowledge through Leo that a crime like that was about to happen? If he did, he could cancel the Revels hit and claim Del Payton had been killed to lure Kennedy down here.”

“Exactly.”

“And three weeks after Payton died, Sirhan Sirhan made the whole question moot. Any real chance of another Kennedy taking the White House died at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.”

Henry looks pleased that his story led me to the same conclusion.

“The Viola angle still doesn’t play,” I argue. “From what you’ve told me, Brody Royal is a monster. Even if Viola didn’t know about his involvement in all this, the Double Eagles did. If Viola was a threat to the Eagles, then she was a threat to Brody Royal through them. I can’t believe anything would have stopped Royal from killing her.”

Henry taps the photo of my father in the boat with Brody Royal. “Which brings us right back here. Maybe your father pledged something in exchange for Viola’s life. Maybe he guaranteed her silence. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”