“I did,” Dad says, his eyes hard. “For a specific reason. One week after that Gulf fishing trip, Ray Presley visited my office. He told me that Carlos Marcello had heard Brody’s CIA guest had gotten drunk and said a little too much. Marcello wanted me to know the guy was a nut job, and that nothing he said should be believed.”

“If that was true, why would Marcello bother sending Ray to tell you that?”

Dad nods slowly. “Exactly. And here’s the thing: Ray was close to Jim Garrison’s investigation of the JFK assassination in New Orleans. He said witnesses were vanishing, and some had already been murdered. Making yourself a potential witness in the investigation of the JFK assassination was the equivalent of suicide. Ray was telling me this as a favor, believe it nor not. Then he gave me that picture of you. He apologized, and he swore he hadn’t taken it himself, but the implication was clear.”

“I’ll bet Ray shot this himself.”

“I imagine so. And now you know why, when Leland Robb came to me in 1969, I didn’t want to hear his story. They’d already let me know what crossing Brody Royal or Carlos Marcello would cost me. You.”

Me? Only a few hours ago, Henry Sexton suggested as much—though he figured it was the Double Eagles who’d threatened my life. The truth is even more disturbing. Without knowing it, I once functioned as a hostage to the Mafia, not the Ku Klux Klan, and to prevent my father from speaking out, not about the atrocities of Brody Royal but the drunken boasts of a CIA operative.

“Is there a particular reason you kept this picture in Will Percy’s book?”

Dad looks away, his jaw tight. “Perhaps. But that’s a conversation for another night.”

“So that fishing boat picture with Royal … it’s just a fluke?”

“Essentially, yes. I never had any kind of relationship with Brody Royal. If there was justice in the world, that bastard would be dying of ALS, instead of the sweet young mother I diagnosed three months ago. But that kind of justice is a child’s dream. The evil prosper, and the innocent pay the bills for them. I’ve seen it all my life, and so have you.”

“Why haven’t you told Henry Sexton any of this?”

Dad holds up both hands, as if raising an invisible wall between us once more. “I have my reasons, and I’ve said my piece. I want you to keep all this between us, Penn. I admire what Henry’s done these past years, but I’m afraid that if he continues, he’ll end up like Glenn Morehouse. I worry about you, too,” he says, his voice thickening. “Don’t start poking into the Double Eagles or Brody Royal. That’s not your war.”