“So was that Sinatra sending you a message via a screenplay?” Winston asked. “A hint that he’s willing to expose truths? Motivated by revenge? Or maybe he’s still deep down the same bleeding-heart Commie-symp he’s always been?”

Kennedy ignored the question.

“So,” Winston said, filling the dead air, “are you going to call off Giancana’s hit on Castro?” He smiled, finishing his glass of scotch. He was having fun.

Kennedy didn’t respond. White looked down at the ground.

After a second, Kennedy stepped toward Winston. “As you know, that wasn’t a Justice Department proposal.”

“Surely it would be a war crime, which would be an issue of concern, I would think, for an attorney general,” Margaret jumped in. “Western societies don’t contract mobsters to kill foreign leaders, even despots.”

Winston laughed aloud. “We don’t?” he asked, pouring himself another drink. “C’mon, little girl.”

Kennedy turned to Charlie, exasperated, as if Charlie had any control of either his father or his wife. “We can’t talk about this here,” he said.

“Should we talk instead about what the Agency got your brother to sign off on a year ago?” said Winston. “And how you kept the press from reporting on the Alabama National Guardsmen killed in Cuban airspace after that goat-fuck?”

Kennedy frowned at Winston.

“Wait, what?” Charlie asked.

“They didn’t declassify that for you, did they, on your Oversight Committee?” Winston said. “Four Alabama Guardsmen were killed during the Bay of Pigs. Castro’s even got one of their cadavers on ice as proof of an American invasion.”

“The Agency is responsible for any number of fiascos,” Kennedy agreed. “Some of these were plans that President Eisenhower signed off on. It’s one of the reasons we got rid of Dulles.”

“Dick Bissell is your problem, Bobby,” Winston said. “Not Dulles.”

“Don’t I know it,” he replied.

“Hoover is just as dangerous,” White added.

“It’s all a goat-fuck,” Kennedy said, “as Winston says.”

“Look at you, one of the most powerful men in the world and you’re acting as if you’re powerless,” said Margaret with equal parts disgust and disappointment in her voice. “You fought so hard to get to the White House. Why? How are you different from Nixon? What are you doing with this power?”

From downstairs echoed the bubblegum voice of Marilyn Monroe, followed by deep laughter.

“Are you fighting for women to be seen by your brother as something other than depositories?” Margaret asked, motioning vaguely toward the stairs. “What about civil rights? I voted for your brother. What was it all for? Anything other than power?”

Kennedy sat down on a maroon felt sofa; a table lamp shining on his face deepened the bags under his eyes. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth as if there were something stuck in his molars. Addington White sat down at the edge of the sofa.