“You’ll see in a minute. So, Presley chose Del Payton as the victim. Why, I don’t know. He was in charge of voter-registration drives for the local NAACP, but he was a quiet guy. Had a nice house and a pretty wife. Saved his money. He had a nicer house than Presley did, really. That by itself could have been the reason. Anyway, Zeb Hickson was all set to announce his plans for a Natchez carpet factory—”

“But you had Marston by the short hairs.”

“Yep.”

“But you didn’t make any arrests.”

Stone sighs deeply. “Right.”

“Why not?”

“As soon as Hoover heard the tape of Marston and Presley, he ordered me to forward every case note, transcript, surveillance report, witness interview, photograph, and audiotape to Washington. After he reviewed all that, he scheduled a visit to the Jackson field office. Good PR for the troops, he said. But the real reason for that trip was to meet Leo Marston.”

The ringing in my head is an alarm bell now. “About what?”

“Politics. Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s assistant, made the call. I still had the wiretap running, and I heard it. Marston thought he was going up to Jackson for a pat on the back for his performance as D.A. When he got there, Edgar read him the riot act, then laid the classic Hoover pitch on him.”

“Which was?”

“Work for me, or endure the punishment you so richly deserve for your sins.”

“Work for him how?”

A cynical smile thins Stone’s lips. “This is where it gets interesting. And dirty. Del Payton died in May 1968, five weeks after Martin Luther King. What else was going on then?”

“The Vietnam War?”

He waves his hand dismissively. “The presidential primaries. Bobby Kennedy had jumped into the race as soon as Eugene McCarthy proved LBJ was vulnerable. After Kennedy came in, Johnson announced he wouldn’t run for reelection. Del Payton was killed on the day Bobby won the Nebraska primary, and he’d won Indiana the week before. Kennedy was shaping up as the likely Democratic candidate in November.”

“I’m not following you. What’s the connection?”

“Hoover, Cage. Compared to the presidential race, Hoover didn’t give a damn what happened to some black factory worker in Mississippi. Why? Because the FBI director has always served at the pleasure of the President. Hoover had been director since 1924, and he meant to stay director until he died. Two of his least favorite people in the world were Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. King’s assassination had thrilled him, literally. But Bobby’s presidential campaign was giving him ulcers. Can you guess what Hoover’s mission in life was in 1968?”

“Not to kill Robert Kennedy?”