Karp shrugged. 'He's on parole on a federal drug charge. You have to assume he's interested in helping the government.'
V.T. let out a bitter laugh. 'Yes, he would be-in real life. In this investigation, on the other hand, it might be just as well to assume the opposite.'
'That's a point,' said Karp. 'We'll have to see. Meanwhile, and in the same vein, make a copy of that film and bury it. And V.T.? Don't show it to anyone else but Clay. Oh, yeah, and I guess Ziller too. He's a spy for Dobbs, but, hell, if Dobbs is bent we might as well pack it in anyway. He's the only friend we got on the committee.'
'Are you serious about restricting access? I mean I'm paranoid too, but that's a little extreme.'
'Yeah, I'm serious. Have blowups made at a private lab, and you can show those to your photo-analysis people, but keep the actual film to yourself.'
'Can we afford a private lab?'
'You can,' said Karp.
'Still no budget, huh?'
'Afraid not.'
V.T. switched on the lights and collected the film. 'You going to see Crane? Yeah? Ask him if we can have a bake sale and a dance at the gym. I mean, this sucks!'
When Karp arrived for his regular Monday meeting, Crane was talking to Bea Sondergard. They both froze for an instant and stared at him, as if they had been deep in conspiracy against the Republic. Sondergard's face seemed drawn, and her eyes lacked their usual tolerant good humor.
Karp hesitated in the doorway and said, 'Sorry-I'll come back later…'
But Crane waved him in. 'No, we were just finishing up. Come in and sit down.' To Sondergard he said, in a lower tone, 'Stop worrying-we'll be fine.'
The woman sighed and said, ' 'We' is not the problem, Bert. As far as I'm concerned they can all kiss my sweet patootie. It's you I'm scared for.'
'What was that about?' Karp asked when Sondergard had gone out.
'Oh, administrative horseshit, the usual crying and moaning,' Crane said, waving his hand in a limp circle to indicate the triviality of it all.
'I heard it was more serious than that.'
Crane gave a snort of derision. 'You and Bea both. Am I going to have to hold your hand too? Look-what it is, there was a piece in the Post today. Flores sent me a letter citing irregularities in staff expenditures and of course the son of a bitch leaked it simultaneously to the press. He told me I am to incur absolutely no further expenses until this issue has been resolved by the committee. According to him, I'm encouraging some kind of sybaritic lifestyle off the public fisc without doing a damn thing to earn it.' He smiled and tapped his desk. 'This desk was specifically mentioned along with its cost. I guess I thought when they hired me that I'd have a desk, but I guess I was wrong. So Bea's pretty upset. She feels responsible for her usual efficiency. And then there's this.'
Crane reached into his wastebasket and pulled out a folded newspaper and waved it. 'Have you seen this piece of shit yet?'
Karp had not, but of course he knew what it was.
'Philadelphia,' he said.
'You read it?'
'I heard about it. You're in with the Mob.'
'Trash, a total lie. I'm going to bring a libel suit that'll kick their teeth in. My only worry is that this and the budget thing are going to occupy the caucus and the press so much that they'll totally forget why they got me here in the first place.'
'You're not still going to the caucus?' Karp had blurted it out without thought and he was dismayed when Crane gave him a searching look.
'Yeah, I'm still going,' he snapped. 'Why the devil shouldn't I? I haven't done anything wrong. If I lie low, it'll just give them something else to yap about.'
Karp nodded and held his tongue. He knew Crane was wrong and that Harrison had been right. The man was doomed. The worst thing he could possibly do now was to continue his defiance of Flores. He should have canceled his appearance before the Democratic caucus, should have apologized to Flores, should have sucked ass for all he was worth, so that they would let him alone. He should have then proceeded with the investigation, in secrecy, covering the real work with a cloak of supine amiability until he had some politically potent findings, preferably some that implicated Flores or his cronies, or that were so explosive that they couldn't be suppressed. But Crane, it seemed, was just like Karp. That was the problem. And nothing could be done.
After a brief, empty silence, Karp rattled his notes, cleared his throat, and launched into his briefing. Most of it was concerned with the film V.T. had found, the Cuban connection, and the proposal to have the CIA man Paul A. David testify.
'When is he scheduled?' asked Crane.
'Wednesday, day after tomorrow.'
'Any problems?'
'No, except for the usual CIA stuff about not violating secrecy.'
'Mmm. On that score-he'll be our first major witness. Do you think it's a good idea to start out with the CIA?'
This startled Karp. 'Bert, we had this discussion. You said we should bear down on Langley, and that's what I'm doing. I didn't think good idea or bad idea. Our only new material-the documents from Schaller, the letter from Hoover, and now this film-all suggest CIA connections, and participation in suppressing evidence. It makes sense to start off with a senior CIA guy who might have been directly involved with concocting a phony story.'
'I take your point,' said Crane, 'but I've been thinking about it some more. It's starting to strike me as, well, backward. It might make more sense to start with the assassination proper: the shots, the trajectories, the witnesses, the evidence inculpating Oswald, the autopsy…'
'You mean present it like Warren,' Karp said, and when Crane nodded, he continued, 'No, the problem with that is that there's no point at all in most of the forensic stuff. It's all corrupt. Every piece of it. We don't have reliable chains of evidence for anything. The bullets, the photographs, the X rays-God knows where they came from or who handled them. The autopsy was totally fucked. We have no access to the body. The tissue slides are missing. The witnesses? All interrogated originally by people we know had some sort of ax to grind-the FBI or the Dallas cops or the Warren people-oh, yeah, and the assassination buffs, of course. The surviving witnesses have told their story so many times that any connection between what they're saying and what actually happened is probably coincidental. So, absent actual, legally probative evidence, we have to rely exclusively on experts, which means, as you know as well as I do, that for any three experts saying one thing, I can get three other experts to say the opposite. Even so, ninety percent of Warren and ninety percent of the anti-Warren writing has focused on the minutiae surrounding a single question: Did the shots that killed Kennedy come from a single known rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository? That question is a waste of time. Oh, yeah, we'll go through the motions, but it's going to be essentially a dead end, and irrelevant. Any real advances we make will be made through completely fresh material, stuff that hasn't been totally mangled, like the evidence I just mentioned. It tells us two things: one, the CIA was actively involved in stonewalling on this case; and two, Oswald was definitely involved with anti-Castro Cubans and with the CIA. Whether Oswald killed Kennedy alone, or with help, or was just a patsy is something that can't ever be established from the existing Dallas evidence. But there's at least a slight chance that if we follow up this new stuff we'll find something that'll give us the real story.'
Crane was silent for a long while after this. He swiveled his chair around to stare out the window, at the rail yards, or perhaps at nothing. Finally, he said, 'You're right, of course. But…' Crane looked directly at him. 'I don't want this degenerating into a Jim Garrison circus. I won't have that.'
'No, of course not,' said Karp vehemently. 'Garrison's problem was the fact that he didn't have anything documentary like we have now. He had to rely on testimony from sleazebags against the word of Clay Shaw, who, whatever his sexual predilections, presented himself as a solid citizen. Garrison's star witness was a petty hustler and known perjurer. Another one was a known crackpot. And he was trying to prove Clay Shaw's involvement in a conspiracy, which is always a hard case to prove. Okay, so what if Shaw knew Oswald and Ferrie and denied it? It doesn't generate guilty knowledge of, or participation in, the assassination, which is one reason Garrison's case collapsed. One thing, though: Garrison was right on about the importance of the New Orleans connection.
