Karp began, "This is our first general meeting and I hope it's our last. I hate meetings." Muffled, polite laughter. "This staff is still small enough so that we can talk to each other just about every day. I also want to minimize written reports and bureaucratic garbage as much as possible. I assume you've all met V.T. here. He'll lay out the research assignments for each of you. The well-dressed gentleman sitting across from me is Clay Fulton, on leave from the New York PD. He'll handle all the fieldwork with such of you as he thinks can help out. We've divided the work into a number of lines of research in two big groupings. First, we want to know to the extent possible what really happened in Dallas that day. We're therefore going to reexamine, one, the ballistics and other forensic material, two, the photographic evidence, including the various amateur films, and, three, there'll be a special reexamination of the autopsy evidence by Dr. Selig and his team of forensic pathologists.
"The second grouping is concerned with why Kennedy was shot and whether the actual facts of the crime were covered up by either governmental or nongovernmental sources, or a combination of the two. The recent Church committee report gives us some reason to believe that neither the CIA nor the FBI was perfectly forthcoming with Warren. We're going to look into, one, the Cuba connection, right- and left-wing versions, and the CIA involvement; two, we're going to review the investigation of Oswald's background; three, we're going to check out the organized crime connection; and four, we're going to see what we can find out about Jack Ruby."
Karp then read off a list of assignments and looked up. Everyone except Fulton, Selig, and Newbury was scribbling away on pads. Karp continued, "V.T. has set up a filing system and an initial set of leads for each group. We'll expect you all to use your heads in following them up. I'm available any time for a conference on any particular problem, but I'm not going to have time to nursemaid you through this. One other thing: I intend to run this as a professional investigation. You'll hear a lot about political sensitivities and pressures. I want you to ignore them. The reason we're here, the reason the Warren Commission screwed up, was just that kind of knuckling under to politics, and I'm not going to be party to a repetition of that. All we're going to be concerned with here is evidence and the best interpretation of that evidence, on the basis of our professional judgment and not a damn thing else."
He paused and looked around the table. Some of the faces bore faint smirks or incipient expressions of disbelief. Then he added, "Some of you may have problems with that, in which case you're welcome to leave. And I can guarantee you this: if you sign on here and I do find out you're crimping the investigation to suit somebody's political agenda, you're out and I don't care who your patron is. I know Bert Crane will support me on this. Okay, any questions?"
A silence, then a series of anticlimaxes. Somebody asked about furniture. Another asked about travel funds, and a third raised the critical issue of whether congressional staff parking privileges would be retained. It was a replay of the conversation between Flores and Crane. Karp referred these matters to Sondergard. Nobody seemed to have any substantive questions about who shot JFK. The meeting broke up in the usual burble of cross-conversation, centering around V.T. Karp slipped out feeling tense and irritated.
Later, Karp sat in his office with Fulton and Murray Selig. "Welcome to the funhouse," he said.
"You got yourself a problem, boychik," said the pathologist. "Comparatively, I got it easy."
"You're satisfied with the panel?" Karp asked.
"Oh, yeah, all good people. That's not the issue, though."
"What is?"
"The material. If the material isn't there, how are we going to come up with anything different than Warren did?"
"Oh, come on, Murray!" Karp snapped. He reached for the summary volume of the Warren Report and flipped it open to the famous ugly profile drawing of JFK with the trajectory of the magic bullet going through its neck. "Are you going to endorse this crap?"
Selig smiled and placed his hands over his ears. "I don't want to hear it. We'll look at the evidence available and we'll judge from that. You know how I work."
Karp tossed the volume down with a bang that raised a little flurry of plaster dust. "Yeah, right. Sorry, I know you'll do what's right."
Then the three men, who had worked together on hundreds of violent deaths over many years, chatted briefly about the simpler cases of the past, until Selig had to leave to catch a plane back to the city.
When he had gone, Fulton observed, "He's right, you know. Autopsy could draw a blank on this one."
Karp shook his head. "I don't believe it. This"-he motioned at the blue book-"is a lie. Murray won't be party to a lie. I don't expect him to get the full story, but I'd be willing to bet he'll explode this one."
Fulton shrugged. "Maybe. I hope so. Meanwhile, what are we going to do about this investigation? That crew in there couldn't find a cat in a grocery bag. You in deep shit here, Stretch."
"We in deep shit, you mean. Any ideas?"
Fulton rubbed his hand slowly over his close-cropped head for a moment before he replied. "Well, there's you and me and V.T. Maybe a couple of the crew'll turn out to be some good. They can't all be as useless as they look."
"You mentioned ex-cops on the phone."
"Uh-huh, cops on pensions, here and there. They'd be willing to pitch in."
"Like who?"
"Al Sangredo, used to work the Two-five?"
"Yeah, way back. He still alive?"
Fulton chuckled. "Al better not hear you say that. Yeah, he's down in Miami. Got a private license, still dabbles a little. He's up for it. He's a Spaniard, but he can get into the Cuban business down there. He was Fidel's bodyguard for the cops when he made that New York visit back in the fifties, so he knows the other side too. Apparently they hit it off, him and Fidel."
"Oh, great! That's a desirable reference in Little Havana."
Fulton laughed. "Then there's Pete Melchior in New Orleans…"
"What about here?" Karp asked impatiently. Fulton gave him a disbelieving look and shot back, "Man wasn't killed here, son. We don't need no more people here in D.C. We're damn lucky that New York cops hit the warm climates a lot when they throw in their tin. Spend the bribe money in peace. This is gonna be cleared up in Texas, probably New Orleans, maybe Miami, if the Cubans are connected up to it, like the Senate Intelligence report says. I think I got a guy in Dallas too. What I mean is, we need folks know those towns, which I don't and neither do you."
Karp shook his head as if trying to throw off sleep and sighed. "Yeah, sorry. That's what this fucking place does to you. I been here a lousy month and I'm starting to think the world ends at the Beltway, like everybody else." He looked at his watch. "I have to get over to Schaller's office."
"The CIA stuff?"
"Yeah."
"You want me to come with you?"
Karp gave Fulton a puzzled look and opened his mouth to say something like, "No, why should you," when the other man's implication struck him, generating an unwelcome shiver.
Karp laughed unconvincingly. "You think Langley is going to gun me down on Independence Avenue and steal back their files?"