57

In Thea’s second novel, the character named “d” sleeps with her brother, and bears a child by him. I wondered if Alonso had read it closely, understood what he was reading. I’d watched his eyes move at the graveyard, searching first his uncle’s face, then the photo of his long-dead namesake.

Fiction? I hoped so. I recalled Thea’s taped confession—she’d told Alonso Senior she was uncertain who the father was.

I hoped Alonso Junior would never hear that particular tape. He looked too much like his mother, like his uncle.

Better he shouldn’t know. Maybe his mother was right when she said she gave him the best father she could.

I spent most of the night in Mooney’s spartan office, listening to uninformed brass criticize him via telephone. According to various “superiors,” he should have immediately issued an all-points on Garnet Cameron, initiated a high-speed car chase through five cities and towns, endangering pedestrians and drivers alike. I sat nearby, offering quiet support with my presence, rolling my eyes whenever the phone rang. Supplying doughnuts and coffee.

I thought he’d done the right thing. A trial would never have resolved the issues at stake. Garnet’s death might make reconciliation possible, once Tessa finished grieving. If she ever did.

About the FBI: Alonso Nueves Rojas, subject of the elusive missing persons file #902869432, itinerant gardener, was a Cuban national under FBI surveillance. Ten years after the Bay of Pigs, Cuba was a hot spot for the Bureau. They’d traced Nueves as he made his way north from Miami, deciding whether to approach him as a prospective counterintelligence agent. Although he’d once fought for Castro, he now declared himself an anti-Castro patriot. The Bureau had inconclusive paper concerning his whereabouts on November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy died. The FBI hadn’t made up its collective mind, friend or foe, when Nueves abruptly disappeared.

That was all. That was why MacAvoy had been afraid to dump the Nueves file entirely, perhaps why his shaky eraser had failed to obliterate the number. Simple fear of Big Brother FBI.

Gary Reedy got to stamp “Case Closed” on #902869432. He was a happy man. He shook Mooney’s hand when he left, actually smiled at me.