"Where is this happening, V.T.? And what's the point?"
"Patience. Aren't you interested in how we trained all the brave anticommunist Cubans?"
"Is that what this is? The Bay of Pigs?"
V.T. stopped cranking. "No, they trained those in Guatemala; this is Louisiana, and if we assume that the film was processed shortly after it was taken, from the markings on the leader it's the early summer of 1963. It's an illegal operation."
"How do you know where it is?" Karp asked.
"Watch."
V.T. started the film moving again. Now the camera was obviously in a vehicle of some kind, an open vehicle because the camera could pan around 360 degrees. A jeep: the well-known square hood flashed by and then the backs of the heads of two men with military caps on. A white road sign loomed up and started to whip by. V.T. stopped the movement again. The road sign had the shape of Louisiana and a number.
"We know just where this is, right by Lake Pontchartrain, near New Orleans. Okay, this part is important." He cranked slowly. The jeep ride ended and the camera cut to a group of five men standing around a jeep, talking, as troops filed by in the background. V.T. froze a frame and pointed with a pencil.
"Okay, these two guys look like Cubans, we haven't identified them yet. This stocky guy with the round face is Antonio Veroa, of Brigada Sixty-one fame-the star of document A. The tall, ugly guy here is Gary Becker, the head of the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean."
"Who's the other guy in civilian clothes?" asked Karp, indicating a tall man with dark hair, a prominent nose, and deeply impressed wrinkles under his eyes. He was turning away from the lens as the shot opened, as if more interested in some background object than in the conversation the men were having; that, or he had a predisposition to avoid being the subject of photography.
V.T. said, "Also a blank. It's a little hard to ID him because he's turning away like that. Now watch this."
He edged the film forward. In the treacly movements of slow motion, the camera's view moved to another group of men standing by a truck. One of the men in the group turned around and smiled at the camera. It was actually more of a smirk than a smile, the famous smirk.
"Holy shit!" said Karp. "It's him."
"So it seems," said V.T. "Perhaps a sort of private ROTC weekend away from the lovely Marina, or maybe this was during the time he was actually living in New Orleans."
Karp was looking at the other men in the group around Lee Harvey Oswald. "Who are they?"
"It'd be nice to find out. I'll have portrait blowups made of every identifiable face in this film and get my people on it. But there's more."
He turned more quickly now, the figures moving with the comic velocity of Keystone Kops. The screen brightened. It was full day. Some men were shooting pistols at a crude outdoor firing range, firing at man-shaped targets nailed to trees. Karp recognized Veroa, in civvies this time, holding an army.45 and smiling. The view moved unsteadily back to the shooting; the camera jumped slightly at each soundless explosion. Two men, grinning, held up a well-punctured target. A man in a black T-shirt and ball cap sat at a table loading bullets into pistol magazines. He looked up for an instant, frowned, spoke briefly, and lowered his head again so that the bill of the cap obscured his face. V.T. backed the film to the few frames that showed his face.
"Oswald again," said Karp.
"Looks like it," said V.T. "It's got to be some time later than in the first scenes, because his sideburns've grown longer."
V.T. cranked the film forward for another few seconds. More shooting, men posing with weapons, then a close-up of a round-faced man with a fright wig and patently phony, impossibly thick eyebrows.
"David Ferrie," said V.T. Unnecessarily: nobody else looked like Ferrie.
The film moved on and then Oswald in his ball cap and black T-shirt returned. The shot was taken from the rear and showed him standing, aiming at a target twenty-five yards downrange and firing off seven shots rapidly. V.T. slowed the film. The thin puffs of smoke from the pistol, his arm moving up in response to the recoil, took on a ghastly slowness. The camera moved in for a close-up of the head of the target silhouette. It was shredded and flapping away from its fiberboard backing.
"Terrific," said Karp tightly. "It's like a coming attractions trailer for the Zapruder film." They looked at the frozen target in silence for a while. V.T. moved the film again through another twenty seconds of paramilitary dullness. He stopped cranking, pulled the film from the viewer, and began to wind back.
"What's on the front end of the spool?" he asked.
"Nothing," said V.T. "Home movies. A barbecue somewhere. A Kiwanis award of some kind."
"Ferrie was in Kiwanis?"
"No, but I doubt the cameraman was Ferrie. Ferrie didn't own a movie camera that we know of and of course he's there in the picture."
"So who took the film and how did Ferrie get hold of it?"
"This we don't know," said V.T. with a sigh. "In fact, we don't know its provenance at alclass="underline" who took it, why they took it, or how it got from whoever took it, to Ferrie, to Depuy, or why." He grinned without humor. "In short, it's just like all the other fucking evidence in this case."
Karp rose stiffly and wiggled his bad knee. "But it's great stuff. It puts Oswald with the Cubans."
"Assuming it's Oswald. Assuming it's real."
"We could show it to Veroa," said Karp.
"We have Veroa?"
"Yeah, I didn't tell you. It was no big thing-he was in the book. Al Sangredo, Fulton's guy in Miami, just talked to him in Little Havana. I'm going to get Clay to go down there and pick him up."
"He'll cooperate?" asked V.T., surprise in his voice.
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.