They left immediately for lunch, which was taken in one of those expensive, dark, quiet saloon-restaurants that thrive around every major courthouse in the nation by purveying rich food and large drinks to lawyers and politicians and providing a comfortably dim venue for deals.

Seated in a secluded booth, the three men declined cocktails and ordered carelessly: the "special." No bon vivants, these. There was a period of obligatory sports talk. All were basketball fans, all had played in college, but only Karp had played NBA ball, albeit for six weeks as part of an undercover investigation. Crane wanted to hear all about that.

The food came; they ate. Over coffee, Crane settled back and gave Karp an appraising look, which Karp returned. Crane was a good-sized man in his early fifties, who exhibited the perpetual boyishness that seems to go with being a descendant of the Founding Fathers and rich. He had a sharp nose, no lips to speak of, light blue eyes, and graying ginger hair, which he wore swept straight back from his high, protuberant brow.

"So-to business," he said. "First, some background. What do you know about the JFK assassination?"

"Not much," said Karp. "Just what everybody knows."

"You haven't read the Warren Report?"

"Not really. Just the Times stuff and Cronkite on TV. Like everybody."

"All right. Let me say this. If the victim had been a minor dope dealer, and you had Lee Harvey Oswald in custody as a suspect, and the cops brought the evidence presented to the Warren Commission to you, as a homicide case, you would've laughed in their faces and given Oswald a walk. You wouldn't have even taken that trash to a grand jury. And they served this up on the most important homicide in American history."

"That bad, huh?"

Crane nodded. "Worse. All right, it's never been any big secret. As a result, almost from the start the Warren Commission has been under fire. Three main reasons."