"Um, Bert, slow down. You're making the assumption that I'm gonna do this thing. I haven't decided I am yet. I still have a lot of questions."

Crane opened his mouth to speak and then checked himself. Karp saw him shoot a quick glance at Lerner across the table. Crane smiled and said, "Sorry, my enthusiasm runs away with me. Of course, you have questions, and I just broke my own rule about assumptions. Please-ask away."

He waited, smiling. Karp said, "Okay, first, why me? If you're really serious about digging up these old cans of worms, you're going to need somebody who knows his way around politics. That's not my strong point, as I'm sure Joe will tell you." Karp glanced toward Lerner, who returned a cool, ironic look.

"Second, I'm not sure why you think you can get to the truth in this Kennedy thing. You know as well as I do that the chances of solving a homicide go into the toilet after a week, much less a year, much less-what is it?-thirteen years. I'm trying to think of a New York homicide case that got solved after that long and I can only come up with one."

"Hoffmeyer," said Lerner.

"Yeah, Hoffmeyer. Killed his wife, the cops loved him for it, but they couldn't find the corpse. Confessed out of remorse after fifteen years."

"He fed her to his dogs and ground the bones up into the Redi-mix for the patio," said Lerner.

"He did. Oh, yeah, I forgot the serial cases. The Mad Bomber. We catch a guy with an MO used in an old case, we can clear it-sometimes. So-either, you got a guy trying to kill the current president in Dallas with a mail-order Italian rifle, or somebody's confessed, which I haven't heard about either of them. Or, maybe the job is to make a show of activity around this to cool down the Mark Lane types. In which case, I'm also the wrong guy."