Corruption of Blood Read Online Free Page B

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.”
    He held up a big, freckled hand and counted on his fingers.
    “One, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that even if the conclusions of the commission happened to be correct, no legitimate case had been presented. The chain of evidence for critical material was a hopeless mess. The autopsy was a joke. There was no follow-up on possibly critical witnesses. Two: The conclusions are inherently implausible. The existing amateur film of the actual assassination locks in the time sequence of the shots striking Kennedy, which means that if you want all the shots to come from Oswald’s rifle you have to make some fairly hairy assumptions about what happened to the three shots Warren assumed that Oswald got off. The magic bullet and all that—you remember the magic bullet? Also, ‘assumed’ is a word I don’t like hearing around homicide investigations, but that’s nearly all Warren is made of. Look—you know and I know that crazy things can happen to bullets. I wouldn’t want to rule anything out a priori. But you also know that if you’re going to make a claim that a missile did a bunch of things that no missile is likely to have done, then your ballistics and your forensics have to be immaculate. Which in this case they are distinctly not. Three—and this is the tough one. It wasn’t some junkie who got killed—it was the president of the United States, a man with important political enemies, some of whom may have been involved in the investigation itself. Then we have the supposed assassin, who is not your garden-variety nut, but a former radar operator with a security clearance who defected to the Soviet Union, who was involved with Cuban weirdos, who had a Russian wife, and who was killed in police custody by a guy who had close ties with organized crime.”
    Crane paused, looking at Karp. A cue. “You mean the conspiracy angle,” Karp said.
    “Yes, indeed, the conspiracy angle. JFK was killed by the CIA, the FBI, the Cuban right, the Cuban commies, the Russian commies, the Mob, or any three working in combination. There’s a vast literature on the subject ranging from the plausible to the insane. You’ll have to go through it all, along with the original Warren material, of course—”
    “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