He took three shots a night-no more, no less.

He switched from whisky to straight gin. The bum compensated for the scant volume.

Three shots tweaked his hatreds. Four shots and up cut those hatreds all the way loose.

Three shots said, You project danger. Four shots or more said, You’re ugly and you limp.

He always drank facing his hallway mirror. The glass was chipped and cracked-his new apartment was furnished on the cheap.

Littell knocked the shots back, one-two-three. The glow let him spar with himself.

You’re two days shy of forty-eight years old. Helen left you. J. Edgar Hoover fucked you-you fucked him and he fucked you back much more efficaciously.

You risked your life for nothing. Robert F. Kennedy shunned you. You went to hell and back for a form-letter rejection.

You tried to contact Bobby in person. Yes-men showed you out. You sent four notes to Bobby. All four went unanswered.

Kemper tried to get you work at the Justice Department. Bobby nixed it-the alleged Hoover hater kowtowed to Hoover. Hoover put the fix in: No law firm or law school will employ you.

Kemper knows you’ve got the Fund books. His fear defines your bond now.

You went to a Jesuit retreat in Milwaukee. Newspapers lauded your burglary daring: MYSTERY ART THIEF TEARS LAKE GENEVA ESTATE DOWN! You did odd jobs for the monsignor and imposed your own code of silence.

You boiled the booze out. You put on some muscle. You studied cryptography texts. Prayer told you who to hate and who to forgive.

You read a Chicago Trib obit: Court Meade died of a massive heart attack. You toured old haunts. The foster homes you grew up in were still churning out Jesuit robots.

You’re licensed to practice in D.C. Hoover left you an escape hatch-in his own backyard.

The move east was invigorating. Washington law firms seeking applicants were shocked by your Commie pedigree.

Kemper comes through. Egalitarian Kemper was still friendly with old car-thief confreres. Car thieves were prone to Federal indictments and always in need of cheap representation.

Car thieves brought you occasional work-enough to sustain an apartment and three shots a night.

Kemper called to chat. He never mentioned the Fund books. You can’t hate a man so high up on a ledge. You can’t hate a man so immune to hatred himself.

He gave you great gifts. They compensate for his betrayals.

Kemper calls his civil rights work “moving.” It’s that cheap noblesse oblige the Kennedys evince so condescendingly.

You hate the mass seduction that Joe Kennedy financed. Your foster fathers bought you one cheap toy per Christmas. Joe bought his sons the world with cancerous money.

Prayer taught you to hate falsehood. Prayer gave you insight. Prayer was like a choke hold on mendacity.

You see the President’s face and see through it. You see Jimmy Hoffa skate on Sun Valley charges-a newsman cites insufficient evidence.

You hold numbers to reverse that injustice. You hold numbers to indict the Kennedy seduction.

You can break the remaining Fund code. You can expose the Robber Baron and his son the Priapic Boy Fьhrer.

Littell got out his cryptography books. Three shots a night taught him this:

You’re down, but you’re capable of anything.

Bobby held the floor. Fourteen lawyers pulled chairs up and balanced notebooks and ashtrays on their knees.

The briefing room was drafty. Kemper leaned against the back wall with his topcoat slung over his shoulders.

The AG brayed-there was no need to get close. He had free time-a storm delayed his flight to Alabama.

Bobby said, “You know why I called you in, and you know what your basic job is. I’ve been tied up in red tape since the Inauguration, so I haven’t been able to get to the applicable case files, and I’ve decided to let you do that on your own. You’re the Organized Crime Unit, and you know what your mandate is. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to dawdle any longer.”

The men got out pens and pencils. Bobby straddled a chair in front of them.

“We’ve got lawyers and investigators of our own, and any attorney worth his salt is also a catch-as-catch-can investigator. We’ve got FBI agents we can utilize as needed, if I can convince Mr. Hoover to shift his priorities a bit. He’s still convinced that domestic Communists are more dangerous than organized crime, and I think that making the FBI more cooperative is going to be a major obstacle to overcome.”

The men laughed. An ex-McClellan cop said, “We shall overcome.”

Bobby loosened his tie. “We shall. And roving counsel Kemper Boyd, who’s spying from the peanut gallery, will overcome racial exclusion practices in the South. I won’t ask Mr. Boyd to join us, because skulking at the back of the room is very much his modus operandi.”

Kemper waved. “I’m a spy.”

Bobby waved back. “The President has always contended that.”

Kemper laughed. Bobby half-ass liked him now-breaking off with Laura clinched it. Claire and Laura stayed close-he got regular updates from New York.

Bobby said, “Enough bulishit. The McClellan Committee hearings have provided us with a hit list, and at the top we’ve got Jimmy Hoffa, Sam Giancana, Johnny Rosselli and Carlos Marcello. I want the IRS files on these men pulled, and I want the intelligence files of the Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Cleveland and Tampa PDs combed for mention of them. I also want probable-cause briefs written, so that we can subpoena their financial books and personal records.”

A man said, “What about Hoffa specifically? He got hungjuried on Sun Valley, but there’s got to be other approaches we can use.”

Bobby rolled up his sleeves. “A hung jury first time out means an acquittal next time. I’ve given up hope of tracing the Spooky Three Million, and I’m starting to think that the so-called ‘Real’ Pension Fund books are nothing but a pipe dream. I think we need to impanel grand juries and deluge them with Hoffa evidence. And while we’re at it, I want to pass a Federal law requiring all municipal PDs to obtain Justice Department writs to implement their wiretaps, so that we can have access to every bit of wiretap intelligence seized nationwide.”

The men cheered. An old McClellanite threw some mock punches.

Bobby stood up. “I found an old deportation order on Carlos Marcello. He was born in Tunis, North Africa, of Italian parents, but he’s got a phony Guatemalan birth certificate. I want to deport him to Guatemala, and I want to do it danm soon.”

Kemper broke a little lightweight sweat-