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know how many people are supposed to have been in on the hit?’ I did. I had spent months researching every conceivable conspiracy theory for my book on the assassinations of the Kennedy Brothers. ‘E. Howard Hunt was an unsuccessful novelist, CIA operative and burglar. What makes you think he was a successful presidential assassin?’
    â€˜The same thing that made him unsuccessful in everything else. Complete lack of imagination. He never anticipated the consequences of anything he ever did, including JFK.’
    â€˜So how exactly did Hunt fit in?’
    â€˜The way every patsy does: He was pushed. Marginalized. There was no other place for him to go but with the conspirators. They were the only ones who would still have him after Bay of Pigs.’
    â€˜What was his role in Dallas?’
    â€˜He was the benchwarmer. The man who picked up the phone and put the suitcases on the plane. Always doing, never thinking. And then it blew up in his face.’ Tex leans forward, the stench of soda-masked booze saturating the air. ‘He was expecting a reward. But when he started to see what was happening to the witnesses . . . ’ The famous ‘murdered witnesses’ to the JFK Assassination, most of whom had actually died of natural causes. Jeetton shrugs with a gesture of helpless magnanimity. ‘He realized he was lucky to be spared.’ Some luck. When a president needed a leak fixed, Hunt was told to take his plumbing tools to the Watergate Building. Unlike Nixon, no one spared Hunt his prison time.
    Tex pulls out a crumpled piece of glossy newsprint, unfolding it carefully. There is a photo of three men being marched across a Dallas street by two escorting police officers. I recognize them instantly. The notorious Three Tramps, detained shortly after JFK’s assassination. Tex’s nicotine-stained fingers caress the photo. ‘The small one here is Hunt. This one up front was a Frenchman. And this one, in the middle? That’s Philip Hastings.’
    Ice from the machine rattles the silence. ‘The Philip Hastings from the Bannister case?’
    That’s one conspiracy theory I’ve never heard before. Tex nudges his glass towards me. That has to be a three-drink revelation. ‘One and the same.’ He taps the photo of the small Tramp. ‘Of course you know E. Howard Hunt was Deep Throat.’
    â€˜Deep Throat was Mark Felt.’ Felt was furious because he thought he was next in line to become FBI chief, and when he didn’t get the promotion, he started blabbing. Behind most whistle-blowers, there’s usually a backstory of paranoia, wounded pride and vengeance. ‘Everybody knows that.’
    Jeetton stares at me, his eyes hooded with alcohol and exasperation. ‘You liberal reporters come down here sniffing round for information . . . ’ Here we go. ‘ . . . And when you actually get it, you turn your noses up because it’s not what you want to hear.’ He looks into his glass, drains what dregs might still be lurking there amongst the caramel-coloured melting ice, the heat of his resentment flushing the too-small space between us. Normally he should be saying these things on a phone to a shock jock in a radio studio, not a stranger in a bar.
    â€˜It’s not because I don’t want to hear it; it’s because I know it’s wrong.’
    â€˜Because the
Washington Post
or the
New York Times
told you it’s wrong?’ He slams his glass down hard on the bar counter, making the stale peanuts jump in their miserable saucer. That’s it. He’s lost his free drinks after two rounds: a new record for Mr. Tex Jeetton. ‘You and your goddamn Political Correctness.’
    The tell-tale sign of the irredeemable bigot: the vicious sneer in the voice, like a death-choke, whenever they utter those two, detested words. Politically Correct. It deprives them of the easy racial epithets they’d