The Accidental Pallbearer by Frank Lentricchia

he wasn’t faking it all the way through? The plan included hospitalization. Why not?”
    “I thought of that, Detective. His doctor was Ronald Sheehan. Ring any bells?”
    “I’ve heard the name, but not for some time.”
    “You’ve heard the name because he was the most esteemed physician in the area. Honorary degrees, Syracuse and Cornell. You haven’t heard his name for some time because he was killed in a one-car accident four months after the assassinations. Your father, who was his patient, delivered the eulogy at Saint Louis Gonzaga, the church where all the faithful Lebanese attend.”
    “Eventually you must have talked to DePellaccio.”
    “I intended to, naturally, but I was too late.”
    “I did a search on him – natural causes according to the obit. When would that have been? Not long after the hospitalization?”
    “A week later. Heart attack is how the family wanted it reported. It was suicide. By hanging. In his attic. According to my source in the coroner’s office.”
    “These deaths … this isn’t a paranoid movie conspiracy.”
    “I entertained the thought. Occasionally still do. Where’s the evidence, Detective? Good luck.”
    “You were not at the scene of the van accident, obviously.”
    “No. There were three witnesses, whom I interviewed.”
    “You interviewed the driver of the bus and the policeman driving the van?”
    “Those were not witnesses, Detective, but I did interview Frank Doolin, you remember Frank? Former mayor, friend of your father’s, the bus driver. How the mighty fall. Frank said he had the green light, so did some of his riders, who came forward to see me down at the paper.”
    “And the van driver? You talked to him?”
    “No. Chief Criggy put a clamp on it. Told me when I requested that these good men didn’t deserve such publicity. He wouldn’t release the names.”
    “I can’t believe a reporter of your, uh …”
    “Astuteness?”
    Conte toasts the Polish Prince.
    “You dug into it, Rudy, I know you did, and determined the name of the driver of the van, didn’t you?”
    “I didn’t have to dig, Eliot – someone came to see me, at home, no less, that night, and told me who it was.”
    The Polish Prince sips his wine, enjoying the feeling that he has Conte on the edge of his seat.
    Conte says, “But that name never appeared in print, either, as far as I know.”
    “He spoke on condition that his anonymity would be preserved. Said he feared for his job and his life.”
    “Would you like to tell me, Rudy?”
    “Absolutely, Detective. It gives me pleasure to know that you’re looking into the source of the stench. The man who came to see me is our current assistant chief of police, Michael Coca. The man who was driving the van is our current chief – your pal, Antonio Robinson. At the time, I believethey were both corporals. Buddies. Ambitious and on the rise.”
    Conte breathes out heavily. “You see something dirty, Rudy?”
    “Do you? I think you do.”
    “Some petty jealousy might be all it is, Rudy. Maybe they were rivals of some sort.”
    “No idea, Detective. What Coca told me was that the light was red – that the van stopped at the light and when the bus hit the intersection the van lurched hard forward – perfectly timed to crash the bus broadside.”
    “Robinson was maybe spaced out and didn’t –” Conte cuts himself off, feigns a shrug. “Maybe Coca lied about the red light.”
    “Maybe. Maybe. I’m not a grassy-knoll type, except the three witnesses I mentioned had no doubts about the van and the red light and there were no discrepancies among their accounts.”
    “Their names never appeared in your story. Edited out?”
    “Yep.”
    “Your editor’s rationale?”
    “He wouldn’t give me one.”
    (“Grassy knoll” – not an allusion lost on Conte, who’d written an essay at UCLA on novels about the JFK assassination and its major, explanatory conspiracy theory. When asked by his professor if he, himself,