Excerpt from November Road by Lou Berney, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Maybe they were," Guidry said. "Maybe they worked for J. Edgar Hoover."

"I'll say it once more, because we're such old friends. Don't worry. The authorities have their man, don't they?"

"It's just the cops in Dallas, and they only think they have their man."

Guidry knew that the FBI would never buy Oswald, not for a minute. C'mon. They'd start digging, and he'd start gabbing. No. Check that. The feds were already digging, and Oswald was already gabbing.

"He won't be a problem," Seraphine said.

Oswald. That little rat face, vaguely familiar. Guidry thought he might have seen him around town at some point. "So you can tell the future now?" he said.

"His."

"Where's the Eldorado?" Guidry said. Seraphine could reassure him till she was blue in the face, but he wouldn't be safe from the feds until that car disappeared forever. The Eldorado was the one piece of physical evidence that linked him to the assassination.

"On its way to Houston," she said, "as we speak."

"If your fella with the eagle eye gets pulled over by the cops ..."

"He won't." Her smile a bit less serene this time. The Eldorado was also the one piece of physical evidence that linked Carlos to the assassination.

"And once the car's in Houston?" Guidry said.

"Someone trustworthy will send it to the bottom of the sea."

Guidry reached over the bar for the bottle of scotch. He felt better, a little. "Is that true?" he said. "About your father working here?"

She shrugged. The shrug meant, Yes, of course. Or it meant, No, don't be absurd.

"Who's dumping the car in Houston?" Guidry said. "Your fella who's driving it down?"

"No. He's needed elsewhere."

"So who, then?" Guidry, from his elevated perch in the organization, just a branch or two below Seraphine, knew most of Carlos's guys. Some were more reliable than others. "Whoever dumps it, you better be damn sure you can count on him."

"But of course," she said. "Uncle Carlos has complete faith in this man. Never once has he failed us."

Who? Guidry started to ask again. Instead he turned to stare at her. "Me?" he said. "No. I'm not going near that fucking car."

"No?"

"I'm not going near that fucking car, Seraphine." Guidry remembered to smile this time. "Not now, not a hundred years from now."

She shrugged again. "But, mon cher," she said, "in this matter who can we trust more than you? Who can you trust more?"

Only now did Guidry complete the arduous climb to the summit and, panting with exertion, realize just where Seraphine had led him. It had been her plan all along, he realized. Have Guidry stash the getaway Eldorado before the hit so that he'd be thoroughly motivated—his own ass on the line now—to get rid of the car afterward.

"Goddamn it," he said. But you had to admire the dazzling footwork, the elegance of the maneuver. Who needed to tell the future when you could create it yourself?

Out on the street, Seraphine handed him a plane ticket. "Your flight to Houston leaves tomorrow," she said. "You'll have to miss your Saturday-morning cartoons, I'm afraid. The car will be left for you downtown, in a pay lot across the street from the Rice Hotel."

"What then?" he said.

"There's a decommissioned-tank terminal on the ship channel. Take La Porte Road east. Keep going after you pass the Humble Oil refinery. You'll see an unmarked road about a mile on."

What if the feds had already found the Eldorado? They'd sit on it, of course. They'd wait for some poor idiot to show up and claim it.

"In the evening you'll have all the privacy you need," she said. "The ship channel is forty feet deep. Afterward walk half a mile up La Porte. There's a filling station with a phone. You can call a cab from there. And me."

Excerpted from November Road by Lou Berney. Copyright © 2018 by Lou Berney. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.