A Federal Offense by Larry L. Lynch

CHAPTER  TWO Wednesday June 5, 1968 ANSWERING THE CALL             The phone jolted Angie Hawkins into semi-consciousness. She tried to clear the martinis and focus her mind.             Her first emotion, before pondering who was at the other end of the line, was one she had gone to sleep with – anger. She knew better than to blame Frankie Manzzirie, the Post’s assistant librarian.  Frankie believed he had good reasons for his obsession with the bizarre death of Nick Hays and  the few conspiracy theorists who labored to tie Hays’ death to President Kennedy’s assassination.  Frankie was also obsessed with the detectives who had gotten Hays killed with their gunplay. Neither of the pricks had gone to jail; both had quickly entered guilty pleas and gotten probation. And the Warren Commission had refused to even consider the possibility that Hays’ death might have been linked to JFK. After all, Hays had just returned from Dallas and Jack Ruby’s trial. Frankie constantly b

CHAPTER ONE Wednesday, April 22, 1964 Nick Hays sat alone in the press room of the Long Beach Police Department.   He was bored, still coming down from his latest trip to Dallas, where he had covered the strange trial of the mobster who killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Nick had always loved his job as the night cop house reporter for the Long Beach Post. Now it seemed like a comedown from clamoring crowds and cameras, down to dirty linoleum floors and midnight silence. To stay awake, he pulled a hard-boiled crime novel, “Stop This Man,” from his battered desk ’ s top drawer, tipped back his chair and hooked his heels over his typewriter. He was deep into the tale of a three-time loser trying to steal a radioactive bar of gold when he heard the familiar voices of two detectives, Theo Knight and Frank Ragen, echoing down the long hallway. Knight and Ragen were exchanging the usual insults with another officer. “Shit,” Nick thought. They usually wanted to play cards and he just