Another possibility was a shot from above, directly down at the President as he passed in his convertible.
I was part of the crowd, just facing the wrong way, as I knocked on the front doors, getting no response. An after-hours buzzer did no good, either. The crowd’s giddy excitement-loud talk and shrill yelling and hysterical laughter-made a collective cacophony that created an anxious edge in me that I needed to shake. Glad to get away from them, I headed around to the rear of the building and found a loading dock, and climbed up there and pounded on another door.
A guy finally answered, a scrawny character in his fifties in overalls and gray stubble, who made about as good a security guard as a kid with a cap pistol, only he didn’t have a cap pistol.
Of course, he wasn’t a security guard at all, just a janitor, and he took about two seconds to glance at my Justice Department credentials before letting me in.
We stood in a cement stairwell and echoed at each other.
“Anybody else in the building, Pop?” I asked.
“No, sir. Just me, the rats, and the roaches.”
“Nobody came around today, wanting to get in to watch the President’s parade from the fifty-yard line?”
He shook his head. “That’s not allowed. Maybe you know the Secret Service came by earlier in the week, had a look around, and said, on the motorcade morning? Keep anybody but employees oh-you-tee. Last minute yesterday, bosses here decided just to shut down for the day.”
I gestured toward the cement stairs with their metal railing. “Can I get to every floor from these?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doors locked on the landings?”
“No, sir.”
“Okay. Listen, nobody else gets in unless they have credentials that say Secret Service or Chicago PD. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How do I get to the roof?”
“There’s a door on the warehouse floor. That’s the top floor. Eight. I can show you.”
“No. But thank you, Pop.”
What the hell was I calling him “Pop” for? He was probably my age.…
I headed up. Eight floors was a lot to search, and a sniper-depending on whether he wanted to hit Lancer coming off the expressway ramp or wait till the target moved past the building-could be just about anywhere, on just about any floor.
My hunch, however, was that the shooting post of choice would either be the warehouse floor or the roof-either should provide the kind of privacy a shooter would need. True, no other employees were around today; but when the plan had been formulated, the assumption would have been that Saturday was a workday at IPP. And they would stick to plan. Popping the President from the third-floor window, with Vallee surrounded by thirty or more other print-plant employees, would not have been a contingency.
I decided to take the warehouse floor first. As I climbed, I got out the nine-millimeter, releasing the safety.
So we had two of the four assassins in custody-or was it five? The fifth assassin, Vallee, would be under surveillance, unless-in the confusion of the IPP plant’s taking the day off at the last second-the screwed-up little ex-Marine had slipped his tail. Where better for him to make his stand than his workplace, where he either had a key or had made sure to get one. A familiar setting for him to use as the stage for his John Wilkes Booth performance.
Was Vallee part of the Cuban/white-trash team? Or was he acting of his own twisted accord?
That bothered me. Either way you read it, something seemed wrong-Vallee as another ex-soldier in bed with those Cubans, or Vallee as just another lone nut.
Even as a lone nut, however, a guy like Vallee was not some frenzied maniac racing across a hallway or an intersection, waving a cheap pistol, careening suicidally into the waiting armed arms of the Secret Service. No-Vallee, those Cubans, and the other ex-soldier boys were all cool, calculating, military-trained killers. With loaded rifles. With sniper scopes.
And the President would be here soon.
The door opened onto a vast expanse of giant paper rolls, stacked oversize cartons, and piled metal plates, a city of paper supplies with avenues wide enough to accommodate a forklift, two of which were at rest nearby, like small slumbering dinosaurs. Also nearby were the wood-slatted doors of a big old-fashioned freight elevator.
The ceiling was high and open-beamed and the lights were off, sunshine filtering lazily through the many windows like bright mote-floating fog.
Moving slowly across the wooden floor, with the nine-mil ready, I kept my back to a wall of looming paper rolls. No ink smell up here, more like a lumberyard scent. I felt Vallee-or whoever the sniper might be-would more likely be on the roof; but I could take no chances. Down at the end of this aisle (they were aligned with the narrow sides of the building’s rectangle) I could make out several of the windows onto Jackson.
No one perched to shoot down there.
And when I reached the end of that aisle, window upon window with views onto Jackson presented no Vallee, no anybody, waiting with a rifle. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
At the left, however, down at the West corner of the building, some cartons had been piled in an orderly fashion, though not following the layout of the rest of this warehouse floor. This had a homemade, temporary look to it, like some kid had made a fort out of thirty or forty cartons, walling himself in, making a little room with six-foot paper-carton walls. Behind those walls would be the corner windows, including at least one looking across the intersection of Jackson and Des Plaines.
What you might call a sniper’s nest.
I have never moved more slowly. More cautiously. More silently. I was glad to be wearing Hush Puppies with their rubber soles, though socks might have been better. If a foot chase developed, though, particularly on this wood floor, a slip in socks could put you on your ass.
So I eased down past the half-dozen mouths of aisles in IPP’s paper city, until I had neared the three-walled makeshift room surrounding the corner windows. Space on both sides of the stacked-carton fortress had been left to allow entry and exit.
I did not hear any movement from another human being. I did not hear heavy breathing or a cough or a rustle of clothing, much less someone loading a weapon.
Had this sniper’s nest been prepared earlier, and the shooter not yet taken his position?
That possibility seemed very real.
When I swung around into the open space, however, there he sat, Indian-style, his arms folded, as he watched out that window. Waiting patiently. A rifle with a scope was propped on a little stand, an M-1 like Vallee’s.
But this wasn’t Vallee.
Perched there maybe six feet away from me was the white soldier boy who somewhat resembled Vallee, in a white T-shirt and plaid shirt with its sleeves rolled up and blue jeans and sneakers. He had a blond butch and he was chewing a toothpick and he was wearing Ray-Bans.
White trash in blue jeans and green sunglasses.
“On your feet,” I said. “Hands up. Nice and easy, son.…”
He just looked up at me. Bland as toast. As unconcerned as a lion regarding a cricket.
Finally he nodded, started to slowly rise, then lurched for the rifle, and damn he was fast, because that long barrel was staring right up at me when I cracked a Ray-Ban lens by putting a bullet through it.
It stood him up straight, that eyeglass lens cracking like an eggshell, weeping a single red tear, and it was damn near comical, like he was coming to attention and preparing to salute when instead he just flopped facedown at my feet and showed me the nasty wet hole where the nine-mil slug had made its exit.
I removed the M-1 from his limp grasp, then yanked him by an arm and dragged him out of the nest.
There would be at least two shooters. Why hadn’t this guy been Vallee? This was Vallee’s building. Or had the mentally disturbed ex-Marine been some sort of decoy? In which case, with the Cubans in custody, one other white-boy shooter was out there.
Just one.
I knelt in the window and looked around at the buildings of the intersection. My eyes searched windows and rooftops.
Then just across Des Plaines, on the five-story building across from me, I saw him.
Again, not Vallee.
It was the white boy with the black butch and he was emerging from a rooftop doorway, staying low, scoped rifle in hand, heading to the roof’s edge.
Should I go over there?
Should I call it in?
The President wasn’t due for a while yet. But what if the rooftop shooter didn’t get a scheduled signal from his now-dead cohort, and decided to light out, or find some alternate position? A lot could happen by the time I left the eighth floor of IPP and got across Des Plaines and made my way to that rooftop.
I waited till he was in position near the building’s edge, where the lip came up and gave him a resting place for his weapon, and I lined him up in the M-1’s cross hairs.
When I fired, the report of the rifle was just a minor whip crack in the morning, probably dismissed by one and all as a festive firecracker or maybe a car backfiring or some other unidentified city sound, even the indistinct blare of a sound truck down the street, making some announcement or other, possibly for a new pizza place or perhaps Stop the World, I Want to Get Off at the Shubert.
That is, dismissed as such by everyone but the sniper who the M-1 round had caught in the neck. I hadn’t handled a rifle since the Pacific, and been trying for his head and came close. I hadn’t intended for him to die that way, rolling around unable to scream with his hands clutching his throat as he strangled in his own blood.
But it served the purpose.
I was on my feet, wondering what to do next, when I could finally make out the sound truck’s blare: “The President’s appearance has been canceled! We are sorry to announce, President Kennedy’s Chicago trip has been canceled! A parade featuring other dignitaries will go on as scheduled. The President’s appearance has been…”
Might have told me before I went to all this trouble.
CHAPTER 19
Near the freight elevators was a little office area where I used a wall phone. No police sirens cut the air-just those sound trucks, which a glance out a window told me were actually police cars with uniformed cops hanging out rider’s windows with bullhorns to announce the President’s cancelation.
As for the cancelation of those two snipers, no sign that anyone had noticed any part of that episode presented itself. The warehouse area on West Jackson was really just a bunch of empty buildings-IPP working on Saturdays was the exception not the rule around here-and anybody normally in those buildings had probably been down lining the sidewalks waiting for the motorcade. As far as I could tell, no other buildings or even the expressway had a view of that rooftop, where the body of the black-butch sniper was just a vague shape near a rooftop edge, anyway.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to considering just digging out that nine-millimeter slug from the wooden floor, where it had deposited itself after traveling through the blond assassin’s Ray-Bans and brain, and wiping down the M-1 I’d borrowed to eliminate the other assassin, and fuck it, walk away. Wasn’t like that janitor was liable to provide much of a description of me.
But I was law enforcement today, not the free agent I usually was, and I had a responsibility to Bobby Kennedy and even these great United States. Besides, it was odds on that this would be covered up-that neither the Justice Department nor the Secret Service would want word getting out that two assassins were killed while lying in wait for a Presidential parade. Not good press. Not good press at all.
So what to do?
I called the Cook County sheriff’s office and asked for Dick Cain, knowing he’d be out in the field, maybe Soldier Field, still caught up in this presidential trip that wasn’t happening.
“Patch me through,” I said. “Tell him it’s Nate Heller and that it’s important.”
Getting Cain took five minutes that only felt like five hours. The small solace was that in the meantime nobody came running up the stairs with guns to arrest me or kill me or anything. Two dead, and even the janitor hadn’t noticed, which was no surprise.
“Nate,” Dick said, outdoors apparently, maybe using the radio mike in his car, “what is it?”
I told him what had happened.
“First,” he said, “change your story. What went down with the first sniper, don’t change a thing. That’s heroic stuff, my friend. But the second guy? Best say that you looked through the sniper scope, saw that other sniper aiming back at you, and fired in self-defense.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding to myself. I probably would have come up with that myself on the walk back to the Federal Building, but I thanked Dick for the advice and pledged I’d take it.
“Second,” he said, “why the hell are you calling me? I’m with the Cook County Sheriff, in case you forgot.”
“I need these shooting scenes secured before I go back and tell Martineau how I saved the President from getting shot on the trip he didn’t take.”
“Oh. See what you mean. You can’t risk either of those bodies being found and this thing spiraling out of control.”
I was nodding again, like the phone had eyes. “This can’t go public till we know what the official story’s going to be. I could go downstairs and find a cop easy enough-that motorcade’s going on without Kennedy, for some reason, which means there’s still crowd control down there. But I’d have to take potluck.”
“And in Commissioner Wilson’s brave new world, when you call a cop, how do you know what you’re getting? I follow you. You want me to send some of my boys over, or reach out to dependable fellas on the PD?”
“I’ll leave that to you, Dick.”
“Consider it done.”
“So then … I can just walk away?”
“Yeah. You go fill Martineau in. He’s probably back by now-he left O’Hare when the call came from D.C., canceling.”
“Is that where you are, O’Hare?”
“Yeah. We still have Senators Dirksen and Douglas taking the motorcade into town, plus Justice Goldberg, Bob Kennedy’s guy Katzenbach, a few other dimly lit luminaries. Nice to know that even if the President can’t make it, the crowds can go wild getting a load of the comptroller of the currency.”
I laughed at that. “Yeah. And what teenage girl doesn’t go to bed dreaming about Everett Dirksen? Listen, Dick, thanks for this. I knew you were the right guy to call.”
So I took the stairs down, did not encounter the janitor on the way out, and headed back for the Federal Building. Sunny but cool, the walk felt good.
When I got to the ninth-floor offices of the Secret Service, the bullpen was about half full, guys pulled back in from duty that no longer mattered. Martineau’s office blinds were down, but he proved to be home.
I stuck my head in. “Marty, got a few minutes?”
He looked none the worse for wear, after this frantic, stressful morning, working at his desk in his suit coat. Those wiggle-worm eyebrows made his frown look unfriendly, but that was more concern than anything.
“Nate, where the hell have you been?”
I shut the door behind me, went over and sat across from him, feeling very much like a juvie reporting to the high-school principal. I kept the report short and factual, except for the self-defense aspect Dick Cain had suggested, and as dry and humorless as if I’d been a Secret Service agent all my career. Easy to play it straight when the cordite is still clinging inside your nostrils.
Throughout, the broad-shouldered chief was rocking gently in his big swivel chair, his hands tented before him. His expression remained blank but for eyes that were moving in thought. When I’d finished my report, I didn’t prompt him for a reaction. He would give it to me in due time.
Finally Martineau leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk and clasping his hands, as if we were about to say grace. I hoped I wasn’t the meal.
“Chief Cain has secured the scene?
”
“If not, he soon will have. Either with his own SIU guys or with reliable PD.”
His sigh damn near ruffled papers on his desk. “Nate, you did the right thing. You may have saved the President’s life … yes, I know he canceled, but having two armed, trained assassins floating around out there, with Lancer as their target, would be unacceptable. We might prefer them in custody…”
Interesting choice: might prefer to have them in custody.
“… but we certainly like having them out of the game. You did well calling Chief Cain. I didn’t realize you were aware of his special status.”
“What special status is that?”
Martineau shrugged. “I don’t entirely know, I was just told to work with him on this Presidential visit. He apparently is a government asset. I would assume of the Company. Both the Cook County Sheriff’s Department and the Chicago PD have a strong working relationship with the CIA, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
That seemed to faintly amuse him. “In this day and age, Nate? Local police in big cities routinely take specialized counterintelligence training with the spooks. Anyway, Cain will help us make this go away.”
I’d been right. This would be covered up.
Martineau sighed again, not so big this time. “The President has a number of scheduled trips on the docket, and I’ve already spoken to your boss-Robert Kennedy, I mean-and he wants no publicity on this assassination plot.”
That didn’t surprise me.
“What about Vallee?” I asked. “Is he still loose out there?”
Martineau’s head snapped back a little and he grinned. “No, didn’t anyone tell you? He’s in Interview One, right now. Lieutenant Gross and Sergeant Shoppa brought him in about fifteen minutes ago. We haven’t even had time to question him.”
“You mean, he’s not a priority anymore?”
“Not really. Just another crank. We’ve had other fish to fry-actually, we’ve already had an agents’ meeting about the general situation.”
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