by Warren Adler
She was so absorbed in the catalogue that she did not hear him enter the room. His voice startled her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. He motioned her to a chair near the fireplace, over which hung the heroic version of his younger self. He was radiant, self-confident, in command of himself, not at all like the frightened man she had seen on inaugural night.
“I make an excellent martini,” he said, and went to the liquor table where the makings had been laid out. With a steady hand he presented her with a drink on a silver tray. He sat directly across from her.
“No problems over . . . her?” Her eyes gazed at the ceiling; her meaning was clear.
“A miracle,” he said, smiling. “I owe you my gratitude on that one. And Bruce as well.”
She averted his eyes and took a deep sip of her drink. If he didn’t already know that they had broken up, she wasn’t going to tell him. Besides, she thought testily, it was irrelevant to her visit.
“Now what can I do for you?” he said, flashing an ingratiating smile. She felt suddenly guilty, as if she were imposing on his privacy.
“Inadvertently,” she began, watching his face. His eyes met hers squarely. “You set me off on a journey.”
“How so?”
“We talked about the Mannlicher-Carcano and the three cartridges. Remember?”
“I do indeed.” He smiled, showing his even white teeth.
“Then you said ‘assassin.’ You used the term.”
“Yes?”
He waited calmly as she searched for words.
“It set off this long fuse.” He nodded. “And I followed it.”
“And where did it lead you?”
She looked at her hands. Her fingers seemed locked, like claws, holding back.
“Here.”
Her swift response confused her. Yet he remained poised, waiting for her to continue.
“I mean you seem to know so much about the subject.” She was fumbling her words, groping. “You know. About presidential assassinations.”
“Ah. I see.” He moved to the edge of his chair, his interest seemed piqued. “It’s a bit morbid, don’t you think?”
“No. I . . . I think it’s fascinating. They cause quite a hullaballoo for a time. Then people forget.”
“Until the act is repeated.”
“Yes. I suppose you’re right.” She hesitated, watching him. “How many out there would remember names like Guiteau or Czolgosz?” Again she paused.
“Or even Tippet,” she added. His face was bland, showing little reaction.
“Poor Officer Tippet,” Remington said.
“Booth seems to have achieved the name recognition he craved.”
“Well, he did want immortality.” He sipped his drink, his hand steady. “Do you suppose it was because his name is so easy to remember? Booth. Only one syllable. The others seem harder.”
Was she testing his knowledge? She searched for something esoteric.
“Garfield was shot with an English Bulldog.”
“A forty-four,” he said without missing a beat.
“You know that?”
“Oh, yes. He was shot at the old B and O Station.”
“Is it still there?”
He looked at her archly now. Then he puffed out his cheeks and let out a trill of laughter.
“You’re not serious.”
“I am serious,” she protested.
“They built the National Gallery of Art on the site.”
“You know that, too.”
“What is it? Privileged information?” His hand swept the walls. “It’s my thing. They should teach it in the schools.”
“Don’t they?”
“A cursory pass at it. They are a manifestation of something deep in our national psyche, a clue.”
For the first time, he seemed to drift off, his alertness fading. His eyes turned inward and he grew silent. For a moment she was confused. She felt inadequate. Intuition again. Not to be trusted.
“We have reason to believe,” she began, her heart thumping in her throat, “that there’s a killer loose who is replicating the assassinations of our Presidents. He’s choosing the same time, same date, same gun. Only the places are symbolic.”
“How imaginative,” he replied, alert again.
“But he’s killing innocent people.” Compared to Remington, she felt awkward, naive. What had she expected?
“What is tomorrow?” she asked. It seemed a last ditch ploy. Her clumsiness galled her. Why was she really here?
“Tomorrow?” He thought for a moment. “April fourteenth.”
“Exactly.”
“Why, that was the day that Booth shot Lincoln.”
It was maddening. Was he playing with her? Teasing?
“What kind of a man would do that?” she asked.
“Kill Lincoln?”
“No. Replicate his killing. It has to have some purpose, don’t you think?”
“Without question,” he said innocently, widening his blue eyes, which caught the glints of the afternoon sun. “Why bother otherwise?”
“Why, do you suppose?”
“Maybe he’s trying to tell us something.”
“Us?”
“The world.”
Aside from an intellectual interest, he seemed to betray no inner concern.
“Do you think he will go through with it?” she asked suddenly, hoping for some untoward reaction.
“Has he been on schedule up to now?”
His reaction was a disappointment.
“To the letter.”
“Do you think someone who had gone to all that trouble would stop now?” he asked, as if reading her mind.
“No. I don’t.”
“Then at the appropriate time, he’ll be there.”
“You still didn’t answer my question.”
“You mean about the kind of man?” So he had been listening intently. She didn’t know what to make of that.
“Yes.”
“What kind of men killed the four Presidents?”
“Loners. Men frustrated in their aspirations. Even Booth, who had everything . . .” She hesitated, watching him, his face still bland, the lines and planes offering a sculpted impenetrable visage. “There are psychiatric explanations, of course.”
“Oh.” His interest seemed to quicken.
“Paranoid schizophrenia seems to be the most frequently heard diagnosis. All of them had maladjusted sex lives. Oswald was having impotency problems. Booth was overcompensating. He had six pictures of various girls in his wallet. Guiteau had bad relationships with women. And Czolgosz didn’t appear to have any. There are some theories that portray all four as repressed homosexuals . . .”
She thought she saw a brief tic in his jaw, something uncontrollable, a tiny palpitation. Perhaps it is the light, she thought. But when it came again, she was alert to it. Something was stirring inside of him. He could not quite get it under control. To mask it, he began what seemed to her, a little stage business. Standing up, he moved to the liquor table and mixed up another batch of martinis, lifting one in her direction after he had filled it. She nodded no and he shrugged and began sipping. Somehow he had gotten the palpitation under control.
“The theory goes that the gun itself, the phallic symbol and the target, the President, represents the ultimate proof of the gender.”
“Too bad psychiatry is not an exact science,” he said, returning to his chair and crossing his legs. One foot dangled in the air. It had not done so earlier. He seemed to be waiting for her now. She groped for something rapier-sharp, something to puncture the bland facade. She felt her brain overheating again, regretting that she had not accepted the second martini.
“Would you have liked to be President?” she asked. In the long silence she could hear the relentless tick-tock of the antique grandfather clock in the hallway. Again, the palpitation began in his jaw.
“Yes. I would have liked that.” He sighed. “But it wasn
’t in the cards. We tried.”
“We?”
Again the palpitation.
“A collective pronoun,” he said, smiling. “Often used as a euphemism, seems more modest.” He was going to great pains to explain it. The eggplant had simply used it possessively, encapsulating them. Remington felt the further need to justify it. As if he had revealed something hidden, something he did not want revealed. Finally he said:
“Doesn’t every mother want her son to be President?”
His foot was now beating a rhythm in the air. The palpitation continued, growing stronger as the declining light left deeper shadows on the planes of his face. Suddenly, he looked at his watch and got up.
“Another cocktail party,” he said, offering the charming shy smile. “I’m caught in the Washington whirl.”
She stood up awkwardly, still watching his face. Their flesh touched. His hand was strong and she gripped it hard, grasped it, as if the touch of it could transfer the information she sought. He was trying to disengage. She felt that, but continued to hold it.
“I hope you get your man,” he said.
He walked her toward the door, gently nudging her elbow.
“If I can be of further help,” he said, kissing her cheek. The kiss singed her flesh.
He closed the door behind her. What had she learned? she wondered; she was confused by the encounter. Something still nagged at her, uncontrollable, persistent. No! Not possible! You women and your fucking intuition. The eggplant’s words echoed in her mind as she turned the ignition. The angry squeak of the tires as she pulled out reinforced the rebuke.
28
FROM across his desk the eggplant offered a tight thin smile. The meeting was scheduled in the department auditorium in ten minutes, but he had called them in, she suspected, for further reassurance. Jefferson stood beside her, his big black ham hands crossed awkwardly in front of him, feet astride, at parade rest. Like her, she was certain, his sense of anticipation was acute. Earlier he had opened his jacket and patted the Magnum, holstered beneath his right armpit.
“I want the first clear shot,” he said.
If he shows, she thought. She had wrestled with this doubt for the past twenty-four hours. The pattern was irrevocable. It was the heart of her theory. Hadn’t Remington agreed?
“If we’re wrong, I’ve had it,” the eggplant said. “And if I’ve had it, you’re going to have it.”
“They’re in it upstairs, too,” she said, feeling the bile rise in her throat.
“The bigshots always have a way of getting out of it,” he sighed. “Anyway, we got our head. The ball is in our court.” He put his elbow on the desk and cocked a finger at both of them. “I want this dude alive. You hear that, Jefferson?”
“You mean wait until he gets off his round?”
“It’s only one shot,” the eggplant said, lowering his voice.
“It’s going to be a head wound, probably fatal,” Fiona explained.
“I’m not saying that we deliberately let it happen.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying . . .” He was trying to keep his patience. “That . . . we get him alive. That’s all I’m saying. The chances are he’ll get his round off before he’s spotted. That’s what I’m saying.” He waved his finger. “Of course, the only real evidence will be if he gets off his round.”
“And blows some poor joker’s head off,” Jefferson snarled.
“You just keep that Magnum’s fly buttoned.” The eggplant’s finger wiggled ominously. So he knew about that, Fiona thought. Maybe he wasn’t quite the eggplant she imagined. Suddenly he softened. “Look, you got to trade off something. We want him alive to prove the other three killings. It makes sense. It’s still just theory unless we sweat out a confession or work out a bona fide connection. We don’t know if we’ll find the weapons. The only sure thing is to keep the fucker alive.”
“That means that some poor joker is going to die,” Fiona said.
“Don’t presuppose,” the eggplant said with surprising gentleness. “I know,” he whispered. A whiff of guilt mingled with her own. The scenario had to be played out. Perhaps that, too, was ordained. Someone had to die. There simply might be no alternative.
“We’re going to have twenty people in plainclothes in all seven downtown theaters, with more than a hundred uniformed men in reserve. At least, the principal bases will be covered.”
“What do they know?” Fiona asked.
“Only that we’re after a screwball with a gun. A crazy.”
“And how are they going to know that the crazy only has a single round? You want to take that responsibility?”
“Don’t think I slept so good last night.”
“Booth had two Colts on him. And a knife,” Fiona said.
“I know.”
“Nobody in their right mind wants to commit suicide. Even a cop.”
“Maybe we should spell out the theory?”
“Absolutely not. It’s not part of the deal. The upstairs boys don’t want to look like horses asses if it blows up in our faces. It’s one step at a time.”
They were already late. The eggplant stood up and started out the door. In the squad room, he paused.
“Being a smartass has its drawbacks,” he said, confronting her directly. She could see his agony. “It’s just a job, FitzGerald. Just a fucking job.”
The meeting broke up at six and the various teams fanned out to the theaters.
“Reminds me of Nam,” Jefferson told her as they scurried for their cars. “Nothing worked then neither.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist.”
A command post was set up in a room off the lower level of Ford’s Theater, under a nest of pipes. Communications specialists had worked all day and the eggplant’s voice rattled over the airwaves, staticy but clear enough. When they arrived at the post, the eggplant was already there. She was surprised to find Dr. Benton.
“You don’t expect me to miss it, do you?”
He sat quietly in a folding chair, his arms crossed over his chest.
The theater managements had been alerted. Tickets to strategic seats were procured and plainclothesmen were stationed in various parts of the theaters. Because of their special position in the case, Fiona and Jefferson were given no specific assignment. They had agreed to roam, play it by ear, accessible to all theaters.
Fiona spotted Teddy standing in the shadows of the Presidential Box at Ford’s, decorated on the outside with bunting and a portrait of George Washington, exactly as it had been at the time of Lincoln’s death. The box, as a sign of respect, was never used, a memorial now. The theater itself had been rehabilitated a number of years ago and was operated as a museum and working theater under the sponsorship of the Department of the Interior.
Leaving Jefferson in the orchestra, she bounded up the stairs. Booth’s route. The thought was disturbing. She saw Teddy, who was obviously assigned there.
“What’s going down, Fi?”
“We’re looking for a crazy.”
“That I understand. It’s the MO that’s confusing.”
“Let’s hope it’s all clear in a few hours.”
She looked at her watch. It was nearly six. In another hour, the first patrons would be arriving. Standing in the box, near the rocking chair, authentically copied from the one Lincoln had actually sat in when he was shot, she sensed the historical connection and the span of dissolved time. He had sat in this place, living his last moments of consciousness. It chilled her blood.
When doubts flashed across her mind, she tried to reason them away. Would the killer strike at Ford’s? It was the most authentic site. The performance was The Fantasticks, a light musical. Surely there would be moments of laughter. It was one of the points missed by the eggplant, and she activated her walkie-talkie to explain, as cryptically as she could, why each burst of laughter should be especially noted.
“Ten-four,” the eggplant’s voice crackled after his acknowledgm
ent. Soon they would all get the message.
“Looks like you made a believer out of him, Fi,” Teddy said. She detected a tinge of envy, the macho reaction.
“How are the kids?” she asked.
“I don’t see them as much as I should.” He seemed morose and bitter.
“Hang in there, Teddy,” she said, bounding down the stairs. Again, she looked at her watch. Not yet. There was something that still had to be done.
“Do you think this will be the place?” Jefferson asked.
The Kennedy Center was doing a Noël Coward play, Tonight at Eight-Thirty; the National was doing They’re Playing Our Song by Neil Simon; the Warner was doing a revival of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. All comedies.
“This would be the most authentic.” She looked at the straight-backed chairs ranged in a semicircle. Behind them, the stagehands were making last minute adjustments on the set. “Let’s check out the other theaters.”
Jumping into the car, they moved quickly through the traffic to the Warner Theater on Thirteenth Street, a converted movie house with a complicated array of box seats and balconies. They spent about fifteen minutes there, then proceeded across the street to the National.
“Who knows?” she whispered, surveying the faces of early arrivals. Was she looking for someone, a specific face? It nagged at her, inhibiting her concentration.
“Like playing Russian roulette,” Jefferson said. “I still say Ford’s.” They left the National and jogged back to their car. Again, she looked at her watch. It was nearly seven. Crowds were beginning to form under the marquees.
She felt uncertain, confused, as if she were peering into the edges of a vast, impenetrable forest. The faces had a bland sameness, without any identifying features. Then, suddenly, a gesture emerged, a brief movement familiar in another context. She saw blondish, mustardy hair, a heroic profile, that vanished into the crowd.
Getting out of the car, she moved a few steps from the curb, briefly confronting an unfamiliar face. At that moment the image from all her intuitive meandering swept into the center of her focus. Remington! It came to her with all the explosive power of an epiphany. Remington! Could it be? She had bottled it up, banged shut the door to her intuition, in response to the eggplant’s macho caveat. How dare they denature her instincts, she cried to herself, furious that she had joined in the conspiracy against her.