by Ed McBain
“I know,” she said, sobbing.
She was thinking that she’d been to bed with the man who’d killed her mother. She was thinking she would never go to bed with another man as long as she lived.
“Miss Randall,” Hogan said, “if you feel up to answering a few questions, I’d like to …”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m all right.”
“’Cause I’d like to get started on this right away,” he said. “I tried to reach Nichols and Dobbs,” he said, turning to Geoffrey, who’d met them yesterday, “but they’d already left for the island. Liberty Island,” he explained. “So what I want to know … is that drawing a good one? The composite? ’Cause if it is …”
“Not particularly, no,” Elita said.
“What I’m asking, if I had copies of that drawing messengered out to the island, would it help our people out there? Would they recognize this character from the drawing alone? When he pops up? If he pops up.”
“I don’t think so,” Elita said. “Not from the drawing alone. I know him, but I’m not sure anyone who didn’t know him …”
“Because what it is, we’re having trouble getting that hospital out there to cooperate. All we want is a photograph of the guy, but you’d think we were asking them to fax us his kidney or something. Which brings me to my next question. Would you recognize this character if you saw him again?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Randall, do you want to help us catch him?”
“Yes.”
“Would you be willing to come out to Liberty Island?”
“Why do you want her out there?” Geoffrey asked.
Hogan hesitated. He knew he’d be placing the girl in harm’s way, and ethics demanded that he tell her what she might be getting into. At the same time …
“It’s my guess he’ll be heading out there,” he said. “One way or another, he’ll get on that island, is my guess.”
“Why would he want to do that?” Geoffrey asked.
Hogan hesitated again. This kid was from the British Consulate. How much of this did he want going out over the international wire? He decided to level with them both.
“We think he’ll be trying for the President,” he said.
Elita looked puzzled. Geoffrey was already nodding.
“To kill him,” Hogan said. “He’ll be trying to kill President Bush.”
“I thought so,” Geoffrey said.
They all fell silent. A doctor in a white coat, a stethoscope hanging out of his pocket, came down the corridor, pulled open the heavy door to the morgue, and went inside. There was the sudden whiff of decomposing bodies as the door whispered shut.
“If the picture’s no good to us …” Hogan said.
“I know what you want,” Elita said.
“Just stay with us,” he said. “Point him out if he shows his face.”
She nodded.
“That way, we’ll maybe have a slight edge.”
She was still nodding.
“Will you do it?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
“Good,” he said.
Heather Broward was positioning the Marine Corps Band on the level above the podium. Three musicians deep, fourteen musicians wide, a human wall of red, white and blue above the red-white-and-blue bunting draped on the wall behind the podium. The podium itself had been hung with similar bunting on its sides and above the Presidential Seal on its face, but nothing could disguise its primary function. A Coast Guard cutter was moving in a circumscribed circle out on the water, waving off any boats approaching the island, but its presence was hardly necessary; every precautionary measure had been taken to circumvent any water-borne snipers.
“Which one of you is the leader?” Heather called up through a bullhorn.
The leader, who happened to be a brigadier general, didn’t much enjoy being yelled at by a snip of a girl, but he raised his hand like a schoolboy asking permission to go pee.
“Could you stand just a bit forward of the others, sir?” Heather called, the sir mollifying him a bit, but not entirely.
Behind the podium, Ralph Dickens and his assistant were helping the television people set up their microphones. A technician from ABC accidentally banged into the CNN mike. Ralph caught it before it fell over completely, but he hit his elbow on the goddamn shield in the process. Muttering under his breath, he righted the microphone and scowled at the clumsy technician. Not three feet away, Heather was bawling into the bullhorn again. On such a nice day, too.
Ralph yawned and looked at his watch.
Ten forty-seven.
In about an hour and a half, it’d all be over and done with.
Sun dazzled the water, glinting like diamonds in the spray kicked back by the police launch. Against his better judgment, Hogan had allowed the Turner kid to accompany them. He would probably get all kinds of flak about this from the Chief of Detectives, but better to get the damn girl out to the island than to argue about it all morning with someone who could hardly speak the English language right.
“He took me out there, you know,” Elita said, shouting over the roar of the twin engines.
“Who did? What do you mean?” Hogan shouted back.
“Sonny. We went out there last Saturday.”
“What’d you do?”
“Walked around, took pictures.”
She was thinking of what they’d done afterward. In her mother’s apartment. In her mother’s white lingerie and red shoes. How could she have been so utterly stupid? A wave of guilt and shame washed over her, almost overwhelming her grief, followed instantly by a rage so fierce it virtually blinded her. In that moment, the spray hitting her face as she stood on the open sunwashed deck with Geoffrey and the police lieutenant, she wanted nothing more than to strike back at Sonny Hemkar, cut out his heart, eat his heart, hurt him, kill him, kill him.
Geoffrey saw the look on her face.
And shuddered.
In the darkness of the supply closet, the Walkman clipped to his belt, the earpiece in his ear, Sonny listened to the news while he knotted his tie, slipping the silk under the collar of the white shirt, looping it under and over, smoothing it on his chest. The black fedora was sitting on top of the camera bag. He moved it to the floor and flicked on the small penlight, but only for an instant, time enough to locate the FBI tag McDermott had fashioned for him.
He clipped the tag to his lapel, took the walkie-talkie from the bag, and slipped it into the right-hand pocket of the suit jacket. He had earlier removed the bulb from the basting tool; he now slipped the plastic tube into the left-hand pocket of the jacket, together with the two extra magazines for the pistol. Picking up the gun with its attached silencer, he tucked it into his waistband on the left-hand side of his body, easily accessible for a cross-body draw.
He had not touched the bottle of sarin since he’d placed it in the camera bag yesterday afternoon.
He turned on the penlight again.
He knew this was a risk; light might spill into the entrance alcove from the crack under the closet door. But the greater danger was to work with the bottle in the dark, risking a spill that would certainly kill him. Cautiously, his hand shaking, he peeled off the transparent tape around the nozzle, relieved when he saw that the nozzle was still turned to the OFF position. He would not turn it to the STREAM position until he was in place on the level above the President.
On the radio, a news commentator was saying that the Presidential jet had just landed at La Guardia airport.
Dobbs listened while the girl told her story.
Good-looking kid, he was wondering how she’d managed to get mixed up with an assassin. No question now about what Sonny Boy was or what he planned to do. Green scimitar tattoo on his chest, he was one of Quaddafi’s chosen. Took her here to the island last Saturday, innocent boy and girl on a day trip, while meanwhile he’s shooting pictures of everything in sight, planning his attack. He’d be here again today, no question about that, eith
er. If he could get past them. Dobbs couldn’t see how. He looked at the pencil drawing again.
“What color are his eyes?” he asked.
“A sort of greyish-green,” Elita said.
Not a bad-looking man, Dobbs thought, but who said a killer had to be? The guy who’d chopped up all those people in Milwaukee was handsome as hell.
“How tall is he?” Nichols asked.
Didn’t like feeling left out, Dobbs thought. If they nailed this guy, the CIA would take all the credit, no question about that, either.
“Around six feet?” the girl said. “More or less.”
Dobbs hoped he wouldn’t get physical.
“Ever take you to his apartment?” Nichols asked.
“No,” she said.
“Then you wouldn’t have seen a weapon …”
“No.”
“Anything he might use as …”
“No.”
Nichols looked out over the water. Wondering if Sonny Boy planned to come in that way, Dobbs guessed. The Coast Guard boat was still maneuvering out there. Nichols nodded, still wondering. His walkie-talkie went off. He took it from his belt and put it to his ear.
“Nichols,” he said, and listened. “Yeah,” he said. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Got it, thank you.” He tossed back his jacket, hooked the walkie-talkie to his belt again.
“The chopper just left La Guardia,” he said.
Dobbs looked at his watch.
Twenty-five to twelve.
The girl seemed nervous.
He didn’t know what to say to her, so he just let it go.
Sonny waited.
The radio was telling him nothing new. Local news, information about tonight’s fireworks displays, traffic and weather conditions, but nothing further about Bush. His speech was scheduled to begin at twelve noon. Was there some problem?
Alvin Rhodes was beginning to smell.
Effluvial odors emanated from his distending organs.
Sonny tried not to breathe too deeply.
His digital watch read eleven thirty-seven.
The chopper came in over the water at a quarter to twelve, zooming out of the sun like an attack machine, the Presidential Seal painted on each of its sides, its big blades whirring furiously. From where Dobbs stood with the others, he could see it circling in toward the flagpole on the other end of the island. Hovering on the air now, virtually motionless, and then sinking lower and lower, below the treeline and out of sight.
He could not see the President when he disembarked.
He knew he would be surrounded by his own Secret Service people from Washington, who would rush him here to the base of the statue.
Sonny flipped through the dial.
One of the news announcers was saying that the president’s speech would begin as scheduled in ten minutes.
He took this to mean that Bush was already on the island.
He was handsomer in person than he appeared on television, a tall, rangy man with the look of an outdoorsman, sporting the suntan he had acquired on his recent vacation to Kennebunkport, smiling affably as he approached Heather, his hand outstretched.
“’Morning, Mr. President,” she said.
“’Morning, Heather,” he said.
Knack of his. Called everyone by his or her first name, never forgot a face or the name that went with it.
“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
“Gorgeous, Mr. President.”
“They look terrific up there,” Bush said, indicating with a wave of his hand the Marine Corps Band lined up on the level above. “Everything looks terrific.”
“Thank you, sir,” Heather said, beaming.
“I won’t need makeup, will I?”
“No, sir, you look fine,” she said.
“Because you know what Hitchcock used to say, don’t you? Alfred Hitchcock, the film director?”
“No, sir, I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“He used to say, ‘How can anyone respect a man who makes his living wearing makeup?’”
“Yes, sir.”
“He was referring to actors. He hated actors.”
“Yes, sir,” Heather said.
Some of her best friends were actors.
“Hello, John!” Bush shouted, changing the subject, and raising his arm in greeting to the brigadier general who would be leading the band. “Got some nice tunes for us today?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Did a good job with the podium, too,” he said, turning back to Heather, his Secret Service contingent turning with him as if they were all joined at the hip. Four men from the personal White House security platoon, two on each side of him, eyeballing the reporters and the other security people, checking the landscape for anything that looked even remotely alien. Dobbs walked over, introduced himself to the Secret Service man in charge. The two had a whispered conversation, Dobbs nodding in Elita’s direction, the White House man looking her over and nodding in puzzled understanding. As he understood it, the blonde was here to finger some Libyan hit man out to get the President. Which seemed about as likely as a Bengal tiger leaping out of the East River. The White House man nodded uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, clearly unconvinced.
From behind the podium, Bush said, “Do we really need this thing?”
“Open water out there, Mr. President,” Heather said.
“I hate these darn things.”
A network woman wearing earphones and cradling a clipboard said, “Four minutes, Heather.”
“Can’t we get rid of it?” Bush said.
“Not without messing up all the bunting, sir,” Heather said.
“Mr. President, could we get a voice level, please?” one of the technicians said.
“Hello, Gabe,” Bush said, calling to a reporter he recognized.
“If you’ll just give me a ten-count, sir …”
“One, two, three, four …”
“Can we move that number-two camera a bit to the left?”
“Watch those cables, Harry.”
“Bit more, Mr. President.”
“Seven, eight …”
“Two minutes, Heather.”
“That’s good, sir, thank you.”
“Didn’t think I could count to ten, did you?” Bush quipped, and grinned.
A network person wearing earphones held up his hand, said, “Quiet, people,” and then turned toward the podium and said, “Ready, Mr. President?” Standing behind the battery of microphones, Bush cleared his throat and nodded. There were four television cameras between him and the water beyond. The security people were spaced in a semi-circle behind the cameras, facing not the President but the possible approaches to him from any given compass point. Only Dobbs stood apart with Elita, farther back from the others, where they commanded a wider view of the President and the statue behind him.
“Stand by, please,” the man with the earphones said.
“Thirty seconds,” the woman with the clipboard said.
Everyone fell silent.
There was not a breeze stirring.
Out on the water, even the Coast Guard boat had cut its engine and was drifting idly, soundlessly.
“Ten,” the woman said. “Nine … eight … seven … six …”
The man with the earphones held up his right hand for the President to see. Ticking them off on his fingers, he began counting the seconds to airtime …
“… five, four, three, two, one …”
“Good afternoon, my fellow Americans …”
He turned off the Walkman the moment he heard Bush’s salutation, yanked the earpiece from his ear, and dropped radio and cable on the floor beside Rhodes’s body. Picking up the camera bag and the black hat, he came out of the supply closet, and pushed at the door, closing it firmly behind him, satisfied when he heard the latch clicking into the strike plate. He did not want anyone opening that door, not with Rhodes’s body in there, not until he had done what he was here to do.
He went into one of the stalls, lifted the lid
on the toilet tank, dropped the black hat into it, and replaced the lid. He dropped the camera bag into the restroom trash basket.
Boldly, he stepped into the corridor.
The FBI tag clipped to his lapel identified him as Frank Mercer.
But he knew who he was.
He was Sonny Hemkar, and he was stepping forward to meet his destiny.
“… on this Fourth of July, a day we call glorious—not only because it is a glorious day here in New York—but because this day marks a day of glory for us and for the world, the day upon which freedom was born. Freedom,” Bush said, and paused. “Well now,” he said folksily, “that’s a word we sometimes take for granted nowadays, especially since dramatic changes all over the world have brought freedom to peoples everywhere. But I can tell you, it’s a word which wasn’t so darned familiar back then when the founding fathers thought of it. Back then, it was a new concept for these brave men to declare themselves free and independent and forge for themselves, and for all mankind to follow, a constitution that has survived the centuries, a document that has served as a model of inspiration for democratic nations everywhere. It was a good idea then, and it’s still a good idea. And I’m here on this glorious—yes, glorious—day of celebration to tell you that America will continue to be the brightest star in a firmament of emerging democracies.”
He paused for merely an instant.
Soberly, dramatically, he gazed into the whirring cameras.
Here it comes, Dobbs thought.
“Four years ago, I promised the people of America a thousand points of light. Well, four years later, we’re living in a nation where none need go hungry and none need go poor, a nation of healthy, educated, employed, hard-working, proud and patriotic people who can achieve whatever their minds can conceive, who can aspire to whatever their souls …”
God, what bullshit, Dobbs thought, and turned his attention to Elita.
She wasn’t watching Bush.
Her eyes were darting everywhere.
The President was already three minutes into his speech.
He took the steps up swiftly, the walkie-talkie in his right hand, quite official-looking in the event anyone stopped him, ten steps to each of the two flights, past the non-functioning telephone exhibit, and up the two shorter flights of steps leading to the star-shaped Fort Hood level.