The Second Assassin

by Paul Christopher

  Even through the walls of the windowless detention cell in the administration building Jane Todd could hear the resounding cheers of the crowds assembled around the main gate and a twenty-one-gun salute from the New York Police Rifle Team. ‘They’re here,’ she said, turning to Thomas Barry. The Scotland Yard detective nodded almost absently, sitting on the bunk against the side wall of the narrow cell, smoking another cigarette and staring up at the ceiling. There was another bunk against the opposite wall, an open toilet but no sink, and a heavy metal door painted dark yellow. The floor was painted concrete.

  ‘What time is it?’ Barry asked.

  Jane checked her little Bulova, squinting in the pale light. ‘Twelve forty-five.’

  ‘They’re late then.’

  ‘So’s our lunch.’

  Since being taken to the cell the night before, the two had seen no one except a silent, uniformed policeman, who’d brought them a simple breakfast of toast and coffee earlier in the morning. Jane got up from her own bunk, walked to the door and smacked it hard with the palm of her hand. ‘We can’t just sit here and let this happen.’

  ‘We don’t seem to have much choice in the matter,’ said Barry.

  Jane went back to her bunk and sat down. ‘How much of the itinerary do you remember?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s a welcoming ceremony at the New York pavilion just inside the gate. Then they do the rounds of the exhibits and go to the British Empire pavilion for some kind of lunch.’

  ‘And then they do their inspection of the British Honour Guard on the side lawn?’

  ‘Right,’ Barry said.

  ‘Then we still have time.’

  ‘Hope springs eternal?’ said the detective.

  ‘Something like that,’ Jane answered. ‘I think Foxworth may yet see the light.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’ Barry asked.

  ‘Something you said a while back,’ said Jane. ‘About this guy not leaving anything to chance.’

  ‘I’m not sure I see what you mean.’

  ‘Neither am I… yet.’ She got up and went to the door again, pounding on it with her fist this time. ‘Goddamn it! Open up!’

  * * *

  The weapon John Bone had chosen was a bastard, constructed from a half dozen guns he’d found at Lavan’s shop but based on the original Lancaster rifle he’d spotted in the gunsmith’s racks when he first visited the store. Most Lancasters Bone had seen were classic double-barrelled side-by-side shotguns but he had occasionally seen twin-barrelled rifles, usually built in express calibres as African elephant guns.

  The Lancaster he’d seen in Lavan’s was something different: a four-chambered rifle in a massive .500 calibre with British Whitworth Fluid steel barrels and a complicated lockwork designed like a double-action revolver. A single, flat mainspring mounted at the rear of the action drove a striking rod so that with each trigger pull the rod drew back and then flew forward, striking the firing pin.

  The pin was arranged in a square formation to match the barrels and as the firing pin shot forward a small, spring-loaded stud engaged a helical gear, turning the striking plate ninety degrees, the pin striking each of the four barrels in turn as fast as the trigger was pulled.

  The advantage to Bone was immediately clear. Any self-loading rifle available to him, such as the Mauser, the Krag or Springfield, had relatively slow bolt actions. Automatic weapons like the Browning or the Thompson were gas-blowback operated, only good for short range, and depended on rate of fire to take out a target rather than accuracy. The Lancaster action, although more than forty years old, gave Bone four shots available almost instantly. By his calculation the weapon could be emptied in slightly less than three seconds.

  By replacing the heavy-calibre express barrels with a carefully spot-welded quartet of lightweight twenty-six-inch Winchesters cut down from Lavan’s collection of ‘sportified’ military model 70s, Bone created a dead accurate .30-.06-calibre rifle that would give him four shots with an almost perfectly flat trajectory over two hundred yards – more than he needed.

  By stripping off the heavy walnut stock and replacing it with a simple piece of tube steel tapped at one end and fitted with a leather-padded butt at the other, he dropped the weight from twelve and a half pounds to seven, even with the added bulk of a telescopic sight. With barrels, action, butt and sight broken down into their component parts, the weapon easily fit into his duffel bag, as did the modified Graflex tripod he was using as a targeting rest.

  As the first volley of the salute rang out Bone began to put his exotic weapon together, keeping well out of sight, deep in the shadows. With the four-barrelled device assembled and loaded, he snapped the action closed, automatically cocking the rifle. He then dropped it into the padded rest on the tripod, tightened the clamp and put his eye to the sight, swivelling the floating mount on the tripod until the podium in front of the British pavilion came into view.

  Glancing away from the sight he noted the faint fluttering of the half dozen Union Jacks on the roof of the building. Putting his eye back to the sight he adjusted it by a single click to take in windage and the stifling heat, both of which could throw off his aim if he wasn’t careful, even at such a relatively close range.

  He touched the guide arm of the tripod with the tips of his fingers, bringing the crosshairs up a fraction of an inch. The first two shots for the king, chest high, crushing his heart, the second volley for the queen, striking her a little higher, somewhere close to the base of the throat, the explosive power of the soft-nose bullets probably enough to decapitate her. Stepping away from the weapon Bone stood back in the shadows and waited. He smiled. Even over the roaring of the crowd he could hear one of the bands nearby doing a brassy rendition of ‘The Bluebells of Scotland,’ Her Majesty’s favourite song.

  * * *

  More than anything else in the world Bobby Zwicker, twelve years old, wanted to be a professional baseball player, preferably shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers, not so much because he liked the team, but because Ebbets Field was only a mile or so away down the Kingston Avenue trolley line, making it close to home. To him, baseball was the most manly thing in the world, even better than sneaking peeks through the basement windows at Pratt and watching the naked models standing there looking so bored even though they had everything showing you could ever hope to see. Dolph Camilli and Cookie Lavagetto, Babe Phelps and Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons were the names of his current heroes and Goodie Rosen, pug-nosed and mean, was the essence of the underdog and a Jew to boot. They were saying the team was going to be better this season with Leo Durocher managing but he didn’t care. It wasn’t who played, really. The game was the thing.

  Except general admission was an out-of-this-world $1.10, a decent seat on Saturday was even more and the only other way to see the game was from the roof of a garage on Bedford Avenue or by lying prone on the sidewalk by the exit gate in the deepest corner of right centre field. The big steel doors didn’t quite fit flush against the ground and if you looked through the crack, twice as wide as an eyeball, you could see most of centre field, left field and two-thirds of the infield but the only way to tell if someone was safe or out at first was by the reaction of the crowd. On top of that you had to worry about a cop poking a shoe in your ribs and telling you to move along.

  All of which was why Bobby Zwicker rose each day before dawn, picked up his forty-four copies of the Brooklyn Eagle and rode his bicycle up and down the streets of Bedford, pretending that the folded projectiles he tossed up onto his customers’ porches were serving as good practice for his future career as a big leaguer.

  Today the headlines were screaming about the King and Queen of England visiting New York and the fair but Bobby wasn’t even mildly interested. Six days dragging himself out of bed and delivering papers was buying him a blissful afternoon at Ebbets, two hot dogs, a Coke and a half-decent view of Rosen hitting at least a little bingle or two if everybody prayed hard enough.

  At 6:30 a.m. he started on his t
our of the neighbourhood, and at ten past seven he flipped a paper up onto the Hamners’ front porch at 331 Adelphi and rode on, vaguely surprised that the old bag’s front door was still closed. In his experience it was usually open by now, with the woman in her dressing gown waiting for the paper with a cup of coffee in one hand and a smoke in the other.

  At seven forty-five, his route complete, Bobby bicycled up Adelphi again on his way home. The Hamners’ paper was still on the porch and the door was still closed. At the time Bobby assumed that she’d either had too much to drink the night before and was sleeping in or she’d coughed herself to death. Reaching home he said as much to his mother, who smacked him across the rear end with her own copy of the Eagle and told him to have more respect for his elders, even though she was smiling as she said it.

  At nine thirty, on her way to the butcher shop on DeKalb, Bobby’s mother also noticed the paper still on the porch. It was still there when she came back in the opposite direction fifteen minutes later. Concluding that it was really none of her business she went home, had a brief discussion about the situation with her husband and then took things in hand by calling Mrs Hamner on the telephone. There was no reply. An hour went by and she called again. Still no answer. Frustrated, she argued with her husband, sure now that there was something wrong.

  Silently cursing his son’s powers of observation at seven in the morning, Arnold Zwicker, who had intended spending the Sabbath doing absolutely nothing, which included attending services at the synagogue, walked down Adelphi to 331 and hammered on the Hamners’ front door. Getting no response after repeated knocks he went around to the rear of the house, climbed the rickety back porch and knocked again. Like the front door, the rear door was closed and locked.

  Leaning outward and cupping one hand over his eyes against the glare, Arnold Zwicker peered into the dark kitchen. At first it looked as though everything was in order but then he noticed a dark streak of colour on the floor, leading to the basement doorway. For some reason he could not really fathom at the time, or even many years later, he knew exactly what he was seeing, even though his initial suspicion was that Leo had finally become fed up with his mother and beat her to death with one of her frying pans. Feeling bile rising sourly in his throat, Bobby Zwicker’s father backed away from the window, tiptoed down the porch steps and then ran like hell back to his own home, where he telephoned the police.

  By then it was eleven in the morning. The police, short-staffed by the security measures for the royal visit, took almost an hour to respond. Leo Hamner was found, shot to death in his bed, and his mother and Agent Gordon were found in the basement. Special Agent Gordon remained unidentified until two thirty in the afternoon when his relief, an agent named Breur, appeared. Foxworth, coordinating FBI security measures for the royal tour from his office, was informed of Gordon’s murder at ten minutes to three.

  * * *

  By mid-afternoon Lascelles could see that both the king and queen were finally succumbing to the strain of the day’s events. Visiting the United States pavilion at the far end of the fair site they were faced with a receiving line consisting of more than three hundred local dignitaries. Lascelles himself had a brief discussion with Grover Whalen, the fair’s chairman. Whalen had the presentation cut short, changing it to allow the royal couple to simply move along the line, bowing to the guests, occasionally shaking a hand or having a brief conversation.

  Visits were made to a number of the governmental pavilions, including several of the state exhibits, the Japanese pavilion and the Irish Free State pavilion, where Lascelles listened to the queen asking a little too ingenuously about the granite monument dedicated to Padriac Pearse and the men executed by the British army during the 1916 Rebellion. Travelling with Whalen, La Guardia and other notables in one of the absurd Greyhound motor trains the king and queen were exposed to the tremendous heat of the day, worsened by the heat-absorbing asphalt roadways, the massed crowds behind the wooden barricades and the diesel fumes of the motor train itself. Once again Lascelles had a word with Whalen and once again the itinerary was shortened. By three p.m. the royal couple still hadn’t been given lunch, the king was beginning to mutter about his need for a cigarette and a restorative glass of whiskey and the queen was looking quite ill.

  After a flying visit to the Italian pavilion, where the Italian commissioner general gave them the fascist salute, and a brief pose for photographers in front of the Mounties and totem poles outside the Canadian pavilion, the king and queen were finally escorted into the British Empire exhibit, where the queen was given a couch to lie down on and the king was given a Players and a double shot of Dewar’s, neat.

  Jack Lait, reporter for the Daily Mirror, observed the proceedings from a telephone booth, where he called in his story for the late edition, bucking the trend and referring to the somewhat wilted queen as a ‘cute, cuddly, homely-looking girl in a blue ensemble that was becoming enough but wouldn’t have rated a second glance in a Broadway theatre lobby.’

  As the royal entourage disappeared inside the air-conditioned pavilion, the crowd, held back as far as the Lagoon of Nations, began to slowly disperse. By three forty-five, somewhat revived, the king and queen were enjoying a light, informal lunch of cold chicken and salad while outside in the adjacent Court of Peace a military band played a medley of light music to aid their digestion, including – as a special gesture to the Queen – yet another rendition of ‘The Bluebells of Scotland.’

  * * *

  The door to the detention cell swung open and Assistant Director Sam Foxworth stepped into the narrow room, closing the door behind him. His face was chalk white and the hand holding his cigarette was shaking slightly.

  ‘Trouble?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Last night we sent agents to the houses of all three people your second assassin was interested in. This morning we found one of those agents dead. Shot once in the head. The man he was sent to protect is dead as well and so is the man’s mother.’

  ‘Which one was it?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Hamner. The janitor,’ said Foxworth. ‘You were right. The son of a bitch is here.’

  ‘I thought he’d be the one,’ Jane said. ‘The Borden’s guy and the other one were too specific. Hamner was a janitor – probably had all sorts of pass keys. Now the killer has them.’

  ‘It looks as though he used my own agent’s car and his identification to get into the fair last night,’ Foxworth said. ‘We’re checking with the gate guards now to see if anyone remembers him.’ He shook his head. ‘At least then we’ll know what he looks like.’

  ‘I don’t think that matters now,’ said Barry. ‘Where are the king and queen?’

  ‘Having lunch in the British pavilion.’ Foxworth checked his wristwatch. ‘They’re running behind schedule.’

  ‘How long until they do their inspection of the Honour Guard?’ asked the Scotland Yard man.

  ‘Ten minutes. Fifteen at the most.’

  ‘We know where the killer’s going to be,’ said Jane. ‘We figured it out last night.’

  ‘Where, goddamn it?!’

  ‘And have you leave us here? Forget it, Foxworth. Open that door and we’ll lead the way. And I want my bag back. It’s got my new camera in it.’

  ‘I’ll arrest you!’

  ‘No, you won’t. You’re not that stupid. Now open the goddamn door.’

  * * *

  The houses of the Town of Tomorrow were designed to look like a small section of a futuristic subdivision, the dwellings arranged on three winding streets that led absolutely nowhere. The town was located on a two-and-a-half-acre site nestled in behind the Contemporary Arts pavilion, flanked by the Electrified Farm on one side and the curving shape of the Home Building Center. The fourth side of the exhibit faced a narrow strip of parkway that led down to the river. Beyond that, on the opposite bank, was the Gardens on Parade exhibit and the British Empire pavilion.

  The lawns of the town were sodded and trimmed, looking a little burned in the
heatwave. Saplings had been planted and shrubs banked along driveways; the fantasy community had even borrowed a scattering of next year’s motor car models from the Chrysler, Ford and General Motors buildings, parking them on the streets and in the opened garages for a more lived-in, authentic look. Of the fourteen houses being displayed, nine were two-storeyed but only three had reasonable lines of sight from their second floors to the side lawn of the British pavilion.

  By the time Jane, Barry, Foxworth and four of his agents battled their way through the crowds on Rainbow Avenue to the futuristic town site, another crowd had begun to assemble on the Spillway Bridge and the bank of the river all the way along to the French pavilion and the Lagoon of Nations. The first few bars of ‘Rule Britannia’ rang out and the people began to cheer again. Everyone’s attention was on the British pavilion as the uniformed Honour Guard marched into view and took up their positions on the side lawn. This was to be the royal couple’s last official function at the fair. For the time being the Town of Tomorrow was deserted.

  ‘Which house?’ yelled Foxworth, standing in the middle of the central street, his heavy pistol drawn and in his hand.

  ‘I’m not sure!’ Jane yelled back. She took a small Contax camera out of her bag and started shooting.

  ‘Take a guess!’ Foxworth bellowed. ‘We’re running out of time!’ He glared at Jane. ‘And put that damn camera away!’ Jane smiled and stuck out her tongue at the man. She kept on shooting.

  Barry swung around on his heel, squinting in the hammering sunlight, trying to remember what he’d been told during his training in the army more than twenty years before. In this case the elevation was already there – the Town of Tomorrow was built on an artificial hill twelve to fifteen feet higher than the river. The three houses on the river slope side of the road and closest to the All Electric Farm would give clear views of the side lawn. Two others, at the farthest end of the curving road, were also in a direct line but at least another hundred yards away. Not an impossible shot but considerably more difficult. ‘Those three,’ said Barry at last, pointing at the last three houses on the street. Foxworth waved his men into the houses, one after the other.