The Second Assassin

by Paul Christopher

  ‘You’d better be right about this,’ said the FBI man.

  Jane laughed coldly. ‘Little bit late to be shifting responsibility. You guys have screwed this up from the beginning.’

  ‘Just so long as they don’t screw it up now,’ said Barry, still scanning the houses. Something wasn’t right and he felt a strange flush of cold sweat at the back of his neck.

  Jane picked up the look and questioned it. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Barry whispered. ‘This is wrong.’

  ‘It’s the only place that works,’ Jane insisted.

  ‘No,’ said Barry, shaking his head. ‘It’s not safe enough.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Foxworth. ‘All he has to do is melt into the crowds back on Rainbow Avenue.’

  ‘It fits,’ said Jane. ‘Leo Hamner probably had keys to all these places! It has to be here!’

  ‘It’s not.’ ‘Rule Britannia’ had swung into ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’ The appearance of the royal couple was imminent now, barely seconds away. Thomas Barry moved away from his companions, walking down between the white clapboard Cape Cod and its ultra-modern concrete-and-steel neighbour, pausing at the top of the dry grass slope, peering over the heads of the massed crowds across the dark line of the river to the side lawn of the British pavilion. Two dozen old men stood there at rigid, arthritic attention, expatriates all, wearing the wounds and medals and uniforms of a war that had almost been forgotten. His war. A gust of hot wind blew across the fair, snapping the flags and rippling the water and taking him back.

  In 1915 Barry had been in a place called Kut-el-Amara, an ancient stronghold on the road to Baghdad. He and fifteen thousand other men had been brought there under the command of a foolish young officer named Townsend to take a meaningless piece of the desert named Ctesiphon. A wind like this had been blowing that day when they finally met the forces of Nur-ud-Din, a madman in league with the Turks and the Germans. Almost no one had survived the battle, yet the policeman, once a soldier, was sure that not one man in ten thousand could find Ctesiphon on a map or the name of Nur-ud-Din in the history books. History was as fleeting as the hot wind on his face and both would pass away no matter what happened here this day.

  In fifty years no one will remember this any more than Ctesiphon.

  Jane watched as the four FBI men came out of each of the houses, shaking their heads. ‘The son of a bitch isn’t in any of them,’ said Foxworth.

  ‘Then where the hell is he?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  Jane turned and stared at Barry, still standing between the houses at the top of the slope. She looked back at Foxworth. ‘Hamner was a janitor?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did he do anything else?’

  ‘He was a janitor, damn it! He did what janitors do.’

  ‘Nothing special?’ Jane prodded.

  Foxworth shrugged. ‘One of things he did was clean out the trash that collected in the river.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Every night. He used a boat.’

  Jane whirled around. From where she stood she could see down to the wooden Tree of Life statue and just beyond it to the Spillway Bridge, crowded for its entire span with hundreds of spectators waiting for the king and queen to appear. The bridge was concrete, fitted with a high guardrail set with flagpoles and created from four low main arches in the centre of the river and two much smaller circular openings close to either bank.

  ‘Oh Jesus!’ Jane whispered. With a single movement she reached out, grabbed Foxworth’s pistol from his hand and raced off towards Barry. ‘It’s the bridge!’ she yelled. ‘It’s the bridge!’ On the other side of the river there was a roar of applause as the royal couple appeared in the sunlight and ‘God Save the King’ began for one last time that day.

  * * *

  As the anthem began John Bone made the final adjustments to the gun, watching through the reticle as the slim man in the grey suit and topper climbed up on the podium with his blue-frocked wife beside him. With the powerful lens of the sight he could see the powder caking a little around the creases of her neck and the flanges of her nostrils. There was a faint dark perspiration line just under the rim of her powder-blue hat. She was clearly feeling quite uncomfortable. Bone twisted the knob of the scope, bringing the crosshairs into perfect focus, watching for even the faintest heat mirage that might interfere with his aim. There was none.

  Bone shifted slightly, putting himself directly behind the tripod now, the shallow water from the stream eight inches up his gumboots, the concrete bottom of the spillway conduit giving a strong, firm footing. The tunnel under the bridge and the water would absorb most of the sound when it came. What remained would be drowned out by the cheering crowds.

  Behind Bone, the flatboat, bow first in the water, was nudging the trash rack set halfway down the length of the spillway pipe, riding easily on the light current. It would take Bone no more than five seconds to climb into the boat, release the trash rack and head downstream, first gliding solely on the current and then with the motor brought into play. All the attention of the people on the bridge above him and the ones lining the banks of the river would be on the spectacle of the king and queen and then the horror of their brutal assassinations.

  He turned his attention back to the rifle, easing his shoulder into the leather-padded butt piece, his long, powerful finger slipping into the circular trigger guard, taking up the slow pull until the ring was tight against the curl of his flesh. No more adjustments now, or even thinking, letting the mind empty, the eye filling with nothing but the target and the last exhalation before the primary shot.

  ‘Hamner used some kind of boat to clean up trash,’ Jane panted as she ran up to Barry at the top of the slope. ‘Our man’s in the culvert under the bridge! He has to be!’ She thrust the pistol towards the Scotland Yard man.

  Grabbing the pistol from Jane’s outstretched hand, Thomas Barry raced down the slope leading to the walkway, elbowing the crowd out of his way as he ran, his shoulders working now as he threw himself forward like a battering ram, desperately pushing ahead until finally he reached the water’s edge and ran forward through the shallows. The pistol lifted in his hand, pointing into the shadows of the nearest bridge tunnel as the first in the crowd saw his gun and screamed, their frightened outcry and pointing fingers lost in the surrounding clamour.

  Under the bridge the assassin was lost in the process of his art. His targets both stood together on the podium now, the king raising his hand to tip his top hat towards the crowd, the queen raising her own gloved hand in that small cupped gesture she’d created to ease the pain of too much waving. Bone’s finger had fully reduced the pull, now needing only the pressure of a whispered breath to move it. Then he heard the splash. He looked away from the eyepiece of the sight in time to see the silhouette of a man standing a few feet outside the mouth of the bridge tunnel, a large handgun pointing in his direction. Almost without conscious thought Bone smacked the lever on the floating head of the tripod and spun the rifle around in the direction of the silhouetted man, who was still standing there, gun in hand, apparently frozen in place.

  As the barrel swung around, Bone took up the pressure on the trigger again, squeezing back just as the man with the pistol dropped down onto one knee in the shallow water and fired at the same moment. Bone whispered something almost inaudibly an instant before. The single shot fired from the four-barrelled, remodelled Lancaster travelled two hundred and fifty yards, the trajectory almost perfectly flat as Bone had predicted. The shot buried itself in the concrete of the narrow footbridge that led across the river in front of the Brazil pavilion, missing the left, open-toed sandal of a well-to-do young woman taking movies with her father’s Bell & Howell Filmo by less than an inch, sending out a spray of concrete chips. For a moment the young woman thought she’d been stung by a bee and wrote about it as such that night in her diary, the only known record of the single shot fired from John Bone’s weapon.


  Three out of five of the shots fired from Foxworth’s military-style S&W Model 1917 struck Bone, the .45- calibre bullets hitting him in the chest, blowing him back into the flatboat and sending it crashing through the trash rack, where it then dropped over the slight lip of the spillway and headed downriver, unnoted by anyone except Detective Inspector Thomas Barry of Scotland Yard.

  The second assassin was gone.

  * * *

  After a rigorous debriefing by Sam Foxworth back at the FBI offices, Hennessy, Jane Todd and Thomas Barry returned to the Plaza. Jane Todd’s gloomy prediction turned out to be correct. There was no sign of Sheila Connelly anywhere. Hartery the Plaza house dick, Pelay the bellman and the cop Hennessy had left as insurance had been playing bridge with the Connelly woman as a fourth. At some point during the late evening she had excused herself and gone into the bedroom of the suite, which also contained the bathroom. She picked the lock of the door leading to the adjoining suite and disappeared. It was later learned through Foxworth’s contacts that she had been smuggled aboard the North German Lloyd ocean liner Bremen and worked her way across to Le Havre as a chambermaid. From Le Havre she took a ferry to Rosslare, then a train from there to Dublin, and finally reached Belfast.

  Barry was devastated, especially since she had apparently taken the signed and sealed affidavit with her.

  ‘She took us, Tommy. She took us all,’ said Jane, easing herself down onto the arm of her upholstered chair.

  ‘I feel like such a fool.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not very good with women when you get right down to it.’

  ‘None of us is,’ Hennessy snorted. Pelay appeared with a tray of drinks and set them down on the card table.

  ‘He is not kidding,’ said Pelay. ‘I have had the pleasure of meeting his wife.’

  ‘Watch it, runt. She’s a fine woman, in her own way.’

  ‘As was Medusa. You know, the one with the snakes for hair. Turned men to stone with a single look I think I heard.’

  Jane took a bottle of beer from Pelay’s tray for Barry and one for herself. She handed one down to the Scotland Yard man. ‘I ever tell you about my sister?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Her name is Annie. She’s what some people call feeble or more like a vegetable. Never moves, never talks, never really does anything.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ Jane shrugged. ‘It’s not like she knows what she is. I go and visit her sometimes. She’s in the asylum on Welfare Island. We crossed right over it on the way to the fair.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Barry. He took a sip of the beer, wincing at its frosty coldness. The Americans’ penchant for cold beer and ice in their drinks was something he’d never get used to.

  ‘What I mean to say is, sometimes I have dreams about her,’ Jane continued. ‘Not dreams like in sleep, but visions, or an idea of what it would be like if she came into a room, dressed nicely, carrying a purse, her hair all brushed neatly and said something like, “Hey, Jane, let’s go shopping,” or “Let’s go to Coney Island for the day.” You know it’s never going to happen, you know it can’t happen, but that doesn’t stop you from thinking about it. I think that’s what happened with you and your Irish. She’s a mirror and she lets you see what you want to see when you’re with her. It’s her… talent… I guess you’d call it.’ She shrugged and took a swallow of her own beer. ‘Who knows? Maybe she even believed it herself when she was with you. Believed that it was possible to escape the terrible place she was in, the terrible past she came from.’

  ‘She as much as told me so,’ said Thomas Barry quietly. ‘We were in Detroit. She said the organisation had no time for romance; they were only interested in bullets and bombs. She said, “We can have it for a moment, Thomas, no more than that.” I believed her and she knew I would.’

  ‘It is like anything good in life, kiddo. We only have those things for a fleeting moment and then they are gone.’ She smiled broadly. ‘All the more reason to enjoy them while you have them.’ She leaned down and gave Barry a soft, lingering kiss on the cheek. ‘Lesson learned. Just because a lady’s nice and pretty doesn’t mean she’s pretty nice.’

  ‘I wonder who the killer really was?’ Hennessy mused from a couch on the other side of the room. ‘And who he was really working for?’

  ‘The assassin was Irish,’ said Thomas Barry, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Although I’m willing to wager we’ll never know for sure who hired him.’

  ‘How could you possibly know he was Irish?’ Hennessy scoffed.

  ‘Because he spoke to me, just before I killed him. Spoke in the Old Language to me as though he knew I’d understand.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Three words only. ‘Slan, mo chara!’ Goodbye, my friend! And then he died.’

  ‘Maybe he meant he was about to kill you,’ Hennessy offered.

  Barry shook his head. ‘No. He knew I’d be faster. He knew he was going to die. He looked like death itself standing there, part of him already a shadow.’

  ‘How do you say, “It’s over” in Gaelic?’ Hennessy asked.

  ‘Ta se thar,’ Barry answered.

  ‘Then that’s what it is then. Ta se thar!’ he said and smiled. He leaned forward and tapped his cold bottle against Thomas Barry’s and both men laughed.

  ‘But what if it’s not?’ Jane said.

  ‘What are you talking about, you foolish girl?’

  ‘Tom here shot him but did he kill him?’

  ‘I shot him in the chest. From twenty feet away. He’s dead enough.’

  ‘No body.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘They haven’t found his body yet. And it will be a waste of time to drag the river. I’m trying to say that this John Bone or Mr Green, or the Devil himself might have thought of everything.’

  ‘What everything?’

  ‘A bulletproof vest.’ She nodded to herself. ‘He killed that FBI man, stole his car and his clothes. Why not his bulletproof vest as well? They all have them.’

  ‘No,’ Hennessy whispered, shaking his head. ‘That would mean…’

  ‘That would mean he let the current take him all the way down the river. That would mean he’s still on the loose.’

  Barry nodded coldly. ‘And that he’ll make one last attempt on Their Majesties.’

  ‘With not a soul looking for him,’ said Hennessy.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Saturday, June 10, 1939

  New York City

  Hennessy hung up the telephone and swivelled in his seat to face Jane and Thomas Barry. ‘There were three cars stolen from the parking lot at the Flushing Bay Pier this afternoon. A green ’35 Nash, a ’37 Ford Coupe in blue and a white ’39 Dodge. They picked up a bunch of joyriders in the Ford so we can scratch that one. The Nash and the Dodge haven’t been recovered. The Nash is plated 2V 32 90, the Dodge is 3J 20 86. Both of them are New York.’ The policeman shrugged. ‘On the other hand the IRT station was just as close.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have taken the chance,’ said Jane, shaking her head. She was sitting on the couch across from Barry now. ‘Easier to watch people getting onto the trains than it is to watch ten or fifteen acres of parking lot.’

  ‘The real question is where’s he going?’ said Hennessy.

  Barry gingerly took a crumpled piece of carbon paper out of the inside of his jacket pocket. He laid it out flat on the coffee table. ‘I found this in the wastebasket in Mr Foxworth’s secretary’s office. It’s the last page of Their Majesties’ itinerary for their stay in America.’

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ said Hennessy. ‘I didn’t know Limeys were so sneaky.’

  ‘I wonder what other talents he’s keeping from us.’

  Jane grinned. Barry flushed and used two fingers to straighten out the sheet of carbon paper.

  He leaned forward, peering down at the artefact. ‘According to this, the royal couple will be dining at President Rooseve
lt’s home in Hyde Park tonight at approximately eight. Sunday’s agenda begins with breakfast at nine, church in the village at eleven, back to the house at Hyde Park to change into casual clothing and then at noon they go off with the president et al to a picnic lunch on the estate. At two they are scheduled to go to Mrs Roosevelt’s cottage at Val Kill to go swimming, followed by tea, and then back to the president’s home. Dinner at six, followed by farewells at the Hyde Park Railway Station as they board the royal train for their return to Canada at ten. In parentheses for both the church and the railway station it says to expect crowds.’

  ‘No kidding,’ muttered Hennessy. ‘You’d think they were Gable and Lombard the way people swarm around them.’

  Jane looked at her watch. It was ten after seven, the light outside only just beginning to fail. ‘We rule out the train station and the church, too many people and too many cops.’

  ‘Same with anything to do at the president’s house,’ put in Hennessy. ‘Cops all over the place, Limeys as well as our guys.’

  ‘The picnic or the swimming thing,’ said Jane. ‘Those are the only private events that aren’t at the house.’

  Barry stared down at the sheet of carbon paper. ‘What’s the terrain like at this Val Kill spot? And what exactly is a kill? Sounds a bit ominous.’

  ‘It’s Dutch for brook or stream,’ Jane answered. ‘I did a photo feature on Val Kill for Life a few years ago. It’s Eleanor’s private little spot away from the big house. It’s on the wooded side of the estate, west of the Albany Post Road and Route 9G farther east. They widened the stream to make a swimming hole and put up a big fieldstone-and-clapboard cottage. Pretty place. She’s got some kind of factory out there in the woods too, making furniture.’