Jack & Jill Read online

  We climbed into a somber, blue Lincoln Town Car that was parked less than fifty yards from the jet. It was close to ten in the evening, and that part of the airfield had been secured. There were Secret Service men, FBI agents, and New York City policemen milling around everywhere.

  Surrounding the five limousines of the presidential motorcade were at least three dozen NYPD blue-and-white squad cars, not to mention a few Harley motorcycles. The Secret Service agents stared into the foggy night as if Jack and Jill might suddenly appear on the runway at La Guardia.

  I had learned that the NYPD would have a minimum of five thousand uniformed officers on the special-service detail for the length of the President’s visit. More than a hundred detectives would also be assigned. The Secret Service had tried to convince the President to stay at the Coast Guard base on Governors Island, or at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. The President had insisted on making a statement by staying in Manhattan. No regrets. His words in the Oval Office played over and over in my head.

  I settled back into the cushy and comfortable leather seat of the town car. I could sense the power. What it was like to ride in a motorcade directly behind the President’s car, which the Secret Service called “Stagecoach.”

  A couple of NYPD police cruisers pulled out in front of the pack. Their red and yellow roof lights began to revolve in quick kaleidoscopic circles. The presidential motorcade started to wind its way out of La Guardia Airport.

  Don Hamerman spoke as soon as we were moving. “No one has seen Kevin Hawkins in the past three days, right? Hawkins seems to have fallen off the face of the earth,” he said. His voice was full of frustration, anger, and the usual petulance. He enjoyed bullying people beneath him, but neither Grayer nor I would put up with it.

  “No one knows the route we’re taking,” Hamerman said. “We didn’t have a final route until a few minutes ago.”

  I couldn’t keep quiet. “We know the route. People in the NYPD know it, or they will momentarily. Kevin Hawkins is good at uncovering secrets. Kevin Hawkins is good, period. He’s one of our best.”

  Jay Grayer was peering out of the rain-streaked window into the fast lane of the New York highway we were traveling on. His voice sounded far away. “What’s your instinct about Hawkins?” he asked me.

  “I think Kevin Hawkins is definitely involved somehow. He’s extreme right-wing. He’s associated with some groups that are opposed to the President’s policies and plans. He’s been in trouble before. He’s suspected of a homicide inside the CIA. It all fits.”

  “But something’s bothering you about him?” Grayer asked. He’d learned how to read me pretty well already.

  “According to everything I’ve read, he’s never worked closely with anyone before. Hawkins has always been a loner, at least until now. He seems to have problems relating to women, other than his sister in Silver Spring. I don’t understand how Jill would fit in with him. I don’t see Hawkins suddenly working with a woman.”

  “Maybe he finally found a soul mate. It happens,” Hamerman said. I doubted that Hamerman ever had.

  “What else pops out about Hawkins?” Jay Grayer continued to probe. He shut his eyes as he listened.

  “All his FBI psych profiles and workups suggest a potential loose cannon. I don’t know how they justified keeping him active for all those years in Asia and South America. Here’s the interesting part. Hawkins can get committed to causes that he believes in, though. He strongly believes in the importance of intelligence for our national defense. President Byrnes doesn’t, and he’s said so publicly several times. That could explain the Jack and Jill scenario. Could explain it. Hawkins is experienced and resourceful enough to pull off an assassination. He definitely could be Jack. If he is, he will be very hard to stop.”

  We were starting to cross the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge into Manhattan. New York, New York. The presidential motorcade was a strange, eerie parade of wailing sirens and bright flashing lights. The island of Manhattan lay straight ahead of us.

  New York looked amazingly huge and imposing, capable of swallowing us whole. Anything can happen here, I was thinking, and I’m sure Don Hamerman and Jay Grayer were, too.

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Bam!

  The three of us jumped forward in the backseat of the town car. I had my hand on my gun, ready for almost anything, ready for Jack and Jill.

  We all stared in horror at the President’s car up ahead—Stagecoach. There was total silence in our car. Awful silence. Then we began to laugh.

  The loud noises hadn’t been gunshots. They just sounded like it. They were false alarms. But it was chilling all the same.

  We had passed over worn and warped metal gratings on the ramp coming off the bridge. Everyone in our car had experienced an instant heart attack at the sudden and unexpected noise. Undoubtedly, the same thing had happened in the President’s car.

  “Jesus,” Hamerman moaned loudly. “That’s what it would be like. Oh, God Almighty.”

  “I was there at the Washington Hilton when Hinckley shot Reagan and Brady,” Jay Grayer said with a tremor in his voice. I knew that he was back there once again, with Reagan and James Brady. Experiencing a flashback, the kind no one wanted to have.

  I wondered about Grayer’s personal stake in this. I wondered about everybody on our team.

  I watched the President’s car as it swept down onto the crowded, brightly lit streets of New York City. The American flags on the fenders were flapping wildly in the river breeze.

  No regrets.

  CHAPTER

  79

  THE PHOTOJOURNALIST had arrived early on Monday, December 16, for his work in New York.

  He had decided to drive from Washington. It was much safer that way. Now he walked along Park Avenue, where the presidential motorcade would travel tomorrow morning, only a few hours from now. He was relaxing before the historic day, taking in the sights and sounds of New York City in the holiday season.

  Kevin Hawkins had occasional flashes, and photos of memorabilia he had studied on the JFK killing, the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, even the badly botched shooting of Ronald Reagan.

  He knew one thing for certain: this particular assassination wouldn’t be botched. This was a done deal. There was no way out for Thomas Byrnes. No escape.

  He was closing in on the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where he knew the President and his wife would be staying. It was typical for this president to go against the advice of his security advisors. It fit his profile perfectly.

  Don’t listen to the experts. Fix what isn’t broken. Arrogant fool, useless bastard. Traitor to the American people.

  The night was cool and fine, the light rain having finally stopped. The air felt good against his skin. He was certain that he wasn’t going to be spotted as Kevin Hawkins. He’d taken care of that. There were easily a couple of hundred NYPD uniforms around the hotel. It didn’t matter. No one would recognize him now. Not even his own mother and father.

  The picturesque divided avenue outside the hotel was relatively crowded at this time of night. Some spectators had come in hopes of seeing the President shot. They didn’t know when the President would be arriving, but they knew the likely hotels in midtown. The Waldorf was a good guess.

  The local tabloids, and even the New York Times, had run huge headlines about Jack and Jill and the ongoing drama. In typical fashion, the press had gotten it mostly wrong—but that would be helpful to him soon.

  Kevin Hawkins joined in with the strangely noisy and almost festive crowd, several of whom had wandered over from holiday visits to the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. The unruly ambulance-chasers gathered outside the hotel told smugly ironic jokes, and he despised them for their big city cynicism, their attitude. He despised them even more than the useless president he had come to this city to kill.

  He stayed at the outer edge of the crowd, just in case he suddenly had to move fast. He didn’t want to be around there too late, but the presid
ential motorcade was running behind the schedule he had, the schedule he had been given.

  Finally, he saw heads and necks in the crowd craning to the far left. He could hear the roar of cars coming up Park Avenue. The motorcade was approaching the hotel. It had to be the motorcade coming.

  The dozen or so cars stopped at the canopied entrance on Park Avenue. Then Kevin Hawkins almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  The arrogant bastard had chosen to walk inside from the street rather than use the underground garage. He wanted to be seen—to be photographed. He wanted to show his courage to all the world… to show that Thomas Byrnes wasn’t afraid of Jack and Jill.

  The photojournalist watched the cocksure and vainglorious chief executive as he was ushered from his limousine. He could have taken out Thomas Byrnes right there! Once the hotshot, former automobile executive had made the decision to return the presidency to “business as usual,” the assassination was virtually guaranteed.

  Amateurs made such amateurish decisions, Hawkins knew. Always. It was a fact that he counted on in his work.

  I could do him right now. I could take out the President right here on Park Avenue.

  How does that make me feel? Excited—pumped. No guilt. What a strange man I have become, Kevin Hawkins thought.

  That was really why he was there that night—to test his emotional responses.

  This was his dress rehearsal for the big event. The only rehearsal he would need, or get.

  The Secret Service team smoothly and expertly got the President safely inside the hotel. Their coverage was excellent. Three tight rings around the PP, the protected person.

  The presidential detail was very good, but not good enough. No one could be. Not for what Kevin Hawkins had in mind.

  A kamikaze attack! A suicide attack. The President would not be able to escape from it. No one could. It was a done deal.

  He watched the rest of the shiny blue and black sedans unload, and he recognized nearly every face. He took his usual mind photos. Dozens of shots to remember—all inside his head.

  Finally, he saw Jill. She looked so cool and utterly unconcerned. She was such a great psycho in her own right, wasn’t she? Jill stood there in the middle of all the fuss and bustle. Then she disappeared inside the Waldorf with the rest of them.

  The photojournalist finally sauntered away, down Park toward what had once been the Pan Am Building and now belonged to MetLife. A float with Snoopy driving Santa’s sleigh stood out on the building’s rooftop.

  The President ought to buy some term life insurance tonight, he thought, whatever the price. The assassination is as good as done. It was guaranteed. But what Kevin Hawkins didn’t even suspect, didn’t realize, was that he too was being watched. He was under close observation, at that very moment, in New York City.

  Jack was watching Kevin Hawkins stroll down Park Avenue.

  CHAPTER

  80

  JACK BE NIMBLEST.

  Jack be quickest.

  After he had watched Kevin Hawkins disappear on Park Avenue, Sam Harrison left the crowded area near the Waldorf. New York was already as stirred up about Jack and Jill as Washington, D.C. That was good. It would make everything easier.

  There was something he had to do now. He had to do this, no matter what the risks. It was the most important thing to him.

  At the corner of Lexington Avenue and Forty-seventh Street, he stopped at a pay phone booth. Surprisingly, the damn contraption actually worked. Maybe the only one that did in midtown.

  As he dialed, he watched a garish street hooker plying her trade across Lexington. Nearby, a middle-aged gay man was picking up a blond teenager. Urban cowboys and girls sashayed into a peculiar New York bar called Ride’m High. He mourned for the old New York, for America as it had been, for real cowboys and real men.

  He had important and necessary work to do in New York. Jack and Jill was heading toward its climax. He was confident that the real truth would go to his grave with him. It had to be like that.

  The truth had always been far too dangerous for the public to know. The truth didn’t usually set people free, it just got them crazier. Most people just couldn’t handle the truth.

  He finally reached a number in Maryland. There was a very small risk in the phone call, but he had to take it. He had to do this one thing for his own sanity.

  A little girl’s voice came on the phone. Immediately, he felt the most incredible relief, but also a joy he hadn’t experienced in days. The girl sounded as if she were right there in New York.

  “This is Karon speaking. How may I help you?” she said. He had taught her to answer the phone.

  He closed his eyes tight, and all of New York’s depressing tawdriness, everything he was about to do was suddenly, effectively, shut out. Even Jack and Jill was gone from his thoughts for the briefest of moments. He was in a safety zone. He was home.

  His little girl was what really counted for him now. She was the only thing that mattered. She’d been permitted to wait up late for his call.

  He wasn’t Jack as he cradled the phone receiver against his chin.

  He wasn’t Sam Harrison.

  “It’s Daddy,” he said to his youngest child. “Hello, pumpkin-eater. I miss you to bits. How are you? Where’s Mommy?” he asked. “Are you guys taking good care of each other? I’ll be home real soon. Do you miss me? I sure miss you.”

  He had to get away with this, he thought as he talked to his daughter, and then to his wife. Jack and Jill had to succeed. He had to change history. He couldn’t go home in a body bag. In disgrace. As the worst American traitor since Benedict Arnold.

  No, the body bag was for President Thomas Byrnes. He deserved to die. So had all the others. They were all traitors in their own way.

  Jack and Jill came to The Hill

  To kill, to kill, to kill.

  And soon—very soon—it would be finished.

  CHAPTER

  81

  SOMETHING was clearly wrong at the hotel. We hadn’t been at the Waldorf for more than a few minutes when I knew there was a serious breach in security. I could see the way the Secret Service agents closed around President Byrnes and his wife as they entered the glittery hotel foyer.

  Thomas and Sally Byrnes were hurriedly being escorted to their suite of rooms on the twenty-first floor. I knew the drill by heart. NYPD detectives had been working closely with the Secret Service detail. They had checked every conceivable and inconceivable method of infiltration into the Waldorf, including subways, sewers, and all the underground passages. Bomb-sniffing dogs had been marched through the midtown hotel just before our arrival. The dogs had also been taken that afternoon to the Plaza and the Pierre, other possible choices for the President’s stay.

  “Alex,” I heard from behind. “Alex, over here. In here, Alex.” Jay Grayer beckoned with his hand. “We’ve got a little problem already. I don’t know how they managed it, but they’re definitely here in New York. Jack and Jill are here.”

  “What the hell is going on here, Jay?” I asked the Secret Service agent as we hurried past glass cases filled with quart-size perfume bottles and expensive clothing accessories.

  Jay Grayer led me to the hotel’s administrative offices, which were directly behind the front desk on the lobby floor. The room was already filled with Secret Service, FBI agents, and New York City police honchos. Everybody seemed to be listening to earphones or hand transmitters. They looked stressed-out, including the hotel management, with their own director of security and the proud claim that every president since Hoover had stayed at the Waldorf.

  Grayer finally turned to me and said, “A delivery of flowers came about ten minutes ago. They’re from our friends Jack and Jill. There’s another rhyme with the flowers.”

  “Let’s take a look at it. Let me see the message, please.”

  The note was on a mahogany desk next to an arrangement of blood-red roses. I read it as Grayer looked over my shoulder.

  Jack and Jill
went up The Hill

  And surprised the Chief with flowers.

  We’re here in town

  We’re counting down

  Your last remaining hours.

  “They want us to believe they’re a couple of kooks,” I said to Jay.

  “Do you?”

  “I sure as hell don’t, but they’re sticking with it. It’s consistent as hell and it’s all a plan. They definitely know what they’re doing, and we definitely don’t.”

  And Jack and Jill were definitely in New York City.

  CHAPTER

  82

  THE HEAVY WOODEN DOOR into President Thomas Byrnes’s master bedroom opened a few minutes past midnight. The Waldorf’s presidential suite consisted of four bedrooms and two sitting rooms in the tower portion of the hotel. No other hotel guests were staying on that floor, or the floors immediately above and below.

  “Who is it?” The President looked up from the book he was reading to try and calm his nerves. The book was the massive Truman by David McCullough. The President nearly dropped the heavy tome when the door opened unexpectedly.

  Thomas Byrnes smiled when he saw who was standing between the doorway and a large antique armoire.

  “Oh, it’s you. I thought it might be Jill. I think she secretly likes me. Just a gut feeling I have,” he said and chuckled.

  Sally Byrnes forced a smile. “Only me. I wanted to say goodnight. And to see if you were all right, Tom.”

  The President looked fondly at his wife. They had been sleeping in separate bedrooms for the past few years. They’d had problems. But they were still close friends. He believed they still loved each other, and always would.

  “You didn’t come to tuck me in?” he asked. “That’s a shame.”

  “Of course I did. That, too. Tonight, you deserve a tuck-in.”

  Her husband smiled in a way that reminded both of them of better times, much better times. He could be a charmer when he wanted to be. Sally Byrnes knew that all too well. Tom could also be a major heartbreaker. Sally knew that, too. It had been that way for most of their years together. The agony and the ecstasy, she called the relationship. In truth, though, to be fair, it had been more ecstasy than agony. They both believed that, and knew what they had was rare.