True Detective (30 page)

"I put on ten pounds during the trip," Roosevelt was saying, "and one of my first official duties will be taking the ten pounds off."

I moved away from the bench and the wall of flesh behind me closed tight as I edged alone the front of the first row; no one bothered me, or noticed me, because reporters and Secret Service men were stirring around, anyway. Miller and Lang were closer to the ex-blond than me, but their eyes were on Roosevelt, caught up in his charisma instead of watching the people like they were being paid to.

"I hope that I am able to come down next winter," Roosevelt said, finishing up, "see you all and have another ten days or two weeks in Florida waters."

Roosevelt smiled wide and nodded and waved and the roar of applause would have led you to believe the Gettysburg Address had just been spoken for the first time. Everybody was on their feet, some of them jumping up and down, whooping, hollering, and the people began moving forward, to get near him, right onto the paved area- the cops and Secret Service men didn't bother to try to stop the mass of humanity, perhaps realizing it wouldn't do any good. I could still see the ex-blond, moving in himself, unbuttoning his coat, but his eyes weren't on Roosevelt: his eyes were on the stage.

The newsreel boys were climbing up on the back of the green car, hollering at Roosevelt to go through the speech again, because one of their cameras had got fouled up; he said, "Sony, boys," and slid down onto the back seat, motioning to Cermak up on the stage.

As I did my best to plow through, moving against the tide. I could see Cermak, beaming, come down the steps off the platform toward Roosevelt. I even heard Roosevelt raising his voice above the din: "Hello there, Tony!"

Then Cermak was shaking hands with Roosevelt, talking to him, on the side of the car next to the stage, away from the crush of people.

And the ex-blond was reaching under his coat- but I was there. I grabbed the arm and pulled it away from the coat, and the hand came out with no gun in it, he hadn't got that far, but I saw the gun under his arm as his coat flapped, and he looked at me amazed and I buried a fist in his belly, and he doubled over. The people around us didn't seem to notice, as they continued to press forward.

I yanked the automatic out from under my shoulder and grabbed him by one arm and put the barrel in his face. He didn't look at it, though: he looked at me.

And the damnedest thing happened: he recognized me.

"You," he said. Eyes wide.

It had never occurred to me that the blond would recognize me; he'd only seen me that once, in the street, but the same was true for me, and I remembered
him
, didn't I? And he had no doubt followed the Lingle case, having a vested interest in its outcome, and my picture turned up in the papers in regard to that, so I

was a part of his life, just as he was part of mine. My image was as seared into his brain as his was in mine, and I said. "I got you this time, fucker."

Firecrackers went off.

That's what it sounded like, but I knew better. I whirled, without releasing my grip on him. and saw Cermak, well away from Roosevelt (who was being presented with a gigantic mock-telegram from the city of Miami), double over.

Shot.

And the firecrackers continued to so off.

I looked to where they were coming from, over to the right, stage left, and a bushy-haired head on a stumpy body was floating oddly above the mass of people around him, about five rows back, and then I realized the man had stood on one of the benches to do his shooting. The muzzle flashes from his long-barreled revolver made fireworks above the crowd.

And more people were going down.

The blond pulled away, and I swung at him, hard as I could, putting every fucking thing I had into it, right in the side of his face, and he crumpled, unconscious, and I moved toward Cermak, pushing, shoving, almost throwing people out of the way to get there.

Miller and Lang were crouching near him. and lanky, white-haired Alderman Bowler was kneeling, too, as if praying.

Cermak looked up at Miller and Lang; his glasses had been lost in the shuffle. He said, "Where were the goddamn bodyguards?"

I pushed my way past Bowler. "I had the blond, Your Honor. He didn't fire the shots."

Cermak smiled wanly. Sort of shrugged. "What the hell. They got me, Heller."

Roosevelt's touring car was still in place; the air was filled with screams, men and women both, and over toward where the shots had been fired, the crowd had turned into a mob.

"Kill him!"

"Lynch him!"

Roosevelt, momentarily shielded by his bodyguard, a sea of Secret Service men around him waving their aims, urging him to get out but getting a repeated curt "No!" from him, climbed out from under and pushed himself up in the back of the car and waved and smiled at the crowd, and yelled, "I am all right!"

A Secret Service man shouted, "Get out of here!" to Roosevelt's cop chauffeur. "Get the president out of here!" The cop moved forward and a couple motorcycle cops hit their sirens and began clearing a path.

I yelled to the moving car. "For Christ's sake. Cermak's shot! Take him out of here!"

Roosevelt must've heard me. because he turned and looked and leaned forward and spoke to the chauffeur and stopped the car. Cermak had caught it in the front, under his right armpit, along his rib cage, and he was bleeding, but able to get to his feet. Bowler and a couple Miami politicos helped me walk Cermak to the waiting car. We helped him in back with Roosevelt, who looked at me and smiled and nodded. Cermak looked at Roosevelt and smiled- he finally had his private audience with the president-elect; then he passed out, and the car shot away.

A white-haired man holding his head, blood seeping between his fingers, staggered by; over on the steps to the band shell, a woman in her thirties in an evening gown crouched in pain, a hand on her stomach cupping red. The blue convertible that had followed Roosevelt into the paved area was still there, and a confused-looking young uniformed cop was still behind the wheel: I went over to him and said, "Get another man and load these wounded people up and get 'em the hell to a hospital."

"I'm supposed to stay with the car," he said.

I grabbed him by the shirtfront and some shiny buttons popped off. "Fuck the car!"

He swallowed, said, "Yes, sir," and got out of the car and started rounding up the wounded.

Off toward the left, people were piled on top of each other like a couple football teams all in on the tackle. Some uniformed cops and Secret Service men were trying to pull the people off.

Over the loudspeaker came: "Please leave the park! Please leave immediately!"

I went over and started pulling people off the pile and one of the cops used his nightstick judiciously, and we got the assassin out from under the onslaught, and it was a small man. little more than five feet tall, naked but for a few shreds of his khaki clothes, which had been ripped from his body by the mob.

The cop I'd got tough with was helping the white-haired bleeding man into the blue convertible; the woman in the evening gown was already in the back seat. So was another man bleeding at the head. I pointed at the car. and two uniformed officers who had the small, barely conscious figure by either arm, and another who held the assassin's nickel-plated revolver, nodded at me and we made our way toward it, and tossed him on the trunk rack of the car. The cops climbed on top of the little man, sat right on him, and the car moved away. As it did, the groggy little assassin looked at me and managed a little smile and blurted something; the cops sat on him harder. It wasn't the gentlest way to treat him, but it probably saved his life: the crowd wanted blood.

If they wanted it, all they had to do was look on the paved area where Roosevelt's car had been: pools of blood were scattered here and there, like color in one of the paintings in Mary Ann Beame's Tower Town flat. The people were still milling around, but the crowd
was
thinning.

I sat on the steps to the band shell. Next to me was some of the wounded woman's blood.

Miller and Lang wandered up to me. They stood and looked at me and shrugged.

Lang said, "What now?"

"If you want to stay employed." I said, "I'd find out what hospital Cermak was rushed to. and be on hand"

Miller and Lang exchanged glances, shrugged again, and wandered off.

One of the other two bodyguards. Bill, had overheard this; he came slowly up. He looked haggard.

■

"We should have stopped it." he said.

"Right," I said.

"Do you think it was an accident?"

"What?"

"Maybe the guy was after Roosevelt."

"Go away."

He went away.

The blond, who was now brown-haired, was long gone. I'd had him. and he was gone. Cermak was shot, possibly dying; and a little bushy-haired man had pulled the trigger.

The gardener I'd seen at the son-in-law's.

Well. I knew where they'd taken him: the county courthouse. That was where the jail was. I wanted to get in and talk to that Cuban or whatever the hell he was. Maybe the fools
would
believe Roosevelt was the target.

But they hadn't heard what the bushy-haired assassin had muttered to me. as the three cops sat on him and drove him away.

'Well." he'd said, looking right at me, with brown shiny eyes. "I got Cermak!"

The towering Gothic Dade County- Courthouse was starkly white against the night, lit up so you could see it for miles. Or anyway for blocks: it was only a matter of eight or so from Bayfront Park to the courthouse, which I walked, since traffic was still blocked off. Cops and sheriffs deputies swarmed the two flights of steps that rose to the entryway, where a row of two-story fluted columns loomed, like a reminder of more civilized times.

A cop, his hand on the butt of the revolver at his side, was pacing nervously at the curb.

I approached him. "I was at Bayfront Park," I said, showing him my identification. "A Cermak bodyguard."

"You did a swell job," he said.

"You're telling me. I take it they aren't here with the gunman yet."

"No. I don't know what the hell's keeping 'em; it ain't that far from the park."

"The car they threw the guy on the back of had some of the wounded in it. They probably went to the hospital first."

The cop nodded. "That must be it."

When the blue limo rolled up a few minutes later, the assassin was off the luggage rack and in the back seat with two cops sitting next to him. not on him; the chauffeur cop and the other cop were in front. They ushered the dark, bushy-haired little man out of the limo and up the steps- he was completely naked, even the khaki shreds I'd seen hanging on him at the park were gone now. and no one seemed concerned about providing him with something to cover up with, not that he seemed particularly concerned about it: he seemed calm, and had the faintest of smiles on his face. The swarm of cops parted like the red sea and moved in waves up the steps. I dove in.

That was when I noticed a guy at my side, in plainclothes; he definitely wasn't a deputy. He was wearing a gray snap-brim fedora, a black suit, a dark blue shirt, and a yellow tie. He was in his mid-thirties, but his brown hair was grayed, and he had a nervous, ferretlike manner.

We were in the midst of the crush of cops and inside the high courthouse lobby, when I turned to him and said, "Can I have your autograph, Mr. Winchell?"

He had a smile about two inches wide- tight, no teeth- and beady blue eyes that were cold as the marble around us. He pressed something in my hand. I looked at it: a five-dollar bill.

"Keep your trap shut, kid," he said, "and let me tag along with you."

"Be my guest," I said.

"Atta boy," he said. "There's another fin in it for you, you play your cards right."

I managed to pocket the five as. across the lobby from us. the elevator was opening and the assassin and a few of the cops squeezed in. apparently. Anyway, as soon as the elevator went up. the crowd of cops and deputies began to thin a bit. and they began milling about, and going their separate ways.

"Shit," Winchell said.

"How'd you get here so fast? You're the only reporter around."

"The rest of those jerks are probably at the hospitals and tagging after Roosevelt."

"I didn't see you with the press at the park."

"I was at the Western Union office, sending my column off to the
Mirror
, when I heard two guys arguing about how many shots the nut got off at Roosevelt. That's all I had to hear: I got over here so fast my ass won't catch up till Tuesday."

"The rest of the newboys'll catch up with you before it does."

"I know. Can you get me upstairs? The jail's on the twenty-eighth floor. I hear."

"I can try."

We moved over to the elevator, where two cops were stationed to keep the likes of Winchell away, I supposed. We wouldn't have got any farther than that, but one of the cops had been at the park and had seen me helping load the assassin on the back of the limo. So when I said I was Mayor Cermak's personal bodyguard and wanted to question the assassin and flashed my ID. he let me on the elevator.

"What about him?" the cop said, pointing at Winchell. He didn't seem to recognize the columnist; normally that would've hurt Winchell's feelings. I supposed. But he didn't seem to mind, under the circumstances.

"He's with me," I said.

The cop shrugged and said, "Okay. It's the nineteenth floor. That's where the isolation cells are."

We got on the elevator.

Winchell rocked on his heels, looking up at the floor indicator.

"I didn't think this sort of thing was your line." I said.

"My by-line's my line." he said, "and anytime I can pin it on a story that's more than just entertaining the poor slobs on Hard Times Square with how some chorus girl got a diamond bracelet for laying some millionaire, I will."

The door opened on the nineteenth floor, and the sheriff, a big, lumpy man in dark suitcoat, white pants, colorful tie, and misshapen hat, was standing talking to a uniformed cop, who had a nickel-plated.32 long-barreled revolver in the palm of his hand, like something he was offering the sheriff. The sheriff turned a glowering gaze upon us, his dark eyebrows knitting, but before he could say anything. Winchell stepped forward with a smile as confident as it was insincere.