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.