‘Which he does,’ said Jane hotly, ‘especially considering the way things have gone so far.’ She glanced at Barry. ‘Your people left you out on a limb so you could be the scapegoat in case anything went wrong with the Russell situation. Now Foxworth and Warren can’t run fast enough to get away from the idea of a second assassin. All this stuff I brought them about Flynn and Kennedy must be scaring the pants off them. If this gets out somehow it’s going to raise some serious hell.’
‘Which,’ said Hennessy, a sour note in his voice, ‘is no doubt why the people behind this tried to blow you into little tiny pieces.’ He shook his head, both hands gripping the wheel tightly. ‘Just remember I told you so, pally, okay?’
‘Why don’t you sit on your thumb and just drive the car, Dan?’
‘Sure thing, Jane,’ said the cop with a grin. ‘But has anyone given any serious thought to exactly what we’re going to do when we get to the damn fair?’
‘Do what Foxworth and his friends won’t,’ Jane answered promptly. ‘Find the son of a bitch and kill him.’
* * *
By eight thirty Bone had piloted the flatboat along the concrete river to the back side of the Court of States just beyond the overpass for World’s Fair Boulevard, the four-lane thoroughfare that acted as a convenient divider between the serious sections of the fair and the amusement area around Fountain Lake.
The Court of States, representing twenty-three states and Puerto Rico, was a multi-building exhibit shaped like a long horseshoe around a shallow, rectangular pool, all of which straddled the Flushing River from the boulevard overpass to the Japanese and Czechoslovakian pavilions a hundred yards or so to the north-west. At first glance it appeared as though the artificial river simply vanished under the base of the Jeffersonian-style Virginia exhibit but in fact the flow out of Fountain Lake was diverted through a wide concrete culvert, fitted with a trash rack for catching refuse thrown into the stream and just big enough to allow the flatboat to pass through.
Among other things it had been Leo Hamner’s responsibility to travel the length of the river from the lake to the spillway, clearing the accumulated garbage tossed into the river each day that wound up being trapped in the trash racks, then taking his nightly haul downstream to the Flushing Bay Piers, where it would be pitchforked onto a barge and taken to a landfill in New Jersey.
Keeping to Leo’s schedule Bone killed the engine, tilted it up on the transom and then used a long-handled wooden rake from the bottom of the boat to clear the garbage from the wide mesh of the trash rack. There was an extraordinary amount of it: food wrappers, dozens of copies of Today at the Fair, copies of various real newspapers, several soggy hats, both men’s and women’s, diapers, stuffed toys and other smaller prizes from the midway, at least a dozen unrolled, bloated prophylactics, a shoebox that turned out to hold one red child’s shoe and a perfectly modelled birchbark canoe eight inches long and fitted with a carved cork Indian seated in the middle. Etched into the side of the canoe with some kind of burning tool was the word Opemigon.
Trash dumped into the bottom of the boat, Bone moved the flatboat forward by bracing his hands flat against the rough concrete of the culvert and pulling. Within a few seconds the boat had been completely swallowed by the culvert and Bone found himself moving through complete darkness, sweating hard now under the raincape. Halfway along his right hand grabbed empty air and he knew he’d reached the side passage that fed the pool that ran the length of the Court of States. The side passage and everything else about the intricacy of the site’s waterworks had been shown on the blueprints the clerk in the administration building had proudly shown him on his second visit to the fair.
He reached the far end of the culvert and paused, using both hands to keep the flatboat from being pulled out into the open by the current. He glanced up at the radium dial of his wristwatch. It was eight forty-one. From this point on, timing would be critical. The exit point of the culvert was directly under the south end of the Pennsylvania pavilion, a three-quarter-size reproduction of Independence Hall, complete with its own copy of the Liberty Bell, with appropriately placed crack, a carillon tower like the original and a recording of a bell that rang out every hour on the hour from opening in the morning to closing at night.
Two hundred feet away along the watercourse was the main floodway entrance to the Lagoon of Nations. Along the left bank was a shrub-covered slope at the rear of the Missouri, Washington, D.C. and Belgian pavilions, while on the right bank there was the looming, featureless slabs of marble marking the Soviet pavilion and its centrepiece, the floodlit statue of Big Joe at the summit of his tower, striding over everything, the red star of communism held high in his strong right hand.
On his last two visits to the fair, Bone had paced off distances along the length of the river and clocked the speed of its current. Although the speed varied depending on the time of day and width of the river, he knew that between his present position and the entrance to the lagoon the river flowed at an average of a little more than seven miles per hour, or 616 feet per minute. At that rate, unpowered, it would take the flatboat roughly twenty seconds to go from the culvert to the lagoon.
At eight forty-five Bone began to notice a steady increase in the number of people moving along the walkway beside the shrub-covered slope on his left and the sidewalk in front of the Soviet pavilion, all of them moving in the direction of the lagoon. It was almost time.
* * *
‘It really is quite amazing,’ said Detective Inspector Thomas Barry as they made their way along tree-lined Constitution Mall. ‘I’ve never seen anything remotely like it.’ He smiled. ‘It’s very… American.’
‘We’re not here to sightsee, pally,’ Hennessy grumbled.
‘Quit complaining,’ said Jane. ‘You were the one who started me off on this whole thing and this is where it led.’
‘No,’ said Hennessy. ‘This is where you took it and it’s going to get us in deep trouble before the night is over.’ He looked back over his shoulder. ‘You notice no one gave us a second look coming in here with my badge? All those plain black Chevys parked around the New York City building inside the main gate? This place is already swarming with dicks. This place closes down they’re going to be welding all the manhole covers shut and putting their best shooters on all the roofs. By the time the sun comes up the whole fair’s going to be locked down tighter than my aunt Fannie’s fanny.’
‘Our guy knows that as well as you do,’ Jane answered. ‘He’s figured it out. He’s got a way around all that.’
‘And a way out as well?’ Hennessy shook his head. ‘You’re dreaming, Jane. Your guy, if he ever existed, is waiting for the midnight sailings from the West Street piers. He’s gone. I should have known better. This whole thing is a wild-goose chase.’
‘No,’ said Barry, ‘Jane’s right. He’s here.’
‘Yeah, well last I heard everyone thought Sean Russell was the assassin and he was going to blow everyone up in Detroit. Now it’s somebody else and he’s going to do his dirty work here.’
‘Russell was nothing more than a distraction to keep us occupied while the real assassin got on with it.’
‘Look,’ said Jane, ‘we’ve been over this a hundred times. The voice on the telephone Foxworth tapped isn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination. He’s real.’
‘All right,’ said Hennessy. ‘So now that we’re here, what do we do to catch him?’
‘Try and think like he does,’ said Barry. He dropped down on a bench in front of the Heinz exhibit, a white, slightly pointed dome that looked just like the hat Harpo wore in all the Marx Brothers films with a giant, floodlit 57 standing above the entranceway.
Jane glanced through the glass doorway. Inside there was a tall, bright blue column in the centre of the exhibit, covered with entwined figures and golden vines. Halfway up the column was a giant glass saucer with water spilling over the edges and on top of the column was a golden nude woman crouched like a monkey holding u
p a crystal sphere with one hand, while the other arm crossed discreetly over her private area. Jane wasn’t quite sure what it all had to do with pickles and ketchup. She sat down beside Barry on the bench and lit a cigarette. Hennessy stalked back and forth in front of them, his hands jammed into his jacket pockets. All around them the remaining people at the fair seemed to be moving towards the perimeter of the Lagoon of Nations.
‘Think like a professional murderer,’ said the detective, lighting a cigarette of his own. ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult for a homicide dick.’
‘The king and queen will be surrounded by police,’ said Jane. ‘Secret Service, New York State troopers, New York City police.’
‘Plus a dozen or so from Special Branch,’ Barry added.
‘Shooters on the rooftops, don’t forget,’ said Hennessy.
‘What about crowds?’ Jane asked. ‘They’re not shutting down the fair for the visit, are they?’
Hennessy shook his head. ‘Nah. They’re just going to cordon off the areas the king and queen will be going to for a few hours, cops every twenty feet or so.’
‘That’s good for the killer,’ said Barry.
Hennessy looked sceptical. ‘You think he’s going to shoot from the crowd?’
‘No, but when he does shoot the crowds are going to panic. The cordons won’t hold them back. It’ll give him cover.’
‘How long between the shots being fired to the gates all being sealed?’
‘No more than a minute or two,’ said Hennessy. ‘It’s just like when the president opened the fair in April. Radio cars at all the exits and observers everywhere with army field telephones.’ He grimaced. ‘Like I said, Aunt Fannie’s fanny.’ He paused. ‘Russell may have been nothing but a distraction but he sure put the fear of God in everyone. I heard they even have minesweepers out in the harbour in case someone tries to blow up the ship they’re using to come across from New Jersey.’ He made a snorting sound. ‘Like no one would notice New York Harbor being mined.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’ Jane laughed. ‘No one noticed the krauts sabotaging all those freight cars full of dynamite on Black Tom Island on the Jersey side during the war. I was sixteen years old. Woke me up out of a dead sleep ten miles away, broke windows on Park Avenue.’
‘This guy’s not going to be using a freight car full of dynamite.’
‘We’ve been assuming he’s going to use a rifle,’ said Barry. ‘Perhaps he has some other weapon in mind.’
‘Like what?’ Hennessy asked. ‘Can’t be a pistol, not if he figures on getting away with it. Explosives are probably out as well.’
‘Why?’ Jane asked. She nodded towards Barry, seated on the bench beside her. ‘Tom here actually saw Russell’s bomb factory.’
The Scotland Yard man was shaking his head. ‘I agree with the detective,’ he said. ‘It leaves too much to chance. According to the newspaper articles the king and queen have rarely been on schedule. A minute or two early or late and the bomb goes off without doing any harm to them.’
‘Not to mention the fact that we’ve got a whole squad of guys to take care of that kind of thing,’ Hennessy put in.
Jane pulled out the guidebook she’d bought at a booth just inside the main gate. She flipped it open, turning to the map, squinting at it closely. She looked up, comparing the view and the map, pointing across Constitution Mall and Rainbow Avenue. ‘French pavilion, Brazil pavilion. Both high enough and close enough. The All Electric Farm is out because even the silo isn’t as tall as the side wall of the Brazil building.’ She turned slightly, pointing to the right of the mall. ‘You might have a shot from the top of the Heinz building here but people would see you from a mile off.’
‘Nothing else?’ asked Hennessy.
‘There’s a building in the Gardens on Parade exhibit but it’s awfully close and they’re sure to have it covered. The only other thing I can see is maybe one of the houses in the Town of Tomorrow.’
‘What exactly is that?’ Barry asked.
‘Just what it says,’ Jane answered. She looked down at the book. ‘Fifteen model homes of varying styles and materials. They’ve got a brick house, a redwood house, plywood, glass, Celotex – whatever that is – even a motor home.’
She shrugged. ‘Some of them have got two storeys. Maybe he found an attic to hide in. I did a photo feature for Life about it. The houses are ready to move into.’
‘What about the range?’ asked Barry.
‘You’d have to pace it off, I guess, but some of the closer ones are within two hundred yards, easy.’
‘That has to be it,’ said Hennessy. ‘He hides out in one of the houses overnight, seals himself in or something so a search won’t find him, takes his shot, then slips into the crowd and walks away.’
‘Let’s go and look,’ said Jane, getting up from the bench.
‘Or tell Foxworth,’ said Hennessy. ‘That’s what we should do.’
‘I don’t really think Assistant Director Foxworth is really very interested in any theories about our second assassin,’ said Barry, rising from the bench himself. ‘Director Hoover has done everything he can to limit his participation in events thus far and I think Foxworth has seen the wisdom of his master’s ways.’
Hennessy moaned. ‘For Christ’s sake, Jane! You mean to say we have to run this bastard to ground ourselves?’
‘Let’s go and take a look at these houses,’ Jane answered. ‘Then we can decide.’
They headed up the mall, following the crowds to the Lagoon of Nations, reaching the immense pool just as the nine o’clock show was about to begin. Without warning the two main fountains in the centre of the lagoon dropped away to nothing and the lights snapped out.
‘What’s this?’ asked Barry.
‘Watch,’ Hennessy answered, grinning. ‘It’s a pip, believe me.’
There was a brief moment of silence, the recorded bell sounded in the tower of the Pennsylvania exhibit, and then, as suddenly as darkness had fallen across the lagoon, its waters suddenly began to glow, brighter and brighter. A dense mist began to rise from the surface of the still water and then, abruptly, a hissing cloud of bright blue steam roared up from nozzles around the edges of the pool, forcing people away from the guardrails before they were soaked.
The fountains in the centre of the lagoon began to rise again, climbing higher and higher, the wall of mist around the entire pool now changing colours as spotlights played across the suspended curtain of droplets, first rose, then amber, then blue. Music began to swell, great powerful gusts of strings and blaring, triumphant horns, the sound seeming to come from within the lagoon itself. As the music became louder, the fountains rose with it. Then, twin pillars of flame roared up a hundred feet and more, drawing a collective gasp from the assembled crowd. A dozen hidden searchlights made an arching roof of brilliant beams overhead as the music climbed even higher and the blazing tongues of flame rose into the sky again. Then the fireworks began.
* * *
As the recorded ringing of the bell boomed out overhead Bone released his restraining hands from the edge of the culvert and the flatboat rushed silently forward in the current, guided by the tiller arm. A quick check confirmed that the walkways on both sides of the river were empty. Everyone was gathered around the lagoon.
The boat reached the floodway entrance and slid into the narrow opening. Once again Bone ducked low and lifted a hand to stop the flatboat, waiting for the exact moment when the music began to swell and the curtain of mist began to rise at the edges of the lagoon. He counted off the seconds in his head, listening to the music and waiting for the loud gasp from the crowd announcing the first flaring of the massive gas jets. As the flames roared upward into the sky Bone released the boat and simultaneously twisted the key in the outboard’s ignition.
Seconds later he slipped out through the lagoon opening of the floodway and headed for the other side.
According to the information Bone had gathered the lagoon show used more than a thousand w
ater nozzles capable of throwing twenty tons of water into the air at any given moment, four hundred gas jets, sixty searchlights, 350 noiseless fireworks cannons and three million watts of brilliant light. A live band played in the concert hall, the music broadcast to the crowd around the lagoon from huge, theatre-style speakers that poked up just above the surface of the water. The show was controlled by three technicians from inside the United States Building at the far end of the Court of Peace, all three men seated at a vast console like an organ’s, fitted out with the dozens of switches and buttons controlling the water nozzles, the fireworks and the gas jets. The whole extravaganza, fireworks included, lasted for exactly six minutes.
Right from the start John Bone had realised that getting his equipment to his chosen lie would be the most difficult challenge confronting him. The necessary apparatus was large, cumbersome and impossible to explain away. Bringing it to the lie could not be accomplished during the daylight hours. Bone also quickly came to the conclusion that coming in by water was far and away the safest and most expedient path to the lie and his best escape route as well.
During daylight, the paths along the meandering course of the river were filled with strolling visitors to the fair, and the grassy, lightly sloping banks on either side were a favourite picnicking spot, but during the evening hours, especially after dusk, the walkways were virtually empty. The lagoon was a different story. The four-hundred-foot-wide, eight-hundred-foot-long basin was one of the fair’s focal points and there were always groups of people leaning on the guardrails or sitting on the benches, resting or waiting for friends.
Leo Hamner regularly made his rounds along the water course, and just as regularly he must have crossed the lagoon, but Bone wanted no one to remember his passage – too much depended on his remaining invisible.
Ironically, he came to the conclusion that the only time to cross the lagoon was when the most people were focusing their attention on it. For the six-minute duration of the show the fine nozzles around the edge of the basin effectively screened the surface of the water and the spurting fountains, floodlights, gas jets and pyrotechnics saw to it that everyone’s eyes were looking upward for that brief space of time.
The Second Assassin Page 34
