Target Lancer (29 page)

He went out.

Back in my office, frustrated as hell, I just sat at my desk looking for options. The only thing that occurred to me was taking Martineau up on it and hoofing over to IPP Litho-Plate. Only six blocks.…

The phone rang. I pushed the Line Two button and answered it.

“This is Mrs. Peters.”

Vallee’s landlady.

“Hello, Mrs. Peters. You have something for me?”

“Possibly. Possibly it is unimportant. But Mr. Vallee goes out this morning. Half an hour ago.”

“Is that unusual? He does work on Saturdays, right?”

“Usually. They work him very hard at the printing plant. But they are closed today.”

“Our understanding is they’re open.”

“They decide yesterday that they would close. I hear Mr. Vallee on the hall phone talking to someone about it. He said to this person that his work was shutting down because of the … he said ‘goddamn President’ coming to town. His bosses, they say that the crowds and the parking will be bad, so they give the day off.”

This had perked me up. “When Mr. Vallee went out this morning, was he carrying anything?”

“You mean his guns? No. But they will be in his car.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, where else could they be? They are not in his room now. I check there before I call you.”

“You are a rare gem, Mrs. Peters.” Hitler Youth or no Hitler Youth.

She reminded me of her open invitation for me to stop by for tea, and we exchanged good-byes.

Looking like hell, Motto and Stocks were discussing whether or not to transfer the two uncooperative subjects to Federal Building holding cells. I came up and shared what I’d learned about Vallee and his place of business, and asked them to get hold of Martineau ASAP, and tell him.

“You’re going over to IPP?” Stocks asked.

“Yeah. In the meantime, one of you guys try to get those Chicago coppers on the line—try to get patched through to their radio. They may be in their car, if Vallee is riding around, waiting for the right moment to sneak into his workplace.”

I collected my raincoat and hat and headed over to IPP.

CHAPTER
18

Saturday, November 2, 1963 9:10 A.M.

The day was chilly but not overcast, sunlight lancing through clouds and off skyscraper glass, with some lake wind making itself known; but that hadn’t discouraged the good citizens of Chicago. When I got to West Jackson, I found them by the hundreds eagerly lining both sides of the street, a mix of well-dressed and casual, men in hats or bareheaded, women in Easter-worthy hats or just scarves, some citizens standing at near military attention, others leaning on the wooden handles of homemade placards they would eventually brandish (
ALL THE WAY WITH JFK!
), abuzz with anticipation (“I wonder if Jackie will be with him!”). Over the next hour and a half, these hundreds would grow into thousands. And soon JFK himself would be riding in his convertible, smiling and waving to them all.

IPP Litho-Plate, on the corner of West Jackson and Des Plaines, dated to just after the turn of the century, a nondescript brown brick rectangular eight floors. The building across the way, on Des Plaines, was several stories shorter, so from the roof or a high window, a corner IPP window would (as Martineau had admitted) provide a sniper a clear view of the slowed limo making its way onto Jackson.

Another possibility was a shot from above, directly down at the President as he passed in his convertible.

I was part of the crowd, just facing the wrong way, as I knocked on the front doors, getting no response. An after-hours buzzer did no good, either. The crowd’s giddy excitement—loud talk and shrill yelling and hysterical laughter—made a collective cacophony that created an anxious edge in me that I needed to shake. Glad to get away from them, I headed around to the rear of the building and found a loading dock, and climbed up there and pounded on another door.

A guy finally answered, a scrawny character in his fifties in overalls and gray stubble, who made about as good a security guard as a kid with a cap pistol, only he didn’t have a cap pistol.

Of course, he wasn’t a security guard at all, just a janitor, and he took about two seconds to glance at my Justice Department credentials before letting me in.

We stood in a cement stairwell and echoed at each other.

“Anybody else in the building, Pop?” I asked.

“No, sir. Just me, the rats, and the roaches.”

“Nobody came around today, wanting to get in to watch the President’s parade from the fifty-yard line?”

He shook his head. “That’s not allowed. Maybe you know the Secret Service came by earlier in the week, had a look around, and said, on the motorcade morning? Keep anybody but employees oh-you-tee. Last minute yesterday, bosses here decided just to shut down for the day.”

I gestured toward the cement stairs with their metal railing. “Can I get to every floor from these?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Doors locked on the landings?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay. Listen, nobody else gets in unless they have credentials that say Secret Service or Chicago PD. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How do I get to the roof?”

“There’s a door on the warehouse floor. That’s the top floor. Eight. I can show you.”

“No. But thank you, Pop.”

What the hell was I calling him “Pop” for? He was probably my age.…

I headed up. Eight floors was a lot to search, and a sniper—depending on whether he wanted to hit Lancer coming off the expressway ramp or wait till the target moved past the building—could be just about anywhere, on just about any floor.

My hunch, however, was that the shooting post of choice would either be the warehouse floor or the roof—either should provide the kind of privacy a shooter would need. True, no other employees were around today; but when the plan had been formulated, the assumption would have been that Saturday was a workday at IPP. And they would stick to plan. Popping the President from the third-floor window, with Vallee surrounded by thirty or more other print-plant employees, would not have been a contingency.

I decided to take the warehouse floor first. As I climbed, I got out the nine-millimeter, releasing the safety.

So we had two of the four assassins in custody—or was it five? The fifth assassin, Vallee, would be under surveillance, unless—in the confusion of the IPP plant’s taking the day off at the last second—the screwed-up little ex-Marine had slipped his tail. Where better for him to make his stand than his workplace, where he either had a key or had made sure to get one. A familiar setting for him to use as the stage for his John Wilkes Booth performance.

Was Vallee part of the Cuban/white-trash team? Or was he acting of his own twisted accord?

That bothered me. Either way you read it, something seemed wrong—Vallee as another ex-soldier in bed with those Cubans, or Vallee as just another lone nut.

Even as a lone nut, however, a guy like Vallee was not some frenzied maniac racing across a hallway or an intersection, waving a cheap pistol, careening suicidally into the waiting armed arms of the Secret Service. No—Vallee, those Cubans, and the other ex-soldier boys were all cool, calculating, military-trained killers. With loaded rifles. With sniper scopes.

And the President would be here soon.

The door opened onto a vast expanse of giant paper rolls, stacked oversize cartons, and piled metal plates, a city of paper supplies with avenues wide enough to accommodate a forklift, two of which were at rest nearby, like small slumbering dinosaurs. Also nearby were the wood-slatted doors of a big old-fashioned freight elevator.

The ceiling was high and open-beamed and the lights were off, sunshine filtering lazily through the many windows like bright mote-floating fog.

Moving slowly across the wooden floor, with the nine-mil ready, I kept my back to a wall of looming paper rolls. No ink smell up here, more like a lumberyard scent. I felt Vallee—or whoever the sniper might be—would more likely be on the roof; but I could take no chances. Down at the end of this aisle (they were aligned with the narrow sides of the building’s rectangle) I could make out several of the windows onto Jackson.

No one perched to shoot down there.

And when I reached the end of that aisle, window upon window with views onto Jackson presented no Vallee, no anybody, waiting with a rifle. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

At the left, however, down at the West corner of the building, some cartons had been piled in an orderly fashion, though not following the layout of the rest of this warehouse floor. This had a homemade, temporary look to it, like some kid had made a fort out of thirty or forty cartons, walling himself in, making a little room with six-foot paper-carton walls. Behind those walls would be the corner windows, including at least one looking across the intersection of Jackson and Des Plaines.

What you might call a sniper’s nest.

I have never moved more slowly. More cautiously. More silently. I was glad to be wearing Hush Puppies with their rubber soles, though socks might have been better. If a foot chase developed, though, particularly on this wood floor, a slip in socks could put you on your ass.

So I eased down past the half-dozen mouths of aisles in IPP’s paper city, until I had neared the three-walled makeshift room surrounding the corner windows. Space on both sides of the stacked-carton fortress had been left to allow entry and exit.

I did not hear any movement from another human being. I did not hear heavy breathing or a cough or a rustle of clothing, much less someone loading a weapon.

Had this sniper’s nest been prepared earlier, and the shooter not yet taken his position?

That possibility seemed very real.

When I swung around into the open space, however, there he sat, Indian-style, his arms folded, as he watched out that window. Waiting patiently. A rifle with a scope was propped on a little stand, an M-1 like Vallee’s.

But this wasn’t Vallee.

Perched there maybe six feet away from me was the white soldier boy who somewhat resembled Vallee, in a white T-shirt and plaid shirt with its sleeves rolled up and blue jeans and sneakers. He had a blond butch and he was chewing a toothpick and he was wearing Ray-Bans.

White trash in blue jeans and green sunglasses.

“On your feet,” I said. “Hands up. Nice and easy, son.…”

He just looked up at me. Bland as toast. As unconcerned as a lion regarding a cricket.

Finally he nodded, started to slowly rise, then lurched for the rifle, and damn he was fast, because that long barrel was staring right up at me when I cracked a Ray-Ban lens by putting a bullet through it.

It stood him up straight, that eyeglass lens cracking like an eggshell, weeping a single red tear, and it was damn near comical, like he was coming to attention and preparing to salute when instead he just flopped facedown at my feet and showed me the nasty wet hole where the nine-mil slug had made its exit.

I removed the M-1 from his limp grasp, then yanked him by an arm and dragged him out of the nest.

There would be at least two shooters.
Why hadn’t this guy been Vallee?
This was Vallee’s building. Or had the mentally disturbed ex-Marine been some sort of decoy? In which case, with the Cubans in custody, one other white–boy shooter was out there.

Just one.

I knelt in the window and looked around at the buildings of the intersection. My eyes searched windows and rooftops.

Then just across Des Plaines, on the five-story building across from me, I saw him.

Again, not Vallee.

It was the white boy with the black butch and he was emerging from a rooftop doorway, staying low, scoped rifle in hand, heading to the roof’s edge.

Should I go over there?

Should I call it in?

The President wasn’t due for a while yet. But what if the rooftop shooter didn’t get a scheduled signal from his now-dead cohort, and decided to light out, or find some alternate position? A lot could happen by the time I left the eighth floor of IPP and got across Des Plaines and made my way to that rooftop.

I waited till he was in position near the building’s edge, where the lip came up and gave him a resting place for his weapon, and I lined him up in the M-1’s cross hairs.

When I fired, the report of the rifle was just a minor whip crack in the morning, probably dismissed by one and all as a festive firecracker or maybe a car backfiring or some other unidentified city sound, even the indistinct blare of a sound truck down the street, making some announcement or other, possibly for a new pizza place or perhaps
Stop the World, I Want to Get Off
at the Shubert.

That is, dismissed as such by everyone but the sniper who the M-1 round had caught in the neck. I hadn’t handled a rifle since the Pacific, and been trying for his head and came close. I hadn’t intended for him to die that way, rolling around unable to scream with his hands clutching his throat as he strangled in his own blood.

But it served the purpose.

I was on my feet, wondering what to do next, when I could finally make out the sound truck’s blare: “
The President’s appearance has been canceled! We are sorry to announce, President Kennedy’s Chicago trip has been canceled! A parade featuring other dignitaries will go on as scheduled. The President’s appearance has been…”

Might have told me before I went to all this trouble.

CHAPTER
19

Near the freight elevators was a little office area where I used a wall phone. No police sirens cut the air—just those sound trucks, which a glance out a window told me were actually police cars with uniformed cops hanging out rider’s windows with bullhorns to announce the President’s cancelation.

As for the cancelation of those two snipers, no sign that anyone had noticed any part of that episode presented itself. The warehouse area on West Jackson was really just a bunch of empty buildings—IPP working on Saturdays was the exception not the rule around here—and anybody normally in those buildings had probably been down lining the sidewalks waiting for the motorcade. As far as I could tell, no other buildings or even the expressway had a view of that rooftop, where the body of the black-butch sniper was just a vague shape near a rooftop edge, anyway.