The studio in which McDermott worked was fronted by a huge picture window that flooded the room with natural light. Pale blue backing paper hung behind a raised platform on one wall. A half-dozen power packs were on the floor near the platform, their cables snaking to strobe lights on stands topped with grey, umbrella-shaped reflectors. A Polaroid was mounted on one tripod, a Nikon on another. A green door on another wall was marked with a red hand-lettered sign that warned the room beyond was a darkroom.
They were sitting now at a long table strewn with snippets of film, grease pencils, magnifying glasses, developer, metal clips, capped lenses, order forms, and a half-empty bottle of Heineken beer. Sonny took from his jacket pocket an envelope containing the card Karin Lubenthal had given him. Careful to handle it only by its edges, he placed it on the table before McDermott, who picked up one of the magnifying glasses, leaned over the card, and studied it:
“What do you need?” he asked, still peering through the glass.
“An ID card.”
“What on it?”
“The hotel seal, my name, my...”
“Do you want the seal in gold, as it is here?”
“Yes. Exactly as you see it.”
“What else?”
“My name, my picture...”
“Do you have a photograph?”
“I thought you might take one today.”
“Sure. What else on the card?”
“Across the bottom, in bold letters, the word security.”
“Do you have a sample of the type?”
“No. A good block lettering will do.”
“What color?”
“Black.”
“How about the photograph? Color, or black and white?”
“Color.”
“Do you want the card laminated?”
“Yes. With one of those little fastener clips on it, so I can pin it to my jacket.”
“Plastic strap and fastener,” McDermott said, nodding.
“Yes.”
“How big should it be?”
“Two and a half by four, approximately.”
“Seal at the top...”
“Yes.”
“... in gold, photo where?”
“On the right-hand side of the card.”
“Name on the left then?”
“On the left, yes.”
“What name?”
“Gerald Ramsey.”
“And the word security across the bottom, block lettering, in black.”
“Yes.”
“All caps or just initial cap?”
“All caps.”
“Do you need this card back?” he asked.
“I have no further use for it.”
“How does Monday sound?”
“Tomorrow would be better.”
“Tomorrow’s a bit early.”
“Sunday then.”
“I suppose.”
“Early Sunday morning.”
“Well...”
“Time’s short.”
“All right, Sunday before noon. Need anything else? A birth certificate? A...?”
“No.”
“Driver’s license?”
“Yes.”
“What name?”
“Same as the Plaza card.”
“How about ID cards?”
“Have you got NYPD stock?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need one for the First and one for the Eighteenth. Both of them detective ID’s.”
“What grade?”
“Second.”
“Any particular name?”
“James Lombardo.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Can you make up an FBI card?”
“Yes, I’ve got blanks in stock.”
“Put the name Frank Mercer on it.”
“You plan to be all these people?”
“I don’t know yet. How about Secret Service?”
“Don’t know what it looks like, never had a call for one. Sorry.”
“No problem,” Sonny said, but he was clearly disappointed. “Can we take the pictures now?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
From a phone booth outside The Food Emporium on the northeast corner of Second Avenue, Sonny dialed the number she had given him on the train.
“Elita?” he said. “Hi, this is Sonny.”
“Oh, God,” she said.
“Ever been to the Statue of Liberty?”
“Oh, God,” she said, “it’s you!”
7
It had been a long hot Friday, but Saturday was even hotter.
At ten minutes to two that afternoon, the temperature in Washington, D.C., soared to ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit, shattering the ninety-eight-degree record set for this day on June 27, 1980.
Agent Samuel Harris Dobbs was sweltering in the lightest-weight seersucker suit he owned. His immediate superior, Daryll Phillips, had taken off his jacket, and pulled down his tie, and was sitting in his shirtsleeves behind his big uncluttered desk, the Treasury Department seal on the wall behind it. But this was the boss’s office here, and Dobbs didn’t feel he could risk the liberty of making himself quite so much at home. Not with Phillips seeming to have a hair across his ass this hot summer day.
“I don’t like surprises,” he told Dobbs.
“Nossir,” Dobbs said.
“I don’t care it’s a president or some sheek fum an Arab nation, it don’t make no never-mind to me.”
“Nossir.”
“I don’t like this last-minute sputterfuss, I got to send a team to New York, beef up the security there.”
Dobbs was thinking he didn’t much like it himself. He had promised Sally they’d take a trip to Pennsylvania next weekend, have a sort of second honeymoon in Bucks County. Booked the room and everything, his wife had been looking forward to it since early May. Now Phillips was telling him he’d have to leave for New York this afternoon, take five other agents with him, be there all weekend and through the first of July. And for what? To make sure security at the goddamn Plaza Hotel would be tight enough to suit the goddamn Republicans, and then to give the New-York field office a hand at the goddamn Canada Day banquet, whatever the hell that was.
Dobbs hated Republican presidents.
He’d learned to hate Reagan and his witchy wife when he was working for them as part of the White House detail, hated all the things the President and his fine lady had stood for. Alone in bed with Sally, Dobbs would rage at how Nixon had only tried to steal the goddamn country whereas Reagan was now trying to murder it. Sally would tell him to hush, Sam, he’d lose his job or something.
He told Sally the only way he’d get out of this rotten job was to throw himself across that son of a bitch when another crazy bastard like Hinckley tried to kill him. That was more than eleven years ago, before he got transferred to the Omaha field office, where he learned how much better it was to be in Washington, even working for Republican presidents. He never stopped believing it was Nancy who’d had him transferred because one day he was thirty seconds late opening a goddamn door for her!
Hating them both, he’d loved all the Reagan jokes they began telling...
There’s this banquet at the White House, okay?
And Reagan is sitting next to Nancy, and one of the White House waiters appears by her side to take her order, explaining that they’re serving either roast beef or filet of sole, which would she prefer?
And Nancy says, “I’ll have the roast beef, please.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the waiter says. “And the vegetable?”
“He’ll have the same,” Nancy says.
... rejoiced when the son of a bitch got caught with his hand in the Iran-Contra cookie jar, but knew he’d wiggle out of it somehow — gosh, I’m terribly sorry, I just don’t remember.