AT ST. ELIZABETH'S, no one in authority would talk to Pepsie Dobbins.
"Are you denying Gila Gingold has been committed here?" she insisted. "Remember, you're on camera."
They were in the office of the hospital's spokesman. Behind Pepsie, Buck Featherstone sighted through the ANC videocam lens and hoped he was pressing the right button.
"I am neither confirming nor denying it," said the official spokesman for St. Elizabeth's Hospital.
"That's no answer."
A man walking on very hard heels tramped up behind them and demanded to know, "Who's in charge around here?"
Recognizing the voice, Pepsie turned. Seeing Gila Gingold, face red with anger under his white thatch of hair, she struck Buck in the arm and hissed, "Film everything that happens!"
She shoved her mike into Gingold's perpetually red face and asked, "Congressman Gingold, what do you say about reports that you were taken away from the White House tonight after an unsuccessful attack on the President's life?"
"I deny them absolutely," Gingold snapped, voice thundering with indignant rage.
Pepsie whirled on the hospital spokesman and said, "Obviously Congressman Gingold hasn't been committed here. So why do you refuse to deny the rumor?"
The spokeman looked confused. "But-but he is here."
"Show me," Congessman Gingold said.
"This way, Congressman," said the spokesman.
"We're coming, too," said Pepsie triumphantly.
"No, you're not," the spokesman retorted on the run.
"Congressman, the only way you're going to quash this vicious maligning of your character," said Pepsie breathlessly, following Gingold down the immaculate hallways, "is with raw footage."
"Stick with me," Gingold bit out.
In a private ward on the fourth floor, they were taken to a private room where a man lay sedated. He was sleeping on his stomach, his arms hanging over the sides of the bed.
"We keep turning him over on his back," an orderly said, "but he keeps flopping over like that."
Gila Gingold strode up and lifted the man's head by his thick hair. "That's not me."
"It sure looks like you," Pepsie said.
"I'm handsomer. Vastly."
"Maybe it's your brother."
"I don't have any brother and I demand St. Elizabeth's Hospital issue a statement categorically denying that I'm being held for observation."
"According to this chart you are," Pepsie said, indicating the clipboard at the foot of the bed. "See, it says Gila Gingold. "
"I will sue this institution out of existence before I let this outrage go any further," thundered Gila Gingold.
"We're under Secret Service instructions to release no information about this patient," the spokesman stammered.
"Somebody is going to pay for this."
Pepsie lifted the mike and asked, "Congressman, do you want to make an official statement for broadcast?"
"You're damn right I do," said Congressmen Gila Gingold, pivoting to a perfect two-shot with Pepsie Dobbins.
At that moment two Secret Service agents came pounding into the room to wrestle Gila Gingold to the floor. "How the hell did you get loose?" one grunted.
"Tell them I'm the real Gingold," the congressman shouted as he straggled on the floor.
Pepsie turned to Buck and hissed, "Are you getting this on tape?"
"Yeah."
"Good" Raising her voice, Pepsie said, "You've got the wrong Gingold. The other one's still in bed."
On the bed the sleeping Gila Gingold flippered his arms and legs as if swimming through a dream lake.
It took twenty minutes to straighten it all out. By that time Pepsie Dobbins couldn't be more pleased. She had yards of tape, and it was coming up on eleven o'clock.
CONGRESSMAN GILA GINGOLD'S vociferous denial aired on the eleven o'clock news nationwide. All of official Washington saw it.
In the White House family quarters, the First Lady said, "Damn!"
In his pizza-box-strewn New York apartment, Thrush Limburger jumped up and said, "Washington, here I come!"
And in the White House subbasement Secret Service command post, all hell broke loose.
Chapter 20
The director of the Secret Service hated stonewalling. It was not his job to hold information back from his boss, the President. But this was a special case. It wasn't just a matter of his job. The honor and integrity of the service were at stake.
An assassin wearing a Secret Service countersniper windbreaker had tried to kill the President of the United States and had been slain in return by a service-issue Delta Elite. Everything smacked of Dallas.
If the attempt on the President's life had any connection to the service-any at all-then the service was all but headed for mothballs. Hell, it had almost happened in the aftermath of Dallas anyway. Every agent knew that. It was the service's darkest hour, the event that haunted every agent's waking life and deepest slumber.
So when the President showed up at the command post in the White House subbasement with three of the strangest people he had ever seen in tow, the director thought fast.
"We're still developing the incoming Intelligence," he said quickly, even before the three could be introduced.
The beeping of the fag brought an agent hurrying out of his seat to pluck a sheet of paper from the tray. He glanced at it and seemed to lose two shades of color.
"Is there a problem?" the white-haired man in the gray suit and dark glasses asked in a lemony voice.
"And you are?"
"Smith. Secret Service. Retired."
"He's agreed to come back to help us out," the President added.
"Back? Where did you serve?"
"Dallas."
The director swallowed hard and hoped it wasn't noticed. Did they suspect? If they suspected the truth, it was already all over.
"And this is Special Agent Remo Eastwood, along with Chiun, who is an expert on assassins."
"You?" asked the director, looking down at the tiny Asian in the white-and-gold kimono and smoked glasses.
"You will reveal all that you know," he said.
"Why don't we start with security video of the two incidents here in Washington?" The director turned and said, "Jack."
Jack Murtha popped a cassette into a VCR, and they gathered around to watch.
"We had all the video from the different monitors edited together for easy analysis. You'll see."
The video was a kaleidoscope of agents running to and fro, trying to catch the nimble black-and-white cat that strongly resembled Socks. At first it was comical, until the cat, cornered, started attacking.
"It started off acting like a typical cat," the director narrated, "then all of a sudden, it turned lion."
The video had caught it turning on two Secret Service agents, leaping up, ripping at their throats with its teeth and hanging on, as if by sheer tenacity it could drag its victims to the ground.
"Here it looks as if it's actually trying to drag Special Agent Reynolds away, but obviously its strength wasn't enough," the director said.
The footage that followed was even more chaotic, but it showed clearly the desperate attempt by the Secret Service detail to capture the crazed cat before it could reach the President.
"As you can see, Mr. President," the director said when the footage ended, "the White House detail was clearly trying to save you from what it believed was a rabid animal."
The President looked unconvinced.
Agent Eastwood turned to the tiny Oriental, Chiun, and asked, "What do you think?"
"I think tiger."
"Say again"
"Not lion. Tiger. That cat thinks it is a tiger."
"Why makes you say that?" the President asked.
"Because if it thought it was a lion, it would have bitten those men on the rump to bring them down. It seized their throat in its jaws. A tiger brings his prey down thus. Therefore, it was not a lion, but a tiger."