Four
Grier and Johnson had the gunman pinioned on the stainless steel cart, the little man no longer squirming like an unruly child but lost in a motionless daze. It took more than three of us to subdue him — Plimpton, Breslin, a Kennedy aide and the hotel man who’d guided Bob off the stage also piled on at one point. But the footballer and decathlete had taken charge and were now, in a way, protecting the assailant, as a good number of the seventy or eighty people piled into this so-called Pantry clearly wanted blood for blood.
I was wondering if the little shooter was hyped-up on something — the dilated pupils seemed to indicate that. Might help explain the superhuman strength.
With Ethel kneeling at Bob’s side now, I went back over to the site of the struggle, taking my belt off. I had Grier hold the little man down as Johnson and I cinched my belt around our captive’s ankles, even as an angry mini-mob bore down.
“We want him alive,” I said, the two black faces dripping sweat looking at me curiously. “Or do you want another Oswald?”
“We don’t want another Oswald!” Grier said with a forceful head shake in the midst of all this.
Somebody heard that and echoed, “We don’t want another Oswald!” Several others repeated this new mantra.
Nonetheless a male voice shouted, “Kill him!” Other voices joined in: “Kill him! Kill him now!”
Peace-loving supporters consumed with rage pressed in trying to pummel our captive, reporter Hamill in the lead, several at a time taking looping swings around us, punching, kicking, one grabbing the shooter’s leg and twisting it.
As if a mosquito had bit him, the gunman said, “Stop that — you’re hurting my leg,” and it understandably infuriated his attackers.
Yet we pushed them away somehow, and Breslin shamed fellow New Yorker Hamill back: “Think you’re fucking Jack Ruby or somethin’?”
Bob’s brother-in-law/advisor, the collegiate-looking Steve Smith, was yelling, “Please clear the area! Please don’t panic. Everything is all right.”
Of course the circumstances were anything but all right, though over the din of swearing and screaming, a woman’s voice could be heard: “Pray!”
At least two persons were already doing that — the fallen man’s wife, kneeling at his side, and the man himself, whose blood-streaked hands cradled a rosary to his chest.
Finally a quartet of uniformed cops came in and collected the shooter from us and carried him out, holding him over their heads like a football hero after the game. Poor baby had a broken finger and a sprained ankle.
I was dispatched to find a doctor. I made my way through the double doors and into the featureless corridor and up onto the platform, empty of people now, devoid of triumph. The cheers of minutes before were wails and shrieks now, hysteria spreading like a brushfire. Kennedy Youth girls in red, white and blue ribbons and jaunty straw hats hugged each other and sobbed; a few were on their knees praying. A big black guy in a dark suit that might have been a circuit-riding preacher’s was pounding the wall with his fists, yelling up to a sky somewhere beyond the chandeliers, demanding, “Why, oh Lord? Why again? Why another Kennedy?” A college longhair with an RFK peace button was shouting, “Fuck this country! Fuck this fucking country!”
On stage, using the same microphone Bob had, I asked in that time-honored cliched way, “Is there a doctor in the house?” Smith came up onto the stage behind me. He leaned in to the mic and said, “Please clear the ballroom, so we can get medical help to the Senator and other victims.”
Soon a doctor — the husband of a Kennedy campaign worker — was bending down by Bob, who seemed awake but as dazed as his attacker had been. The doctor reached behind Bob’s head, felt around. Bob’s face tightened. Moments later the doctor’s hand came back with a bloody forefinger.
He said, “This will remove cranial pressure.”
The victim’s wife had gone off to get a bag of ice for the medic and, on her return, Bob said softly, “Oh, Ethel.”
Shortly thereafter two ambulance attendants rolled a gurney in. Bob protested weakly: “Don’t lift me... please don’t lift me.” But they did anyway, gently, and then wheeled him out. The other major player in the drama had departed the stage.
Now the Pantry was again just an embarrassing display of a celebrated hotel’s questionable kitchen practices, its floor littered with trash and cigarettes and a good man’s blood.
In the melee I’d lost track of Nita. Not surprisingly, many had, when the shots were firing every which way, just scattered for their lives. Nita was not among the victims and that was a good goddamn start. I returned to the fifth floor, in hopes of finding her, which I quickly did.
In the living room of the Royal Suite, the victory party was now a vigil, a mix of Kennedy staffers, celebrities, activists and a few reporters who had gathered, waiting for updates.
Nita was sitting on the floor in the same corner where we’d first chatted. Legs up, she was hugging them to her, arms clasped under her knees; what remained of the Cher-like makeup was tear-streaked racoon smears, pink lipstick gone, the big brown eyes fixed in a hollow unblinking stare. She looked like hell, frankly, but just seeing her alive and unharmed was the first welcome sight since the gunfire rang out down in Pantry hell.
I joined her, taking my previous spot against the wall. Sat with my legs outstretched and one ankle over the other; got out of my suitcoat and piled it next to me. My shirt was soaked. I loosened my tie. The suite’s air-conditioning helped. But I felt like I’d awoken from a terrible dream to find myself drenched in night sweats.
The TV in the background was playing the victory speech Nita had typed up, an ironic ghost haunting the place. This much smaller group than before huddled around the TV but for a few haggard souls filling the suite’s Danish modern furniture, little of which I’d even noticed when the cocktail party was in full swing.
“I’m so ashamed,” she said. Her voice was small. From such a self-assured woman, this was as startling as a scream.
I didn’t say anything. I thought I knew what she meant by ashamed: ashamed to be an American. For killing our own, our boys in Vietnam, our leaders at home. Ashamed to be a human being. If God created Man in his image, what kind of monster must He be? If we were the top species on this ant-farm planet, we must be the work of an underachiever among Supreme Beings.
But I was wrong. That wasn’t it.
“I ran,” she said, barely audible. “So many gunshots all around me and I panicked and ran out of there. Right as he was being struck down like his brother.”
She started to cry, but they were dry, wrenching sobs, tears long since spent, and I drew her close and held her to me. She considered herself a coward, like I thought myself a failure. Some fucking bodyguard. I should never have let Bob talk me into going into this unarmed.
But for all the self-recrimination, I knew: when somebody was willing to lay his life on the line to take yours, you were going to die.
Someone switched the channel and the speech Nita typed up started in again.
“I wish they’d quit playing that,” she said into my chest. “I can’t stand hearing it. I just can’t stand hearing it.”
As if she’d willed it, the speech was interrupted. On the TV Frank Mankiewicz was speaking outside the Hospital of the Good Samaritan, saying the operation was still underway and taking longer than anticipated.