When Bob was finally able to begin his speech — which was frequently interrupted by cheers of “Kennedy power!” and “Bobby power!” — he thanked everybody Mankiewicz had told him to, and more. Drysdale got his mention and so did the family dog. Ethel came last, and Bob embarrassedly said to her with a fond glance, “I’m not doing this in any order of importance.” She beamed of course.
“Our speech sounds pretty good,” Nita whispered. She was holding my hand.
I said, “For a list.”
It improved. He went on to say the showing in the cities and the suburbs and the rural areas indicated how well the campaign could do all around the country.
“We can get past the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society,” he said, “whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups or over the war in Vietnam. We can start to work together again. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country... Now my thanks to all of you, and it’s on to Chicago, and let’s win there.”
Joyful screams again swept the room.
Bashful Bob flashed a grin and the V-for-Victory/Peace Sign, then turned to his right to go toward where that doorway into the Embassy Room had led all of us onto the stage. But a hotel staffer called out, “This way, Senator,” and guided him toward the rear curtains into the corridor behind. That got me clogged up momentarily with the others on the stage, reorienting ourselves to follow Bob and the hotel man, and when I had almost caught up, Ethel was having trouble back there getting down. I jumped to the floor to help her.
When that was safely accomplished, the pregnant woman said, “Never mind me. Help the Senator.”
I sensed her behind me as I slipped through the supporters, reporters and aides, Nita included, attempting to catch up with Bob, stray balloons from the ballroom popping underfoot. The candidate and my unofficial bodyguard assistants, Rosey and Rafer, were going down the gentle slope to the double doors beyond which awaited the narrow Pantry passageway.
Our group now entered an area crammed with staffers, reporters, photographers and gawkers. Bluish fluorescent lights cast an eerie glow, as a smiling Bob — up ahead — stopped to shake hands with white-coated kitchen staff between the big ice-making machine and the three lined-in-a-row service tables where a clump of people stood, some standing up on the things.
Back toward the east end of the passage that goddamn fan with the poster tube had stuck around, standing next to a cute curvy girl in a white dress with black polka dots; better company than he deserved, and no accounting for taste. A throbbing “We want Bobby!” seeped through the walls from the nearby Embassy Room, adding to the frenzy of an experience that seemed at once sped up and slowed down.
This halting progress was further stalled by a radio reporter. Bob glanced back, raised his eyebrows, then looked past me, no doubt at Ethel. Barely audible over the crowd’s drone came a pointless question: “Senator, how are you going to counter Mr. Humphrey and his delegates?”
Bob told the man’s microphone, “Just get back into the struggle,” and did his best to press on.
That puffy gray-faced security guard was finally doing his job, just behind Bob, trying to help move him through the gaggle, guiding him with a hand on his right arm. The press of the burgeoning crowd, infested by teenage girls shrilling, “We want Bobby!” overwhelmed me in the small space for a moment, and I had all but lost sight of Bob when a young-sounding voice yelled, “Kennedy, you son of a bitch!”
Then came the first pop, and I thought at first another balloon had burst, followed by another. Then a rapid volley — pop-pop-pop-pop-pop — like distant gunfire or Chinatown firecrackers.
Not balloons.
Bob jerked forward, his hands flying up toward his face, then his arms went over his head as if in surrender and he fell backward onto that filthy gray concrete floor, almost as if he had slipped on it. Tall Paul Schrade, the UAW guy, went down, too, bleeding from the forehead. People were diving out of the way and onto the cement where Bob already sprawled, blood running down the side of his face, recent cheers and applause supplanted by immediate cries and shouts.
The security guard had his gun out and I yelled at him to put it away: “Too many people in here!” Five feet or so beyond the fallen senator stood a small swarthy man with a big gun; his dark blue jacket and dark bushy hair initially made me take him for that fan from before, but no, that guy was at the other end of the Pantry and this one right here was smaller, almost tiny.
For a frozen moment the shooter maintained his position as if he were between rounds at a firing range, and I pushed through and practically crawled over the people scrambling to find safety in the small space and I probably damn near trampled several, but I dove at the little bastard and shoved him against one of the steel serving tables and yanked the fucking gun from his grasp and slammed it onto the steel table. He looked at me with big blank almost-black eyes, buttons sewn on a doll’s face, and that nothing expression was as strange as anything I’d ever seen. I punched him hard, twice, hard right-hand punches and that zero expression didn’t change. But now I had him pinned and others were converging, and at the forefront were Grier and Johnson. So was that hotel man who’d guided Bob.
That should have been the end of it, but despite the blankness of his expression, he was squirming, trying to get loose, and my God he was strong, so much power in such a little bastard!
Breathing hard, I yelled, “Take him, Rosey, take him!”
As others were closing in, Grier picked the shooter up and slammed him with professional skill onto that serving table with a whump! Trays of unwashed dishes danced.
But that allowed the little bastard to, damn!, snatch back that gun, a .22 revolver!
All of us who were on top of the punk talked over ourselves: “Get the gun, get the gun!” “Get the fucking gun!” “Rafer, get the goddamn gun!”
But our captive was shooting again, orange-blue flames licking out the barrel of the .22, and bystanders were falling like clay pigeons over five or six seconds that felt like forever. The blank-eyed gunman kept firing even as Rosey Grier and several others of us struggled with him. Finally he was clicking on an empty chamber.
Then the big lineman wrested the gun away from the little man, whose squirming finally stopped as he stared blankly at the ceiling, as if those bluish fluorescent tubes above held a secret.
Five wounded besides Kennedy were slumped on the floor here and there, in various postures of pain and shock, getting help from whoever was nearest. The end of the shooting and capture of the assailant did not bring a lull of quiet. Instead pandemonium descended, screams, cries, obscenities, wails of “Not again!” and “No!”; but also a scurrying for help, medical and police.
A white-jacketed busboy — a small dark man whose agonized expression was everything the other small dark man’s hadn’t been — was kneeling as if in prayer, or maybe in prayer, by the fallen Bob on the floor, spread-eagled as if nailed to a cross waiting to be raised into proper crucifixion position, precious blood pooling like spilled wine and shimmering, reflecting the popping flashbulbs and positioning of TV lights.
For just a moment I knelt next to him, because I could see a near-hysterical Ethel being escorted up to him by Mank, and I would soon be in the way.
Then he said the last thing he ever said to me: “Is everybody okay?”