something of this order. You can get away with a lot if you look respectable in this town.
His arms and body hardly moved at all as he ran across the street, just his legs below the knee, so that with his bulk and in his black suit, he looked more like a bowling bowl, rolling slowly toward Pavlick's car, than anything that might be described as respectable. True to his word of his own expertise, though, he was inside the car in seconds, checking the glove box, and then the back seat, and last of all the trunk with the innocence of a travelling salesman from Honor, Michigan.
He was back in the Chrysler, alongside Nimmo, in just a few minutes, his broad, sweating face flushed with fear and excitement.
He's a fucking loony, all right. He's driving a bomb around, and I don't mean no fuckin' Edsel. The trunk of that car is filled with fucking dynamite, and several cans of gasoline. There are all sorts of wires going in and out of the driver's compartment, and a kind of switch thing under the dashboard that looks as though it might turn this whole street into Bikini fucking Atoll if you rocked it. I really think he means to do it, the crazy sonofabitch. To kill Kennedy.
Wired up, you say?'
Mothballs wiped his face with a handkerchief. Wired. There are blasting caps, detonators, wires, sticks of dynamite, everything except the cheap clock and the Jew accent.'
Did you touch it?'
Do I look like a fuckin' Jap general? I wanna kill myself I'll take an overdose of pussy, not go screwin around with a fuckin' bomb. Nervously, Mothballs lit a cigarette. 'What do we do now?
Call the Secret Service.'
What about the cops?'
They'll involve the FBI. Do you want to spend the rest of the weekend answering their questions?'
Not now you come to mention it.'
Besides, I owe someone a favour. Someone in Washington. I need to call long distance. Can we pick up my car and then go to your place?'
Mothballs gunned the engine. I'll be glad to get out of here.'
I don't get it,' said Nimmo, switching off the TV in the corner of Mothballs' living room. There was nothing at all about Pavlick or his bomb on the eleven o'clock news.'
Hey, forget about it,' yawned his host. They're probably still questioning the guy. And you know how they are with the newsboys. They don't want to tell 'em what fucking year it is. Come on. I'll show you to your room.
Mothballs' home in Lake Worth was a modest Cape Cod-style house with a kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a carport, in a Levittown-like development of uniform, unidentifiable, pre-fabricated properties. Mothballs was perhaps the only unmarried man in the street.
The bed was comfortable, but Nimmo hardly slept. Every half hour he would start out of a light doze to recall the details of what he had told Murray Weintraub, worried that he had somehow failed to impress upon the Secret Service agent the full gravity of the threat posed to the young President-elect. The fourth or fifth time he woke up, Nimmo wondered if perhaps his insistence on not wanting any credit for the collar after all might have confused Weintraub, or even made him suspicious.
I don't get it,' Weintraub had said. I thought you said you wanted this collar. To get back in Hoover's good books.'
I changed my mind. I'd prefer to remain anonymous.'
Anonymous tips have to be verified before we can act on them, you know that, Jimmy.'
I already thought of that. You can call the cops in Belknap County, New Hampshire. And there's an attorney, name of Maurice P. Bois, who originally reported this character. He'll verify that Pavlick threatened Kennedy.'
Good enough.'
Just leave me out of it.'
Why so coy all of a sudden? This is on the level, isn't it?'
Like it was built by Frank Lloyd Wright, Murray. Look, let's just say that I was somewhere I shouldn't have been when I found out, okay?'
Same old Jimmy.'
If you're quick, you might just catch him in his motel room.'
Now Nimmo sat up in bed and looked at his watch. It was five fifty-five on Sunday morning, a whole fourteen hours since he had reported Pavlick and his car bomb. Surely they would have put out something to the press by now. He got out of bed, went into the living room, turned on the Pilot Soloist radio-phonograph and, as soon as the tubes had warmed up, searched the tuner for a six o'clock news broadcast. But to his irritation and discomfort, the news was still dominated by events in Algeria and Congo. As if anyone cared about shit like that. There was nothing about a plot to kill Jack Kennedy.
Nimmo was not a man to sit around and do nothing. He dressed quickly and, leaving Mothballs snoring like a lawnmower, he went out to his car.
From the house in Lake Worth, it was a straight drive north up Dixie Highway into West Palm Beach. Pavlick's car was gone from outside the motel but it was immediately clear to Nimmo that its absence had nothing to do with the Secret Service, or any other law enforcement agency. If Pavlick had been arrested the motel would likely have been closed while the bomb squad boys went over his room, just in case there were any other sticks of dynamite or booby traps inside a hollowed-out Gideon Bible. At the very least, the county sheriff would have posted a couple of men in the parking lot. Clearly something had gone very wrong.
Nimmo looked at his watch. It was now six thirty a.m. Jack Kennedy would be getting ready to go to seven a.m. mass at St Edwards. Suddenly Nimmo saw Pavlick's obvious course of action in all its simple lethality. Detonating a car bomb in front of La Guerida might only injure the President-elect. The Kennedy house looked substantial enough to withstand a decent-sized blast. The only certain way of killing the President-elect with such a device would be if Pavlick were to crash his car into the Kennedy limousine, and then to hit that switch underneath the dash. In just a few minutes Kennedy would be getting into the back of his car for the short drive to St Edwards Church. There was no time to lose thinking twice.
Nimmo stamped hard on the gas pedal and, with a strident caterwaul of hot rubber on warm blacktop, the Chevy Impala sprang forward, as if pursued by a whole pride of hungry lions. Driving like a man who is late for the Indianapolis 500, Nimmo careered east over Flagler Drive and on to the Royal Park Bridge, across Lake Worth. The car snaked from side to side as it held the left turn off Royal Palm Way on to South County Road. Touching sixty miles an hour, he sped past another church - Bethesda-by-the-Sea - cursing himself at the top of his voice for what he might have to do. How the hell did you stop one car from crashing into another except by crashing into that one car yourself? And not just any fucking car, but a car filled with dynamite. He would probably be lucky if they found enough bits of him to put in a lousy shoebox.
Rounding the Palm Beach Country Club on to North Ocean Boulevard, Nimmo slowed a little. It was six forty- five and a dark limousine was already parked outside La Guerida. As he passed the front doorway he had an excellent view of Jack Kennedy himself coming through the oak door and on to the Boulevard, followed closely by his daughter, Caroline, and Jackie, who was carrying their new baby, John. It was then that Jimmy Nimmo saw Pavlick's dust-covered Ford, parked about thirty or forty yards to the north of the house. The Ford was already creeping slowly forward, like a wild animal stalking its prey. There was no need to crash into it.
Nimmo accelerated again, spun the wheel to the right, and then hit the brakes, which was more than enough to cause the Impala's uncertain back end to sweep across the whole road like a pastel-coloured turnpike, blocking the path of Pavlick's explosive-filled car.
The dusty Ford jerked to a halt. Richard Pavlick looked as surprised as a jack rabbit to see Nimmo blocking the Boulevard in front of him. Any chance of driving into the Kennedy limousine was now gone. Surprise quickly turned to fear as Nimmo, gun in hand, leaped out of his car and lurched towards the bonnet of the Ford. Momentarily he lost his footing and went down on the blacktop, scraping his knees. Almost immediately, Pavlick began to reverse away from Nimmo, gaining speed all the time, and by the time the policeman had picked himself up from the ground, the Ford had all but disappeared. Nimmo got back into his own car and turned the key, intending to pursue the bomber, only to discover that the stalled V8 engine was also flooded.
With his own car now blocking North Ocean Boulevard, the only way for Pavlick to reach St Edwards would be to go all the way to the north of the island and then drive south down the western shore of Lake Worth on Lake Way. Meanwhile, thirty yards away to Nimmo's right, quite oblivious to what had just taken place, Jack Kennedy and
