True Detective

groggy little assassin looked at me and managed a little smile and blurted something; the cops sat on him harder. It wasn't the gentlest way to treat him, but it probably saved his life: the crowd wanted blood.

If they wanted it, all they had to do was look on the paved area where Roosevelt's car had been: pools of blood were scattered here and there, like color in one of the paintings in Mary Ann Beame's Tower Town flat. The people were still milling around, but the crowd was thinning.

I sat on the steps to the band shell. Next to me was some of the wounded woman's blood.

Miller and Lang wandered up to me. They stood and looked at me and shrugged.

Lang said, 'What now?'

'If you want to stay employed.' I said, 'I'd find out what hospital Cermak was rushed to. and be on hand'

Miller and Lang exchanged glances, shrugged again, and wandered off.

One of the other two bodyguards. Bill, had overheard this; he came slowly up. He looked haggard.

¦

'We should have stopped it.' he said.

'Right,' I said.

'Do you think it was an accident?'

'What?'

'Maybe the guy was after Roosevelt.'

'Go away.'

He went away.

The blond, who was now brown-haired, was long gone. I'd had him. and he was gone. Cermak was shot, possibly dying; and a little bushy-haired man had pulled the trigger.

The gardener I'd seen at the son-in-law's.

Well. I knew where they'd taken him: the county courthouse. That was where the jail was. I wanted to get in and talk to that Cuban or whatever the hell he was. Maybe the fools would believe Roosevelt was the target.

But they hadn't heard what the bushy-haired assassin had muttered to me. as the three cops sat on him and drove him away.

'Well.' he'd said, looking right at me, with brown shiny eyes. 'I got Cermak!'

The towering Gothic Dade County- Courthouse was starkly white against the night, lit up so you could see it for miles. Or anyway for blocks: it was only a matter of eight or so from Bayfront Park to the courthouse, which I walked, since traffic was still blocked off. Cops and sheriffs deputies swarmed the two flights of steps that rose to the entryway, where a row of two-story fluted columns loomed, like a reminder of more civilized times.

A cop, his hand on the butt of the revolver at his side, was pacing nervously at the curb.

I approached him. 'I was at Bayfront Park,' I said, showing him my identification. 'A Cermak bodyguard.'

'You did a swell job,' he said.

'You're telling me. I take it they aren't here with the gunman yet.'

'No. I don't know what the hell's keeping 'em; it ain't that far from the park.'

'The car they threw the guy on the back of had some of the wounded in it. They probably went to the hospital first.'

The cop nodded. 'That must be it.'

When the blue limo rolled up a few minutes later, the assassin was off the luggage rack and in the back seat with two cops sitting next to him. not on him; the chauffeur cop and the other cop were in front. They ushered the dark, bushy-haired little man out of the limo and up the steps- he was completely naked, even the khaki shreds I'd seen hanging on him at the park were gone now. and no one seemed concerned about providing him with something to cover up with, not that he seemed particularly concerned about it: he seemed calm, and had the faintest of smiles on his face. The swarm of cops parted like the red sea and moved in waves up the steps. I dove in.

That was when I noticed a guy at my side, in plainclothes; he definitely wasn't a deputy. He was wearing a gray snap-brim fedora, a black suit, a dark blue shirt, and a yellow tie. He was in his mid-thirties, but his brown hair was grayed, and he had a nervous, ferretlike manner.

We were in the midst of the crush of cops and inside the high courthouse lobby, when I turned to him and said, 'Can I have your autograph, Mr. Winchell?'

He had a smile about two inches wide- tight, no teeth- and beady blue eyes that were cold as the marble around us. He pressed something in my hand. I looked at it: a five-dollar bill.

'Keep your trap shut, kid,' he said, 'and let me tag along with you.'

'Be my guest,' I said.

'Atta boy,' he said. 'There's another fin in it for you, you play your cards right.'

I managed to pocket the five as. across the lobby from us. the elevator was opening and the assassin and a few of the cops squeezed in. apparently. Anyway, as soon as the elevator went up. the crowd of cops and deputies began to thin a bit. and they began milling about, and going their separate ways.

'Shit,' Winchell said.