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  “I’ll have one run off,” Geoffrey said, and took the seating arrangement from him, and pressed a button on his phone console.

  “I’ll want to know immediately if her position at the table is changed.”

  “I’ll call the moment I hear anything.”

  “Because we’ll be planning very tight security,” Worthy said, and winced as Lucy Phipps’s voice blared out of the speaker.

  The third call Sonny made was to a firm called J.D. Bowles Laboratory Sales, Inc., in St. Paul, Minnesota. He spoke to someone in sales, telling her he wished to order some isopropyl alcohol. She looked up the item in the company catalogue, told him it came in 480-milliliter bottles and sold for $9.75 plus tax, how many bottles did he want? He told her he would need only one, and said he wanted one-day FedEx delivery. She said it would go out in the morning. When she asked him his name and company affiliation, he told her he was Hamilton Pierce of SeaCoast Limited and gave her the firm’s address and telephone number. She asked him what sort of company it was.

  “We do research,” he said.

  “Can you be a bit more specific?” she asked.

  “We do a wide variety of experiments for private physicians,” he said.

  “Can you tell me how you plan to use this product?” she asked.

  This surprised him. Isopropyl alcohol was common rubbing alcohol, harmless even in the hundred-percent concentration stocked by a chemical supply house.

  “We’re running toxicity tests on rats,” he said.

  “Toxicity tests on rats,” she said, obviously writing. “Very well, sir. Someone will call you regarding billing. Meanwhile, this will go out tomorrow.”

  “Thank you very much,” he said.

  Nodding, he put the receiver back on its cradle.

  The photography shop was located on the second floor of a brownstone on East Seventieth Street, between First and Second avenues. There was a tailor shop on the ground floor and a palm reader on the first floor, and then the photography shop at the rear of the second-floor landing. Sonny did not get there until a little past five that Friday afternoon.

  A man named Angus McDermott ran the shop. Four years ago, he had prepared Francine Dumar’s suicide note from a sample of her handwriting. Sonny told him he was looking great, which wasn’t quite true. McDermott had lost a lot of weight in the past four years, and his normally ruddy complexion was now somewhat sallow, his reddish hair thinning. McDermott was gay; Sonny wondered now if he’d contracted AIDS since last he’d seen him.

  “How can I help you this time?” he asked.

  There was the faintest burr in his voice. He had once lived in Glasgow, Sonny knew, but he was certain the man’s heritage wasn’t Scottish; the cover name was as false as his own Krishnan Hemkar. The night he showed Sonny the perfect suicide note, handwritten on Francine’s own stationery, they got drunk together in a Third Avenue bar. In the empty hours of the night, McDermott confessed his abiding hatred for the United States, but never once mentioned what had provoked such murderous rage. Sonny got the feeling a woman was somehow responsible, but he knew better than to ask McDermott.

  The studio in which McDermott worked was fronted by a huge picture window that flooded the room with natural light. Pale blue backing paper hung behind a raised platform on one wall. A half-dozen power packs were on the floor near the platform, their cables snaking to strobe lights on stands topped with grey, umbrella-shaped reflectors. A Polaroid was mounted on one tripod, a Nikon on another. A green door on another wall was marked with a red hand-lettered sign that warned the room beyond was a darkroom.

  They were sitting now at a long table strewn with snippets of film, grease pencils, magnifying glasses, developer, metal clips, capped lenses, order forms, and a half-empty bottle of Heineken beer. Sonny took from his jacket pocket an envelope containing the card Karin Lubenthal had given him. Careful to handle it only by its edges, he placed it on the table before McDermott, who picked up one of the magnifying glasses, leaned over the card, and studied it:

  “What do you need?” he asked, still peering through the glass.

  “An ID card.”

  “What on it?”

  “The hotel seal, my name, my …”

  “Do you want the seal in gold, as it is here?”

  “Yes. Exactly as you see it.”

  “What else?”

  “My name, my picture …”

  “Do you have a photograph?”

  “I thought you might take one today.”

  “Sure. What else on the card?”

  “Across the bottom, in bold letters, the word security.”

  “Do you have a sample of the type?”

  “No. A good block lettering will do.”

  “What color?”

  “Black.”

  “How about the photograph? Color, or black and white?”

  “Color.”

  “Do you want the card laminated?”

  “Yes. With one of those little fastener clips on it, so I can pin it to my jacket.”

  “Plastic strap and fastener,” McDermott said, nodding.

  “Yes.”

  “How big should it be?”

  “Two and a half by four, approximately.”

  “Seal at the top …”

  “Yes.”

  “… in gold, photo where?”

  “On the right-hand side of the card.”

  “Name on the left then?”

  “On the left, yes.”

  “What name?”

  “Gerald Ramsey.”

  “And the word security across the bottom, block lettering, in black.”

  “Yes.”

  “All caps or just initial cap?”

  “All caps.”

  “Do you need this card back?” he asked.

  “I have no further use for it.”

  “How does Monday sound?”

  “Tomorrow would be better.”

  “Tomorrow’s a bit early.”

  “Sunday then.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Early Sunday morning.”

  “Well …”

  “Time’s short.”

  “All right, Sunday before noon. Need anything else? A birth certificate? A …?”

  “No.”

  “Driver’s license?”

  “Yes.”

  “What name?”

  “Same as the Plaza card.”

  “How about ID cards?”

  “Have you got NYPD stock?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll need one for the First and one for the Eighteenth. Both of them detective ID’s.”

  “What grade?”

  “Second.”

  “Any particular name?”

  “James Lombardo.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Can you make up an FBI card?”

  “Yes, I’ve got blanks in stock.”

  “Put the name Frank Mercer on it.”

  “You plan to be all these people?”

  “I don’t know yet. How about Secret Service?”

  “Don’t know what it looks like, never had a call for one. Sorry.”

  “No problem,” Sonny said, but he was clearly disappointed. “Can we take the pictures now?”

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  From a phone booth outside The Food Emporium on the northeast corner of Second Avenue, Sonny dialed the number she had given him on the train.

  “Elita?” he said. “Hi, this is Sonny.”

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  “Ever been to the Statue of Liberty?”

  “Oh, God,” she said, “it’s you!”

  7

  It had been a long hot Friday, but Saturday was even hotter.

  At ten minutes to two that afternoon, the temperature in Washington, D.C., soared to ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit, shattering the ninety-eight-degree record set for this day on June 27, 1980.

  Agent Samuel Harris Dobbs was sweltering in the lightest-weight seersuck
er suit he owned. His immediate superior, Daryll Phillips, had taken off his jacket, and pulled down his tie, and was sitting in his shirtsleeves behind his big uncluttered desk, the Treasury Department seal on the wall behind it. But this was the boss’s office here, and Dobbs didn’t feel he could risk the liberty of making himself quite so much at home. Not with Phillips seeming to have a hair across his ass this hot summer day.

  “I don’t like surprises,” he told Dobbs.

  “Nossir,” Dobbs said.

  “I don’t care it’s a president or some sheek fum an Arab nation, it don’t make no never-mind to me.”

  “Nossir.”

  “I don’t like this last-minute sputterfuss, I got to send a team to New York, beef up the security there.”

  Dobbs was thinking he didn’t much like it himself. He had promised Sally they’d take a trip to Pennsylvania next weekend, have a sort of second honeymoon in Bucks County. Booked the room and everything, his wife had been looking forward to it since early May. Now Phillips was telling him he’d have to leave for New York this afternoon, take five other agents with him, be there all weekend and through the first of July. And for what? To make sure security at the goddamn Plaza Hotel would be tight enough to suit the goddamn Republicans, and then to give the New-York field office a hand at the goddamn Canada Day banquet, whatever the hell that was.

  Dobbs hated Republican presidents.

  He’d learned to hate Reagan and his witchy wife when he was working for them as part of the White House detail, hated all the things the President and his fine lady had stood for. Alone in bed with Sally, Dobbs would rage at how Nixon had only tried to steal the goddamn country whereas Reagan was now trying to murder it. Sally would tell him to hush, Sam, he’d lose his job or something.

  He told Sally the only way he’d get out of this rotten job was to throw himself across that son of a bitch when another crazy bastard like Hinckley tried to kill him. That was more than eleven years ago, before he got transferred to the Omaha field office, where he learned how much better it was to be in Washington, even working for Republican presidents. He never stopped believing it was Nancy who’d had him transferred because one day he was thirty seconds late opening a goddamn door for her!

  Hating them both, he’d loved all the Reagan jokes they began telling …

  There’s this banquet at the White House, okay?

  And Reagan is sitting next to Nancy, and one of the White House waiters appears by her side to take her order, explaining that they’re serving either roast beef or filet of sole, which would she prefer?

  And Nancy says, “I’ll have the roast beef, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the waiter says. “And the vegetable?”

  “He’ll have the same,” Nancy says.

  … rejoiced when the son of a bitch got caught with his hand in the Iran-Contra cookie jar, but knew he’d wiggle out of it somehow—gosh, I’m terribly sorry, I just don’t remember.

  God, how Dobbs had hated him, still hated him.

  But if Reagan had merely killed the nation, it was Bush who was now attempting to bury it, and Dobbs hated him even more than he had his predecessor. In fact, it was a good thing he was no longer part of the White House Secret Service detail; he might have killed this president himself.

  Got a domestic crisis?

  Just bomb a foreign country.

  Follow in the footsteps of the Great Communicator, who’d used military force against Lebanon in 1982, and Grenada in 1983, and Libya in 1986 and finally in Honduras in 1988. The Great Communicator. Who’d once sent a Bible as a gift to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of a Moslem nation. Bombs and bibles, how stupid could a person get?

  So along comes Haji Bush, hero to millions, conqueror of Iraq, a fearsome nation with the gross national product of Kentucky, still bloated with his Commander-in-Chief importance, still managing to ignore the minor problems like dope, crime, collapsing cities, and civil rights so long as the Big Parade went on and on and on. The Washington newspapers were full of scathing editorials about him running off to New York where, golly, he could stand before that lady in the harbor on the Fourth of July, and, gee, wrap himself in the flag yet another time, and, wow, take advantage of all those big patriotic sound bites in an election year.

  Reagan and Bush.

  Two presidents too many.

  Dobbs hated them both.

  “Here’re your plane tickets,” Phillips said. “Enjoy the trip.”

  They each had different agendas.

  Sonny was here to observe and to record.

  Elita was here on an outing.

  In the distance, they could both see the Statue of Liberty sitting far out on the water, the sky clear behind it. But Sonny was registering a sign advising that Battery Park closed at 1:00 A.M., and Elita was noticing a pair of lovers strolling hand in hand, one white, the other Asian. On her right, Elita saw a man selling green, foam-rubber, Statue-of-Liberty crowns, and wondered if she would appear childish buying one. On his left, Sonny saw a low, greyish-brick building with the metallic letters UNITED STATES COAST GUARD across its facade—and wondered if there would be Coast Guard cruisers circling the island when the President made his Independence Day speech.

  They bought tickets for the ferry in a round, red brick building that reminded Elita of a sun-washed cloister, and Sonny of a roofless fortress. The tickets cost six dollars each. Sonny had a camera around his neck. He posed her in front of a large posterlike sign headlined PLANNING YOUR VISIT TO LIBERTY ISLAND.

  They boarded the ferry at two-fifteen.

  Elita was wearing running shorts, a white T-shirt, and sandals. Sonny noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra. He was wearing chinos, a striped polo shirt and jogging shoes. She thought he looked exceedingly handsome, dressed so casually. She did not know that he had dressed to blend in with what he’d suspected would be a tourist crowd.

  There was a babble of foreign tongues everywhere around them. Elita found the mix of nationalities exciting; Sonny found them boring. He understood many of the languages, but did not reveal this fact to Elita. A French girl reading aloud from a guidebook to New York City was informing her friends that the island they were heading toward was once called Bedloe’s Island and was the site of the old Fort Hood, the outlines of which now formed the starlike base of the statue. Sonny found her voice monotonous. A German girl approached a man whom she’d heard speaking in her own language, and asked if she could have a single cigarette—eine einzige Zigarette, bitte—because there was no place to buy any on the boat. Sonny found her bold. The man gave her the cigarette she’d begged, and then, in English, asked, “Do you have fire?”

  “Danke ja, ich habe,” she said, and went back to where she’d been sitting on the port side of the ferry.

  The ferry was called Miss Liberty. It was moving out from Battery Park now in a southwesterly direction, approaching toward the distant copper statue from her right, where she clutched a tablet in the crook of her arm …

  “… sur laquelle est écrite la date du quatre juillet, dix-sept cent soixante-seize …”

  “How thrilling it must have been,” Elita said over the sound of the French girl’s voice. “Approaching her as they came into the harbor.”

  “Yes,” Sonny said.

  “The immigrants, I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  He was wondering how he would get back to the mainland once he’d accomplished his mission.

  The soaring downtown towers of the financial district were behind them now; the island and Liberty were coming closer and closer. A Japanese girl sat beside him and began changing the film in her camera. She was wearing a T-shirt that read DISNEYLAND, TOKYO. Her friend said something to her in Japanese, which Sonny could not understand. A Hassidic Jew in a black suit, flat black hat, and snowy white beard stood at the railing, staring beyond Liberty to where Ellis Island sat on the horizon. The French girl kept babbling from the guide book …

  “… fond de la base jusqu’à la
torche est quarante-six virgule cinq mètres. Pour avoir accès à la couronne, il faut monter trois cent cinquante-quatre …”

  The pilot of the ferry headed her straight for marker thirty-one, then brought her around so that she slowly revealed the statue first in profile, then in a three-quarter view, and then dead-on, the folds of her garments cascading to the pedestal in a flow of green copper, the left arm cradling the tablet, the sleeve of the raised right arm falling back, the golden torch in her right hand capturing the rays of the early afternoon sun, the sky behind her a vibrant blue. Viewing the statue as the boat circled her, revealing her as if in separate frames of motion picture film, Elita felt a fierce patriotic pride mixed with a sense of place and history. Sonny felt nothing.

  The boat circled the island and came into the dock. In the distance, Elita could see the American flag flying from a tall flagpole. This, too, thrilled her. Sonny was busy looking down at a sign on the dock:

  At the

  Statue of Liberty

  All Packs,

  Packages,

  Briefcases, etc.

  are Subject to

  Search

  They came down the gangway and onto the dock. A high shed-like structure opened onto a wooden walkway that led to a huge brick-paved circle at the center of which stood the flagpole Elita had seen from the deck of the ferry. A tree-flanked esplanade—similarly paved with brick and ornamented with rectangles outlined in blue tile—led to the rear of the statue, standing tall on her pediment, a seeming halo of light around her crown.

  “What happened to you at the train station?” Elita asked. She’d been dying to ask this from the moment he’d called, but had only now found the courage to do so.

  “First, I couldn’t find a porter,” he said. “Next, I ran into a guy I went to Princeton with, and he dragged me off to …”

  “But I was standing there waiting for …”

  “Well, I had your number. I figured you knew I’d call.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “But I did.”

  “It’s been three days.”

  “I lost the slip of paper.”

  “What slip of paper?”

  “The one I wrote the number on.”

  “Then why didn’t you look it up in the phone book?”