The Legacy (3 page)

The limousine continued rolling and the picture began to move slightly up and down, as if the person shooting the footage was running alongside the vehicle. Suddenly President Kennedy lurched forward as a bullet smashed into his upper back. The impact jerked Kennedys elbows up and out and pulled his hands toward his neck, an involuntary neurological reaction to the inch-and-a-quarter copper-jacketed bullet damaging his spinal cord. Still the picture moved with the vehicle as Kennedys body stiffened and Connally began to react to his own wounds. Suddenly the picture stopped its subtle up-and-down motion, and Cole realized that the person making the film had ceased trying to keep up with the limousine. Then the killing shot came, tearing the presidents head apart with appalling force.

God, Cole murmured. It was shocking footage, so shocking he almost forgot the seven-million-dollar hit his portfolio had taken in the aftermath of the Fed announcement this afternoon.

On the screen there was instant pandemonium with people racing everywhere. The camera followed the limousine as it sped away, then panned back to the spot at which the killing shot had struck the president. People were sprinting across the street toward the grassy knoll, then the screen went dark.

The end, Cole said aloud.

But it wasnt the end. A face suddenly appeared on the screen. Jesus Christ, Cole whispered, moving forward to the edge of his seat. The face on the screen was his fathers, much younger than the face he had sat across from at lunch six months ago, but obviously Jim Egans. Then darkness enveloped the screen once more.

Cole knelt down in front of the television, rewound the tape and played it again. As the limousine drifted slowly ahead, he noticed something he hadnt seen beforea rifle barrel protruding over the fence behind the grassy knoll. There could be no mistaking what it was, so clear were the images. Almost instantly a tiny puff of white smoke burst from the end of the gun, and the crimson halo appeared immediately as the presidents head snapped back toward the camera. Damn. Cole recoiled as blood and skull fragments and brain matter spattered the air, and pandemonium broke loose once more.

He stopped the tape, rewound it and played it againthis time in slow motionwatching intently as he knelt on the floor, his eyes only inches from the screen. He pressed the button time after time, moving the tape ahead inch by inch. There was the rifle protruding over the fence, the puff of smoke, the presidents head snapping back toward the camera and exploding, the rifle disappearing behind the five-foot-high fence and the president slumping down toward Mrs. Kennedy. Everything coming within a few cataclysmic seconds. Then the limousine moved away, people panicked, momentary darkness shrouded the screen, his fathers angry face appeared and finally there was permanent darkness.

Cole tried to swallow but couldnt. His mouth was bone dry.

He rewound the tape to the puff of smoke and froze it there, mesmerized, his eyes riveted to the rifle. Was this Badge Man? That was the name attributed to a blurry figure apparently clad in a Dallas police uniform standing behind the fence and visible in certain photographs taken of the grassy knoll just before the killing shota blurry figure seen by conspiracy fanatics so anxious for subterfuge to exist that they were willing to see anything in a picture as long as it tilted the assassination answer toward something darker than one madman firing a Mannlicher-Carcano out the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

Cole touched the screen where the rifle lay over the fence. He had never put much stock in conspiracy speculation about the assassination. It was irrational to think that, if in fact a conspiracy had really existed, after all these years nothing of substance would have come to light. People couldnt keep secrets, that was human nature. But here was proof of the conspiracy. Absolute proof of suspicions that had tormented people for decades. Confirmation beyond all doubt that John F. Kennedy had indeed ridden the open limousine into a killing zone that November day in Dealey Plaza. Confirmation that Lee Harvey Oswald hadnt acted alone, if at all.

The VCR whined as the tape moved forward. When his father appeared on the screen, Cole stopped the tape. For thirty seconds he studied Jim Egans face, unaware of anything except the man on the screen in front of him. Finally he shook his head and pressed the rewind button. When the tape was fully rewound, Cole removed it from the VCR and replaced it in its unmarked black plastic case.

In 1964 Life had paid Abraham Zapruder $250,000 for his film of the assassination. What would the media pay today for something that provided not only another graphic view of the assassination but, more important, proof that the killing shot had come from the grassy knoll? What would they pay for proof that a conspiracy had existed? At least a few million, Cole was willing to wager. Maybe more. Maybe much more.

Suddenly his hands began to shake. This was the answer to his problemsand his prayers.

As Cole reached to shut off the television, out of the corner of his eye he noticed the doorknob silently rotating. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck rose straight up and his head snapped toward the door. It sounded strange, but on the way back from Chase, he had felt as if he were being followed.

The knob turned all the way to the right, then the latch rattled against the metal frame of the lock as the person outside pushed. But the door didnt open because it was secured from the inside.

Hello, Cole called out hoarsely. He suddenly realized how many people would want to see this tape played publiclyand, more important, that a few might not. That those few might take extreme measures to suppress what he now possessed. Im working on a presentation. Could you come back later?

Its the cleaning service, a woman replied in a thick Eastern European accent.

Cole checked his watch. It was only five-twenty. Typically the cleaning people didnt make their rounds until much later, at least not on the trading floor.

It will only take a short while to vacuum the carpet, the woman persisted. Thats all I need to do in there.

Cole hesitated. All right, just a second.

A moment later he moved silently across the carpet to the door. Holding his breath, he pressed his ear to it and listened intently. Then he stepped back, unlocked the door and swung it open.

Just outside, a dark-haired woman stood beside a large plastic trash container. It coasted atop tiny rollers so she could easily move it with her on her rounds. As Cole stepped through the doorway, she plunged her hand under the top few sheets of wastepaper in the trash container, then looked behind her toward sounds coming from down the hallway. Then she whipped back around to face Cole.

He saw her eyes fix on the black videocassette case in his handand saw, too, the glint of what might have been a pistol barrel barely protruding from beneath the wastepaper.

Four young men, chuckling loudly, rounded a corner thirty feet from the screening room. They were traders from the corporate bond desk. Cole raised a hand to them. Hello, gentlemen, he said calmly.

Hey, Egan, the man at the front of the pack answered. He was carrying a videocassette case as well.

Cole nodded at it. Whats that?

The man held up the cassette case. Theres a bachelor party for one of the guys on the desk this Friday night, and we need to prescreen some of the entertainment. He seemed unabashed, though the others milling behind him smiled sheepishly at the admission that they were about to view a porn flick. Want to watch?

No, thanks. Cole brushed past them and headed for the stairwell.

The trader holding the flick turned to the cleaning woman. How about you, honey? Want to see it with us?

The woman didnt respond as she watched Cole yank the stairwell door open.

Instead of climbing the stairs back up to the trading floor, Cole headed down, taking the steps two and three at a time. He had to get out of here right now. He leaped four steps onto a landing and slammed into the cinderblock wall. Hardly noticing the pain shooting through his left shoulder, he pushed off and kept going. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe that hadnt been a gun in the trash container beside the cleaning woman. But at this moment it seemed far better to let his imagination run wildand survive.

At the ground floor Cole stopped as he was about to shove open the fire door leading from the stairwell into the main lobby of the Gilchrist Building. He reached forward, then pulled his hand away, as if the metal handle were electrically charged. The woman upstairs might be working with people who were right outside this door, people she could have alerted by now. He took a step back and wiped his forehead, uncertain of his next move. The stairs went down no farther. There was no basement access through which he could slip out of the building unnoticed. He glanced up. He could return to one of the upper floors and try to call the police, surrounding himself with coworkers to keep enemies at bay. There would certainly still be people around.

But who was he kidding? The tape he had watched in the screening room would ignite a national firestorm and probably a new investigation into the Kennedy assassination. If someone wanted to suppress the tape badly enough, she might not care about killing a few people in the process. That was why he had darted away from the traders outside the screening room upstairs. The cleaning woman might not have hesitated at taking them all out if it meant getting her hands on the tape. And what was he going to tell the police anyway? That a cleaning woman with a thick accent and a gun was chasing him? New York City cops would laugh at him.

A door banged open several floors up and he heard footsteps descending the stairs rapidly. There was only one choice. Cole slammed open the door and burst into the high-ceilinged lobby.

Teeming with commuters headed toward taxis, trains and buses, the lobby was a swirling mass of mostly indistinguishable humanity rushing home after a long day. However, Cole managed to pick one face out of the crowd immediately. The man was dodging clusters of people, fifty feet away at most, heading directly toward him, his gaze locked on Cole even as he avoided the human obstacles. Cole recognized the man as one of the people seated in the reception area this afternoon as he had rushed out to claim the envelope containing the note and his fathers death certificate and the key to the safe-deposit box. A man who had seemed engrossed in the Wall Street Journal while Anita joked about having initials tattooed on a very private part of her anatomy. A big man, easily six-four and broad, with fair skin, rosy cheeks, a young-looking faceexcept for the deep crows feet around his eyes and the corners of his mouthand a wispy shock of curly blond, almost yellow, hair.

Cole turned and bolted through the lobby, plowing into and knocking over a young woman as he glanced back at the blond man, who was gaining ground. The contents of the womans bag spilled onto the marble floor and she screamed angrily, but Cole kept going. As he squeezed through the door to the outside on the heels of another man, cold November night air rushed at his face and inside his shirt. Without a coat, it was freezing. He glanced left and right, vapor pouring from his mouth and nose, then sprinted south on Fifth Avenue past the Chase branch from which he had collected the tape earlier, dodging people as he ran. At Forty-second Street he pushed through the crowd waiting for the light to change and threw himself blindly into six lanes of rush-hour traffic.

A bus driver spotted Cole at the last second. He yanked the buss huge steering wheel to the right and slammed on its brakes. The bus skidded over several traffic signs and a fire hydrant as the crowd on the corner tumbled out of the way.

Cole dove to the pavement and rolled across the blacktop to the double yellow line in the middle of the wide street. He heard the roar made by the water surging out of the hydrant against the undercarriage of the bus, and the screams of pedestrians as they were hit by the torrent forced violently out from beneath the vehicle, but he didnt look back. He didnt have time. The shrill sound of a car horn bore down on him, and he scrambled to his feet and jumped instinctively, clutching the cassette against his chest as he bounced off a taxis hood and windshield and slammed heavily to the pavement again. Another oncoming car veered away and smashed into a truck to avoid hitting him. He struggled to his knees, dazed, and looked back across the intersection. The blond man had vanished.

Cole shook off the effects of the impact and headed down Fifth Avenue once more. As people scattered from his path, he searched frantically for policemen, but there were none. Though he hadnt seen the blond man across the intersection, he still sensed the pursuers presence. Cole glanced left, rightand suddenly had a plan.

He swerved sharp right and sprinted up the steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library. It was an impressive structure, two blocks long and several stories high, its wide front steps flanked by a pair of imposing stone lions. He bolted between them and past several people lugging bags of books, then slowed as he moved through the revolving door. The guard to the left of the door eyed him suspiciously, but Cole didnt hesitate. He swerved right again and climbed the steps to the second floor two at a time. At the spot where the wide stairway turned ninety degrees left, he glanced back down at the door, but there was still no sign of the blond man.

Cole trotted across the second-floor hallway to the stairs leading to the third story and began to climb again. At the top of the steps he walked quickly ahead, turned right into the Bill Blass Public Catalogue Room, then proceeded directly through it and into the librarys main reading room. It was the size of a basketball court, filled with hundreds of people seated at long wooden tables and immersed in resource material.