So Win Workman worked the street. He liked working the street. The trouble was every time the President blew into town, they pulled him off the street, made him shave and put on his best Brooks Brothers gray suit and handed him the belt radio whose earphone had been custom-fitted from a mold of his left ear for a perfect fit.
Usually he had to deal with the "quarterlies"-the local nuts and screwballs who had come to the service's attention because they had made public threats against the Chief Executive. They were interviewed every quarter as a matter of routine precaution and were checked out whenever the President came to town.
But this time he had to stand post, thanks to a virulent flu that had knocked out half the Boston office.
Win felt like a tailor's dummy standing post as the Presidential motorcade rolled like a segmented black dragon through the narrow streets of the city. All dressed up and hoping for no action. None whatsoever, thank you very much.
The trouble with standing post for the President of the United States, as Win Workman saw it, was not the boredom factor. High as it was. It wasn't even being pulled off the street.
Working undercover, you won some and you lost some. Not much glory either way. Not in the service, where you were trained to take your satisfaction in a job well done, not press ink or TV face time.
Standing post for the President, you got no thank you's if you did your job right. If you didn't, you might as well have been witness to the end of the world.
Win Workman found himself standing post on the roof of the University of Massachusetts Healey Library building when the shots that all but stopped his own heart rang out.
His eyes went instantly to the source. Across the plaza. Down on the Science Center roof, there was a man: with a rifle.
"Fuck!" he said, dropping into a marksman's crouch and opening fire.
It was a dumb-ass ridiculous thing to do. Win had only his service-issue 10 mm Delta Elite automatic. The range was too short. But he was the only agent close enough to distract the shooter.
So Win Workman emptied his clip as the shooter, one shot fired, laid his rifle carefully at his feet and took off.
It was only then that Win saw the man's aviator sunglasses and white coil going from his earphone into his windbreaker collar and realized that he'd waved to the man only minutes before. Waved to what he thought was a D.C.-based Secret Service countersniper named Don Grodin.
The man walking away wasn't Don Grodin. He was wearing Grodin's service-issue windbreaker and he practically swam in it.
"Jesus," he said as he pelted toward the stairs.
After that everything became a mad blur. His earphone filled with so much chatter Win had to pull it out and scream into his hand mike.
"Shut the fuck up! Everybody! Shut the fuck up right now."
When the earphone stopped buzzing, he jammed it back into its place. By that time, he was on the plaza. "Boston agents, this is Win. Switch to backup frequency. Suspect shooter has left roof of Science Center. Repeat, suspect shooter has just left Science Center roof. Be aware he's wearing a countersniper windbreaker. I want men on the garage elevator, men on the plaza and at all exits including the damn catwalks. The rest of you sweep the Science Center."
Someone asked, "How is the Man?"
"Forget the Man. He's the White House detail's problem. Ours is the shooter."
"Looked like he was hurt pretty bad, " someone else muttered.
After that the only conversation came in snatches, punctuated by gunfire.
"We have shooting in the parking garage. "
A moment later it was, "Shooting in Science."
"My God! There are two dead agents here."
"We think he's in the Lipke Auditorium."
By that time, Win Workman had reached the Science Center with a knot of agents and got them organized.
The main entrance to the Lipke Auditorium was one floor above. But the stage entrances were on the plaza level.
"Half of you take stage right. The rest of you come with me. We're going in stage left."
It took less than thirty seconds for the other detail to report that they were in position. Everyone took deep breaths, and Workman shouted, "Go!"
They poured into the gloom of the auditorium, flashlights pointing in all directions like a million-feelered insect.
The shooter was sitting quietly in the front row, exactly dead center. He made no effort to resist as they fell on him, throwing him to the floor.
"I'm not resisting. I'm not resisting arrest!" he screeched.
"Good thing for you, you bastard," Workman barked.
After patting him down and finding no concealed weapons, they hauled him to his feet again. Someone took his wallet and handed it to Workman. He hastily pocketed it and said, "Let's get him the fuck out of here."
They were hustling him up the steps when someone with a head like a high-tech diver's helmet popped up from behind a section of rows and started firing two pistols at once, straight-arm style.
It was one of those heart-stopping moments you play and replay in your mind forever, rolling the tape back, looking at your own mistakes or a juncture where you could have done something to change what happened.
For years afterward Win Workman would do that in the grim hours before he fell asleep. But when it happened, he was just one of the many who mowed down the assailant as he methodically pumped hot rounds into the prisoner.
THE GUNSHOT ECHOES were still bouncing when Win Workman kicked the .38 revolver and what looked suspiciously like a service-issue Delta Elite away from the dead assailant's hands and shouted, "Anyone hurt? Anyone hurt, damn it?"
"Just the suspect."
He stamped back.
The suspect in the President's shooting lay on his back, jerking uncontrollably like a puppet whose lax strings still had some tug in them. Then he expired.
"Motherfucker," Win cursed.
It was in that moment that he took his first hard look at the shooter.
"I know that face," he said.
"He on the lookout list?"
"I don't..."
Someone pulled his set of the watch cards showing mug shots of people who were considered a threat to the President. The face of the dead man was not among them.
The other agents gathered round, faces drained of all blood, all emotion except dull shock.
"Yeah, I've seen him before, too."
"Where?"
"Dunno."
They were like robots now, focusing on the face because to have lost their President like this probably meant the loss of their jobs. They were being professional. To be otherwise would probably have caused them to break down sobbing.
After several minutes no one could place the face.
"All right," Workman muttered. "Let's get these bodies out of here."
"Christ," an agent said bitterly. "It's Dallas all over again. How could we be so stupid?"
The thought seemed to hit everyone at once.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Win said slowly.
"What I'm thinking I don't want to be thinking."
They gathered around the dead shooter again.
"Oh, man," a third agent said. "It is him."
"You know what this means?"
"Yeah," Workman said. "I know exactly what this means. It means the end of the Secret Service as we know it. That's Lee Harvey Oswald lying there."
And Win Workman reared back and gave the dead man the hardest kick he had in him.
"Don't look now," another agent said in a dull, drained-of-emotion voice, "but I think this guy in the funny helmet looks kinda like Jack Ruby."
There was a stampede to the body of the man in the helmet. Enough of it had shattered to show one side of the man's face.
"Looks like Ruby. But a younger Ruby," Win observed.
"And that guy back there is the spitting image of Lee Harvey Oswald-if Ruby hadn't shot him dead back in '63"