“Yessir.”
I hung up the microphone and swung open the car door. “I’m going to the phone booth. You wait here until you’ve got all six men. Then come to the booth. If I’m not there, wait in the lobby. Bring walkie-talkies, but no shotguns. Clear?”
“Yessir, that’s clear.”
501 McAllister was an office building that had probably been built in the late twenties or early thirties. Standing on the sidewalk, I counted windows. The building was twelve stories tall, and faced the Civic Center Plaza. Friedman had been right: the front of the building commanded a clear view of the City Hall steps. The range would be about three hundred yards, optimum for a scope-sighted rifle. If the president were the visitor, every office facing the Plaza would have been evacuated, then secured. For Castro’s visit, security was a little less stringent.
A team of four patrolmen were erecting crowd-control barriers: heavily weighted steel stanchions with rope threaded through their eyebolts at waist height. Now, the rope was slack, lying on the pavement. As the crowd gathered, the ropes would be pulled taut. Across the street, in the Plaza, a group of demonstrators was gathered in a loose circle around two men who were hammering wooden handles on anti-Castro placards.
I nodded to one of the patrolmen, entered the building, quickly crossed the small lobby and went directly to three phone booths located next to the two elevators. Canelli’s information was correct. Leo had called the phone in the middle booth. Using my handkerchief, I closed the booth’s door. At the same moment one of the elevators opened, and two patrolmen stepped out. Both men were strangers to me. I identified myself, explained the situation and ordered one of the men to guard the booth against destruction of latent prints.
“What’s your name?” I asked the second man.
“Diebenkorn, sir.” He said it sheepishly, as if the sound of his name embarrassed him.
“Well, Diebenkorn, you’re my communications man.” I ordered him to park his unit directly in front of the building. As I was hastily outlining Friedman’s situation and coordinating communications channels, I saw Canelli entering the lobby, followed by six inspectors. All seven men were big and burly, momentarily evoking the incongruous image of seven football linemen dressed in business suits, shouldering their way through the doors toward bruising action on an imaginary line of scrimmage.
“Come over here—” I gestured for them to follow me into the farthest corner of the lobby, where they assembled around me in a loose circle. It was another football-style image: the huddle, everyone waiting for signals. As I handed out the lapel buttons Friedman had given me, I gave the orders.
“I don’t know how much Canelli told you,” I said, “but here’s the situation. For those of you who don’t know, Castro is landing at the airport in about twenty minutes, maybe less. He’s scheduled to drive in a motorcade through the Golden Gateway and the financial district to here” — I gestured toward the lobby doors and the plaza beyond — “the City Hall steps, where the mayor’ll welcome him. Now, Lieutenant Friedman is in charge of municipal security, and he and I have good reason to think that, somewhere in this building, there’s someone who’s going to try and kill Castro, probably when the mayor’s welcoming him. So—”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Turning sharply, I faced a tall, stooped, sad-faced man with a long nose, a prim little mouth and ice-cold eyes. He was dressed like a banker — and held a small badge in the palm of his hand.
“I’m Parsons,” he said. “FBI. What can I do for you?”
I tried to explain the situation while my men shifted restlessly around me. At my elbow, Canelli was muttering something unintelligible. As I talked, Parsons frowned disapprovingly.
“I haven’t got anything on this,” he said. “I just talked to Mr. Brautigan. Just a few minutes ago. And he had no problems to report.”
“Well, Lieutenant Friedman and I have been working with Brautigan all morning,” I said. “And half the night, too. And believe me, there’s a problem. Have you got this building secure?”
Holding his chin disdainfully high, Parsons nodded. “We were here at eight, when the doors opened.”
“How many men do you have?”
“Three,” he answered. “Including myself. We checked packages — anything big enough to hold a rifle, or rifle parts. All deliveries to the building have been impounded.”
“What about the offices facing City Hall? Are they evacuated?”
Parsons sighed. “We’ve checked them out. But they aren’t evacuated. Those weren’t my orders.”
“Do you mind if I have them evacuated?”
Nostrils pinched, mouth pursed, he said, “This building is my responsibility, Lieutenant. The FBI’s responsibility. I’ll have to check with my office before I can let you evacuate those offices. And, frankly, unless Mr. Brautigan has gotten some new information in the last minute or two, I doubt if he’ll issue the orders. I’d be glad to try. But—”
“Christ, I’m giving you new information right now. Right this minute.” I looked at my watch. “And, right about now, Castro is landing at the airport. He could be here in a half hour, for God’s sake.”
He stepped back, glancing speculatively toward a phone booth. I moved toward him. Looking him hard in the eye, I dropped my voice as I said, “Listen, Parsons. While you’re phoning Brautigan, I’m going to check out the offices for anything suspicious. I won’t evacuate them. I’ll just check them. I’m going to assign two men to each floor, beginning at the twelfth floor.” Still holding his eye I said, “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble over this, Parsons. Including myself, I’ve got ten men here, solely on my authority. And I, personally, have lost a night’s sleep. So I’m sure as hell not going to walk away from it. And you can tell Brautigan that. For me.”
Still with his chin high, neck stiff, he shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“Are there any empty offices?” I asked. “Or any locked up?”
“Five or six empty, I’d say, and a few locked up. All of which, incidentally, we checked out. In fact—” He permitted himself a small grimace that could have been a smile. “In fact, we checked out everything but the ladies’ room.” He reached in a vast pocket and produced a set of four keys, which he extended to me with thumb and forefinger fastidiously pinched. “There are the master keys. One key is for the office doors. One’s for the cleaning closet on each floor. The other two are bathroom keys.”
As I turned to my men, I felt another tap on my shoulder.
“Don’t forget to return those keys to me. They’re my responsibility, you know.”
I assigned my six men to the three top floors, ordering each team of two to check every third floor. Canelli and I, meanwhile, would investigate the locked offices, beginning at the top floor. We would coordinate our communications through Diebenkorn, outside. While the six men dispersed, I waited in the lobby until Parsons called Brautigan, at FBI headquarters. During the conversation I saw Parsons’s face become increasingly glum. Finally, hanging up, he turned to me and curtly announced that he’d been instructed to “cooperate” with me. Trying to conceal the satisfaction I felt, I ordered him and his men to secure the lobby. Canelli, meanwhile, was holding an elevator for me. Going up to the twelfth floor, the elevator ride seemed interminable.
“This is a pretty old elevator,” Canelli said. “Fifteen years, I bet. At least.”
When we finally stepped out into the twelfth-floor corridor, a team of inspectors was already at work, briefly questioning each person they found in every occupied office. Canelli and I momentarily hesitated, getting our bearings.
“How about the cleaning closet?” Canelli asked, gesturing to a pair of small blind doors set next to a door marked “Stairs.” “Should we check that?”