Jack & Jill

President of the United States. New York City, December 16 and 17.
It ran to eighty-nine pages and included virtually every moment from when the President would step off
Air Force One
at La Guardia until he reboarded at approximately two in the afternoon and traveled back to Washington.
    Included among the pages were sketches, literally of everywhere the President would be: La Guardia Airport, the Waldorf, the Felt Forum inside Madison Square Garden, the motorcade routes, alternate routes.
    The Secret Service document stated:

    10:55 A.M . The President and Mrs. Byrnes board motorcade

    Note: The President and Mrs. Byrnes proceed through a cordon of NYPD officers at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

    11:00 A.M . Motorcade departs Waldorf via route (code C) to Madison Square Garden, the Felt Forum

    Closed arrival.

    No press pool coverage.

    I occupied my mind with the puzzle of Jack and Jill as the time approached for the President to leave the Waldorf and then travel downtown with the motorcade of limousines, police radio cars, and motorcycles. For the past three days, the FBI, Secret Service, and New York police had been cooperating on a massive plan to try and capture Jack and Jill if they actually came to Madison Square Garden. Nearly a thousand plainclothes agents and detectives would be inside for the President’s speech. We all had doubts that it would be enough protection.
    A disturbing mania had been running through my head all morning:
No one ever stops an assassin’s bullet. No one stops a bullet except the victim.
    What would Jack and Jill do? How would it go down? I believed they would be at Madison Square Garden. I suspected that they planned to do the job up close. And somehow, they planned to escape.
    The President and Mrs. Byrnes were escorted to their car at precisely five minutes to eleven. A phalanx of a dozen Secret Service agents shadowed them from the tower suite to an armor-plated limousine waiting in the hotel’s underground garage.
    I walked closely behind the main escort group. My role here wasn’t to physically protect the President. I had already told Jay Grayer how I believed the attempt would be made.
It would be close in. It would be showy. But they would have a plan to escape.
    There had already been a change in plans that morning.
No cordon of high-ranking policemen at the hotel’s rear entrance. No photo opportunities.
The President had been convinced not to go through the open Waldorf lobby a second time.
    I watched as Mrs. Byrnes and the President walked into the limousine for the two-mile ride. The two of them held hands. It was a touching moment to witness. It fit with everything I knew about Thomas and Sally Byrnes.
    No regrets.
    The motorcade began to move right on time. It was what the Secret Service called “the formal package motorcade.” There were twenty-eight cars. Six held counterassault teams. One car, ‘’Intelligence,” held computers to keep contact with surveillance on known threats to the President. I wondered if Jack and Jill had the schedule, even the number of cars.
    The motorcade’s limos and town cars rode at almost perpendicular angles out of the steep hotel garage. Manhole covers clattered loudly under our tires. The route to the auditorium began on Park Avenue, then jogged west along Forty-seventh Street to Fifth. I rode with Don Hamerman, two cars behind the President. Even Hamerman was subdued and distant that morning. Nothing had happened yet. Could Jack and Jill possibly have changed their plan? Was this part of covering their trail? Would they surface when we began to doubt that they would? Would they surprise me and attack the motorcade?
    I watched everything out the car window. The morning was an eerie, out-of-body experience. The people lining the street were enthusiastic, clapping and cheering as the motorcade passed by. That was one reason why President Byrnes had decided he couldn’t hide in the White House any longer. The people, even New Yorkers, wanted a piece of him. He was a good president so far, a popular one, a courageous one, too.
    Who wanted to kill Thomas Byrnes, and why?
There were so many potential enemies, but I kept returning to the President’s own list. Senator Glass, Vice President Mahoney, a few reactionaries in Congress, powerful men connected to Wall Street. He had said that he was trying to change the system, and the system fiercely resented change.
    The system fiercely resented change!
    Police sirens wailed and