The Multiple Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

with the local FBI office to slip a real wino who really died tonight into the Mass General files. "The police patrolling the area found him and alerted the President's security team. They are very protective guys, as you may have noticed, and they had the body shipped here immediately. Just routine precaution, that's all." Better get those two Boston patrolmen sent to Washington or otherwise put on ice. If these wiseasses get their hands on them, the story'll pop out in fifteen minutes. The meditechs were Army people, from what McMurtrie said. Check on it.
    "Seems like a helluva lot of overreaction for one dead wino."
    I nodded at them. "Yeah. I suppose so. But that's the way these security people react. Nobody's hit a President—or even a candidate—in a lot of years. Right?" What about tonight? Was it an attempt? Did it succeed?
    They muttered reluctant agreement.
    "Listen, fellas." Now I had to throw the strikeout pitch. "I spoke to the President on the phone just before I came over here. I suggested, and he agreed, that I ask you guys not to print anything about this little incident . . ."
    "I knew it!"
    "Come on, Meric. For Chri . . ."
    "Hear me out!" I raised my voice. When they stopped grumbling, I went on. "I don't like to ask you to do this, and the President was even more hesitant . . ."
    "Then why ask?" It came from Len Ryan.
    "Simply because it was just a harmless incident that shouldn't be blown up out of proportion. And because everytime there's been a news story that even hints at an assassination attempt, every kook in the country turns violent. You know that. I don't have to tell you about it."
    "What about the President's terrific security team? Are they scared of a little exercise?"
    "Wise up!" I snapped. "The Man's got the best protection in the world. But why invite trouble? Why put the idea in some nut's head? Because a drunk dropped dead in an alley? Come off it."
    "How'd he get back there? Wasn't there a police net around the Hall?"
    That's right , I realized. How the hell did he get into that alley? But my mouth was getting very clever. "That's just my point. No security system is perfect. Thank God it was just a harmless drunk."
    "I'll have to ask my city editor about this," said one of the men in the back of the room. "We can't guarantee not to print it."
    "Listen! Remember the attempt on Jackson's life, back in the eighties?"
    "The poor slob never got within a hundred yards of Jackson . . ."
    "Sure," I said. "But the following week that mental patient killed eleven people in Sacramento, right? And the sniper in Dayton, right after that?"
    "You can't prove that a news story made them go berserk."
    "I don't have to prove it," I said. "I just want you guys, and your editors, to understand what's at stake here. You make a story out of this incident and you might set off a new Boston Strangler."
    "Jesus Christ!" somebody muttered. "Might as well blame us for Jack the Ripper."
    It took a lot more talk. And phone calls to a half-dozen sleepy, short-tempered editors. I called right from the hospital's main switchboard, while they clustered around me. It was past two in the morning when the last one of them agreed to sit on the story.
    I was dead tired. The reporters filed out of the hospital, too frustrated to complain about spending the night for nothing.
    "Still going to the airport in an official limousine?"
    It was Ryan. He was the last one left, as I stood in the hospital's entrance corridor. Nobody else there except him and me, and the near-invisible security man leaning his back against the wall.
    "I stalled you," I admitted. "I'm sorry about it. They found a corpse in the alley and everybody got a little fidgety."
    He nodded, a compact little jerk of his head. He had a bull neck and looked as if he could be very stubborn when he wanted to be. And idealistic. He reminded me of myself at that age. Maybe that's why I didn't like him.
    "I can still drive you to the airport," he said.
    "No. Thanks,