Bombshell

Chapter Fourteen This Happy Place

Within minutes of the disclosure by May Reis in bungalow number seven — and the phone call from the Anaheim police chief, on behalf of Walt Disney — three black sedans streamed out of the Beverly Hills Hotel driveway and onto Sunset Boulevard, little traffic in the pre-dawn morning hours to hinder them, as they sped toward the Santa Monica Freeway.

Each vehicle carried its own swiftly-formed posse of State Department agents, Secret Service men, and Khrushchev’s own guards — minus, of course, the two (deceased) KGB traitors; none had been briefed in detail, although the attempt on the premier’s life was known by all. Jack Harrigan, behind the wheel, with CIA agent Munson on the rider’s side, took the lead, as the sedans chased each other, keeping a reckless pace, along the highway to Disneyland.

Harrigan had left a Secret Service agent he trusted, Chuck Simmons, to stay behind and handle the slain Russians… and to maintain a strict press blackout. While Harrigan had been organizing the interdepartmental posse, FBI Special Agent Sam Krueger — who at the moment was in the sedan just behind Harrigan’s — had dealt on the phone with the Anaheim police, instructing them to be waiting at the gates of the amusement park, to enter only if they heard gunfire, and not to disclose details of the situation to anyone except the top personnel involved on the call itself.

And no sirens!

Among the short list of crucial things Harrigan wanted to avoid was attracting public attention, or springing a leak to the press, or arriving at the scene of a Wild West Show already in progress by some rinky-dink out-in-the-boondocks police force.

As Harrigan swung the sedan, its tires squealing, off the freeway and onto the asphalt road to the park, he could see the round domes of the black and white squad cars flashing red up ahead, streaking the night scarlet.

Harrigan brought his vehicle to a jerking halt in front of the three black-and-whites and one unmarked vehicle parked in a semicircle, noses in but headlights off, pointed toward the locked gates of the darkened Disneyland, the park’s train station looming beyond. Behind him, the brakes of the other sedans screeched, then car doors slammed like sarcastic hand claps in the night.

A uniformed policeman — a captain, according to his badge — approached Harrigan, as the State Department man scrambled out of his car. Big, burly, bucket-headed, the officer presented a comfortingly businesslike demeanor. At his side was a smaller, thinner cop, a lieutenant whose narrow face with close-set eyes and mouth-breather expression gave Harrigan no confidence at all.

In the background, milling around the squad cars, were half a dozen other uniformed officers, their casualness telling Harrigan that they were more than literally in the dark.

From out of the unmarked vehicle, a navy-blue Chevrolet, stepped a tall, rangy plainclothes officer in his fifties, his brown hair cut short and flecked with gray. He wore a brown suit and crisp, darker brown tie and looked like an executive, his badge holder tucked into the breast pocket of his suit coat, the shield gleaming in the moonlight. He, like the captain, had a reassuring air of professionalism.

Harrigan stepped forward to meet the man halfway. “Chief Coderoni, I presume.”

“You must be Agent Harrigan.”

They shook hands; the two had spoken a number of times on the phone, previously about the planning and then cancellation of the Khrushchev visit, more recently — less than half an hour ago — about the situation here at the park.

“How much do your men know, Chief?”

“My Captain here, Ed Keenan, and Lt. Willits, have been fully briefed. The other men, not at all. We get calls out this way from time to time, you know.”

“Yes, I understand there’s no security force at Disneyland.”

“Not after closing, not even a night watchman. We keep a pretty close eye, though — park’s a real boon to Anaheim.”

Harrigan had no time for small talk. “Gather everyone around,” he ordered.

The chief seemed to have no compunctions about relinquishing his leadership to Harrigan — that, at least, was a relief. Wasting time jockeying for position, pissing on trees to mark territory, was out of the question.

In a circle hastily formed in front of the locked gates of the amusement park — beneath a sign that read: To all those who come to this happy place, welcome… Walt Disney — Harrigan quickly told the diversified group about the attempt on Khrushchev’s life, and Marilyn Monroe’s involvement.

“We have good reason to believe they’re inside,” Harrigan finished. “And we have excellent reason to believe two assassins — probably Chinese — are inside, as well.”

“One of them is Lee Wong,” Munson added, and showed around a picture of the angular faced, dead-eyed Chinese hit man. “He’s freelance — ruthless as hell. He will kill you in a heart-beat, gentleman — your last. We don’t know who the other one is, but it’s not unusual for assassins to work in teams.”

The government agents took in all of this in stride, but the local cops, for the most part, looked like non-swimmers contemplating being thrown into the deep end. The chief and his captain, however, revealed nothing but a coolly competent manner.

That mouth-breather lieutenant, on the other hand, responded by dropping his jaw further, an appropriate enough response to the critical state of things, but then the man belatedly stammered, “You… you mean, the Marilyn Monroe?”

The captain stepped up, perhaps to draw attention away from his dopey crony. “Unless they climbed over, I don’t think anybody’s got inside this way,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the gate. “Lock’s intact.”

Harrigan nodded. “Is there another way into the park?”

“Uh, there’s a road goes around the back,” the lieutenant responded, attempting to redeem himself. “It’s a service entrance and some of the employees use it, too.”

Harrigan dispatched Krueger to go in the back way and keep in touch via walkie-talkie; that efficient, burly captain — “I know this park inside out” — volunteered to go along, and the FBI agent and a carload of support headed off, just as Chief Coderoni slipped up alongside the State Department man.

Speaking sotto voce, Coderoni said, “We may have another problem, Agent Harrigan.”

“Which is?”

The Chief grimaced, then whispered, “Mr. Disney was supposed to meet us here — to let us in… and there’s no sign of him.”

Harrigan processed that for a moment, then got Krueger on the walkie-talkie and informed him of the stray movie mogul who was somewhere inside the park, along with two assassins, a sex bomb, and the premier of Russia.

Harrigan instructed the chief to leave some of his men behind to watch the front gate. “They can raise us on this,” he said, handing Coderoni a spare walkie-talkie. “Gather ’round again!”

The G-men and local cops did so.

“We’re going in,” Harrigan said, “in four teams. Special Agent Krueger is already heading in, to take the back way — that’s Team Number One. The rest of us will split up at the end of Main Street. Team Number Two will head to the left, Team Three to the right, Team Four’ll continue on straight ahead. Place is set up like the points of a compass. We’ll converge at the rear of the park, at the midway.”

“How about a password?” the lieutenant asked.

“What?”

“So if we run into somebody, splittin’ up like this, we don’t shoot their head off.”

That wasn’t a bad suggestion, considering the source.

“Make it ‘Armageddon,’ ” Harrigan said.

Around back, Sam Krueger had discovered two parked cars in the bushes near the metal gate that half-heartedly barred further passage to Disneyland.

The captain was the first to reach the abandoned cars: a blue Buick and a green Ford, both late models.

“This one’s a rental,” the officer said, shining his flashlight on the back license plate of the Ford.

“This is Marilyn’s,” Krueger said, kneeling beside the Buick, noting that the tires had been slashed. Clearly these assassins didn’t want their prey to get away.

The captain assigned one of his men to stay with the cars, “in case the assassins return,” a tactic Krueger approved.

The FBI man used the walkie-talkie to bring Harrigan up to speed.

Harrigan took the info, and instructed Krueger to continue on into the park; right now the State Department agent was in the lead, the three teams — men with drawn handguns and flashlights and walkie-talkies — following him slowly up Main Street a replica of turn-of-the-century storefronts, Victorian in a cartoony, postcard sort of way.

At Harrigan’s side, the chief said, “No sign of Mr. Disney… Thought he might meet us here, if not at the gate. He has an apartment right there, you see.”

The chief was pointing to a mock fire station.

Harrigan shuddered — a foreign agent murdering Walt Disney would be almost as bad as Khrushchev buying it on American soil; wars had been fought over less.

They cautiously proceeded in, only the moon and a few security lights providing any illumination. Eyes darting from storefront to storefront, the former Secret Service agent felt he was going down a Hogan’s Alley, one of those academy training exercises where at any moment a cardboard gunman might “jump” into a doorway.

But any gunman who leapt from these doorways would hardly be cardboard.

In the meantime, Krueger’s group — the Anaheim captain, two Secret Service agents, one KGB, and a cop, also armed with walkie-talkies and flashlights, were fanning out from the rear of the park, jogging past a pagoda and park benches that sat peacefully among the rhododendrons in the moonlight.

Then Krueger noticed a halo of light shining through the trees up ahead — could that be the sun coming up? No, too early for that… He picked up his speed.

The FBI man broke away from his group, running toward the light, finding himself on the midway, where various rides were shut down and dark, like slumbering beasts at a zoo.

All, that is, but one…

“Jack,” Krueger whispered urgently into his walkie-talkie, “I’ve got something over here… Toad’s Wild Ride. Lights are on like she’s open for business.”

The communicator crackled. “Copy.”

Krueger had just signed off when he noticed several dark splotches on the ground, ahead of him. He knew what they were even before he knelt and touched one — still damp! — and his heart sank even as his breath quickened.

An out-of-wind Harrigan appeared at his side. “Jesus, Sam — don’t… don’t tell me that’s what I think it is?”

“It’s not catsup off somebody’s hot dog.”

They followed the blood trail with their flashlights, twin paths that led into the alcove of the ride. Harrigan splashed light on an empty Model T car.

“Looks like the blood starts here,” he said.

Krueger leaned in, having a closer look at the car. “Shit — Jack… there’s a bullet hole in the back of the seat…”

Harrigan, noting the puncture in the car’s vinyl padding, said, “Armageddon is right.”

“What?”

“That’s our ‘password.’ Don Knotts back there insisted.”

By this time, the others in Harrigan’s group had caught up with them.

“Watch where you step!” Harrigan said, flashing his light on the blood trail. “We’re trying to find where this goes.”

Flashlights flickered across the ground like giant lightning bugs.

“Looks like it goes back the way we came,” the lieutenant said.

“No,” Krueger said. “The trail leads there…”

And the FBI man pointed toward Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, silhouetted against the night sky like some gothic illusion.

As the group headed off in that direction, Harrigan wondered who the blood belonged to.

Khrushchev? Marilyn? One of the assassins?

Or maybe Mickey Mouse’s daddy?

It sure as hell wasn’t some kid who got a bloody nose on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

He was pondering that when he began to hear the screams — the shrill screams of a woman in danger.