“Sorry,” the guard turned to call after her. “I’m no lover of the coloreds, causing all the riots. Kennedy should have been more careful who he hired. He might have lived to be president.” “You think he’ll die?” Angie asked, grabbing the guard on the elbow with a grip she thought would get his attention. “Looked like it, him lying there on the floor, one eye closed and the other catawampus.” “Tell me what you saw,” Angie said. “I really missed the whole thing, stuck back in the crowd.” Angie offered the man a ride back to the Ambassador to pick up his car. He might be a good witness. He was in his twenties, big, maybe 235 pounds. Under the street lights she had decided he had a boxer’s beefy jaw and a face getting puffy from too much booze. Nose was a little crooked. It wasn’t clear exactly what he’d seen or his exact role in the shooting’s aftermath. He gave her some details of the scene in the pantry he cou
CHAPTER TWO Wednesday June 5, 1968 ANSWERING THE CALL The phone jolted Angie Hawkins into semi-consciousness. She tried to clear the martinis and focus her mind. Her first emotion, before pondering who was at the other end of the line, was one she had gone to sleep with – anger. She knew better than to blame Frankie Manzzirie, the Post’s assistant librarian. Frankie believed he had good reasons for his obsession with the bizarre death of Nick Hays and the few conspiracy theorists who labored to tie Hays’ death to President Kennedy’s assassination. Frankie was also obsessed with the detectives who had gotten Hays killed with their gunplay. Neither of the pricks had gone to jail; both had quickly entered guilty pleas and gotten probation. And the Warren Commission had refused to even consider the possibility that Hays’ death might have been linked to JFK. After all, Hays had just returned from Dallas and Jack Ruby’s trial. Frankie constantly b