Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [32]
Reagan and Donovan chatted briefly about politics before the labor secretary launched into an amusing yarn about a politically connected bar owner given a patronage job as the commissioner of weights and measures. After his first day on the job, reporters asked the new commissioner: “Sir, how many ounces in a pound?”
“Hey,” the former bar owner said. “Give a guy a chance to learn his duties!”
Donovan had told the president that joke more than once over the past few years, but, as always, Reagan laughed.
Riding in the front passenger seat that afternoon was Jerry Parr. It was the same position he had occupied two months ago during the inaugural parade, and now, as then, he listened to the Secret Service radio and constantly scanned the cityscape. At the limousine’s wheel was Agent Drew Unrue, an army veteran who had joined the service in 1972. Unrue was often given the stressful job of driving the hulking limousine, and even during a routine trip such as this one he was intensely focused. Knowing that he was an obvious target was bad enough, but the agent was always nervous about missing a turn or dropping the president off at the wrong entrance to the venue, the kind of mistake he would never live down.
Directly ahead of Stagecoach was a second armored limousine, a tan Lincoln that carried Dr. Daniel Ruge, the president’s personal physician. Ruge or one of the doctors working for him always accompanied Reagan on trips outside the White House gates; usually Ruge sat in the second limousine, which the Secret Service would use as a spare if Stagecoach broke down. It also served as a good decoy.
Ahead of the spare limousine, riding in the passenger seat of a marked cruiser driven by a D.C. police sergeant, was Agent Mary Ann Gordon, who was responsible for ensuring that the motorcade encountered no problems on its way to and from the Hilton. Gordon, a former juvenile parole officer from Boston, was one of only a handful of female agents in the Secret Service. She had already made history when she’d chauffeured Jimmy Carter to a speech, becoming the first female agent ever to drive a president. Earlier that Monday, Gordon had driven all of the possible motorcade routes to the Hilton, to the White House, and even to George Washington University Hospital. She wanted to be sure the streets were free of construction equipment or other impediments; she also wanted to imprint the routes in her memory, because there would be no time to think or ask for directions in a crisis. Now, as they drove toward the Hilton, she kept an eye on the police motorcycles ahead of them and noted that officers were blocking traffic at all the appropriate intersections, giving them a clear corridor to the hotel.
The presidential limousine was trailed by an insurance policy—a follow-up car that carried a driver and half a dozen additional agents who wielded handguns, shotguns, and submachine guns. Code-named Halfback, the car was an armored Cadillac with running boards and a powerful engine, and the six agents riding in it were all members of the so-called working shift, which closely shadowed the president. In the front passenger seat was Agent Ray Shaddick, the shift’s supervisor. Among those squeezed in the back was Timothy McCarthy, a muscular former Big Ten safety.
McCarthy, the thirty-one-year-old son of a Chicago cop, was not happy about today’s assignment because of the weather—he was wearing a new Geoffrey Beene suit and didn’t want it to get wet in the rain or splotchy from water dripping from Halfback’s leaky roof. He had nearly gotten out of the trip but had lost a coin toss with two other agents who also wanted to skip the speech because they were behind on their expense reports.
Behind Halfback was the control car, driven by a military noncommissioned officer. Also in the control car was Michael Deaver. A member of the Troika almost always accompanied the president on official trips, and today