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On December 8, while standing outside Blair House, Hinckley learned that his hero John Lennon had been assassinated in New York City earlier that day. Overcome with despair, Hinckley rushed to New York and attended a vigil. Afterward, he returned to Evergreen, where his troubles seemed to deepen. In the weeks following Lennon’s death, he was swept up in a tornado of fantasies that became ever more elaborate and absurd, most of them involving Jodie Foster. He dreamed of skyjacking an airliner, forcing Foster to join him, and then compelling Reagan to resign. This narrative ended with him and Foster living in the White House. He bought a postcard of the Reagans, on the back of which he jotted: “Dear Jodie, Don’t they make a darling couple? Nancy is downright sexy. One day you and I will occupy the White House and the peasants will drool with envy.” He didn’t send the postcard, but he slipped it into a book and saved it.

Now, having returned to Washington, he was determined to kill the president. After loading the gun in his hotel room, he’d put on his jacket and dropped the small revolver into his right pocket and a John Lennon pin into another pocket. A few minutes later, he hailed a cab and asked the driver to take him to the Hilton. On the way, he thought about what he wanted to do. He could pull out the gun and shoot; he could pull it out but then choose not to shoot; or he could just leave the gun in his pocket and walk away. He also worried that he might not get close enough to actually hit the president. Even after all of his target practice, his effective range was still only twenty to thirty feet.

Once the cab pulled to a stop near the hotel, Hinckley paid the fare, walked to the nearby Holiday Inn, and used the bathroom. Then he walked to the Hilton, where he saw cameramen and spectators gathering behind a black rope strung across the sidewalk not far from the VIP entrance. Hinckley joined the small crowd. He didn’t think security seemed especially tight.

Five minutes later, the long motorcade arrived. The presidential limousine appeared at the Hilton’s driveway on T Street and pulled to a stop at the VIP entrance. A Secret Service agent in a tan trench coat got out of the front passenger seat and opened the right rear door. Out stepped the president. He turned to the spectators and journalists standing behind the rope line and waved.

Hinckley felt as if the president were staring right at him. He raised his arm to wave back, but by then Reagan had already turned toward the hotel. A moment later, surrounded by a phalanx of Secret Service agents, the president walked through the Hilton’s brass-plated doors and was gone.

* * *

JERRY PARR HOVERED by Reagan’s shoulder as the president entered the elevator with Ray Donovan and the chief of hotel security. As Reagan and the others took the elevator to the ground floor, several agents hurried down a spiral staircase to meet them. The president stepped off the elevator and then, with Donovan providing introductions, shook hands with labor leaders and smiled for the official White House photographer in the foyer of the holding room.

At two p.m., Reagan walked down the short, curving hallway lined with portraits of previous presidents and arrived at the backstage entrance to the International Ballroom. Just before he went onstage, Reagan popped out one of his contact lenses. The severely nearsighted president couldn’t read a speech while wearing his contact lenses, so he had devised a unique solution: he read the text with his unaided eye and used the other to pan the crowd.

At the sound of “Hail to the Chief,” Reagan strode onstage. He walked behind the head table and toward the podium, where he shook hands with Robert Georgine, the president of the trades department of the AFL-CIO. After a brief introduction, he stepped to the dais.

“Thank you all,” Reagan said as the audience applauded. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” The president opened his speech with a story, one he had written