R.F.K. Is Gonna Burn - Short story - Review

Whole Earth, Winter, 1999 by John Barracato, Peter Michelmore

In the car we searched Zavos's pockets and found the key to a locker at Pennsylvania Station.

"Is this where you keep the shit?" asked Connell.

"I do not make shit, I make fires," Zavos replied. His tone was calm but he had a silver glitter in his eyes that made me shiver.

He pulled on my shoulder. "Thank you for catching me, marshal, once again. I was going to burn Bobby Kennedy. The `queen of space' told me to burn him and I said I could not. She said I must because my father ordered it,"

"Is the shit at Penn?" Connell had no respect for the insane.

"Oh, yes."

We found a brown paper shopping bag in the locker containing a gallon can of paint thinners, plus two quart bottles half full of the same inflammatory stuff.

"I stood in line at the cathedral with my shopping bag today," Zavos explained, "but it was moving too slow, and I decided to leave and go back this morning."

After we booked him at the precinct near Penn Station I called the Secret Service. I was assured that he would have had no chance of getting into the cathedral carrying a shopping bag full of paint thinners in bottles and cans. But I wondered about that. Only marshals are trained to think of fire as a weapon. Numerous people buy paint thinners for cleaning up paint smudges at home. It is a harmless liquid unless put to the match. Would the agent at the door when Zavos arrived have made a diabolical connection?

I had trouble typing my report on the case because my right hand was swelling up like a melon and turning purple. A physician available to us at the Municipal Building said I had blood poisoning. He drained the infection and swathed my hand in bandages.

What hit me in Zavos's cubicle must have been a cross between a roach and centipede. I carry the scar to this day.

One of the press information officers at the Fire Department, in issuing a short account, talked to me and, seeing the bandages, assumed I had been wounded by a knife or gunfire. The Daily News carried a story and the next day I was instructed to appear at a seminar being conducted at the United Nations by the American Federation of Police. The subject, I believe, was the bombings that were then part of the antiwar resistance in the United States.

I was called to the platform at the seminar and grandly presented with a plaque honoring me for meritorious conduct.

"And as you can see," said the police captain making the award, "Marshal John Barracato was wounded in the line of duty."