The Mayor of Castro Street (44 page)

*   *   *

Cyr Copertini, George Moscone's appointments secretary, was surprised to see the mayor's black Lincoln limousine parked by the Polk Street entrance of City Hall when she arrived to work at 8:40
A.M.
The mayor rarely arrived before her, but then she remembered today was to be a special day at City Hall. Cyr found her boss ebuliant that morning. He'd gotten a good response to his private soundings about appointing a liberal neighborhood activist to Dan White's supervisorial seat. He'd finally have his working majority on the board. Moscone had originally planned a 10
A.M.
press conference to announce the appointment, but he asked Cyr to delay the gathering until 11:30. George decided to take care of some phone work before then.

A cadre of Dan White's supporters were waiting in the mayor's office when Cyr arrived. They wanted to present a stack of petitions to the mayor. Cyr offered to take the papers to him. No, they insisted, they wanted to see Moscone. Copertini returned to her office. George told her he did not want to see the delegation. Copertini was not surprised. Moscone was by nature a jovial man who avoided potentially nasty confrontations at all costs. He still had not told Dan White that he would not be reappointed. Copertini went back to White's supporters, told them the mayor was busy, and promised to give them a receipt swearing that Moscone would have the petitions on his desk within minutes of when they handed them over to her. They relented and gave Cyr the petitions, shortly after 9
A.M.

At about the same time, George Moscone dialed Dianne Feinstein's Pacific Heights home. No, he was not going to reappoint White, he explained, even though the former supervisor insisted he would physically take his seat at that day's board meetings, whether he got it back or not. George returned to writing out by hand his comments for the press conference. Later that morning, his close ally, Assemblyman Willie Brown, dropped in briefly and the two made arrangements to do some Christmas shopping that weekend.

*   *   *

A worried Dianne Feinstein was sitting in her small City Hall office a half hour after talking to Moscone. As president of the board, the decorum-minded Feinstein felt it was her responsibility to prevent the kind of donnybrook that might arise when two men, both claiming to be supervisor from District 8, tried to get in the same chair at that afternoon's board meeting. She called a hurried meeting with a deputy city attorney and the board clerk to see if there were any legal tactics that could circumvent the problem. Finally, she decided she would try to dissuade White from forcing his way into the chambers. She told her aides to try to find White, and tell him she'd like to have a chat before the meeting.

*   *   *

Dick Pabich and Jim Rivaldo had rarely seen Harvey in as good a mood as when he bounded into the office at 9
A.M.
He was always bouncy on Monday mornings, since each board meeting gave him the chance to put on another show, but that morning, Harvey seemed particularly cheerful. Funding for a gay community center would be voted on that day, and Harvey figured he finally had his sixth vote. He chatted briefly with Jim and Dick, then strolled over to the mayor's office where Moscone told him the news he wanted to hear—Dan White would not get his seat back. Buoyant, Harvey walked down the grand marble staircase and started to make his way toward a cafeteria where he could have his morning roll.

*   *   *

Doug Franks had been thinking about Harvey all morning. Just couldn't get him off his mind, even as he left the senior citizens center where he worked and headed for the library. He was suprised when he ran into Harvey striding down the street.

“I've never seen you so radiant,” Doug told him.

“I am,” Harvey said. “I'm happy. I just came from George's office. He's not going to reappoint Dan White.”

Milk wasn't sure whom the mayor would appoint, but he knew he had the gay center vote and he was confident he had a sixth vote for many other decisions to come. The couple walked together to the cafeteria for breakfast. Harvey spent most of the next fifteen minutes talking excitedly about the march on Washington. No senators or congressmen could speak, he decided, unless they came out. They walked back to Civic Center, where Doug turned to go to the library and Harvey to City Hall. They agreed to get together that night for dinner after the board meeting.

*   *   *

Denise Apcar told Dan White she had seen Harvey leave the mayor's office when she picked White up, about 10:15. Dan told her he wanted to see both George and Harvey once he got to City Hall. Denise noted he was rubbing his hands together and blowing on his fingertips as he talked. “I'm a man. I can take it,” he told her. “I just want to talk with them, have them tell me to my face why they won't reappoint me.”

Denise dropped White off at City Hall and left to gas up her car. William Melia, a city engineer with a lab overlooking the supervisors' parking lot, first noticed a nervous young man pacing by his window at about 10:25. The man walked back and forth, anxiously glancing into the window where Melia was working. The phone rang and Melia stepped briefly into another room to take the call. As soon as he left the room, he heard the lab window open and the sound of someone jumping to the floor and running out of the lab and into the hall.

“Hey, wait a second,” Melia shouted. He knew such an entrance was a sure way to avoid passing through the metal detectors at the public entrances of City Hall.

“I had to get in,” White explained. “My aide was supposed to come down and let me in the side door, but she never showed up.”

“And you are—”

“—I'm Dan White, the city supervisor. Say, I've got to go.” With that, White spun on his heel and left the office.

Mildred Tango, a clerk-typist in the mayor's office, saw White hesitating near the main door of the mayor's office as if he didn't want to use that entrance. Inside sat the mayor's police bodyguard; White knew that, since he had once worked the relief shift as the mayor's police bodyguard during the Alioto administration. White saw Tango unlocking a side door to the mayor's office on her rounds to collect the morning mail. She recognized White and let him follow her into the hallway that led to the mayor's suite. White presented himself at Cyr Copertini's desk at about 10:30
A.M.

“Hello, Cyr. May I see the mayor?”

“He has someone with him, but let me go check.”

Moscone grimaced at the news. He was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of a confrontation on what promised to be such a splendid morning.

“Give me a minute to think,” the mayor said. “Oh, all right. Tell him I'll see him, but he'll have to wait a minute.”

Cyr asked if George wanted someone to sit in on the meeting. Press secretary Mel Wax often served such duty to make sure disgruntled politicos did not later lay claim to specious mayoral promises.

“No. No,” George said, “I'll see him alone.”

“Why don't you let me bring Mel in,” Copertini persisted.

“No, no. I will see him alone.”

Copertini told White the mayor would be a few minutes. Dan seemed nervous.

“Would you like to see a newspaper while you're waiting?” Copertini asked.

He didn't.

“That's all right. There's nothing in it anyway, unless you want to read about Caroline Kennedy having turned twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one? Is that right?” White shook his head. “Yeah. That's all so long ago. It's even more amazing when you think that John-John is now eighteen.”

Moscone buzzed for White.

“Good girl, Cyr,” Dan White said.

*   *   *

An aide told Dianne Feinstein that he had just seen Dan go into the mayor's office. She sent her administrative assistant, Peter Nardoza, to find White. As an extra precaution, Feinstein opened her office door so she could see him if he slipped into the long hallway on which the supervisors' offices were clustered.

*   *   *

Around the same time Dan White walked into George Moscone's office, Harvey Milk was stepping up the marble staircase to his aides' offices. Dick Pabich was working on correspondence. Jim Rivaldo was talking to a gay lawyer, who, Harvey knew, had a fondness for leather during his late-night carousing.

“Well, where are your leathers?” Milk asked.

“Don't worry,” Jim joked. “He's got leather underwear on.”

Milk excused himself to go to the bank. He was expecting Carl Carlson with the cashier's check. Jim and Harvey agreed to get together again at 11:30 so they could go to the swearing-in of the new supervisor.

Harvey walked to his office, but Carlson hadn't arrived yet. Harvey was on the phone when he came in, about 10:50; Carl sat down to do some typing until Harvey was finished.

*   *   *

Dan White and Moscone hadn't been in the mayor's large ceremonial office more than five minutes before Cyr heard White's voice raised, shouting at Moscone. George hated scenes and decided to try to mollify the former supervisor by inviting him to a small den off his office where he kept a wet bar. He lit a cigarette, poured two drinks, and turned to see White brandishing a revolver. White pulled the trigger and fired a bullet into Moscone's arm, near the shoulder, and immediately shot a second slug into the mayor's right pectoral. Moscone sank to the floor as the second bullet tore into his lung. Dan White knelt next to the prostrate body, poised the gun six inches from the right side of Moscone's head, and fired a bullet that ripped through Moscone's earlobe and into his brain. He pulled the trigger again and another bullet sped from the revolver, through Moscone's ear canal and into the brain.

White methodically emptied the four spent cartridges and the one live bullet from his Smith & Wesson and crammed them into the right pocket of his tan blazer. He had special bullets for his next task; the hollow-headed dum-dum bullets that explode on impact, ripping a hole into the victim two to three times the size of the slug itself. White slipped the five bullets into the revolver's chamber, stepped out a side door, and dashed toward the other side of City Hall where the supervisors' officers were.

The four dull thuds sounded like a car backfiring, Cyr thought, so she looked out her office window, but saw nothing. Rudy Nothenberg, Moscone's top deputy, had an 11
A.M.
appointment with the mayor. He was ready to cancel it when he noted that George's meeting with White was taking longer than expected. He was relieved when he saw White hurriedly leave the office; he'd get his chance to talk to the mayor after all.

*   *   *

Dick Pabich saw White dashing toward the supervisorial offices. What a jerk, Pabich thought, running around here like he's still somebody important.

Peter Nardoza saw him rushing into the hallway outside Dianne Feinstein's office.

“Dianne would like to talk to you,” Nardoza said.

“Well, that will have to wait a couple of moments,” White answered sharply.

Feinstein heard the exchange, then saw White flash by her office door.

“Dan,” she called.

“I have something to do first,” White said.

Harvey and Carl were getting ready to go to the bank when White stuck his head into Milk's office.

“Say, Harv, can I see you?”

“Sure.”

White took Harvey to his old office across the hall. He noticed that his name plate had already been removed from the door. Once Milk stepped inside, White planted himself between him and the door. He drew his revolver and fired. A sharp streak of pain sped through Harvey.

“Oh no,” Milk shouted. “N—” He reflexively raised his hand to try to protect himself.

White knew that bullets went through arms, and he fired again, cutting short Harvey's cry. The slug tore into Harvey's right wrist, ripped into his chest and out again, finally lodging near his left elbow. Another dum-dum bullet pounded Milk in the chest. He was falling now, toward the window. As he crumpled to his knees, Dan White took careful aim from across the office. The first three bullets alone would not have killed Harvey. White took careful aim at the staggering figure and fired a fourth bullet which sliced into the back of his head and out the other side, spraying blood against the wall. The shots sounded so loud they startled White; louder than the shots in Moscone's office. Harvey had fallen to the floor. White gripped the revolver's handle and pulled the trigger once more. The bullet left only a dime-sized wound on the outside of Harvey's skull, but shards from its hollow tip exploded when they struck Harvey's skull, tearing and ripping into his brain. Harvey Milk died at approximately 10:55
A.M.
on the dark gray morning of November 27, 1978, a year and a half short of his fiftieth birthday.

*   *   *

Dianne Feinstein had heard the first shot and known exactly what it was—Dan White had committed suicide. Then she heard more shots and felt an unspeakable horror. She had to get up from her desk. She had to force her brain and body to function together, to move her out of her chair, out of her office. But she felt she was going too slow, too slow, she had to go faster. She saw White walk by her door. She couldn't move fast enough as she smelled the odor of gunpowder that wafted down the hall.

Carl Carlson thought at first maybe the sounds were firecrackers, but he had heard Harvey shout and knew it was not firecrackers. Carlson stepped out of Harvey's office in time to see White walk out of his office, pull the door shut behind him, glance coldly at Carlson, then walk calmly down the hall. Feinstein joined Carl at the door to White's office.

Feinstein shoved the door open and saw Harvey's body sprawled out, his face toward the window, lying in a spreading pool of blood. Feinstein's mind shifted into automatic. All her emergency medical training told her to take the injured man's pulse. She knelt to take Harvey's arm; she put her finger to Harvey's wrist and it quickly oozed into the wound left by the second bullet. Blood and tissue engulfed her finger.