The Washington Decree

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  He got up, chucked a couple of bull’s-eyes into his dartboard, yawned, stretched, sat down again, and opened the last video file.

  UNTRANSMITTED RECORDINGS/CAMERAMAN MARVIN GALLEGOS, NBC4 was its title: ten out-of-focus minutes of footage, taken by the camera lying on its side on the floor.

  Yes, he’d have to slog through this one, too.

  * * *

  —

  He was awakened some hours later by his telephone ringing loud enough to rouse the dead. He took the receiver with the same lack of enthusiasm as if he were picking up a decomposed body part.

  “Yes?” he said, trying to sound awake. His alarm clock read Saturday, March 28, 2009, 05:27 A.M. Having his sleep interrupted was getting to be a regular occurrence.

  He rubbed his eyes. The last frame of Marvin Gallegos’s video recording was frozen on the screen before him at a ridiculous angle for any cameraman with respect for himself. The case documents described him being hit by a stray bullet and subsequently dropping his camera, and that all one could see were blurry legs and pant legs dancing back and forth. The prosecutor had called the pictures “surreal” and “impressionistic”—in other words: useless.

  But no matter what adjectives Mortimer Deloitte chose to use, the ever-patient, methodical T could think of at least four others that were better suited: naturalistic, realistic, minimalist, and—most important—pluralistic. If one applied these four homespun terms and blended them all together, one got a completely different picture. It was merely a question of finding and precisely identifying the details in the proper context. Thus a new world of possibilities opened, and then it was a matter of asking the right questions. He nodded again, this time at the frozen video image. Yes, through the proper eyes one was able to see the truth.

  “Hey, T, are you there? It’s me! Dody!” she repeated loudly over the telephone. “You’ve got to come out here, T. Wake up, now! Leo Mulligan’s gone completely crazy!”

  He tried opening his eyes wide. It was difficult. The light through his blinds was already heralding the new day. “Leo Mulligan, did you say? You’re out at his house? What’s going on out there?”

  He heard a couple of bangs through the receiver, followed by some muffled sounds. “Fuck!” cried Dody. “Yeah, out at his farm. T, you’ve gotta come now! Oh, God, I’m afraid Leo’s killed the deputy sheriff and the new guy he had with him!” She was gasping for breath. So was T. Perkins.

  “What?! You mean Stanley and Willie?”

  “Yes, Willie! And Stanley! He shot them. They’re lying a few hundred yards into his field. Oh, God, oh, God, T! I’m sure they’re dead!”

  CHAPTER 21

  It wasn’t the police who came to Rosalie, but one of his friends. He stood in the doorway, clutching his baseball cap and wearing a sorrowful expression rarely seen in the neighborhood. A look that instinctively made her hold her breath. He spoke cautiously and slowly so she wouldn’t know all at once. They’d found Frank, he said. He’d been lying down by the water in Weir Creek Park with glassy eyes and spotted skin. He’d been dead a while and now they’d collected him.

  She called in to work to ask for the day off without saying why, but was given only two hours. Time that could have been spent in anger and tears but instead passed in silence, with a blank expression. The sorrow was there, to be sure, but there was also a sense of relief. Mrs. Fullbright from upstairs had had visits from the police two times, and twice she’d been to the morgue to identify her own mutilated flesh and blood. That was even worse.

  It was easier to live with the notion that her Frank had at least died as a result of his own deeds. Rosalie waited as long as possible before leaving for work; perhaps she was hoping that James and Dennis would come rushing through the door. It would have been nice with a little consolation—a warm hug or some assurance that they’d never let this happen to them—but they weren’t like that. It was probably too early for them to come home, she told herself. During the day they held a pretty low profile, but nighttime was another story. This was a time for flaunting egos in the light of firelit garbage cans, for chilling with the Rastafarian brothers, for ridiculing the pimps with their gold chains, for proclaiming that the world had yet to see its greatest rapper, and for dissing the boy bands into extinction. Her sons were so extravagantly full of themselves, she could scream till she was blue in the face and they’d never notice. Coming to her of their own accord and saying they loved her and were sorry they hadn’t kept an eye on their brother was simply not their nature.

  * * *

  —

  She gave herself constant pep talks and tried to gain control over her trembling lips and the pile of bills before her. The state of emergency had created serious problems for the accounting department at Mo Goldenbaum’s Export-Import, Rosalie’s workplace, and if things went on like this, pretty soon Mo would be the only one left in the office. At present the portly man was sweating over his bank credit limit, and Rosalie knew better than anyone how hopeless his fight for survival would be if something didn’t happen soon. She looked over at her colleague Henry, who comprised the shipping department, letting her eyes linger on his fleshless face. They’d worked ten feet apart for twenty years and yet she knew almost nothing about him, even in spite of the fact that they were the only two left out of thirty employees. It crossed her mind that Henry might sense the state she was in, look up, and meet her eye. That, if she broke down in tears, he would understand and be able to offer words of deliverance. Or that he’d console her and assure her that Frank had gone to a better place. But Henry was fully occupied by his computer screen, clearly fighting for his existence. What other choice did he have, forty-five years old and never having tried any other work than shuffling containers around between point A and point B? Rosalie understood. These were hard times.

  She took a deep breath and fought a moment to get herself under control. Her mother and father had lost half their flock to God, and each time it had added new furrows to their faces. But had she ever seen them complain or give in to adversity or despondency? No, she hadn’t. Never had she seen them let themselves go and surrender to their grief. They still had kids left to worry about, kids that had to eat. There was still hope for their remaining children; that was their compass in life. How was her situation any different? Didn’t she still have two wonderful boys, as well as a great responsibility? She pursed her lips and looked at the papers lying before her.

  The sound of oaths and swear words erupted from her boss’s glass cubicle. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be pounding his fist into the desk, so hard that the empty Coke cans rattled. Next his face might turn copper red with rage and the glass panes start vibrating with his bellowing. She looked at her watch. He must be listening to some long-wave program. Why did he do it? What was the use? It was always at times like this that he began wailing about wanting to go back to South Africa. Rosalie looked at Henry once more. She knew what effect Mo’s outbursts had on him. Every time he yelled, Henry attempted to straighten his skinny posture, but it didn’t help. A life of insecurity had made his shoulders go permanently limp.

  Mo froze with his hand halfway in the air. It looked as though he’d stopped breathing; the bright red face had turned ashen. For a moment Rosalie was afraid her boss had finally worked himself up to a fatal heart attack. She jumped to her feet at the same time as Henry, expecting to see Mo keel over before she reached his office, but he kept sitting there with his hand in the air, stone-faced.

  “What’s happened?!” shouted Henry, but Mo waved him away.

  “Listen . . .” he said, as the color slowly began returning to his face.

  Rosalie plopped down heavily on the worn-out chair reserved for clients, ready to break down. If there was more bad news, she simply wouldn’t be able to take it.

  “Just listen to what that idiot’s saying,” said Mo.

  It was President Jansen’s voice, and it was calm. Som
e voices are especially well suited to cut through the whistling static of an unused radio frequency, and his was one. Despite the noise and the fading in and out, he seemed intimately close by, his words like an outstretched hand, offered in friendship and solace.

  “This morning our most fervent wish was fulfilled,” he was saying. “Our competent investigators in New York found the Killer on the Roof at eight A.M., local time, on the outskirts of Fordham University, as he lay in wait for his next victim. After a short exchange of gunfire, he was hit by a bullet identical to those he used himself to spread fear and fatality. According to an FBI spokesman, he expired immediately after being shot, without having given any explanation for his insane, terrorist behavior.”

  “Gosh, is he dead?” said Henry quietly.

  “Fool’s luck for Jansen!” snickered Mo Goldenbaum.

  “The FBI spokesman has also stated that the investigation’s breakthrough came in connection with the fact that census takers in Brooklyn had reached the area around Prospect Park, more precisely Flatbush Avenue. When the census taker came to the perpetrator’s apartment, he asked for the man’s fingerprints, as the law prescribes. He also noticed how nervous this made the man. The census taker happened to be someone with previous experience in the correctional system, a man trained to notice small signs that signal criminality, and it was precisely this training that aroused his suspicions and led him to recommend the perpetrator’s apartment be searched.

  “If we hadn’t had this alert person doing his job, the citizens of New York would still be unable to go to work or to school without fearing for their lives. Instead, the man’s home was searched while he was out, and several pieces of circumstantial evidence were found, indicating that he was the culprit.

  “Yesterday’s and last night’s subsequent close surveillance of the suspect led to the ultimate conclusion of this loathsome drama that’s been played out in New York the past couple of months. We thank God that it’s finally over. The murder of twenty-seven innocent people brings back memories of many other terrible trials Americans have had to endure in the course of time as the result of madmen with weapons. I feel convinced that these outrages will soon be a thing of the past. During the last month we’ve confiscated more than a million and a half illegal weapons; laid out end to end, they would reach from Washington to New York. What we’re doing is worth it, I tell you. We’ve already confiscated as much ammunition from ordinary people’s homes as was used in warfare throughout the world in 2008, and there’s still more. It will be worth it.”

  Mo Goldenbaum took hold of his desk drawer and pulled it open. Then he took out a heavy pistol and popped out the magazine. “Phew!” he exhaled. “I just wanted to see if he’d counted my ammunition, too.” He laughed so his entire body shook, and Henry gave a thumbs-up sign, relieved. Rosalie couldn’t manage to say anything.

  “The Department of Homeland Security informs us that a ballistics examination has confirmed that we got the right man. America can now breathe easier.”

  Rosalie stared into space. She’d heard rumors that there’d been an assassination attempt on the president, but there he was, speaking to the nation. She’d also heard people claim that the Killer on the Roof could not have been working alone, that he had to have had accomplices, but that’s not how it sounded now.

  So everything should be fine—only it wasn’t. Because Frank was dead.

  “The American people have been freed of yet another burden,” continued President Jansen, as Henry stood up slowly, to emphasize how essential he was. Rosalie didn’t follow his example.

  “Yet another mentally disturbed person has been neutralized. As a result of the Secure Future program, our country has become a better and safer place in which to live, and we firmly believe that this process will continue. We Americans have a long tradition of creating our own problems, and now it must stop. Just look abroad. See how our support for Saddam Hussein—when we needed him against the Iranian clerics—and our support for Osama bin Laden against the Red Army turned out to be a double-edged sword that was later turned against us with catastrophic consequences. Look what happened when we got ourselves involved in Korea and Vietnam and Somalia. Look at Israel. We lost our sons and made new enemies. Look what we’ve done to ourselves here, at home. We stick our nose into everything and worry more about foreigners on the other side of the world than we do about ourselves. But that’s all ending now. We don’t want more problems; we don’t want to bury any more sons or daughters. From now on we’re letting the world take care of itself while we take care of each other, here, in God’s own country. Reforming our way of thinking will pave the way.”

  At this point the radio transmission was interrupted by a voice that alternated between English and French. Mo Goldenbaum turned down the radio.

  “It’s a Canadian station; they took it from a television transmission half an hour ago,” he explained. Then he turned to his telephone and dialed a number. “Did you see it?” he asked, without introduction. It must be his wife. “Yes, that’s right! Now you and the kids can come home again. New York’s safe!”

  Mo Goldenbaum stretched his huge bulk while the speaker concluded by saying that President Jansen had been forced to postpone a press conference the day before because of an assassination attempt, but the president was unharmed and was now back in Washington.

  “Then Tom Jumper was a little quick on the trigger, ha-ha!” Mo laughed so hard that his double chins rippled. “Ten minutes ago, on this very same frequency, he claimed the Killer on the Roof was a concoction of the White House, along with several other recent attacks and murders.” He shook his head. “Piss-poor timing, but you’ve gotta admire the bastard for having guts and managing to elude the FBI so far.”

  Rosalie rose and walked back to her work desk. A few days ago she would have felt a stone fall from her heart, but now it was too late. The stone could no longer be budged.

  The phone rang. Mo Goldenbaum picked it up, then gave a sign through the window that she should take it.

  It was the police from the Barkley Avenue precinct. They were very formal, and it was bad news.

  They’d arrested James and Dennis as they were in the process of beating up two pushers in broad daylight. One of them was still unconscious but would recover. The boys claimed they were the men who’d sold crack to their now-deceased brother. The police were understanding of their situation, but the law had to take its course. The boys had already been arraigned, and would she be so kind as to come down right away and post their bail. These days they couldn’t have people taking up space in jail who hadn’t committed a more serious crime. Rosalie sat for so long without answering that the police officer had to ask her again.

  “Come up to the station? Now? No, thanks, I don’t think so,” she finally answered, and gently laid down the receiver. She raised her head and gazed at the unreality of the empty office landscape. Henry nodded at her as though saying everything was okay, no matter what. Only Mo saw the breakdown coming.

  * * *

  —

  She’d practically cried the eyes out of her head; her dark cheeks were striped with salt. Mo and Henry had tried to calm her down, then accepted the futility of their attempt. When you’ve lost a son, you’ve got to be allowed to grieve, as Mo said.

  She sat at one of the many empty desks at the far end of the open-plan office and tried as well as she could to think. She’d pinched and scraped for five years with nothing to show for it. She had convinced herself that the dream of a tranquil life in the country, down by her sister’s, could one day become reality. Now that dream was shattered. The bit of money she’d tucked aside probably wouldn’t even cover Frank’s funeral, not to mention bail for her two remaining sons. What was she supposed to do? What in the world was she supposed to do? All her life she’d struggled to pay everyone their due, plus have a little left over for a rainy day. What was she supposed to do now, when that wa
sn’t enough?

  She looked over at Mo’s glass cubicle and saw him shaking his head. Maybe he’d help her. Of course he would, if he could. And Henry, too. But she knew they couldn’t, nor could anybody else she knew. In forty-eight years on the planet, she’d experienced plenty of things, but never financial independence, and now this was about to pull her under.

  “Can I have permission to go now, Mo?” she asked through the intercom. “I’ll work late on Monday instead, okay?”

  * * *

  —

  Clutching her handbag, she shoved her way past the demonstrators in front of the Jansen’s Drugstore on East 14th. ONLY TRAITORS SHOP HERE was printed on several of the protest signs. The police didn’t try to disperse them; they only held a small passageway open in case anyone felt like tempting fate by going into the store. This had been going on for weeks now. If there was anyone who had suffered financially from the state of emergency, it was the president himself, that was for sure. So much so, that it made sissies of the chorus of moaning shareholders who were watching their own stocks crash.

  Emotions were beginning to boil over at the intersection of East 14th Street and Broadway. Here hundreds of the city’s citizens had gathered and were literally screaming to the rooftops what they thought should be done with the body of the Killer on the Roof. Despite their bloodthirst and deranged suggestions, their behavior seemed perfectly fitting. New Yorkers were known for their solidarity when it came to feelings—even the darkest kind—and feelings were what this was all about.

  * * *

  —

  Rosalie Lee made her way up to Penn Station. She figured it would take less than three hours to reach Washington with the Acela Express. It would cost every penny she had on her, but only there would she be able to find the solution to her problems. She’d have to borrow money from Doggie, and she knew that a couple of thousand dollars was a sum that Doggie could easily afford.