The Intern: Chasing Murderers, Hookers, and Senators Across DC Wasn't In The Job Description

by Dale Wiley

  I snapped myself out of self-pity and called the Post on Tabitha’s cell phone. After three different operators, I finally got to speak to Greer, who was down in the news department instead of at his desk in features. I knew he was loving his new status as the most important reporter on a very important newspaper.

  While I was waiting, I firmed up my story. I had information for him. If he asked me for details to prove the validity of my material, I was going to tell him a little about the burglary I had reported. That way, it would make it look like I had something to do with the police department.

  “Greer,” he said into the phone.

  I rolled my eyes. I knew I wasn’t going to like this guy. For an opening to a phone conversation, instead of the traditional, “Hello?” this guy said, “Greer.” Oh boy.

  “I’ve got some information about the Norris case.” I had thought about calling it the Timmons case, but I allowed myself this much hubris. Suddenly, I had cold feet, wondering if journalists ever really got calls like this.

  Well, if they didn’t, they at least dreamed of it, because Greer jumped at the bait.

  “Yeah?” he said, sounding more excited than he probably wanted to.

  “Yeah.”

  He sounded like he was ready to get out his pencil and quote me but then remembered himself.

  “How do I know this isn’t just a prank?”

  I paused for a minute to make him think about all of this, and then told him all about the report I had given the police about the burglary, and he seemed pleased. I told him to meet me at The Tombs, a Georgetown pub, at nine-thirty. I told him I would recognize him from his picture in the paper. He told me he had lost weight. I didn’t believe him.

  The food arrived about the same time as the bondage kit. I was in the closet for both arrivals, of course, and was pleasantly surprised both times. Especially with the bondage kit. Tabitha told me it was officially known as a “B and D” kit, which meant bondage and discipline. The intention was not only to hurt the person, I surmised, but to humiliate them as well, while wearing a leather dress and brandishing a bullwhip. Our kit came with these items and much more. There were half a dozen sets of police-quality handcuffs, arm and leg restraints, and lots of little painful-looking clamps. The way Tabitha carefully picked over things, I didn’t think she had a lot of experience.

  “Do you … do … a lot of this?” I grimaced.

  “A bit. They make you learn how to use the whip, just in case, but I think they figure you can figure out the rest if you need to.” She told me there were women who specialized in humiliating people, and this left the others free to ply their own specialties. I wondered what her specialties were, but I didn’t dare ask. I kept quiet and ate an egg roll.

  I hadn’t caught a fresh newscast since early that morning, so I turned the TV to one of the local stations. “A new development in the Trent Norris case arose this morning,” said a sandy-haired, cross-eyed man, who read the news painfully slowly. They showed Morris’s press conference but cut him off after he said, “I was afraid he would kill me.” People who didn’t watch the entire press conference didn’t get to hear how nice I was or how he had thanked me. But the anchor ended the piece by saying I had called myself Leonard.

  Tabitha could see I was seething. She glanced around the room and over toward the closet, where all of the costumes were hanging. “I guess I should go to The Tombs.” I nodded, and she ran with her bag into the bathroom. A minute later she emerged wearing a green blouse and a new pair of jeans.

  “You look really nice,” I said. “You look good in green.” Knowing nothing else to say, I pulled out that day’s copy of the Post and showed her Greer’s picture one last time. She nodded, prodded me for some of the senator’s money, said goodbye and once again left me to my own imagination.

  Chapter

  * * *

  Twenty-Three

  Later Tabitha told me what happened on her journey. She took a cab to The Tombs, which, not surprisingly, is dark and subterranean. The walls are lined with rowing memorabilia, and it was one of my favorite bars in DC. She got there about 9:20 and pulled up a chair at the bar. She informed me she was hit on by several preppies—which didn’t surprise me—and she let me know one was enough of a hunk’a’man that she was very pissed she had to brush him off in order to keep the Greer watch.

  Greer, she said, was already there when she arrived, wanting everyone to know he wasn’t going to be alone long. He looked at his watch and kept glancing at the door, all to no avail. Tabitha said she made her move about twenty-’til-ten, believing that Greer no longer thought his source was coming. She looked and smiled at him from the bar and then looked away. When she turned her head back, he was still looking. She walked slowly to his table and sat down.

  “I see your picture in the paper,” she began. “You write for the Post.”

  She said she expected Greer to be surprised at being recognized, but it didn’t seem to faze him. The Post is widely-enough read that people probably said that every day.

  “Gerald Greer.” He extended his hand.

  Couldn’t this guy just say hello?

  She told him her name was Lisa, and they struck up a conversation. She said at first, Greer kept looking over his shoulder, still hoping his source would arrive, but soon gave up and concentrated on her. She told him she worked in New York and was in town on business, staying at the Watergate. This impressed him, and he heaped on the compliments. At five after ten, she asked him if he’d like to escort her back to her hotel, and by ten-fifteen, the cab Greer had ordered had arrived.

  While she was busy travelling around Washington saving my ass, I cleaned up the room enough that she could get him in it without our prey getting overly suspicious. This didn’t take as long as I expected, so I sat down and read the answers to Trivial Pursuit questions, determined to win a rematch with Tabitha if one occurred. Then I sat down at the table to try and make some notes about how I was feeling, on the off chance I would survive this whole mess.

  But nothing important was written by the time I heard Tabitha giggle and let her body slam against the door, our sign for her re-entry. I almost forgot I had placed the gun on the nightstand next to the bed, and now I scrambled to palm it as I moved into the closet. I closed the mirrored door almost all the way and listened. In a moment, she quit fumbling with the card key, and let herself in, giggling like she was fall-over drunk. He was laughing too, a rather high, surprising laugh.

  Tabitha told me she would say, “Goodness me!” when she was ready for me to spring from my lair. I crouched nervously, accustomed enough to the dark to see the box of bondage equipment and the rows of costumes which hung in the gargantuan closet. She was trying to get Greer comfortable, into a somewhat compromising position before I sprang, so we would have both surprise and fear on our side. She continued with the coy, half-sexual talk, which I knew must be the tools of her trade. She poured him a drink from the mini-bar and brought it over to him.

  This was my first glimpse of the man himself. His hair and his beard were short and prickly, and he was wearing a black turtleneck, which accentuated his gut, and loafers but no socks.

  “Any idea where the intern might be?” asked Tabitha, sitting on the other side of Greer and fixing his collar.

  Greer looked at her for a second, deciding if he should say anything. Then he looked at Tabitha again and decided this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. “I’ve heard two reports. One has him up somewhere in Boston, hiding out with old college friends, and another has him somewhere in Alexandria.”

  “Which one do the police believe?”

  “The one about Virginia. I kind of agree. I don’t think he could get far. He’s Public Enemy Number One.”

  “Do you really think he did it?” Tabitha asked.

  “Yeah,” Greer said. “I do. Don’t have the foggiest idea why, unless this kid was so into the idea of the NEA that he couldn’t stand the thought of Timmons voting against it.”
r />   “That’s kind of weak, isn’t it?” Tabitha asked. I hoped she wasn’t overplaying her hand.

  “I think so too,” said Greer. “I just think he snapped. Another fruitcake.” I wanted to pistol-whip him.

  “One more question,” Tabitha said, flirting by touching Greer’s nose with her finger. “Do you think they’re close to getting this idiot?”

  “I don’t know. We’re not hearing much, which probably means they don’t have anything substantial. They need an arrest in this case, and any kind of lead at all would lead to tons of leaks.”

  She didn’t’ have anything to say to this, and in a moment she moved closer to Greer. She snuggled close, and he was loving every minute. Tabitha kissed him and they fell back on the bed. Soon she had the turtleneck off and was planting kisses all over his furry, droopy chest.

  All of a sudden, Tabitha sprang up. “Let’s have some real fun,” she said. She went to the bag laying on the counter and pulled out one pair of handcuffs. She glided over to Greer and secured his left wrist to the bedpost.

  “A wild one,” Greer sneered lamely as she secured his right as well. I thought about how few men were truly immune to the powers of a woman who looked and moved like Tabitha.

  Tabitha smiled and licked her lips. She quickly glanced over at my hiding place and put the keys on the dresser. She knocked them on the floor and then exclaimed, “Goodness me,” which by that point seemed over-theatrical.

  I emerged, and my new prisoner turned ghost white.

  Chapter

  * * *

  Twenty-Four

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  Worry lines deepened into furrows as he stared at the short, silver barrel pointed at his forehead. When I didn’t respond, he struggled to break free from the handcuffs chaining him to the bed.

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and he froze. His eyes darted around the room, and his mouth opened.

  Waving the gun, I regained his attention. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  He blanched until the color of his face matched the white hair on his head, and beads of sweat popped out on his brow.

  To be perfectly honest, he could have yelled his head off and no one would have come. Fancy hotels, with rooms the size of a bus depot, thick yellow drapes and deep pile carpet designed to suck every sound out of the air, along with the constant air conditioning hum, ensured cries of passion or lover’s quarrels went unheard.

  And since he thought I was a killer, he wasn’t going to scream. He didn’t have to know there were no bullets in the gun. After all my misadventures, I didn’t carry a loaded gun when killing wasn’t on the menu.

  I didn’t like pointing a gun at anyone, even an empty one. It didn’t make me feel strong. It didn’t give me a rush of power. It almost reinforced the futility of my position. But I wanted the illusion of power. He needed to be still and listen to me.

  Because I needed his help.

  I let him squirm for a moment, the trembling of his lips getting lost in the scruff of his beard, before I shook my head.

  He breathed long and slow, easing down from panic into fear. After checking the wrist shackled behind him by the tight-clamped cuffs, he looked at me, eyes wide, trying for sympathy, and asked, “Then, why am I here? What do you want?”

  Relief shuddered through me. The question I had been waiting for.

  “That’s simple,” I said. I set the gun on the dresser and leaned against it. My eyes bore into his. “I want to tell you my story.”

  He wasn’t going to argue. Once again, I laid everything out. I was getting pretty good by now, embellishing the shoulder injury and the fall out of Helper’s house. Greer had gained control of himself and listened with pursed lips.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, when I had barely finished.

  I hadn’t really expected him to believe it the first time he heard it; it was a lot for me to believe, and I had been there. And we knew so little of what Helper and his cronies were doing that my villain looked rather unconvincing when compared with the villain Greer had been helping to create in the public eye.

  Still, it’s never easy to hear someone say he doesn’t believe something you desperately need him to. I glanced at Tabitha to see if she had any ideas, but she shook her head and sighed. Greer had returned to his pre-handcuff smugness. This was not going well.

  “Well,” I said, “think about it. Because I feel pretty safe here, and I can wait until you get ready. And to show you what a great guy I am, I’ll give you a pretty fair deal. If you don’t scream, we won’t gag you. But if you’re bad, Tabitha will stick one of these rubber balls in your trap.”

  “Trap?” Tabitha mouthed.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t believe I had said it either.

  After my success with Tabitha, perhaps I did expect Greer to jump on the side of truth and righteousness immediately. And despite my rationalization, when I realized he wasn’t going to do so any time soon, I found my neck tensing up and my shoulder throbbing. I needed to talk to Tabitha now, so I brought her over to the couch, where we whispered to each other. Despite it being the only way to keep Greer from hearing while keeping an eye on him—even though I really didn’t think he was going anywhere—I thought it might also be good to keep him feeling like he was a step behind.

  “What do you think?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know. I was trying to watch him the whole time you were telling the story. He seems like he’s going to be pretty hard to convince.”

  “They’re going to miss me,” Greer said loudly, the whispering getting to him already.

  “What?” I asked.

  “They’re going to miss me at the paper in the morning. When I’m not there.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said, although I hadn’t covered this base yet. “We’ve already got that taken care of.” I smiled and nodded at the red rubber ball. “Your trap …” I reminded gently.

  “We need to get Helper here … to have him spill his guts,” I said, resuming my whisper.

  “And how are we going to do that? Do you have any sexual info on him?” Tabitha said in a tone I couldn’t read. I shook my head. We sat there, saying nothing, watching Greer watching us, watching Tabitha stare idly at the dresser. I was beginning to develop a blister low on my back where I had been carrying the gun.

  “The novel,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “The novel. It’s perfect!” Tabitha wasn’t getting it. “Helper’s looking for an agent for his book. I read parts of that sucker, and it’s just not gonna happen. When we were at his house, he had written “rejected” on a couple of copies of letters he had sent to agents, but most haven’t had the time to reject him yet.”

  Tabitha nodded.

  “I have the letters here from the disk. We’ll call in the morning and pretend you’re one of the agents in DC for business. You’ll act so impressed and get him to think he’s the next Updike. Then you’ll bring him over here and get him to talk while the two of us are in the closet.” If I couldn’t get him with sex, I’d get him with ego. Come to think of it, those two were very closely connected.

  She smiled admiringly. I let her. “It’ll work,” she finally said.

  “Of course it will,” I said, not feeling quite that confident. The thought of our plan going awry and ending up with another hostage was extremely unsavory. “And one more thing. Do you sleep with any doctors?”

  She glared at me. “Please don’t call it ‘sleeping with.’ Say ‘clients.’”

  “Do you have any clients who are doctors?”

  “A cardiologist and a psychiatrist.”

  “The cardiologist will be perfect. Think up a story to tell him, but have him call from the hospital or his office and tell the Post Mr. Greer is going to be out of commission for a couple of days.”

  She beamed, and we both turned to look at Greer, who was livid at being the butt of a joke. He looked away, pretending he wasn’t interested. We la
ughed, and I got up.

  “Time for bed. We’ll have another long day tomorrow.”

  Until that very moment, I hadn’t considered the logistics of keeping a hostage. We really needed to get him away from the bed, if we had any hope of getting a good night’s rest, but I didn’t want to do anything that would help him escape. Greer, despite weighing forty pounds more than me, was cooperative, partly because he probably still thought I was a killer and prone to slapping guys like him around. I wanted to collapse after only doing that and my shoulder was killing me, but we hadn’t addressed the next question.

  How do you make a hostage go to sleep? You hate to make him sleep upright, but you can’t let him have his own bed. You could tip him on his back, but his hands would get smooshed, and all the blood would run to his head. After a brief conference with Tabitha, and accepting any suggestions that Greer had to offer, we decided to back him up against a wall, which would give his neck some support.

  We also decided we would take turns sleeping—two-hour shifts—so we could watch him. About the only thing I thought he could do was bang his head against the wall, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I agreed to take the first shift, and Tabitha nodded off fairly quickly. I wondered what she was dreaming about.

  Greer glared at me but lost interest when I wouldn’t glare back and ultimately dozed off, his head resting against the wall. I watched TV with the sound down and closed-captioning on.

  I flipped through the channels until I saw fabled southern segregationist senator, Kenneth North, pontificating on the highlights on C-SPAN. I would’ve kept flipping, but I saw the word “Timmons,” so I stopped.