"This dog," I said to a policewoman who seemed to be working some form of crowd control, though the Georgetown crowd would prove more than tame. "He's mine, and he's injured, and he desperately needs some veterinary help. Do you have someone who could rush him to the Friendship Animal Hospital?"
She said, "Well, I'm supposed to call animal control to transport a dog. Technically, we're not allowed to."
She looked concerned, and by her words and tone, I knew I had her.
Baker licked my face. I said, "Look, ma'am, this dog desperately needs help. I'd drive him myself, but the insides of my car are scattered all over the street. Please. I'm begging. Please take him."
"Follow me," she said. She led me to a station wagon, opened the back, and I gently slid Baker inside. He kept looking at me, frightened and in pain. I borrowed the woman's cellular telephone, punched out the number for Kristen's house, and told her, in about twenty seconds, of my situation. About two minutes later, she was standing in front of me, out of breath. She slid into the back of the car beside Baker and, lights blazing, they were off.
As I turned back toward Havlicek, a pair of EMT'S were pushing his stretcher into the back of an ambulance, about to close the doors. I raced over and said, "I'm with him," and began climbing into the back cabin. One of them gave me a look like he was about to stop me, then didn't bother, which I didn't take as a particularly hopeful sign. The doors shut behind me. Inside, two EMT'S worked furiously on Havlicek's head and occasionally pounded his chest.
Within about four minutes, the ambulance slowed to a halt, the doors flung open, and I leaped out of the way. Havlicek was transferred onto a new stretcher and wheeled into the emergency room of Georgetown Hospital. As I tried to follow, a nurse blocked my path and said,
"You'll wait out here." By now, I was too dazed to argue. I slumped down in a chair in a hallway, in a situation that was too hauntingly familiar, and tried to piece together the violent puzzle that had been the last hour, and probably Havlicek's final hour.
Before I could put a single fragment of the day in its place, a doctor appeared in front of me. This time it was a man, not a woman. This time he stayed in the hallway, rather than lead me into a conference room. This time, I knew the message before the words came out.
"Your friend, Mr. Havlicek," the doctor said in a tone that seemed aloof, even clinical. "I'm afraid I must inform you that he's dead."
I'd like to report back that I was handling this spate of violence with Bond-like cool, that Havlicek's death only made me angry, and when I get angry, I get even. But save that for the movies. Sitting on that lime-green chair in the hallway of the Georgetown Hospital emergency room, it felt like my entire world had just packed up and abandoned me.
I was, admittedly, frightened. Someone had just tried to blow me up along with Havlicek, or more likely it was just me they were after, and Havlicek was the unwitting victim. Let's put aside questions over who and why for a moment to look at the results.
Havlicek's death had left me without my crucial partner on the biggest story of my life. His death would also mean that I was about to become part of the story yet again, rather than a reporter covering it, just like the week before when I was hit in the assassination attempt.
More importantly, it also left Margaret Havlicek without the husband she adored, something I can relate to. And it left their two children without a father to see them through college. This was a sadness that transcended every other, which is why I finally lifted myself up off that chair, walked slowly, heavily, to a pay telephone around the corner, and dialed the Havlicek household in Braintree, Massachusetts.
It should probably be up to some Record official to inform the widow of her husband's death. Problem was, this being two on a Sunday morning, even a newspaper can take a while to mobilize. That very moment, I strongly suspected that a CNN camera crew was standing in front of my house, some blow-dried reporter telling an anchor in Atlanta named Ashley, "All around me are the glass remnants that just a few hours ago were Boston Record reporter Jack Flynn's automobile."
Fuck the reporter, and fuck CNN. Now I know how it feels.
"Hello."
It was the unfailingly pleasant, though sleepy, voice of a middle-aged woman, namely Margaret Havlicek, picking up the telephone. She sounded calm, not panicked, meaning she didn't know yet.
"Margaret," I said. "Jack Flynn here." I spoke in the calmest, most soothing tone I could muster. "Margaret, I have some bad news. It hurts me terribly to have to tell you this. Your husband died about twenty minutes ago. We were about to drive to an interview tonight in my car, and he was alone in the front seat while I ran back into the house to get a tape recorder I had forgotten, and it exploded. It appears that someone planted a bomb."
There was silence on the other end as she processed what I had just told her. Then I heard her soft voice say to no one in particular,
"No, I just talked to him a couple of hours ago. I just heard his voice. This can't be right. He just told me he loved me." She had become almost too choked up to talk. "Oh, my God," she said, then came the sounds of sobbing, followed by "Oh, my God. Oh, my God," again and again and again.
"How?" she asked, her voice soaked in a cascade of tears. "Who? Why?
Why would someone do this?" Her sobbing descended into crying before I could hear her try to collect herself. I felt like a voyeur on my end, the unintended survivor breaking the bad news to the next of kin.
"I was with him at the end," I said. "He was alive after the explosion, then I felt him die in my arms. The EMT'S seemed to revive him, but then the doctor declared him dead in the emergency room of Georgetown Hospital."
I paused and listened to her sobs, pictured her sitting on the edge of her bed, surrounded by family mementos, knicknacks, every photograph, every vase, representing some day in their long marriage. Suddenly that house would seem so empty, the future overwhelmed by the past.
"Margaret," I said, "I work with words every day, but I could never find the right ones to tell you just how sorry I am right now." I paused and said, "And I mean this, Steve said just two hours ago how much he loved his life with you, how he wouldn't trade it for all the money in the world. He talked about you and the kids all the time."
"Thank you, Jack," she said through her tears. "Steve really enjoyed working with you."
There was a moment of silence until she asked, "Who, Jack? Who did this to Steve?"
"I don't know yet, but you can be sure we're going to find that out."
I could still hear her sobbing. She said, "I'm going to go now. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I think I should go. Thank you, Jack." And with that, she hung up the telephone to face a life alone that she never wanted or expected.
After that, the call to Peter Martin was relatively easy. He was upset to the point of being choked up, and not just over having the story delayed yet again. And as with so many other times in life, he was able to cut to the chase in a way that even the Washington police didn't seem capable, saying to me, "This means you're in grave danger.
I want you out of your house," he said. He didn't know yet that I really had no choice, not to mention doors and windows. "Check in at a hotel somewhere, then call me. I'm going to hire some security guys to watch you, whether you want the protection or not. Be in touch within a couple of hours, or you're fired."
I ambled outside into the cold, coatless, with a bandage over my right eye, dried blood on one of my arms, my hair mussed to the point of wildness. I was not a pretty picture. I flagged a taxi, and as I settled into the backseat, the driver, a man with a turban, turned around and gave me a nervous once-over. I couldn't even smile back.
"Friendship Animal Hospital," I said. He thought I was crazy, I'm sure. But he took me there nonetheless, to be with the animals.
When Kristen saw me, she rubbed her palms across her face and followed me with her enormous eyes, just kind of looking at me in mute amazement. When I sat beside her, she said, "The doctor wants to
put Baker to sleep. I told her she couldn't do anything until you got here."
I was running low on emotional strength, not to mention physical strength. This news made me feel like I had been kicked in the chest by a mule.
Some sort of veterinary assistant, a kid with a pair of studs in his right ear, led me down the hallway into a visiting room. He opened the door, and I saw Baker sprawled out on top of a stainless steel examination table, tied down. Baker saw me as well. Without lifting his head, his tail whacked the table several times. I leaned over and kissed his muzzle, then gently stroked his soft ears. The kid said,
"The doctor will be right with you."
When the door shut behind him, I pulled up a stool and sat. My head was close to Baker's, and I whispered to him, "You are the best boy in the world. You really are." His tail thumped the table again, his head stayed flat. He followed me with his brown eyes. I kissed him again, and he ran his coarse tongue slowly over my soiled face, relieved, I suspect, that he had done nothing wrong to cause all this, that his pain was not some punishment. Dogs think like that, best as I know.
"You are my very best friend," I whispered into his ear. It was the truth, almost from the minute I met him. I got Baker a little under three years ago. At the time, Katherine and I had just moved into our new house in Georgetown and decked it out for the holidays. We dragged in a Christmas tree that soared ten feet. I arrived home from work on Christmas Eve to our plans for a quiet dinner alone. She was sitting in the living room, sipping a glass of red wine, wearing a red satin dress, festive, just for me.
"I'm going to give you your gift tonight," she said. "I'm going to give it to you now."
She pulled a large hatbox out from under the coffee table. I sat on the couch beside her and undid the ribbon. There was no wrapping paper. When I lifted the top, all I saw was a ball of fuzzy blond fur.
I looked back at Katherine, confused. She beamed and put her face close to mine. "Pick him up," she said.
"Oh my God," I remember exclaiming. I looked at this frightened puppy, scooped him up in one hand, and held him tight to my face. His fur mopped up a tear that Katherine never saw.
"This is like going to the driving range," she said, imitating my long-held argument for getting a dog. "Same basic swing, plenty of room for error." Baker would be our predecessor to children, our chance to step tentatively into a life of responsibility. Three years later, he is the only living, breathing remnant of our marriage, aside from me, of course. If this veterinarian thought she was about to put him to sleep, she had no idea how wrong she was.
"Mr. Flynn, hi, I'm Dr. Gabby Parins. Sorry to meet you under these conditions."
Coming through the door, she looked up from her clipboard at me for the first time, a pretty young woman with glasses and blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. "Oh, my. It appears you've been through some trauma as well."
I explained the situation, the explosion, the falling chandelier, the broken glass. She told me of the extensive injury to Baker's hips, the fractures in both his hind legs. He might never walk again, she said, and he would certainly never be able to run the same way. She could perform surgery, but it might fail, and he could easily die on the operating table, at considerable expense. Her recommendation, given the costs, the pain, the lifetime of a debilitating condition, was to put him to sleep.
"That doesn't seem very humane," I said. "Not to him, not to me."
"On the contrary, Mr. Flynn, given the extent of the injuries here, the multiple abrasions to his skin, the overwhelming possibility of infection, the likely loss of the use of his legs, I think it's the most humane thing you could do right now."
I looked down at the dog, at his profile, pleading with me to make things better, to take him home. I thought of that first night I had him, this vanilla fluffball walking on city sidewalks for the first time, people padding their way in the snowy dusk squealing as they saw him. I thought of the way he moped around the house when I came home from the hospital that awful October day without Katherine, how he sniffed at her side of the bed, waited constantly by the door. I was not about to give him up now, to say goodbye to him and all he represented.
"Doctor," I said, my voice so thick that it surprised me. "Please, perform the surgery. Perform it well. Let's take it one step at a time and decide where we should go from there."
She stood near me in a white coat, with a clipboard in her hand, looking from the dog to its owner. She nodded and said, sweetly,
"Okay. I'll do that. I'll do that this morning. We'll both keep an open mind."
While I still stood there, she shot him with a sedative. I rubbed his head until he fell sound asleep. I went out and told Kristen that Baker was going to have surgery. She shed some tears of relief and said, "I knew that's what you'd do." She asked if she could wait with the dog.
I dug into my pocket to see if I had enough money for a cab. When I did, my hand came across a crumpled piece of paper. I pulled it out, and the memory of Havlicek telling me to reach into his coat suddenly pulsed through my mind. Nerves caused me to fumble a bit as I unfolded it, then read the handwritten line: "Paul Stemple, 898 C St." SE, Washington, DC. Apt. 2."
nineteen
It would be impossible to realize how fully my world had just changed.
Forget the obvious stuff-that my most esteemed colleague was no longer here to help me, that I would miss him to my core, that I and my newspaper were about to be showered with too much attention at a time when we wanted it least. I had to come to terms with the fact that danger now lurked beyond every corner and in every shadow. I probably should have realized that last week, when someone took a shot at me at the Newseum, but since I hadn't been hurt, I had refused to accept any sort of changed reality. If I had, maybe Havlicek would still be alive.
Marbled into all that danger were answers to the most significant questions that I may ever ask. It seemed evident right then that I had to confront the danger to obtain the information that Havlicek would so badly want me to get. I essentially had two days to the election, two days to answer these questions before Hutchins won his own four-year term.
These were the thoughts racing through my brain as I stood frozen in that antiseptic waiting room, more tired than I've ever been in my life but even more determined to make amends. I asked the veterinary assistant if there were any other exits I might use, like some sort of side or cellar door. He looked at me strangely, but then led me down a rickety set of basement stairs toward a steel door that opened into a small backyard.
Outside, I hopped over the fence into another yard, then another fence to another yard. I don't know where I found the strength and stamina to do it, and I didn't dare start asking myself any needless questions.
Eventually, done with my little Bruce Jenner act, I emerged onto a side street in the Burleith section of Washington. I ran behind some hedges and arrived on Wisconsin Avenue. It was after 3:00 A.m." and through the luck of the skilled, I flagged a passing cab and was safely-I think-on my way.
"Capitol Hill, please," I said. I saw the taxi driver eyeing me suspiciously in his rearview mirror, taking in the bandage on my head, the dried blood, the mussed and matted hair. He fumbled around beneath his seat, I assumed to make sure he was carrying his gun.
As he eyed me warily in the mirror and I looked back at him, I said, "I just fell off a turnip truck." He nodded and reached back under his seat, just to be double sure.
On the hill, I asked him to take a drive past 898 C Street, Southeast.
It was a two-story brownstone town house in an advanced state of disrepair, on a block of buildings that the current economic boom had apparently overlooked. The bushes in the patch of dirt that passed for the front yard were overgrown. Old candy wrappers, cigarette butts, and beer cans were strewn about. A banister hung precariously off the front stairs, ready, it seemed, to blow down in the first strong gust of wind. All the windows were dark.
"I'll get out at the corner," I told the driver. He appeared r
elieved, and I can't say I blamed him.
Outside, the air was colder than I had expected, and I remembered that I had left my coat in Georgetown, having covered Havlicek with it. I walked briskly back down the street toward the house, unsure of exactly what I was about to do, but positive that I had to do it. The way I saw it, by morning I would be ordered off the story by the paper's editors for safety reasons, and if I wasn't, then whoever was attempting to abbreviate my life would have learned my whereabouts and would be trying anew.
In front of the house, I took a deep breath and climbed the four stairs to the front door. I knocked softly on the glass window on the decrepit door, which was covered by a shabby curtain, and waited. I didn't hear a sound from within.
I stepped back and looked at the upstairs windows to see if any lights clicked on, but none did. I rang the doorbell, heard a loud buzz inside, and pressed my ear against the window. Still nothing. I looked at the upstairs windows. Nothing again.
I wasn't sure quite what to do. I wished Havlicek was here to jimmy the lock with a knife or a credit card or whatever it was he'd use.
The only thing I knew how to break into was a sweat, and I was starting to do that just then, despite the chill air.
For the hell of it, I fingered the doorknob, and to my unbridled amazement, it turned, the door readily creaking open into an entryway that led to a larger room. I stepped inside, keeping the door open behind me. I could either announce my presence and hope for the best, or sneak inside and look for the worst.
"Anyone home?" I yelled. All right, so it's not original, but it gets the job done.
No response, no stirring, no nothing. So I groped around for a light switch, eventually found one, and flicked it on. A bare bulb illuminated overhead, revealing peeling wallpaper covering ravaged walls that rose from a filthy linoleum floor. The only other item in the tiny space was a toilet plunger. Don't ask me why, but I grabbed it.
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