Capital City

by Lee Hurwitz

  Stone waddled in ten minutes later. Mornings were not Stone’s best time, Watson observed. He had a few crumbs from breakfast stuck to his shirt collar, his eyes had a half-glaze and as he walked, Watson noticed, he labored not to breathe through his mouth. “Ever play Where’s Waldo, John?” Watson asked casually as the bureaucrat collapsed into a high-backed chair.

  “Where’s Waldo?” Stone smiled tentatively.

  “Kid’s game. It’s a kid’s game where you take a big complicated

  picture and try to identify where Waldo is in it.”

  Stone considered this for a bit. “I’ve heard of ‘Where the Hell is Carmen Geography,’” he said at length.

  Watson took the Tattler, turned over to the picture of Hawkins and Hightower, and threw it onto Stone’s lap. “Where’s Waldo, John?”

  And then Stone did something that Watson, in all of his years of experience, had never seen before. He literally broke out into a sweat, as though he had just swallowed a Jalapeno pepper. Perspiration oozed out his forehead; darkened his nice white shirt.

  “Recognize anyone, John?” Watson asked.

  Stone gave him a sickly grin. “That looks like Jimmy Ray Mallory, I think.”

  “Cut the crap, John. That sprinter in the upper right hand corner is Evelyn Boone, isn’t it? You fucked her, didn’t you?”

  Stone’s eyes widened. “No, Wendell—honest to God. I never laid a hand on her.”

  “Really? She’s a subcontractor, isn’t she? A subcontractor with big boobs? And you didn’t fuck her? You must be getting old, John.”

  Stone stood up, an impressive feat of engineering, with little wattles of fat swaying this way and that. At first Watson thought, to his astonishment, that Stone was walking out on him. But then it dawned on Watson that Stone needed to stand in order to look away from him. Must be having neck problems, Watson thought.

  “I—I had drinks with her in my office one evening, Wendell. That’s all. She seemed like a nice girl. I wanted to get to know her better.”

  “I’m sure you did.” In fact, Watson had no interest in Stone’s fascination with women’s mammary glands. He merely wanted to throw Stone off stride for the next line of inquiry. “This woman, she’s a subcontractor for RDE, isn’t she?”

  “Why, yes, Wendell, I believe she is.”

  “Now look at the picture again. Surely you see my bodyguards, Hawkins and Hightower.”

  Stone squinted at the page. “It says here that Hightower is working for Jimmy Ray Mallory.”

  “Forget that bullshit, John. That is Hawkins and Hightower, isn’t it?”

  “Yes—yes, I believe it is, Wendell.”

  “Now, who else do you see there? White boy, with a front-row seat, watching everything?”

  “I’m sure that’s not him, Wendell. “

  “Sure it’s not who?”

  “You know. Sean O’Brien.”

  “Oh? And why are you sure that it’s not Sean O’Brien, Stoney? It sure looks like the ofay motherfucker.”

  “Because, what would he be doing fifteen hundred miles away from here with Jimmy Ray Mallory?”

  “What would your doxy or my bodyguards be doing there, Stone? I heard O’Brien quit us and went to RDE, for a hundred fifty. Is that right?”

  “Yes, I think so. What’s on your mind, Wendell?”

  “You think so. Here’s what I think: RDE’s managed to get a big contract with us. But computers, they’re pretty fickle. They break down. And when they break down, the contractor’s in trouble.”

  “So?”

  “So wouldn’t it be great for them if they could have something to hold over our head? Maybe get some pussy subcontractor to shake her tail at a couple of our primitives? Maybe get them to say something indiscreet about the Mayor? And there’s Sean O’Brien, whoremaster-in-chief, overseeing the whole operation.”

  “No!” Stone’s eyes widened in shock and, Watson noted, relief as well. Apparently he thought Watson was going to blame him for the picture.

  “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to call O’Brien up, get him to a bar, buy him a drink. And then you’re going to explain that nobody fucks with the Mayor. That whatever little operation he’s pulling for those wops, it stops now. In fact, he never even saw Evelyn Boone in the same room as Hawkins and Hightower.”

  Of course, Watson didn’t believe anything he had just told Stone about RDE’s blackmail scheme or O’Brien’s part in it. He had no idea why O’Brien was a witness to the first stage of his bodyguards’ abduction of Evelyn Boone, nor did he care. All he wanted to do was shake O’Brien up a little, make sure he never talked about what he saw that night.

  “O’Brien’s got a good future.” Watson stood up. It was nearly time for his press conference. “I’d hate it if he had to spend it under a pier somewhere off the Anacostia.” Watson threw his arm around his fat subordinate’s shoulders. Stone seemed ready to cry. “Joking!” Watson said, cheerily.

  Damn! P. Traum muttered under his breath when he heard that they had found the car, keys in the ignition and license pried off, on a side street in Warrenton, and then he said, one hundred times quickly, swearing shows a poverty of imagination. He continued driving north while he made this recitation, acknowledging, as he had before, that he had allowed himself to become linguistically lazy. Done with his penance, he briefly mourned his search’s failure. Surely the security guards, having gotten wise to the attention they had drawn, would easily evade the indifferent efforts of the Georgia State Police, who would not, P. judged, extend themselves on behalf of a dead hotel clerk.

  Still, P. knew, it was a mistake to draw conclusions too quickly. There was nothing wrong with continuing north for a few more hours, police radio on and open.

  When he pulled into the town of Little River, South Carolina, Hightower knew that he had a disgruntled crew on his hands. Hawkins wanted to know why Hi wouldn’t contact the mayor. Evelyn just wanted a better hotel room.

  “If you’ve got enough money for Dom Perignon and Georgio Armani, don’t be putting us in some cheap-ass hotel.”

  He compromised and booked two rooms in a Ramada. When they had eaten and changed, Hawkins proposed that they spend the rest of the night in a nearby casino boat.

  “Forget about it,” Hightower said. “We’re under the radar here. The last thing we need is some cop spotting you at the roulette wheel.”

  “Let him go on, Aloysius,” Evelyn said in a low voice. He looked back; she was smiling at him.

  He figured he had thrown them off the track by ditching the Caddy and dropping the aliases. They were registered in this hotel as Hawkins and Hightower, and who would be looking for them? The odds against anyone spotting Hawk were pretty long.

  And he was already thinking of what they could do while Hawk was gone.

  “Here’s five hundred bucks,” Hi said, peeling off ten $50 bills and handing them to his partner. “I want you back here by eleven.”

  As soon as Hawk was gone Hightower and Evelyn fell on each other, famished, as though they hadn’t been together in years. Within minutes they were separated only by their skins, and then, by not even that. When he was inside Evelyn, Hightower felt an enormous protectiveness well up. You will be safe if it costs me my life.

  By eleven o’clock Evelyn was asleep and Hightower was sitting in a chair watching her, waiting for Hawkins to come home. He had told Hawk that they would still stand guard over her because he did not trust her commitment to the deal, but in truth it was his worries about Watson that kept him up all night, hand near his gun. Why would he send somebody for us? He felt, from long experience, the scheming behind Watson’s reassurance. The Mayor was capable of anything; if he was willing to have Hightower kill Evelyn, he knew, he would be willing to have someone else kill Hightower.

  But if the Mayor truly meant to do him harm, why should they go back to Washington at all? Hightower entertained the thought of the three of them, frolicking in Jamaica on the remains of Watson’s mon
ey. And as he did he noticed his eyes start to close…

  Hawkins staggered in drunk at twelve-thirty. “Holy shit, what a night!” he said, smiling and belching. “I’m sure glad we decided to roll the dice!”

  “Shut up, Hawkins. You’ll wake her up.”

  Evelyn was awake. “That you, Hawk? What happened?”

  “Ten thousand dollars is what happened!” Hawkins, with considerable effort, managed to extract his wallet from his pants so that he could show the other two what ten thousand dollars looked like. “I won ten thousand dollars at the lucky slots! Wanna hear how I did it?”

  “No. Just so you didn’t make no motherfucking commotion.”

  “Commotion?” Hawkins’ eyes widened. “First, this huge siren goes off. I thought I was busted! Next, the manager comes over and punches something in the machine and a big bell goes off! Next, he leads everybody in a round of ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow!’”

  Hightower put his face in his hands. “Fuck me,” he muttered.

  “And then some reporter interviews me and snaps my picture!”

  “Say what?”

  “Hey, Hi, don’t get your panties in an uproar. It’s cool. I gave him my alias.”

  “Your what?”

  “My undercover name. You know, Ted Wilson.”

  Hightower grabbed him by the shirt collar. “What was—what was the reporter’s name?”

  Hawkins looked confused. “Craig something. Craig—Stummer…no…uh… Stammer! I think. Don’t look at me like that! I think that was the guy’s name!”

  Hightower let go of Hawkins, stepped back for a minute. If the Mayor was really sending someone after them, Hawkins would be of no help. He took the gun out of his pocket and handed it, butt-up, to Evelyn. “If he gets really annoying,” gesturing to Hawkins, “shoot him.”

  It took Hightower half an hour to find Greg Stambler, which was enough time for him to improvise another story. This one he played out from a Jack Nicholson movie.

  “My name’s Vince Tourotte, DC Police.” Hightower flashed his badge long enough for Stambler to recognize it, but not so long that he could take identifying information from it. “I understood you took a picture of Ted Wilson after he won ten thousand bucks at one of the slots tonight. Have you decided to run it yet?”

  “No, that’s up to my night editor.” Stambler was about forty, forty-five, with blond curly hair starting to turn gray.

  “Okay, here’s my problem.” Hightower sighed, and slumped against a wall. “Ted’s wanted in DC for knocking over a liquor store. We found him in Florida and I’m bringing him back. Ted’s a three-time loser. By the time he gets out of Lorton he will be an old, old man. But believe it or not, he’s not a bad guy. Just a goofball. Wouldn’t hurt anybody, really—I’ve never heard him say a bad word about anybody. And so this one night—the last night before he spends the next thirty-five years’ worth of nights in the pen—I told him he could live it up. Go to the boat, buy some drinks, play the slots a little…”

  “Well, he did all that,” Stambler said, and smiled

  Hightower moved in for the sell. “The thing is, if this gets out, and someone sees it, I’m screwed. Fired, no pension, never get another police job in my life. And here’s the worst thing, they’ll take back the money Teddy won. He was going to use it to take care of his kid.”

  Hightower had five thousand dollars in his pocket, but he didn’t want to use it unless he had to. If Stambler was an honest guy, the bribe offer would offend him and make it less likely that he’d go along.

  Stambler thought for a minute. “Nah,” he said at length. “Can’t help you, Officer Tourette. Once I do the story, I’m out of the food chain. You wanna talk to my night editor that’s okay with me.”

  Hightower stepped toward the reporter, allowed his jacket to fall open, and took the wad of hundred dollar bills out of the inside pocket. He riffed them slowly, allowing Stambler to see them. “I understand this is an inconvenience to you,” he whispered, grinning widely. “But it’s my whole career. So I’m prepared to make allowances.”

  Stambler’s eyes widened. “Okay,” he said, barely audible.

  Hightower pressed the money into his hand. “I’ll need the negative,” he explained.

  Stambler slipped the money into his front pants pocket. Jesus, who made 5K for a single shot! He would have to find a men’s room in order to transfer this wad of cash into his wallet. “They’re downstairs in the file room,” he said. All the negatives were put in the file room after they were printed.

  “Can I go with you to get it?” Hightower asked.

  “Yeah,” Stambler said. “We better hurry, though. The night editor’ll be here any minute.”

  But Stambler was wrong; the night editor was already there, and had been for a half hour. He was sitting across the room from Stambler and Hightower with the print in his hand. He had heard everything.

  Watson put his face in his hands. The press conference had gone even worse than he had expected.

  He was ready for a half hour of nonsense on the picture. Instead, every single reporter wanted to ask about that picture...every reporter except that prick for the Moonie paper, who had connected the picture with the earlier story about Hawkins being detained at the Marriot.

  “Is that woman Officer Hawkins is chasing the same woman he was harassing at the Marriot?” Harvey Middleton asked.

  “I don’t know that that man is Officer Hawkins,” Watson said, hoping he sounded patient, “I don’t know that he is chasing that woman, and I don’t know who that woman is.”

  “Is Officer Hawkins on leave?” Middleton persisted.

  “I don’t know,” Watson said. “Honestly, Mr. Middleton, you are the first person to tell me that you believe that the person in the picture is Officer Hawkins, so I haven’t had cause to check his leave records.”

  “But he’s not among your personal guards at the moment, is he?”

  Watson could have ignored him, since that was a second follow-up question, but it was important to respond. “Not everyone assigned to me personally is with me every hour of every day,” he said. He grabbed the podium to help control his anger.

  “Does it seem to you from this picture that Officer Hawkins has a problem with women?”

  No, this wouldn’t do, this wouldn’t do at all. Something had to be done about Harvey Middleton, who had confused his job as a reporter for a marginal newspaper with an appointment as US Attorney.

  Fortunately, he knew just what to do. Bob Brindle was the much-loved owner of the Washington Bullets, a multi-millionaire who had made his dough in real estate and had given a great deal of it back to his community. More importantly, the Bullets had won the NBA title in the late seventies.

  But there was a story about Brindle, a bad one. He married young, and it didn’t work out. Although Bob and Amanda Brindle had seemed like a happy couple, they divorced suddenly in the mid-sixties, and Amanda disappeared from view. The story was that he used to beat her—a story which gained currency when he refused to discuss their marriage and when she refused to meet with the press at all.

  Well, it was all nonsense. The real story was that Amanda was a depressive for whom Bob’s public presence was a round-the-clock nightmare. They had tried electro-shock therapy, to no effect, and at one point she jumped from a second-floor balcony, breaking her nose, and setting tongues wagging. When they divorced, it was more to protect her sanity than because of any displeasure on Bob’s part, and she sank into the obscurity she so desperately craved.

  How did Watson know this? Well, of course, he had access to the City archives. The Metropolitan Police, then under Federal control, had done a pretty good job of investigating the rumors, probably at Bob’s instigation, Watson concluded. He confirmed it the way he often confirmed things. In bed. With Amanda.

  It was during the period between Rachel and Reina, when the principal thing that Wendell Watson wanted to confirm was his own virility, both to himself and to the community at larg
e. And it was a large community. Watson bedded dozens of women during his personal comeback campaign, and why wouldn’t Amanda Brindle be one of them?

  He wasn’t all sexual acrobatics. Wendell Watson succeeded with women for the same reason he succeeded with the electorate...because he listened to them, and took them seriously. He wasn’t attracted to Amanda Brindle, but he was attracted to the idea of Amanda Brindle: this white woman, driven nearly mad with fear and despair as the wife of one of the sweetest and most beloved men in Washington, made docile and satisfied in the arms of Wendell Watson.

  And she was made satisfied and docile in his arms—oh, yes indeedy. And in the small hours of the morning, he learned of Amanda’s greatest shame and sorrow: that she had allowed people to think that Bob Brindle, “the most decent man I ever met,” could be a wife-beater.

  Well, Wendell Watson would take care of that, once and for all. He had allies in the Metropolitan Police Force (they begged to be corrupted, and it thrilled Watson) who could manufacture an authentic-looking police report that would say—well, that would say whatever Watson wanted it to say. And he could manufacture a phony whistleblower (what was the opposite of a whistleblower, he wondered. A whistle swallower?) who would convey that report to Middleton. There would have to be a tell, something which proved its lack of authenticity, that Middleton, in his eagerness to break a story, would miss. (They have no decent fact checking at the Times, Watson was sure.) And then the coup de grace. Amanda, in the throes of her guilt, would file an affidavit that the beating never took place, and Brindle would sue the Times for millions. Middleton, Watson was sure, would end up writing obituaries, or become a theater reviewer.

  He thought for a minute, and then made a phone call.