Capital City

by Lee Hurwitz

  P. Traum looked at his watch, then at his host, then at his watch again.

  “I think something has gone wrong, Mr. Mayor,” he said, in as unctuous a voice as he could muster. In fact, he had no doubt that something had gone terribly wrong; Vasquez was forty minutes late and, with the skies clear and no reason at all for the plane to be late, all of P. Traum’s instincts were on high alert. “Perhaps the targets were not on the plane,” he said, although he knew in his heart of hearts that they were, and that the problem was more fundamental. Vasquez was not here.

  Wendell Watson looked ostentatiously at his Rolex, and then at the two bodyguards he had taken with him. “I can’t spend any more time here,” he said. He made a hand gesture and his limo pulled up. “You finish this.” The December air was turning colder; he felt a sharp wind, hard off the Anacostia River. Taking a look at the geeky hit man; Watson suppressed a shudder. It bothered him what a fan this guy was; a killer who knew Watson’s career better than Watson himself did. And of course he had been a fool to come here; to expose himself to this lunatic. But it was the only way that he could see them, at last. It burned in his heart, what he was going to do to Hightower, and he wanted to see him, at least, at last.

  P. Traum gave a brief nod, businesslike and respectful, and watched the mayor as he entered the limo. P.’s heart was full of powerful emotions. Most important: his profound respect for Wendell Watson, for his accomplishments and for the style with which he wielded his power. Further down, there was deep sorrow. He knew Vasquez was dead; that the mission had been horribly compromised, and that his presence was now superfluous. He watched Watson’s Cadillac speed off. He would stay another half hour, he thought, and then go; but his debt to Mayor Watson would be undischarged, and he would have to do something to redeem himself.

  They managed to walk as far as Columbia, before they found a cabby who would cheerfully take them into the City for one hundred twenty-five dollars, no questions asked, even though they looked like hell on a stick. Evelyn paid with a credit card.

  They trudged their way into the condo, passed the astonished clerk—Miss Evelyn! Police been looking for you!—and into Evelyn’s unit, where she unceremoniously stripped and showered. We’re cattle! thought Hightower, watching as she padded, unconcerned about her nakedness, out of the shower and into the bedroom.

  Her heart was so full of sorrow that Yvonne didn’t even think she could pull herself from Mitch’s car and get out at her hotel. She thought she would just have to sit there until she herself died, and then perhaps be interred there, in his passenger seat, so grave, so heavy was her sense of defeat.

  “You’ll feel better tomorrow after a good night’s sleep,” he said evenly.

  Dammit, he’s cold, she thought, and the anger gave her an impetus to spring from her seat and into the frigid night air. “Goodnight, Agent Dennis,” she said, and slammed the door.

  She stalked into the giant lobby and viewed the three levels. There were restaurants everywhere.

  I need a drink, she told herself, knowing she needed four drinks; strong ones; ones that would make her sleep, without dreams or regrets.

  She decided to go to The Dead Room, on the lowest level, since the theme seemed to match her mood. On her way to the bar she passed the Thomas Jefferson ballroom; noticed the crowd milling there.

  “Miss Brown!”

  She turned and astonished herself by looking into the face of Captain Elijah Pitts. Pitts, dressed in a yellow dashiki, seemed utterly transformed from the dour presence who had made their investigation miserable just a few hours earlier. He seemed mellow, even cheerful. “Good to see you again, Captain,” she said, as coolly as she could manage.

  “How goes the investigation?” he asked, taking her hand in his. He felt warm.

  “Mostly dead ends,” she said carefully. Every cell of her body screamed for her not to trust this man.

  “Mostly?” He looked at her appraisingly,

  “All right. All dead ends.” She looked away. She wanted to seem coquettish, but tears kept welling up in her eyes.

  Pitts was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was warmer. “Are you here for the party?”

  “What party? I was here for a drink.”

  “RDE’s sponsoring a Christmas bash for City employees. The high-ranking ones, anyway. I figured you had wrangled yourself an invite.”

  “Who did you say was sponsoring?”

  “Relational Database Economies. They do a lot of computer work for the city.”

  Yvonne closed her eyes, remembered sitting in the big office with Mitch and the intense little man. “Yeah. With DC Government,” he was saying. “Or with RDE. We’re a sub on the big parking ticket processing contract.”

  “No,” she said. “I just thought I’d step in for a drink. At, ah, the Dead Zone.”

  Pitts looked surprised. “You have a thing for insurance lobbyists?” he said, and then smiled. “Why don’t you join the party?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said, flashing a brief smile. “I’m not a high-ranking DC employee.”

  “I’ve got an extra invitation,” Pitts said. “My wife can’t make it—some sort of last-minute caucus or something.” He put his hand, lightly, on her shoulder. It wasn’t sexual, exactly.

  “Food’s always good. Band’s usually tight,” he encouraged. “Lots of good-looking, unattached brothers.” She knew he meant, unattached for the night. And then she looked through the smoke, saw a glimpse of the intense little man himself—Dworkin, that was his name, Evelyn’s boss—and she had an impulse: I could make people nervous. I could cause pain. She looked at Pitts.

  “Why not?” she said

  At Evelyn’s apartment they staggered in and collapsed. Hightower, on the floor, did not wake until the next morning. When he opened his eyes Evelyn was sitting in a chair, reading a newspaper and shaking her head.

  “What’s going on?” Hightower said.

  “I’m thinking about my family,” Evelyn replied. The article she was reading was headlined: Dead Man May Have Had Drug Connection and began: The mysterious death of a suburban Maryland man may have had some relationship to a drug war now raging between the Insane Disciples, a DC gang, and alleged Jamaican interlopers. Ronald Wilkes, Jr. was discovered Thursday morning by his live-in girlfriend, Denise Boone, with a single bullet hole in his temple… Aloud, she said, “you ever think you should have listened to your daddy more?”

  “All the time. You?”

  “Yeah. He had friends.” Evelyn looked up, and Hightower saw her eyes were moist. “I should have kept up with them.”

  Hightower pulled himself up off the floor. “They’d probably be glad if you’d look them up now.”

  Abruptly, Evelyn stood. Apparently the subject was closed. “When can we see Watson?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hawkins said. His voice was hoarse and he felt confused, dazzled.

  “You don’t know?” Evelyn gave him a cool smile. “I guess we’ll have to hole up here forever.”

  Hightower thought deeply. “What day is it?” he asked.

  “Friday. Why?” Evelyn didn’t look at him.

  “No. I mean what day of the month is it? The—the date!”

  “It’s the sixteenth, Aloysius.”

  He thought hard once more. “He’ll be at the Marriott tonight,” he said. “At the annual Christmas Party.”

  “What’s that? Something for City employees?”

  “It’s for bigwigs,” Hightower said. “Department heads and so on.”

  “We’re going,” she said.

  “I will not.” Hightower exploded. “What if someone recognizes us?”

  “You said it was a party for bigwigs.” Evelyn gave him a bland look. “What bigwig would recognize you?”

  “Wendell Watson, for one.”

  “We want Watson to recognize you.” Evelyn gave him a smile, like a teacher explaining things to a slow child. “We want Watson to recognize all of us. It’ll mak
e it so much easier to swing a deal.”

  “What if Watson has us arrested? We’re wanted down south. Remember?” Hawkins wanted to be upset, but he was too confused to be really convincing.

  “Then you’ll just have to explain to the press, the courts and everyone else about the Mayor and Sharon Scott.”

  “I did that!” Hightower cried. “Not the Mayor. You were there!”

  “I was,” Evelyn said. “And so were you. And we can tell any story we like.” She picked up the phone and started to dial. “And Watson knows it. No, I doubt he’ll have us arrested.”

  She straightened the tie on the tux she had delivered to her condo for Hightower, picked up her purse and put it under her arm; gestured toward the door. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Hightower had to admit he enjoyed the looks they got in the lobby. She looks like a diplomat, or a movie star, he thought wonderingly, looking at the gorgeous bright blue gown that hugged her like a lover. He and Hawkins, dressed in identical tuxes, could be security detail.

  Evelyn slid behind the wheel. He tucked in her skirt and closed the door. Walking gingerly—he still felt like hell—he circled around the car and got in the passenger side. He heard Hawkins slide in behind him. “We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Evelyn said. “I know a short cut.”

  “How will we get in?” asked Hightower.

  Evelyn looked at him, smiled. “You may have to kill somebody,” she said.

  John Stone put on his heavy coat, scarf, and fur hat and made it out of the lobby. He trudged two blocks west to the District Building. Mayor Watson wanted to talk to him before they both went to RDE’s Christmas party.

  Watson’s desk was clear except for an inch-high pile of papers. RDE’s contract was at the top of the pile.

  “There it is, Stoney. I just signed the contract with RDE. What is this—about five or six million a year?”

  Stone knew that Watson had memorized the precise terms of the contract. “Six point two the first year,” Stone recited. “Escalator of half a million each year for five years. Total of thirty-six million.”

  “This should boost their stock price, don’t you think?”

  “I believe they’re privately held, Wendell. But yes, this could be a gold mine for RDE. Now that they have this contract in the nation’s capital, Sean O’Brien will be out selling this ticket processing system to other cities. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they made hundreds of millions. Maybe a billion.”

  “Listen, Stoney, we pushed this contract through in record time. I want to be sure RDE knows that they owe me. Big time. I want you to tell O’Brien that. Explain to him—and for God’s sake, be discreet—that we are gonna make him a rich man and RDE a rich company. Make certain he didn’t see anybody he recognized in The Fun Factory in Miami. Not Evelyn Boone and certainly not Hightower or Hawkins. Because if he saw them, he was hallucinating. And we can’t do business with anyone prone to hallucinations. Got that?”

  “But Wendell—there was that picture in the newspaper…”

  “Damn, Stoney!” Watson half rose out of his chair. “Are you hallucinating?”

  “No, no, Wendell.” Stone lifted his hands. “You’re right. There was no photo in no newspaper.”

  “If there was,” Watson sat back down, “it didn’t have any impact on anything. Nobody’s said anything.” He looked up, smiled beatifically. “So I can count on you to explain things to Mr. O’Brien?”

  Of course, Stone had already talked to O’Brien. Watson knew this. So why this rigmarole? What was Watson’s game? Stone thought it best to play along, whatever the game was. “No problem, Wendell. I’ll take care of it.” Stone stood silently for a moment. “Wendell, let me ask you something else. Do you know where Evelyn is and if she’s out of harm’s way?”

  “Listen, Stoney. You’re my Director of Public Works. It’s your job to pick up the trash, clean the streets, fix the potholes, and issue driver’s licenses. The police department investigates criminal activity. To answer part of your question, Evelyn’s fine. She’s in perfect health.” Watson was thinking of that scene in Romeo and Juliet where the Friar stands over Juliet’s apparently dead body and pronounces her “well,” meaning at one with God. “Now that I’ve told you that, I don’t want you asking any more fucking questions about her. Do you understand?”

  “Sure, Wendell. I understand.”

  “Let’s go to the Marriott. I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, and I haven’t gotten laid all week.”

  Watson put on his winter coat and gloves and summoned his two bodyguards. The four of them walked to the J.W. Marriott Hotel.

  The lobby was mobbed with party guests standing in front of the Jefferson Ballroom. As soon as Watson and Stone approached the crowd, a steady stream of women began to walk up to the Mayor to shake his hand and wish him a merry Christmas. Watson stopped to chat with the prettiest ones and gave two a peck on the cheek.

  O’Brien saw the Mayor’s entrance and barged through the crowd, telling a dozen of his company’s guests to move out of the way so that the Mayor could get through. O’Brien made sure there was enough room and led the Mayor into the ballroom

  Watson, Stone, and the police bodyguards walked into the ballroom and again were surrounded by attractive women in low-cut evening dresses. Stone downed some shrimp, roast beef, and four gin and tonics.

  Then someone else came into the room.

  After he dropped Yvonne off at the Marriott, Mitch went back to the office. Although it looked like his suspects were dead, he was not altogether satisfied that the woman with them was Evelyn—which is to say, he was not satisfied that they were the right suspects. They might have been three random victims in a violent town. He wanted to review the intelligence from the Southern Region, where the real suspects had last been seen, before he made sure.

  It was sparse, as he anticipated it would be. Unless Hightower or Hawkins had done something to warrant Federal attention on the trip back, it was unlikely that news of their activities would make its way back to the Hoover Building.

  But after an hour’s worth of reading, he found something curious—impersonation of an FBI Agent, in some godforsaken town in North Carolina. On impulse, he called the reporting Agent, who directed him to the local sheriff.

  The phone picked up on the first ring.

  “I’d like to speak to Sheriff Collins, please.”

  “This is Enzo Collins.”

  Mitch asked for details about the FBI imposter and listened with growing trepidation as the Sheriff described him. For eight years, the Bureau had been trying to track down a professional hit man who had operated with devastating effect in the Southern states. He had a chameleon-like ability to ingratiate himself into wherever he needed to be in order to take the target down. To get closer to his target, he often impersonated police officers. But what would he be doing in what boiled down to be a bar fight with a threat of gunplay? And were the three Black folks really Hawkins, Hightower, and Evelyn Boone?

  Mitch hung up and thought about his next step. Because the phony FBI agent sounded like their mystery killer, Mitch would try to find out both where things stood on the investigation of the FBI impersonator and what, if any, leads the Bureau had on the killer. Both those inquiries, of course, would have to wait until morning.

  Mitch dozed at his desk. He dreamed that he was in Molasses with Enzo Collins. In Molasses, the streets were paved with molasses. The mystery killer, face white as carved Ivory soap, was walking up the street toward Mitch and the Sheriff. The killer was wearing a gun. The phone rang.

  Helen! was Mitch’s first thought. She wants to know when I’ll be home. Then he woke up, realized that Helen no longer cared when he came home, picked up the phone. “Hello,” he croaked.

  “Mitch, thank God you’re still in the office.” It was Yvonne. “They’re here.”

  Chapter 12

  Mitch got down to the Marriott in six minutes, parked his car in the loading zone, put up the “Official Business” sign with t
he FBI logo, and sprinted into the lobby. He walked over to the table in front of the Thomas Jefferson ballroom, flashed his badge, and took out the sketch of Evelyn Boone from his inside coat pocket.

  “Yes!” The woman was obviously distressed. “They just pushed their way in…”

  “They?”

  “She’s with two men in tuxes. One of them’s got no eyebrows. It’s just impossible after nine. After nine I’m the only one here. And people just come in, whether they have invitations or not…”

  “I understand,” Mitch said absently. He saw Yvonne and slipped into the ballroom.

  “But you don’t have an invitation!” the woman wailed. Mitch put some people between him and the entrance.

  John Stone sauntered up to where O’Brien was sitting with Spagnola and a few other top RDE executives. “Good evening, gentlemen. Happy holidays. O’Brien, I see why you hitched up with these guys. They really know how to throw a nice party. Have you tried the roast beef?”

  “No, I haven’t, Stoney.”

  “I need another serving myself. Come on over to the entree table with me.”

  As soon as they were out of earshot, Stone could barely contain his anger.

  “Who the fuck is that, Sean?”

  O’Brien looked toward where Stone was pointing. He didn’t recognize anybody. “No one I know.”

  “It’s a motherfucking FBI agent. His name is Mitch Dennis. He’s one of the ones who sued Carter.”

  “Jimmy Carter? What does that have to do with us?”

  “Nothing, asshole. It’s just why I remember him. There aren’t too many brothers working with J. Edgar’s boys. The point is, he’s FBI. What’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I could go right up and ask him, if you want me to…”

  “No!” Stone turned his back on the agent and bent in a little toward O’Brien. “Listen to me and keep your voice down. I have good news for you. Watson signed the contract just now. It’s signed, sealed, and will be delivered on Monday morning. RDE can start work next week.”