Capital City

by Lee Hurwitz

  Without another word to Morrison, he turned and walked out of the building as fast as he could, dragging the suitcase behind him. The nearest pay phone was broken, but he found an operating one in front of a delicatessen three blocks north. His RDE phone credit card no longer worked, however, and he was obliged to buy five dollars worth of lox in order to get the change he needed to call Washington.

  “The Mayor’s office.”

  “Loretta, this is Sean O’Brien. Is he in?”

  “The Mayor’s in a meeting, Mr. O’Brien. I don’t know how long he’ll be.”

  “Call him out of it. This is important.”

  O’Brien felt the temperature over the line drop five degrees. “The Mayor left instructions not to be disturbed, Mr. O’Brien.”

  O’Brien punched the side of the phone box in frustration. “I need to see him. When can he see me?”

  “Let me look.” O’Brien heard a rustling of pages, as though Loretta was looking through a calendar book. “He seems pretty heavily scheduled,” she said slowly. This was bullshit; O’Brien knew that Watson never scheduled any work in the last half of December, and neither did anybody else in City Government. “Maybe something toward the third week in January. I think you’d better call toward the middle of next week…”

  O’Brien slammed the phone down. He could almost feel the steam coming out of his head. Okay, he thought, Watson fucked me, I’ll fuck Watson. What was it that set Watson off? Evelyn Boone in The Fun Factory with his moron security force? Fine. Fine. I’ll tell the Washington Post. I’ll tell the Washington fucking Times. But first, I’m going to call—who was that FBI agent Stone was so squirrelly about?

  He shoved some of his remaining coins into the phone. When the receptionist answered he said, “Get agent Mitch Dennis on the line. Tell him it’s the man who has what he wants.”

  Chapter 14

  Mitch stepped into the Occidental and immediately felt himself catapulted forty years back. It’s black-and-white in here, he thought, looking at the hundreds of photographs of long-forgotten politicos festooning the pristine walls and setting off the immaculate tables…and then he corrected himself, for there was not a single Black face among all the Committee Vice-Chairmen and Executive Undersecretaries. Look: here was the Associate Supreme Court Justice whose whole life was remarkable only for the manner—and the position—in which he left it. Or: here was the Chairman of the War Production Subcommittee, who produced three small wars in the late eighteen hundreds. Or: here was Evelyn Boone, licorice wrapped in chiffon, looking at him. Ralph Ellison’s line in Invisible Man came to mind about the single drop of inky black which, when mixed with a can of white paint, turned it luminously bright. Evelyn was luminous. “Sit down, Mr. Dennis,” she said. He did.

  “I apologize for being so short with you,” she said, looking at him full in the face, frankly. “I’ve had a very hard time dealing with Vonnie and the prospect of talking about it with you on the phone…well, I didn’t really trust myself.”

  Mitch noticed her large eyes, her muscular shoulders, the relaxed, easy, alert way she sat in her chair. She had the look of a woman who trusted herself a great deal. “Vonnie,” he said.

  “Yvonne Brown. I gather she’s the one who sicced you on me.”

  “My understanding is that you were abducted by two members of this city’s police force,” Mitch said, not answering. “They flew in to Miami, tracked you down to the The Fun Factory, chased you out of the restaurant, followed your car, eventually sideswiping you and pulling you out of the car.” He paused. “Is my understanding correct?”

  As soon as Mitch said “abducted” Evelyn smiled and picked up a menu. She opened it and started to read, shaking her head once or twice. “You ready to order?” she asked when he was done.

  “I’m just having coffee,” Mitch said. He was sure it was all he could afford.

  Evelyn summoned the waiter and ordered a lobster salad and cucumber soup. When the waiter left she took a breath and seemed to steady herself. She glanced at Mitch, and then looked away. She’s nervous, he thought, surprised.

  “I suppose we’ve all done things we haven’t been proud of when we were young,” she began. She glanced momentarily at Mitch, and then away again. “Maybe not. My home life was kind of screwed up. As you probably know, my father was a—a career criminal.” Mitch hadn’t known, and he felt a mild pang of self-annoyance for not having done a basic background check. “I was kind of a tomboy and I wasn’t, so to speak, well socialized..I had trouble with boys. And when I got to college I thought I might be…you know.”

  “You thought you might be gay,” Mitch guessed.

  Evelyn slumped, nodded. “I met Vonnie in one of my classes. And she was so head over heels—so—God, I can’t even say it. Anyway, I was flattered, and I thought, maybe, maybe I was. I mean, she was. And so I—so we—” She lapsed into silence, and the waiter brought their orders.

  “How long were you together?” Mitch asked after the waiter left and while Evelyn was deep into the soup.

  “About three years,” she replied. “And through it all I knew there was something wrong, something missing, and I never wanted to say it. I mean, Vonnie was ecstatic. It was the best thing that ever happened to her. And I loved her, in my way. But it was just—” she looked at him. “I missed dick.”

  “I see,” Mitch said, startled.

  “Vonnie was crushed, but eventually she saw things my way. She was even grateful. Breaking up with me was why she went to Hollywood, which is really where she belonged.”

  “She was in Miami.”

  “Her TV show moved there so she followed.” Evelyn finished the soup and was now into the salad. “What happened last month was all about a man. Big surprise, huh? I had been seeing this guy for two years; it was really serious; I loved him; he was a good man; generous; sweet. He just couldn’t keep it in his pants. Do you know what I mean?” She looked up. “Of course you do. You’re a guy. Anyway, I caught him doing the horizontal bop with some ho from the projects. And that pissed me off. Here he could have all the good loving he could possibly handle from me and he has to fuck a two-dolla ho, can’t even speak English right. Sorry.” She looked up at Mitch again and then did not look away. “Anyway, I decided I had to get away from him and get out of town. And the only person I could think to go to was Vonnie. Because I needed to be with somebody who knew me and nobody knows you better than your ex.” She looked down at her plate, smiled. “Anyway,” she said, “I thought Vonnie and I were past…our past. Boy, did I get a wrong number. When I looked her up she insisted I stay with her. And when I told her about my bad boy, she told me I should rip up his picture and destroy everything I ever got from him. Ha! Like my Cadillac? That first night?” She gave the table a slow-motion slap and sat back. “I wake up, and she’s in bed with me—naked.”

  “What did you say?”

  “What did I say? I said get your sorry ass out of my bed! And then it was oh, boo, hoo, you know I was the only one who was any good for you, and I had to put up with this shit until I threatened to move into a hotel.

  “Well, to make matters more complicated the next day who shows up on her doorstep, but my bad boy. And he wants me back in the worst way. He’s so sorry and he’s done roaming. And please won’t I come back. And on the other side of it, there was Vonnie, boo-hoo-hooing about how I should never go back to him and how I should stay in Miami with her, which I definitely no way was doing. And I remember all the good times I had with him, and all the good times I could have with him, and so I said…” She shrugged her shoulders. “Vonnie was not happy.”

  “Your bad boy,” Mitch said slowly. “Was that Officer Aloysius Hightower?”

  Evelyn looked puzzled. “Aloysius who? You think I would date a cop?” She smiled. “My guy’s name is Aaron Moore. He’s an architect.”

  “Tell me about this.” Mitch unfolded his copy of the National Tattler to the picture of Evelyn being chased by Hightower.

  Her compos
ure broke, but only for a second. “I went out to dinner with Vonnie the third night I was there,” she said. “Big mistake. By the time we got to the second course she was telling me that we were meant to be together. People were looking. So I decided to book.”

  “You look a little disheveled,” Mitch observed, pointing to the picture.

  Evelyn smiled slyly. “I was maybe a little under the influence.”

  “Cocaine?”

  “No, thanks.” The smile turned into a snicker. “I never indulge.”

  Mitch didn’t laugh. Drugs were tearing the community apart. He knew guys who had lost kids to crack. “Who is this man?” he asked, pointing to Hightower.

  “I don’t know,” she said, squinting over the paper. “I guess he was Jimmy Ray Mallory’s bodyguard.”

  “He wasn’t Officer Hightower.”

  “Honestly, Mr. Dennis, I don’t know who this Officer Hightower is. Certainly nobody I ever met.”

  “And he wasn’t your boyfriend.”

  “Aaron? No, Aaron came later.” Something clicked in Mitch’s mind, but he decided to save it. But he couldn’t resist one last line of questions.

  “When you left DC, you didn’t tell your boyfriend where you were going, did you?”

  “No, of course not. Why?”

  “Well, I wonder how he figured out that you were with Yvonne.”

  A stricken look passed over Evelyn’s face, as if she was realizing for the first time what a fool she was to meet with an FBI agent all by herself. Abruptly, she sat up. “Mr. Dennis, I’m terribly sorry, but I have another appointment. If you have any more questions, please give my lawyer a call.” She reached into her handbag, drew out a business card, and dropped it in front of Mitch.

  “No idea how your boyfriend figured out you were in Miami?” Mitch said mildly. “He must have been psychic to guess that you would head out to visit a woman you had an affair with in college.”

  Evelyn stood up. “Really, I’m sure he’ll be happy to arrange another interview if you feel it is necessary.” She gestured to the card; she wanted him to read it. “I have to go now,” she said, throwing down a twenty and running out of the room.

  When she was gone Mitch did read the card. Well, okay, Brendan Sullivan. But he supposed that anybody could just walk into Sullivan’s office and take a couple of cards, and probably a lot of people had done that ever since he got Oliver North off.

  Watson didn’t dare go to the press conference with Corbin; this was C.C.’s show, and if he went to the press conference it would all be about him, and not the Young Prince. Instead, he had a telephone line opened between his office and the press room and had the press room speakerphone turned on. It was just like having your own listening device.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, I entered public service because I wanted to fix injustice, just as my father did and just as I imagine many of you entered journalism.” It was a nice opening, and it quieted the room a little. “For two hundred years the people of this City—six hundred thirty-five thousand strong—have suffered a massive injustice, and we will begin to fix it now.”

  Corbin went through a brief history of the City of Washington; how it was built through slave labor, the abysmal conditions under which free Blacks lived, in the shadow of the nation’s mightiest men, the years of enforced segregation and second-class living under that bigot Woodrow Wilson, who all the white intellectuals adore, and into the present day. The population of DC compared to that of the Western States, and so on. He didn’t use the line about Rhode Island, which was just as well, since Corbin hadn’t yet learned to lie convincingly.

  The effect, Watson thought, was good. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about and his tone was that of a reasonable man, determined to do right.

  Ah, but now came the questions. “Councilman Corbin, isn’t this a political stunt?” asked Harvey Middleton.

  “No, Mr. Middleton, it is not. It is an exercise in American Democracy. I have released the names of twenty-eight Senators and sixty-one members of the House of Representatives who have co-sponsored the legislation.”

  “I’ve seen your list, Councilman. They’re all Democrats.”

  “They’re all white men, too! What’s your point?”

  Don’t do that, Watson almost shouted. Corbin had give Middleton an opening for a third question.

  “The point is that without Republican support you won’t be able to override a veto, much less pass a constitutional amendment.”

  “This won’t require a constitutional amendment! The Constitution does not require that Black people living in the Nation’s Capital be deprived of representation!”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but that’s exactly what it says, ‘Congress shall have the power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District as may become the seat of Government of the United States.’ Article I, section 8.”

  “So what! Congress can give up the power, and that’s what it does with this legislation! Does anyone have another question? George!”

  Watson heard the scrape of a chair, and then the bass of George Gilson’s voice. “With all due respect, sir, that is what it says.”

  “Does anybody have a real question?” For a minute Watson considered running out to the hall and pulling the fire alarm, but before he could stir he heard Middleton’s nasally voice.

  “Yeah, I have one. Isn’t this just a laughably desperate plan by a pathetic politician whose campaign for Mayor has no traction, no support, and no chance?”

  “You’re despicable, Mr. Middleton.” Corbin had remembered the phrase, though not the cause. “For your information, we have plenty of Republicans! Plenty! Including Senator Trotter! The Mayor and Senator Trotter have this thing wired!”

  No no no...and Watson was astonished to hear himself saying these words aloud, and what’s worse, he couldn’t stop after that. No no no no no. This couldn’t be happening! He slammed his receiver down to break the connection with the press room. But how could he break his connection to Corbin, and what he had just done?

  He took three deep breaths. He would have to contact Trotter immediately, let him know what had happened. Give him a chance to deny—Watson would have to deny it too.

  “Senator Trotter’s not here right now, Mr. Mayor.” It was his receptionist, the pissy one who always stared at him while he waited outside Trotter’s office. “I’ll ask him to call you back.”

  He decided to call Keisha. “We’re screwed,” he said.

  “You’ve dealt with worse, Wendy,” she said.

  “Corbin’s through!”

  “He is. You’re going to have to cut him loose,” she said.

  “It’s worse than that. Trotter was going to help me with Styx. Now I’m not sure he’ll do anything.”

  “He can’t be that angry with you. What was he going to do to Styx?”

  “Something very nice. I—” Loretta opened the door. “I told you not to interrupt.”

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “It’s Bob Brindle, and he said it’s urgent.”

  Watson sighed. “Gotta go, babe,” he said, and put down the phone. He didn’t want to talk to Brindle, but it would be good to talk about something other than the fiasco he had just witnessed.

  “Wendell, what the fuck is going on?” For a second, Watson thought that Brindle must have watched the press conference, but then he remembered Middleton’s scoop.

  “Damned if I know, Bob. I would sue those bastards for fifty million dollars. They’d have to take up a special collection to pay you.”

  “He wouldn’t have made it up out of whole cloth. He said he had documentary evidence. That could have come only from your police department.”

  “I had our archives checked, Bob. There’s nothing except your exoneration, which you know about already.”

  “There’s nothing there now. His informant probably lifted it from the collection.”

  “Jesus, Bob,” Watson said. “Why would we keep a secret repor
t on you beating up Amanda? Anyway, just call her up and have her swear out an affidavit. We’ll get this motherfucker.” Actually, Watson could call her up, but he didn’t want Brindle to know he had been dining on Brindle’s leftovers.

  “And how would I get her to do that? With a Ouija Board?”

  “With a—what the fuck are you talking about, Bob? What Ouija Board?”

  “Didn’t you hear? Amanda killed herself last night when the story came out!”

  Loretta stuck her head in again. “Mr. Mayor, Senator Trotter.”

  “Oh, God, Bob, I have to take this call.” The line was silent for a moment.”I’m sorry for your loss.” Watson clicked the phone and said, “Hi, Brad. What a fucking mess!” but there was no answer.

  Loretta was still in the room. “The television,” she explained. “Channel four.”

  Watson used his remote. Trotter was standing on the steps of the Capitol, surrounded by reporters. “I am here to tell you that I will never vote for Statehood for DC, I will never support it in any form, it is unconstitutional, and it is just plain wrong.”

  A reporter’s voice floated up. “Senator, Councilman Corbin said you had some sort of arrangement with Mayor Watson about Statehood. Do you have any comment?”

  Trotter stared into the camera. He seemed to be looking directly at Watson. “I have never had any sort of arrangement or agreement with Mayor Watson about Statehood or anything else,” he said. “And I never will.”

  Imagine yourself; examine yourself. P. Traum at all times tried to consider himself objectively, and now, at this moment, it was especially important. He had failed. He had never failed before, never, and now his failure was of immense consequence. Vasquez was dead. His client’s quarry had become rich—terribly rich, richer even than P. Traum—and the Mayor was now in danger, at the mercy of a dangerously unstable woman and the two morons she had apparently been able to turn. And yet he had been told, firmly and with certainty, that he would not be permitted to strike at her now; that as important as it had been that she be dead; it was now that important that she stay alive.