by Lee Hurwitz
Quick! What would Hightower tell him to do? Hawk tried to imagine his old friend standing next to him. What would Hi tell him? What would he say? He’d say—he’d say, “Don’t say anything, Hawk!” That’s what he’d say!
“Hi did it,” Hawkins said.
Alpha Travel was actually the product of the recommendations of an efficiency expert, a Big Eight accounting firm which had recommended that District government contract out employee travel to private travel agencies. Watson generally ignored recommendations like that, but he seized on this recommendation to reward an old and loyal friend who ran a struggling travel agency in Anacostia. Soon all DC government travel was flowing through Alpha Travel. Al Carter was a rich man, and his agency had a street-level facility in a glitzy, massive, office building in the middle of downtown Washington. It was at that office that Watson sat now, looking at Carter.
“Listen, Wendell, I don’t know any easy way to tell you this, but it’s five days before Christmas.” It caused Carter immense distress to give this trivial calendar information to the Mayor. Carter hated giving anyone bad news, and he hated giving Watson bad news worst of all. “Everyone and his brother is travelling. All the flights to Rio have been booked solid for weeks. Can’t this wait until next week?”
“Al, what were your billings for DC government travel so far this year?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe forty grand a month.”
“Okay, forty grand a month. Lemme see, that’s about half a million a year. Assuming you’re skimming off a quarter, that leaves you with a hundred and twenty five in profit.”
“I don’t take…”
“Lemme ask you something, Al. Since you’ve got all this cash as a result of your DC government contract, don’t you think you could pull some strings and get me on a flight to Rio?”
“Well, uh, all right. Let’s go back to my office.”
Watson and Carter walked back down the hall to Carter’s cramped office. Carter closed the door.
When John Stone stepped out of his office, the police were waiting for him.
“Do I know you?” he asked with as much dignity as a 350-pound man with quivering jowls could muster.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Arthur Klosky,” said the oldest of the four. He seemed to Stone to be almost elaborately polite. “These are my colleagues, Detectives Bradshaw and Vliet and Officer Fenner.”
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” Stone was beginning to regret that he had come in to the office on a Saturday.
“You can turn around and put your hands behind your back,” Klosky replied. Stone saw Vliet take out a pair of extra-large handcuffs. “You are under arrest as an accessory to the murder of Sharon Scott.”
“Son of a bitch!” Stone shook his finger in Klosky’s face. “I told Altman I had nothing to do with that!”
Vliet grabbed Stone’s hand and, stepping quickly, twisted it painfully behind Stone’s back. “We had an interesting conversation with a young man named Ronald Hawkins,” Klosky said. “Do you know him?” Vliet slipped the cuffs on Stone’s wrist, and then grabbed the other arm and jerked it behind Stone’s back.
“That bitch was dead before I got there,” Stone shouted.
“One moment, please, Mr. Stone.” Klosky smiled. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you. You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you.” He stopped smiling. “You were saying about the bitch?”
“Okay, Wendell, lemme get this straight. You want to fly to Rio this afternoon. Alone?”
“Do you see anyone else?”
“Well, no, Wendell. But you took me by surprise. We’ve got a thousand customers wanting flights out of town. I had no idea that you were going on vacation. Okay, lemme clear the screen. Do you want a hotel?”
“Did I say anything about a hotel, Al?”
“All right. I was just trying to make it convenient for you. I won’t ask about your hotel.” Carter clicked away at the keyboard and nervously eyed Watson, sitting five feet away from him. “Wendell, all the major carriers are booked solid. I’m still checking all three airports. Does it matter which airport you want to fly from?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“When do you wanna return flight to Washington?”
“Did I say anything about a return flight?”
“Uh, well I kinda figured.”
“WELL DON’T KINDA FIGURE, Al. Just get me a one way ticket this afternoon.”
Carter continued to click away at his keyboard.
“Okay, I—no, damn! I thought I could get a standby out of Kennedy, but it’s gone.”
“A standby! Out of Kennedy!”
Carter turned around. “I ain’t lying to you, Wendell. Every airline to Rio out of National, Dulles, and BWI is booked solid until Monday. Hell, if I owned an airline, I couldn’t get you on a flight to Rio today.”
Watson thought for a minute. “Can you get me a charter?”
“Not today. Not out of the country.”
“All right. Get me a ticket to Sao Paulo, then.”
“I would like to speak with an attorney.”
Altman gazed at the bland little man in front of him. How many people had he killed? A dozen? A hundred? Already he had received reports from police chiefs all over the country. Altman himself had witnessed one of the killings: that poor devil watching over Hightower, drilled between the eyes in a millisecond. Oh, yes, this was a killer, eyes hooded and dangerous as a cobra, Altman thought.
I know I’m supposed to shut up when they say they want a lawyer. Everything after that could be tainted. Still, it would be unlikely that he would ever have somebody as spectacularly evil as this man in his sights again. He couldn’t resist planting something in this bastard’s mind.
“Of course, Mr. Traum.” Altman was pleased to see Traum react; he hadn’t given his real name, and Altman wanted him to know that they had found it out on their own. “I’m just wondering, would you like a lawyer here, or do you want to wait until South Carolina?”
“South Carolina?” Traum looked up.
“It seems that they found a dead photographer in South Carolina, a fellow by the name of Stambler. Found him in a cave out in the desert, along with another corpse. Haven’t identified that one yet, but they seem to think you could help them out.”
“’Fraid not, Mr. Altman.” Traum’s smile seemed tentative to Altman, but he wasn’t sure. “I’ve never been to South Carolina.”
“It appears that there are some folks who would disagree with you, motel clerks and the like. In any event, the interesting difference between South Carolina and DC is that they have the death penalty. The enlightened citizens of the Nation’s Capital do not. So we’ve received an extradition request from the State of South Carolina and I’m wondering whether we should just forget about the charges here for a while and send you out there.” Traum was staring at him and Altman, pleased, stared back. “I’ll let you call your lawyer now.”
Carter continued clicking away at his keyboard.
“All right, Wendell, there’s a standby list on American. Six o’clock at Dulles Airport. You know what standby is.”
“SIX O’CLOCK! Six o’clock. Fuck that shit, Al. I wanna leave now. It’s twelve-fifteen. I wanna leave in an hour or two.”
“Wendell, I’m trying. You have to understand. This is at the last minute. You know that you’re gonna pay through the nose for this one way flight.”
“Not a problem.”
“Sorry, Wendell. The only one that I can find is American Airlines flight 355 at six o’clock tonight from Dulles. And it’s standby. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get on. A one way ticket will run you six hundred and fifty dollars. Lemme have your credit card and I’ll put you on the standby list.”
Watson turned away from Carter, snapped open his case, reached in and peeled off a thousand-dollar bill. He closed the case, turned around, and presented it to Carter.
“Shit, Wendell!” Carter looked the Mayor in the face, and then at the money lying in Watson’s hand. “All right,” he said, taking the money. “You’re on the standby list.” He turned back to the computer. “Lemme print out this standby reservation for you and see about getting some change.”
“Don’t worry about the change. Just gimme the printout.”
Watson grabbed the printout from Carter and put on his coat.
She slapped me! Evelyn stepped back in horror, not even realizing who “she” was.
“That was rude,” Mitch Dennis observed.
“You’re looking mighty fine, Ms. Evelyn Boone.” Yvonne said, sneering, looking Evelyn up and down. “Cartier watch, Prada shoes. You come into some money?”
“Please, Yvonne. We’re in a public place.” Evelyn felt weak and frightened.
“Well, technically, we’re not.” The FBI man sounded apologetic. “This is a private home that we’re viewing. And the real estate agent has consented to give us a little additional privacy.”
“What do you want?” Evelyn asked, breathing shallowly.
“This is a nice house,” Mitch said. “What do they want? Three fifty? Four? You thinking of buying this?”
“You called me a lesbo!” Yvonne snarled. “I was trying to save your life!”
“Please, Yvonne, that’s in the past.” Mitch put a gentle arm on Yvonne’s shoulder and thought, well, gee, everything’s in the past.
“You know, Ms. Boone, we’ve been talking to your friend Mr. Hawkins. He told us a remarkable story. My hat is off to you. He said you made eight hundred million dollars out of this.”
“Eight hundred million!” Evelyn blurted. “That moron! Try eight million…” and then she knew she had ruined everything.
Watson walked out of Carter’s office into the twenty-degree weather. The streets were nearly deserted and there were no cabs in sight. He walked two blocks south to the intersection of Eighteenth and hailed a taxi. He briefly considered going back to Florida Avenue and picking up his car, but what difference did it make if he abandoned his car there, as opposed to the Dulles parking lot? Leaving his car where it was would slow the people chasing him, and he could certainly afford the cab fare to the airport.
There had been a movie, Road to Rio? Blame it on Rio? Leave it to Rio? It was terrible, but he learned one thing from it: Brazil had no extradition treaty with the United States. If you were wanted for a crime in the United States, Brazil was the place to be.
Especially if you had a suitcase full of money.
The cab pulled into Dulles at two o’clock. Watson got to the American Airlines terminal fifteen minutes later.
Dulles was a madhouse, with Christmas travelers crammed like sardines into each gate.
Watson stood in line behind the Gate 14 counter. Numerous travelers recognized him, but no one said anything. After a half hour, he made it to the counter.
“Happy New Year, Mayor Watson. How can we help you?”
“Lemme show you this printout for my flight to Brazil.”
“You’ve got a standby ticket on flight 355. It doesn’t leave until six o’clock. The flight is totally booked. We don’t know if there’ll be any seats available.”
“Miss Magruder, I have an urgent meeting in Rio de Janeiro.”
“Well, this standby ticket is for Sao Paolo.”
“That’s what I meant to say. I’ve got an urgent meeting in Sao Paulo. You have to give me a seat on that flight, Miss Magruder.”
“Well, I’ll see what I can do, Mayor Watson. There are five other people on the standby list ahead of you.”
“Let me see, could you? Here it is.”
He had slipped a wad of thousand-dollar bills from his case into his pants pocket when he bought the ticket from Carter. He peeled one off and shoved it across the counter.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s for you, Miss Magruder. Like I said, I really have to get on that flight or some other flight to Brazil. I’ve got an urgent meeting there.”
The airline clerk stared at the bill. “I’ve never seen one of these,” she said. Finally she handed the cash back to Watson. “Okay, Mayor Watson. We’ll try to get you on that flight.” Her smile was uncertain. “You know that it doesn’t leave until six. We’ll board at five thirty.”
“Yeah. I know. Why don’t I come back around five and then you can get me on that plane.”
It was two forty-five. The last thing Watson wanted to do was to stay out in the open at the terminal where someone might ask him where he was going. He went to the small airport bar next to the gate and got a table in the back.
His waiter spoke with a West African accent and didn’t seem to recognize him. As Watson munched on a hamburger, fries, and a light beer, he felt like Jesus at the last supper. News of his arrest would be a banner headline on the evening news in an hour or two.
At three fifteen, he went back to the gate and got in line. Five minutes later, he made it to the counter.
“Hello, Miss Magruder.”
“Hi, Mayor Watson. We haven’t had any movement on the standby list and there are still five people ahead of you.”
“Miss Magruder, you don’t understand, you have to put me on that flight. I’m not on vacation. I have an urgent meeting in Rio.”
“Well, the six o’clock flight is for Sao Paolo.”
“That’s what I meant to say, Sao Paolo. I’ve been working such long hours that I can’t even think straight. I’ve got an urgent meeting in Sao Paolo tomorrow.”
“You have an urgent meeting in Sao Paulo four days before Christmas?”
“Yeah, it’s the—what is it—the Winter Solstice. It’s a very mystical group of South American business leaders. They like to meet on the winter solstice every year that ends on eight and do their investment planning for the next decade. I thought that I had a flight this morning but my staff messed up and never made the reservation. That’s why I had to frantically look for a flight and I ended up getting this standby ticket.”
“Well, like I said, Mayor Watson, we have five people on standby ahead of you, and there’s no guarantee that any of the standbys will be able to get on the six o’clock flight.”
“Miss Magruder, I have something else for you.”
Watson peeled off three thousand-dollar bills and put them on the counter.
Magruder handed the cash back to Watson.
The Gate 14 lounge was crammed with passengers clutching carry-on baggage and watching the soaps. After Days of Our Lives was over, there was a news flash.
This is Bruce Johnson, Channel Nine Eyewitness News. There is a breaking story in the District where Mayor Wendell Watson was arrested last night and charged with obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Sources in the DC.Superior Court said that Watson was arrested at about eight o’clock yesterday evening in the Takoma section and taken to the fourth district police headquarters, where he was officially charged. Sources said that the two charges were related to the murder of DC government employee Sharon Scott. Scott’s body was found in southern Prince George’s County on December third. Details on Eyewitness News at six.”
The crowd in the packed lobby was transfixed by the television screen.
“Miss Magruder.”
“I’m sorry, Mayor Watson, there’s a long line of people behind you. You’re just going to have to wait until about a half hour before the flight when we sort out the standbys.”
It was four ten. The gate was packed with Washingtonians waiting to fly to Brazil. All eyes were on the television screen with the story of Watson’s arrest. Many of the travelers looked at Watson and then whispered among themselves. One burst out laughing. Watson wanted to crawl into a hole for the next half-hour and not come out until it was time to get on the plane. But he only had a standby ticket. He had to hang around the gate in case there was an opportunity for something.
Watson sat down in one of the few empty seats in the lounge and held a copy of the Washington
Post with both hands. Hopefully, no one would see who was behind the newspaper.
“Mayor Watson, is that you?”
Watson pretended not to hear and continued to hold the newspaper up high.
“Mayor Watson?”
Watson buried his face in the paper.
“Excuse me, Mayor Watson, I’d like to ask you something.”
Again, Watson didn’t respond.
“Mayor Watson, are you going to Brazil?”
Watson lifted the newspaper higher.
Then the man peeked over the newspaper and saw the Mayor trying to shield himself from view.
“Mayor Watson, I’m with the Washington Post, and I’d just like to ask you something.”
“Get the hell away from me.”
“Mr. Mayor, I’m Allan Schwartz, Washington Post. I’d just like to ask you something.”
“Well, I don’t feel like sayin’ anything. So why don’t you just get lost?”
“Mr. Mayor, I’m a reporter for the Post.”
“Well, I don’t know you. You don’t cover the District Government.”
“I cover international economics for the Post, but I saw the story on the news and I was wondering if you are…”
“Get the hell away from me.” Watson turned, muttered, “fuckin’ Jewboy.”
Schwartz grinned. “My question is, you’re thinking of not running for another term, aren’t you?”
Watson got up, threw the newspaper on the floor, and pushed Schwartz to the ground.
The crowd in the lounge now stared at Watson, picking up the newspaper, and Schwartz, picking himself off the ground.
Shit! This won’t do. Everybody in the terminal is looking at me.
He checked his watch. It was four fifteen. Quickly, without looking back, he strode out of the terminal. There’s always one of these things in airports, he thought.
He found what he was looking for on the second floor. Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped up into an empty chair.