by Peter Stone
I simultaneously wondered why she didn’t say “boyfriend” and if the fake ID was really the reason I was detained.
“Listen,” she said. “Oscar’s already doing me a big favor by coming here, and”—she elevated her voice—“he’s not going to tell my parents about this.”
Oscar flashed a disappointed but supportive look at her.
“So he’s going to drive me back home. Are you okay getting back to your place?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, still shaken from the encounter with the bouncer, or whoever that guy was.
With that, Lena entered the car, and Oscar slammed the door. He hopped in the driver’s seat and whisked her back to the embassy.
The pulsing music of the bar became more muffled as I quickly walked out of eyeshot and into an empty street block. Closed clothing shops and restaurants were faintly lit from the streetlights as I realized it was almost midnight. I headed west on M Street, and saw a man across the street who walked at about the same pace. For three full blocks.
I turned right, heading down a sloping, narrow road that intersected M Street. I looked back to see that the man had crossed M Street as well. He followed me down the road, toward the canal. I began to hear the scratching of his footsteps against the loose pavement. He was getting closer.
I made an abrupt left and hoped to find someone—anyone—else walking along the canal. But the only things that greeted me were the hollowed-out tourist canoes that gently banged against one another in the standing water. Within seconds, the man made the same left turn and now followed me from less than a block behind. The various industrial lamps and spotlights of the canal cast disorienting, long shadows that at once made him seem far away and disturbingly, increasingly close.
When I started to jog, he did too.
I approached a footbridge and tried to cross the canal, but it was blocked by a firmly closed gate. Trying to open the gate only made me lose my lead. The man was now close enough for me to see that he was over six feet tall and wearing a black hoodie. I stepped back to the pathway and started to run in and out of the pools of light created by the streetlamps above.
Three blocks ahead, I noticed two people walking together, just out of earshot. When he got close enough for me to hear his labored breathing, I leaped to my right—into the serene stream of water.
I hit the shallow floor of the canal, and a punishing shock jolted from the heels of my feet to the top of my spine. For a moment, I was sure both legs were broken, but I treaded water toward the couple that approached me, which signaled they were okay. I could hear the hurried and worried footsteps of the couple increase in speed. Without looking back at the pursuer, I started to shout at the people above, “Help! I can’t swim!”
The couple must have quickly concluded that I was just another drunk GWU student when they saw that I was clearly standing in about three feet of water. They guided me toward a ladder. My legs quivered as I lifted my sopping wet self up each rung. When I reached the top of the ladder, I panted, “And there’s this guy following me!” I pointed to the other side of the canal, to find the full stretch of pathway completely empty.
“Yeah, sure there is.” The man and woman laughed to each other and continued their midnight stroll. “Make sure to have a swimming buddy next time,” the man mocked.
I studied each empty block of the other side of the canal. The man was gone. I wrung out the thick, mossy water from my shirt and pants and bolted west along the canal. I could barely manage more than a frantic limp as thick needles of pain shot up my concussed legs.
I reached the main bridge and crossed it back up to M Street, realizing I was leaving a trail of sloppy wet footprints behind me. I saw a taxi emptying out some late-night arrivals into a hotel and jumped into the back seat. I urgently commanded the driver to get out of the area—now. When he asked me for an address, I told him the closest thing to a safe house that I could think of.
19
I did not breathe for the three blocks it took the speeding taxi to jet across the Georgetown Bridge. As we careened down Pennsylvania Avenue, the growing distance from that hopeless canal alleyway was directly proportional to the growing depth of my breathing. We crossed the street that led to my apartment, where I knew I couldn’t lead the stalker in case he was still somehow following me. I grabbed the flip phone and started texting Memo.
Got busted for fake ID for the first time ever. Man chased me in Georgetown. Out of control. What is going on?
We blew past the Mexican embassy, where I envisioned Lena dumping me for good if she knew the additional drama of the night. Besides, she had grown up with a security detail and wouldn’t exactly know what to do with a stalker other than retreat behind the embassy walls. Better for her to think I was just an unlucky underage bar patron than the mark of a hitman. The taxi shot down to the Mall, which was empty and vast in the warm summer night. Memo did not respond. I had to push my head against the window to see the top of the Washington Monument as we drove by. Memo still wasn’t responding.
I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS, I texted Memo again.
We passed the bone-like columns of the National Archives Building, and then the glowing white Capitol building came into view. I turned to look out the back window, just in case that man was somehow running after the taxi at fifty-seven miles per hour. He wasn’t, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he were.
No response from Memo. Very convenient for him that he could always find me, but the one time I needed him, he was radio silent. . . .
The taxi screeched to a halt on a dark block behind the Capitol. I threw too much money at the driver and didn’t wait for the change. I winced at the unplanned splurge and ran into the lobby of a four-story building that looked like it was shedding layers of stucco on the outside. A gaping yellow water stain adorned the wall of the elevator that took me to the third floor. As I knocked on the door of apartment 310, I realized that it was past midnight.
“Who is it?” her voice promptly inquired from inside as I looked down both sides of the dim hallway for signs of anyone else.
“It’s me, it’s Cameron. Please let me in now,” I low-talked into the crack of the door.
Katie opened the door. Her initial surprised smile was replaced with total confusion as she asked, “Why are you soaking wet?”
“It was the canal . . . ,” I uttered.
“And what are you doing here at twelve thirty a.m.?” she demanded. “Get inside!”
She ushered me into the apartment and triple-locked the door behind me.
“One second,” she said as she disappeared down a narrow hallway. The small living room belonged in a much nicer building than the dumpy-looking one outside the front door. A marshmallowy gray couch dominated the room, along with a lamp that looked like a praying mantis, modern-looking tables and chairs, and a tragically too-small TV. She may have fancy taste in furniture, but Katie clearly didn’t appreciate the value of a big old TV.
“Here.” She handed me a light purple bathrobe, which matched her own.
“Purple,” I said.
“Listen, you look like a sea creature, and you’re not sitting on my couch in those hideous wet clothes,” she responded. “And yes, these are his-and-hers robes, but it was two for one at this store, and I figured maybe one day there would be a ‘his’ in here. And now there is, but not exactly how I had envisioned it. . . .”
“Should I change in your bedroom?” I asked.
“No, no, no, no.” Katie laughed. “It’s a mess. I’ll go in there while you change in here. Just shout when you’re done.”
I peeled off the sticky layers of canal-watered clothes from my body and threw them in a pile on Katie’s kitchen floor. The blasting air-conditioning rocked my body with a deep, long chill. I put on the “his” robe, which had the softness of a sweatshirt that’s never been washed before.
“All clear,” I shouted.
Katie bolted down the hallway. With her hair up in a messy bun and
feet wrapped in oversize slippers, she was a much more relaxed version of herself away from the office. She eyed the mountain of knitting supplies on her coffee table and quickly gathered them into a basket.
“No comments about the knitting on a Friday night, please,” she said, without looking at me.
We both plopped into the fatty folds of the gray couch. It was the kind of couch that embraced you so generously that it required dedicated core exertion to get out.
“Okay, what are you even doing here? And how did you get my address?”
“You gave me your contact info. That night at the George Mason Memorial—remember?”
“Okay, well, I was expecting the occasional text, not a midnight swamp thing knock at the door. What’s going on?”
“I just needed a place to go,” I said, still feeling the adrenaline from the chase coat my veins. “Really, no big deal. I fell into the canal in Georgetown, and I needed a place to go, that’s all.”
“You fell into the C and O Canal?” she shouted. “What’s wrong with you?”
“It was the only way I could get away. . . .” I stopped short of saying more of the evening’s events. Talking about that chase was the first pulled yarn that would undo the ugly sweater Memo had crafted for me.
“Someone was after you?” she asked gravely.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Can we talk about something else?”
Katie took a deep breath. She looked at my hair and instinctively pushed it to the side of my forehead before rapidly rewinding and pulling back her hand.
“Purple is not your color,” she apologetically assessed.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“So.” She stood up and headed for the kitchen. “I’m actually glad you’re here. Because otherwise I would still be having a counseling session on the phone with my college roommate about how she can keep her marriage together despite the ravaging effects of a home remodel.”
I leaned back into the gray cloud couch and looked to her for permission to put my feet up on the coffee table.
She hesitated for a moment before saying, “Of course! So, yeah, she married this tech king, moved to a gigantic home in Palo Alto, and now her full-time job is choosing tonally complementary wainscoting.”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s not even worth explaining,” Katie dismissed. She leaned forward to straighten a stack of magazines that lay on the table and then sat back and said, “Okay. So that was me lightening the mood. Now it’s your turn to talk.”
Memo, Ariel, Wade Branson, the man by the canal—it all seemed to churn throughout my stomach. Like I had swallowed a mouthful of finely chopped glass, which slowly sliced through my intestines. Needing to be expelled. Exorcised. A voice inside told me to “just explain a little” of what was going on. A little won’t hurt. It would feel so good. Just how that first sip of beer won’t do any harm at the first ninth-grade party where alcohol showed up. Try some. . . .
“What’s going on, Cameron?” she implored, now quite serious, even insistent.
I thought about how she said I was “family.” How she gets things—the city, the office politics, the starting-from-nothing thing. She understood things—certainly more than my dad or Berto. She understood me—or at least the me I was trying to become. And she had told me to come to her with any concerns. . . .
“Well, you know how you told me I could always check in with you—even about the crazy questions?”
She nodded warmly.
An unstoppable chunky tidal wave of verbal gastric acid shot up my throat as I blurted out, “I think Ariel’s death maybe wasn’t an accident. . . .”
“What? Why would you think that?” interrupted Katie, her voice and posture now more befitting a chief of staff.
I looked straight ahead and let out a deep breath. “This guy cornered me during a Capitol tour. He said he talked with Ariel before she died, that Ariel was looking for someone and had probably left a clue for me. . . .”
“A clue? Cameron, do you realize how crazy this sounds? There are so many paranoid weirdos all over this town, and if you engage, they’ll follow you around like lonely stray dogs.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath—her reaction a little more aggressive and dramatic than I had expected. Then she leaned forward so she could look me in the eye. “Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No, and I know I’m supposed to tell Nadia about anyone who approaches us, but something tells me she would not be happy about what I found,” I replied.
“No,” she said. “Don’t tell Nadia anything. And what do you mean, ‘What you found’?”
“In the things she left behind in her desk. There was this note that said ‘For C,’ with an address. In Virginia Beach.”
“You’re kidding me, Cameron. . . .”
“Look, I do know how stupid this probably sounds: I went to that address. I didn’t even know if I would knock on the door, but I did, and it was the parents of Ariel’s best friend, who died when they were teenagers. Died of this drug overdose because a CEO put the drug on the market before it was ready. Wade Branson . . .”
“Branson,” she said in unison. “You asked me about him in a text that one night.”
“So you know who he is?” I asked.
“Of course I do. But I already told you: We don’t talk about Wade Branson in the office. Anyway, that was like eight years ago. What does he have to do with anything?”
“Six years ago,” I corrected her. “And I think there’s a connection between Wade’s suicide and Ariel’s accident. Like, what if it wasn’t a suicide?”
“Cameron, you sound like a conspiracy theory Reddit thread right now. You realize this, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know,” I said. But it felt like kicking off uncomfortable new shoes as I told her. Memo and his secrets and—let’s call it what it was—his bribery felt constricting. Talking to Katie felt like discovering an escape hatch—a back door out of the house Memo had lured me into. And even if I would never bail on Memo, it felt good to know I could. I continued, my breaths deeper and my face less strained with every word: “Ariel left this list of names, and I called one of them—used to be a Navy SEAL—and tonight I basically got arrested for a fake ID, which never happens, and next thing I knew, I was getting chased down a Georgetown alleyway, and the only thing I could do to escape was jump in the water to get these random people’s attention.”
Katie slowly dragged both hands down the front of her face and sighed.
“Now I think this guy might be after me,” I said. “And that is why I’m knocking on your door at twelve thirty a.m.”
“Cameron, you need to stop.” She put her hand on my knee. “You need to stop, and hope that this guy will stop too.”
“But what if there really is a connection? What if Wade Branson was killed? What if Ariel was killed? And I’m next?”
“Ariel Lancaster died in a drunk-driving accident,” Katie clarified.
“I know, but she died right after she wrote that list. She died when she knew things. And now I know more than she knew when she died.”
“Do you know Rose Mary Woods? Oliver North? Mary Jo Kopechne?” she asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Exactly,” she said. “Collateral damage left behind by the political machines that you do remember—Nixon, Reagan, and Ted Kennedy.”
“Whoa.” I cut her off. “Who’s the conspiracy theorist now?”
“Look, all I’m saying is that people who poke into things don’t always fare well in this city. They turn into accomplices, fall guys. They die. And once you touch this stuff, the bad stuff, you can’t ever really wash it off. Better to stay away.”
“You speak from experience?” I asked.
“I’ve seen a lot,” she replied. “Enough to know that you don’t want to keep peeking inside Pandora’s box for an answer to a question that isn’t even a question. You should be taking selfies with the ruby slippers at the Smithsonian and
going to Screen on the Green this summer, Cameron. Not being taken advantage of by some mysterious guy who corners you and puts questions into your head. Who was that guy, anyway? And who did you call who is suddenly following you? How does all of this connect to Wade Branson?”
Three questions too many. Even though Katie only wanted to help, I seized up as I thought of Memo and the secrecy he had always insisted upon. The secrecy I could no longer bear. And even though it felt good to talk with Katie, I knew I had to answer to Memo.
And that I had to backtrack. A little. Somehow.
“I’m sorry, Katie,” I said. “Thanks for looking out for me.”
She looked like she was still waiting for me to answer her questions.
“I think I just need to get home. Put a good night’s sleep between me and what happened tonight. Leave the conspiracies behind.”
My newfound resolve, however feigned, successfully convinced her that I wasn’t going to answer her questions. That would only impede my penitent progress, I hoped she thought. It seemed to work.
“I’m driving you home,” she said. “You look ridiculous, and part of me would find a little bit of pleasure in your taking the metro in a purple robe—but I will spare you that indignity.”
Not to mention, spare me from the madman trying to track me down.
I followed Katie to her car, wearing only the purple robe and sludgy shoes, with a heavy garbage bag of wet clothes in my hand. As I stepped into her aging Toyota Camry, Katie was already starting the ignition. Which triggered Cher blasting out of the speakers: “Do you believe in life after love?” Katie snapped the radio off and made a fierce hand gesture that preempted my inclination to critique her music selection.
I entered my address into her GPS, and she started cruising across the deserted streets.
“A lot of people say DC was built on a swamp,” she commented. “And, look, you know from the Capitol tour that there are lots of made-up stories about this city. But even if it wasn’t built on a swamp, it can feel like one. Deep, thick mud. Bugs that suck on you, and you can’t see them until it’s too late. Alligators perfectly content to watch you fumble around the distractions until they decide they’ve waited long enough.” She accelerated through a yellow light near the Lincoln Memorial and banked northward toward GWU.