by Peter Stone
“Paid my foundation.” Meteer cleared his throat. “He told me to set it up. National Oncology Warriors, I called it. That way, he could give me annual donations—he could give a bunch of foundations money—and it just looked like he was a generous guy. Got me out of the woods, that money. Clean bill of health.”
Memo’s jaw was increasingly lax. “This is insane.”
“So I went to Boston. Fresh Pond . . .” He stopped, replaying a scene in his mind that he would not verbalize for us. “Exercised the skills my government taught me. And then disappeared. That’s what we are trained to do, after all. Mission complete.”
“Why are you telling this to us?” I asked.
Meteer’s taut cheeks blew up with indecision. He let out a slow exhale and proceeded. “Because Billy went all Washington on us. Forgot about causes. Focused on getting votes. Getting money. Because I called and called, and he never returned. I showed up at his office one day, and he looked right through me. With a smile on his face. Because the cancer came back. First day of spring, this year. Don’t get me wrong, I can still get around. I can still run on a good day—junior here knows that pretty well, don’t you?”
He managed a partial smile as I recalled that nighttime chase with dread. “But the good days are fewer and fewer now. And I don’t want another man’s death to be the thing keeping me alive.”
The rain retreated upward, and the first sly wave of morning heat slathered itself over us. Memo and I closed our umbrellas.
“And then there were the calls from that girl . . . ,” he continued.
“And you . . .” I searched for the words. “ ‘Took care of her,’ too?”
“Hell no,” Meteer quickly rebuffed. “Branson was my last assignment. I didn’t touch that girl. Didn’t even see her in person. Didn’t want to, at first. But she kept calling me. And then I got my diagnosis, and I was like, ‘Screw it, I’ll talk.’ So we spoke on the phone. Was supposed to meet up with her in person—the day after someone else took care of her.”
“Someone killed Ariel?” I asked, my heart leaping at our proximity to answers, real answers. “All reports said it was a car accident. . . . It looked like a car accident. . . .”
Meteer emitted a light chuckle that gave way to a punishing burst of uncontrollable coughs. “Very . . .” He paused. “Convenient,” he eventually said, carefully filling out all three syllables of the word.
A distant, cold slap of metal signaled the early arrival of a nearby shopkeeper who raised the retractable grate covering a store. Meteer’s head snapped in the direction of the noise, and his subsequently tightened body indicated displeasure with the company—however far away.
“So you’re dying, and you want to bring BIB down,” stated Memo. Even though we were talking about a murder for hire, his conclusion sounded particularly insensitive.
Meteer did not respond. He didn’t have to.
“You know what this means? Press, trial, sentencing, prison, and then capital punishment . . . ,” listed Memo.
“Doctor gave me two months two weeks ago. So I think I’ve got my own death penalty on its way,” said Meteer.
“Can I get a recorded statement?” asked Memo, incredulous.
“Put me on the freakin’ YouTube, I don’t care. I’m done. And it’s time Billy is too,” said Meteer, his soft voice disguising a sour kind of revenge.
The giggles of a pair of jogging girls indicated more signs of life in the area. I saw an anxiousness fill both Meteer and Memo, and I knew our time was short.
“How can I reach you again?” asked Memo.
“You don’t get to ask that question, mister,” scolded Meteer. “I’m dying, but I’m not stupid.” He cocked his head toward me with a fleeting flash of sarcastic emotion.
“I’ll find you,” he reminded us.
He leaned forward from the iron triangle of the giant’s bent leg, the surface now shining in the morning light.
“Thank you,” I said, reaching out my hand to his.
Meteer brushed past me without saying a word. He was not proud, but he was visibly relieved. We watched him take a few steps and then stop. He turned around and looked at me. In the eyes, for the first time in the whole conversation.
“And don’t you talk about this with anyone in that office.” He ominously held up his left hand, index finger outstretched. “Because Billy owns everyone there, to some degree or another. Everyone there owes him. And he makes them pay, sooner or later.”
A heavy tremor of guilt reverberated through the sentence. He shuffled through the drying sand and stepped onto the dock, which led to a dozen resting boats. Memo and I turned toward the steps and walked to the car.
I looked back and squinted as a ray of sun ricocheted off the giant’s upraised arm and into my face, obscuring my view of the ghostlike Meteer, who appeared to be walking to the end of the dock.
We got into Memo’s car, and I looked back at the patch of sand, the giant, and the dock.
Meteer was gone.
Only the giant remained. Sinking into oblivion.
23
Dear Mr. and Mrs. _______,
On November fourth, the ballot boxes will open in Lagrima County, and I am asking for your support. We have come far together. With your vote[s], we can continue this journey.
A news anchor–worthy head shot of BIB filled the upper-left corner of the page. “A Generation of Service” was written in a slick font next to it. Red, white, and blue (obviously). Katie said the election letters were going out in a week. She needed someone to proofread the document, and I offered to help.
This November, you can send a message to Washington: that you have been supporting a murderer. That I paid a dying former Navy SEAL to kill Wade Branson and make it look like a suicide. And then, when my hot staffer started to figure it out, I somehow made her die too. This time, I made it look like a drunk-driving accident. And then my crazy press secretary planted some story that I was screwing the girl, so the press would ask different questions. I didn’t care that the girl’s mom is a close political ally.
“Try to have a normal few days. Don’t talk about this to anyone in the office,” Memo had me told before dropping me off three blocks away from the Rayburn building, the morning we’d talked with BIB’s penitent hitman. “I need time to formalize Meteer’s statement, and I need you to act like you’re continuing to have an amazing summer interning for your congressman. Replace copy machine toner. Give tours. Write form letters. We’ll keep an eye on you. You’ll be safe.”
“A normal few days,” he’d said so effortlessly. Normal, even though the man whose name was on the plaque outside the office hired at least one contract killer in his life. Normal, even though I’d spilled a particularly volatile pile of beans to this same man’s number two. Normal, even though I was keeping secrets that had gotten others killed.
So I kept my head down, all the while bracing for impact. And I’d had taken the liberty of tweaking Katie’s election form letter. It felt good to get the truth on paper, even if it would only be heard by “Mr. and Mrs. _____.”
A vote for me is a vote for our children, for health care, for our senior citizens, for covering up a six- year-old murder and an eight-week-old fatal car accident. And most important, for my perfect hair and that smile.
So thank you. Thank you for being complicit in a crime that is the foundation of my political career. Thank you for knocking door to door and getting the word out. Thank you for never asking questions. Because if you do, maybe you’ll be found with a gunshot to the head under a bridge. Or wrapped around a tree on the side of the road.
Try me.
Sincerely,
William “Billy” Irman Beck
Member of Congress
“Cameron,” Marcus called gingerly as he sauntered over to my desk, third afternoon coffee in hand. “So I could use some help with that literacy report, if you have a second?”
Just before he reached my side of the desk, I quit out of the elect
ion letter and clicked “Don’t Save” any of the edits I made. “Mr. and Mrs. _____” would have to find out the truth about BIB some other way. And, by the way, was it really taking Marcus an entire summer to assemble some report about literacy? Was he literate?
“Is this the same report you were working on in June?” I asked.
“Yes,” he murmured, lowering his voice and making sure no one else in the office was hearing. “Look, it’s a really complicated report. And I’ve had all these other things going on. . . .”
“Like a Fourth of July barbecue,” I teased.
“Yes,” he replied. “No! What? Why do the interns always end up mocking me? It’s supposed to be the other way around. Please can you just get these statistics? You’re only here another week!”
My internal countdown had been inactive for a while, as it hit me: it was my last week in the office. Maybe it was Lena and our mutual denial that summer was ending, and with it, our unlikely time together. Maybe I was actually enjoying the hunt with Memo. Equal measures of relief and knotty anxiety competed in my stomach. Soon I’d be out of this mess. An intriguing mess, but a mess all the same. Just a few more quiet days and my plane ticket would make the decision for me.
But deep down, I knew my remaining time wouldn’t and couldn’t be quiet. I felt the momentum of Memo and my efforts—an undertow that was drawing us closer to the end of something. Or someone.
Marcus shoved a bulleted list of questions on my desk, the slap of the paper jolting me back to the task at hand.
“Yeah, sure . . . ,” I said to him, trailing off a bit as I noticed a text pop up on my phone.
It was Lena. Confirming that my final days in DC would be anything but quiet.
“Of course . . . ,” I said, my eyes now firmly fixed on the message from her.
We need to talk. I found something, and you need to get out of that office, she had typed.
Ha-ha, I wrote back. So clever of her to play along with my little spy hobby. If you want to go out tonight, you really don’t need to make things up.
Her reply came back strong and furious. This is real ASAP immediate 911 not a joke.
I read the sentence over and over, before she added another one for me to read. She hadn’t acted this way before. I moved my phone low, beneath the desk, as if that would keep her news—and me—more secure.
Cameron, you’re not safe. Not if what you told me is true.
Where? Mexican embassy? I texted back promptly.
Not safe? Simultaneous thoughts darted down moldy rabbit holes of possibility in my mind. Was Meteer’s confession a front, a favor for BIB, a trap? Had Nadia reached a critical mass of my incriminating actions through her network of PR spies? Panicking on the inside, I casually looked around the office for who else or what else could explain Lena’s grave warning.
Can’t meet there, she indicated and then paused. Where you had your first edamame . . . experience.
Nice of you to bring that up, I replied.
And then, before I could write The National Press Club? in response, she wrote more.
Don’t write the name of the place in this text. We both know where. And we don’t know who else is reading.
When? I asked.
Now, she shot back.
• • •
“A few personal errands” sounded plausible enough at four p.m. on a weekday, so that was my excuse for leaving. Katie said she needed me back by five thirty p.m. for the traditional summer interns’ photo with BIB. I ran down the Capitol South metro station escalators and barely got through the train doors before the mostly empty late-afternoon train whisked me to Metro Center. I shared the subway car with a couple families of tourists and a lone, jacked-up guy in workout clothes who looked at me enough times to make me think either he was going to hurt me, or I was officially paranoid. It turned out to be the latter, as he slipped out the doors one stop before me. I got to the National Press Club in twenty-three minutes, door to door. Lena was waiting outside, wearing a yellow tank top and jeans and an alarming look of concern.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
“Your driver was unavailable,” I said, exasperated as sweat dampened the roots of my hair. “Can you just tell me what is going on? I’m really not supposed to be raising any questions in the office right now. . . .”
She scanned the area and didn’t appear to hear a single word that I said. She grabbed my hand and led us both into a plus-size middle-aged women’s casual wear store.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “Are we going to try on caftans and scarves together or something?”
She tore through the store, arbitrarily picking up four different items off the racks before leading me straight to a dressing room. An upbeat Gwen Stefani jam filtered through the speakers from the ceiling. A store employee who was wearing a flowy, flowery blouse sang along and bounced to the beat before noticing that we were in there with her. She initially smiled and then, sizing up Lena’s sticklike figure, shot us a look of confusion and then disgust.
“You have to come in here with me!” cried Lena, for the employee to hear. “I’ll miss you too much if we aren’t togetherrrrrr!”
Lena pushed me into the cramped space and quietly closed the door.
“You are a crazy person,” I told Lena.
She threw the armful of clothing on the floor and then lifted a small electronic tablet from her deep purse.
“What is this?” I asked.
“You asked me to see if I could find anything on Ariel in the days leading up to Capitol Sinny.”
“What was she doing? What did you find?”
“Nothing,” she answered. “Nothing before the party at Capitol Sinny. But I found what happened after.”
She dropped the tablet on my lap.
“Press play,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Fine!” I responded and touched the triangle-shaped play icon on the screen. Grainy black-and-white security footage suddenly filled the small screen. “Why did you take me into retail hell to show me a security video?”
“Scroll forward to eleven forty-nine p.m.,” she instructed.
And then I noticed the date on the screen: June 4. And the location: Eighteenth Street NW. As I slid the time stamp over to 11:49 p.m., a familiar girl came into view.
“This is . . . ,” I uttered, frozen in anticipation.
“The security footage near Capitol Sinny on the night of Ariel’s death,” she answered. “I mean murder. You’re welcome.”
Murder.
Ariel’s flowing yellow dress practically glowed white in the security camera footage. She and her male companion for the night meandered down the sidewalk and then stopped to kiss. The kissing went on until 11:52 p.m., at which point they appeared to be saying good night.
“Guy had game,” observed Lena.
When the clasp of their outreached hands broke apart, the guy got into his car and turned on the lights. Ariel dropped out of view, away from the camera. He started to drive away, alone.
A loud knock at the dressing room door jolted both of us upright and startled. We looked at each other in trapped terror for a few seconds before a husky voice inquired from the other side.
“Are you going to need those in any other sizes?” It was the store employee.
“Umm . . . ,” stalled Lena. “Yes. Smaller!”
I looked back down at the screen and saw another person run at the retreating vehicle to stop the guy. The person had their back to the camera and gestured for someone else to come closer to the car. Then a reluctant Ariel ambled back into view. They stood outside the car for a minute before the person basically pushed Ariel into the passenger seat and slammed the door. The car tore off in a zigzag pattern, away from Adams Morgan.
And into a tree, three miles away.
A rip of vibration tore through my pocket, and I pulled out my phone to see that Berto was calling. I declined the call and swore to myself I would call him later. Always at the worst time.
The person who pushed Ariel into the car stood in the vacated parking spot and did not move.
Berto called again, and I declined again. For a flicker of a thought, I wondered if something was urgent or wrong at home. But nothing felt more urgent than the video in front of me.
“You can fast-forward this part,” indicated Lena, hinting that the best/worst was yet to come.
As I quickly scrolled through three minutes of footage, the person’s body gently swayed back and forth. Groups of other weeknight revelers shot in and out of the screen. Cars zoomed by.
Berto called for a third time. I almost picked up the phone, but then the person turned, their face illuminated by the headlights of an oncoming car. Her face.
Lena reached down and pressed pause as Katie Campbell’s face came into crystal clear view on the screen. And even though it was recorded from a security camera probably attached to a lamppost several feet in the air, her face read excitement and relief and guilt and exhaustion, all at once.
“Katie Campbell killed Ariel,” I said in a low voice.
“After Ariel said good-bye to that borracho—after,” emphasized Lena, “Katie dragged her back to the car. Insisted that Ariel drive with him.”
In that moment, I heard in my mind Russell warning me against telling anyone in the office. Everyone there owes him. And he makes them pay.
And I also heard Katie’s dismissal of my offer to walk her to the metro station that night after we walked around the monuments together. “There are cameras all over this city.”
And worst of all, I recalled my stupid, pathetic, and—did I say stupid?—confessional at Katie’s apartment. Which she’d no doubt been dissecting since.
Lena picked up the tablet from my weakened grasp and put it back in her bag.
“How did you get this?” I asked.
“A girl can do a lot with security guards for best friends and some free time.” She shrugged.
I wondered how much more Lena and her security guard besties could have helped had I told her what was going on earlier that summer. Her street smarts surprised me. She was good.