Current Affairs

by Raskin, Barbara;

  Amelia’s ice cream begins to melt as soon as we leave the Inside Scoop. Back on the sidewalk, I jog along beside her, trying to stem the flow and keep the drippings off her T-shirt. Some chocolate drops onto her beloved pink plastic jellies, which I know hurt her feet, and she stoops over to wipe them clean. The cone is still drooling as we take a sheltered table inside Café au Lait, away from the heat of the street.

  Lieutenant Culver and I order beers.

  I am nervous and unfocused. I am fearful Amelia will slip off the backless stool. Watching her breaks my concentration. The marble tabletop is covered with melted ice cream and flies are crash-diving toward the sweet drippings. Stickiness prevails.

  From our table I can see the street. Suddenly I feel a new affinity with all the outsiders—all the immigrants walking aimlessly along the sidewalk, looking at wares in store windows that trifle with their desires. Because I am now on the wrong side of the law, I feel peril all around me. It is producing a panic that pounds inside my chest, pummeling my heart.

  D.C. is a dangerous city, a toxic city. Hazardous waste products, dumped by both the federal and district governments, pollute the environment. Political corruption has corroded the administrative infrastructures so that everything reeks of rot. Rats run rampant through the alleys and children call them squirrels. Cars carrying Chicago-style mobsters pursue their targets in broad daylight. Drugs determine who will live and who will die.

  “So? Tell me. You’re still married to your original husband?”

  “Yup,” I nod.

  “Wish I could say the same thing.”

  “How many?” I ask, knowing what he wants to tell me.

  “Three marriages, two divorces, one separation. No kids, no property. I’ve got a learning disability. I’m sexually dyslexic.”

  I give a hoot.

  He’s funny, this guy. And nice, even though he doesn’t seem to notice that Amelia is in danger of falling off her stool. Clearly one or all of his wives did some good groundwork on him. America’s women are embarked upon a male reeducation project similar in intensity to Castro’s literacy campaign in the backlands and mountains of Cuba.

  “Didja know the second largest settlement of Salvadorans in the country lives here in Adams-Morgan?”

  I nod amiably, indicating that I wasn’t aware of the precise statistic, but that I could feel the truth of it. I am waiting for him to finish warming up. I am waiting for him to come at me.

  It takes only another minute.

  “Their kids are getting hooked on crack same as black kids. Since the street prices dropped, more of them can afford to try it. They get hooked fast. That damn shit is powerful. It’s going to kill off our next generation. It’s a”—he looks at me cautiously—“holocaust. A goddam holocaust.”

  I wet a paper napkin on the tip of my tongue and make a move to clean Amelia’s face.

  “Don’t put shpit on me,” Amelia protests urgently.

  Lieutenant Culver erupts with laughter.

  “She’s smart,” he roars. “Who wants someone else’s smelly spit rubbed on their face? My mother used to do that to us kids all the time. Anyway, Ms. Myers, tell me how you got those papers. The whole story.”

  This is it.

  Once again my mind begins flailing about. I don’t know if I want to protect Shay or just tell the truth. I don’t know if I should pretend to have no knowledge of the papers, and thus perjure myself, or if I should simply recite what I know. I decide to proffer a stripped-down version of the truth.

  “Well, my sister was a houseguest out on Long Island and she somehow saw this testimony lying around in her host’s study and I guess she just stuffed it in her purse or something. Being a journalist and all that.”

  Lieutenant Culver elevates his eyebrows in wonderment at my chutzpah and begins to look a little impatient.

  I drink some beer.

  “We’re going to have to do better than that,” he prompts. “We’re not playing Twenty Questions.”

  I flush. “Well, lemme think. I don’t know those people. He’s a D.C. lawyer, I guess, but they have a summer place out on Long Island.”

  “Jerry Russo?” Lieutenant Culver asks. “Is it Jerry Russo?”

  A furious blush scalds my face. “Yes, I think that’s maybe right. Do you know him?”

  “Yeah—Jerry Russo represents a lot of rich Hispanics here in D.C. and he’s been involved in some very big and very shady deals. He works for a couple of the big contras who live here or float in and out of town. Guys like Cruz. In fact, I’m kinda excited that he had a copy of Hall’s testimony at his place. I like that. It plugs him right into the network I’ve been tracking.” Lieutenant Culver takes a few gulps of beer. “I’d like to talk to your sister.”

  “She’s out of town until Friday.”

  “What about your husband?”

  “He’s gone until Friday too.”

  He is silent for several minutes.

  “I was just appointed the Third Precinct drug czar,” he says. “That’s my job now. Which gives me about as much power as the Channel Four weatherman—what’s his name? I’m spending three quarters of my time tracking the different drug-importation routes into D.C. Anyway, I should probably go up to Long Island and have a little chat with Mr. Russo because I’m thinking he knows about some things I’m real interested in.” He sighs and smiles. “If I’m talking too fast or if you don’t understand something, Ms. Myers, just say so. Because it seems to me you might be in a sort of precarious position. Those papers name some of our local talent who’d be very upset if they knew you had them. I’m gonna make sure the guys patrolling your area keep an eye on your house. Just as a precaution. But I want you to stay alert to anything that feels suspicious to you.”

  I place my hand on Amelia’s knee so she’ll stop kicking the wrought-iron base of our table, which is wobbly enough without her assaulting it.

  Lieutenant Culver strokes his beard thoughtfully. “We have a homicide a day now, as you probably know, and half the victims are kids. This damn city is out of control. It’s a goddam zoo here at night. The drugs in Adams-Morgan are controlled by an organization of contra jefes. It’s a Nicaraguan Cosa Nostra, and they run a tight ship. Real tight. They own some cops in this town and some politicians too. You hear what I’m saying?”

  I nod.

  “I get sick when I see those kids’ corpses. I puke.”

  I nod again.

  “All I’ve learned so far is just one thing. If there are drugs around, kids will use them. Now I got no kids of my own, but my first wife, Bernice, had a little boy I helped raise up. At least partway. But she found him dead three weeks ago with—excuse me—his penis cut off and stuffed in his mouth. His body was out on her back porch. I got there about twenty minutes later. Ronald’d gotten into a turf struggle with some dealers. So you see why I’m pissed off at the Feds and the DEA and the FBI and everyone else who’s fucking up around here?”

  I realize something important is happening, but Amelia has a hammerlock on my attention. I am fanning flies away from her face and watching so she doesn’t lean back too far and tip over her stool. A fall from that height onto the cement floor would fracture her skull. In just three hours I have become a mother.

  “Now the way I’ve got you people figured—”

  “Who’s ‘you people’?” I echo him.

  “You and your husband and your sister and all her husbands. I figure you for Sandinista fans, right? And you’re pissed off because Ollie North and his crew have been funding the contras, right? You figure that a lot of drug dollars have been buying guns for the wrong team. Well, I don’t have any problem with that. I suppose that’s why your sister took the testimony in the first place. If you blow the whistle on North, you might blow the cover off the Columbia Road crew, and I’d like that a lot. But I’m only interested in this for drug reasons. That’s all. I’m not interested in nailing Ronald Reagan or Ollie North or any of those jokers. I just want the guys who are import
ing the drugs into D.C. Anyway, at the moment, my interests correspond with yours. See, the contra crack-cocaine dealers operating on Columbia Road are being protected by some federal …”

  Amelia begins to rock precariously atop her stool.

  Lieutenant Culver reaches out to steady her. The fact that he moved faster than I did makes me like him enormously.

  But now that I am fully informed about my situation, I realize how vulnerable I am. Finally all the vague anxieties that populate my mind are magically brought to life. Like suddenly animated statues, they assume attack positions and spring into action. Finally real men are plotting my demise, lurking in the dark, pursuing me like death itself.

  Bo Culver finishes his beer, signals the waitress to bring over the check and hands her some dollar bills. Then he stands up, lifts Amelia down from her stool and smiles at me.

  “Okay, let me walk you ladies back home.”

  “Oh, really,” I protest, “you don’t have to bother.”

  “You think I need a white grandmother bludgeoned to death in an alley eight blocks from my station house? You’re wrong.”

  There is a small fissure in the heat outside. Maybe a possibility of rain. We walk slowly. Now Eighteenth Street doesn’t seem as threatening as it did before. The stores look friendlier and less menacing now that I feel less felonious.

  As we pass McDonald’s, I see Hannah standing near the trash bin. From that receptacle, on a good day, Hannah can recover enough thrown-away food to fill her stomach. Spotting us, she begins waving vigorously.

  “Oh,” I say. “That’s a client of mine over there. I want to go talk to her.”

  Still watching us, Hannah continues searching through the trash can with her twisted hands. When she finally recovers a Big Mac carton, she shakes it until one remaining piece of sandwich falls to the ground. Then she quickly bends over to reclaim the scrap from the sidewalk.

  “Uh-oh, Auntie Nattie,” Amelia says, watching this forbidden act with wide and anxious eyes.

  We have a crisis.

  “Hannah has ow-ows in her hands,” I say as if that explains her eating off the dirty sidewalk.

  “Bad. It’s so bad today,” Hannah says, chewing the morsel she’s recovered.

  Then Hannah turns and trudges off, back toward Kalorama Park.

  Amelia watches her disappear before reaching out to take my hand.

  “Hannah sick?” she asks me.

  “No. She has to go someplace.”

  “Bag lady,” Amelia hums happily. “Bag lady, bag lady.”

  “How do you know about a ‘bag lady,’ Amelia?” I ask her sharply.

  “Shaysie told me.”

  Of course. Leave it to my sister.

  At our front door, Lieutenant Culver puts his hand atop Amelia’s head for a moment and ruffles her hair.

  “Now you keep a sharp eye open,” he says to me. “You got that card I gave you with my number? Anyway, here’s another. You call me if anything seems out of the ordinary to you. Okay?”

  He turns back toward the sidewalk.

  “Hey! What about my car?”

  He stops and turns around, laughing.

  “Call the Motor Vehicle Department. They’ll tell you where to pick it up. It’s probably out on Bladensburg Road Northeast.”

  Then he’s gone.

  I park Amelia in front of the television set in the den and then I sit in the kitchen while I read the Fawn Hall document.

  She’s a ballsy little dame, Fawn. It sounds as if she views herself the way Shay does: outside and above the law. She doesn’t sound particularly contrite and she certainly doesn’t sound worried that her coke use might be a breach of government security. Having access to top-secret documents doesn’t mean she can’t date contras or do blow in Georgetown. Raked by my own outrage, I get Shay’s hotel number from Atlanta information and then call her room. She answers in a husky, whiskey, having-sex kind of voice.

  “Shay! The police found my car. They called right after you left. Everything was gone except the papers They were spilled all over the backseat. Whoever stole the car couldn’t have cared less about the papers; they just wanted your luggage and computer and shit.”

  A squelched silence.

  “So then this detective came over here because he’d read the papers and was real interested in investigating the drug dealers Fawn Hall mentioned and also your friend Mr. Russo. Actually, he guessed you’d taken the papers from Jerry Russo. Anyway, he returned them to me and I just finished reading them. They’re really wild, Shay. You’ve got to get this story out right away. Before the convention’s over. They’re really incriminating. You were right. This’ll blow the Republicans right out of the water. Bush can forget the whole thing. The Reagan administration has dirty hands up to the elbows. There’s been a real big cover-up here, and it could cause a big splash.”

  Shay’s voice sounds very distant. “Listen, Nat. Things have changed a little. Mickey and I’ve talked to some of Dukakis’s top people and they’re not interested in any explosive news stories coming out right now. The Duke wants to keep his campaign pretty neutral.”

  The Duke?

  “He just wants to focus on his administrative ability. He wants to rest on his good-Massachusetts-government laurels. Nothing explosive. So I’ve decided to let the whole thing drop. At least for a while. I’ll just hold on to it and wait for a better time.”

  “Shay! That’s insane. There won’t ever be a better time than right now.”

  “Listen, Nat, I’ve got to get ready to go back over to the Omni. Tom Hayden’s having a book party for Reunion. Is Amelia doing okay?”

  “Yes. But look, Shay. If you don’t want to write the story, can Eli do it? He could use a boost like that right now. And, of course, he’d put a totally different slant on things. He’ll—”

  “No way, Nat. Just forget it. I mean it. Don’t mess around. Now I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks a million. Ciao.”

  Ciao?

  No one in North America has used that expression in the last twenty years. It’s as passé as thin gold chains.

  Shay’s starting to slip a little.

  7

  Around eight o’clock that evening, while I am bathing Amelia in my bathroom, I hear the sound of glass shattering.

  A scream flies up into my throat but I trap it there. It flutters inside my neck like a warm-breasted bird, pulsing vibrations toward my temples. As an older sister, I was trained to take charge, to trade fun for authority, to offer leadership during crises. Now my first concern is that Amelia not be frightened.

  But what could have happened? Did a picture drop off a wall? A window fall shut and break? A burglar smash some pane to gain entry after dark?

  I lock the bathroom door and find some empty plastic bottles beneath the sink to convert into toys for Amelia. When ten minutes pass without any further noise, I take her out of the tub, put on her shorty pajamas and lead her out into the hallway.

  I am ready to sense the presence of an intruder in my home.

  But the house feels empty to me.

  Safe.

  We walk down the hallway and I kick open the door to my bedroom. That’s when I first smell the smoke. The white muslin curtains on the windows beside my bed are burned. One panel hangs like a dehydrated tongue, scorched and blackened along the edges. Another has inexplicably been trimmed short and hemmed in brown lace. There are burn holes in three of my four curtains.

  I do not understand.

  How could my curtains catch on fire? What would make them burn?

  “Auntie Nattie, I’m afraid,” Amelia whimpers.

  There are holes in the windowpanes.

  There is broken glass on the sills.

  There are also small hills of white powder on my carpet in the center of the room. I don’t know what they are. Flour, sugar, salt? Cocaine? I don’t understand how the powder got there when my carpet had been clean.

  Amelia and I remain standing in the bedroom doorw
ay as if seeking shelter during an earthquake. She slides the soft petals of her fingers into my hand. Then I feel them curl into a fearful fist of emotions.

  “Everything’s okay, honey,” I lie.

  Without thinking, I lift my eyes toward the ceiling. And that’s when I see the holes. Three deep round holes in my clean white ceiling.

  Suddenly I understand.

  The piles of white powder on my carpet are plaster dust. Something smashed through my windows and set my curtains on fire. Someone shot bullets through my windows. They set the curtains on fire before smashing up into the ceiling, leaving behind charred fabric, broken glass and plaster dust on the carpet.

  I press Amelia gently back into the hallway.

  Alone I would be hysterical, but being responsible for Amelia keeps me calm. I take her down the back staircase to the kitchen. It is beginning to get dark but I don’t turn on the lights. Instead I stand against the wall and dial information to get the number of the Third Precinct. Then I ask the switchboard operator for Lieutenant Culver before I remember he went off duty.

  But he’s there.

  He answers his extension. I tell him about the bullet holes and he says he’ll be right over. Then I sit down at the kitchen table and hold Amelia on my lap while I place a call to the Atlanta Omni. Eli isn’t in his room; I leave a message for him to call me. I telephone Barney. He says he’ll be right over. While we wait, I tell Amelia a story. I tell her “Snow White and Rose Red,” the first fairy tale that floats into my head.

  In less than ten minutes, Lieutenant Culver appears at my front door with a uniformed policeman. I unlock the safety bolt and they both come inside. Without speaking, Lieutenant Culver runs upstairs and I hear him walking around in my bedroom. After a while I hear the sounds of furniture being moved and then some pounding noises. When he comes back downstairs, he is holding two bullets, rolling them around like dice on the pale palm of his hand.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “You were right. Someone fired into your bedroom with a semiautomatic.”

  The other policeman goes upstairs. Lieutenant Culver, Amelia and I remain standing in the hallway.