The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  And this the quarterback did.

  As he flung himself across the goal line, he was slammed by the linebacker. Both men flew into the air, rolling violently into a crowd of photographers assembled on the goal line for pictures. The cameramen dashed out of the way like scurrying geese, trying to avoid the flying bodies. The crowd roared, for the umpire had flung his hands skyward, signaling touchdown, and Detective Barren leaned back, not thinking, just letting the idea of victory fill her.

  The announcers were babbling excitedly.

  “That was some collision on the goal line, right, Bob?”

  “Well, I think that was a gutsy call by the rookie quarterback and a tough way to learn about life in the National Football League. He took an all-pro shot.”

  “I hope those photographers are all right . . .”

  “Well, I suspect that linebacker for the Saints probably ate a couple of them . . .”

  Both men laughed, then paused.

  “Tell you what, let’s go down to Chuck on the field. He’s with a couple of photographers now. They had a real close-up view of the touchdown, didn’t they, Chuck?”

  “That’s right, Ted. I’m standing here with Pete Cross and Tim Chapman of the Miami Herald and Kathy Willens of the Associated Press. Tell us what you saw, guys . . .”

  “Well,” said one of the photographers, a sandy-haired man with a beard, “we were all lined up to get the over-the-top shot, you know. And the next thing we see . . .”

  The young woman interrupted. “. . . The next thing we see is these two fire-breathing players heading our way, and . . .”

  “I had to grab Kathy,” said the other, a curly-haired, barrel-chested man. “She was shooting with the motordrive and I thought they were going to run her over . . .”

  “It can be pretty dangerous down here on the sidelines, huh?” asked the announcer.

  “No worse than covering your average war or revolution,” said the young woman.

  The television picture held then, close-up on the three photographers. Detective Barren was listening idly, wondering whether she had ever met any of the cameramen on any of the crimes she had been assigned to.

  And then she sat up sharply.

  “Oh, God!” she said abruptly.

  She fell to her knees in front of the television.

  “Oh, God! My God!”

  “That’s the story from the sidelines. Back to you, Ted . . .” said the announcer.

  “Hold it!” screamed Detective Barren. “Stop!”

  She clawed at the sides of the television set.

  “No! Stop! I need to see!”

  The announcers were continuing to talk and the teams were lining up for the extra point. Detective Barren was unaware of the crowd’s cheer as the kick sliced through the uprights. She shook the television set and cried, “No, no, no! Go back, go back!”

  And then she slumped back and thought of what she’d seen.

  Three photographers standing in front of a camera.

  A slight gust of wind. Just enough to ruffle the hair.

  Or to make their press credentials flap around their necks.

  A wide, thick, yellow paper tag with the words official press field pass embossed on it.

  Detective Barren scrambled in panic across the floor to her desk. She pawed in desperation at the papers, speeding through her files of evidence until she came to the list of items discovered at the scene of her niece’s murder. There were thirty-three items that had been identified, isolated, and seized by the crime-scene technicians. But it was only the last that she was interested in.

  “. . . Tag end paper color yellow origin unknown (under body).”

  “Yes,” she said out loud. “I think so.”

  She gasped in air.

  “Yes,” she said.

  She sat down hard on the floor and rocked, holding the paper list in her hands not unlike a woman holding a baby, remembering the piece of paper she’d inspected months earlier.

  “I think so,” she said.

  In the morning she went to the dirty property office warehouse in downtown Miami. The clerk was reluctant to battle the stacks of boxes gathering dust in the cavernous interior. An angry man, unpleasant, scowling from the moment Detective Barren walked through the door, he first demanded a court order, then a letter from some superior officer. He finally settled for a handwritten authorization by Detective Barren, who kept smiling and acting nonchalantly throughout the man’s wheedling complaints. The clerk was a wide man, with the no-neck appearance of a person who spent his free time grunting in a weight room. His shirtsleeves were pushed up high on his arms, revealing a pair of elaborate dragon tattoos, and when he wielded a piece of pencil, snatched from behind his ear, she thought he would break it with the strength in his stubby fingers. She trailed after the clerk, trying not to anticipate, not to prejudge, but with her heart racing and a growing stickiness beneath her arms.

  It took nearly an hour to find the right cardboard containers.

  “Closed fucking cases, lady,” the clerk complained. “Closed fucking cases means sealed fucking boxes. I don’t have to do this, you know.”

  “I know, I know. Officer, I realize this is a special request. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your cooperation.”

  “Just so you knows I don’t have to be doing this,” he insisted.

  “I understand,” she replied.

  All the boxes were coded with a simple numerical procession. The first digits represented the year the crime was committed, followed by the case number assigned by the various investigative squads. Robberies, burglaries, rapes, homicides, and other crimes were mingled together in a lazy, haphazard fashion that represented more the distinction of being a closed case than by any design. She ran her eyes up and down the stacks, thinking that if she opened any one, some tragedy would fall out, followed by someone’s heartbreak or someone’s terror.

  “Jesus, I knew it. It’s at the fucking top. I’ll go get the fucking ladder.”

  She waited motionless while he retrieved the box.

  “Now, you gotta sign this if you’re gonna open it . . .” He thrust a preprinted form at her, which she signed without reading. He checked her signature and looked up. “I’m supposed to watch, even with the closed fucking cases. But screw it. You want something in there? Hey, have at it.”

  The clerk stomped away, his belligerence and frustration intact and as mysterious to Detective Barren as it was when she first entered the warehouse. She stared down at the box of evidence. Taped to the top was a disposition sheet listing the items inside and stating the fact of Sadegh Rhotzbadegh’s guilty plea and life sentence. There was a large red stamped sign at the top of the sheet of paper: closed/cleared.

  We’ll see, she thought.

  She used the penknife from her purse to slit open the tape that held the box together, and, gingerly, as if trying to not disturb the dust collected there, opened the top. She refused to allow herself any excitement, thinking: This is just the first step.

  She reached in swiftly and retrieved the yellow tag. It was encased in a plastic cover. As she slid it into her pocketbook, she noted the residue of dust on its surface from fingerprint work. Picking at straws, she thought: Fingerprints rarely come up on paper. She glanced at the box, wondering if there was something else she should steal, then shaking her head and shutting the cardboard flaps.

  She breezed past the surly clerk. “Thanks for your help. If I need anything else I’ll be back.”

  “Sure,” he said in a voice that implied the opposite.

  The late-morning sun caught her as she exited the warehouse. She was not allowing herself to think, to imagine, to process information. One step, two, she said to herself. For a single moment, she felt as if she were winning. She did not think of her niece,
then, did not associate the dusty box or the plasticene-covered yellow paper with the memory of the crime scene. Instead her eyes picked out the distant flow of traffic on the expressway. The sunlight glinted off the steel bodies, making it seem like each glowing car was somehow blessed. The movement of the vehicles darting in and out caught her, and she was wrapped in thoughts about commerce and life and progress. Her eyes traveled upward and she fixed on a large, solitary blackbird, flapping purposefully against the morning breeze. She watched the bird’s determination outlined against the perfect blue of the tropical sky. The bird brayed raucously once, then seemed to put its beak into the wind and steadily, surely, beat its way across the sky. Detective Barren had smiled and then she walked swiftly to her car to join the flow of people and head downtown.

  At the Miami Dolphins team offices on Biscayne Boulevard a secretary made Detective Barren wait. “You’re really lucky that Mr. Stark can make time for you,” the secretary said. She was a young woman, equipped with the essential prettiness that all receptionists seem required to have: a breezy smile, a soft voice, and slightly teasing look.

  “Why is that?”

  “Didn’t you read the papers?” the young woman asked.

  “Not this morning.”

  “Oh. You didn’t hear about the new contract?”

  As Detective Barren shook her head, she overheard a loud blare of laughter from one of the offices.

  “That’s the press conference,” the receptionist said.

  “Can I see?” she asked.

  The secretary hesitated. She looked around quickly. No one else was in sight. “Are you a fan?”

  Detective Barren smiled. “Never miss a game.”

  The woman grinned. “Come on, then. We’ll just poke our heads in the back.”

  Detective Barren followed the swishing skirt of the receptionist inside. The young woman gingerly opened an office door and the two women slipped through the crack. Detective Barren recognized the scene instantly, from a hundred sportscasts watched late at night when sleep was elusive. A half-dozen television cameras, mounted on tripods, dominated the center of the room. They had been placed in front of a table, which was raised up on a small dais. Newspaper and television reporters were scattered about; some in chairs, some lounging against the wall, scribbling in notebooks. Sound men and still photographers crept beneath the level of the television cameras. At the table, talking into a stalk of microphones, were the famous jut-jawed coach, the owner, and the tall, curly-headed quarterback. They were all smiling. Occasionally they all shook hands together, and this would prompt a flurry of pictures, all the camera motordrives whirring at once. Detective Barren was instantly mesmerized. She felt like a child who captures Santa Claus in the act of placing presents around the tree. “He’s bigger than I thought,” she whispered in girlish, awestruck tones to the receptionist. “And better-looking.”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “And richer, too. He’s going to get more than a million a year.”

  The young woman was quiet a moment. Then she glumly added, “And wouldn’t you know he had to go and marry his college sweetheart, too.”

  This was said with such undisguised jealousy and sudden pout that Detective Barren almost burst out laughing. She turned back and watched the figures on the dais. Someone had made a joke and the three men were laughing. This caused another photographic explosion. The motordrives whirred again. In that instant the sound seemed to invade her heart. My God! she thought, looking about her wildly. He might be here. For a panicked instant she reached for her purse to seize the gun installed there. She stopped herself, just as her fingers wrapped around the cold handle. But who?

  Her eyes cast desperately about.

  She saw a muscular, bearded man fiddling with a wide lens. She stared at his large hands, seeing them suddenly wrapped about her niece’s neck; she turned away, fixing on a thickset, balding fellow who was making wisecracks between shots. There was a special hardness about the corners of his mouth that chilled her. Another man, thin, blond, young, almost ascetic-looking, hovered into her line of sight. He seemed almost delicate, then craven, and she saw him mingling freely with the crowds at the student union, his beady eyes picking out her niece’s blond hair.

  She closed her eyes tightly, trying to dispel the vision. The noise of the press conference seemed to gain in volume about her; the laughter and gibes filling her head, as if mocking her feelings, her pursuit. She felt dizzy and wondered if she would be sick.

  There was a whisper, then, at her side.

  “Detective Barren?”

  She opened her eyes. A short man in a seersucker sportscoat hung next to her. She nodded.

  “Mike Stark here. I’m the guy in charge of this zoo . . .”

  He laughed and she gathered herself with a great internal effort and joined him. He looked back at the crowd, then past to the figures washed by the spotlights from the cameras. “So what d’you think?”

  She took a deep breath and forced her nightmare thoughts back into oblivion. She constructed a smile.

  “I think a million bucks per year is a lot of money.”

  “He’s a helluva ballplayer.”

  “He sure is . . .”

  Stark hesitated. Then he clasped his hands before him as if in supplication.

  “You’re right. A helluva lot of money for a guy with two bum knees. I hope that whatever God there is that looks after football players is paying close attention.” He rolled his eyes skyward. “Hey, are you listening up there?”

  Detective Barren’s smile was genuine.

  “He doesn’t pass with his knees,” she said.

  “For what we’re paying him, he ought to be able to,” Stark replied.

  Their laughter mingled with the general sounds of the room.

  The little man looked around. “I’ll wrap this up. Thank God we signed this guy in August, before the season really got under way. I hate to think what he’d be worth if he had another season like the last. Why don’t you wait in my office?”

  Detective Barren nodded.

  She was staring out the large glass window, watching powerboats beat white-plumed wakes on the bay, when Stark entered. He took his seat behind his desk and she sat in an armchair across from him. “So?” he asked.

  She fished out the tag from her pocketbook. For an instant she held it out of his sight, wondering whether she was taking the right approach. Then, wordlessly, she dropped it on the desk in front of him. She saw his brows furrow quizzically for a moment as he picked up the bag and turned it over slowly.

  He put it back down.

  “I’m sorry . . .” he said, then stopped.

  She thought: The silence hurts. It was like being twisted by some great invisible machine.

  He picked up the plasticene bag again and her heart seemed to jump within her.

  “Well, maybe,” he said. He put it down and wheeled about to rummage in a file cabinet. After a moment he came out with a folder. He opened the folder on his desk and Detective Barren saw a small pile of yellow field-passes. “Last year’s model,” Stark said. “This year we’ve printed them in aqua and orange, the team colors, for the home opener.” He held one of the tags against the sample in the plasticene.

  “Could be,” he said. “A definite maybe.”

  Detective Barren looked at the two slips of paper. They were the same width.

  “Right color,” Stark continued. He felt through the plastic. “Feels like the right thickness, too. Can’t say for sure,” he said. “But a real possibility.”

  He hesitated, then looked at Detective Barren.

  “Why?”

  She hesitated. Why not? she thought.

  “Murder,” she replied.

  He let out some breath in a long whistle. He looked back down at the two papers.

 
“1 guess it was bound to happen,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well we live in Miami, right? This is murder USA, right? I guess everybody rubs against a murder in Miami at some time or another, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well,” he said, “that sure could be what’s left from one of our field-pass tags. It could be almost anything else, too, for that matter. I mean, what do I know?”

  “Do you know who prints those for you?”

  “Sure. That’s easy. Biscayne Printing up at Sixty-eighth Street. They can tell you in a minute whether that’s theirs.”

  So can forensics, she thought quickly.

  “And have you got a list of people that they were issued to?”

  “Yep. Which game?”

  “Last September eighth.”

  “Got it right here.” He swiveled to the file cabinet, dug about again, and emerged with another file. She wanted to snatch it out of his hands, but held back. “Actually, the game was on the ninth. The eighth was the Saturday before.”

  An idea struck her. She felt her throat quiver. It was very dry and she had to cough before asking the next question. She felt dizzy again.

  “Did anyone request two passes? I mean, did anyone call and ask for an extra because they lost one?”

  Stark looked surprised, then nodded. “I get you,” he said. He looked down at the folder. “The NFL requires us to keep strict lists of who’s shooting the games. Security reasons, partly. But mostly they like to control the photographers, control the publicity. Sometimes I think I’m working for Big Brother.” He picked out a typewritten sheet. “There were a lot of passes for that game,” he said. “Everybody wanted pictures of the stud who just got the big contract today. He was a rookie, and nobody had good art.”

  “Good art?”

  “That’s what they call it. God knows why. A good picture is good art. Rembrandt would turn over in his grave if he ever heard one of those animals say that.”