A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  Man at the desk, pinched face, like someone gave him a good smack just five minutes before. Superior tone of voice - ‘Can I help you, Miss?’

  ‘Looking for someone . . . called earlier, was told I was gonna get a call back. Haven’t heard nothin’.’

  ‘And who was it that you spoke to, Miss—?’

  ‘Joyce. Name’s Natasha Joyce. Didn’t take the name of the woman I was dealing with, but she was in the records department.’

  The man smiled understandingly. ‘I think at the last count we had something in the region of two hundred and forty people working in the records department, Miss Joyce. Perhaps if you can give me a few details relating to your inquiry I might be able to check it on our system.’

  ‘Was after someone named Darryl King. Died back in October 2001. Reason I’m checking up on it here is that he was found by the police back then. They came and told me he was dead. Wanted to find out who found him, you know? Wanted to find out what happened.’

  The man seemed puzzled, opened his mouth as if to ask a question and then decided against it. He tapped on the keyboard, he waited, he shook his head and tapped some more.

  He smiled as if now pleased with himself.

  ‘Your call at eight forty-eight this morning, yes. Call was taken by operator number five . . . and here we have it, yes. Darryl Eric King. A note on the system to say that there were no records here, and it seems that operator five has forwarded a request to our I.T. department—’

  ‘I know all that,’ Natasha said impatiently. ‘That was more than two hours ago. She said she was gonna call me back. She hasn’t called me back. That’s why I’m here.’

  The man smiled sympathetically. Expression on his face was one of patience, like now he was dealing with a child, a young child, perhaps a child slightly backward for their age. Everything slowly, everything twice. ‘Miss Joyce,’ he said. He took his hands from the keyboard, placed them together like prayer time. ‘Sometimes it takes a little time to sort these things out. These records are very old—’

  ‘Woman I spoke to said they shoot them on over here electronically. They’re here in a flash, a second or two, that’s what she said. She didn’t say nothin’ about records being old . . . like they’re old and they gotta walk over here by theirselves or something. That what you’re saying?’ Her tone of voice was indignant, irritable. White man, pinched face; looked like he was going to get another slap before the day was out. ‘What I’m asking can’t be that hard, now can it?’ She shook her head from side to side. She was ready to start wagging her finger at the little white man. You tell me what I want to hear, little man, or yo’ gon’ get a faceful of thunder and no sunshine. Hands on her hips maybe. Enough now. Four hundred years of oppression stops right here and now motherfucker.

  ‘Miss Joyce. I understand your position completely—’

  She was wound up good, and then some besides. ‘Understand? Understand what? What you understand and what I understand ain’t even in the same fuckin’ street, Mister—’

  ‘Miss Joyce.’ His voice was stern now. Now he was upset, started to rise from his chair. ‘There is absolutely no need for this kind of language. If you don’t behave in a civil manner I’m going to have to call security and have you ejected from the building . . . and believe me, Miss Joyce, you do not intimidate me in any way, shape or form. I am trying my best to assist you with your enquiry, and I have not treated you with disrespect or—’

  Natasha Joyce backed up and lowered her head. ‘I apologize, ’ she said. She knew she was going to get nowhere fast if she blasted the poor white son-of-a-bitch. ‘I’m a little upset, sir,’ she said. ‘I’m a little upset, and there have been recent events that have reminded me of things that I believed I could forget, and all I’m trying to do is get some help here . . .’ She took a Kleenex from her pocket. She had the little-girl-lost thing going on, the half smile, the pitiful expression. Whatever it took, right?

  The pinched-face white asshole smiled. He raised his hands in a conciliatory fashion. All water under the bridge, he was thinking. We’re starting over again. We’re backing up, rewinding this little piece of our lives, and starting all over, okay?

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Apology accepted. We are going to do what we can to help you, Miss Joyce, but you have to understand that sometimes these things take a little more time than we want. You have to appreciate our position here, dealing with the records for countless police precincts and however many thousands of officers, active, retired, even deceased . . .’ His voice trailed away. Tapping the keyboard. Reading the screen, nodding.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said, and he smiled, and rose from his chair.

  He was gone for no more than a handful of minutes. Natasha waited patiently, and when he returned he was not alone.

  Amanda called as they drove toward forensics.

  ‘Yes, of course I did,’ Al Roth was telling her. ‘I’ll speak to you when I get back tonight . . . yes, sweetheart, of course. I love you too.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Miller asked.

  Roth shook his head, put his cell away. ‘Left here,’ he said. ‘First right at the end, it’s faster.’

  Miller followed Roth’s directions, pulled up fifty yards or so from the Forensics Division building.

  Once inside they identified themselves. The receptionist seemed to have been expecting them.

  ‘From Greg Reid,’ the guy said, and slid an unmarked envelope across the counter. ‘He’s not here. He’s out on something else. He said you’d have something for him?’

  Miller nodded, handed over the plastic baggie with the newspaper clipping inside.

  ‘You see him, you tell him thanks,’ Miller said, and he and Roth left the building and returned to the car.

  Reid had copied the photographs, all three of them, and put them through some digital process that made them clearer than the originals.

  ‘He look like a serial killer to you?’ Roth asked as he squinted at the man’s face.

  Miller smiled. ‘What the fuck does a serial killer look like?’

  Roth handed the picture back to Miller and started the car. ‘Christ almighty knows,’ he said. ‘Anyway, Columbia Street is next.’

  It was just before ten by the time they reached Catherine Sheridan’s house. Roth pulled up at the curb, turned off the ignition, and the pair of them were silent for a moment. The engine clicked as it cooled.

  ‘We’re waiting for what exactly?’ Roth asked.

  ‘She walked back down this way,’ Miller said. ‘Three days ago.’ He closed his eyes, frowning tightly, deep furrows in his brow. ‘I want to know where the hell she went between the delicatessen and here.’

  ‘We could do a news thing,’ Roth suggested. ‘Ask Washington if they saw her.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Lassiter has maybe another two days, maybe ’til the end of the week, and then the chief will want a task force. They don’t want it on the news, believe me. Hell, you know the way these things go.’

  Roth was silent. He knew when to say nothing.

  ‘What did she do between leaving the deli and arriving home? Was he already in the house by the time she returned? Did she put the DVD on and then he came up behind her?’ Miller turned to look at Roth. ‘I thought about that . . . about what I do when someone comes to visit, or when the phone rings and I’m in the middle of watching a movie . . .’

  ‘You pause it, right?’

  Miller nodded. ‘Right. And she didn’t pause the movie, and what that tells me is that she was watching it and this guy was already in the house, or the other thing . . .’

  ‘That he did her and then he put it on.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That’d be fucking weird.’

  ‘I agree,’ Miller said. ‘That would be very fucking weird.’

  ‘So we’re going back in the house?’ Roth asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Miller replied. He reached for the door lever. ‘And we don’t come out until we know who the fuck Catherine Sherida
n really was.’

  I wonder what my father would have said had he known what would become of me. Minnesota gets a Muslim Congressman, connected to Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam.

  Officials in Virginia told ABC News that the FBI were investigating claims of voter intimidation.

  And only last week, November 7th, the most beautiful irony of all. A former Marxist revolutionary, a man I knew all too well for too many years, wins back the presidency. The current U.S. administration issued veiled threats that they would impose punitive measures.

  November of 1980, Reagan and Bush won the election. The war went on for another four years, the Americans busily selling arms to the Iranians and then using the money to support it. The second poorest Western Hemisphere nation, right there behind Haiti, and Reagan wanted so much to hold it against the communist infiltration he believed would make its way up through Honduras, Guatemala and right into Mexico. Gautemala. Hell, we were there too. Still are there, interfering and bullshitting everyone. Five thousand unlawful killings a year.

  It’s all a thin line. A thin line from Mexico to Colombia through the Panama Canal. The coke. The heroin. The guns. The money. Jesus, what were we thinking? Communist infiltration through the South American pipelines. How many years was I down there? How many real communists did I find?

  Such bittersweet irony. Could almost be funny if it wasn’t for the number of people who died.

  And now Bush Junior is watching the empire fall apart.

  June of ’86 the United States was found guilty of violating international law by supporting the rebels. The International Court of Justice ruling stated that the U.S. should pay compensation but Reagan boycotted the whole thing and ignored the verdict.

  ‘You are in breach of your obligations under customary international law not to use force against another state, not to intervene in its affairs, not to violate its sovereignty and not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce.’

  That’s what the International Court said.

  ‘You have been found guilty of training, arming and funding paramilitary forces, including laying mines in foreign waters . . .’

  ‘Fuck you, your mommy, your daddy too . . . and fuck the horse you rode in on,’ said Reagan.

  Through 1987 and ’88 we sat on our thumbs while they held talks, and then finally a peace agreement was signed.

  Six years later we pulled another mighty stunt. A U.S.-backed rebellion fronted by the National Opposition Union forced the government out again. We persisted with our refusal to pay compensation for the damage we had done, and in 1991 the National Opposition Union, a government we had put in power by force, announced that the proceedings for American compensation would be dropped.

  And now the prodigal son has returned. Tough bastard, I’ll give him that much. Using Congressional immunity to avoid the rape allegations from his stepdaughter, and he takes the president’s seat yet again.

  Venezuela is busting its sides with laughter. What did Chavez say? ‘We will unite as never before to construct a socialist future. Latin America is ceasing to be - and forever - a backyard of U.S. imperialism. Yankee, go home!’

  Bush’s administration calls the election ‘transparent’.

  I say ‘Hey George Dubya . . . remember Florida?’

  So now we’re in Washington again, and the Democrats have regained control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994.

  Four days ago the U.S. administration conceded defeat in the mid-terms. They even lost Virginia, staunch Republican strong-hold that it once was. Out came the non-denial denials, the non-affirmative affirmations, but whichever way you look at it it seems they are now experiencing their own ‘extraordinary rendition.’

  Watergate . . . hell, that was nothing.

  The ramifications head further south than you can even imagine.

  Rumsfeld retires. Jesus, the guy is seventy-four years of age. Bush says we need a fresh perspective in Iraq, so who do they wheel out? Robert M. Gates, Bush Snr’s CIA director. For God’s sake, Gates was CIA director from 1991 to 1993. He held the position of Deputy Director for Central Intelligence under William Casey. CIA director before that from ’86 to ’89. What goes around comes around. Seems that way.

  Oh fuck, I hear someone saying. We’re gonna get our asses kicked for the next two years.

  Oh I don’t think so . . . way these people work they’ll have something all figured out by the end of next week. Just you wait and see, friends, just you wait and see.

  I watch these things unfold and I am struck by the utter insanity of what we are doing with our country, with our lives. I think of the countries we’ve bombed since the end of the Second World War. I can list them right now. China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, the Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq, the Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. And those are the ones we told you about.

  And we were there alongside every single one, in the underground, the preliminary expeditions, the aftermath. I saw a couple of them, and a couple of them were quite enough for me. For Catherine too. We were there - fulfilling our role, doing our duty, due representation of the Chief Executive of the Federal Government, the Administrative Head of the Executive Department, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Like they say . . . you know what the CIA is doing, then you know what the president wants done.

  We held court for far too long. I know what happened there. I also know what happened in Afghanistan, in Colombia, in too many places to name.

  And the shit I’ve seen? The things I know about . . . ?

  We have to pay for what we did.

  But believe me, this time, some other people are going to pay too.

  Sometimes I can’t even bear to think about it.

  I wonder what my father would have thought had he lived.

  But he didn’t. He died. And maybe a little of me died with him.

  THIRTEEN

  It was only later - an hour, perhaps two - that Natasha Joyce felt a sense of disquiet and unease. Insidious, almost intangible, it was not what had been said, not what she’d been asked, but the way it had been asked.

  The Police Department Administrations Unit receptionist had returned with a white woman - smartly dressed, late forties, her manner sympathetic, understanding. She’d shown Natasha to a private office. Natasha followed her, asked no questions, and once inside the plain and undecorated room they sat in silence for a moment. Natasha felt she was being observed, examined, and then the woman laid a thin manila file on the desk, a number of sheets of lined paper, a pen.

  ‘My name is Frances Gray,’ the woman said. ‘I work for the Washington Police Department’s public liaison office. Our function here is to act as a bridge between the public and the people who manage police affairs.’ Ms Gray smiled. ‘Do you have any questions before we start?’

  ‘Start what?’ Natasha asked.

  ‘The interview.’

  ‘Interview?’

  ‘About your request this morning.’

  ‘You’re dealing with that now?’

  Frances Gray nodded. ‘I am.’

  Natasha leaned back, folded her arms across her chest. ‘Well, I do have one question Ms Gray—’

  ‘Call me Frances. This isn’t a formal interview.’

  ‘Frances? Okay, if that’s what you want. So . . . so my question is this. How come I all of a sudden get a private office and a person like you when all I’ve made is one phone call?’

  ‘Standard procedure in such a case, Ms Joyce.’

  ‘You’re telling me this is standard procedure for anyone who asks a question about someone who died?’

  ‘No, of course not . . . not for anyone who inquires about a regular death—’ Frances Gray caught herself, laughed a little stiffly. ‘That sounds so cold, so unsympathetic,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to sound so unfeeling, but the death of your fiancé—’

  ‘I didn’t tell you he was my fiancé,’ Natasha int
erjected.

  ‘No, you didn’t, but you did mention it to one of the staff at the public records office when you called them yesterday.’

  ‘I did?’ Natasha asked.

  Frances smiled. ‘Yes . . . you called that office yesterday, and apparently they told you that all records were archived after five years, and that you should perhaps try here.’

  ‘You have that conversation on record?’

  ‘Yes, we do. We like to consider ourselves efficient when it comes to dealing with important requests.’

  Natasha shook her head. ‘This don’t make sense, Frances . . . this sure as shit don’t make no sense to me.’

  Frances frowned, tilted her head to one side. ‘Doesn’t make sense? What doesn’t make sense, Natasha?’

  ‘That you people would go to all this trouble over someone like Darryl. I mean, for God’s sake, he might have been the father of my girl, but he wasn’t anyone important. Hell, he was nothing more than a two-bit bullshit thief and a heroin addict.’

  Frances was silent for quite some time, and then she shook her head slowly. ‘You were not told anything, were you?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Told what?’ Natasha asked. ‘About what?’

  ‘About Darryl King . . . about what happened when he died?’

  ‘Jesus, there can’t be that much to know can there? He got himself shot. Some cop found him, that’s what I heard. I wanted to see if the cop was still around so I could ask him what happened.’

  Frances was nodding slowly. ‘Okay . . . okay Natasha. And could I ask you why, after all these years, you wanted to find out what happened?’

  ‘For my daughter,’ Natasha said. ‘I have a nine-year-old daughter. Name is Chloe. I started to figure I should know something about what happened. Wanted to find out if there was anything more than what I heard. She’s getting older, she’s gonna start asking questions, and one time she’s gonna ask about who he was and what happened to him, and to tell you the truth . . .’ Natasha paused and smiled. ‘Tell you the truth, Frances, I ain’t such a good liar when it comes to kids, you know?’