Capital City

by Lee Hurwitz

Watson felt his blood pressure rise. “If there was one thing wrong with it, it wasn’t perfect,” he said. There was silence. Finally Watson asked, “What was wrong with it?”

  “The only thing wrong was that part where Aaron the Moore kills the nurse. I don’t think he had to kill her.”

  “No?” Watson felt his insides sag.

  “No.” Hightower sounded eager, in high spirits, even. “I thought he could have made a deal with her. If I had written it, Aaron would have kidnapped the nurse, and held her for a while, and convinced her that it was in her interest to keep his secret. He would have offered her a contract, see, a contract with the Roman Empire, which would have earned her millions and cost him nothing. And she would have been an ally.”

  “Interesting,” Watson said. There was a part of him that knew from the start he shouldn’t have trusted these amateurs, that he should have turned it over to his wet work boys, and now it will never be right until much, much blood had been shed. Aloud he said, “Titus Andronicus by Aloysius Hightower.”

  “And I can guarantee that she would never, never reveal his secret.”

  “Okay, Hightower, cut the crap,” the Mayor said. “We’re on a secure line. You have the girl?”

  Hightower hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Conyers, Georgia. In something called the Abelman Motor Inn. Listen, if we can get this done I can just fly into Dulles from Atlanta…”

  “That’s not a good idea, Hightower. You see today’s Tattler?”

  There was a half-second pause. “No. Why?”

  Watson had one on his desk. “There’s a beautiful picture of you in it. With your close personal friend Jimmy Ray Mallory. On the front page. Above the fold, I might add.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “In the picture, you appear to be slow-dancing with a very large man. Is there something about you I don’t know, Hightower?”

  “He was the bouncer.”

  “According to the Tattler, he was trying to take Mr. Mallory’s picture. They said that you were Mr. Mallory’s bodyguard and you were trying to keep him away. Is that true, Hightower? Have you taken on extra work?”

  “They got it all screwed up.”

  “And in the top left corner, Ms. Boone seems to be sprinting for the exits. I assume this picture was taken before you reached your understanding with her.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Mayor. I’ve got it all straightened out.”

  “The problem, Sergeant, is that several members of the local press corps have recognized you in the picture. They’re having a great deal of fun with it. And if you were to step off a plane with Miz Boone in tow, I have no doubt that there would be several follow-up stories. Normally I am not averse to a little publicity but I think…you understand where I’m going with this, don’t you?”

  “Mr. Mayor, I am so very, very sorry. I don’t have the words for this.”

  “That’s all right.” Watson was suddenly hit with a wave of nausea. He knew what he would have to do but he hated it. Hightower had been a good man. Watson wished he could just tell him to leave the girl alone and get out of there. Hell, the man had saved his life. But he had given his officer one chance and he knew now, beyond all doubt, that he was a loose cannon. Watson took a deep breath. “You did good,” he said. “I agree with your plan. Just sit tight. I’ll send somebody for you.”

  “Stay here in the Abelman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Mayor? Is something wrong?”

  “No.” Watson felt older and heavier, somehow. “Aloysius? You’re a good man. Thanks for all your help.”

  “Why, Mr. Mayor, that’s…” But Watson had already hung up.

  A bank of heavy clouds rolled in, shutting out the sunshine that had been flooding his office. The Mayor poured himself a short scotch, drank it down like medicine, and picked up the phone again. He knew what he had to do.

  Chapter 6

  Yvonne Brown called in sick on Wednesday and Thursday. She sat by the phone, waiting for any word that her friend was safe. For diversion, she worked on the season-ending script for Beat Cops of Miami. Having had the incredible good fortune of a network greenlight for an entire season in advance, Yvonne felt compelled to work on scripts even though she was too scared and confused to leave the apartment. She had been stubbornly editing the draft, and was now at the climactic scene, the climax of a season-long story-line in which Clyde Elmer, the show’s vague and confused hero, draws himself deeper and deeper into a matrix of rollicking psychosis. Now, he is about to confront an FBI Agent.

  CLYDE ELMER: I would be happy to debrief your superior officer, but in order to save time why don’t the three of us go into Director Session’s Office and…

  FBI AGENT: Step away from the car, sir.

  CLYDE ELMER: (Moving.) Why? Is something wrong with it?

  FBI AGENT: You have the right to remain silent…

  CLYDE ELMER: What? You’re arresting me? Why?

  FBI AGENT: Well, for starters, kidnapping, destruction of Federal Property, possession of an animal on the endangered species list…

  She put the manuscript down. Evelyn will call in for sure, she thought, buttering her toast and marmalade, waiting for Maltby’s call, and reading the Times. But Evelyn didn’t call. And when Yvonne called Detective Maltby, the Detective was always out.

  Yvonne began to pace. I feel like I’ve been placed on the endangered species list, she said to herself, and then felt a twinge of memory, as though she had already talked about endangered species with somebody…somebody important…

  With an FBI Agent.

  She saw the Agent in an instant—tall, well-built, looking like a…well, looking like a television actor. And he was saying something to Clyde Elmer.

  FBI AGENT: Well, for starters, kidnapping, destruction of Federal Property, possession of an animal on the endangered species list…

  FBI Agent. FBI Agents didn’t investigate every crime; they only investigated certain types of crimes. And what kind of crimes?

  Well, to start with, kidnapping, destruction of Federal Property, possession of an animal on the endangered species list…

  Kidnapping. The solution to everything appeared, jumped out at her, immediate, immaculate. She suddenly knew how she could find Evelyn and get help, good help, effective help, not Ford and Maltby and the Miami Police but real help.

  Evelyn had been kidnapped.

  She thought of calling the FBI, but she had had enough sitting by the phone, waiting for someone to call her back. She would state her case directly.

  Evelyn had come to Miami to hide. Yvonne would go to Washington to seek.

  She called her travel agent.

  P. Traum was watching television when the phone rang. He let it ring.

  No. P. Traum was watching television go by—click click click—when the phone rang, and he didn’t simply let it ring, but tensed his body in reaction to it. The phone was like a school bell, interrupting his most private thoughts, a summons, and if he didn’t answer it, that voice, that voice, would come on.

  “This is P. Traum,” said the voice, his voice, on the machine. He hated his voice, and he hated the words he had said, but he could not think of any others. “I am not answering the phone. So talk.”

  “Pick it up, you fruitcake. I know you’re there. Watching TV, likely.”

  It was that one from the DC Insane Disciples, Vasquez. P. Traum could find no clue on the television, so he picked it up.

  “P.,” he said.

  “You are a weird fucking dude. You ready to make some money?”

  Vasquez meant real money, P. knew. He was connected. It came from being in the Nation’s Capital, where they were really rich and really scared. Once Vasquez had given him a very complicated contract, middle six figures. The contract included cleanup so after P. was done he took the bodies and put them in an acid bath. Later he read that the wife of a US Senator had disappeared.

  “Vasquez?” he asked. “I wa
s trying to watch the election.”

  The phone was silent for a couple of seconds. “The election?” Vasquez said finally. “The election? The election was over a month ago, you nutball.”

  “I mean the Electoral College,” P. insisted. “That’s the real election.”

  “Well, I think Dana Carvey’s gonna win. Here’s what I’ve got. Three people in a motel room. Your usual fee, thirty-five apiece plus expenses, half up front. Say yes and I can have the up front part at your door in an hour.”

  P. felt cautious. “Who are they?” he asked.

  “Two cops and a woman. They’re holding her in the motel room, and they’re waiting for you. They think you’re going to escort them, see…”

  “Cops are extra.” P. said. “Two cops, twenty thousand extra.” Vasquez knew the rules. Doubtlessly he had charged the extra to the client and planned to pocket it himself. “Thirty-five times three, one oh five, plus twenty, one twenty five, plus expenses, half up front, deliver sixty two five to my door, 9:00 p.m., Central time.” It was seven forty-five but P. thought he would give Vasquez a little edge, a little extra time, so he wouldn’t feel so bad about the extra twenty thousand.

  “They’re not really cops,” Vasquez protested. “They’re more like security guards.”

  P. stood up. “Law enforcement personnel is always ten thousand extra,” he said, tonelessly. It was the risk, of course; in many states—including Louisiana, where he lived—killing a law officer, even a security guard, meant he could fry. “Sorry. That’s the rule.”

  Vasquez cursed, and P. stood up, looked around. He lived in a shack, the shack where he was born—one room, two hundred square feet, drafty and miserable. It was attached to a two million dollar mansion he had built from the revenues he earned in the business. The mansion had the indoor swimming pool and gym; the library and the conference room, the bedroom suite, but he seldom went in there, and then only to impress a client or, more often, a prime contractor—someone who the client had approached, in the hopes of using P. He would give Vasquez a discount, a good one, if he could tell him what TV channel was carrying the Electoral College vote. But of course he could not. He didn’t understand.

  “Okay.” Vasquez said suddenly. “I’ve just faxed the details.” And suddenly P. heard a little burp, and his fax machine, sitting next to the television, began to spin out pictures of Hightower, Hawkins, and Evelyn Boone.

  Chris Celeste eyed the woman carefully as he eased the sedan into the motel office’s parking space. He could not believe his good luck. He drew in his breath. This goddess, this ethereal angel, this sweet and innocent morsel. Ever since she had been named his partner he had wanted to fuck her brains out.

  “Wait here,” he said as he got out of the car. He left the motor running. After he got their room, he’d park the car behind the motel, where no one could see it.

  He would have liked to have had the time to go home, gotten changed, and driven to the motel in a civilian car. But then he would have had to explain what he was doing to his wife.

  He’d rather explain it to the motel clerk.

  “We need a room for a stakeout,” he said, without preliminaries, to the weasel-faced man in shirtsleeves behind the desk. A cop’s ingrained habit made him look at the nametag. Jeremy Williams, it said.

  “Fill out these forms,” weasel-face said, indifferently, handing Chris a sheaf of papers.

  Christ, forms for everything. “We’re, ah, on deep undercover.” He glanced at the rates tastefully displayed on a poster behind the counter, and fumbled with his wallet. Twenty, forty, fifty. “The five’s for you.”

  Jeremy looked at the young cop sweating through his uniform. Jeremy hated it when locals booked a room in the motel. His salary paid for his college, but if he wanted walking-around money he needed to refer people to one of the local churches for the annual Conyers Pilgrimage. This cop wasn’t going to any Pilgrimage. He was coming here to fuck.

  “Here’s your key. Room 131. Last unit to your left near where that car is parked. Check-out time tomorrow is eleven,” he added, unnecessarily.

  Chris drove his lissome partner to the end of the motel parking lot. “I’ll drop you here and drive around back,” he said. “Just so’s we don’t have to explain what the m.v. was doing at the Abelman for a half-hour mid-morning.”

  “Only a half-hour?” she said, smiling. God, he was going to enjoy this!

  In room 129, three people were not enjoying it at all.

  “We’re fucked,” Hawkins said, putting down his coffee as the police car rolled past their room.

  “Quiet. Let me think,” Hightower said. “How many uniforms?”

  “Two. One male and one female.”

  “Are they dressed?” Hightower asked.

  “Jesus, Hi.” Hawk looked back at him. “Of course they’re…”

  “Are they armed, you idiot?”

  Hawkins, confused, squinted. “I can’t tell,” he said. “They’re still in the car.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “They’re just sitting, talking. And—oh, now the female’s going inside and he’s driving back, away— he’s driving around back.”

  “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “Get out. Everybody. Don’t bother to pack anything. Just get the keys and let’s go.”

  “What about my stuff?” Evelyn asked. “What about those nice things you got me?” She had actually gotten rather attached to them.

  “Forget about them. I’ve got plenty more money.”

  “What about the guy the Mayor is sending for us, Hi? Shouldn’t we wait…?”

  Hightower grabbed Hawkins with a violence that surprised Evelyn. “Get your sorry ass out to the car,” he said between clenched teeth. “If we’re not out of here in five minutes, the Mayor’s man better be carrying bail money.”

  Evelyn gave a last, wistful look at her new clothes and then followed her kidnappers out to the car. She would have expected to have been overjoyed at the arrival of the police, but oddly, she was not.

  Traum slowed down on the outskirts of Conyers. The Escort couldn’t do eighty for more than an hour and a half or so, and the last thing he wanted to do was overheat the engine; have to pull over and waste twenty while the car cooled down.

  The Escort was a nod to popular culture. He hated the car but it made him inconspicuous, and inconspicuous was good when one is in the business of killing people. Was that an Escort or a Taurus we saw driving away a half-hour before they found the bodies? Or a Toyota? The guy driving it—I don’t know, medium height, medium build. Eyes? Blue or brown. Couldn’t say in particular what he was wearing. P. Traum had it all down, except for the voice. He couldn’t get his voice to sound inconspicuous. God knows he had tried. But the more he tried the more conspicuous he became. He had bled every single sound he made of any possible regionalism, every conceivable identifying characteristic, and now he sounded…weird.

  He drove more than six hundred miles, from Shreveport north and east. He saw the sign for Conyers before he realized he had passed Atlanta. He wasn’t tired. This was because he had mastered his will, established dominion over his own body, like his hero, G. Gordon Liddy. True, he had never roasted his own hand over an open flame, like Liddy, but once he had stayed awake for seventy-two hours straight without ill effect, in order to pop a capo in Detroit.

  When he pulled into the empty motel parking lot he felt something icy and bad in his stomach. It was possible that one of them had gone out to get dinner, but not likely. He knew guys like these guys; if they were told to wait in a hotel room, they would stay there, ordering Domino’s, until they were eligible for retirement.

  He cat-footed his way to room 129 and peered inside. The beds were made and women’s clothes, nice clothes, from what he could tell, were hung up on the coat rack.

  He hesitated a few seconds before attacking the locked door, but once he started he was inside in ten seconds flat and right away he knew they were gone. The cold
, half-drunk coffee told him that, and so did the upset wastepaper basket, knocked aside in great haste. And yet there were all these clothes left behind.

  Something spooked them, he thought.

  All of a sudden a keening swell overtook him, and he felt alone and empty. It’s wrong to love your work this much, he knew, wrong and unprofessional. And when an opportunity to kill someone disappeared like that, it was as though a lover had abandoned him. He was a professional; he liked the money, but there were times he just felt so much love for what he did that he would have done it for nothing, nothing at all. He reached for the phone, thought better of it, backed out of the room, closing the door gently, and drove around until he found a pay phone. Five dollars worth of quarters later, he was talking to the gang leader. “Your birds have flown,” he told Vasquez, miserable.

  Chapter 7

  Mitch Dennis, Special Assistant to the Assistant Director for Administrative and Congressional Relations for the FBI, forced himself to look at the mind-numbing array of figures once more. The report which those numbers swaddled was a soup of passive verbs and words which someone invented on his lunch hour. It was a work of brilliance: seamless, high-tech-sounding, totally incomprehensible. Mitch did not feel equal to critiquing it. But in the back of his mind, he knew that editing was superfluous. He remembered a time, when he was reviewing a report on white collar crime and noticed that the statute was mis-cited. The report purported to rely on the law against bribery, which was not even in the same volume of the United States Code. But when Mitch brought it to the attention of the A.D. (“Hey, Dennis!” the A.D. invariably said, confusing his first and last names and making Mitch feel like the kid in the comics), the A.D. was nonplussed. They had cited the same law in the last three annual reports to the Special Senate Committee, his superior pointed out, and nobody had complained. Right or wrong, they’d cite the same law this year.

  Mitch fought the temptation to simply give this year’s report the Federal Wave and send it on to the A.D., who would sign without reading it, and issue it to the Special Senate Committee on White Collar Crime, none of whom would read it either. Why should Mitch be the only reader? Before he slit the seal on the folio, he already knew what it would say: Things Are Getting Better. It would say that because if it didn’t say that, if it said, for example, that Things Are Getting Worse or Things Are Staying the Same, that would mean that the Bureau wasn’t doing its job, and the Special Senate Committee wasn’t doing its job, and God knew who else wasn’t doing their jobs. And we couldn’t have that. Mitch knew the flacks and statisticians who put the report together, experienced bureaucrats all, and knew they would never be so foolish as to report an impossible thing.