Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  “What did they say?”

  “They never called back.” Shrugging, he looks out the window again.

  “Have you ever gotten a good look at this guy?”

  “Only from up here.”

  “Could you take a guess at his age?”

  “Thirty-five?” Pascal ventures.

  Asian, with a ponytail. Mid-thirties. Jesus, I think. Then I face Pascal. “Where’s your phone?”

  He leads me to the hall outside the living room. A phone is fixed to the wall with three thick metal plates. Under Pascal’s curious gaze, I unscrew the mouthpiece.

  “Is the apartment ever empty? Is there ever a time when all of you are usually out?”

  Pascal shakes his head. Days off, technicians working irregular shifts, somebody recently fired, one way or another, he says, there is always someone here. He lifts his chin toward the phone, more than a little curious about what I am doing.

  I peer into the mouthpiece innards. Zip. No silicone square.

  Rescrewing the mouthpiece, I keep my voice low. “Somebody bugged the phones in Toshio’s apartment before he died. Yesterday an Asian guy, mid-thirties with a ponytail, tried to bug my phone. This isn’t an Immigration problem you’ve got here, Pascal.”

  The skin bunches between his eyebrows. His lower lip probes forward, a flash of pink.

  Hanging up the phone, I rest a hand against the peeling wall. And I try to think this through. I could call Mike, but it would take him at least an hour to get up here; the guy in the Ford might be long gone by then. If I called the police, what exactly would I say to them? Jennifer, I think, then dismiss the thought immediately. Too many complications. Pascal’s roommates would probably be only too pleased to help, but the idea of involving guys who cannot afford to lose their jobs does not appeal. Which leaves me, finally, with a guy who cannot afford to lose his job but who is already involved anyway.

  “Come on,” I tell Pascal, moving down the hall. He moans and shakes his head. But when I pause in the doorway and look back, he is right there on my heels.

  There is no rear exit.

  “Fuck,” I say when Pascal tells me. We stand together in the main hall downstairs, a cloying smell of disinfectant in the air, while an argument rages in the ground floor apartment. Two women, cussing.

  Going to the main door to the street, I stick my eye up to the peephole. My own car is right out front. “How far away is the Ford?”

  Just past the alley, Pascal tells me. Thirty or forty yards to my right.

  Stepping back, I check which way the door opens. “Does this guy know you by sight?”

  Pascal lifts a shoulder. Maybe, maybe not.

  I turn it over. After the brief glimpse the guy got of me yesterday, I’m not sure I would be recognized either. But then, is it really just a coincidence that the guy has showed up here now, so soon after my arrival? Doesn’t it seem possible that he’s here because I’m here, that he followed me? Besides, a white man walking out of this building? At this hour?

  “You go out first,” I decide, facing Pascal. “Keep your head down, try not to let him see your face. Walk on past his car but get the license number. Make sure you get it. I’ll watch you from back here. Any trouble, I’ll be out.”

  Pascal looks doubtful.

  “Wait at the end of the block. Once you’ve got the number, I’ll come out and see if I can get a look at the guy, make sure it’s him. The same guy from my place.”

  “What if it is?”

  “If it is,” I say, “then when he sees it’s me looking at him, he’ll be out of here.”

  I beckon Pascal over to the door. His doubtful look lingers.

  “Get the number?”

  Get the number, I say.

  He steadies himself a moment, then I open the door and Pascal shuffles out. When the door swings back, I hold it open a crack with my foot. The white Ford is visible now, but its plates are just a blur from this distance. Halfway down the front steps, Pascal stops and speaks.

  “He is moving.”

  My eyes shoot back to the car. It is moving, pulling slowly away from the curb.

  Shit, I say. Shit.

  “Can you see the number?”

  “No.” Pascal squints. “It is too far.”

  I rest my forehead against the door. Should have called Mike, I think. Then I yank open the door, leap down the steps, and shout at Pascal to get in my car. I am already getting my key into the ignition when Pascal scrambles in through the other door.

  “Watch the guy,” I shout. “Can you see him?”

  Pascal bobs his head like some crazed jack-in-the-box.

  Hitting the gas, I swing into the street, the tires squealing. When I look straight ahead, there is no white Ford. “Left or right?” I shout, careering toward the crossroad.

  “Left!”

  I swing left. Halfway into the turn, Pascal changes his mind.

  “No, right!” he yells.

  I pull right and we begin to slide. A graceful arcing sweep, the tail of my car drifting while I haul back desperately on the wheel. Too late. The slide goes on in slow motion; from the corner of my eye I see Pascal brace both hands on the dash. Then the rear left wheel strikes the curb, the whole car jars, jumping a few inches into the air. I grip the steering wheel tight. There is a loud bang. We’re both thrown sideways, and then the car stalls.

  I close my eyes. Then I open them and sit up and look back over my shoulder. We have not traveled a hundred yards.

  “I did not see the number,” says Pascal.

  I look at him. “You okay?”

  He nods, shaken, finally releasing his grip on the dash.

  We get out to inspect the damage. The lamppost is embedded in the rear fender, the left rear tire has already deflated. An insurance job. Windows are opening above the boarded-up shopfronts beside us. Black faces appear, mainly kids; you can hear TV cartoons playing in the apartments behind them. We receive a rowdy mixture of abuse and advice. A minute later an NYPD squad car comes into view; it cruises slowly past us, then U-turns and parks up behind. The kids jeer.

  When I reach in to retrieve my insurance papers from the glove compartment, there is a high-pitched squawk from the bullhorn mounted on the squad car.

  “Get your hands in the clear,” barks a disembodied voice, and I turn to see a cop getting out, one hand on his holster. I withdraw my own hand from my car slowly. The voice on the bullhorn orders me to step away from the vehicle and put my hands on the hood.

  25

  “WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?”RACHEL ASKS ME, PUTTING HER Walkman beneath her pillow, then sitting up. “You said you’d be here first thing.”

  “I was held up.”

  “By what?”

  “I’m here now, Rache, okay?” Moving around the Room Seven conference table, I bend over her bunk and touch her shoulder. I can see that she has hardly slept. Her eyes are glassy, there are dark moons beneath them, and when I squeeze her shoulder, she folds her arms and leans back against the wall.

  “I’ll just be stepping outside here a while,” says Weyland, who has remained standing by the door after letting me in. “You need something, Rachel, you just call. I’m right here.”

  Rachel lifts a hand. Exchanging a look with Weyland, I nod gratefully. He winks at me, then scoops his paperback off the conference table and withdraws to the hall. Rachel stays on her bunk. It looks like something from summer camp, green canvas stretched over black tubing. Weyland brought it up yesterday from the sanatorium along with a pile of sheets and blankets, most of which are now heaped on the floor. I deposit my bag on the table, then pull up a chair.

  “Has Patrick been in to see you this morning?”

  “Yeah.” Rachel crosses her legs and toys with a thread in the blanket. “But I didn’t speak to him. Like you said.”

  “Good.”

  “Mike came in too.” She yanks the thread. “Cracking stupid jokes, like that was gonna cheer me up or something.”

  “He just wants to
make things a little easier for you, Rache.”

  “Well, he could make them a whole lot easier if he just let me go.”

  I drop my gaze to the floor. Anyone else? I say, glancing up.

  “Only Weyland.” She gestures to the door. Then she looks at me a moment, finally cocks her head. “You look awful.”

  I remark that I would have settled for a comforting lie. At that, she smiles. But the smile quickly fades, and a second later she is looking past me as though I am no longer present in the room. A distant look. One that I have seen too often before. And for one dreadful moment I am transported back to those dark days of her confinement at Bellevue, sitting by her bedside, waiting for some word or even acknowledgment of my presence as she gazes blankly out the window. Hoping and praying that we can somehow pass through this thing together, that somewhere in the future my precious daughter might return to me, healed.

  “The vote’s scheduled for twelve,” I hear myself say.

  “The vote,” she echoes, returning to herself. Then she swings her legs off the bunk. “I wish I’d never heard of the damn thing. I wish I’d never heard of this whole damn place.” Standing, she throws up a hand. This place, the UN. And I know she is not thinking just about herself. She is also thinking about her mother.

  She crosses to the table. Before I can stop her, she looks in the bag.

  “What’s this?” she says, and then she sees what it is: a few pounds of apples and bananas. I bought them from a stall outside the precinct headquarters in Harlem; something for Pascal and me while we waited. Useless to tell Rachel that now. The look she gives me is withering.

  “You need anything else from home?” I ask.

  Her eyebrows take on a V shape. “If the vote’s at twelve, I’ll be out then, right?”

  I nod.

  “So why would I need anything else?” she says.

  “It was just a question, Rache.”

  “Well, it was a stupid question.”

  I bite back a fatherly instinct to pull her into line. She is obviously, and understandably, finding this whole experience hard to cope with. Now she grabs a bar of soap from among the toiletries on the conference table. She picks up her toothbrush and toothpaste, then snatches a towel from the foot of her bunk. When she marches out, I trail after her across the hall, receiving a sympathetic look from Weyland as I pass. Seated outside Room Seven, he drops his glance back into the paperback as we disappear into the rest room.

  Rachel sets her things up at one of the white porcelain basins. She puts in the plug and turns on the tap. “So have you got any proper suspects?”

  “We’ve got a few leads.”

  “You mean like me.”

  I look at her. Letting her know that she is not the only one on the rack here. Not the only one who has had a bad night.

  “What did Juan say?” she asks, soaping up her hands. “Did he laugh?”

  “I haven’t told him.”

  Her head swivels.

  “I told him you were spending the night back at home.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he showed me the NGO message boards,” I say. “The Internet. Pages of it. Every fruitcake in the world speculating about Toshio. Who killed the special envoy. In a couple of days they’ll have it in the goddamn Drudge Report.”

  “So?”

  “So I didn’t want your name up on the message boards as today’s big feature, Rache. And I was afraid that might happen if Juan knew you’d been detained.”

  She makes a sound. She splashes water on her face, then reaches for her towel. “That is such a crock, Dad. What happened to open government, freedom of information, all that? Isn’t that what you’re always telling me? That half the problems you have come from people trying to cover things up?”

  “Well, this is one of the other kind of problem.”

  Almost imperceptibly the corner of her mouth rises. A smirk. The smirk of youth, ever alert to the small self-deceptions by which every adult life is sustained. Right now it feels like a blade to the heart. I turn away from her, then back.

  “Listen. If you want Juan to know you’re here, I’ll call him. But there’s no way I’m getting into any details with him. Not with him or anyone else.”

  “Don’t you trust him?”

  “It isn’t a question of trust.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Do you want me to call him or not?”

  She squeezes a finger of toothpaste onto her toothbrush. Thinks awhile, and finally shakes her head no.

  “I’ll be out of here in a few hours anyway,” she says, her eyes lingering on mine. I nod immediately. Of course. No question. This was, after all, why I came here. Not to hold some debate, not to argue, but to reassure my daughter, to let her know that I am standing by her, that I will do everything in my power to get her out.

  She puts her toothbrush beneath the tap and looks down. “Weyland says the Japanese ambassador—Asahaki?—Weyland says he went back to Tokyo straight after Hatanaka was killed.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Weyland says they didn’t get along, Asahaki and Hatanaka. And that’s what the Keisan Shimbun journalists said too, remember? Like Asahaki’s probably not too sorry Hatanaka’s gone, and maybe it could help the Japanese in the vote.”

  She seems to be waiting for some response from me. So I give her one. I remark that Weyland seems to have been very free with his opinions on the matter. Don’t believe all you hear, I say.

  Rachel rounds on me, flourishing her toothbrush. “Well, if you didn’t keep acting like I was eight instead of eighteen, maybe told me what’s happening, I wouldn’t have to ask Weyland.”

  “Okay.”

  “And he doesn’t bring me bags of fruit, like I’m some goddamn hospital case.”

  I raise a hand. “Okay.”

  “Don’t say that, Dad. It’s not okay. It’s just not.” She turns and grips the basin, bowing her head. “I’m stuck here for no reason. I can’t even go to the bathroom without Weyland sitting outside the door like I’m a dangerous criminal or something. Don’t blame Weyland just for talking to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You were,” she says hotly.

  Stepping up, I lay a hand on her shoulder. Her collarbone feels as fragile as a sparrow’s wing.

  “Who else can I talk to, Dad?” She screws up her face, fighting back tears. “You weren’t here. Who else even wants to listen?”

  I stroke her shoulder, trying to quiet her, to comfort her. My child. But then her words hit me, and my hand freezes. My whole body is momentarily chilled.

  “Rachel, you haven’t told him anything?”

  She looks up at me.

  “Last night. This morning.” Stepping back, I open a hand. “You never said anything to Weyland about what you were doing in the basement Monday night. Or why you went through that paperwork down in the library. You haven’t discussed that with Weyland, have you?”

  “He’s Mike’s friend,” she says. And in that one second I glimpse the abyss.

  She has told Weyland, I think. She has told Weyland and he is going to report it to Patrick, who will then have a case to pass to the International Court. And there, if Patrick so decrees, the judges of fifteen nations will spend several years debating what to do with my daughter while she rots her life away in legal limbo, permanently detained at UN headquarters. Jesus, I think. No.

  “What am I going to tell him anyway?” Rachel says, making a face. “Come on, Dad. Get real.”

  When I close my hands, my palms are sticky with sweat. I wait for the hammering of my heart to ease. Weyland is Mike’s friend. That is right, I think. Rachel is right. Get real and calm down. Rein in the runaway paranoia. But the sudden bolt of irrational fear has left me badly wrung out; in the aftermath of the sickening adrenaline rush, my muscles feel like Jell-O.

  I lay a hand on her shoulder. I tell her that I am going to see Patrick now.

  “That won’t change anything,” she says. “
I mean, what’s he gonna say? Sorry, big mistake, and just let me out?” She throws out a hand despairingly. “God, what a mess.”

  That it is. And with greater insight than I would have given her credit for, Rachel seems to have gotten Patrick’s number. Until Asahaki has completed his lobbying, until the vote on the Japanese seat goes through, Patrick will not be lifting a finger to release her.

  “We’ll have you out soon.”

  “When?”

  “Soon,” I repeat, trying to give my voice some conviction. But in truth I feel emasculated; not a father but a fraud. If I hadn’t tangled with Patrick, Rachel wouldn’t have spent the night here. We would not now be holding a futile debate on possible times for her release. I take both her shoulders in my hands. “After the vote he won’t have any reason to keep you here. Once it’s over, he’ll let you go.”

  She regards me closely; she has always been able to read me like a book. And something more than doubt appears in her eyes. A sliver of real fear.

  “It’ll happen,” I say. A lump the size of a fist has risen into my throat. Rachel gently pulls free of me and turns her back. The bones of her shoulders make small sharp ridges in her shirt. “I promise.”

  She gives a choked sound and looks at me over her shoulder. “You know, you really are the world’s absolute worst,” she tells me quietly.

  It takes me a second to get it. Then I do. Liar, she means.

  When I enter Patrick’s office down the hall, he is busy working the phones. He has one handpiece tucked beneath his chin, another in his right hand, and with his left hand he is attempting to dial a number. He nods me toward a chair, an invitation that I ignore, and carries on his interrupted conversation, a blatant piece of lobbying for the Japanese, as if I am not present. So I wait. And I simmer. I know, of course, that the world is not black and white, that corners get cut, edges blurred, and that there is an inevitable falling off from all the ideals dreamed up by mere mortals. I accept that. God knows, after my years in this place I cannot claim that my own hands are entirely clean. But what I am witnessing here, Patrick O’Conner working the phones, ringing the delegations like some backwoods political fixer, lobbying furiously on behalf of a UN member, is so far out of line with the Secretariat’s obligation of impartiality that even a man of Patrick’s conveniently flexible standards cannot have any doubt that what he is doing is wrong. And he carries on doing it right in front of me.