Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

  Hands and heads bleed the worst, he remembered from his Army first-aid courses. Another car came down the street, and he sank down in the front seat until it had gone by. Still no cops. He had an idea. He dialed her number again. Busy. So she was on the phone. Have to think about that; a possible loose end there.

  When he was satisfied that the street was not going to fill up with flashing blue lights, he started the Ford, did a U-turn, and went back out to 23rd Street. He turned right and took 23rd down to Memorial Bridge and across the river to Arlington, struggling to keep the suit coat wrapped tightly around his right hand. He was being very careful to contain the blood. He was pretty certain he had dripped none in her apartment, although the knife might show traces if she hadn’t washed it.

  He might have to go back there during the day to check on that. That would be easy enough. He had the keypad number, and those apartment door locks were a joke.

  Once in Virginia, he took Arlington Boulevard over to the 10th Street exit, drove up Wilson to Quincy Street, turned right, and then turned left into the underground parking garage of the Randolph Towers apartment building. For several years, he had maintained a one-bedroom, Spartanly furnished safe-house apartment in the Randolph Towers, which was a twenty four-story high-rise one block from the Ballston Metro station. With the apartment came secure underground parking. He rarely stayed in the apartment, but it was there as a bolt-hole if he ever needed one, another one of Monroney’s recommendations. He could still hear his old Saigon mentor’s hoarse voice and clipped New York accent: “If you’re gonna get into the shadow-land

  business, you need to have at least one hidey-hole, Mal achi, and at least two, maybe even three vehicles, with lots of different paperwork, the whole bit, for everything.

  Remember, you can buy any kind of vehicle paperwork you need from those scary-looking Haitians in the District, the ones who hang around the Traffic Division up on New York Avenue.” Malachi had registered each of his three vehicles under assumed names and addresses, taking advantage of the District’s rather porous tax-by-mail system. As long as he sent in the checks, the renewals came right back. He even had two driver’s licenses—one from Virginia and one from the District—that matched the names and geographical registrations of each vehicle. In the age of computers, it wasn’t a foolproof system, but it would withstand a street-side traffic check.

  The Randolph Towers had good security at night after ten o’clock, but until then there were three entrances out of sight of the front desk, so he could come and go without attracting any attention. Several of the foreign embassies in town maintained blocks of apartments there, so transients and strange new faces were a way of life. The exits from the garage were also conveniently out of view of the security people at the front desk, and they were operated by automated access cards.

  Malachi had taken Monroney’s advice about vehicles to heart, and he maintained three for his operations: a pickup truck, a small van, and a Ford sedan. The Ford stayed at the Randolph Towers. He had purchased it at a police auction in Fairfax County. It was old, dented, painted black, with tinted windows and a small whip antenna on the trunk, as well as a chrome-plated, remotely-operated spotlight in front of the driver’s side mirror. He kept two sets of plates for it: one from the District, when he operated in Virginia, and another from Virginia, when he was operating in the District, both sets arranged after a meeting in the parking lot of the District of Columbia’s Traffic Division, just as Monroney had said. The Ford looked exactly like what it had been, an umarked cop car, which solved a lot of

  problems in certain neighborhoods and also made parking around Washington simpler. He could hit any empty space that said reserved for government vehicles, of which there were hundreds in Washington.

  He circled down two levels to the bottom level and parked. Keeping the coat bunched around his hand, he shucked the raincoat and rolled up the blood-soaked shirtsleeve. Making sure no one was watching, he retrieved the first-aid kit from the trunk of the car, dropped the suit coat, and bandaged his fingers by the light coming from the trunk. The cuts were deep and raw-looking; his entire hand already felt hot and tender, with swelling evident along the base of his fingers. Should have stitches, he thought, but there was no way he could go to an emergency room now. He put some antibacterial cream on the cuts, wincing at the stinging pain, and then used four butterfly bandages to pull the cuts together as best he could. He replaced the first-aid kit in the trunk and climbed back into the car. Making sure he had retrieved the FBI credentials from the suit jacket, he wiggled back into his raincoat, slipping his injured right hand into the raincoat pocket.

  He waited while a sudden swarm of evening commuters sought their parking spaces in the garage, but when everyone had headed for the elevators, he got back out of the Ford, locked it, and walked up the ramp to the Randolph Street garage entrance, carrying the ruined suit coat. He triggered the door and walked out past the deli on the ground floor, pitching the bloody suit coat into one of the apartment building’s Dumpsters as he walked by. He went across Randolph Street, into the parking lot behind the dentist’s office, past the IHOP, across Stafford, and into the entrance of the Ramada Renaissance Hotel. With his right hand stuffed into the raincoat pocket, no one paid any attention to him as he went through the lobby area, past the concessions, out the glass doors of the hotel’s back entrance, and directly down into the Ballston Metro station.

  He took the first Washington-bound train that came through and dropped into an empty seat. It was a Blue Line train, going back into town at the end of rush hour, and therefore pretty much empty. He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. He badly needed a drink and a cigarette.

  Hold that thought, he said to himself.

  Get home, wash this mess up, get proper bandages on it, maybe some sulfa powder, and then have a little session with Mr. Harper’s hundred proof.

  He started to review the events in the woman’s apartment, but the insistent, throbbing pain in his hand was too distracting.

  He must have dozed, because he was suddenly startled by a push of people boarding the train at the Metro Center station. When he looked around, he saw that he was now the only white man in the car. But he was used to that: The trains leaving Metro Center at night going to Virginia were mostly filled with whites; going east toward Capitol Hill and Northeast Washington, the crowd was predominantly black.

  Malachi lived up on Capitol Hill, which by day was the province of the almost entirely white national legislature and its staffs and the Capitol Hill police. Once the working day was over, though, the area reverted back to what it had been before serious gentrification had set in during the eighties: a very black part of town.

  He had acquired the place in 1975, once again, courtesy of Monroney. The Army had stationed him at Fort Me Nair, the mostly ceremonial installation at the junction of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, while he had been waiting for his discharge papers to come through after the incident in Germany. Monroney, retired by then and running his own consulting business in Washington, had introduced him to a middle-aged Realtor lady who had a passion for whiskey that was almost as large as Malachi’s. Without telling her any more than absolutely necessary, he had revealed that he had saved some money and was looking for somewhere to live that might also be an investment he could make before getting out of the Army. Besides being a kindred soul in matters of good whiskey, she had steered him into buying a run-down brick duplex on 5th Street NE, three blocks back from the Supreme Court building, with the suggestion that he could restore the two houses himself.

  It had given him something to do during his final months in the Army, and now he lived in one and kept the second one, which he had eventually retitled under an assumed name, as a safe house for clients who needed a discreet place to hole up from time to time.

  The lady had given him some damn fine advice: The duplexes had appreciated many times in value since then, and having the spare house also brought in some nice retainer incom
e from three congressional offices that seemed to have an occasional need for extremely discreet living quarters.

  Two very large ladies were giving him a suspicious once-over as the train approached the Capitol South station, but he ignored them, pushing his throbbing hand deeper into the raincoat pocket. He focused hard on the help he could expect from Mr. Harper and on what he would do the next morning. Goddamned woman. Twelve years in the Army, and no man had ever really hurt him physically. Only a god damned woman.

  He knew her commuting routine cold. He would up the ante in the morning.

  at quarter to six the following morning, Malachi waited in his white Ford F-250 pickup truck on the southbound side of 23rd Street, just behind a bus loading zone. The truck had a yellow caution flasher mounted on the roof of the cab, a large steel push grate mounted on the front bumper, and magnetic signs displaying the logo of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority attached to both doors. Monroney had pointed out that in Washington, a Metro service vehicle could park damn near anywhere except in front of the White House. He sat there with the cabin light on and a large clipboard resting on the steering wheel. A Metro bus schedule checker, waiting for rush hour. Three cop cars had passed him without so much as a glance.

  He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a dark tie.

  From time to time, he would hold up his bandaged right hand to ease the aching pain. The little bitch. She had had that kitchen knife under the sofa cushions the whole time. Another hostess with the mostess. City dweller. Especially in this city, the murder capital of the free world.

  What was it—an average of two murders a night in the District for the past three weeks? Springtime in Washington. He looked at his hand again, the fingers buried now under a bulky white bandage. Four deep red cuts in a row right across the base segments of his fingers. Lucky she had slashed instead of jabbed. He was getting careless in his old age. Not expecting a woman to pull a knife: For Malachi, that was incredible.

  His mind shied away from a sudden vision of Inge, the German barfly who had put him down for the count in Frankfurt that night. Yes, he would have to pay much better attention.

  He checked his watch again. Maybe thirty minutes now until she came out.

  There was little traffic in town as yet, although the surburban arteries were probably already swelling. A 17A bus with the words foggy bottom illuminated on the signboards pulled in ahead of him, the driver waving casually in his mirror. Malachi waved back and pretended to write something on his clipboard. He had twice more tried her phone last night, but it had been busy both times. Telling somebody about her night visitor maybe. Definitely a possible problem there, depending on whom she had called.

  But probably not somebody at work—she would have had to explain the nature of the problem. A relative perhaps. The file said she had a brother, but he was away in the Navy somewhere. Her mother—he would have to check that out. The knife and the phone call— two loose ends.

  He yawned and lit another cigarette, lowering the window some more.

  Getting a little old for this shit.

  Twelve years in the frigging Army, nine of those in the military police, and he was having trouble with a little early reveille. Maybe the booze hadn’t been such a good idea. The whiskey hadn’t helped like it used to.

  By the time he’d had enough to dull the pain in his hand, his head had begun to hurt. When he had rolled out at four thirty, his head and his hand were competing to see which could hurt the most.

  He had bought the Metro signs four years ago from a guy who needed a little help, and the flasher unit was out of a catalog. With these two accessories mounted on a plain pickup truck, he had gained another vehicle that could go anywhere and park anywhere in the city without attracting attention. Before leaving his garage, he had taken the precaution of spraying WD-40 over the entire front end, lights, hood, bumper, and especially the heavy steel push grate, just in case he got too close. He had made two careful circuits of the local streets to check out his escape route before parking in the bus zone, making sure that the city’s diggers and fillers hadn’t placed a baby Grand Canyon in his way.

  He looked at his watch again. Ten, fifteen more minutes and she should come clacking up the street on his side, cutting across about a hundred feet down 23rd Street for her paper. Commuters: absolute creatures of habit. They had to have their morning papers. Usually all he had to do was place one of his enormous hands on someone to convince them where the path of righteousness lay. So round one to the lady. Round two would involve a little escalation: This morning he would scare the living shit out of her with the truck. Power steering, bitch. Don’t need two hands for that. Make sure she saw his ugly face at the moment of truth. Let her understand that she was extremely mortal, she wanted to press on with something. He waited, his head and his hand emanating pain in stereo. He gave up and fished in the glove compartment for his flask and took a hit, the whiskey immediately sanding down some of the rougher edges in his head.

  Twelve minutes later, as another Metro bus pulled away in a roaring cloud of diesel smoke, he saw her at the far end of the block. He looked around, wincing at the movement. His mouth was dry and there was an aura of needlelike pain around the periphery of his eyes. But it looked pretty good: no other pedestrians around, still too early for serious commuter traffic on the street. He checked the mirror and saw the traffic lights up at Washington Circle behind him blink from yellow to red. Perfect. The street would be clear for another ninety seconds. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, thought fleetingly of maybe one more little tug on the flask, and then put the big truck in gear, hearing the 460 V-8 engage the drive gear with a dull clank. He gently eased the nose of the big truck out into the street itself but then stopped before going more than a few feet. He kept the lights off. Down the block, the woman continued up the sidewalk. He could just make out the bottom of her face, her jaw out thrust in the glow of the streetlights as she strode determinedly, probably thinking about what she was going to do and say this morning, maybe an indignant confrontation with the great man, pumped by some deeper apprehensions that her career might suddenly be at risk. He saw her look briefly up 23rd Street and then step out to cross to the newspaper dispenser. He waited until she had taken three solid steps out into the street before mashing the accelerator, causing the truck to lunge out of its parking place and jerking his neck as it accelerated into the street with a clean surge of horsepower, passing forty by the time she finally saw it over her left shoulder, then fifty when she absorbed what was looming at her up the shadowy street. Malachi aimed right behind her, just to her left, intent on making it very close, leaning forward to put his face in the windshield so she could see it, see who it was. He assumed that she would jump clear, but she didn’t. She froze instead, transfixed by the truck that was filling her vision, and then, instead of moving, she was focusing on his face, a flare of recognition visible in her eyes at the last critical instant when she finally did try to move. But her foot slipped on the damp asphalt and she lurched sideways and the left side of the push grate caught her, the eight thousand-pound impact spinning her around and catapulting her deformed body seventy-some feet across the street, where it crashed in a heap of bloody clothes against the front stoop of a brownstone.

  Malachi, his face frozen, had no time to look back.

  He knew a direct hit when he felt it. With the blood pounding in his head and a cold feeling spreading through his stomach, and suddenly very sober, he careened down 23rd for one more block, slowing down, braking on the gears as he went, and made the first available left, onto F Street. He crossed three more streets and then took a right onto 19th south.

  The stupid bitch! The stupid, defiant little bitch! All she had to do was jump!

  He flipped on the police scanner mounted under the dash as he took 19th down to Constitution, where he made a left and then turned on the yellow flasher unit as he headed up Constitution toward Capitol Hill at just over the speed limit. His headache was
gone, he noticed. Nothing like a little adrenaline rush to clear the head. Her face—at the last moment, something had happened to her face. For an instant, she had become Inge.

  If he closed his eyes for even a fraction of a second, he could still see it—that same angry glare and then the shock. But, no: not like Inge’s face at all. Inge had been white. Damn it!

  He slowed down once again as he got into heavier traffic near the Russell Senate Office Building, then turned south on 2nd Street, intent on driving around for a while in the warren of side streets surrounding Capitol Hill, just part of the Metro fleet of supervisors, out monitoring the capital’s daily morning madness.

  There was some chatter on the scanner now, some codes, and finally, a request for an ambulance, code eight. Twenty-third Street. Code eight—too late. The “don’t hurry” code.

  After driving down into Southeast Washington for a few minutes, he turned into an empty automated car wash. Normally, the place was filled with young men washing and waxing their rides, but at this hour he had the place to himself. Before running the truck through, he got out and took down the flasher unit and peeled the magnetic Metro decals off the sides of the truck. He drove the truck through the car wash twice, then headed back toward the duplex on Capitol Hill. After pulling into the garage, he shut the door, got out, and then carefully inspected the front of the truck with a flashlight. Nothing. The hard rubber on the push grate was still dripping water from the car wash, creating a small pool on the grimy concrete floor, but there were no visible dents, no broken glass, bits of fabric, scratches, or bloodstains on the truck. He stood up and closed his eyes for a moment, his mind’s eye contrasting the sterile sheet-metal sides of the truck with the black and-white image of her body deforming against the push grate, that black-white face twisting out of human shape as she was spun around and launched by the impact.