Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

  She looked out the window. It was a lovely afternoon out there. And it was positively depressing afternoon in here. She decided that she needed to get out of the house and go for a walk. Fifteen minutes later, she found herself at the top of the stone steps that led down to Canal Road from Prospect. The steep stairway, made famous by the concluding scene in the movie The Exorcist, descended almost seventy feet. Below was the smoky grunt and grind of rush-hour traffic headed for Virginia via the Key Bridge, and below the vehicular tangle were the deceptively placid waters of the Potomac River. And the boat houses. She wondered, then decided to go check it out.

  She walked carefully down the steps, crossed M Street on the Washington side of the busy Key bridge intersection, and walked down a small brick lane to an arched footpath bridge over the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. After some very careful steps down to the gravel and clay of the towpath on the other side, she could see further steps leading down to Water Street, which ran parallel to the river banks underneath the elevated Whitehurst Freeway. Water Street, with its row of warehouses, truck-loading zones, and derelict buildings presented an unattractive prospect for a woman walking alone, but there were students out on the towpath, and it was still broad daylight. She decided to try it, so she went down the steps to Water Street, turned right under the steel beams supporting the freeway overhead, and headed for the Potomac Boat Club buildings visible about a third of a mile up the street.

  The area underneath Key Bridge was littered with broken whiskey bottles, and smelled of vagrants and the pungent aroma of leaking sewage. An abandoned off ramp leading down from the Key Bridge was littered with broken glass, trash, and thick weeds. She hurried along, hoping that the club would be open. Walking down here had not been a terrific idea, after all, she decided.

  The Potomac Boat Club was a ramshackle wooden building of approximately three stories that squatted between the extension of Water Street and the banks of the Potomac. The green-and-white walls of the building along Water Street bulged and curved as the result of flooding over the years. A small plaque indicated that the club had been going for almost 130 years, so it probably had been drowned more than once. She pushed open the front door and looked around, but the place seemed to be abandoned. The door at the river end of the entrance hallway was open, and she could see that there were rowers already out on the river. A sweating young man in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt came into the hallway from what looked to Grace to be a boat loft to her right. He was carrying a set of oars and what seemed to be an outrigger of some kind.

  “Excuse me, but has Commander Collins been down today?” she asked.

  The young man looked her over for a second, blatantly sizing her up.

  “Who’s asking?” he replied.

  “My name is Grace Snow. I’m just a friend. We did an assignment together in Philadelphia last week, and he told me he rows a single—a scull, is it?—that he keeps here.”

  The man smiled then, and pointed with his chin toward the front door.

  “You’re in luck, Grace Snow.

  That’s his Suburban coming in now.”

  Grace turned around and saw Dan’s Suburban bump its way through the potholes on Water Street and pull into a parking place in front of the building. She watched as Dan got out, still dressed in his blues. When he turned around and saw Grace standing in the entrance to the boathouse, he waved and smiled, and, for some reason, she felt better than she had during her entire walk down to the river. Out of the Pentagon, he had a boyish grin that took years off his age. She walked over to the car as he opened the back of the Suburban to get his gear.

  “Well, fancy meeting you here,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were this close to the river. Tell me you didn’t walk down here.”

  “Well … actually, yes; I needed to take a walk and ended up at the Exorcist steps and decided to—”

  She ran out of words, and he rescued her. “I walked back up that way once on a Saturday morning; you’re in for a climb and a half on the way back. Come on in; let me park you somewhere while I get changed.”

  He walked her back through the main hallway and straight out to the sunlit boatyard behind the club building.

  “So you’ve come to see the intrepid rower battling the treacherous torrents,” he said, leading her to a decrepit-looking folding chair close to the riverbank.

  She looked over at the river, which, from this closer vantage point, did indeed look treacherous, with large silver gray swirls appearing and disappearing everywhere on the surface under the pressure of the spring currents. A large gray rock fifty yards offshore had a visible bow wave, and the river made a soft hissing sound as it scoured the boat ramp and tugged at the pontoon pier fifty feet away.

  “Is that safe? It looks so … disturbed.”

  “Yeah, well, we crew types are exceptionally brave; not too bright, maybe, but certainly brave. But no, that’s not especially safe right now. But if you know the channels and where not to go, it’s a pretty good physical challenge. Most of us row upstream against that current for the workout, and then it’s an exercise in control getting back downstream without hitting anything and then getting across the current somewhere near the landing.

  It’s a perfect antidote for a day at Fort Fumble, though.”.

  “That I can appreciate. I almost called you this afternoon; I’ve had some news.”

  He put his bag down while she related her conversation with Englehardt on Thursday and then told him about the EA’s nasty little surprise this afternoon.

  “Damn,” he said. “They were laying for you. It also sounds like your rabbi cut you loose. I’m sorry to hear this. Look, daylight is limited.

  There’s a Coke machine over there. Why don’t you grab a Coke and one of those lawn chairs out by the river. This whole evolution takes a little less than an hour, and then we can go get a drink somewhere. Those sons of bitches. Just like that?”

  “I’m afraid so. In a way, I’m really angry about it, and yet, in another way, I feel a bit relieved to be out of it.”

  “Hold that thought,” he said. “And when I get back, don’t watch my landing too closely.”

  Twenty minutes later, he launched the scull into the river and headed out across the currents. Grace took his advice and sat in one of the dilapidated lawn chairs and watched the river go by. Out on the river, one of the Georgetown eights came sliding upstream, the boat seeming to move in a jerking motion with each stroke, losing a little way to the current each time the rowers reached for the next stroke. A small boat appeared to be chasing the shell, with a man shouting something at them through a megaphone. A pair of rowers came out of the boathouse carrying a slick-looking two-man shell and entertained her with their efforts to drop the boat into the water and board it before the current could take it downstream. She had never seen one launched before, and it seemed a miracle that they even managed it. Forty minutes later, Dan came sculling at what looked like an alarming speed across the currents, did a pinwheel turn downstream of the dock, and then maneuvered the scull alongside the pontoon pier. She went down and held on to the side of the shell while he extricated his feet from the shoe straps, stepped onto the pier, removed the oars, and then reached down and picked the entire boat up out of the water. Holding the boat over his head, he walked it back up the ramp area to the boathouse while Grace went back to her chair.

  He said he would be back in five minutes. Grace watched him go up the hill, conscious that she was appraising his lithe body, the way the muscles in his back corded effortlessly as he carried the boat. She turned away abruptly when she realized that another man was watching her watch Dan.

  He was back in five minutes, as promised, still in his sweaty tank top, grubby, stringless sneakers, and a pair of khaki shorts.

  “What I usually do at this point is drive home like this and then make myself presentable again. If you can stand it, why don’t you ride back to Old Town with me.

  I’ll get cleaned up and we can go over
to one of the gin mills and have that drink.”

  Grace hesitated for just the fraction of a second but then agreed, the thought of climbing back up to Georgetown from the riverbed facilitating her decision.

  They walked over to the Suburban and he let her in, pitching his gear bag into the back. She was amused when he rolled down the rear windows to improve the ventilation, and yet, as they drove out of the boathouse parking lot, the smell of manly sweat brought back some disturbing memories of sex with Rennie before her marriage turned sour. Rennie had also had a good body, maintained by daily sessions at an expensive Wall Street athletic club. As she stole a glance at Dan, she realized that it had been a very long time since she had been with a man. For once, she did not find the speculation discomforting.

  Dan had to swerve as he rounded the curve just at the point where Water Street went under the Key Bridge to avoid a large white Ford pickup truck that was parked half in, half out in a driveway on their side of the street. Grace caught a glimpse of a large man inside, who appeared to be studying a map as they went around him.

  malachi fought the urge to look up from the map as the Suburban drove past on Water Street. He was pretty sure that the woman had noticed him, but he had had his face partially obscured by the map. Still. He started up the truck and waited for the Suburban to turn up the hill toward the city. He had not expected her.

  He had followed the Suburban over from the Pentagon’s north parking lot.

  Locating the vehicle had been a piece of cake: He had looked Collins’s name up in the Virginia suburban phone book and found the address in Old Town. He had known to look in the Virginia book because these Navy officers were snooty: They generally considered it beneath them to live in Maryland or, worse, the District. Then all he had to do was go take a look. The Prince Street address signified Old Town; the guy either came from money or had gotten lucky with some real estate. Old Town was for rich people.

  He had taken the metro over to Ballston the previous evening and retrieved the Ford sedan from the Randolph Towers. He had then driven down into Old Town at 10:30. He had cruised down through all the four-way stops on Prince until he reached the block with the cobblestones, and then had bumped his way past number 128 on the left as he pointed downhill towards the river.

  It being late Thursday night, he had found a parking space on Union Street, near the old Interarms warehouse, and walked back up the diamond-patterned brick sidewalks to the block where Collins lived. He noted that all the curb parking was by District 1 permit only, and it didn’t take him long to find the Suburban with its Naval District Washington base decal on the bumper and the strange-looking racks on the roof.

  None of the other vehicles on the street had a military sticker. Out of habit, he memorized the license plate, wrote down the serial number on the navy decal, and then returned to his car to drive back to the Randolph Towers. The following noon, as a Colonel Smith, he called into the Pentagon Parking Control office to complain about a car parked in his reserved space in south parking, then gave the woman the Suburban’s Navy decal number. She told him that decal belonged in north parking and asked if he wanted to file a formal complaint.

  He said no, the week was nearly over, and he was leaving, anyway; he’d just leave the guy a nasty note. He then drove the pickup truck, this time without its Metro decorations, over to the Pentagon, cruised up and down the north parking lanes until he found the Suburban, and then parked three rows away and waited. Collins had come out at 5:15, and Malachi had followed him over to Water Street. When Collins had continued under the Key Bridge to the boathouse, Malachi had swerved into an alley next to a deserted building three blocks back, then backed out once he figured Collins had had time to go inside.

  Now as he turned left onto the extension of Wisconsin Avenue that led back to M Street, he decided not to try to follow Collins back to Old Town. He was pretty confident that Collins was going back home after his preppy little outing on the Potomac, with his swell little boat and undoubtedly admiring little girlfriend. He wondered if the woman might be Miss. Snow from the NIS. He had tried Snow in the phone book and found a couple of candidates, but none in Georgetown. Collins had been alone when he drove to the boathouse, so the girl presumably had walked there to meet him. He decided to go back to Old Town himself and see what he could see.

  It took him nearly an hour to get back downtown to the Memorial Bridge, across the river, and onto the GW Parkway southbound. Then he had to sit through the Friday-afternoon rush-hour creep-and-crawl routine once the parkway hit Old Town itself, stop and go through all those wonderful traffic lights on Washington, until he came to Prince Street. He turned down toward the river again but found that every single parking place in the entire town seemed to be taken. After some driving around, he finally spotted a small commercial lot practically on the riverfront, on Strand Street, and only a half block off of Prince. He pulled in, but there was a lot full sign already in the entrance. A dark-skinned man was lazily waving him away from inside a wooden hut. Malachi fished in his wallet and flashed two twenties out the window, and the man stopped waving. Two minutes later, Malachi, now afoot, walked back up Prince to the intersection with Union Street, where he had noticed a small bistro nested up against the Interarms warehouse buildings.

  As a rule, Malachi didn’t use commercial lots when he was tracking someone: Too many things could go wrong, and the process of retrieving a car in a hurry could be problematical at the damnedest times. But it was a Friday night in Old Town, at the beginning of tourist season on a lovely spring evening, so he really had little choice. He turned right to walk along Union to King, then turned left up the hill into the chichi shopping district, joining the throngs of people who had begun the evening promenade on both sides of King.

  Malachi was dressed in casual khaki slacks, a short sleeved yellow knit polo shirt, and a khaki windbreaker.

  Even in his flat tennis shoes, he stood a head taller than almost all of the people around him—all of whom were decked out in a wide variety of Friday night sport coats, ties, and even cocktail dresses. The smell of garlic and seafood spread over the street from all the restaurants along the lower blocks of King, intermingled with exhaust from the line of creeping cars trying to get through the crowds. Malachi walked slowly, letting people either get around him or out of his way, depending on which way they were going. He was of a size that caused the crowd on the sidewalk to part around him like a stream around a big midchannel rock.

  He was careful not to make eye contact: He didn’t want anyone remembering him.

  He walked slowly as he circled the block where Col lins lived. The Suburban was in residence, three doors away from number 128, and there were lights on in the house. He kept walking, circling the block again, where he discovered that there were two alleys cutting into the block containing Collins’s house. The first ran behind

  the stores and restaurants on King. The next one up gave access to garages and off-street parking for the houses on Prince. On either side of the alley was a staggered line of brick walls, some high, some not so high, some with iron gates, others with wooden gates. There were some green plastic trash bins behind some of the houses, apparently in preparation for the Saturday morning pickup. He could see the second story of most of the town houses behind the walls, but they were beginning to be obscured by springtime greenery on several large trees.

  At the far end of the alley, he could see the furtive shadows of cats darting in and out of the lights behind what looked like some abandoned garages.

  The sounds of kitchen exhaust fans from the other alley were barely audible over the middle row of houses. As he was looking into the alley, there was a flare of headlights at the other end as what looked like a cop car turned around slowly at the end of the alley, prompting Malachi to resume his walk toward Prince Street on the uneven brick pavement.

  He kept walking, making another large circle along the river that brought him back to the second alley entrance after fifteen minute
s. For Malachi, there was nothing like actually walking the ground around a surveillance target; you could pick up things that you would never see from a car. He looked into the alley again, but this time the car was gone, so he strolled into the alley and walked downhill until he came to a green plastic trash bin with the number 128 on it, parked next to a solid wooden gate set into one of the higher brick walls. There was a garage wall jutting out three feet into the alley by the gate, and it provided some shadow.

  It was approaching full darkness, but he still looked around the alley carefully to make sure no one was watching, and then he gently tried the gate handle. It was locked, but the wood was old and he could see through the cracks if he put his face right up against it, which he did.

  Behind the wall was a garden and a patio, overhung by drooping tree branches from the yards on either side. He could see Collins and the woman sitting in some chairs, but they were too far away for him to overhear their conversation over the general noise of a Friday night in Old Town. There was a sudden clatter of trash cans behind him and he drew back into the shadows while a man emptied a bag of garbage into the Dumpster behind his house, which was about fifty feet away. When the man went back inside, Malachi returned to his peephole, trying to make out details of the woman’s face in the twilight, but it was too hard.

  Feeling that he was pushing it in an area that was probably well patrolled, he walked back out of the alley an dover to King, then went down the hill again to Union and the waterfront, turning right along the river, past the parking lot. His truck sat right up front, pointed at the street; he had paid the attendant another twenty to keep it unencumbered and ready to go. He retraced his steps to the bistro at the intersection of Union and Prince.

  The small cafe on the corner had umbrella-covered alfresco tables along the sidewalk, diagonally across from the intersection of Union and Prince streets. Malachi walked over and sat down at the end table on the sidewalk, farthest away from the restaurant’s door. The rest of the sidewalk tables were empty. It was a relatively pleasant evening, but most of the people having dinner in the cafe were dressed for inside restaurants; the men in their coats and ties would have been comfortable, but most of the women would have found it too chilly to be out on the sidewalk. But it was a perfect place to keep watch on number 128, almost a full block up the hill from the cafe, and that big blue Suburban.