By the time I had made my way through the Grille Room, Lyle had already drawn me a beer, a Sam Adams OctoberFest, God love him, and God love the Boston Beer Company while we're at it. I could use whatever they had to offer tonight.
"You've become quite the celebrity," Lyle said to me through barely pursed lips. He wasn't admiring or condescending, but matter-of-fact, as if pointing out to me, with his years of Washington wisdom, that this too shall pass, like so many other things in life. Lyle had seen it all. That's just one of the reasons I like him. The frosted pilsner glass he slid toward me was another.
As I took my first pull of beer, he nodded toward the pool table, casually, never rushed. "Your colleague, Mr. Havlicek, I believe, arrived a while ago, and is engaged in a game of billiards."
I looked. Havlicek had just made a long bank shot. He let out a loud yelp and held his open-faced hand over his shoulder, as if to high-five his opponent, who happened to be Sinclair Shoesmith, the great-grandson of one of the club founders, a former secretary of state. I swear to God, Mr. Shoesmith-I've never heard anyone use his first name before-flinched back, as if he might be under attack from Havlicek.
They don't high-five much over at the Chevy Chase Club or the Smithsonian Society, so I embarked on a rescue mission, though I'm not sure who was most in need of salvation-me, Mr. Shoesmith, or Havlicek.
I said, pulling up to the table, "Good evening, Mr. Shoesmith. Steve, good to see you. Do you mind if I interrupt the game before ESPN tries to put you gentlemen on SportsCenter? Steve, it's actually important we talk right away."
Havlicek hesitated, looking longingly at the table, while I tried to will him away with my eyes. "Good, let's talk," he said finally.
"Terribly sorry, Sinclair, but I've got some work to do here."
Settled down at a table, he looked at me with a smile and said, "Good to see you, slugger. Strange trip, huh?" He then looked at me closer, at the bruise on my left cheek from my recent scuffle, and said, "Whoa, you look like shit. Everywhere you go these days, someone's taking a poke at you."
"Yeah, violent business we're in. I took a shot from one of Nathaniel's lackeys. The whole trip was something worse than strange.
I've got some more news for you from today. First, though, I want to hear what you have."
Havlicek didn't seem overly concerned about my physical well-being. He pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase and put a pair of half-glasses on his prominent nose. "Good stuff," he said. "Not sure what it means yet, but I know it's good stuff."
Truth is, when it came to work, to journalism, to investigative reporting, Havlicek was as good as it gets. He had no fear, not just of government officials or mobsters or white-collar criminals much smarter than himself, but of failure. Where other reporters would assume that they couldn't find what they needed, Havlicek would scrape away, pushing a little more dirt back every day until finally he had dug a nice little hole to put someone in. He was tenacious and he was street-smart, and at age fifty-six, he hadn't lost a bit of speed on his first step or his ability to open it up down the homestretch. When I'm that age, if I'm ever that age, whatever it is I'm doing, I hope to have one-tenth of Steve Havlicek's passion.
Havlicek flipped through a sheath of papers, saying, "Okay, Tony Clawson, Tony Clawson, where are you? There you are. Here, this is the photograph everyone was running of Clawson after the shooting. It came from a Home Depot security badge out in Fresno. He used to work in their landscape and garden department. Check it out: dirty blond hair, blue eyes."
I'd seen the photograph before. Not a great-looking guy, by any stretch. His eyes seemed wild, almost insane, as if he might club you over the head with a metal watering can, then leave you for dead by the terra-cotta pots, all because you didn't get your purchases to the checkout line by five minutes before closing time like the nice lady on the public address system had asked. Most people try to smile for their ID photos, especially when they're going to be wearing them on a badge. Clawson, I'd venture to guess, went out of his way to sneer.
I'm betting the guy behind the camera just wanted to get him out of his office.
I said, "Okay." Obviously, the issue of Tony Clawson was of great interest to me right now, given the note, but I decided to hold back on sharing my own revelation until Havlicek was done.
One of my favorite waiters, Carlos, stopped by the table. "Mr. Flynn, a pleasure to see you again," he said. "Could I bring you gentlemen a bite to eat?" We ordered hamburgers and onion rings and an order of smoked salmon, along with another round of beers. Havlicek continued.
"So remember, the Secret Service shoots this guy six times in the head.
Every one of them connects. You shoot a guy six times in the head, there's not much left. You have any idea what a guy looks like who's been shot six times in the head?"
"I really don't."
"Like this." With that, Havlicek slid a large glossy photograph toward me. It was a picture, I believe, of a man who had been shot six times in the head, the man specifically being the man they are calling Tony Clawson. My first instinct, quite beyond my control, was to vomit.
Luckily my second instinct was to turn away to prevent myself from vomiting. In the photo, someone-I'm assuming the coroner-must have cleaned some of the wounds. Still, entire chunks of the man's face had been torn out. What remained was black and blue, almost beyond recognition as a human head. Oddly enough, and frightening beyond words, one eye remained in place, and that eye was open for the photo shoot.
"Pretty gross, huh?" Havlicek asked. "Sorry about this. But do you have any idea what I had to do to get this photo slipped to me?"
I was stunned into silence, trying to regain my composure. I wondered if I could trade that hamburger in for a little bowl of fruit salad.
Havlicek continued. "Take a look at that eye-"
"I don't want to look at anything in that picture again," I interrupted.
"No, really, this is work," he replied, straight as an arrow. He could overcome any queasiness in the name of a story. This was the hunt, he was the hunter. "Take a look. What color does that look like?"
I couldn't believe I was doing this, but I found myself looking closer at it, bending my head toward the photograph, which sat on the table because I didn't want to touch it. I said, "Looks to be brown."
"Bing-fucking-o," he said. "Now take another look at the Home Depot ID
photo. What do you see?"
"Blue eyes," I said. I paused. Dawn breaks on Mar8,4. I added, "Holy shit."
The waiter returned with the food. Great. Across the table, Havlicek merrily spread some condiments on his burger and bit into it like a ravenous dog. I opted to let mine sit for a while, waiting to see if my stomach might settle.
I said, "But we can't jump to conclusions. One, this eye is barely an eye, and the color might be off in the photo, or if it isn't, he might be wearing tinted contacts."
Havlicek began talking with his mouth so packed with food that I was surprised that words could even get out.
"Right on all counts," he said. "Which is why I got my hands on this beauty."
He wiped his fingers on a napkin, then slid a folder marked
"Confidential" across to me. I opened it up to see an autopsy report and thought to myself that this dinner conversation just kept getting better and better.
"Scan halfway down," he said, "to eye color."
I did, and there it was: brown. I smiled up at Havlicek as we locked eyes, his brown, mine an ocean blue. "So you have yourself an issue."
"What we have," he said, "is pretty good proof that the man they shot at Congressional Country Club isn't the man they say is Tony Clawson, a California drifter with antigovernment tendencies."
Indeed, in the past couple of days, the FBI had been selectively leaking bits and pieces about the life and times of Tony Clawson. They put out word that Clawson had been to a couple of loose militia meetings in Nevada and possibly Wyoming. They said he had been brought to the attention of the FBI within the last eighteen months as a potential domestic terrorist because of his views and his criminal record, which included numerous instances of violence. Never, though, in all the stories questioning the FBI, in all the two-bit profiles of Clawson, was there any sort of new photograph of him. And all the while, in the name of national security, the FBI said it couldn't provide any more information, even anonymously.
"It's a different guy," Havlicek said. "I'd like to put that fact in the newspaper."
I took a bite out of my hamburger, and it felt like cotton-covered lead in my mouth. I forced it down, then pushed the plate to the side.
"Carlos," I said to the waiter as he whisked by, "any chance you could just bring me some vanilla frozen yogurt?"
"You not going to eat that?" Havlicek asked, visibly concerned. I was trying to think of something to say that wouldn't make him feel bad.
Instead, he reached for my plate and asked, "You mind?"
I let him take the hamburger, and pushed my chair back from the table to make myself comfortable. "What's it all mean?" I asked. "What the fuck does it all really mean?"
Havlicek said, his mouth packed with food again, "I don't have a clue.
I just know what we have. If we know it, I suspect the feds do as well. We don't have a corner on curiosity, deductive skills, and intelligence."
"I've got two new developments on my front," I said.
"Go ahead," he replied.
"Second thing first. I heard from my anonymous source again."
"Jesus Christ," Havlicek said. "Talk about burying the fricking lead."
"Check this out. He gave me this."
I handed him the single sheet of paper with the handwritten note.
Havlicek wiped his fingers again, put his half-glasses back on, and read through it, slowly. He looked up over his glasses and said, "Holy shit. We're really onto something, and now he sounds like he knows what he's talking about. He's for fucking real.
"But wait a minute," he added. He looked at the envelope and saw there was no postmark or mailing address written out. "How'd you get this?
You meet him? You see him?"
I said, "On the goddamned airplane. He-or I should say, someone-left it on my seat when I went into the bathroom. It was just sitting there when I got out."
"Holy fuck. He was on the airplane," he said, partly a question, partly a statement.
"Could have been delivered by a messenger. I don't know. I asked the stewardess if she saw who dropped it there. She didn't. A bunch of people got food sickness up in first class, and it was chaotic. I walked up and down the aisle holding it, staring at people who looked suspicious, but got no reaction."
Havlicek said, "Let me just ask you two quick questions. Who in God's name is this guy, and what the frick else does he have?"
"I don't know," I said, my face pained and purposeful, on purpose. "I just don't know. But for all I know, he could be in this room right now."
"Jesus, you think he's a member here? That's a pretty high-flying anonymous source," Havlicek said.
"Point two," I said. "I think there's something strange going on between the FBI and this militia leader I know."
"Go ahead."
I told him the story. I told him of the interview with Daniel Nathaniel, the visit to the bar, the fight with this kid Bo, and of course, Bo's accusations and rantings about the fed named Drinker.
When I was done, Havlicek looked me up and down with laughing eyes and said in a tone spilling over with amusement, "You punched him in the kidneys and you broke his nose while he was down on the ground?" He made a shuddering motion with his shoulders. "Remind me never to cross you anytime soon."
"Not the kidneys," I said, indignant. "The stomach." I paused and asked, "You think the FBI could be working in some fashion with the head of the Idaho militia?"
Rather than answer, Havlicek asked, "So you pulled the plug on your story?"
"I didn't think I had any choice. You think otherwise?"
He was becoming serious again. "No. You did the right thing, the brave thing. But you should know about this."
He shuffled through more of his papers. God knows what he might be showing me now. He slid a computer printout toward me of an Associated Press story that began, "The Boston Record first published, then later deleted a story from its editions today asserting that a newly formed Wyoming-based militia group had sponsored last Thursday's assassination attempt against President Clayton Hutchins at Congressional Country Club. The story was pulled without explanation, in an apparent belief that the paper had published either wrong or unsupportable information.
Record officials and editors could not be reached for comment today."
I bet those Record officials and editors were getting a real kick out of all this. Martin was obviously running interference for me, and that would also explain his multiple telephone messages to me throughout the day, which I had yet to answer.
"I had too many doubts," I said. "I admit, I rushed something I shouldn't have rushed."
Havlicek said, in that soothing way of his, "Fuck 'em all. By tomorrow, this is yesterday's news. We're onto even better things right now, and you know it."
I allowed my thoughts to broaden. I asked, half-rhetorically, "What is really going on here? What's this all about?" I didn't wait for an answer before I went on, allowing myself, this time, to become melodramatic. "We have some anonymous source who has told us repeatedly that things aren't as they seem, not to believe what others want us to believe. And now we have a point of fact where he is right, and a pretty fucking big one. The shooter isn't who the feds say the shooter is, at least it doesn't seem that way. So that means the motive may not be what the feds say the motive is. And now we have pretty good reason to believe that the feds have some bizarre, and possibly suspicious, relationship with the militia movement they are accusing of trying to kill the president. So where does that take us?"
"I'll have the cheesecake, some extra strawberries off to the side, and another beer." That was Havlicek, speaking to Carlos, who had appeared at our table amid my monologue. I was about to get aggravated with him for his lack of attention when he cut me off.
"Look back at the Kennedy assassination," he said. "It's almost forty years after the fact, and people are still arguing over who pulled the trigger and for what reason. Now we have another presidential assassination attempt, and it is not unlikely that the same argument could take place all over again. Two big differences here, though.
First, Hutchins wasn't killed, which will make this thing fade into history faster. Second, there was a reporter involved, namely you, who might help answer a lot of these questions before they slip off into some arcane debate among conspiracy theorists. For all we know, there is some mysterious force who tries to knock off our presidents every three decades. Maybe that's what this is all about."
Nothing much to add, and I was getting tired, so I said, in an unidentifiable accent, "Pret-ty strange. I've been out of touch all day. Anything happen in the campaign I should know about?"
"No. Nichols in California, Hutchins in the Midwest. The polls show Hutchins inching ahead, but probably not by as much as Nichols was expecting. The Washington Post had another story this morning on that suspicious real estate deal of Nichols's, though I'm not sure if the public cares. And Nichols has begun pushing for a final debate, probably because he sees the same poll numbers we do."
"You still think Hutchins could have cooked this shooting up?"
Havlicek only nodded. He said, "Don't be out of touch tomorrow, not even for a moment. We don't want to blow a call from the anonymous one. I'm going to write up this autopsy stuff and put it in the paper.
I'm nervous I didn't do it today, but wanted to run it by you first, make sure you didn't have something to add or subtract. This note makes me more confident than ever that we're right, that we're onto something big. I actually called my wife before I came over. I told her I wouldn't be home until after the election. My sense is, this thing gets a lot bigger before it goes away, and we're with it all the way through, me and you."
Samantha Stevens's recorded voice was more inviting than it had been before, and far more inviting, I should point out, than it had been in person. This time, there was a tinge of concern in her tone, as if something were wrong. And the very fact that she asked me to call her whenever I got the message, regardless of the hour, was telling enough.
I sat on my couch and wondered what she had.
It was only 10:00 P.m." and the house felt emptier than I had expected in Baker's absence. First things first. I called Kristen, the dog sitter.
"Hey there," I said, trying to sound charming to make up for the hour and the fact I was about to steal my dog away. "Sorry I'm calling so late, but I kind of assumed you wanted to get rid of that no-good blond guy with the oversize ears you've been sleeping withforthe past few days. Any chance of me picking him up?"
She was typically warm. "If you insist. I was about to head up to the store for a soda. Why don't we meet at the corner of n and Thirtieth in five minutes?"
Next, I dialed up Stevens. Ends up, she had left me her pager number, which was interesting. Even worried FBI agents don't give their home telephone numbers out to key witnesses whom they have an enormous crush on.
Okay, so I made up the part about the crush. But it wasn't one minute before the telephone rang.
"Jack, Agent Stevens," she said.
Agent Stevens. Isn't that precious beyond words? Perhaps I'd like to be identified herein as Reporter Flynn, or Journalist Flynn for all you National Public Radio types.
In the time in which she inspired my disdain, she quickly caught her mistake. "Samantha Stevens," she said, this time in a surprisingly fetching tone. I was quickly over it.
"What can I do for you?" I asked.
She said, in a voice that lacked the familiarity that I was hoping for,
"I'd really like to talk about a few things on this case. Would you be available to get together tomorrow?"
I said, "I've got a ton going on at work, obviously. Not every day presidents get shot in the middle of a campaign. Not every day reporters get shot either, thank God."
Nothing. Not even so much as a chuckle.
"What about tomorrow evening?" she asked.
This threw me off. She urgently needed something. If I were a betting man, I would bet it wasn't me. "That works," I said, sounding somewhat short of decisive for no particular reason. "How about a drink at the bar at Lespinasse, seven-thirty."
"Good," she said. "I'll see you there." She hesitated on the other end, then added, "Jack, can we keep this meeting confidential?"
"My favorite kind of meeting," I said.
I could see Kristen already standing on the designated corner from half a block away. Baker lay on the ground beside her, obviously exhausted by another full day of being a dog. He saw or sensed me from half a block away and pulled his face up off the curb, staring intently in my direction. I called his name softly, and he scrambled to his feet, then ran low and fast toward me, his tail wagging hard all along the way. When he got to me, he urgently ran his coarse tongue over my face in a show of thanks.
"Ahh, a boy and his dog," Kristen said as she came upon our little reunion. "How touching."
I said, "You saved me again. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this."
I handed her a check, which she reluctantly accepted without unfolding.
"I have a hunch I may have to fly out of here again soon on very short notice. Are you around?"
"I'm always around," she said, hesitated, then added, "Is everything all right in the house? You getting used to it again? It seems so, well, bare in there."
"I'm getting used to it," I said. "I suppose I should get used to it, seeing it is my life."
There was silence for a moment, the two of us just standing on a lamplit street corner. After a while, she said, "I miss Katherine."
That thought hung there in the crisp autumn air, adorned only by the gentle rustle of dead leaves and the faraway sound of a car door slamming shut. Kristen had only gotten to know Katherine for a short time. It was all so different then. Katherine and I were squeezing in our last spurts of relaxation before the onslaught of parenthood, flying to Rome for a weekend, to a wedding of a friend in St. John, up to Boston for a party in our honor with family and friends. There seemed to be a constant buzz in our lives, the air of expectation always present, the expectation being that life would always get better, that the very best days still lay ahead.
Kristen may not have known my wife very well, but she knew her well enough, and certainly she saw all this. When she said she missed her, I knew she was sincere.
"I do too," I replied.
We were quiet again for a moment. She said, in a tone of voice that was different, "I saw you two once." She stopped, then started again.
"I saw you two once when you didn't know I saw you. It was at night.
You were on M Street, probably going to eat or something. I don't know. Katherine was really pregnant, and she stopped you while you were walking. She kissed you on the street, then stared at you and you stared back at her and it was as if there wasn't anyone else in the world. I walked by and didn't say anything and you didn't see me. I didn't want to ruin the moment. But I thought, my God, how in love are they? I've thought about that moment a lot. I think about it when I see you alone, kind of struggling but not really saying anything about it. I don't know, Jack. I'm sorry for all this. And I'm sorry for bringing it up."
I stared at her for a moment, then away from her, off into the distance. Baker had lain back down. The night was quiet, the air feeling cooler by the minute. "Thanks," I said, softly, and I reached out and gave her wrist a squeeze as I said goodbye.
I live near the corner of Twenty-eighth and Dumbarton Streets, in what the silver-haired grand dames of the realty circuit would call the heart of the East Village of Georgetown. Coming around Twenty-eighth, with a block and a half toward home, I noticed a large black woman sitting in a beat-up old Toyota at the curb. The car engine was turned off. The first glimpse I got of her played in my mind like a snapshot.
She seemed so out of place, just sitting there in her car as it neared eleven o'clock on a cool and lonely Tuesday night. When I spotted her, she seemed to be staring in my direction, as if looking for something, then she turned away as soon as we met eyes. It was odd.
Given what had happened at the Newseum, I knew this was stupid, returning to my house, walking the streets at night alone, pretending I was immune to danger when it was so painfully apparent in my recent history that I was not. But I had this stubborn Irish desire not to give in to the forces who were trying to intimidate me, or even kill me. That said, I was starting to feel afraid.
Halfway up the block, a man and a woman stood on the street, her leaning against a utility pole, necking.
I whispered to Baker, before we arrived within earshot of them, "I forgot that's what men and women do." The dog just kind of looked up at me, blankly. He was heeling tight, drawing his mood from mine. I think he assumed that men just mostly threw tennis balls, then took taxicabs to the airport.
As we passed by the couple, I saw the man look at me out of the corner of his eye. I looked away quickly and thought that that, too, was odd.
Now it felt just plain creepy on these streets that I had walked hundreds of times at every conceivable hour. Most houses seemed to be darkened for the night, the windows shut tight against the chill of autumn, their owners sound asleep. I watched shadows flicker on the ground, looked warily at movement in shrubbery, and scanned both sides of the street for any other people in parked cars. Nothing. As I neared my doorstep, the street seemed so dark, so empty, and so quiet that it was like a Hollywood stage set, void of actors and light crews.
I pulled my keys out of my pocket, and a car rounded the corner, slowly. It was a man, alone, in a Ford Taurus or another car like it.
He was looking in my direction as I was looking at him, and his car was barely moving at all. I fidgeted with the key in the lock and urgently pushed open the door. As I stepped inside, unnerved, I saw the car speed up and drive away. I shut the door fast, turning a deadbolt I don't think I had ever used before.
I quickly picked up the telephone and dialed Kristen's number. Baker stood by my side, looking around anxiously and up at me.
On the phone, one ring, then two, then three. Come on, Kristen. Be there.
"Hello," she said.
"Hey, it's Jack. I just wanted to make sure you got back in all right.
It seemed kind of quiet out there."
She gave a short laugh that seemed a mix of curiosity and gratitude.
"Jack," she said, pausing. "I'm fine." She laughed again. "You worry too much."
"Maybe I do." I said goodbye and hung up.
I pulled my sand wedge out of my golf bag on the way upstairs, then laid it down beside my bed, the closest thing I had to a weapon. I wondered what the NRA and PGA might think about this. Then I drifted off to sleep, and not very quickly.