Harry took a cab from the airport to Washington Hospital Center, a big white building complex on Irving Street. He arrived at 8:37, went to the reception desk and asked where his daughter, Sara Levin, was. A black woman with a well-trimmed Afro, reminded him of Angela Davis, told Harry to have a seat, pointing at couches and chairs arranged in front of a picture window with a view of a courtyard, someone would be out to talk to him.
There was no one else in the waiting area. Harry scanned the magazine rack, picked up TIME. The headline said: “The Occult Revival,” with an illustration of a guy wearing a black hood, and in smaller type: “Satan Returns.”
Harry sat and flipped through the magazine, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was in a daze, nerves on edge, sick to his stomach.
A few minutes later a woman with frizzy shoulder-length dark-hair came across the lobby and stood in front of him. She was cute, early thirties, wearing a sleeveless paisley dress and running shoes, a hippie dressed up for work.
“Mr. Levin, I’m Judy Katz.”
She sat next to Harry, body angled toward him.
“Sara was brought to the ER this morning at 1:34 a.m. She had been in a terrible car accident. She was dead. There was nothing we could do. I’m very sorry.”
Judy Katz put her hand on his and squeezed it. Harry let out a breath as if he had been subconsciously holding it in. He sat there for a couple seconds, trying to process what he’d just heard. “You’re sure it’s Sara?”
“We have her driver’s license and school ID.”
He rubbed his eyes.
“How’d she die?” He rolled the magazine up and squeezed it.
“Internal injuries, Mr. Levin.” Judy Katz said. “Sara died instantly. She wasn’t in any pain.”
“Who else was involved?”
“A man was driving the other car. I don’t know anything about him or his condition. He was taken to Georgetown. Another hospital.”
“Where is she?” Harry said. “I want to see her.”
Judy Katz escorted him downstairs to the morgue. They walked along the spotless hallway that smelled like cleaning fluid, sterile, antiseptic, neither one talking, Harry aware of the sound of their shoes on the tile floor. Hers squeaking, his clicking.
Judy stopped and said, “Sara’s in here. This is a viewing room.”
There was a body on a stainless steel table, covered by a white sheet. Her feet were sticking out the bottom, Sara’s pretty feet with pink manicured toenails, toe tag hanging from her right foot, name and Social Security number and Huntington Woods address in black marker.
Judy pulled the sheet back and Harry saw the lifeless face of someone, a girl with dark brown hair, but unrecognizable, the left side crushed.
“Is this your daughter, Mr. Levin?”
Harry nodded, picturing her the last time he’d seen her, the day she moved into the teacher’s townhouse. “You’ve got the best luck of anyone I know,” he’d said.
“The world’s my oyster, Pops.”
Harry took a cab to the Washington DC Police Department on Shepherd Street, met with Detective Taggart in a room with a long table, two ashtrays on it, pink walls and a clock. Taggart looked about forty, dark curly hair, sideburns, light green dress shirt, brown tie pulled down, slightly askew, revolver in a black shoulder holster under his left arm.
“Mr. Levin, I’m sorry about your daughter,” he said, southern accent. “Can I get you coffee, a soft drink, cigarette?”
Taggart took a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out and tilted it toward him.
Harry shook his head. “Tell me what happened.”
“Your daughter was traveling north on 15th Street. According to the restaurant manager she had just gotten off work. It was around twelve twenty. The car that hit her was traveling east on K Street, ran the red light at 15th, slammed into your daughter’s car broadside in the intersection.”
“Who was driving the other car?” Harry said.
Taggart glanced away and back at Harry. “I’m not at liberty to give you that information.” He looked uncomfortable, squirmed a little in his seat.
“What’re you talking about?”
“I don’t blame you,” Taggart said. “But there’s nothing I can do. He’s a foreign diplomat.”
“I thought I was at the police station.”
“It’s out of our hands,” Taggart said.
“You didn’t arrest him?” Harry said, shaking his head. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this-” He paused. “We held him till this morning, and I heard he was still drunk when we let him go.”
“You mean he’s out on bail?”
“There was no bail. Guy from the Chief of Protocol’s Office and a lawyer from the Office of the Legal Adviser got here at six thirty this morning and we had no choice but to let him go. This guy’s connected, somebody important.”
Taggart slid a business card across the table to him. Harry picked it up and looked at it: James Vander Schaaf, State Department of the United States, Office of the Chief of Protocol.
“You want to know what’s going on? Talk to him. But I doubt you’ll get a straight answer. This is Washington.”
Harry took a cab to 320 21st Street, got out in front of the sand-colored Department of State building. Vander Schaaf had a nice office with a view of the Potomac. He wore a seersucker suit and a bowtie. He was tall and thin and personable. Harry sat facing him behind a mahogany desk the size of a Volkswagen, framed photos on it and a coffee mug that said “World’s Best Dad” in a big cartoon typeface, and wall-to-wall bookshelves behind him.
“Mr. Levin, on behalf of everyone here at the State Department, I want to offer you our sincere condolences for your loss. Unfortunate, tragic, you have our deepest sympathy,” he said.
It sounded like practiced sincerity. Bereavement 101.
“I can definitely relate. I have children of my own.”
“I don’t want your sympathy,” Harry said. “I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”
Vander Schaaf put his palms together like he was praying, gave Harry a solemn nod. “Mr. Levin, I just want you to know that I’m here for you. We all are.”
Whatever that meant.
“But what we have here is a very difficult situation. Are you familiar with diplomatic immunity?”
Harry had an idea, but let him keep going.
“It’s a tradition that dates back to the ancient Greeks: Sophocles, Aristotle.” He picked up a pen like he was going to start writing, using it as a prop, giving him something to do with his hands. “They believed foreign emissaries traveled under the protection of Zeus.” He paused. “Today it’s designed to protect diplomats who travel abroad. Mr. Levin, we can’t in good conscience send our ambassadors to places where an unfriendly government might try to bring false charges against them. Sir, it’s a safeguard. It was all codified at the Vienna Convention in 1961. A complete framework was established for diplomatic relations on the basis of consent between independent sovereign states. It set out special rules, privileges and immunities-which allow diplomatic missions to act without fear of coercion or harassment of local laws. Is any of this making sense, Mr. Levin? If not I can have John Brennan, an attorney from ‘L,’ what we call the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, come by and explain it further.”
He put the pen on the desktop, picked up the coffee mug and took a sip.
“A foreign diplomat kills an American citizen and there’s nothing you can do about it. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Vander Schaaf said. He picked up a piece of paper and started reading. “Article 29 provides inviolability for diplomats, and Article 31 established their immunity from civil and criminal jurisdictions.”
“Don’t read anything else, okay?”
“Mr. Levin, I understand how you feel.”
“You don’t have a clue,” Harry said. “Where is he?”
“Who, sir?”
“The guy that killed my daughter.”
“I have no idea.”
Vander Schaaf looked worried.
“Who’s your boss?” Harry said.
“The Chief of Protocol, Mr. Emil Mosbacher Jr.”
“Get him on the phone, tell him I want to talk to him.”
“Mr. Levin, that’s impossible.”
“I thought you were all here for me.”
“Mr. Mosbacher is with the president.”
“Then call the White House, let’s get Nixon himself involved.”
Vander Schaaf was flustered, didn’t know what to do. Harry got up and started for the door.
“By way of reparation, Mr. Levin, I have a letter of apology from the diplomat himself.”
Harry moved across the room.
“He’s very concerned about the matter,” Vander Schaaf said, on his feet now, coming around the desk. “And has offered to pay funeral expenses.”
Harry was at the door, he turned and said, “Funeral expenses? You think that’s why I’m here?”
“Mr. Levin,” Vander Schaaf said, crossing the room, trying to catch him, but Harry had already gone.
He phoned Detective Taggart from a payphone in the lobby, got him on the line and asked where Sara’s car had been taken.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Look at it,” Harry said.
“It’s in a lot on North Pearl Street. Got a pen?”
Taggart gave him the address and Harry wrote it on the back of Vander Schaaf’s business card.
“I’ll call and tell them you’re coming. Get anywhere with the State Department?”
“They should call it the Anti-state Department.”
“I tried to find out who the diplomat is,” Taggart said, “but they’ve covered this thing up, buried it deep. All I know, the guy’s a German. Good luck.”
Taggart was a standup guy. Harry thanked him and hung up. He went outside and hailed a cab and took it to the DC police impound lot, rows of cars behind chainlink fence topped with razor wire. There was a single-storey cinderblock building just inside the fence. Harry went in the office and showed his driver’s license to a clerk behind the wood and Formica counter. He wore a police uniform shirt but looked like a mechanic, long greasy hair combed straight back over his collar, a few days of reddish-brown stubble on his face.
Harry told him about the accident and said he wanted to see the car, a 1968 Ford Falcon registered in his name with Michigan plates. The clerk flipped through a stack of papers that had a staple through the top left corner.
“Here ’tis, ’68 Falcon.” He looked up now. “In fact, they’re both out there side by each. Your car, what’s left of it, next to the one that hit it. 1972 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL, costs more ’n I make in a year, probably two. Tow trucks brought them in within a few minutes of each other, explaining their close proximity. Row A, spaces seventeen and eighteen. Walk out that door‚ take a right, can’t miss it.”
Harry approached the Falcon from behind, and even from this angle he could see the damage. He walked up to it, stood next to it, looking inside the car. Everything on the left side from the front fender to the trunk was crushed, pushed halfway through the interior. Roof peeled back like a sardine can. Steering wheel bent out of position. Driver’s seat angled sideways against the front passenger seat. There were spots of dried blood on the seats and dash and passenger-side window.
Now he glanced at the black Mercedes parked next to it, twice the size of the Falcon, had to be two tons. Stepped over and looked at the front end crushed all the way to the dash, left wheel and tire trapped in the wreckage.
He opened the driver’s door. Except for blood on the sill and the bottom of the window the interior was untouched, intact. Harry could understand now how the diplomat had walked away. He looked on the floor and saw a cigarette next to the accelerator pedal. He reached and picked it up, a Marlboro burned about halfway. Ran his hand under the driver’s seat, felt a pack of matches. It had a black background with the red silhouette of a naked girl. He opened the cover and saw ‘Archibald’s Entertainment for Gentlemen’ with an address on Q Street. Under it, a note in blue ink said: “You want it, baby‚ I got it, Coco XOXO” and a phone number.
Harry walked around to the other side of the Mercedes, opened the front passenger door, sat on the black leather seat, and scanned the interior. Reached over and checked behind the visor on the driver’s side. Nothing. Checked behind the visor in front of him. There was a vanity mirror. Stared at the close-up of his face. He looked tired and needed a shave. There was a console between the seats and a compartment under the center armrest. He opened it and looked in. Empty. Checked the back seat. Spotless. Checked the glove box, took out a black leather folder, opened it. Car was registered to the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, 4645 Reservoir Road NW, Washington DC, 20007.
Harry took a cab to Archibald’s, walked into the dark room, loud pulsing music, beams of light crisscrossing the interior like air-raid strobes. There was a naked girl on stage, spinning upside down on a silver pole. Other girls in various stages of undress were dancing tableside. Harry asked the bouncer if Coco was working and he pointed to a petite, light-skinned black girl giving a lap dance to a customer at a corner table.
The hostess, a fortyish brunette with fading looks, escorted him to a booth.
“I’ll have a vodka tonic, and will you send Coco over when she’s free?”
“Sure‚ hon,” she smiled. “No problem.”
His drink came, and when the song ended so did Coco.
“How you today, baby?” she said, sliding in the booth in a G-string, full of energy and personality. Afro accentuating high cheekbones and caramel skin, petite body making her seem younger than she was, girlish.
“My German friend told me to ask for you.”
“What German friend you talkin’ about?”
“He was in last night.”
She gave him a big friendly smile. “My man, Fritz.” Gave his arm a light squeeze. “What I call him. What’s his real name?”
“I can’t tell you,” Harry said. “It’s sensitive due to his-” He led her and she picked right up.
“Don’t have to say no more.” Coco touched his arm again. “Fritz okay?”
Harry said, “Yeah, I think so.” No idea what she was talking about.
“Thought he was hurt.”
“Why’s that?”
“Had blood all down his pants.”
“You saw it?”
“Felt it. Was all wet.”
“What happened?”
“Dint say. But when he leave I went to the ladies, washed my hands. Was red blood come off in the sink.”