American Quartet (9 page)

WITH
all suspects checked out and eliminated, the Damato case became a gnawing embarrassment. Thankfully, the press turned its attention to other matters. The hostage crisis. The declining economy. The presidential campaign.

The eggplant assigned them to the boring routine of checking out natural deaths, which did not improve Jefferson’s disposition. He didn’t like being part of the punishment to Fiona. What she learned later through the grapevine was that Jefferson, too, was being disciplined for a brutal beating he had given a drug dealer involved in an earlier murder.

But the Damato case continued to bug her and, when she found the time, she would mentally retrace the investigation. Was there something she had overlooked? It was not a subject she cared to discuss with Jefferson.

She pressed Hadley, the firearms examiner, on the question of the gun and the bullets. He was a tall ascetic man, not given to speculation.

“As my report says, from the lands and grooves, it could only be an English Bulldog or a Wembley. Hard to tell the age. They stopped making them in ’39.”

“When did they start?”

“The design was first manufactured in 1880, a historic piece. Qualifies as an antique.”

“And the bullets?”

“Old. Made, I’d say, about that time.”

“Why a bullet that old?”

“I just identify them,” he shrugged.

“You don’t think it’s odd?”

“In this business, everything’s odd. Old ammo is not that rare. It hangs around. Sometimes it’s not reliable.”

“This was.”

“Shows how good they made ’em back then.”

“But why would someone go out of his way to use old bullets if he could get new ones?”

“You’re the detective,” Hadley said.

At the autopsy, she had watched Dr. Benton’s strong dark fingers deftly slice into the cold alabaster flesh. In the glare of the overhead light the corpse looked like a bloated fish. Dr. Benton’s rich voice, with its Louisiana back parish accents, fell soft and melodious in the quiet room as he dictated his findings. Deftly he extracted the bullet where it had lodged in the pancreas. It had severed a main artery, and the man’s life had quickly hemorrhaged away.

“Destructive devil,” Dr. Benton said as the bullet pinged into a metal pan. His hair was white and cottony, his carriage stooped and scholarly, an authentic wise man’s mien. Of all the men that she had met in police work, he seemed to have the widest understanding of human nature.

“It’s as if he aimed straight for that artery,” he said, pointing to the shredded lifeline. Autopsies had never made her queasy, although she gagged when she had to put the garbage in her apartment’s compactor chute.

“Purely accidental,” Dr. Benton said. Gently, he opened the man’s lids as if he were still alive. The eyes were glazed, as dead as his living dreams. “It was a fluke shot. A smaller projectile might have missed it.”

“What kind of a person shoots another in the back?” she had asked him over coffee at Sherry’s a few weeks later.

“A guilty man, perhaps.”

“Of course he’s guilty.”

“I mean guilty of something else other than the crime. Why then not face his victim? Normally, your garden variety killer would shoot from the front, finding the heart. A contract killer, on the other hand, would go for the head on a rear shot. No. This man is guilt-wracked. Driven.”

“You learned that from the autopsy?”

“From living. From seeing so much violent death. This was no random shot.”

“Sounds more like instinct than science.”

He sipped his hot coffee, smacking his lips.

“Science is nothing without intuition,” he muttered, staring off into space.

He was a widower and lived in an attached house in Northeast Washington, a few blocks from Capitol Hill. It was stuffed, floor to ceiling, with books and magazines. Occasionally he had invited her in for Sunday afternoon tea. He had been deeply attached to his late wife, a lawyer, and memories of her were framed throughout the house: her degrees, photographs, awards.

“You don’t think it was a crime of passion or revenge?” Fiona pressed.

“No. It wouldn’t explain the rear shot.”

“Maybe it got out of hand. Maybe he only wanted to maim?”

“It was not the gunman’s to control,” Dr. Benton said.

“Do you think the victim knew the killer?”

He was always open with her, treating her as an equal. She attributed that to a general respect for women, a by-product of his happy marriage. He was the closest thing to a “rabbi” that she had in the department. Unfortunately, as a medical examiner, he was far outside the chain of command and of little practical help.

“I don’t think so,” he said, mulling over the question. “If it was an act of passion or revenge, the killer would not forego the psychic pleasure of direct confrontation. The dramatist knows this, and he is right. This man killed for other reasons.”

“And therein lies an enigma.” The frustration was eating badly at her.

The enigma lingered in her mind, waiting to be supplanted by other more pressing concerns. And, they came, they always did.

She had promised Bruce she would go with him to New York for the Labor Day weekend, the deadline for their experiment in communal living. Outside pressures had intervened, making any definitive decisions impossible. He hadn’t expected to be confronted with a formidable challenger and she had not expected things to go badly in her work. The gallery case remained unsolved. Nothing was going right.

When the duty roster came down, marking her for the entire Labor Day weekend duty, she stormed into the eggplant’s office.

“I need this weekend,” she said abruptly.

“I can’t spare you.” He did not look up from the pile of papers on his desk.

“It’s okay with Jefferson,” he growled. She stood over him a long time, fighting to control her anger. He looked up and smiled a big toothy grin, goading her.

“I won’t beg you.”

“I know,” he said calmly. She could have called in sick. It was too late now.

“You’re being unfair,” she said.

“I’m being a boss.”

A bastard, she thought.

“It’s a big weekend. We need all hands.” Although he was being official, his eyes told her otherwise. It was rumored that the chief had given him the deadline of Labor Day on the gallery case, but things had quieted down. He was beginning to believe that the crisis was passing and he was celebrating the event by showing her who was boss. He picked up the telephone, dismissing her.

“You could have helped me out,” she told Jefferson as they cruised the city on routine patrol. Their verbal back-and-forth had been so scanty that she realized she had never even broached the subject.

“You never asked, mama.”

“I won’t ask you for squat.”

“You sure are an uppity woman,” he grinned.

“I’m a cop, not a woman.”

They had maintained a kind of professional truce during their weeks together and she had steadfastly avoided confrontations, hoping that nature would take its course and this unnatural alliance would fall apart on its own volition. Sooner or later they would have to be separated. But both knew the timing for such a divorce was still a long way off. It had become, for both of them, a test of patience.

“I can’t wait for the day,” she muttered.

“I’m jes gettin’ to like it. Nothin’ like a challenge.”

“It’s a dead end for both of us.”

“Ain’t nothin’ but a woid.”

“Those stupid ghetto expressions. They make me sick.”

“Jes don’t throw up on the seats, mama.”

When she told Bruce about their lost weekend, he fell into one of his hurt child moods.

“What are you trying to prove?” he asked, after an evening of icy indifference. They were sitting on the patio of his townhouse, having their after-dinner coffee. She had cooked him a meal before breaking the news. “Call in sick. Ask for a transfer. Quit. Anything. Why should you let those bastards control your life?”

“I’m a professional,” she mumbled.

“It’s not worth the candle.”

“You’re asking me to understand your war. Understand mine.”

“Dammit, Fi, you could be a senator’s wife,” he fumed.

“I don’t like titles, especially ‘wife’ of . . .”

“Better than having to take shit from a bunch of shmoogies. Besides, you’re lost in a man’s world, the lower depths at that, strictly blue collar. Cops got no class.”

“Bad for your image, you mean,” she snorted. “The great liberal. At least we’re not hypocrites.”

“What is it you women want?” he shouted.

“That’s what Freud asked,” she said calmly.

The saucer shook, clattering the cup. He seemed to be making an effort to soften his anger.

“How about what I want?” he said more gently.

“I know what you want, Bruce.”

“So then, why all this . . . stubbornness?”

“I’m not going to let the bastards do me in.”

“At my expense?”

“I’m sorry. I have battles, too.”

He took her hand.

“I can lean on them, you know. There’s a way to horsetrade.”He looked into his cup. “If I lose, I also lose the clout. That’s the name of the game. Clout.”

“You miss the point. What the good Dr. Freud couldn’t know was the answer. I want . . .” She paused, clicked her tongue. “My own.”

“Your own what?” He paused, observing her. “Penis?”

“Jesus.”

“He had one.”

“My God.”

“Him, too.”

The wisecracks loosened him and he framed her face in his hands.

“I love you and admire you.” He kissed her lips. “You’re a beautiful sexy lady. How did you get mixed up in such a macho business? Your sex is an intrusion. Don’t you understand that? I mean there is a difference. A cop is a father figure. It’s a no-win career. And most of them are not even your intellectual equals.”

“Who’s the bigger bigot?”

To argue further would get them nowhere. Besides, she came from a long line of thick-headed micks who felt something sacred about their calling.

“Maybe I’m just a dumb Irish cop,” she said.

“Well, if we don’t have the weekend . . .” He moved closer and his warm breath tingled her ear. “We’ll just have to compress the timeframe,” he said, biting into her neck.

She moved out on Saturday morning. There were no tears or recriminations. No sad words; no bad words.

“We’ve got too much on our plates just now,” she told him. “Maybe later.”

“You’re still my girl,” he said, turning to embrace her as they lay in bed. She traced his profile with her fingers. Before she moved in, they had rarely spent full nights together. He had wanted to be home when the children wakened and the delicious luxury of the morning was lost to them. Now they both clung to it.

“Still your girl,” she said.

“Maybe when we both stop trying to make it . . .” he began, his voice trailing off as he kissed her deeply. Make what? she wanted to ask, but held back, disinclined to start down that path again, questioning the priorities of their lives.

“Every once in a while, we’ll run away,” she breathed into his ear.

“To where?”

They made love, but the sense of loss weakened the pleasure; it was less sensual, more cerebral. It was a sharing neither of them could articulate. And in the end it boiled down to an airport farewell.

“I’ll call you when I get back on Tuesday,” he said. He kissed her lightly and picked up his bags.

“I’ll be waiting.”

When he left, she packed quickly. She did not want to stay in his house alone anymore.

IN
the downpour, the old gingerbread State Department Building still retained a gloomy dignity; despite its name, EOB, Executive Office Building, old Washington hands still referred to it as Old State. To the east, the White House seemed like a varnished wedding cake preserved intact long after the nuptial party had left the ceremony.

The image amused him as he walked, head down against the rain gusting into his face. Government, with all its paraphernalia, its restrictions, its inhibitions, was not natural to the human condition. As Tad he might have thought otherwise. But as Czolgosz, he had to flog himself to accept that perception. Czolgosz believed that. It strengthened his motivation and goaded him to make his own historical contribution.

Remington’s hand slid into the right pocket of his raincoat. His fingers touched the cold barrel of the 32-caliber Ivor Johnson revolver, then moved deftly over the hard-rubber grip and the outline of the owl’s head stamped on either side. Another instrument of the grand design.

He had found it, miraculously, among his father’s effects, one of the many revolvers he always kept fully loaded at home. Once he had thought it a weird eccentricity. In those days he did not fully comprehend his father’s paranoia. But his father was acquisitive and greedy, his substance and energy fully devoted to the pursuit of more and more wealth. Once, too, Tad had resented being the beneficiary of such largesse, finally to appreciate it only when his mother put it at the service of her grand cause. Himself.

He lingered near the guard house that stood sentry at the parking lane between the White House and the Old State building. He wanted to take a short cut through the alley, which came out on the ellipse, cutting the distance to the Pan American Union Building where he was headed. The guard studied him for a moment then turned away, waving a car through the corridor.

I am Leon Czolgosz,
he whispered; he pronounced it “Cholgosh,” in correct Polish, for the guard’s benefit. It was like a child’s dare, but the man was too far away to hear it. Moving past the spiked iron fence, he turned on Seventeenth Street and headed south. The west side of the Old State shielded him and he walked erectly, ignoring the rain, still fingering the gun. With his other hand he groped for the handkerchief in the left side pocket of his raincoat, rehearsing again what he had to do.

He had done it at home four times that morning, standing stark naked before his mirrors, observing himself while doing it: wrapping the handkerchief around the gun in his hand and then pulling the trigger of the empty gun. It had excited him and, as before, he had had an erection.

Last night had erased all doubts. The candidate had come, had touched him, indented his flesh with the mark of himself. On one of the mirrors, Tad had written in soap,
JOHN DOE
, the name Czolgosz had used when he checked into that Buffalo hotel nearly eighty years ago. He had decided not to go to Buffalo—surely the fates would allow him some leeway. He had learned enough authentic details to win approval from the great cosmic judge who was testing him for his obedience to courage and truth.

The ellipse was empty and silent. Few people were in the streets and the weather had foreshortened the perpetual line around the Washington Monument. The rain laid a glistening sheen on the grass and the manicured trees. He walked on the landscaped side of the street, which afforded him a clearer view of the Pan American Union Building, with its green rotunda and Spanish architectural style.

He glanced at his watch, then quickened his pace. It was nearly four. Ten minutes to go. The fact that it was a Saturday had caused him a fretful anxiety. Suppose the building were locked? It was another test that had to be passed. But as the day wore on, his anxiety had faded. Nothing could stop what he had to do. Not now.

As he moved closer to the Pan American Union Building, the tall ornate metal entrance doors opened and shut. A man came out, walking slowly. The building was obviously open for business. Why had he ever doubted that?

When he reached a point on the street directly across from the building, he looked at his watch again. Another six minutes. At ten after four, they had, all those years ago, put down the ropes and let in the crowd. Withdrawing his handkerchief, he wrapped it around the right hand that held the revolver, then replaced it in the pocket of his raincoat. With his free hand, he smoothed down the moustache he had pasted on his face and pulled the rainhat brim over his eyes.

He had rehearsed it so many times. The raincoat was reversible. Afterward, he would remove his hat, walk calmly out the front door, turn the corner, and slip into Constitution Hall a block away. There, he would wait in the men’s room until the rally was over. It was the site this afternoon, he remembered, of a religious convention. Another gift from providence. Odd, how little planning was needed, how perfectly things were programmed to fall into line. All he had to do was imagine them.

How laughable it was, all that newspaper and television attention given the shooting at the National Gallery of Art. A bonus for him—did they really think he could be stopped? And how laughable was that obtuse police captain proclaiming his department’s expertise. “We’ll find the perpetrator,” he had said, cocky and arrogant, his dark face threatening. How could they possibly understand that Damato was merely a surrogate, irrelevant to the grand pattern?

Again he looked at his watch, feeling the adrenalin surge, the tingle at the base of his spine, the suffusion of blood in the center of his body.

He tightened his finger on the trigger and walked across the street. There would be no hesitation, but this time he had to look into the man’s eyes; he had to see him. The connection had to be complete. At the exact moment, he was sure, a man would appear, a big man. The choice would be made for him.

He mounted the steps. The rain had quickened. Rivulets cascaded down the brim of his hat, and with his free hand he wiped away the moisture from his eyes.

Opening the door, he saw the guard eye him perfunctorily, then turn away. It didn’t matter. He knew he was immune. In front of him was a large atrium with a fountain in the center. On either side were huge symmetrical winding marble staircases. The interior was surprisingly light and he could hear, faintly, the staccato of the rain on the rotunda.

The place was deserted and the guard turned back to his newspaper. He sat at a wooden table near the staircase to the right.

Then there was a clicking sound, a man with leather soles moving swiftly as he descended the stairs on the left. Remington felt his heart pound in a thrill of discovery. The man was big, dark haired, middle-aged. He moved swiftly down the stairs, his hand on the brass banister. Remington walked forward and waited at the landing. He probed the eyes of the oncoming man. There was the faintest tremor of recognition. Perhaps, he wondered fleetingly, he knew this man, but he could not remember.

The man offered a tentative greeting, a neutral smile, and Remington pressed forward, lifting his handkerchiefed hand as though to return the greeting. He felt an intense joy as the man came toward him, still smiling. A mysterious power radiated from his core through the muscles of his right hand, then down to his fingers.

“Buenos dias,”
the man said.

His response was the pressure of a finger. He felt the jerk as the bullet left the chamber, aimed directly at the man’s chest. Calmly, he pointed the barrel leftward to the man’s abdomen and fired again, and suddenly felt the handkerchief catch on fire.

It was still burning as he opened the doors and ran down the outside stairs, not looking back. Turning the corner, he ran into an alley, smothered the flames with his coat, reversed it, removed his hat, then moved calmly through the street until he reached Constitution Hall.

People milled in the lobby. He found the men’s room, ducked into an empty booth and sat fully dressed on the toilet seat. His hand was badly singed, the skin blackened and painful.

“Something burning,” someone said. He looked through the crack in the booth. Two men searched the towel bin for signs of fire, then, discovering none, left the men’s room. He left the booth, washed his hands, and felt the pain as the water hit the burned flesh. Lifting his eyes, he saw himself in the mirror. The moustache was awry. He tore it off and flushed it down the toilet along with the remnants of the singed handkerchief.

In the distance, he heard the wail of sirens. A man came in and stood in front of a urinal. The sirens grew louder.

“Trouble,” the man mumbled. “Satan’s work.”

“God’s,” Remington said hoarsely. The man stared at him with raised eyebrows, then returned to his business.

Men crowded into the lavatory after the religious rally ended. They were somber, colorless, like figures carved from the same bar of soap. He left unobtrusively. People jammed the lobby, escaping from the driving rain. He could see policemen in slickers searching the crowd. Had they a clear description of him? It hardly mattered. The signs were clear; he was divinely protected, the only bona fide messenger of God in the crowd.

For all his sense of invulnerability, the police observation urged caution. He looked around at the faces in the crowd. Next to him, an older woman stared glumly into the rain.

“Summer rain,” she said. “It was nice when we came in.”

“God’s will,” he said.

The lady wore a straw hat with faded flowers and a black print dress. She looked at him through sad pinched gray eyes set in chicken skin sacks.

“My car is two blocks away.”

He saw his escape clearly now. The policemen in their slickers studied the departing crowd. Occasionally they would stop someone, males about his height and build, and ask questions.

There was a moment when the rain eased and the crowd in the lobby surged outward. He took off his raincoat and put it over his head.

“Duck under,” he said to the woman. She stooped under him and they edged forward into the rain. With the lady in tow, he walked through the police gauntlet. They crossed the street without incident. Yet another sign, he thought.

“That was very kind of you,” the woman said. He continued to hold the raincoat over her as she opened the door of her car.

“Can I give you a lift?”

He nodded his thanks and slid in beside her. Surely an invisible hand emerged at every turn to guide him.

“I live in Arlington,” the woman said, jockeying the ’75 Chevy out of the parking space. The car moved past the new State Department Building, made a left on Twenty-Third and headed for the Memorial Bridge.

“This is fine,” he said as the car reached the Lincoln Memorial circle. He had not intended to leave the car at that moment. The memorial was not in the most convenient spot. He thanked the lady and got out.

The rain had become relentless again and the great Grecian shrine to the martyred President glistened in the milky light. A few tourists carrying umbrellas trudged up the long staircases to the majestic sculpted figure deep in reflection.

Rain cascaded over his bare head, down his neck, wetting his back. As if drawn by a magnet, he ascended toward the giant seated figure.

Towering above him was the Great Emancipator, the Captain, the Commander-in-Chief, the man who saved the Union. He looked up at the somber bearded white figure, high in his lofty chair, eyes brooding under the massive brow. He searched the man’s face and felt that Lincoln was watching him as well. Again the cosmic connection surged through him, touching every nerve, every sensor in his being. The hand of the martyred President seemed to reach out, touching him.

He did not know how long he stood there. When he recovered his sense of place, it had turned dark, the rain had stopped. The memorial was deserted. Lincoln, too, had cast his eye elsewhere.

He moved toward the bridge, past the massive brass horses shining in the reflected lamplight. Cars drove swiftly past him as he walked at a steady pace over the footpath. Occasionally, he glanced over the stone railing at the murky Potomac beneath him. He darted through the traffic on the Virginia side and cut across the grass island to the Arlington Cemetery station of the Metro.

In the deserted station he waited patiently for a train. He felt thrill after thrill of pleasure, signs of validation. He alone had been chosen to execute the grand plan. As he stepped into the train he felt radiant, gloriously alive.