Strachey's Folly - Stevenson Richard - Страница 13

Dolan said, "No, it's not crazy to consider the possibility that there's a connection between everything that went on yes­terday. That's not crazy at all. It does sound to me like it's more than a run of bad luck."

"But," I said, "Timmy may be letting his imagination roam a bit too freely, don't you think? Such as imagining, to cite just one example, that some of the GW hospital staff may be out to do Maynard in, and the same for large segments of the D.C. Metro­politan Police Department. I think he needs to be reassured on these points, among a number of others."

Dolan sighed heavily and said, "Look, I gotta make a phone call. I told my date I'd check in with her around now. Come on with me while I make a quick call, okay? There's a phone down at the corner, by Second."

Before we could question Dolan, she stood up and we quickly got up, too, and followed her out onto Pennsylvania Av­enue. None of us had finished our coffee, but Dolan paid no at­tention to that.

As we walked up Pennsylvania toward the Library of Con­gress, Dolan looked straight ahead and said, "I just wanted to get us out of there. Don't turn around, don't look back, but another plainclothes officer was in the coffee shop. He came in right after I did and sat three tables behind you all. He was too far away to hear much of anything you said, but after you told me what you told me, Donald, I thought, why is this man sitting here? The of­ficer's name is Ewell Flower, and he works under Ray Craig."

Timmy said, "Oh, God," and he appeared to be putting a lot of effort into not looking over his shoulder, as was I.

"Why not let's walk on over to the Capitol," Dolan said. She led us across Pennsylvania, past the library, across the Capitol grounds with their beautifully kept greenery and their antiter-rorist reinforced-concrete barricades—would missiles with tacti­cal nuclear warheads explode out of the bushes in the event of attack?—and around the south wing of the great building. The Capitol looked soft and creamy in the autumn morning sunlight, as if it could somehow render benign even the hard-hearted harangues of Jesse or Newt that regularly bounced off the walls inside.

From the high terrace of the west facade, we looked out over the city and the Mall and the AIDS quilt stretching away to­ward the Washington Monument, and beyond that, Abe Lincoln. Tens of thousands of people milled quietly among the panels. Timmy had remarked the day before that he had never seen so many people in one place remain so subdued. The quiet was partly a sign of respect, we concluded, and of so many of the quilt visitors being lost in memory, but it was also that no words felt adequate to express the quilt's huge and complex meaning.

Timmy said, "It's funny. Five minutes ago I was really fright­ened, but here I actually feel safe. In fact, this is the first time in twelve hours that I've actually felt safe. Not that I necessarily am safe," he added, and took a quick look back toward Pennsylva­nia Avenue. I looked around, too, but saw no one who stood out among the quilt visitors and other tourists and passersby. Dolan had not described Ewell Flower to us, so I didn't know whom to look for.

Timmy went on, "It's interesting how most gay people aren't usually aware of feeling wnsafe. But at these big, mainly gay events, you're always aware of feeling safe in a way you never do any other time. Do you know what I mean?"

I said I knew, but Dolan just said, "I'll take your word for it."

I asked, "Is this Ewell Flower following us? Have you spot­ted him since we left the coffee shop?"

"No, and he probably knows I made him. He's a short, skinny African-American man, gray-haired, wearing shades, in a black windbreaker. If they've got a tail on you, he probably switched off with somebody. I don't recognize anybody else from the division just now. I guess they could be using people from outside the division. So, yeah, we could still be under sur­veillance."

Dolan said all this nonchalantly, but I could all but hear Timmy's sphincter squeaking as it tightened. My own blood­stream was on the move, too.

"What reasons can you think of," I asked, "why Timmy and I might be under surveillance by the Metro Police Department?"

"Craig might suspect strongly that you had something to do with the shooting. Is there any reason he should?"

"Of course not," Timmy said. "That's just wacky."

"No, not wacky, just not real smart. Ray is one of those guys out of another age who think that if you are homosexual, you are, ipso facto, mentally impaired and possibly dangerous. Ray and I have talked about his old-fashioned opinions, which for some reason he seems to want to hang on to."

"Have you been to law school?" I asked Dolan.

"I went to Howard prelaw for a year. I learned a lot of his­tory and a lot of law, and I learned to speak standard American English. But I knew all I ever really wanted was to be a cop, so I switched to an M.A. program in criminal justice. I had an uncle who was an officer in the department until a sociopathic child shot him in the heart in 1989. James Dolan was the kind of man who made police work look like a noble calling. For him, it was a noble calling, I still believe, although for me it's been quite a bit more complicated than that."

"Because you're an African-American lesbian?" I said.

"No, because I'm a woman."

"Oh."

"And now my life is about to become even more compli­cated in the division on account of you two. I'm not complain­ing," Dolan said, and hoisted herself, one ham at a time, onto the stone balustrade beneath what must have been the House Speaker's office. "I'm glad you called me. What you told me is interesting. Maybe I can help out a little bit—I don't know yet. But word'll get back to Ray Craig, if it hasn't already, that you guys are talking to me. So we better get our stories straight, right?"

Timmy said, "Absolutely."

"Let's say you heard about me from Bob Bittner, over at Frankie's office—which is true—and you wanted to check in with a gay cop and tell your story to somebody who'd lend a more sympathetic ear than Ray did. That's true, too, and even more important than being true, it's plausible. Ray'll probably just say, 'Oh, they have to go and be PC What we don't need to re­peat to anybody at this point is all that interesting stuff you told me about this Jim Suter, and the quilt panel, and Betty Krumfutz. Let's keep all that amongst ourselves for now. If there is some­body in the department who is criminally involved, we don't want it to get back, okay?"

We both said no, we didn't want that.

"See, the thing of it is," Dolan went on coolly, "I made a couple of calls before I met you at the bagel shop, and early this morning Craig came up with two witnesses to your friend get­ting shot. A man and a woman were sitting in a parked car— sharing a joint, it sounds like—about forty yards down E Street. And they saw the whole thing: Sudbury come out his door and walk to his car, a white Honda with Maryland plates roll down the street, stop beside him, and then gunfire. Then the car— which probably was a white Honda stolen earlier in the evening in Kensington—proceeded at a high rate of speed down E Street and turned left at First. The witnesses got a quick look at the driver—who was probably the shooter—and at his front-seat passenger. Both of them, the witnesses said, looked Latino, they thought. Central American, Indian-looking, not Spanish. What the witnesses actually said was, the perpetrators looked Mexican."

Timmy shook his head in amazement. "This is all for real."