House of Secrets - v4 (22 page)

“Vee Pee! Vee Pee! Vee Pee!”

S
enator Foster took several minutes with reporters after his address to the crowd. He had to insist — forcibly, in one case — that the focus remain strictly on matters of the environment and on his carbon credit bill, which was currently working its way through the committee. A reporter with
The Washington Post
was pushing him to comment on the Earth Day crowd’s wishes that Andy declare his feelings about the vice presidency.

“Senator, with all due respect, your views on the environment are not exactly news at this point. But don’t you think that should you become the vice president, you would be in a position to make some real progress on those issues? Especially in a global sense?”

Andy replied glibly, “I don’t spend my energies on ifs.”

The reporter was not impressed. “If you were offered the position, wouldn’t you be able to push your agenda more aggressively?”

“Not nearly as aggressively as you’re pushing yours.”

“Is that a no?”

“That’s a nothing.”

The woman cocked her head slightly, tapping her pencil against her chin. “Rita Flores warned me about you.”

Andy jumped in immediately. “I’m very glad to hear that. I’m all for warnings. That’s precisely why these people have gathered here today. If we don’t turn warnings into policy, then we have produced nothing but hot air. And in our case, we will have failed our children’s generation and the generations after theirs.”

“That’s cute,” the reporter said. “Rita warned me that you’re one of the most evasive men she has ever covered.”

Andy cued up his smile. “Anything that is not an outright condemnation I’ll take as a compliment.”

After several more questions, Andy finally extracted himself from the press trailer. He was thanked profusely by several of the event’s organizers; then he walked over to Independence Avenue and hailed a cab. From the backseat he dialed Lindsay’s number.

“Have you got it?”

“Yes, it’s right here. I’m at Starbucks.”

“Okay, I’m on my way. Sorry that took so long. Seventeenth and Massachusetts, in about ten minutes. Northeast corner. I’m in a Gem Cab.”

He disconnected the call and fell back in the seat. He checked his watch. It was twelve thirty-five. As far as Andy was concerned, time officially stopped at seven that evening, when he was supposed to be on the phone with the goddamned Russian. Brought down on Earth Day. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint the irony, but he suspected it was there.

L
indsay left the Starbucks as soon as Senator Foster called. Her mind was elsewhere, a million miles away. She vaguely registered the
click click click
of her shoes as she moved along the sidewalk. The FedEx envelope was tucked firmly under her arm. Mere mortal hands could not have pried it loose.

At the next block she began looking for the senator’s cab. A red pedicab was tooling slowly up the street, some twenty or thirty yards back. Up at the end of the block Lindsay saw a Gem Cab pulling over, but as she stepped off the curb, she saw the rear door of the cab opening and an elderly woman getting out. Not the senator. What she didn’t see was a gleaming black motorcycle that was weaving precariously at just that instant past the pedicab. The motorcycle was pitched at such a severe angle that the driver could have practically reached out his hand and touched the road surface. He was losing control of the machine.

The roar from the motorcycle caught up to Lindsay a split second in advance of the vehicle’s rear tire swerving sideways into her leg. Its brakes locked, and the six-hundred-pound machine immediately fishtailed, whipping in a complete circle. Lindsay was clipped a second time, just below her left hip.

The nineteen-year-old rocketed into the air.

She landed on the road surface some fifteen feet away, tumbling helplessly until she bumped up against the curb. The motorcycle, meanwhile, had lost its driver. The machine continued riderless down the street in a ruckus of blue smoke and orange sparks, skidding to a stop at the crosswalk, just as the light hanging over the intersection turned from yellow to red.

Then came the screaming. The shouting. Onlookers rushing to the two downed people. Fingers punching 911 into scores of phones.

All the while, blood flowed from Lindsay’s mouth.

T
he cab driver slammed his hands down on the steering wheel in exasperation. “Forget freedom of speech! How about a little freedom of
driving?”

Andy leaned forward to peer out the windshield. “What’s going on?”

The driver gestured out the windshield. “Look at this. Those bozos care so much about the environment? I’m wasting perfectly good gasoline waiting on these clowns. You think these people think?”

Andy was dialing Lindsay’s number. A parade of eco-protesters was making its way slowly along Fifteenth Street, backing up traffic in both directions. Somewhere there seemed to be a kettle drum. There was chanting, though from this distance the words were indistinguishable. Andy peered through the windshield of the immobile cab at a large puppet figure of a polar bear floating into the intersection. The bear was accompanied by dozens of small penguins on sticks.

Lindsay’s voicemail picked up. Andy waited impatiently for the beep.

“Lindsay, it’s me. Look, I’m being held up in traffic here. You just hang tight, okay? I should be there in… I don’t know. Not long. But you just stay put.”

The polar bear puppet had stopped in the middle of the intersection. The little penguins were racing around it in circles.

“This isn’t happening,” Andy muttered.

Car horns began honking, first a few, then dozens. In no time the air went thick with blaring horns. The penguins continued dancing.

I’m in hell
, Andy thought.
My little stupid hell. All mine
.

T
he motorcycle cop removed his sunglasses.

“I know you,” he said.

Andy didn’t even look at the man. He was still seated in the back of the cab. Several fire trucks, an ambulance, and three police cars filled half the block of Massachusetts. “What happened here?”

“Accident, Senator Foster,” the cop said. “Nutcase on a Harley.”

Andy saw the black motorcycle lying on its side in the middle of the intersection.

“What happened?” he asked again.

“Witnesses said the biker was barreling through like a bat out of hell. He lost control. Slammed right into a woman who was crossing the street.”

Andy knew. It was clear to the senator that Lindsay would have been waiting on that corner even if the final bombs had started falling. She was nowhere to be seen.

Andy put every ounce of effort into appearing to be only casually interested in all this. The last thing he needed was a police officer shooting off at the mouth about the senator who was all flipped out about this accident.

“Would you happen to know which hospital the woman was taken to?”

The policeman knew. He told him.

Andy thanked him and rolled up the window.

“Did you get that?” he asked the driver.

“Georgetown University Hospital.”

“I’m not going to ask you to run any red lights,” Andy said. “But—”

“It’s okay, Senator.” The driver checked the side-view mirror, already having turned the wheel. “Just buckle up.”

C
hristine had to admit it: Butcher covered head to foot with milk and tattoos made one hell of a photograph. She projected the image with her enlarger, blown up as big as it could go without losing definition. The rocker’s torso was dominated by a two-headed dragon that was shooting orange and red flames from engorged nostrils onto Butcher’s shoulders. The dragon’s ornately inked body dominated Butcher’s chest and abdomen, the spiky tail slithering on down in a lazy S toward his crotch. The image Christine had chosen to print showed Butcher posing like Botticelli’s Venus. His left hand was draped casually over his crotch area, and his expression showed a demure but still quite masculine deadpan. The veil of milk running down the rainbow body gave the image an opaque ghostliness.

It was a good shot.

Christine made a print of the image and mounted it in a cherrywood frame. She removed her Magritte print from the wall and hung the Butcher photograph in its place and stepped back for a look. She liked it. Gothic and kitschy, to be sure, but it was also oddly poignant — the disarming nature of Butcher’s pose and expression was riveting. And unquestionably sensuous. The blue-green dragon snaking down Butcher’s milky stomach paralleled his tattooed arm, the two converging dead center on the pelvis, where the rocker’s broad hand failed to obscure completely the goings-on beneath it.

Christine was still admiring the image when the phone rang.

It was Miss Brandstetter, Michelle’s homeroom teacher. Christine glanced at the clock: one fifteen.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Foster,” the teacher said. “But Michelle seems to be quite upset. We were in the middle of an urban archaeology game in Social Studies when suddenly she just started crying. It was quite violent at first. She was shaking all over.”

“Oh Lord. Where is she now?”

“We’re in the infirmary. Michelle’s much better now, but she says she wants to come home. I think—”

“I’ll be right there.”

M
ichelle remained silent while her mother spoke briefly with Miss Brandstetter. She stood by, sniffling and looking forlorn. Christine thanked the teacher, and she and Michelle exited the building. Out on the sidewalk, the child took her mother’s hand. Her voice was barely audible.

“Did he call again?”

It was what Christine had suspected. Michelle had posed the exact same question at the breakfast table first thing in the morning.

They crossed Sixth Avenue and started for home. “No, honey, he didn’t. Like I told you this morning, I’m sure it was just some sad, silly man. I’m sure he wasn’t calling us specifically. He heard your voice on the answering machine and just started talking that way. I’m sure we’re not going to hear from him again. Sweetie, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“But Daddy—”

“Daddy’s fine. He gave his speech this morning down in Washington. When we get home we can see if anyone has put it up on YouTube.”

Michelle brightened a little. “Can we call him?”

“Of course we can. But you know Daddy doesn’t always answer. He’s very busy.”

Michelle implored. “But we’ll call him?”

Christine squeezed the girl’s hand. “Of course we will.”

“Daddy’s not a bad man, Mommy.”

The light at Grove changed, and the two stepped off the curb to cross. The afternoon sun hung over the distant river, almost colorless, and uncommonly blinding.

“No, honey,” Christine said. “Of course he’s not. Your daddy is one of the finest men alive.”

A
ndy dropped a handful of bills onto the front seat.

“Thanks.”

But if the driver responded, it fell on an empty backseat. Andy sprinted past a pair of ambulances parked in the emergency-room bay and pushed through the automatic doors. It was as he approached the nearest admitting window that he realized
he didn’t know her last name
.

A stout African American woman looked blankly at him from behind the glass.

“Can I help you?”

Andy took a beat to catch his breath. “A young woman. She was just brought in. She was hit by a motorcycle. It was on Seventeenth Street. Massachusetts and Seventeenth.”

The woman’s poker face remained intact. “And who are you?” she said — polite, not exactly friendly.

“I’m… her boss.” Andy was glad that the woman didn’t seem to recognize him, but glancing around at the other people waiting in the ER, he knew it was doubtful he would remain so lucky for long.

“Have a seat over there.” She indicated a row of molded plastic chairs, half of which were occupied.