The Intern: Chasing Murderers, Hookers, and Senators Across DC Wasn't In The Job Description (12 page)

I grabbed the remote control and shut the TV off. The light
next to my side of the bed was the only one still on, so I turned it off and
got further under the covers. Tabitha squeezed my hand and lay close to me. I
liked that. I could smell her hair. I could hear her breathing slowly even out
into sleep, while I kept my eyes open and worried about my entire existence.

Thursday

Sixteen

T
abitha woke me around 6:30 wearing a
Georgetown sweatshirt and jeans.

“Shower’s free.”

When I returned from the steamy heaven—my arm feeling
somewhat better—I found a continental breakfast waiting for me.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked.

She took a sip of orange juice and studied me for a second.
“A couple of reasons, I guess. The first one is that Stephanie really did like
you. I got to hear every damn detail of every one of your dates, and she really
thought you were the shit. And Stephanie’s about the coolest person I know, so
that went a long way.”

“Why does she rate so highly?”

“Because it’s very, very hard to stay friends with a hooker.
I’ve heard that from all the girls I work with, and I’ve discovered it myself.
I didn’t tell her for a long time, but then my hours got so crazy that I just
had to. And she wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t desert me, either.” She
gave a short laugh. “I made the mistake of thinking everyone would be the same,
so I told another good friend of mine, and she doesn’t even return my calls
anymore.”

She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “But the other big
reason I’m helping you is that I’ve had my back against the wall. And I’ve
wound up in situations I didn’t create. And I know how that feels.”

I reached out my hand and she put hers in it. “Thank you,” I
said. And I meant it.

But there was work to do. Through the night, as I tossed and
turned, I had considered the plan of action. Between bites, I told Tabitha the
things I had been pondering all night.

“I’m sure my ol’ boss Helper is the key to this whole
thing.” Or at least the key to what I could see of it. “Maybe we should search
his house.”

She shrugged. “It’s as good a place to start as any.”

It would be a helluva lot easier than starting at the
McHolland Foundation and probably less dangerous, too.

“Do you know where it is?”

“No.” I glanced around the room. “Where’s the phone book?”

Tabitha grabbed it and plunked it down between us. He was
listed—no reason not to be. He lived on Bush Hill Drive in Alexandria, and I
wrote down the address and phone number on the snazzy Watergate notepad, which
felt like it was made out of better-quality paper than most law firms’
stationery.

“Do you think he’ll have an alarm system?” Tabitha asked.

Just as I hadn’t considered it when dealing with car alarms,
I had overlooked this completely. I considered for a second “Yeah, I imagine he
will. Damon always called him Inspector Gadget. Said he always had the newest
computer, the newest this, the newest that.”

Tabitha pursed her lips. “Let me make a couple of calls,”
she said. She hit the concierge button on the phone. “This is the Senator’s
room,” she said in a businesslike tone. “We need a laptop computer with a zip
drive and extra floppies and zip disks.” She laughed as she got off the phone.
“They’re gonna think we’re into cybersex.”

Her next call, I gathered, was to Discreet Companions.
First, she told them that the Senator was going to be needing her services for
the next few days and then placed an order from their costume vault; until this
experience, I had no idea that a brothel had a costume vault. She approximated
my size—and did so quite well—and ordered me the detective, the soldier, and
the patient, and got herself the secretary, the schoolteacher, the meter maid,
and the nurse. I almost leaned over and asked her to get the Dallas Cowboy
Cheerleader outfit—a favorite of mine—but finally decided against it.

“And listen, Julie, his clothes got a little … soiled last
night. Can you send over a sweatshirt and some jeans, maybe? Thanks.” I
groaned, wondering what Julie would think.

Before she could make her third call, the doorbell rang.
That scared the bejeezus out of me because I had absolutely no idea that hotel
rooms had doorbells. I whispered this to Tabitha, but she assured me that this
one did.

She motioned me to a corner by the closet and went to the
door. In the next moment, she returned, wheeling a cart with a laptop hooked up
to a new-looking printer.

The next phone call scared me a bit. She called and asked
for Phillip, and, when he came on the line, she identified herself as Desiree
and smiled at his response.

“Phillip,” she said after a second, “I’ve gotta break into a
house with a good security system … No, you can’t break into it for me.”

Oh God
, I thought, master criminals were now playing
on my team. He evidently asked no more questions, because she gave him our
location and hung up. “A client,” she said, looking at my milky complexion.

“A hobby of his?” I asked.

“No, it’s his profession. He has a deep fondness for me and
would do just about anything I ask of him.”

“Where does he rank among your clientele?”

She thought for a second. “He’s one of the nicest guys, but
one of the most perverted.”

I almost protested his appearance on my behalf when I
realized I was in so much trouble it made exactly no difference. She sorted
through the computer pile and nodded her approval while I paced the floor. I
looked out the window, still expecting to see the entire DC police force lined
up around the outside. There was a squad car, but it was headed down the street
and out of my view in seconds.

“All right,” she said, “we’re hooked up from this end.” She
had plugged the modem line into the phone and explored the files and menus to
see what she had. The doorbell once again rang, and I headed back to my spot.
She came back with two thick hanging bags and a red backpack. We opened them
and found professional-quality costumes, facial hair, wigs and bottles of
spirit gum among lots of other goodies.

“What did you have in the bag last night?” I asked. She
laughed and flipped the blond hair back from her face while walking to the
closet. She produced a costume that would’ve turned her quite convincingly into
Little Red Riding Hood. It was enough to make a fellow want to play the big bad
wolf.

She went back to rummaging through our new booty, handing me
a navy DKNY sweatshirt and a new pair of jeans to put on. We were not going to
be the world’s least conspicuous burglars, but it was much better than a
business suit or an orange Blues Explosion T-shirt. I ran to the bathroom and
was finished dressing and tying my shoes when I heard the doorbell ring once
again. Tabitha got service, I thought as I listened to the conversation outside.

“Desiree—is everything all right?” Phillip, who had a heavy
south Jersey accent, sounded genuinely concerned.

“Everything’s fine, just like I said.”

“Can you …”

“I can’t tell you anything right now, Phillip, but I will
soon.”

He seemed to understand and began explaining how the device
worked. It was to be held next to the keypad on the alarm, he said, and would
come up with a code in less than fifteen seconds. He also talked about a second
device, which would open garage doors, which, he said, made entry much more
convenient, and then handed her what he called a care package. She thanked him.

“If you need any more help you’re gonna call me, right?” he
asked.

“Of course,” she said. By this time, I was tired of sitting
on the toilet and hoping she was getting rid of him. She almost had him out the
door when I heard him push his way back in, trying to find a way to tell her
that this was expensive equipment, and he needed it back soon.

I bit my lip, thinking that I didn’t want to be on any
hardened criminal’s shit list and made a note to take extra-special care of
Phillip’s stuff. I finally heard the door close moments later, and she knocked
on the bathroom door. “He’s gone,” she said, and I sprang up.

When I came back into the room, she was smiling, looking
warily at the contents of the “care package.” She handed me a Walther PPK
pistol—the kind of gun James Bond favored—with a cool looking silencer on it,
two full clips of ammo, a flashlight, a set of lock picks, and a pair of
ladies’ black leather gloves.

“He’s way more thorough than we are,” I said, kicking myself
for not thinking about gloves.

“He has a good deal more practice,” Tabitha said, moving to
the phone. She dialed the concierge once again. “Yes. We’re in need of some
surgical gloves. … Yes. … I don’t know—could you spare a box? Great.” She hung
up, and I could only imagine what that poor man downstairs was thinking. While
we were still laughing, there was the doorbell again, and Tabitha returned with
a box of 100 latex gloves.

Tabitha sized me up, looking very pensive, and then dug into
the backpack. She pulled out a long, straight-haired blond wig. “Ever had a
pony tail before?” she asked.

“I came close once,” I said as she stood on her tiptoes to
put it on top of my head. For a minute, I almost said no, thinking long hair
would make me look more like the picture on TV, but then I realized I had never
been blond.

She did some magic with bobby pins, whipped a rubber band
around the hair in the back, grabbed a Braves baseball cap from her bag in the
closet, and put it on over top of the wig. I looked at it in the mirror and
thought it looked good—the annoying guy no one really wants to speak to anyway.

Tabitha, however, was not done. She covered my brown
eyebrows with some yellow gunk that tickled when she applied it, and then made
me model a goatee. I eighty-sixed that idea, thinking that really would make me
look like a bleached version of the picture the media had.

“Yeah,” she said. “And it would only be something else to
worry about. The hair should stay in place fairly well.”

We grabbed our contraband. I stuck the gun in the small of
my back as I’d seen done a thousand times in the movies. I was a little ticked
at Phillip for not bringing a holster; I was very concerned about the
possibility of eluding the cops and the criminals only to end up shooting my
own butt off. I emptied the backpack and loaded it with the zip disks and
floppies, the extra ammo clip, the gloves, and our high-tech crime gear. I hung
the “Maid Please Come Early” sign on the door, and we were off.

Tabitha knew a back set of stairs reserved for just these
sorts of clandestine exits. Every movement echoed in the empty stairwell,
making us sound like an army marching down the steps. We plunged deep into the
basement before we came to her car. It was a new, red Saturn in need of a wash.
We stopped, not having considered how best to take care of the seating
arrangement.

“My trunk is very clean,” she said, trying not to laugh.

“Oh, come on!”

“I’m serious. It’s one less chance we take.”

“You don’t even know how to get there.”

“I’m great with geography.” She popped the trunk and
gestured. “I’ve never had someone in here before,” she said. “Knock if you need
oxygen.”

She was enjoying this too much for my liking.

“Wait,” I said. “What about getting out? We’re gonna park
some distance from this guy’s house, and it’s probably going to be residential,
and there’ll be some Mrs. Kravitz with nothing better to do than look out their
window.”

She hadn’t considered this. I hadn’t either until she made
the oxygen comment, and I was struggling for one more reason to stay out of the
trunk.

“The back seat, then. After I pay the parking attendant,
you’re laying down.”

“What if we’re stopped?”

“Then you’re sick, and we’re taking you to a doctor.”

I had no good reason to avoid this one. I told her to at
least let me sit in the front until we got out of the garage, and she agreed.
Tabitha drove off, the garage attendant paid no notice, and I hopped over the
seat, lay down, and tried to think.

Seventeen

T
he drive took about half an hour. My
first order of business was to take the gun out of the small of my back and put
it in the backpack. It was very uncomfortable, and I saw no reason for taking
the chance of getting my rear blown off while we were crossing Memorial Bridge.

We didn’t talk, but the silence wasn’t forced. She had
plenty to think about, and so did I. This was the first time I really had
reflected on everything, and I was glad to have a chance.

I had been on the brink of absolute terror for a day now. I
realized that once you got there you almost got used to it; the excitement and
adrenaline almost made up for the fear that had been with me constantly. Every
car held a madman or a policeman, and every sound was ominous. Even now, when
all I had to do was think, I could barely keep my heart from racing.

When you get on that adrenaline high, you start to believe
you’re invincible. That’s probably why most everyone gets caught; they forget
all about caution, both because they need more excitement and they believe they
can’t or won’t be caught. I was definitely beginning to think like that, and
that scared me as much as anything else.

I also spent a good deal of time trying to learn more about
Tabitha from her back seat. For someone with a high-paying job, her car was
just okay. She had a very sorry-looking blanket spread out with all kinds of
junk on top of it: one parking ticket—I wondered how far she was from The
Boot—two empty vitamin bottles, and a well-worn Orioles cap, the old style with
the goofy, smiling bird on it. Her car could’ve belonged to anyone, and that
got me nowhere.

Under one corner of the blanket, there was a small bulge I
didn’t know at first. I reached down and uncovered it, and there lay a book
about angels, the kind I would’ve never expected her to have. I opened it to
the first page, and there someone had written,
T—I hope this book and a few
angels will help you through all of this … Love, S.