The Intern: Chasing Murderers, Hookers, and Senators Across DC Wasn't In The Job Description (16 page)

Despite all of the heartache that the boob tube had caused
me in the past few days, I turned it on again. And for once, I didn’t see my
face on the screen; I saw Stephanie’s.

She was being interviewed by Sandy Springer, a perky,
inquisitive journalist, who always reminded me of a blond Chihuahua.
Stephanie’s face looked flat and cold, with very little make-up, probably an
attempt by the producers to make her look even more sympathetic. Sandy—looking
pert, blond, and wonderful—gazed intently at her, showing the audience her deep
rapport with her subject, before beginning her questioning in a frank but
gentle tone that annoyed the hell out of me.

“What was he like?” she asked, resting her chin on her
knuckles.

Stephanie shrugged. “He seemed nice enough. I … I did not
expect this.”

I glanced at Tabitha, who watched her friend closely.

“Any hints at all?”

She thought about it for a second. “None. I liked him.”

“You liked him?” Sandy didn’t want to hear that.

She nodded. “He was funny and thoughtful.”

I was reeling. It was very weird to hear Stephanie talk
about me the way you might hear Liz Taylor talk about Husband Number Four.
Funny and thoughtful. And deadly.

This probably sounded way too sympathetic to the killer as
far as the show’s producers were concerned, so Sandy quit pursuing it and
started a new line of questioning. “Were you straight with him about Roger? Did
he know you had a previous boyfriend?”

She nodded. “I told him that I had been serious for a long
time with Roger and that he had been my only really serious boyfriend.”

Okay. Every detail of my life that might have ever come back
to haunt me had already surfaced to become dinnertime conversation for Middle
America. Rumors, half-truths, and white lies were being bandied about on every
talk show in the country. But there was something very naked and very wrong
about someone interviewing Stephanie about our relationship. It just seemed
really intimate, and it made me very uncomfortable.

The segment didn’t last much longer. Stephanie wasn’t the
hysterical wailer or the vindictive vixen they were wanting; she was just an
honest person who had been hurt in a variety of ways. Through a satellite
hook-up, Sandy had found someone more to her liking. She was now talking to
Jack Swanson, who she described as my “childhood friend.”

Trouble was Jack Swanson wasn’t a childhood friend. In fact,
I hated him. He was the pot-bellied shit-head who picked on me in junior high.
Last I knew, Jack had been “doing well” in the roofing business in Naples,
Florida, where he was shacked up with Kellie Kingman, the girl who wore the
biggest hair bow in the whole elementary. I had always loathed Jack, and Kellie
hadn’t done me any favors, either. The bigger the bow, the bigger the ho, as my
friend Kevin used to say. His enormous face filled up the screen like a ham
hock, and when he laughed his lip nearly touched his nose. It had always done
that.

But he wasn’t laughing now. He was shaking his head, filled
with remorse for his friend who had, in Jack’s words, “strayed from the path.”
He told Sandy that I never was quite right, and the only slight pleasure I
could manage out of the whole painful minute that he was on camera was when I
noticed that he was going bald quickly. He misquoted the Bible and then
earnestly asked me to give myself up to the proper authorities. I flipped him
off, even though I knew he couldn’t see me.

I was just going to have to swear off TV. First, I had been
embarrassed about the truth being aired. Now, I was embarrassed that the whole
friggin’ nation would now believe I had ever liked Jack Swanson. Tabitha turned
off the set and chuckled quietly.

“Did you really like that guy?”

I realized I hadn’t spoken throughout the whole show. I was
sure, though, that my expressions had said plenty. “He pantsed me in gym.”

She laughed. Loudly. She was way too happy about this.

“Quit laughing,” I said.

“Pantsed,” she pointed.

Her laugh was so loud and so annoying that I finally cracked
a smile. After I explained the exact logistics of my junior high humiliation
and after she laughed for quite a while longer, Tabitha and I began to map out
just exactly how we were going to accomplish this daring break-in. I told her
what I remembered about how the building was set up and that there was a single
security guard at the front desk. I knew the building held such covert
operations as Easter Seals and Save the Children and was fairly sure they
didn’t have major problems with espionage or burglary, and, thus, we could
probably catch the watchman off-guard—pardon the pun. Because of growing up
around two older brothers, Tabitha knew a good deal about cars, and she told me
of some doohickey in the engine that she could remove which would keep the car
from starting. This was good, I told her, because I knew lots about computers
compared to what I knew about cars.

By the time we were ready to move, it was after ten. We once
again traipsed silently down the hall, and I was still terrified that the
parking attendant would spot me. I had brought the flashlight and the lock-pick
set provided by Phillip as well as his gun, more as a prop than anything else.
I thought about that old saying,
you should be ready to use a gun, or it
would probably end up being used against you
.

Despite everything, I didn’t believe I was to the
trigger-pulling point; I wasn’t going to bring anyone down—with the possible
exception of Mark Helper—to get myself off the hook. Looking back on it, this
decision on my part was both courageous and dumb. But, then again, that could
almost be the title of my whole adventure.

Other than the monuments and monoliths, which are all lit up
like electrified snowmen every night of the year, DC at night isn’t much to
behold. You see street lights and tail lights and rats scurrying across lanes
of traffic. So I didn’t mind slinking down in my seat and listening to Buddy
Holly on the radio until we got nearer to our target. Tabitha watched as I
pointed it out, a metallic ten-story building which looked like no one had ever
taken the time to finish it. She drove past it, and I got out, running under
the building’s overhang and sneaking along the side. The street was empty.

Tabitha circled back around the block and parked in the
middle of the street, fifty feet from the door. I moved closer to the entrance.
She turned on her hazard lights and popped the hood, checking to make sure she
wasn’t going to be mugged. I pointed to the pistol tucked under my shirt to
remind her that I had her covered. She raised the hood and grabbed something
small, wrapped it in a tissue, and put it in her pocket. Then she ran into the
front of the building, looking hysterical. Her clients, I thought, would
believe absolutely anything that she told them. I was hoping the guard would
too.

I wanted to hear what she was saying, still slightly scared
that she might try to turn me in. But then I realized she had just let me out
of the car and could’ve driven to Montana before I would’ve even known she was
gone. So I put this worry aside and waited.

Tabitha came out the door with a gaunt, middle-aged man, who
looked like he hadn’t stood up all night. She was standing close and talking
briskly, and I slipped into the open door while his back was turned. I knew the
McHolland Foundation was on the third floor, so I eased myself into the
stairwell and up the stairs. I sprinted, realizing my time on the lam was
getting me in excellent physical condition—I wasn’t even breathing hard.

The glass door which stood between me and the documents
which might free me proved to be a little more of a challenge than the piddly
little door at Helper’s. It took me almost a minute to get it open. I stuck the
flashlight in my mouth and then turned and fumbled and pushed and twisted until
I finally heard something click. I took the flashlight out of my mouth and went
in.

The streetlights provided just enough light to plaster my
shadow to the far wall. I didn’t think anyone could see this from the ground,
but it made me even more nervous. I chewed on my lip and wondered where to
start. There were several desks in the middle of the room, but I wondered if
they would have access to what I needed. Still, they were there, and I could
also see the printer to which they were connected. I swore in several languages
when I realized I had forgotten gloves and wondered how many fingerprints I had
left already. But I quickly decided I might as well not even worry about
that—this escapade was pretty insignificant compared to all the rest of my
crimes. I switched on the printer with one of my knuckles and examined the
desktops to see which computer to use.

At the NEA, we had to watch a really lame video before we
could get a computer password. It starred a big fat guy who cackled a lot and
told you he was a computer hacker. At the end, they gave you a long list of
places not to write your password, and I decided this must mean that those
places were where people were most likely to write it. I checked the monitors
and the papers on the desktops, and, in the second desk just inside the top
drawer, I found the letters “dres” followed by “90hR42.” Bingo. It had to be a
password. Unless it was an old one, I was in.

I turned on the computer. It beeped loudly, and I
frantically searched to find the source of the noise, sure I had set off some
alarm. But it started booting up, whizzing, and whirring—thankfully, it quit
beeping. Theirs were newer than the ones at the NEA. But I was betting that
everyone in DC had a computer newer than those at the NEA. While it continued
to boot up, I turned off my flashlight and stuck it in my pocket. From my desk
I could look out into the hall, so I quickly checked to make sure no one was
there. The coast was clear. I logged in. The password worked. Now I just had to
find the financial reports.

I looked in several different network folders and finally
found them. There were two versions, the short one for those who just wanted
the big picture and then an actual line-by-line budget. But it was over a
thousand pages. I knew Tabitha couldn’t stretch out her performance long enough
for me to print all of that. This made me want to smack my head into the desk
again and again.

Instead, I took a deep breath and began frantically
searching for numbers that wouldn’t add up.

I printed out the salary pages, because I thought some
answer might lie there. I looked through administrative expenses, and I quickly
printed some of the grants, thinking for the first time that maybe they had
been inventing fake artists and getting grants for them. And then, under travel
expenses, I saw a name that looked familiar—Daedalus Travel. That was the same
agency we used. As I saw this, I remembered Ann telling me about her crowded
flight into the conference on NationAir. As Ann had mentioned, everyone flew
NationAir because it was cheaper than dirt. They flew planes that were older
than Jesus, but they got you there for pocket change. But all of these
flights—ninety percent of which seemed to be NationAir—were costing the
Foundation anywhere from $700 to a thousand bucks, probably twice as much as
they should have. My heart leaped—maybe this was it! I hit the print button,
but as I did, I saw the hall door open. I knew I was dead.

Twenty-One

T
he monitor was on, as was the printer
light. The printer now seemed incredibly loud to me. I thought about hiding
under the desk, but I was afraid he had already seen all he needed to. I rushed
to the door, pointed the gun at him, and screamed, “Freeze!”

It was a different security guard, rounder and shorter than
the first one, and he was out of practice. He didn’t even try to pull his gun,
instead just putting his hands up and looking at me like I was chewing through
steel. As I looked at his forehead through the gun sight, I realized I had no
idea what I should do with him. I motioned to the door and stepped back so he
could get by. “Come in here and get my papers.” He did as he was told, pushing
through the glass door slowly, keeping his eyes on me the whole time. I wanted
to ask him if he recognized me but knew that would be really, really dumb. If
he hadn’t, I didn’t want to add another crime to my list. “Pick them up and
don’t look at them,” I said, and he handed them to me without so much as
peeking.

There were probably twenty sheets, and I was now challenged
with what to do with them. I couldn’t fold them up and put them anywhere
because that would involve putting down the gun. And I didn’t like him having a
gun. I told him to take off his holster slowly. He did.

Now what was I going to do with this? It would be nice to
have an extra gun, one for Tab, and he also had a walkie-talkie and some
handcuffs. Handcuffs! That’s what I would do with him. I bent down, keeping the
gun pointed at the guard, and picked up the handcuffs. I wanted to cuff him to
something but couldn’t find anything suitable in the office. I figured there
would be a storage closet in the hall. There’s always a storage closet in the
hall.

And, true to form, there was one two doors down from the
Foundation. I told him to march to it and then opened the door and let him walk
in. Against one wall, there were tall metal shelves filled with ballpoint pen
boxes and aerosol cans. The shelves weren’t nearly sturdy enough to keep this
big guy hostage for very long, but they would probably hold him for long enough
for my escape. I snapped those suckers on him and shut the door behind me as I
left. Of course, it didn’t lock. I comforted myself, thinking it wouldn’t hold
him long anyway as I sprinted back down the steps.

I had no idea whether he had talked to his partner or anyone
on his walkie-talkie before entering my hall. I doubted it, but there was still
a chance that he had radioed before opening the door. I was praying Tabitha was
safe as I burst out of the stairwell and then shot out of the front door.