Voices of the Dead (3 page)

“Yo, baby, what’s up?” Coco said.

But he was moving, walked out the club and never looked back.

Sara cashed out her last table, tipped Kenny the bartender, and the busers, and walked outside. It was just past midnight, still hot and muggy. It felt good after being in an air-conditioned restaurant for six hours. It had been a great night. She had made $180 in tips alone. Life was good. She’d been lucky enough to get the job at Bistro 675, a trendy new restaurant on 15th Street, not far from the White House. But it had been a lucky year. She was on the Dean’s List at George Washington, and a month before the semester ended, her English professor, Dr. Lund, had asked if she’d be interested in house-sitting for the summer. Two months, anyway. He’d rented a country home in the south of France, three kilometers from Aix-en-Provence, and needed someone to water the plants and bring in the mail.

A chance to stay in Washington for the summer, she’d said to herself. Are you kidding? How cool was that? She’d called her father and told him the good news.

He said, “That’s great. I want your life. Things always seem to fall into place.”

She hadn’t told him about Richard yet, this cute boy in her psych class. They had been hanging out for a few months and Sara liked him a lot, maybe even loved him. Next time her dad came to DC she was going to introduce them.

She found her car in the lot, a baby blue ’68 Ford Falcon her father had bought for her, cruising north on 15th, windows down, listening to Joni Mitchell do
Blue
. Passed the statue of Alexander Hamilton and the Treasury building and New York Avenue, approaching Pennsylvania, green light, heading into the intersection, singing with Joni, really belting it out:

Hey blue, here is a song for you…

Hess had no idea where he was. He had been driving west on Pennsylvania Avenue, and now was somehow on K Street. He regretted stopping at the gentlemen’s club but he’d needed several drinks to calm him down, he had been so charged up, so high on adrenalin.

To the right was a sign for Lafayette Park, and he realized he was traveling in the wrong direction. The White House was somewhere south through the trees. He tapped a cigarette out of his pack and lighted it with a match, steering the big Mercedes-Benz with his knees. He was drunk, the white line dividing the road, blurring into two. He closed one eye to correct his vision.

Hess brought the cigarette to his mouth, but it slipped through his fingers. He fumbled, tried to catch it with dulled reflexes, cigarette dropping in his lap, falling to the floor. He glanced down, saw it and reached to pick it up, but it rolled toward the accelerator pedal. He looked up now, approaching an intersection, red traffic light sending an alarm to his brain, foot going for the brake pedal, but too late.

He slammed into an automobile, hitting it broadside with serious impact, crushing it, pushing it through the intersection. Hess was conscious of his head striking the steering wheel, the Mercedes spinning, crashing into a storefront. He heard voices and the high-pitched whine of a radiator under pressure, the sound of a siren some distance away, and saw faces staring at him through the windows.

Harry was in his office at the scrap yard, writing a check to the IRS, he couldn’t see the amount, but it was enough to put him out of business. He was signing his name when he heard the phone ring, sounding like it was far away. He woke up, opened his eyes, the phone on the table next to his bed, ringing. Slid over, glanced at the clock. 3:17 a.m. Answered it, barely awake. “Hello.”

“Mr. Levin, this is the Huntington Woods Police Department.”

“Yeah? You know what time it is?” Harry said.

“Sir, your daughter has been in an automobile accident. There is a police officer at your house. Will you please answer the door?”

No way it was Sara. “My daughter’s in Washington DC. What’s going on?” He heard the doorbell.

“The officer will tell you.”

He hung up the phone. It had to be a misunderstanding. Heard the doorbell ring again as he was putting on his robe. He went downstairs, opened the front door. A Huntington Woods cop in a blue uniform was standing on the porch.

“Mr. Levin, may I come in?”

Harry swung the door open further. The cop stepped into the foyer and took off his hat. He looked young, thirty maybe. Blond hair parted on the side, creased where the hat rested, ruddy complexion. Seemed nervous.

“Mr. Levin, your daughter, Sara, was killed in a car accident this morning in Washington DC.”

Harry felt like he’d been punched in the chest. Stepped back and tried to take a breath. It couldn’t be. He’d talked to her just before she went to work.

But the cop assured him it wasn’t a mistake. His department had been contacted by the DC police. Sara was at Washington Hospital. He gave Harry the name and number of a Washington DC detective named Taggart and a woman named Judy Katz at the hospital. The cop told him how sorry he was, and let himself out and closed the door.

Harry went back upstairs, sat on the bed, holding it in, and called Eastern Airlines, booked a seat on the 6:31 a.m. flight to National Airport.

Harry took a cab from the airport to Washington Hospital Center, a big white building complex on Irving Street. He arrived at 8:37, went to the reception desk and asked where his daughter, Sara Levin, was. A black woman with a well-trimmed Afro, reminded him of Angela Davis, told Harry to have a seat, pointing at couches and chairs arranged in front of a picture window with a view of a courtyard, someone would be out to talk to him.

There was no one else in the waiting area. Harry scanned the magazine rack, picked up TIME. The headline said: “The Occult Revival,” with an illustration of a guy wearing a black hood, and in smaller type: “Satan Returns.”

Harry sat and flipped through the magazine, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was in a daze, nerves on edge, sick to his stomach.

A few minutes later a woman with frizzy shoulder-length dark-hair came across the lobby and stood in front of him. She was cute, early thirties, wearing a sleeveless paisley dress and running shoes, a hippie dressed up for work.

“Mr. Levin, I’m Judy Katz.”

She sat next to Harry, body angled toward him.

“Sara was brought to the ER this morning at 1:34 a.m. She had been in a terrible car accident. She was dead. There was nothing we could do. I’m very sorry.”

Judy Katz put her hand on his and squeezed it. Harry let out a breath as if he had been subconsciously holding it in. He sat there for a couple seconds, trying to process what he’d just heard. “You’re sure it’s Sara?”

“We have her driver’s license and school ID.”

He rubbed his eyes.

“How’d she die?” He rolled the magazine up and squeezed it.

“Internal injuries, Mr. Levin.” Judy Katz said. “Sara died instantly. She wasn’t in any pain.”

“Who else was involved?”

“A man was driving the other car. I don’t know anything about him or his condition. He was taken to Georgetown. Another hospital.”

“Where is she?” Harry said. “I want to see her.”

Judy Katz escorted him downstairs to the morgue. They walked along the spotless hallway that smelled like cleaning fluid, sterile, antiseptic, neither one talking, Harry aware of the sound of their shoes on the tile floor. Hers squeaking, his clicking.

Judy stopped and said, “Sara’s in here. This is a viewing room.”

There was a body on a stainless steel table, covered by a white sheet. Her feet were sticking out the bottom, Sara’s pretty feet with pink manicured toenails, toe tag hanging from her right foot, name and Social Security number and Huntington Woods address in black marker.

Judy pulled the sheet back and Harry saw the lifeless face of someone, a girl with dark brown hair, but unrecognizable, the left side crushed.

“Is this your daughter, Mr. Levin?”

Harry nodded, picturing her the last time he’d seen her, the day she moved into the teacher’s townhouse. “You’ve got the best luck of anyone I know,” he’d said.

“The world’s my oyster, Pops.”

Harry took a cab to the Washington DC Police Department on Shepherd Street, met with Detective Taggart in a room with a long table, two ashtrays on it, pink walls and a clock. Taggart looked about forty, dark curly hair, sideburns, light green dress shirt, brown tie pulled down, slightly askew, revolver in a black shoulder holster under his left arm.

“Mr. Levin, I’m sorry about your daughter,” he said, southern accent. “Can I get you coffee, a soft drink, cigarette?”

Taggart took a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out and tilted it toward him.

Harry shook his head. “Tell me what happened.”

“Your daughter was traveling north on 15th Street. According to the restaurant manager she had just gotten off work. It was around twelve twenty. The car that hit her was traveling east on K Street, ran the red light at 15th, slammed into your daughter’s car broadside in the intersection.”

“Who was driving the other car?” Harry said.

Taggart glanced away and back at Harry. “I’m not at liberty to give you that information.” He looked uncomfortable, squirmed a little in his seat.

“What’re you talking about?”

“I don’t blame you,” Taggart said. “But there’s nothing I can do. He’s a foreign diplomat.”

“I thought I was at the police station.”

“It’s out of our hands,” Taggart said.

“You didn’t arrest him?” Harry said, shaking his head. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this—” He paused. “We held him till this morning, and I heard he was still drunk when we let him go.”

“You mean he’s out on bail?”

“There was no bail. Guy from the Chief of Protocol’s Office and a lawyer from the Office of the Legal Adviser got here at six thirty this morning and we had no choice but to let him go. This guy’s connected, somebody important.”

Taggart slid a business card across the table to him. Harry picked it up and looked at it: James Vander Schaaf, State Department of the United States, Office of the Chief of Protocol.

“You want to know what’s going on? Talk to him. But I doubt you’ll get a straight answer. This is Washington.”

Harry took a cab to 320 21st Street, got out in front of the sand-colored Department of State building. Vander Schaaf had a nice office with a view of the Potomac. He wore a seersucker suit and a bowtie. He was tall and thin and personable. Harry sat facing him behind a mahogany desk the size of a Volkswagen, framed photos on it and a coffee mug that said “World’s Best Dad” in a big cartoon typeface, and wall-to-wall bookshelves behind him.

“Mr. Levin, on behalf of everyone here at the State Department, I want to offer you our sincere condolences for your loss. Unfortunate, tragic, you have our deepest sympathy,” he said.

It sounded like practiced sincerity. Bereavement 101.

“I can definitely relate. I have children of my own.”

“I don’t want your sympathy,” Harry said. “I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”

Vander Schaaf put his palms together like he was praying, gave Harry a solemn nod. “Mr. Levin, I just want you to know that I’m here for you. We all are.”

Whatever that meant.

“But what we have here is a very difficult situation. Are you familiar with diplomatic immunity?”

Harry had an idea, but let him keep going.

“It’s a tradition that dates back to the ancient Greeks: Sophocles, Aristotle.” He picked up a pen like he was going to start writing, using it as a prop, giving him something to do with his hands. “They believed foreign emissaries traveled under the protection of Zeus.” He paused. “Today it’s designed to protect diplomats who travel abroad. Mr. Levin, we can’t in good conscience send our ambassadors to places where an unfriendly government might try to bring false charges against them. Sir, it’s a safeguard. It was all codified at the Vienna Convention in 1961. A complete framework was established for diplomatic relations on the basis of consent between independent sovereign states. It set out special rules, privileges and immunities—which allow diplomatic missions to act without fear of coercion or harassment of local laws. Is any of this making sense, Mr. Levin? If not I can have John Brennan, an attorney from ‘L,’ what we call the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, come by and explain it further.”

He put the pen on the desktop, picked up the coffee mug and took a sip.

“A foreign diplomat kills an American citizen and there’s nothing you can do about it. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Vander Schaaf said. He picked up a piece of paper and started reading. “Article 29 provides inviolability for diplomats, and Article 31 established their immunity from civil and criminal jurisdictions.”

“Don’t read anything else, okay?”

“Mr. Levin, I understand how you feel.”

“You don’t have a clue,” Harry said. “Where is he?”

“Who, sir?”

“The guy that killed my daughter.”

“I have no idea.”

Vander Schaaf looked worried.

“Who’s your boss?” Harry said.

“The Chief of Protocol, Mr. Emil Mosbacher Jr.”

“Get him on the phone, tell him I want to talk to him.”