The Intern: Chasing Murderers, Hookers, and Senators Across DC Wasn't In The Job Description (5 page)

I took the bag out to the front desk of our office, sat
down, and grabbed a blank piece of paper. I wrote,
I’M ON TO YOU
in big
block letters. I looked at it and wondered if “on to” should be one word or
two. I didn’t want to take a nasty message to Mark Helper and misspell
something. I wadded that sheet up and tried again. This time, I wrote,
I
KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING
in big block letters. That was better. Then I called
Helper’s office. The same pretty secretary answered.

I used my uptight easterner voice. “We’ve got some paperwork
up here you need to see. Is there anyone else in Mark’s office to cover you?”

“No,” she said; she was all alone. I told her it was close
to the end of the day and begged her until she agreed to come examine the
papers. I instructed her to go to the Visual Arts room on the eighth floor.
Then I grabbed my stuff and rushed out of the office, down the stairs, and
waited on the opposite side of the fifth floor until I saw the secretary come
out of her door and wait for one of the elevators. When she made it inside, I
hustled across and slid the paper under the door to Helper’s private office. I
ran down the stairs and tore out of the building. It was four o’clock.

The subway ride was about the same as usual but not quite as
crowded, since I was getting a little bit of a head start on the evening rush
hour. I found a seat, put my bag next to me, and watched the grayness of the
subway’s innards fly by outside the car. An almost-mechanical voice called off
the stops, and I barely listened, tired from doing nothing, lulled by the
movement of the subway. I heard Eastern Market, though, and got off when the
doors finally opened.

As I emerged from the tunnel darkness, I noticed how short
the days were becoming; the sun was lower in the sky than it had been a week or
two before. I clutched my bag, took off for home, and looked inside only to
realize all of the Regionarts paperwork had gotten thrown in with the rest of
the stuff. I groaned as I realized I’d have to remember to take it back in the
morning, even though it really didn’t matter anyway.

Before I could cross the street, I noticed several people
looking toward the west, as if they were trying to look past the capitol. Of
course, I looked with them, past the row of Pennsylvania Avenue businesses. I
couldn’t see anything unusual, but I could hear sirens. I’ve never been able to
tell one siren from another, so I had absolutely no idea what was going on. No
one else in my group of gawkers seemed to know any more than I did, so I turned,
checked the traffic, and walked home, giving some change to a homeless guy who
had positioned himself underneath the Bread and Chocolate window.

I got to my apartment building—still hearing sirens in the
distance—and went immediately behind it toward my car, hoping against hope it
wouldn’t once again be broken into. Luckily, it wasn’t, and I threw the bag I
had brought from work in the back seat. I was planning on driving to work the
next day, and this way I would make sure I’d get those papers back to the
office.

When I climbed up the stairs to my abode, I turned the
million locks that tried to keep me safe at night. Once I navigated through the
mess on the “living room” floor—I hesitate to call anything that small a living
room—I saw my answering machine light was on. To my delight, it was Stephanie.

“Hey, Trent, just wanted to get ahold of you for a minute.
Give me a call if you will.” She left her phone number and drew out the word
“bye” over two syllables. Of course I had already tattooed her number into my
brain right next to my birthdate and Social Security number, so I didn’t even
bother to write it down. I picked up the phone and dialed, but she didn’t
answer. In an attempt to be mysterious, I didn’t leave a message.

The minute I got done with this, I turned on the television,
hoping to find something about the weirdness I had just experienced on Capitol
Hill. Though before I made my way to CNN, ESPN dropped a bombshell as I was
passing the channel: Mike Carroll, point guard extraordinaire for my beloved
Atlanta Hawks, had been traded to Toronto for Jimmy Henderson and another
player I had never even heard of. Ugh! Carroll led the Hawks in scoring, and it
looked like his best years were ahead of him. I turned up the TV so I could
hear all of the trade gossip and went into the kitchen.

I made my traditional bachelor dinner of pasta without
sauce—sauce is messy and requires much more effort cleaning up—sesame seed
breadsticks, and a Popsicle for dessert. I watched some more SportsCenter,
found that most pundits thought Toronto had gotten the better end of the
deal—big surprise there—and turned the TV off when I finished eating. I needed
something to do for the evening.

I called my college friend Kimberly, but she was on a date.
I called my drinking buddy Rick to talk about the Hawks trade and to ask if he
wanted to get a beer but received a message from him reminding me that he was
in Boston for the week. No bands that I liked were playing, there was no good
movie at the Kennedy Center, and it looked as if I was simply going to be stuck
doing some reading or something boring like that. I had just finished a
Patricia Cornwell novel and wasn’t up to the long titles I had in my bookcase,
so I decided to get out of the house and go to the bookstore. I negotiated
through the old, narrow DC streets toward Virginia, past the Capitol,
silhouetted against a postcard sky, down Constitution, past the gigantic
phallus which was the Washington Monument.

There was a Borders bookstore in Tyson’s Corner, which I
liked, and since it was a pretty fall evening, I thought it the best option for
a nice drive. To get there, I wound up on the George Washington Parkway, a
beautiful, tree-lined stretch of road more gorgeous than any other highway in
the area.

I always loved taking that route after the evening rush hour
had cleared out. The view of the Potomac helped me forget the hectic and silly
world of politics. I put the new Mercy Rule album on, turned it up loud, and
revved up my Toyota like it was a Jaguar.

And, as with all good drives, I was sad to see it end, but I
was happy to get to Borders’—one of those huge bookstores which stretch into
the next world—with title after wonderful title inside. There was a terrible
acoustic band strumming angst-ridden songs with lots of harmony and no melody
and throngs of dazed people circling the shelves and bargain tables. I stayed a
while, picked up several titles, put them back down, looked at others, and then
came back, each time looking at the cover and reading the back, as if my life depended
on this one choice. I finally chose a Kinky Friedman novel and took it to the
counter. The guitar player broke a string, probably adding to his angst, and I
paid for my book and left.

There was nothing on the radio when I got back in my car, so
I turned to public radio to hear the news. Trumpets played a short, martial
intro, and a serious-sounding woman intoned, “What was supposed to be a
red-letter day in Washington for the gun lobby has quickly become a nightmare.
Congressman Gregory Timmons was killed by a sniper’s bullet as he delivered a
speech on the Capitol steps this afternoon. Heidi Strauss has more.”

Heidi reported that shortly after 3:30 pm Timmons had been
gunned down on the Capitol steps. I nearly drove off the road. I felt quite
sick and quite scared, and I found myself slowing down to a granny’s speed as I
tried to keep my composure. I couldn’t help thinking about the strange little
message I had left on the desk of Mark Helper—the “problem” would be terminated
at the Capitol at 3:30—and I also thought of my pretty little neck, which I
loved very dearly. I wondered if I hadn’t made several big mistakes.

I regained some of my nerve and listened to the rest of the
broadcast, which talked about the Congressman’s record as a Second Amendment
preservationist. They had some tearful quotes from friends and reported that
little was known about the police investigation. I sped up as I rationalized
that it was probably just a coincidence. But could Helper be involved? Oh, God.
My mind was taking me a dozen different ways when I realized I needed to listen
to the broadcast. I slowed down again when they started talking about the
search for Timmons’ killer. I wondered if he’d be waiting at my house on
Helper’s instructions. When I walked in, I found that he wasn’t waiting for me;
he had already been there.

Five

I
 noticed the jimmy marks on the door.
The door gave way. The place was decimated. Papers were strewn everywhere like
some sort of pulp snowstorm, and my heart attempted to inch its way toward the
floor as I looked at the mess. Actually, I decided, it didn’t look all that
much worse than it normally did. I sat down, put my head in my hands, and tried
to think straight. First things first—what was gone? I walked into my room and
nearly cried as I saw the space once occupied by my computer. I noticed that
the door to Angie’s room was still closed, and I peeked in and saw her
Macintosh was still there. I looked around and could see nothing else missing.
I went into the living room and saw all the stereo equipment was intact. A few
CDs which had been sitting on top of a speaker were no longer there, and, of
all things, the answering machine was gone.

I was still trying to decide if this was just an absurd
coincidence or a dark conspiracy when I found the clue that I needed: my
Martin. There, in plain sight, not five feet away from where the answering
machine had been, was my beautiful Martin D-28 acoustic guitar, a gorgeous
blond with the most natural ring you ever heard in your life, worth more than
my computer, my stereo, and my TV combined, and probably a lot easier to sell,
too. It was in a hard-shell case with “Martin” written on it, so, unless they
were dumber than most criminals, they had missed the real mother lode and taken
my answering machine, which I wouldn’t have bought back for ten bucks, with all
the messages on it. I swallowed hard. My knees shook.

I called the cops from my bedroom and lied, telling them
that I thought the prowler might still be around, just so they’d get there
quicker. Even with that added detail, it still took them twenty minutes, and I
sat outside and tried to keep breathing and avoid sobbing while I waited. It
was a pleasant evening, and cars whizzed by toward the ghetto hell in front of
them. A small woman with her baby walked past, obviously unnerved that I
watched them. I dropped my eyes until she passed and watched her go up the
block, not knowing if I’d have the energy to do anything if someone were to
attack her.

Could this all just be coincidence? Possibly. It was, after
all, a very vague message, and I might have been reading too much into it. But
there was also the problem of my house being burgled very shortly thereafter.
Again, it simply could’ve been my unlucky day. But hadn’t I stopped believing
in coincidence when my ex-girlfriend broke up with me and started dating my
ex-friend the same day?

I wondered if I was safe there—perhaps my foe watched me—but
I felt safer on the street than waiting inside, and I didn’t know any of my
fellow tenants. That was a big problem. I didn’t know enough people in DC. When
I was just about to give up, a police car, lights like a carnival ride,
screeched to a halt in front of my house, and two officers got out. The one who
had driven, tall and thin and wired like a rookie on his first bust, looked
like he was going to draw his gun as I stood up, but I quickly put my hands
toward the sky and said, “I’m the one who called.”

“You said the perp might still be around,” the antsy cop
said. I imagined he used words like “perp” a lot.

“Maybe,” I said, not wanting them to know I had lied. I
waited with the calm, collected cop, while the antsy one checked out back. When
he returned, they walked up the stairs with me. I told them how long I had been
gone and what had been stolen. They raised their eyebrows when I pointed out
the Martin, but I didn’t want to tell them too much.

“Probably got scared off,” the older one shrugged. He didn’t
like to look people in the eyes.

“We’ll get the paperwork started,” the antsy one said,
looking a little perturbed at his partner. Antsy wanted to stay and investigate
and solve. His partner wanted to get back in the squad car. “Come down, fill
out a report, and tell us what you lost.” He handed me a card, and I nodded,
sad and scared that they were leaving so quickly.

I watched them walk down the stairs, the older cop falling
farther and farther behind his antsy partner, and then went back to the sofa
and resumed the head-in-hands bit. I wasn’t going to stay there, although I
didn’t want to tell them that; they’d think I was nuts. But where would I go? I
thought of my punk rock friend Miriam, but remembered sadly that she was out of
town, going to see her sister in Chicago. I tried Kimberley again, hoping at
least that her roommate would be in, but I got no answer. Then I realized just
how shaken I was—I had forgotten all about Stephanie!

This was the perfect excuse, the one every guy would love to
have early in his relationship with a new, hot girlfriend; a sob story that
would involve getting to spend the night at her house. Oh poor baby! I just
can’t believe it! Of COURSE you can stay here! I felt a little guilty going to
her place, knowing there was at least some chance that international
conspirators were hot on my heels, but not guilty enough to keep me from making
the call. I got a busy signal and decided I’d just have to drive on over.

I put a few items into a hanging bag and threw in my other
suit and a different tie, just so I could impress her in the morning—even
though I knew I would have to take some razzing from Damon and those at the
office, who were as used to seeing me in a jacket and tie as they were in
seeing me in a clown outfit.