The Intern: Chasing Murderers, Hookers, and Senators Across DC Wasn't In The Job Description (9 page)

Howard left a little before one after I told him to put a
forty dollar tip on the bill—I’m really quite generous when it’s not my money
in question—and he said, “Thank you” in a very genuine way.

Before he even left the room, I was practically as tense as
before. I needed to sleep, but I kept thinking about my car in the garage and
my ass in a sling. I was on the “thirty days to an ulcer” plan. I turned the TV
back on and caught the same news segment I had seen before. The anchorwoman
added that I was also suspected of having burglarized the NEA offices early
that morning.

This was when I officially began to feel numb. It probably
should’ve happened earlier, but, unlike all of the other crimes I had been
accused of, when I heard about that one, I remained unfazed. Maybe it was that
this crime was less severe; perhaps, it was the realization that consecutive
life sentences are no worse than a single one. I don’t know. I still didn’t
want to get caught, but it really felt inevitable. People who had known me only
at the height of my doughboy stage were still able to spot me in a crowd; it
was only a matter of time before someone else did.

And if I was going to be caught, I decided I might as well
be well-rested.

Twelve

I
 fell into something that greatly
resembled a coma, more like hibernation than sleep, dreamless, and dark. I woke
almost three hours later, still tired and feeling almost feverish and quite
grumpy. This was before I recalled I was wanted by every major law enforcement
agency in the country.

Before I went to sleep, I had tried to convince myself that
if I gave my unconscious mind a chance to work on the problem, I’d have a plan
worthy of an Ian Fleming novel up my sleeve before I awoke. Now, my unconscious
was plenty rested but still no plan. But one thing kept gnawing at me, and I
knew I had to take care of it or nothing else would be done. I had to eat.

I ordered room service in my Senator accent and told them to
put a rush on it. It was four o’clock, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I
decided not to count the fat grams—my worrying would probably burn off those
calories pronto—and I went for the burger and the good stuff that came with it.

While I waited, I considered how I would handle the other
thing which had been bothering me since that morning—my car. It was still in
the garage, and I wasn’t sure how much longer it would be safe. I flipped
through the channels, saw my face on three of them, and basically got the same
story; Good boy goes crazy and shoots everybody.

The waiter knocked, and I told him to leave the cart by the
door and give himself a ten-dollar tip. He said, “Yes, sir,” and hoofed it down
the hall. I took a peek, saw no one watched, and pulled my lunch in. It smelled
like heaven on a bun, and I ate it in half a bite.

While I was still eating, another news report came on. “The
evidence against Trent Norris just keeps on mounting. Police investigators
reported finding bullets matching the brand and caliber used to kill Gregory
Timmons and Roger Downing in a dumpster just two blocks from Norris’s Capitol
Hill apartment.

“And in Arlington, Virginia, a pawn shop broker reported
selling a gun similar to the one which killed both men to a man matching
Norris’s description. Police have not shared any additional leads regarding his
whereabouts, saying only they have several strong tips.”

The images rolled while the woman calmly convicted me: my
apartment building, police standing by the dumpster, photos of Roger and
Timmons, and the pawn shops. They all underscored my guilt. After the story,
they cut to a lighter story about a singing pig—it sounded more like humming to
me—and then to a laxative commercial. I turned the TV off, tried to put the
latest round of garbage out of my mind, and began seriously considering what I
was going to do with my car.

I thought about driving it a few blocks away, getting out,
and leaving the thing running. It would be no time until some industrious
District resident would be piloting my car to points unknown. However, I was mainly
concerned with my car not being found, and I didn’t want to trust anything to
the competency of criminals I hadn’t even elected.

Driving it into the Potomac and making it look like a
suicide sounded promising, until I realized I liked being me too much for that.
I had known from an early age I would never be cut out for the Witness
Protection Program, because you have to change your name and stuff and that
gets real inconvenient when you want to call in some old favor and score some
free tickets or something. I also wanted to clear my name, make my parents
happy again, and give the networks a better picture of me to run. So the faked
suicide was out.

Plus, either of these options would involve me losing my car
permanently, something I obviously wanted to avoid if at all possible. It was
hard for me to think of abandoning it. I had driven it to Mardi Gras, to
Savannah for St. Patrick’s Day, and taken it on a hundred adventures. What I
wanted was to put it in a place where it wouldn’t be found by anyone.

My best chance for this was the old license plate
switcheroo. I considered pulling my blue jeans and T-shirt out of hiding for
this occasion but remembered that regardless of where I ended up taking the car
I was still going to have to somehow get back into the hotel. And I’d be much
less conspicuous coming back in a suit than in a T-shirt. I decided to go with
that reasoning, fully understanding I would look much more unusual doing the
license plate switcheroo in business apparel.

My shoulder still hurt, even though Howard had done a nice
job. I grimaced a couple of times getting back into my clothes, but it was much
better than it had been. I took the stairs down to the lobby and made a
bee-line for the garage, hoping no one would stop me now.

My mother was the mechanically inclined person in the
family, and the very slight knowledge I had of mechanical things came from her.
She was the one who suggested I keep a small toolbox in the trunk of my car,
and I was very, very grateful at that moment. I had a big screwdriver, which
would do the trick, and I set to work.

Of course, I had never done the license plate switcheroo,
but I had thought about it often when I would hear stories of some criminal
getting caught by not paying enough attention to this very important detail. I
had always thought you needed to switch a good number of plates to make it work
especially well. If I would’ve had time, I would have switched ten—I figured
that was a good, safe figure, but I was going to be lucky to be able to do two
without getting caught.

I decided to move to the other side of the garage to get the
other plates. I practically sprinted, my butt clenched, and my head turning
every which direction looking for interlopers. I hated that dark gray place and
its long, concrete echoes. It just seemed like someone could emerge from hiding
at any time. Still, I kept moving, searching for my mark. I finally found a
nice Maryland car that might work. It was a blue Toyota that was maybe a year
or two newer than mine. I walked around to the back but froze as I caught a
glimpse of a little red flashing light inside. I had nearly forgotten about car
alarms because I never had to deal with them. Until I had lived in DC, I was
convinced no one would want to steal my car or anything in it, and, since I had
lived in DC, I was too poor from replacing the stolen things to be able to
afford an alarm. But here I was, ready to spring on this car and probably set
it off and foil my whole plan before it started.

I turned to see if anyone was watching and then began making
a slower appraisal of the vehicles, hoping to find one to my liking. I looked
for an older car, which was less likely to have an alarm, but it wasn’t an easy
task in this ritzy parking lot. Every vehicle I passed seemed to have screaming
red lights somewhere near the dash, and I was even informed by mechanical
voices that two of the cars were protected by The Viper.

I was halfway back around to my car when I finally found one
that might work. It was a maroon Subaru from Pennsylvania with plates on both
the front and rear. I knew I was pressing my luck and became even more
painfully aware of this when a man and his wife came laughing out of the
elevator and around to their car.

They seemed to be heading straight for me. I tucked the screwdriver
into my jacket pocket and, knowing I didn’t have time to crouch and hide in
front of the car, dropped to all fours facing the path where they would walk
just before they turned the corner, hoping they wouldn’t see me and would
simply pass by. If they did, though, I decided to go with the old
“lost-contact” ploy.

Of course, even the untrained eye notices a six-foot tall
man wearing a suit crouching on all fours in the middle of a swanky hotel’s
parking garage, and the man asked—in a so polite it was meant to be rude
tone—if there was anything they could do to help. I stood up, sighed loudly,
and clasped my hand to my forehead, trying both to feign despair—which was not
hard to do at that moment—and cover my face. “I lost a contact,” I said as if it
were my first-born.

Both of them immediately groaned in empathy and got closer
to the ground to help me look. The man, tall and distinguished with gray hair
and expensive tortoise shell glasses, did his best to squat like Johnny Bench,
and his wife, wearing a sheer black dress that she looked pretty good in
despite the fact she was probably fifty, bent from the waist. Both were hoping
I wouldn’t notice they had no desire to get their clothes dirty in their
efforts.

“Oh no,” I smiled, trying not to make eye contact and
quickly returning to looking down. “It’s my own fault. I’m so clumsy.” I said
this realizing full well how unlikely it is to lose a contact in a parking
garage. I thought about making up a story but figured it would only make things
worse.

“Nonsense!” he said in a manly tone. I noticed the wife
still hadn’t said anything and was not very interested in looking. She was
gazing at a vehicle a few spaces down. He put one knee on the ground, and I
could see he was determined to make me his charity case for the day. I looked
around but could find nothing which resembled a contact and knew I had no
chance of being able to pull one out of my eye without being noticed. He was
soon going to be asking me questions like, “where were you standing,” which I didn’t
want to answer, so I just decided to try some sleight of hand, even though my
hands are far from sleight.

When the man was looking straight down and the woman was
still staring at her car, I held my breath and licked my index finger, hoping
this would make it glisten like a contact, and wondered what kind of
garage-floor germs were now all over it. “Found it,” I said matter-of-factly,
holding up my fingers and hoping they couldn’t see anything. “Better run inside
and put it back in.” I groaned inwardly as I thought how stiff and unconvincing
that had just sounded and watched them both to see if my cover was blown.

The woman didn’t look at me at all and just walked briskly
toward their car. He followed her, probably knowing he was not in her good
graces for stopping at all. I made for the nearest door, relieved when I heard
the motor behind me. They went in the opposite direction, and, as soon as they
made their way toward the surface, I headed back to my mark.

I walked around to the front of the car, which was parked
just a little too close to the wall to make this really easy. I was so scared
and so nervous by this point that it took me what seemed like the better part
of three years to get the plate off. There was no sound except for my
clumsiness. After half-a-dozen positions and several curse words, I removed the
plate and took it to my car, where I placed it on the back after removing mine.
I threw them in the trunk, replaced my screwdriver, and was fully ready to go
back to bed. I poured myself in the car and surveyed the damage: one little
nice nick on my finger from where the screwdriver caught it, a decent amount of
dirt on my knees, which brushed right off, and a car which now looked like it
was from the Keystone State. I cranked the ignition and noticed my dashboard
clock said it was ten after five.

Now, if I had been thinking clearly—which, at that point,
had last happened before this story started—I wouldn’t have started my car,
because of the many characters in the thrillers I read had lost their lives due
to starting a car rigged to explode on ignition. This revelation hit me about
three seconds too late, but I found at least on this one point I had gotten
lucky. It’s not often when not being blown up can make your day, but this was
just such an occasion. Now I only had to decide what the hell I was going to do
next.

Thirteen

I
 drove the car to Dulles. I always
enjoyed that drive; after the stop-and-go tussle of city driving, it’s
wonderful to get away to a straight-ahead, high-speed blacktop. However, I had
to deal with rush-hour traffic, and I was scared to death I was going to be spotted.
But I only had to make it a few blocks to get on the George Washington Parkway,
and then I knew I would be safe.

After listening to another innuendo-filled news report about
me and my nefarious doings, I turned on WHFS, the alternative radio station.
The wonderful thing about rock radio stations is they don’t give a damn about
the news unless it can be read in one sentence, and then it’s only to be done
with discretion. And, after a couple of songs, my heart sank; they announced my
absolute favorite band in the world, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, were set to
play an unscheduled gig at the 9:30 Club the next night. I had no realistic
hope of wrapping up my governmental troubles by then and, hence, had no hope of
going. This was enough to make me sink even lower into whatever funk I was in.