The Revisionists (12 page)

She thanked him. That appeared to be their cue to leave, but she found herself taking another sip of the drink she hadn’t planned on finishing.

“Here’s something you can do: answer a question. Let’s say, totally hypothetically speaking, that you had a job that allowed you to come across very privileged information. Stuff that wouldn’t interest most people. And also you’ve taken a vow never to disclose anything relating to your clients. But one day you read something about one of your clients, something very damning. Something that makes them look very bad—hell, something that
is
very bad. Secrets. You know that if you took it to the press, it would be a major story. That it would get bad people in trouble. But doing that could cost you your job, and maybe worse.”

“Secrets that compromise whom? And what kind of secrets? Financial disclosures, marital infidelity, the ingredients of someone’s special sauce, murder?”

“Kind of the first thing and maybe kind of the last thing.”

“Murder.”

“Not really. But decisions that put lives at stake.”

“
Put
as in past or
put
as in present? What tense we talking here?”

Hell, that was an excellent question. She hadn’t thought of that. She had been so focused on what happened to Marshall, so irate at these middle managers who’d made decisions that put troops’ lives—including her brother’s life—at risk, that she hadn’t even considered the fact that such business dealings were likely ongoing. Which meant that blowing the whistle wouldn’t just expose past wrongdoing but also prevent future wrongdoing. It would save lives.

“I guess both.”

He held out his two palms as if he were the impartial scales of justice. “So you got other people’s lives here, and you’ve got your own job here.” He wobbled the hands up and down for a second. “I think you can guess how I’d judge that one. But it’s not my job we’re talking about.”

She finished her drink. God, she must be drunk to even mention this, however elliptically, to anyone, let alone someone she really didn’t know anymore. Yet what he’d said had helped.

He motioned to her empty glass and asked if she wanted another round.

“Love to, but some of us have to work tomorrow.”

“I work. I just don’t have to think much at my job, other than trying to predict when a car is going to switch lanes without signaling.”

Outside, she wondered if T.J. would make a move for a good-night smooch, and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed when he didn’t. (God, when had she become so uncertain about
everything?
But now there was one thing she was less uncertain about.) They traded phone numbers, shared a quick good-bye hug along with vague plans to reconnect, then she hailed a cab. During the ride home, she plotted her next move. Suddenly, she had a long night ahead of her.

She walked straight upstairs to her second bedroom, opened the file cabinets, and reached for the buried folder she’d randomly labeled
ADDTL. INSURANCE.
Inside were
the files
—the offending GTK e-mails, which she’d secretly copied and ferried out of the building the Monday after she’d stumbled upon them. Copies of those files had remained in her apartment for days, tempting her with their illicit knowledge. The e-mails that, as Jill had noted, were not relevant to their case. The e-mails that merely revealed their client’s decision to put extra profit over its contractual—and could she add patriotic?—obligation to outfit U.S. troops as quickly and fully as possible. Dated six months earlier, when Marshall had been alive. The two issues were not related, Jill had argued, and maybe she was right. Except Marshall had been alive once and things had made a certain sort of sense, and now neither was true.

And maybe, Jill, everything is related.

Still buzzing but hopefully not drunk (sober enough to drive, but perhaps not sober enough to make potentially life-altering decisions), she drove a few blocks to the sketchy copy place on Pennsylvania. Risking suspicion by wearing leather gloves the whole time (not that the dudes at the desk paid any attention to her other than giving her the up-down when she first walked in), Tasha made new copies and bought a package of envelopes. There was a reporter for the
New York Times
whose work she admired. He would find this information interesting.

She heard the law school professors in her head reminding her that this was a clear violation of attorney-client privilege. If caught, she would be fired, and likely disbarred. She tried to imagine disbarment, with all the loans she still needed to pay back for all those law school professors’ advice. But this was more important than that.

And, really, she was smart enough to get away with it.

Outside the sketchy copy place was a blue mailbox, sitting there patiently like it had been waiting all its life for this little contribution to justice and democracy. Tasha opened the lid and slid the envelope into its depths.

Z.

A
fter my ill-advised trip to the playground, I still have some time to kill (what a wonderful and terrible phrase! And, for me, so literal) before the next Event, so I drive through the leafy neighborhoods of Capitol Hill. Black men stand on corners, white women push strollers, Latinos paint the row houses or fix their roofs. Amazing how specified the races are to their tasks.

I pull over at the corner of 15th and E Street SE. A few buildings down, on the left, is the house belonging to Tasha Wilson. The street is quiet and residential, just removed enough from the main thoroughfares to be free of pedestrians at this pre–rush hour. I focus my eyes on the second-floor window of her row house, and my internal microphone locks on the spot. At first I hear only silence, which I should have expected, given that it’s late afternoon and she’s probably at work. But then I hear her muttering to herself. She talks in a sigh, all exhalation, like she’s angry at herself for talking, some reflexive inner madness. She’s coaching herself, I realize, reciting what she’s going to say when making an important call.

I activate my embedded router to tap her phone. I hear the dial tone, the flat music of her touch-tone keys, then the buzzing pulse. A young woman answers the line.

“Hello, may I speak to Aurelio Gomez?” Tasha asks.

“I ask who’s calling?”

“My name is Tasha Wilson, and my brother, Marshall, led Private Gomez’s unit until a few months ago. I was hoping to talk to him about Marshall’s experience if I could.”

A pause. Someone exhales, though I can’t tell who. “He doesn’t need to be talking about that right now.”

“Ma’am, please, I’d just—”

“He needs to be left alone for a while, all right? He doesn’t need to be bothered by—”

“My brother died over there. I just want to talk to the people who knew him last.”

Another pause. “I’m very sorry about your brother.”

“Thank you.”

“Aurelio’s not here. And, honestly, I don’t know that he wants to be talking about that sort of thing, at least not right now. But I’ll give him the message. Good enough?”

“Yes, thank you.” Tasha gives the woman her name, e-mail address, and two phone numbers. “Please tell him he can get in touch with me anytime.”

“What did you say your brother’s name was?”

“Lieutenant Marshall Wilson. He was killed June eleventh.”

The sound of handwriting. “I’m sorry for your loss. I thank God every day that my man’s back for good.”

“Is he doing all right?”

“Day at a time, you know? But he’s gonna be okay.”

They chat for another moment, then hang up. Listening in on the microphone, I hear Tasha writing something, I hear her take deep breaths, mutter to herself, place another call. Again it is answered by a woman, this one older; again Tasha asks for a man; again she is asked why and she delivers her speech.

“Ricky’s at Walter Reed, miss. He’s going to be there for a while.”

“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry to hear that. How is he?”

“He’s going to be fine.” Interesting how they respond to present-tense questions with future-tense answers.

“Was he, um, you wouldn’t know if June eleventh was the day he was injured?”

“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

Tasha explains the date’s relevance. I can tell that, for her, every day of her life will be measured by its distance from last June 11.

You are haunted by your past, Tasha. It casts its pall over everything you do. I wish you could see my time, the world I’m from, the advances we’ve made. I wish I could stop you from wasting more of your life, chasing after a past that cannot be restored. I wish I could see your face right now, wish my technology was that advanced, but all I can do is stare at that brick wall and listen to your voice and try to imagine the rest.

“You’re welcome to call Ricky, and he’ll try to help you if he can. He’s a great kid. But I hope you’re really doing the best thing here.”

“… I’m not sure I follow.”

“I lost a brother once too. In Vietnam. So I know what you’re going through. And I still miss him, every day. But nothing I did could bring him back.”

“I understand that.” Tasha doesn’t so much speak those words as bite at them.

“I’m very sorry, miss. I wish these things never happened. I wish God didn’t test us with so much evil in the world, but He does. I do hope you find a way to come to some peace.”

Tasha’s voice sounds different when she says thank you, and then they hang up. This time there’s a much longer pause before she’s able to make another call.

A few houses down, a man in khaki military regalia opens the front door and comes out. He’s holding a briefcase in one hand and in the other a metal rod, at the end of which is a small circular mirror. He walks down the sidewalk and stops at a silver SUV. He crouches down beside it, telescopes the rod out a few feet, and slides it under the car. Checks it, moves it back a few feet, checks it again. He does the same thing on the other side. He stands up, dusts off his knees, and only then does he get in the SUV and drive away. People are so frightened here.

Tasha dials Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a local call that’s routed from one corner to the other of the fractured diamond that is D.C. She’s transferred between operators and nurses before an impatient young man answers.

“Yeah?”

“Hello, I’m trying to reach Sergeant Velasquez?”

“Who?”

“I was told Sergeant Ricky Velasquez was in this room.”

“Nah, he’s been transferred. Yesterday I think.”

“Oh. Um, do you know where I can find him?”

“No clue, lady. Look, I don’t even know why I answered.” Then the line goes dead.

Silence for a while inside her apartment. Then the off-tempo percussion of a keyboard, and I switch to my wireless function, tap into her account. She’s online, reading Web sites about the military, blogs run by veterans and their families. So much information here! But why, Tasha? Does this bring you peace? I read along with her for nearly an hour, only an occasional pedestrian walking past my car, and none of them ever look at me. They’re used to people loitering in cars here, apparently. They’re used to being watched.

I should leave. But first I tap an unused line and call Tasha.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Tasha? This is Troy Jones. We met outside the White House last night?”

“Yeah, hi, how are you?”

“Just bored at work. I thought I should call and see if we could set a date, unless you’ve decided that having dinner with that strange man is a bad idea after all.”

“I have had bad ideas from time to time,” she says, and I hear her smile, my little gift to her after the stressful calls, “but dinner would be good.”

She names a restaurant downtown, and I say I’ll be there. This is very against the rules. Just calling her like this is bad. But I wanted to put a smile on her lips.

I mention an article I just read, something about soldiers and the war, some diatribe from a political journal about veterans’ lack of decent benefits. Of course, I just read it because she just read it, and I was there over her shoulder.

“Wait, the one in
Mother Jones
?” she asks. “That’s so weird—I read that story a second ago myself.”

“Wow, really? I must have been sending telepathic messages.”

“I literally was just printing a copy. That’s so funny.”

I want to ask her,
What is it like? To push, and push, and push, and not feel that wall budging in the slightest?
Maybe she thinks she
is
making the wall move, but really what’s happening is her feet are slipping from beneath her. It’s been my job, for longer than I care to remember, to keep that wall standing, to bolster it on the other side of people like her. I’ve never really understood them, but I want to.

We chat about her government for a couple of minutes. I’m probably not following everything, but I do a good enough job.

“Anyway, I should get back to work,” I tell her. “Take it easy.”

“Yeah, you too.” And there’s no way to be sure, but I swear she’s still smiling.

I sit there for a few more seconds, and Tasha gets another call.

She picks it up on the third ring, even though she’s probably sitting next to it. Maybe she has caller ID, doesn’t recognize the number. Or perhaps no number shows up on her screen, confusing her.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon, Ms. Wilson. I didn’t expect to find you at home at this hour.”

“To whom am I speaking?”

“I’m someone who would very much like to meet with you as soon as your busy schedule allows,” he says. The voice sounds middle-aged. It is calm and seems to be faking friendliness. “I’d like to discuss GTK Industries.”

Silence for two seconds, three. “All questions about GTK should go through my employer, at their office in Washington,” Tasha says. “Their number is—”

“This question does not relate to your firm’s official business with GTK. It relates to more… extracurricular matters.”

Again she is slow to respond. When she does, she is professional and polished, but it sounds like an act to me. Surely it sounds that way to him too. “I’m really not sure what you’re referring to, but, again, the attorneys handling GTK would be happy to answer—”