Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 21

The tort-reform conference is at the Washington Hilton Hotel and Towers, located on Connecticut Avenue, a few blocks north of Dupont Circle. Following my meeting with Justice Wainwright, I do not return to the hotel directly; I am searching, desperately, for distractions. Instead, I have the taxi drop me on Eye Street to see the bookseller I visited the last time I was in the city; not only does the man remember me, but he assures me that he is on the track of the Fischer pamphlet I asked about. We chat about a few other matters, then I stroll a few blocks up to L Street for a quick swing through Brooks Brothers, in an unsuccessful search for the perfect tie to wear with a yellow silk blazer that Kimmer bought me on her last trip to San Francisco-another second-place trophy to add to my collection. I buy a couple of pairs of socks, then flag down a taxi to return to the hotel to catch the late-afternoon panels.

As the taxi driver goes around the block and heads north on Twentieth Street, I lean back and try to relax. Despite the tension in my muscles, I even manage to doze a bit, required in these tense days to grab a nap where I can.

Then the taxi turns right onto New Hampshire Avenue, and the driver suddenly says: “None my business, sir, but you know car behind is following us?”

Fully awake, I spin in my seat.

“What car?”

“Little green car. There. You see?”

I see it. It is two or three cars behind us, some cookie-cutter American sedan.

“How do you know it’s following us?”

“After I pick you up, I go around block to point taxi right way.” To charge a higher fare, he means; in Washington, where there are no meters, all that matters in adding up the fare is how many fare zones the cab crosses, and drivers often choose one street rather than another to cross a zonal line. “Green car go around block also. I turn another right, he turn another right. I turn right again, he turn right again. In my country, I often see cars do this. Cars of secret police.”

Great.

I think fast. I am not sure who might be following me now that Scott is dead, but, being back in Washington, I cannot quite clear from my mind’s eye the photographs of what somebody did to Freeman Bishop. Conan or no Conan, arrest or no arrest, I feel a chill.

Think!

In about thirty seconds, my taxi will hit the nerve-blasting confusion of Dupont Circle, which only the most foolish out-of-towners and the most experienced Washington drivers ever dare, because you must change lanes rapidly and efficiently, depending on which of the many intersecting streets you plan to take, and, at the same time, steer counterclockwise around a circle rather than straight, all the while avoiding other motorists just as bewildered as you are, to say nothing of pedestrians darting from one misshapen concrete island to the next. I am still looking back at the green car. The driver is a gray smear in the window; there seems to be a passenger too, but it is hard to tell.

Probably my cabbie is mistaken.

But maybe he isn’t. Maybe somebody wants to see where I am headed. Barely plausible, I know, but the green car is there just the same. And, no matter who it is, I find that I don’t like it one bit.

“When you get to Dupont Circle, get in the lane for Massachusetts Avenue.”

“Which way?”

“Uh, southbound, or east, whatever it is-toward the Capitol.”

“You say Washington Hilton. On Connecticut Avenue.” We are stopped at the last traffic light before the Circle. The green sedan is now just two cars back. The passenger seat is definitely occupied.

“How much is the fare to the Hilton?”

He names a figure.

I pore through my thin wallet, select a twenty-dollar bill, and, with a grimace, drop it over the seat. He understands at once that he is to keep the change.

“Turn on Massachusetts, then take the first right, behind that gray building. The one at the corner.” I point. I know the building well, having once practiced law in a firm there, back in the days when Kimmer and I were fooling around behind her first husband’s back, pretending to keep secret what everybody knew. The driver says nothing. He is wondering, no doubt, why I am running away from the green car. As a matter of fact, I am wondering too. But I lay my plans anyway, just in case I turn out to be sane. “Keep the change,” I tell him. No response. “When you hit Massachusetts, go as fast as you can,” I continue. “Then turn onto Eighteenth, also very, very fast.” The driver’s wary eyes meet mine in the mirror. He does not like this. He associates cars that follow other cars with the police. In his country, wherever that is, the police are the bad guys. Here in America…?

“Listen,” I say, adding another twenty from my dwindling supply of cash. “I am not a criminal, and the people in that car are not the police, okay?”

The driver shrugs. He will not make any commitment that he cannot deny later. But he does not offer to return my money.

The light changes, and the taxi surges forward so suddenly that I will probably be in the emergency room later tonight, being treated for whiplash. Crouching, I look back. As my driver weaves through traffic, the green car follows. I look forward. My driver is not in the Massachusetts Avenue lane! He has decided not to cooperate! I am trying to come up with another argument to offer when, without warning, the taxi bumps over the curb into the lane for Massachusetts Avenue before several startled, honking motorists. A clutch of pedestrians scurries for cover. As the green car falls farther behind, I wonder fleetingly what my driver did for a living that caused him to flee to America, bringing along such detailed knowledge of how the police of his country conduct surveillance.

And of how to escape it.

Probably better that I not know.

We fly through the complicated intersection and turn hard onto Massachusetts. The green car is stuck at a light, and in the wrong lane. Its passenger door whips open, just as we swing around the corner behind the gray building.

“Slow down for a second,” I tell the driver as soon as the green car is out of sight. I know it will catch up momentarily, the passenger, who can slide between stopped cars, even faster. I have only seconds. I slip the driver another bill, a ten: I have no more twenties.

He is shaking his head, but he slows. I push open the door and climb, crouching, from the still-rolling car. “Now go!” I call, slamming the door.

I do not need to tell him twice.

As the taxi squeals around the next corner, I am already darting into the narrow alley separating the back of my former office building from an old townhouse next door, home to some private institute or other. The alley dead-ends at the building’s service entrance. Cameras of doubtful working order guard the scene. I crouch behind a drab green Dumpster just as my pursuer, now on foot, hurries by. My eyes widen, and I fight down a sudden trembling in my extremities. I wait, instinct telling me that we are not through yet. I check my watch. Three minutes pass. Four. The alley stinks of old garbage and recent urine. I notice for the first time that I have company: a homeless man, his possessions heaped around him in plastic bags, is fast asleep near the loading dock of the office building. I keep watching the street. The green car finally slithers past, moving slowly, the invisible driver probably checking hedges and doorways-and alleys. I wonder why they are not chasing the taxi. They must have seen me get out. I sink farther back into the shadows. The green car is gone. I still wait. A flurry atop the Dumpster draws my attention, but it is only a mangy black cat, gnawing on something foul. I am not superstitious. At least I don’t think I am. I wait. The homeless man mutters and snores, a fibrous alcoholic sound I remember from the days when the Judge used to lock the door of his study. Ten minutes pass. More. Sure enough, the passenger from the car passes me again, having evidently walked all the way around the block. The green car reappears. The door swings open. They appear to argue. The passenger points down the street, vaguely in the direction of my hideout, then shrugs and climbs in. The car drives away. Still I wait. I remain crouched in the alley for close to half an hour before I slide out and join the stream of pedestrians. Then I sneak back in and stuff my other ten-dollar bill into the homeless man’s pocket.

More guilt money.

Back on the sidewalk, I cross Massachusetts Avenue and mosey into Dupont Circle, pausing at the stone chess tables, pretending to watch the games, but really craning my neck to see whether I spot the green car or its furtive passenger. I drift from one table to the next, glancing at the positions on the boards. The players are a true rainbow, a random mix of ages, races, languages. Few of them seem very strong, but, on the other hand, I am not giving their games much of my attention. A crazy old man yells at a younger woman who just defeated him. The woman, who looks about as healthy as my customers at the soup kitchen, wears a hairnet and glasses repaired at the temple with a Band-Aid. She points a quivering finger at her vanquished opponent. He slaps it aside, baring brownish teeth. The kibitzers take sides. Other games lose their audiences. The crowd around the stone table grows raucous. Lawyers with cell phones at their hips jostle with slender bicycle messengers as everybody seeks a better view of the hoped-for tussle. I lose myself inside the throng, trying to peek in every direction at once. I cannot remember when my senses have been so open, so absorbent. I am not even scared. I am exhilarated. Every color of every branch of every tree is so crisp and clear I can almost breathe its hue. I feel as though I can examine the face of every one of the hundreds of pedestrians who walk through the park every minute. Another half-hour elapses. No sign of the green car, no sign of the passenger. Forty-five minutes. Eventually, I slip away and walk north, toward the Hilton.

Then I change my mind. There is another stop I want to make first, for I have a new question to ask, and I know where to ask it. I look for a bank, find a cash machine, and withdraw another hundred dollars from our dwindling checking account. I will explain it to Kimmer somehow. I find a public telephone and make a quick call. Then I hail another cab and give the driver instructions.

We pass the Hilton and then cut east on Columbia Road, passing through the loud, colorful, ethnically complicated neighborhood of Adams-Morgan, where, following law school, I lived for several years in a tiny walkup apartment with my books and my chess set and an unadorned mattress on the floor, my diet consisting almost entirely of apple juice and Jamaican meat patties from a shop down the block, until, at Kimmer’s urging, I moved to far more expensive quarters in a dreadfully modern building much further up Connecticut Avenue. Sitting in the back of my fourth taxi of the day, I shake my head ruefully, for she was still married to Andre Conway when she began complaining about how I lived. The cab passes my old building, and I soften with sentimentality. We hit Sixteenth Street, where we turn north toward the heart of the Gold Coast. Along the way, I remain alert for any sign of the green car or the passenger who searched for me on foot.

A very familiar passenger. The passenger of my dreams.

The roller woman.