The Famous and the Dead

33



One hour later it was over. Grossly thanked Hood and a marshal seated the next witness, Janet Bly. Hood stood and waited for her as she approached and he could see that she was stricken. The stress of ATF work had long ago hardened Bly’s pleasant features, but now her faced looked weathered and her eyes were flat with distant fury. She took his arm and guided him away from the microphones to a quieter place near the gallery. “Good job, Charlie. I hope I can keep my cool, too. I didn’t know you’d be here until Soriana told me. Did you know that no one else from Blowdown got subpoenas but us? I find that interesting.”

“It’s divide and conquer.”

“They can’t pit us against each other. It won’t work. This is an embarrassing spectacle.” Bly leaned in close: “Twelve years of this and I’m about that close to flipping them this badge.”

“Don’t. The Love Thirty-twos didn’t walk. They ran. It wasn’t our fault.”

“Then why do I feel like a sucker?”

“Just tell the truth.”

“But where’s our backup? Where’s Lansing? Where’s the director, for that matter? Where’s the rest of ATF when we need them?” She let her eyes roam Hood’s face, then looked past him toward the dais. She took his arm again. “I can’t help you with Rovanna, Charlie. I can’t speculate or make excuses. I don’t know why you saw him or what you were looking for. All I know is one thing: I trust you. I’ve got to go. Caution, friend—there’s some reporters lying in wait.”

Hood stepped out of the committee room and looked past the reporters and around them and through the windows in search of Mike, holding up a hand and politely declining to answer more questions. They trailed after him anyway, shouting questions and shooting pictures and video as he worked his way to the underground that would take him to the Capitol Building. At his hotel across the street he collected his bags and the bellman told him all of the airports had just now been shut down for the storm. Fine, Hood thought—a stroke of luck? He took one of the last available rooms at a much higher rate and carried his overnight bag back to the elevator and into his new room. He changed into the casual clothes he’d flown out in and the chukka boots he’d sprayed liberally with waterproofing before leaving Buenavista. He bought an expensive overcoat and a heavy wool scarf in one of the hotel stores downstairs, then ventured outside into the storm.

He hustled across Pennsylvania toward the Metro entrance, leaning into blowing snowflakes that made no sound. The sky and the ground were white, and the buildings had lost their color and looked like long-forgotten prisoners peeking out at the world. He made the Blue Line landing and climbed down the steps. The government had shut down and the cars were filled with workers heading home. Hood scanned the rows of faces, got off at Federal Triangle, and headed into the blasting wind toward the Capitol Building. He found his way back to the Rayburn House Office Building, trudged to committee room 2154, and looked in. A young man with a deep voice was talking about Mexican law enforcement being kept in the dark by American agencies. Hood looked around the committee room, noting the security cameras.

Down in the basement, just past the empty fitness room, Hood located the U.S. Capitol Police substation and badged Officer Donna Ford at the front desk. Behind her, he could see the monitor room with the live feeds coming through and other officers watching the screens. He asked to see the first-session OGR hearing videos from that morning.

“Was that your hearing?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Can I ask you why you want to see our video?”

“I saw a man in the audience I want another look at. He’s a person of interest back in California.”

She studied him with frank suspicion, then rose slowly from her chair and went into the surveillance room. A minute later she came to the doorway and nodded him in. Sergeant Mark Herron sat Hood at a console and pushed some buttons and a moment later Hood was watching Grossly tap his gavel and calling the meeting to order. Herron asked where he saw the subject and pushed more buttons. The POV did a 180-degree switch and Hood was now looking over the backs of the OGR Committee members, toward the rear of the auditorium.

“He was right there, under the monitor,” said Hood. “I saw him a few minutes after the meeting was called to order. Less than a minute later he was gone.”

Herron ran the video forward. Ranking member Collins gesticulated rapidly without sound and Hood watched himself sitting stone-faced, looking up at him. Collins was still at it when Hood saw Finnegan come into view. Hood pointed and Herron slowed the video. Mike took a seat beneath the monitor, crossed his legs matter-of-factly, and locked his fingers together and over one knee. He appeared to be looking at the back of Hood’s head. A moment later Hood watched himself turn and look at Mike. The stare-down was longer than he’d remembered. Finally he turned back to the committee. Mike rose and walked out of the camera’s view. Hood watched himself take a deep breath and turn again toward Mike, finding only the empty chair. Hood waited for Herron to burn some stills onto a disc, then pushed his way outside into the storm.

He trudged along Constitution past the Senate Office Buildings, but the snow was heavy and soon his boots were wet and his feet were cold so he found a Metro Blue Line station that took him out to Largo Town Center and back toward downtown, where he switched to the Red Line to Bethesda and came back to try the Orange Line way out to East Falls Church. No Mike. Then Hood rode back again to the center of the nation’s capital. The Metro cars were mostly empty in this storm, but Hood continued to watch and look and use his wonderful twenty-ten vision but he saw no Mike. He wondered if Mike had gotten out before the airports closed. The cold advanced on his hopefulness. He was zipped fully into the overcoat but his feet were mostly numb and his body shivered intermittently. The cars were surprisingly cold. The Green Line sounded lucky so he rode it clear to Greenbelt, staring at the faces of the other riders, but there was no Mike here either and he knew Mike would not be here and the other passengers averted their eyes and he got off near his hotel—he thought—only to find the streets were white prairies and not a single building was familiar. He faced into the wind and followed his feet. His waterproofed boots were soon soaked.

Sometime later he came upon a tavern where he ate ravenously and knocked back a couple of bourbons neat to warm the blood. The waiter said the storm was supposed to blow through within hours so air travel might resume sometime tomorrow. After dinner, Hood sat in front of the tavern’s fireplace with a woman and her dachshund, which was curled on her lap and wearing a sweater. She talked about her granddaughter, who was second-chair cello for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and pregnant. He watched the flames and they took him away, outside himself, where thoughts could gain no traction and where there was no Charlie Hood. Freedom from himself was pleasant. He saw rivers and Beth’s face.

Later, when his phone vibrated, he had a heart-dropping premonition that his father had died, and he was correct. The stroke had been massive and his death nearly instant. His mother was strangely composed and she didn’t talk very long, having two more of her children to inform of this. She seemed fortified by purpose. Hood stayed by the fire long after the woman and the dog had gone. More bourbon. Midnight came and went. When he got back to his room and took off his boots, his feet were blue-white and as cold as a T-bone just out of the fridge. He pulled the armchair up near the heater and put on the dress socks he’d worn that morning. He thought of his father and remembered good things from his boyhood and let the tears come.