Austin Camacho - Collateral damage

Hannibal managed to leave Mother Washington and Janet behind when he shifted to his own apartment across the hall. His front door entered the fourth room back, just before the kitchen. Cindy dropped onto his sofa but Bea stood while he pushed the tape into his VCR. The image soon resolved itself into a news broadcast, and a second later the sound kicked in. An anchor was setting up the next story, a fluff piece, but Bea narrated right over her.

“This is from Monday’s news. It’s about last Sunday’s event at the Mall. You remember, the international food thing? Dean and I were there.”

The story was the kind of light fare beginning reporters are often assigned, composed of little more than a series of man on the street interviews. The reporter, a trim redhead, was too perky by half. She interviewed couple after couple, child after child, about what a fun time they were having getting a “Taste of DC” as the event was called. This annual affair took place on The National Mall, which was not a collection of stores but rather a flat park sitting in the middle of the city, anchored at one end by the Washington Monument and at the other by the Capitol Building.

The National Mall is as perfect a gathering place today as it was a hundred years ago, big enough to give the revelers the illusion of being separated from the traffic and the grime of government at work, surrounded as they are by this nation’s repositories of knowledge and culture, the various buildings of the Smithsonian Institute.

The screen presented a collage of revelers biting into sausages and baklava and meat pies with unpronounceable names. Less than a minute into the story, the camera zoomed in on the happy couple. Hannibal was focused on the twenty-six inch screen, but he heard Bea drag in a ragged breath as the cameraman zoomed in with that jerky movement now popular, and framed up Dean’s face.

Hannibal didn’t react, but he was surprised. He was briefly displeased with himself for making assumptions. He expected a slick looking, dapper brother of the Taye Diggs school. Instead, he was staring into a rounded, clean-shaven Caucasian face, with straw-colored hair falling into eyes that crinkled almost shut when he smiled. He was a little on the heavy side, in stonewashed jeans and a flannel shirt. He had rolled his sleeves halfway up his arms, and when he slipped one of those arms around Bea’s waist, her face lit with new love. He babbled something about “having a stone blast out here, like Epcot Center in Disney World,” and the whole time he was speaking into the camera, Bea’s eyes were on him, watching his precious words being formed by thin lips and pushed out between white, even teeth. Yep, he had her.

Hannibal rewound to the closest shot of Dean and froze the picture. Perfect con artist looks, he thought. Average height, weight, hair and eye color, common haircut, no facial hair, nothing to make him stand out in a crowd, or a lineup.

“This is all you’ve got?” Hannibal asked.

Bea was startled. “Surely you’d recognize him from this. I’ve just never taken any pictures or anything.”

Hannibal stopped and ejected the tape. “I don’t need pictures for myself, Miss Collins. I need to distribute pictures if we’re going to find this guy. I need to be able to leave them in as many hands as possible in places he might go: airports, train stations, bus stations. If he told you the truth about his profession, maybe computer companies. Does he have a car?”

“No. No car. Is that important?”

“Well it means we add taxi stands and rental car agencies to our distribution list,” Hannibal said. He glanced at Cindy who gave a slight nod. No car meant mobility, a man who might not plan on staying in one place too long. It was a bad sign.

Cindy stood with one hand to her chin. “Hannibal, can’t you get a still made from the video? I’m sure we’ve had that done at the office.”

“I can,” he said, handing the tape back to Bea. She handled it like a precious artifact, gently guiding it back into her purse. “The image quality will be crap if I take it from VHS though. What I will do, is trot on down to Channel 8 and see if I can talk somebody down there into printing a still frame from the original broadcast quality Betacam tape. That might be clear enough. Then we run off fifty glossies and then the legwork begins. Now, would you be kind enough to escort Miss Collins back to the party?”

Bea stood, her spine as straight as a reed, and at that moment looking just as fragile. “That’s it? Is that all you’re going to do?”

Hannibal sighed, thinking how much this woman really didn’t want what he was sure to find if his hunt was successful. “No, Miss Collins it isn’t. I’m going to change my clothes. Then you and I are going to take a ride over to your apartment so I can look around, maybe learn a little more about this Dean Edwards.”

Half an hour later, Hannibal followed Bea down his front steps to the Washington street. The sunshine was still bright, but the world looked different to him. Out there, in front of his three-story tenement, poverty blew in on him like the hot breath from a panting engine. Boys traveled in gangs and older people hurried along the sidewalk, not looking left or right. Even the few trees on his block struggled to maintain their lives at the edge of the curb. And he was no longer on vacation. He was at work, and his work was always grim.

Hannibal looked different too. Now in his black suit and tie, wearing his signature Oakley sunglasses, he felt more businesslike. Black driving gloves did not impede his pushing the button on his key nfob to unlock the Volvo, the White Tornado as he called it in private. He held the door for Bea to get into what was the only new car on the block right then. Once behind the wheel, he started the CD player, filling the car with the sound of Wynton Marsalis’ unique interpretations of movement and sound, melody and rhythm. With an easy smile he pulled away from the curb, headed for the Fourteenth Street Bridge.

Relaxing back into the white leather, Hannibal asked, “Just what is a professional woman like you doing in this neighborhood, Miss Collins?”

“My mother and Mother Washington were very close, Mister Jones,” Bea said. She sat very straight and looked forward at the crumbling inner city beyond the windshield. “I still attend her church. Every Sunday. The Lord has brought me everything, Mister Jones with never a trial, until…”

Hannibal nodded. “Until now. Well, maybe we can make this a short trial. And please, call me Hannibal okay?”

Bea nodded and sat quietly for a while. Hannibal drove them across the Potomac River and onto the George Washington Parkway. Past Reagan National Airport the park on their left was overrun with joggers, picnickers, and the occasional fisherman trying to make the river give up its rockfish. Three small sailboats seemed to be playing tag against the background of the well-wooded Maryland shore.

“And what about you, er, Hannibal?” Bea asked. “I understand you are a successful businessman. What takes you to that neighborhood?”

“Long story. I’m surprised Mother Washington hasn’t told you.” Hannibal turned left at the second light into the part of Alexandria locals called Old Town, then right on Fairfax, the street closest to the river. As other streets moved closer to the river, he turned to keep the open water on his left. “So tell me, how long have you known this Dean Edwards?”

Two blocks of expensive townhouses passed. Bea watched Hannibal’s face until she was ready to answer but when she did she turned to stare into her own lap. “Three months. You think I’m being a crazy woman, don’t you? You won’t find him. You don’t think I should even be looking.”