William Brown - The Undertaker

Washington, DC: the shining city on the hill…

I rolled up the shade as the cab pulled over to the 30 ^th Street Station in Philadelphia at 8:50, giving Goutam a leisurely ten minutes to spare. It was another of those big, neoclassical edifices from the 1930s that Sandy and I were becoming so expert at negotiating.

“Thanks, Goutam” I said as I handed him four of the crisp new one-hundred dollar bills I had taken off “Tony Grigs”, the hit man in Boston. Goutam smiled, and I handed him another one. “That's a little extra so that your memory won't be too clear about the people you had in the back seat and what they were doing on the way down here from New York. You see, her husband can get very jealous.” I winked at him.

“Oh, yes, sir!” he grinned. “And I can see he has ample reason to be.”

“Where's an INS agent when you really need one,” Sandy muttered as she got out of the cab. “Like, he knew what we were doing back there.”

“Like, you care if he did?”

“But this time, we didn't even do anything!” she complained as she jiggled and twisted her skirt and top, trying to get everything back into place. “But how did my clothes get all turned around like this, Talbott?” she asked innocently enough.

As the cab drove away, she took my arm and we strolled into the terminal. The evening commuter crowd had largely dissipated by then, but there were express trains to both New York and DC every forty-five minutes to an hour, so the station was never empty. One of the trains to DC was leaving in ten minutes and would arrive at Union Station in Washington at 11:00. We bought two seats in the upper deck of the observation car. At night and in the rain, we assumed it would be empty and give us some privacy.

The ticker agent found that mildly amusing. “Just so you know, we turn the lights out about two minutes after the train clears the station,” he warned without looking up at us.

“And…? Sandy asked, puzzled.

“And you'll want to be in your seats by then, lady,” he looked up, straight-faced. “The late run back to DC is popular for all those tired, Washington staffers returning home from a hard day “bureaucrating” in the Philly field office. So if I were you, I'd find an empty seat, I wouldn't go gawking or stumbling around up there in the dark.”

We looked at each other, puzzled by his comments. By the time we got on board and climbed the stairs to the upper deck, there were already a dozen couples huddled together on both sides of the aisle, especially toward the back of the car. From the looks and the blankets, it was obvious they were waiting for the lights to go out too.

“Why did I bother to straighten my skirt?” Sandy whispered as we took two seats in the second row. She snuggled up against me and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “But what a great place to hide.”

“Think of all the money we wasted on a sleeping compartment?” I said. Her head shot up and I got those narrow, threatening eyes. “Uh, that isn't what I meant. No, no, it was a lovely sleeping compartment with you lying there next to me.”

“And under you… over you… and yeah, I guess next to you too.” She kissed me on the cheek. “But tonight you're safe, I just want to cuddle.”

The train started up and I looked down at her, concerned. “Are you okay?”

“What? Just because I'm not pulling your pants off like everybody else in here? You think I'm sick or something? Men. Maybe I'm all loved-out for the day. Did you ever think of that?”

“You? My bullshit meter just went off the chart. “What's wrong?”

She put her chin on my chest and looked up at me. “It's almost midnight, Talbott. In three hours, I'll be back in my shack with the pumpkin and the singing mice and you'll be long gone, remember?”

“Sandy, you're crazy.” I couldn't see her very well, but I ran a finger across her cheek and felt the tears. “I'm not leaving you.”

“You won't have a choice; they won't give you one. This has been a wonderful ride, Peter, but it's almost over and we both know it.”

“Trust me, that's not going to happen.”

She put her head back down and stopped arguing, but I knew she was a long, long way from being convinced.

The rain that buffeted New England the previous two days had blown on through DC and sucked the humidity out to sea with them. By the time our train rolled into Union Station at 11:10 we were greeted by a clear, cool early summer evening. DC was a 9–5 “company town,” and the streets were nearly deserted after dark. And Hardin was right. His building wasn't hard to find. Two large office buildings stood between the train station and the big, floodlit Capitol dome stood down the street, less than a half-mile away. The sign on the first one read “Dirksen and Hart.” The sign on the other read “Russell.”

Inside the small front lobby, two bored rent-a-cops sat on stools next to a large, airport-sized metal detector, reading newspapers and watching a game show on a tiny TV. One of the guards went through the motions of pawing through Sandy's shoulder bag. The other one never moved.

“Can you tell us where Senator Hardin's office is?” I asked as the guard opened her camera case and looked through the lens as if he had never seen one before.

“Hardin? Oh, he's up in the “high rent district,” one of the guards snickered. “Ya'll go up to the second floor and take the hall to the right. His office is all the way back on the Capitol side. You can't miss it.”

“High rent?” I asked.

“Yeah. He's got “the view,” the second one cackled.

“And the back door,” the first one added and they both had a good laugh. “Best not forget he's near the back door.”

“Is that so they can sneak stuff in or sneak stuff out?” Sandy asked.

“All depends on what she look like.” The second one laughed even harder.

“Over the years, lots of “stuff” went in and out that back door.”

We walked away shaking our heads, our footsteps echoing down the high, plastered ceilings and broad marble floors of the long corridor. A broad staircase led us up to the dimly-lit second floor. The lights were out in most of the offices. The only light in the corridor came from the art deco ceiling fixtures that ran down the center of the hall. This late at night, with only a handful of bulbs lit, the old building appeared even spookier. The only office that appeared in use was Hardin's. Up ahead, we could see his door standing wide open so the dim light fell out and illuminated a small circle around the doorway, like an island in a black sea. There was a US flag in a polished brass stand on one side, a State of Illinois flag on the other, and a round State Seal with big, gold letters on the open door that said TIMOTHY A. HARDIN, ILLINOIS.

Sandy and I peered around the doorframe. Most of the lights were out in his outer office, but we could see it was jammed with too many desks, mismatched, metal and wooden file cabinets, old computers, dirty coffee cups, pizza boxes, overflowing waste baskets, cubicle walls, tall stacks of paper, and government reports. But, there was no one there: no receptionist, no busy clerks or Senate aides, and no anxious petitioners, nothing but a loud voice and laugh coming from the rear office on the left.

“I think that's him,” Sandy whispered.

“If you aren't sure, I can have him stick his tongue in your ear.”

“Are all the bruises healed yet, Talbott? Because you'll regret that one.” She took me by the arm and wheeled me through the door into Hardin's inner office.

The Senator was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk in a tall, tilt-back leather chair. It was Hardin all right; I recognized him from TV. He was talking on the telephone, but he was one of those men who always looked 6:00 News sound-bite ready, smiling and posing, even when he was alone and on the telephone. Practice makes perfect, and his image was obviously something the Senator took great pains to cultivate, thanks to capped teeth, a tanning bed, and the occasional Botox shot.