Chapter Ten
Dave liked to think of himself as one of the grizzled, rumpled, ink-stained wretches who lived the lives of the heroes in the great books about the news business or even detective stories. He had known quite a few of those guys. They actually wore the dirty trench coats and ill-fitting seer sucker suits of legend. They smoked too much and drank too much and, sadly, they sank into a semi-functional state of journalistic limbo in which they did nothing more than collect press releases, suck up a few free drinks, and wait for the end. But in their prime they were caped crusaders who exposed wrongdoings, championed the downtrodden, and brought down the corrupt power mongers who preyed upon the weak. At least that was the narrative that drifted into the conversations they had with each other in their soft and boozy moments at the press club. At other times they told each other it was all bullshit.
Dave was thirty-three years old. How much longer could he do it? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to end up as a sad drunk in a bar full of reporters but he had to admit to himself that he didn’t know what else he could do to make a living. It was not as though he had a real skill. He didn’t want to end up like Sid, either, yelling at people like him and trying to wrestle a news day out of his staff. He knew Sid spent a good part of his time arguing with stations about one story or another or, as today, about Dave. Elena made him feel small in his life. She forced him to think about a life that was larger and warmer. He was empty when she left. Now she was back. He didn’t know if he could handle it. Right now he had a story to work.
The city of Washington had placed benches between the sidewalk and the curb under the romantic idea that the well-heeled professionals who worked in nearby offices would rub shoulders with wide-eyed tourists on balmy days, each admiring the wonders of their nation’s capital. In reality, especially in winter, the benches were daytime haunts for homeless men and women, who wrapped themselves in whatever they could find to comfort them as they held out cups to the office workers who hurried by. “Change? Spare change?” Some of the pedestrians tossed a few coins into the cups and others offered insults or no acknowledgement.
Benches near heating grates or Metro vents were prized because of the warmth that they offered, however briefly. Peppers was asleep on a bench directly across the street from the coffee shop where Dave was feeling sorry for himself. The bench was close to a Metro vent and when the trains came through the tunnel beneath the vent, a rush of warm air would be expelled. It was midday so the trains were on twelve minute schedules. Peppers had learned to open his blanket when he heard the distant rumble of an oncoming train and to trap some of the warm air that came his way. He imagined that God Himself sent him the warm air that comforted him. He spent his days in a rainbow of hallucinations. He no longer bothered to try to separate real from unreal. He slept the sleep of a child. He was immune to the disgust he generated. It took him a few minutes to come around when Dave shook him. “Peppers! Wake up! Peppers! It’s me, Dave Haggard!”
A distinguished man in an expensive overcoat and polished shoes stopped to watch Dave shaking Peppers. “Leave him alone, for God’s sake! Can’t you see the man is sleeping?”
“He’s a friend of mine,” Dave said, not bothering to look up.
“I’m sure,” said the man, waving an arm at Peppers. “You must go to the same tailor.”
Peppers opened his eyes and sat up. “Are you the word?”
“I need to talk to you. Can I buy you something to eat?”
Peppers smiled his toothless grin and sat up, gathering two plastic bags that contained his worldly possessions. “We can to Berbers. They let me sit upstairs.”
Berbers was a fast food joint on L Street that was a throwback to the days before the swell’s moved into the downtown area in their new office buildings. It was in a building that was the product of the hope that came to the city with Franklin Roosevelt in the thirties and had a grandeur and sense of purpose that the glass boxes that now defined the area did not. It had the look of a building someone cared about when it was designed and built. The new boxes had the look of something thrown together in an afternoon, something to stack boxes on top of each other.
Berbers occupied a corner space that contained two floors accessed from the sidewalk. If the place wasn’t crowded homeless people were allowed to sit upstairs in the back as long as they bought coffee once an hour. If the smell was too bad, all bets were off. Peppers tested the limits of Berber’s management, but on this day the place was nearly empty because of the snow, so Peppers and Dave were not given much notice as they climbed the stairs. They found a table in the back near the bathrooms and Dave went to get food for Peppers. He was gone less than five minutes. The young girl behind the counter smiled at him and made a comment about the weather. He paid for the burger and fries and asked for a bottled water. The girl seemed to be flirting with him but he was still thinking about Elena and Peppers and the information he could get from him, so he took the paper bag and the water and waved goodbye to the girl, who looked sad.
Dave was tired. He felt like he was in over his head with the dead priests story and in even deeper with Elena. He had a how-did-this-happen moment as he climbed the stairs, moving like an old man. He watched his feet as he moved from step to step and nearly walked into the wall at the landing to turn for the second floor. He looked up when he had reached the top stair and started to walk to the back when he saw that Peppers was not at the table. His plastic bags had been torn open and the pitiful contents were scattered on the floor. Filthy shirts, plastic cups, a baseball hat, matches, cardboard and mismatched gloves. He assumed that Peppers had experienced a panic attack that had sent him into his bags looking for something. Dave placed the food on the table and went into the men’s room to get Peppers.
“Peppers! You in there?” There was no answer, only the hollow sound of Dave’s voice bouncing off the tile. “Hey, Peppers! I got your lunch.” There was no response. He assumed that Peppers was on the toilet, so he went back to the table and to wait for him. Ten minutes went by and Peppers did not come out. Dave went back to the door and opened it. “Hey, man, your lunch is getting cold.” Silence. Dave walked into the restroom past the partition that prevented diners from seeing someone on the toilet. He saw Peppers feet under the toilet door. “You okay?” Silence.
The door was not locked. It opened when Dave pushed it. Peppers was sitting on the toilet with his pants up and one of his scarves pulled tight around his neck. His eyes were half open but he was not breathing. Dave stared at him for a full minute; his reporter’s eye was taking in the details. Peppers’ tongue was sticking out. His head was at an odd angle. Dave touched his neck and felt no pulse. He placed the back of his hand under Peppers’ nose and felt no breath. He dialed 911.
Malone was in a sandwich shop across the street when the first patrol car arrived, skidding on the wet snow that had not yet been plowed. The patrol car was left in the street, blocking whatever traffic was trying to negotiate the snow, as the officers got out. They were both wearing earmuffs and gloves and their shoes were covered in rubber galoshes that were unfastened. Dave knocked on the upstairs window and waved them up. Less than a minute later a second patrol car arrived and two more officers were at the scene. One of them stationed himself at the door to prevent anyone from entering or leaving Berbers. An EMS truck arrived and two men wearing D.C.F.D. jackets got out, grabbed a medical kit, and ran inside. Malone watched it unfold like an exercise at the police academy. Soon, a detective car was on the scene. Before Malone’s coffee had turned cold, L Street outside Berber’s was swarming with cops, fire department vehicles, and news trucks.
Malone could see Dave talking with detectives, one of whom was Captain O’Neil. It was time for him to leave. A District snowplow was stuck in traffic at Connecticut Avenue as frustrated city drivers sat in the backup caused by the weather and what a local traffic reporter called “a police action” on L Street. Two Hispanic men with snow shovels were trying to clear the sidewalk as Malone walked ea
st and he stopped to allow them to clear the area in front of him. He glanced back and saw that Dave and O’Neil were sitting by the window and O’Neil was pointing a finger at the reporter. Malone moved on. He found his car and placed a call.
O’Neil was sprawled over two chairs, warming his hands on his coffee cup. “Why is it that nobody can drive in the snow around here? Look at that mess. I’ll bet you five dollars that cars are already abandoned on the Beltway and the stores are sold out of toilet paper and bread.”
Dave knew that O’Neil was just in the preliminaries of what would become an interrogation. “I guess that means that when it snows around here folks just sit on the toilet and eat bread until it’s over.”
O’Neil chuckled but his eyes held no merriment. “That’s a nice thought. You think the big guy over at the White House is on the throne right now?”
“So, let’s talk about Peppers. What do you think is going on?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you. Tell me again how you knew this guy?”
“He was in the shelter when Father Phil was killed. He was sleeping next to me. Not sleeping, actually, since he seemed kind of zoned out most of the time. He kept asking me if I was the word. He gave me the book. I saw him on a bench and offered to buy him something to eat. We came here. He went to the bathroom. Then he was dead. That’s about it.”
O’Neil never believed that anything was “about it”, so he pressed Dave. “Well, see, you’re being played here, you know that. It’s not normal when people keep getting killed around one guy, especially when that guy gets deliveries of things from the people being murdered. I need you to think about everyone you came into contact with since you got this idea to do a story about homeless people. How did you make that happen? Who did you talk to? I know we’ve gone over this before but we need to go over it again.” He stared at Dave with a passive face but his eyes bore into the reporter.
Dave was dealing with some questions of his own. The first was what the hell is going on?