Voices of the dead

A few minutes later a woman with frizzy shoulder-length dark-hair came across the lobby and stood in front of him. She was cute, early thirties, wearing a sleeveless paisley dress and running shoes, a hippie dressed up for work.

“Mr. Levin, I’m Judy Katz.”

She sat next to Harry, body angled toward him.

“Sara was brought to the ER this morning at 1:34 a.m. She had been in a terrible car accident. She was dead. There was nothing we could do. I’m very sorry.”

Judy Katz put her hand on his and squeezed it. Harry let out a breath as if he had been subconsciously holding it in. He sat there for a couple seconds, trying to process what he’d just heard. “You’re sure it’s Sara?”

“We have her driver’s license and school ID.”

He rubbed his eyes.

“How’d she die?” He rolled the magazine up and squeezed it.

“Internal injuries, Mr. Levin.” Judy Katz said. “Sara died instantly. She wasn’t in any pain.”

“Who else was involved?”

“A man was driving the other car. I don’t know anything about him or his condition. He was taken to Georgetown. Another hospital.”

“Where is she?” Harry said. “I want to see her.”

Judy Katz escorted him downstairs to the morgue. They walked along the spotless hallway that smelled like cleaning fluid, sterile, antiseptic, neither one talking, Harry aware of the sound of their shoes on the tile floor. Hers squeaking, his clicking.

Judy stopped and said, “Sara’s in here. This is a viewing room.”

There was a body on a stainless steel table, covered by a white sheet. Her feet were sticking out the bottom, Sara’s pretty feet with pink manicured toenails, toe tag hanging from her right foot, name and Social Security number and Huntington Woods address in black marker.

Judy pulled the sheet back and Harry saw the lifeless face of someone, a girl with dark brown hair, but unrecognizable, the left side crushed.

“Is this your daughter, Mr. Levin?”

Harry nodded, picturing her the last time he’d seen her, the day she moved into the teacher’s townhouse. “You’ve got the best luck of anyone I know,” he’d said.

“The world’s my oyster, Pops.”

Harry took a cab to the Washington DC Police Department on Shepherd Street, met with Detective Taggart in a room with a long table, two ashtrays on it, pink walls and a clock. Taggart looked about forty, dark curly hair, sideburns, light green dress shirt, brown tie pulled down, slightly askew, revolver in a black shoulder holster under his left arm.

“Mr. Levin, I’m sorry about your daughter,” he said, southern accent. “Can I get you coffee, a soft drink, cigarette?”

Taggart took a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out and tilted it toward him.

Harry shook his head. “Tell me what happened.”

“Your daughter was traveling north on 15th Street. According to the restaurant manager she had just gotten off work. It was around twelve twenty. The car that hit her was traveling east on K Street, ran the red light at 15th, slammed into your daughter’s car broadside in the intersection.”

“Who was driving the other car?” Harry said.

Taggart glanced away and back at Harry. “I’m not at liberty to give you that information.” He looked uncomfortable, squirmed a little in his seat.

“What’re you talking about?”

“I don’t blame you,” Taggart said. “But there’s nothing I can do. He’s a foreign diplomat.”

“I thought I was at the police station.”

“It’s out of our hands,” Taggart said.

“You didn’t arrest him?” Harry said, shaking his head. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this-” He paused. “We held him till this morning, and I heard he was still drunk when we let him go.”

“You mean he’s out on bail?”

“There was no bail. Guy from the Chief of Protocol’s Office and a lawyer from the Office of the Legal Adviser got here at six thirty this morning and we had no choice but to let him go. This guy’s connected, somebody important.”

Taggart slid a business card across the table to him. Harry picked it up and looked at it: James Vander Schaaf, State Department of the United States, Office of the Chief of Protocol.

“You want to know what’s going on? Talk to him. But I doubt you’ll get a straight answer. This is Washington.”

Harry took a cab to 320 21st Street, got out in front of the sand-colored Department of State building. Vander Schaaf had a nice office with a view of the Potomac. He wore a seersucker suit and a bowtie. He was tall and thin and personable. Harry sat facing him behind a mahogany desk the size of a Volkswagen, framed photos on it and a coffee mug that said “World’s Best Dad” in a big cartoon typeface, and wall-to-wall bookshelves behind him.

“Mr. Levin, on behalf of everyone here at the State Department, I want to offer you our sincere condolences for your loss. Unfortunate, tragic, you have our deepest sympathy,” he said.

It sounded like practiced sincerity. Bereavement 101.

“I can definitely relate. I have children of my own.”

“I don’t want your sympathy,” Harry said. “I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”