Voices of the dead

Vander Schaaf put his palms together like he was praying, gave Harry a solemn nod. “Mr. Levin, I just want you to know that I’m here for you. We all are.”

Whatever that meant.

“But what we have here is a very difficult situation. Are you familiar with diplomatic immunity?”

Harry had an idea, but let him keep going.

“It’s a tradition that dates back to the ancient Greeks: Sophocles, Aristotle.” He picked up a pen like he was going to start writing, using it as a prop, giving him something to do with his hands. “They believed foreign emissaries traveled under the protection of Zeus.” He paused. “Today it’s designed to protect diplomats who travel abroad. Mr. Levin, we can’t in good conscience send our ambassadors to places where an unfriendly government might try to bring false charges against them. Sir, it’s a safeguard. It was all codified at the Vienna Convention in 1961. A complete framework was established for diplomatic relations on the basis of consent between independent sovereign states. It set out special rules, privileges and immunities-which allow diplomatic missions to act without fear of coercion or harassment of local laws. Is any of this making sense, Mr. Levin? If not I can have John Brennan, an attorney from ‘L,’ what we call the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, come by and explain it further.”

He put the pen on the desktop, picked up the coffee mug and took a sip.

“A foreign diplomat kills an American citizen and there’s nothing you can do about it. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Vander Schaaf said. He picked up a piece of paper and started reading. “Article 29 provides inviolability for diplomats, and Article 31 established their immunity from civil and criminal jurisdictions.”

“Don’t read anything else, okay?”

“Mr. Levin, I understand how you feel.”

“You don’t have a clue,” Harry said. “Where is he?”

“Who, sir?”

“The guy that killed my daughter.”

“I have no idea.”

Vander Schaaf looked worried.

“Who’s your boss?” Harry said.

“The Chief of Protocol, Mr. Emil Mosbacher Jr.”

“Get him on the phone, tell him I want to talk to him.”

“Mr. Levin, that’s impossible.”

“I thought you were all here for me.”

“Mr. Mosbacher is with the president.”

“Then call the White House, let’s get Nixon himself involved.”

Vander Schaaf was flustered, didn’t know what to do. Harry got up and started for the door.

“By way of reparation, Mr. Levin, I have a letter of apology from the diplomat himself.”

Harry moved across the room.

“He’s very concerned about the matter,” Vander Schaaf said, on his feet now, coming around the desk. “And has offered to pay funeral expenses.”

Harry was at the door, he turned and said, “Funeral expenses? You think that’s why I’m here?”

“Mr. Levin,” Vander Schaaf said, crossing the room, trying to catch him, but Harry had already gone.

He phoned Detective Taggart from a payphone in the lobby, got him on the line and asked where Sara’s car had been taken.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Look at it,” Harry said.

“It’s in a lot on North Pearl Street. Got a pen?”

Taggart gave him the address and Harry wrote it on the back of Vander Schaaf’s business card.

“I’ll call and tell them you’re coming. Get anywhere with the State Department?”

“They should call it the Anti-state Department.”

“I tried to find out who the diplomat is,” Taggart said, “but they’ve covered this thing up, buried it deep. All I know, the guy’s a German. Good luck.”

Taggart was a standup guy. Harry thanked him and hung up. He went outside and hailed a cab and took it to the DC police impound lot, rows of cars behind chainlink fence topped with razor wire. There was a single-storey cinderblock building just inside the fence. Harry went in the office and showed his driver’s license to a clerk behind the wood and Formica counter. He wore a police uniform shirt but looked like a mechanic, long greasy hair combed straight back over his collar, a few days of reddish-brown stubble on his face.

Harry told him about the accident and said he wanted to see the car, a 1968 Ford Falcon registered in his name with Michigan plates. The clerk flipped through a stack of papers that had a staple through the top left corner.

“Here ’tis, ’68 Falcon.” He looked up now. “In fact, they’re both out there side by each. Your car, what’s left of it, next to the one that hit it. 1972 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL, costs more ’n I make in a year, probably two. Tow trucks brought them in within a few minutes of each other, explaining their close proximity. Row A, spaces seventeen and eighteen. Walk out that door‚ take a right, can’t miss it.”