Doctorow

  —

  OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS considerable manpower was used in an attempt to identify the child. Once they knew who he was, the question of who had brought him onto White House grounds would begin to answer itself. In the meantime, the agents called him P.K., for Posthumous Kid. With photos in hand, they checked missing-children files, visited hospital pediatric wards, and interviewed pulmonologists in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland. No leads were forthcoming. The Bureau’s national data bank showed no reported kidnappings to match his description. As the paper piled up on Molloy’s desk, he remembers he wondered at what point these inquiries, which were bound to create gossip, would come to the attention of someone whose profession it was to ask questions.

  In order to comply with directives calling for interagency cooperation, Molloy held a briefing for a deputy of the Secret Service, an electronic-security expert assigned to the NSA, and a psychologist consultant to the CIA whose specialty was terrorist modalities.

  Molloy didn’t know any of them. I don’t have much time, he said, and quickly filled them in.

  Secret Service sat tall in his chair, a man in his late thirties, early forties who obviously used the gym, his suit as if tailored to his musculature. Well, he said with an icy smile, are we clean?

  So far, Molloy said.

  The electronics man with the NSA said he could run a system check, but the system was self-monitoring. It sends out an EKG that would have shown something, he said. So we’d already know.

  Molloy’s own techs had told him the same thing.

  The psychologist held his chin in his hand and frowned. Would you say this was a symbolic action, Agent Molloy?

  I’d say.

  I remind you that 9/11 was strongly symbolic, in case you think what we have here is necessarily over and done. You might be tempted to invoke the sixties as historical precedent, when you had those anti-nuke activists trespassing government property and pouring blood on missile housing and so on. Where they were more interested in propagandizing than doing real damage. But you would be wrong. Those hippie types were American. They put their bodies on the line. They took jail terms. They didn’t sneak in, leave their calling card, and sneak out. So this is something else entirely. Something more ominous.

  Like what, Molloy said.

  Like a warning. As in, We’ve done this so you see we can.

  So a dead boy doesn’t mean anything in particular? Molloy said. He’s just a calling card?

  Well, they brought him from somewhere, the consultant said. This feels to me like an Arab thing.

  Secret Service said, Still no I.D.?

  No.

  Nothing ethnic?

  No. A white kid. He could be anything.

  Then he could be from where they hate us, the psychologist said. He could be a Muslim kid.

  —

  IN THE SECOND WEEK of the investigation, a break came when a district commander of the D.C. police, John Felsheimer, called Molloy and invited him for an after-hours beer. The two men had worked together on occasion over the years, and while they were not exactly friends, they had a high regard for each other’s professionalism. That they were of the same generation, family men with grandchildren, was another bond between them.

  Once they’d exchanged amenities, Felsheimer withdrew a letter from his breast pocket. He said he was sorry he had not learned of the FBI investigation of a missing person until he happened to pick up some scuttlebutt that very day. He said the letter had been left at his district station a week before. Unsigned, undated, it was a single page, with just one computer-typed sentence. “You should know that a child was found, dead, in the Rose Garden.”

  Felsheimer explained that Molloy was holding a Xerox copy—the original had been kept by the White House. He had put the original in a glassine envelope and taken it to the office that liaised with the D.C. police. Rather hastily, he’d been shunted over to the Office of Domestic Policy, which he thought odd. A deputy assistant, a Peter Herrick, had heard him out and expressed surprise that he, Felsheimer, would attach any importance to a crank letter. But then Herrick had said he would hold on to it.

  Felsheimer, on his second beer, recalled the conversation:

  So you’re saying there was nothing in the Rose Garden?

  No, I didn’t say that, Commander Felsheimer. What it was, was an animal.

  An animal?

  Yes. A raccoon. FBI did the tests. It died of rabies. It just came in there to die.

  We don’t see much rabies in Federal City.

  Well, you live and learn. Just to be safe, we had the First Dog tested, checked the kids of staff, and so on. Negativo problems. It just wandered in and died. End of story.

  So, Brian, Felsheimer said to Agent Molloy after a pause. Am I wrong to put two and two together? Is that why the FBI is into missing-persons work now? You’re looking to make an I.D. on a dead kid?

  Molloy thought awhile. Then he nodded yes.

  And the kid was found where the letter said?

  Molloy said: John, for both our sakes, I have to ask for your word. This is a classified matter.

  Felsheimer drew another letter from his pocket. Of course you have my word, Brian. But you may be glad you leveled with me. Here’s a letter that came this morning addressed to the district commander, meaning me. When I heard you were running the show, I knew better than to go back to the White House.

  This letter text was exactly the same as the first. Computer-printed, Times Roman, fourteen-point. And unsigned. But unlike the first letter, it had come through the mail. And the envelope had a Houston postmark.

  —

  MOLLOY DID NOT BLAME himself for assuming, from the lab report of time of death—forty-eight to sixty hours before the body was examined—that the child had lived and been treated in D.C. or Virginia or Maryland. He put in a call to the chief of the FBI field office in Houston, whom he had known since their days as agent trainees, and asked for the complete paid obituary notices in all the Texas papers for the month of May. And throw in Louisiana, Molloy said.

  Naturally, knowing you, the chief said, I’m to put this at the top of my things-to-do list.

  You got that right, Molloy said.

  He called his secretary into his office and told her to run the National Arts and Humanities Awards guest roster through the computer to tag all names with Texas addresses. The names as of today? she said. It’s down to under a hundred. The original list, Molloy told her.

  He sat back in his chair and considered the mind of the person or persons he was dealing with. They had wanted it made public. Why then had the press not been tipped off? Why wasn’t it now a rumor flying all over the Internet? Only a note delivered to a district station and, upon a lack of response, a note mailed, this time almost as a reminder to the district commander? How peculiar to rely on authority when authority is what had been subverted. But there was something else, something else…a presumption that a line could be drawn between those powers who might be trustworthy, like local police, and those who were thought not to be, like himself. It did not square with the boldness of this bizarre act that the person who committed it had a hopeful regard for the law. Molloy had from the beginning theorized that he was dealing with eco-terrorists. But he had now the scintillating sense of a presiding amateurism in the affair.

  —

  IT WAS TIME FOR a meeting with the White House liaison, Peter Herrick. Molloy found a balding blond young man who wore Turnbull & Asser shirts with french cuffs. Herrick had been a hotshot regional director in the last campaign, a President’s man. Molloy had seen his like over the years. They came and went but, as if it were a genetic thing, always managed a degree of condescension for federal employees putting in their time.

  You heard from John Felsheimer, Molloy said.

  Who?

  D.C. police. You took a piece of evidence from him.

  I suppose so.

  I’ll have it now, Molloy said.

  Just sit down, Agent Molloy. Ther
e are things you don’t know.

  Withholding evidence is a chargeable offense, even for White House personnel.

  Perhaps I was overprotective. I’ll dig it up for you. But you appreciate why we can’t have any leaks. It would be like the other party to jump on this for political advantage. There’s so little else they have going. And this is the kind of weird shit that sticks in the public’s mind.

  What things don’t I know?

  What?

  You said there were things I don’t know.

  No, I was speaking generally about the political situation. I wonder why we haven’t heard your working hypothesis. I assume you have one? Wouldn’t you think it figures, from this crowd, something disgusting like this? The desecration of a beloved piece of ground? Not that I ever expect the artists, the writers, to show gratitude to the country they live in. They’re all knee-jerk anti-Americans.

  You let a hypothesis limit an investigation and you can get off on the wrong track, Molloy said.

  I’m thinking of the cases musical instruments come in. That kid could have fit into a cello case, a tuba.

  The program was Stephen Foster and George Gershwin, Molloy said. There are no tubas in Stephen Foster or George Gershwin.

  I used that as an example.

  The cases are left back at the hotel. The instruments are examined on the bus.

  Writers were on hand whose books are adversarial to the Republic. Painters of pictures you wouldn’t want your children to see. Our reward for these socialist giveaway programs.

  Molloy rose. I do admire your thinking, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Domestic Policy Herrick. You have any more helpful ideas, pass them on to my office. Meanwhile, I’ll expect that letter.

  —

  MOLLOY KNEW THAT AS a piece of evidence, the letter was useless. It would be dime-store stationery, just like the one in his possession, and overhandled at that. But he had to make a point. This group trusted only themselves. Molloy was certainly no liberal, but he detested politically driven interference in a case.

  He was put in a better mood that same afternoon when one of his agents brought him a missing-persons bulletin taken from the interstate police net: Frank Calabrese, widower, age sixty. The report had been filed by Ann Calabrese-Cole, his daughter. Molloy smiled and told his secretary that when a call came from the Office of Domestic Policy, she was to say he was out.

  He now had dossiers—some thirty of the guests had files. He set to work. A while later he looked up and noticed that the windows of his office had grown dark. He turned on his desk light and kept reading, but with a growing sense of dissatisfaction: There were book publishers and art dealers who’d marched against the Vietnam War. A playwright who’d met with a visiting Soviet writers’ delegation in 1980. University teachers who’d refused to sign loyalty oaths. Contributors to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A lawyer who’d defended priests in the Sanctuary movement. A professor of Near Eastern studies at George Mason. A folksinger who’d gotten an arts award several years before…He knew only halfway through the pile that it was useless, as if he could hear the voice that had written You should know that a child was found dead in the Rose Garden. It was not the voice of any of these files. These were the files of people, who, no matter for what cause, were by nature self-assertive. What he heard here was a circumspect voice going quietly about an unpleasant duty. It sounded to him like a woman.

  —

  MOLLOY WAS HANDED A FedExed 250 MB Zip disk from Houston when he arrived at work the next morning. He gave it to a young agent nerd whom he suspected somewhere down the line of having considered a career in criminal hacking. Would have done quite well, too: In an hour the nerd produced published notices for every child twelve and under who had died in every city and county in Texas and Louisiana in the month of May, then a refined list by city and county of male child deaths in south Texas and southwest Louisiana, and, under that, a target list of all young male deaths in south Texas and southwest Louisiana that had occurred within seventy-two hours of the ceremonial in the Rose Garden.

  Molloy sighed and started in on the target list. He first looked for the age and struck out names of kids over seven. Then he eliminated names that to his mind connoted black children. With the names remaining, he read in detail the simply worded expressions of heartbreak: beloved son of…alive in our hearts…classmate of…taken from us…in the bosom of Jesus…It was not with any sense of satisfaction, but with something like a disappointment in himself, that he came upon what he knew he had been looking for. In the Beauregard, Texas, Daily Record a boy named Roberto Guzman, age six, had been remembered in three paid obits—by his parents, by his cub scout troop, and, crucially, by someone unidentified, who had written “Rest in Peace, Roberto Guzman, it was not God who did this to you.”

  —

  MOLLOY TOLD HIS SECRETARY to make out the appropriate travel forms and book a next-day flight to Houston with a car rental at the airport. He had a pile of paperwork to go through—the agent interviews were still coming in—but he thought he’d have another look at the cadaver. He seemed to remember there was a small brown mole on the kid’s cheek. The on-site flash photos weren’t any good. He requisitioned a Sony Cyber-shot and went off to the morgue.

  The kid was not there.

  Molloy, stunned, questioned the attendant, who knew nothing about it. Wasn’t on my shift, the attendant said.

  Well, someone took it. You people keep a book, don’t you? Bodies just don’t fly in and out of here.

  Be my guest.

  Molloy found nothing written to indicate a child’s body had been received or taken away.

  Immediately, he called his bureau chief. He was told to come right over.

  —

  NOW, WHAT I’M ABOUT to tell you, Brian, his chief said—you have to understand a policy decision has been made that was explained to the director, and however reluctantly, he has chosen to go along.

  What policy decision?

  The investigation is concluded.

  Right. Where’s the kid? I’m pretty sure I’ve made an I.D.

  But you’re not listening. There is no kid. There was no body in the Rose Garden. It never happened.

  So where’d they bury him?

  Where? Where they would not be questioned, where nobody would see them at two in the morning.

  The two men looked at each other.

  They panicked, the chief said.

  Did they, now?

  They shouldn’t have detained that groundskeeper who found the body.

  You’re so right.

  Someone tipped his daughter over in Treasury. So they swore him to secrecy, sprung him, and allowed as they’d been holding him as a material witness on some classified matter. But they also told her that they’d perceived signs of dementia. So if he does say something—

  That’s really low.

  It wasn’t just that. The Post is nosing around. Someone sent them a letter.

  From Texas.

  Well, yes. How did you know?

  I can tell you what it said, Molloy said.

  —

  WHEN AGENT MOLLOY GOT back to his office, he was seething. He sat down at his desk and, with his forearm, swept the stack of paperwork to the floor. There’d been a pattern of obstruction from the start. He’d felt an operative intelligence in the shadows all through this business. On the one hand they wanted answers, as why wouldn’t they, given an intolerable breach of security? On the other hand they didn’t. They may have made their own investigation—or they may have known from the beginning. Known what? And it was so sensitive it had to be covered up?

  Whenever Molloy needed to cool off, he went for a walk. He remembers how, when he first came to Washington as a young trainee, he’d been moved almost to tears by the majesty of the nation’s capital. Quickly enough it became mere background to his life, accepted, hardly noticed. But in his eyes now it was the strangest urban landscape he had ever seen. Classical, white, and monumentalized
, it looked like no other American city. It was someone’s fantasy of august government. On most any day of the week, out-of-town innocents abounded on the Mall. The believers. The governed. He kept to the federal business streets, where the ranks of dark windows between the columns of the long pedimented buildings suggested a nation’s business that was beyond the comprehension of ordinary citizens.

  —

  BACK IN HIS OFFICE, Molloy scrambled around on the floor looking for the awards-ceremony guest list. When he found it, it was as he’d thought—no Texas residents. At this point it occurred to him that if the President had had personal friends staying over that night, they might not have been on this list. Personal friends were big-time party supporters, early investors in the presidential career, and prestigious moneyed members of his social set. They were put up on the second floor, in the Lincoln Bedroom or across the hall in the suite for visiting royalty, these friends.

  Molloy left a message with the White House social secretary. By the end of the day his call had not been returned. This told him he might not be crazy. Like everyone else in Washington, he knew the names of the in crowd. A couple of them had cabinet appointments, others had been given ambassadorships, so they were not possibles. But one or two of perhaps the most important held portfolios as presidential cronies.

  On a hunch, he called the controllers’ tower at Dulles. He would have to show himself with his FBI credentials to get the information, but he thought he’d give them a head start: Molloy wanted to know of any charter or private aircraft logged out of Dulles with a flight plan for anywhere in Texas the morning after the awards event.

  In heavy rush hour traffic he drove to the airport. He was tired and irritable. His wife would be sitting home waiting for him to appear for dinner, too inured to the life after all these years even to feel reproachful. But his spirits lifted when an amiable controller in a white shirt and rep tie handed him a very short list. Just one plane matched his inquiry: a DC-8 owned by the Utilicon Corporation, the Southwest power company, with home offices in Beauregard, Texas.