'Confidential' across to me. I opened it up to see an autopsy report and thought to myself that this dinner conversation just kept getting better and better.
'Scan halfway down,' he said, 'to eye color.'
I did, and there it was: brown. I smiled up at Havlicek as we locked eyes, his brown, mine an ocean blue. 'So you have yourself an issue.'
'What we have,' he said, 'is pretty good proof that the man they shot at Congressional Country Club isn't the man they say is Tony Clawson, a California drifter with antigovernment tendencies.'
Indeed, in the past couple of days, the FBI had been selectively leaking bits and pieces about the life and times of Tony Clawson. They put out word that Clawson had been to a couple of loose militia meetings in Nevada and possibly Wyoming. They said he had been brought to the attention of the FBI within the last eighteen months as a potential domestic terrorist because of his views and his criminal record, which included numerous instances of violence. Never, though, in all the stories questioning the FBI, in all the two-bit profiles of Clawson, was there any sort of new photograph of him. And all the while, in the name of national security, the FBI said it couldn't provide any more information, even anonymously.
'It's a different guy,' Havlicek said. 'I'd like to put that fact in the newspaper.'
I took a bite out of my hamburger, and it felt like cotton-covered lead in my mouth. I forced it down, then pushed the plate to the side.
'Carlos,' I said to the waiter as he whisked by, 'any chance you could just bring me some vanilla frozen yogurt?'
'You not going to eat that?' Havlicek asked, visibly concerned. I was trying to think of something to say that wouldn't make him feel bad.
Instead, he reached for my plate and asked, 'You mind?'
I let him take the hamburger, and pushed my chair back from the table to make myself comfortable. 'What's it all mean?' I asked. 'What the fuck does it all really mean?'
Havlicek said, his mouth packed with food again, 'I don't have a clue.
I just know what we have. If we know it, I suspect the feds do as well. We don't have a corner on curiosity, deductive skills, and intelligence.'
'I've got two new developments on my front,' I said.
'Go ahead,' he replied.
'Second thing first. I heard from my anonymous source again.'
'Jesus Christ,' Havlicek said. 'Talk about burying the fricking lead.'
'Check this out. He gave me this.'
I handed him the single sheet of paper with the handwritten note.
Havlicek wiped his fingers again, put his half-glasses back on, and read through it, slowly. He looked up over his glasses and said, 'Holy shit. We're really onto something, and now he sounds like he knows what he's talking about. He's for fucking real.
'But wait a minute,' he added. He looked at the envelope and saw there was no postmark or mailing address written out. 'How'd you get this?
You meet him? You see him?'
I said, 'On the goddamned airplane. He-or I should say, someone-left it on my seat when I went into the bathroom. It was just sitting there when I got out.'
'Holy fuck. He was on the airplane,' he said, partly a question, partly a statement.
'Could have been delivered by a messenger. I don't know. I asked the stewardess if she saw who dropped it there. She didn't. A bunch of people got food sickness up in first class, and it was chaotic. I walked up and down the aisle holding it, staring at people who looked suspicious, but got no reaction.'
Havlicek said, 'Let me just ask you two quick questions. Who in God's name is this guy, and what the frick else does he have?'
'I don't know,' I said, my face pained and purposeful, on purpose. 'I just don't know. But for all I know, he could be in this room right now.'
'Jesus, you think he's a member here? That's a pretty high-flying anonymous source,' Havlicek said.
'Point two,' I said. 'I think there's something strange going on between the FBI and this militia leader I know.'
'Go ahead.'
I told him the story. I told him of the interview with Daniel Nathaniel, the visit to the bar, the fight with this kid Bo, and of course, Bo's accusations and rantings about the fed named Drinker.
When I was done, Havlicek looked me up and down with laughing eyes and said in a tone spilling over with amusement, 'You punched him in the kidneys and you broke his nose while he was down on the ground?' He made a shuddering motion with his shoulders. 'Remind me never to cross you anytime soon.'
'Not the kidneys,' I said, indignant. 'The stomach.' I paused and asked, 'You think the FBI could be working in some fashion with the head of the Idaho militia?'
Rather than answer, Havlicek asked, 'So you pulled the plug on your story?'
'I didn't think I had any choice. You think otherwise?'
He was becoming serious again. 'No. You did the right thing, the brave thing. But you should know about this.'
He shuffled through more of his papers. God knows what he might be showing me now. He slid a computer printout toward me of an Associated Press story that began, 'The Boston Record first published, then later deleted a story from its editions today asserting that a newly formed Wyoming-based militia group had sponsored last Thursday's assassination attempt against President Clayton Hutchins at Congressional Country Club. The story was pulled without explanation, in an apparent belief that the paper had published either wrong or unsupportable information.
Record officials and editors could not be reached for comment today.'
I bet those Record officials and editors were getting a real kick out of all this. Martin was obviously running interference for me, and that would also explain his multiple telephone messages to me throughout the day, which I had yet to answer.
'I had too many doubts,' I said. 'I admit, I rushed something I shouldn't have rushed.'
Havlicek said, in that soothing way of his, 'Fuck 'em all. By tomorrow, this is yesterday's news. We're onto even better things right now, and you know it.'
I allowed my thoughts to broaden. I asked, half-rhetorically, 'What is really going on here? What's this all about?' I didn't wait for an answer before I went on, allowing myself, this time, to become melodramatic. 'We have some anonymous source who has told us repeatedly that things aren't as they seem, not to believe what others want us to believe. And now we have a point of fact where he is right, and a pretty fucking big one. The shooter isn't who the feds say the shooter is, at least it doesn't seem that way. So that means the motive may not be what the feds say the motive is. And now we have pretty good reason to believe that the feds have some bizarre, and possibly suspicious, relationship with the militia movement they are accusing of trying to kill the president. So where does that take us?'
'I'll have the cheesecake, some extra strawberries off to the side, and another beer.' That was Havlicek, speaking to Carlos, who had appeared at our table amid my monologue. I was about to get aggravated with him for his lack of attention when he cut me off.
'Look back at the Kennedy assassination,' he said. 'It's almost forty years after the fact, and people are still arguing over who pulled the trigger and for what reason. Now we have another presidential assassination attempt, and it is not unlikely that the same argument could take place all over again. Two big differences here, though.
First, Hutchins wasn't killed, which will make this thing fade into history faster. Second, there was a reporter involved, namely you, who might help answer a lot of these questions before they slip off into some arcane debate among conspiracy theorists. For all we know, there is some mysterious force who tries to knock off our presidents every three decades. Maybe that's what this is all about.'
Nothing much to add, and I was getting tired, so I said, in an unidentifiable accent, 'Pret-ty strange. I've been out of touch all day. Anything happen in the campaign I should know about?'
