It would be impossible to realize how fully my world had just changed.
Forget the obvious stuff-that my most esteemed colleague was no longer here to help me, that I would miss him to my core, that I and my newspaper were about to be showered with too much attention at a time when we wanted it least. I had to come to terms with the fact that danger now lurked beyond every corner and in every shadow. I probably should have realized that last week, when someone took a shot at me at the Newseum, but since I hadn't been hurt, I had refused to accept any sort of changed reality. If I had, maybe Havlicek would still be alive.
Marbled into all that danger were answers to the most significant questions that I may ever ask. It seemed evident right then that I had to confront the danger to obtain the information that Havlicek would so badly want me to get. I essentially had two days to the election, two days to answer these questions before Hutchins won his own four-year term.
These were the thoughts racing through my brain as I stood frozen in that antiseptic waiting room, more tired than I've ever been in my life but even more determined to make amends. I asked the veterinary assistant if there were any other exits I might use, like some sort of side or cellar door. He looked at me strangely, but then led me down a rickety set of basement stairs toward a steel door that opened into a small backyard.
Outside, I hopped over the fence into another yard, then another fence to another yard. I don't know where I found the strength and stamina to do it, and I didn't dare start asking myself any needless questions.
Eventually, done with my little Bruce Jenner act, I emerged onto a side street in the Burleith section of Washington. I ran behind some hedges and arrived on Wisconsin Avenue. It was after 3:00 A.m.' and through the luck of the skilled, I flagged a passing cab and was safely-I think-on my way.
'Capitol Hill, please,' I said. I saw the taxi driver eyeing me suspiciously in his rearview mirror, taking in the bandage on my head, the dried blood, the mussed and matted hair. He fumbled around beneath his seat, I assumed to make sure he was carrying his gun.
As he eyed me warily in the mirror and I looked back at him, I said, 'I just fell off a turnip truck.' He nodded and reached back under his seat, just to be double sure.
On the hill, I asked him to take a drive past 898 C Street, Southeast.
It was a two-story brownstone town house in an advanced state of disrepair, on a block of buildings that the current economic boom had apparently overlooked. The bushes in the patch of dirt that passed for the front yard were overgrown. Old candy wrappers, cigarette butts, and beer cans were strewn about. A banister hung precariously off the front stairs, ready, it seemed, to blow down in the first strong gust of wind. All the windows were dark.
'I'll get out at the corner,' I told the driver. He appeared relieved, and I can't say I blamed him.
Outside, the air was colder than I had expected, and I remembered that I had left my coat in Georgetown, having covered Havlicek with it. I walked briskly back down the street toward the house, unsure of exactly what I was about to do, but positive that I had to do it. The way I saw it, by morning I would be ordered off the story by the paper's editors for safety reasons, and if I wasn't, then whoever was attempting to abbreviate my life would have learned my whereabouts and would be trying anew.
In front of the house, I took a deep breath and climbed the four stairs to the front door. I knocked softly on the glass window on the decrepit door, which was covered by a shabby curtain, and waited. I didn't hear a sound from within.
I stepped back and looked at the upstairs windows to see if any lights clicked on, but none did. I rang the doorbell, heard a loud buzz inside, and pressed my ear against the window. Still nothing. I looked at the upstairs windows. Nothing again.
I wasn't sure quite what to do. I wished Havlicek was here to jimmy the lock with a knife or a credit card or whatever it was he'd use.
The only thing I knew how to break into was a sweat, and I was starting to do that just then, despite the chill air.
For the hell of it, I fingered the doorknob, and to my unbridled amazement, it turned, the door readily creaking open into an entryway that led to a larger room. I stepped inside, keeping the door open behind me. I could either announce my presence and hope for the best, or sneak inside and look for the worst.
'Anyone home?' I yelled. All right, so it's not original, but it gets the job done.
No response, no stirring, no nothing. So I groped around for a light switch, eventually found one, and flicked it on. A bare bulb illuminated overhead, revealing peeling wallpaper covering ravaged walls that rose from a filthy linoleum floor. The only other item in the tiny space was a toilet plunger. Don't ask me why, but I grabbed it.
'Anyone here?' I called out again. Nothing.
I stepped into the main room, felt through the shadows for a few long moments for another switch, and flicked one on. An old, dirty chandelier lit up, and I stood bolt upright in shock and fear. Spread out before me was the living room, ransacked from one end to the other.
Right next to me, a desk drawer had been pulled out and thrown to the floor, its contents-some matches, loose change, and assorted papers-tossed about on a threadbare rug. The cushions of the old, ragged couch had been pulled off and cut open. A small television was smashed on a floor next to its stand. Yellowing shades covered the windows.
My eyes sprinted around the room in search of a person or a body. 'God fucking dammit,' I said under my breath. I still hadn't moved from where I was standing. Sweat rolled down my face.
'Paul, come on out!' I hollered. My own voice, bouncing off the bare walls, frightened me even more. My mind kept flashing back to the image of Havlicek's mangled ear.
Gingerly I walked through the wreckage of the living room, peering along the floor for any scrap of paper or envelope that might carry someone's name, that someone preferably being Paul Stemple. I saw nothing of any use. Carrying the plunger with both hands, ready to swing, I walked into the back of the house, into the kitchen and turned on an overhead fluorescent lamp with a dangling string. Same drill, same bolt of fear. Cabinet doors were flung open, drawers thrown on the floor, a few dishes broken on the scratched Formica countertops.
About a dozen roaches sprinted across the floor to escape the light.
All the closet doors were open, which was good, because it meant I didn't have to go through the dramatics of going through them.
I walked back out into the living room, thinking it was high time to get the flying fuck out. But I couldn't help let my eyes wander up the wooden staircase in the far corner of the room to the dark expanse above. I walked slowly toward the steps and stood silently at the foot.
I pushed a switch on the wall, and an overhead light shone on the second floor landing.
'I'm armed,' I yelled, the toilet plunger still in my hands.
I started up the stairs, each one creaking louder than the one before.
I had no idea what to expect. I didn't even know what I wanted to find. Nothing, perhaps? I just knew I had to go up, to press ahead, to scour every possible corner for any clue as to what had gone so tragically wrong.
On the top stair, the silence was broken by a blur of activity.
Something flashed across the scratched wooden floors. I raised the plunger out before me, ready to take a swing at whatever demonic figure was coming my way. My heart nearly came through my chest. I looked down in time to see an immense rat race by my feet into a darkened room and God only knows where from there. I gripped the railing in a combination of relief and for balance. I shook my head and tried to smile at my situation, but couldn't.
That's when I looked closer at the floor in front of me and saw bloody animal tracks where the rat had just run. He was either bleeding himself or had just stepped in blood. I looked warily, ominously, at the open door from where he had come.
And that's where I headed. I had neither a viable weapon nor a logical choice. I stepped around the railing and down the short hallway, calling out, 'I have a fucking gun, and I'll blow your fucking brains out. Come out now.'
Nothing.
From my vantage in the hallway, I could see it was the bathroom. I reached hesitantly inside the door, found a light switch, and flipped it on. A pair of rats came scampering through my legs, causing me to nearly vomit. My
