DravisWrites

[Untitled Work]

EARLIER

There was an instant when nothing happened.

And then after that one brief moment came the next, as though the Universe took a breath, saw that the slowly rolling downhill stone would reach the edge and go beyond, the last grain of sand would be added to the dune, the cloud would condense to rain, the bubble would expand to its limit, and saw that all of the multiple possibilities up until that very last infinitesimal sliver of time would collapse from “what could be” into “what now is” and then all those other possibilities would vanish until the only thing left was the stone dropping, the dune collapsing, the rain falling, the bubble bursting, and for Tommy Morden it was the tremendous liberation, the moment in which all his choices were made and his life moved in only a single direction, a straight line running as unbroken and infinite as the horizon at the sea, and he had become fully who he would always be for the rest of his life as long as it might last, free never to worry about the outcome of any choice ever again because this was his final choice, the one that no one could take away from him, as the trigger went back and the first round exploded and he sprayed bullets through the classroom, and at that second it wasn’t even him, not Tommy but Tommy looking from outside at what he was creating and yet at the same time still inside doing it, and Tommy the perpetual victim who’d endured his father’s belt and fist and the taunting classmates and his own bright black hatred of himself, who at last threw off victimhood like a heavy coat and turned every part of the world around him into victims, his inside world erupting out around him to become the outside world, because he wanted to make it that way, and after that one tiny second he had finally broken through, and everything that he was or ever could have been was reduced to no more than that act, that gun, that carnage, those wounds, those dead children, his release from pain. 

March 2025

Washington, D.C.

Offline for an hour. The host at Marcel seats her near the sidewalk and immediately she needs to reconnect to the world, the way smokers crave nicotine. She fumbles through her work purse, the wide tote of mocha leather, worrying she left her phone at home. Her yellow pad takes up too much space, but then the phone finally comes to hand and she can check messages.

            The waiter with the young bland face interrupts. She passes on the fifteen varieties of sparkling water in favor of still. With rankling pomposity, he smiles, and promises “l’eau ordinaire and our artisan ice, hand-carved to chilling shards, conveyed to your table in an elegant cylinder of glass.”

She’s unsure if he’s sincere or joking, as he doesn’t break character. Either way, she’s not in the mood.

Her table is next to the tarnish-blue Art Deco iron fence separating the outdoor dining area from the sidewalk. South across H Street in Lafayette Park, handfuls of protestors gather for a noon demonstration. The day is clear. The angle of the sun says spring, although the temperature belongs to early summer. The crowd in the park isn’t large, mostly women but men as well. The organizers are handing out placards demanding protection of reproductive rights.

Sooner than she’d expected, William Beausoleil arrives. She’d looked up his photo on the website of Driver Hamilton, whose K Street offices are only six blocks away. He’s in his early sixties, with unnaturally dark hair that she is sure is dyed professionally. Dark suit, Italian, tapered. French cuffs and minimalist silver cufflinks. Money talking, before he opens his mouth.  

She shakes hands with him as they share introductions. She’s old-fashioned, handing him a printed business card. “Maureen Dallas,” she says.

“Call me Beau,” he says.  He sits, picks up the green cloth napkin. As the waiter returns Beau nods in the direction of her drink and says, “Same.” Counter-demonstrators gather on the west side of the park.

            He unzips his slim black portfolio, embossed WEB in gold letters. He sets it on the table near him, away from place setting. Inside she spots an azure plastic folder and a second sheaf of papers held together by a heavy binder clip.

            “I’ve admired your work since you were at the Post,” he says. “And your book. The one on Dubai.”

            “Do you follow my substack?”

            “It’s part of a service I get.”

            She resents being an entrepreneur. She used to have the heft of a national daily newspaper behind her, and now her reporting is just small scale craftsmanship. The pay is okay but she misses the clout, forced to hustle for the occasional paying cable TV gig. Last decade’s Pulitzer doesn’t pay the bills, although it’s a helpful credential to get her in the door with sources. Today it’s a lawyer-lobbyist offering lunch, who she expects has an axe to grind and wants to see if she’ll usher his complaint into the world.

            “You’re wired into the intel community,” he says.

            “Not wired. Mostly I do politics. I know people, sure.”

            “In another life I was CIA,” Beau says. “Decades back, before I joined Driver. Once I finally realized I wasn’t a good fit, I had my law degree to fall back on.”

            “What prompted the change?”

            He shrugs. “The Agency required constant deceit and betrayal, whereas I prefer my deceit in moderation.” 

“And the betrayal?”

A wry half-smile. “The minimum. Who you betray is who you are, for good or ill. You need to be able to live with it.”

            When Beau first made email contact, she found background on him, but not the CIA part. She knows his law firm is a D.C. fixture, a practice broad enough to handle anything from traffic tickets to Supreme Court appeals. Somehow Beau’s profile is very very low. He’s not a litigator, or his name would show on court filings. Even Driver’s website omits reference to any prominent clients or his legal specialty, if he has one.

            “I know your firm. But I don’t travel in circles where I’ve heard of you. No offense.”

            “None taken.” He offers a salesman’s smile. “Part of the value I provide clients is being behind the scenes.” Maureen interprets this to mean that his clients aren’t seeking publicity to get rich, but have already made a pile and are quietly buying influence to keep it.

The waiter brings menus. His praise for the daily specials is again profuse and ornate. She orders salad with blackened shrimp, Beau orders grilled sea bass: “These guys serve vegan dishes that taste like real food, but I was in a different mood today.”  

            “Does that waiter seem odd?” she asks.

            “Not to me,” he says. He looks up and she notices his eyes are a dark brown, nearly black. 

He slips the blue folder out of his portfolio and slides it to her side of the table. Through the thin semi-transparent plastic she can make out a stack of pages and at least one white envelope, letter sized, without markings. The flap to the folder is sealed with a stiff Velcro tab and she leaves it closed.

            “You interviewed Peter Einbrecher,” he says.

            “Vanity Fair, end of last year, right.”

            “What do you think?”

            “I did the interview at his house. His mansion. Two stories of glass and steel. Frank Gehry, no less, a hundred feet up a cliff over the Pacific Ocean. There’s this massive stone and chrome V at the end of the driveway, like the prow of a ship that sailed into the coast and got stuck. All curvy and dreamlike, same as the house. The V diverts rubble away from the house, as the seacoast erodes from climate change.” She pauses to sip her water. “It’s impressive.”

            Beau leans forward. “And what do you think of him?”

            He has no expression, like he’s holding a poker hand and she has first bet. Maybe a completely candid answer loses her whatever story he wants to tell. But being evasive would just mark her as another Beltway bullshitter and she has a reputation to live up to.

            “He’s made billions, so maybe he’s entitled to be as full of himself as he is,” she says. “Very much convinced of his own virtue. He proclaims himself to be a libertarian, which means he doesn’t like paying taxes and wants businesses to be free to prey on their customers without interference from government. Personally, I think libertarianism is just fascism’s kid sister.”  

            Beau gives a quick flinch and says nothing. If he finds her comment harsh, he’s not disagreeing.

            She doesn’t mention the room in Einbrecher’s house with the Nazi artifacts. The glass case with the old bar of soap wrapped in wax paper with a swastika and an eagle, illuminated by a mini-spotlight. The tour Einbrecher gave her was creepy, giving the impression he thought National Socialism really deserved a second chance.

            “Driver has some projects with him,” Beau says.

            She can’t tell if Einbrecher is the reason Beau’s here, but it makes her curious and also cautious. She doesn’t want to be a disinformation channel, in fact a chief part of her job is to avoid it. Making good choices. Not picking a side, just making good choices. She knows plenty of access journalists who print any lie they are told, trying to be first in line for what they hope will be a real story later from the source, but never is. 

            As if he can read her mind, Beau reaches across the table to touch the folder. “This isn’t something where you need to be concerned with my motive or credibility. I’m not trying to get a story out to the public through you. I need savvy and sophisticated judgment. Driver has a subsidiary that does crisis management. We have plenty of PR capability within the firm and when we want to leak confidential information, we have conduits in-house.”

“Well, I make my money sharing stories with the world. I’m sure there’s some public-facing part of this.”

            “Actually not. Hear me out. It’s about the intel community, and I need someone with sources and access to that community without being in it. I need someone to ask questions for me.  If you’re not open to looking into a private matter, then let’s just have lunch and we can talk about how we think the Nationals will do this year.”

            Beau has this look. There are different kinds of people in Washington. In politics, there are the camera-hungry electeds, even the occasional office-holder with honest zeal for public service. Staffers are mostly worker bees who excel as problem-solvers and go-fers—bright, hugely bright, some of them, but with no personal force or charisma or energy. Then the military and intel guys are focused, objective driven. Beau’s like them. Beau has objectives.

            “You didn’t like Peter but your story wasn’t a hatchet job,” Beau says.

            “Not the story that made print. Is a hatchet job what you’re after?”

            “Quite the contrary. I was commenting on your discretion.”

            She says, “There’s a general rule and I tell it to people all the time. If you don’t want something to become public, don’t talk about it to the press. Ever. Even me. Particularly me.”

Without knowing details, she instinctively knows she needs to set boundaries, right here and right now. “You have attorney client privilege. I don’t. If there is something illegal about what you want, or even wrong or hinky, and I get subpoenaed, then I’m talking. And if there’s a good story and you’ve told me the truth and I need to protect you as a source, sure, I can leave you out of it as much as I can. But my job is, I write for the public. And if you lie to me, I’ll give up your name in a heartbeat.”

Beau persists. “You’ve done interviews and research on stories that don’t work out, right? You do the work but sometimes there just isn’t a story, or you spike it for whatever reason.”

“Or it gets edited to mush. It happens.”

            “Anyone talking to you on the record assumes what they’re saying will get into print. But if it doesn’t, you can tell them later the story didn’t pan out.” 

“You’re telling me I have the perfect cover to be a private investigator for you, to research a story for an audience of one.”

“Yes. And if I hire you, I may even have some attorney client privileges that can cover you, attorney work product, beyond your natural willingness to protect a source.”

She doesn’t know this guy. Confident, the sort of person who has said less than he’s thinking for his whole life, and doesn’t feel required to avoid trouble. He seems all right, but she’s never met a lawyer who felt limited by shame or the need to tell the full story, and in a single meeting she can’t know what someone’s after. He’s already admitted his affinity for deception. Beau’s got one of those conversational manners that can make a person relax. But his cordiality is not a reason to trust him. Maybe even a reason not to trust him.

Across the street in the park, the chants are starting.

“What do we want?” “Justice.”

“When do we want it?” “Now.”

She’s still working out his proposition. She turns to the demonstration. “Did no one on the left ever take a marketing class? It’s a cashless society and an iPhone world, but they haven’t changed slogans since Vietnam.”

            He looks over at the crowd. Waiting her out.

            “I see what you’re asking,” she says. “If I was still at the Post, I couldn’t take on a private job. I still stick close to their code of ethics. I’m troubled by the idea of telling someone I’m working on a story when I’m not.”

“It will be a story. Maybe one to print someday.” He’s trying to recruit her, old spycraft skills at work. “And you haven’t asked about the money. I’d pay you for the work.”

“It’s not anything I’ve thought about before, really. It’s not what I do. I don’t have a price list.”

“$100k.”

Unlike Beau, Maureen does not have a poker face. “Alright. That’s a real number. Not in your world maybe, but in mine.” She picks up the blue folder, taps it on table.

“So you’ll do it,” he says.

“You pique my interest. But I still don’t know what the ‘it’ is. I have no idea what’s inside this.” She lifts the sealed folder. In the park, the counter-protestors are drowned out by the demonstrators. A cacophony.

From the west, along the sidewalk, a scowling white man in an open light grey sweatshirt walks along the railing in their direction. Beau has his back to the man. Twenty feet out, the pace of the approaching man slows. He stares at Maureen. She notices the stare but he’s no one she recognizes. Beau notices that her glance is diverted and begins to turn. The man is in his mid-thirties, clean shaven, medium build, looks like a tourist. He comes even with their table, and she hears the man say, “You’re not Charlotte Grace.”  

            He pulls a handgun from the right pocket of the sweatshirt. Beau finishes turning, still seated. She’s about to die. She closes her eyes. She prepares her soul, not in words or images, but as instantaneous experience and emotion, and commends it to the infinite. She hears the shot and her eyes fly open. The bullet strikes Beau in the chest, a reddening hole in his white shirt. Beau looks uncomprehending at his assailant. He doesn’t speak but sags and falls backwards to the ground, the chair sliding from underneath him.

She can’t breathe. Her lungs are empty and she’s frozen. Beau makes no sound and stares at the sky. The assassin leans over the railing and fires another shot into Beau’s forehead, over his left eye, and then runs across the street into the park.

He’s not going to kill her.

            She screams. Then she screams again. “No!” She’s never screamed in her life. The back of Beau’s head is an open spigot emptying blood onto the cement.

            She stands and turns with her bag and runs back through the restaurant. Tunnel vision, her eyes focus on the exit. The path through the tables is too narrow in her panic. She bumps into chairs and diners. Patrons reacting to the noise of the shots begin to stand.

Then from Lafayette Park comes the sound of new shots, close together, at least one automatic weapon. Firing at the protest? She’s ahead of the other patrons, racing to the door, ignoring staff who want to ask what happened.

She bursts through the door and runs north on Sixteenth Street to the Metro. The shots in the park still fire. She can hear them behind her. She runs down the cement stairs of the station the best she can. Underground, she can’t hear the gunfire in the park. There is no train, only empty track on both sides. She has no plan except to flee. Her breath comes in gasps. She finds a bench against the tiled wall and she is weeping, holding her bag to her chest as though it could protect her. An electronic sign over the track: Next train due in eight minutes. Where would she go? She doesn’t even know. She left her car behind. She only knows the need to run, frustrated by no train. She can’t think beyond the moment, not by even a minute. The future has evaporated. It’s like being so horribly sick that it occupies the whole world and there is nothing else in life until the illness passes.  

“Are you injured? Can I help?” She hears a voice at her shoulder. A small black woman leans over, her face concerned on Maureen’s behalf. She doesn’t touch Maureen but her tone carries comfort and the promise of aid. “Are you alright?” she asks.

            “No, not injured.” After the shooting, Maureen lost all words and could only run and fear and see, but now she can speak again. More people flee down to the platform from the park. There is shouting and mass fear. She hears someone say, “I think they killed the girl in front of me.” She’s shaking, as though she’s cold.

            “You may be in shock,” the woman says. From the bench Maureen looks up to the kind eyes. The woman is perhaps Maureen’s age, slightly graying. She is dressed as though she had come from an office on her lunch break. “Are you sure you’re not injured?”

No wounds, and none of Beau’s blood splashed onto her clothing. Maureen says, “I thought I was going to die.”

            The woman nods her head. She takes Maureen’s hand. “Do you have family you can call?”

Maureen thinks: Calling John would be more work than comfort. Mikey’s too young and she can’t put this on him. She shakes her head no and begins to cry again.

“You need to get some help,” her guardian angel says. The woman’s voice has been low and calm throughout and it settles Maureen.  “Where are you going?” She wears an employee badge clipped to her jacket. Her name is Maxine. She’s not here to hurt, just to help, and she knows what to do next.

            “I was just running. My car is parked four blocks over. I came here to get away.” Maureen is still trembling and doesn’t know when it will stop. “For shelter.”

            “You don’t look like you’re in shape to drive right now,” Maxine says.

            Maureen takes a deep breath. “No.” A minute ago her body wouldn’t allow a deep breath when she was escaping, but she can take one now. “No, not yet.”

The voices around them are talking about the wounded in the park. Someone asks, “How can you bring a machine gun this close to the White House?” Maureen is not the only terrified person here.   

“My train is coming. Do you need me to stay with you?” Maxine asks. Maureen closes her eyes, so grateful for the kindness she wants to cry again.

“No, no. I think I’ll be okay. I don’t know how to thank you. I was so scared. I was so….” She runs out of words. “We all have to tend to one another,” Maxine says. She has a wise smile. She might as well be a doctor, providing a prescription. “You need to take care of yourself. You were carrying a lot of tears.”