Sweet land stories - E. L. Doctorow [49]
With everything up and running, Molloy had the groundskeeper brought to his office. Calabrese was a simple man and somewhat stunned by the high-powered reaction to his discovery. He had been in government service all his working life and had years of White House clearances. He was a widower who lived alone. He had a married daughter, a lawyer, who worked in the Treasury Department.
I just seen this sneaker, he said. I didn’t touch a thing. Not the chairs. Nothing.
Were the chairs moved?
Moved?
Out of line.
No, no—they was straight. And this sneaker sticking out. It was a kid, wasn’t it? A dead kid.
Who told you?
Nobody had to tell me. Imagine. And all wrapped around in white, like a cocoon. That’s what it reminded me. A cocoon.
Calabrese had nothing more to offer. Molloy told him he was not to speak of the matter to anyone, and had already sent him out to await a lift back to the White House when a call came from one Peter Herrick, a White House deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Domestic Policy, saying the groundskeeper was to be detained incommunicado under provisions of the counterterrorist statutes until such time as all investigative questions had been answered to the President’s satisfaction. A formal authorization would be coming shortly from the Attorney General’s office.
The gall rose in Molloy’s throat. In my judgment that is a mistake, he said.
We’ve got to put a lid on this, Herrick said. Nobody other than the President knows the reason for this morning’s alert. If this is in the nature of a terrorist act of some kind, it should not be given air.
Without a doubt, Molloy said. But when Calabrese is reported missing, we’ll end up answering more questions than we want to. His daughter’s a lawyer in Treasury.
I’ll get back to you, Herrick said.
Molloy says that only when the line went dead did it occur to him to wonder why the White House liaison re this matter was the Office of Domestic Policy.
AT NOON HE heard from Forensics. The boy had been dead from forty-eight to sixty hours. There were no signs of abuse, no grievous injuries—death was from natural causes.
Molloy went to the lab to see for himself: The body was supine, its hands clenched at its side. Attached to a lanyard around its neck was a bronchodilator. The mouth was open. The face was florid. The eyelids did not completely cover the bulging eyes. The little chest was expanded, as if the kid was pretending to be Charles Atlas. He had black hair a bit longer than it should have been. Molloy had the impression he might be Hispanic.
No foul play here, the pathologist said. You’re looking at respiratory failure. The airways spasmed and closed up.
From what?
Kid had asthma. The worst kind—status asthmaticus. Comes a time when no inflammatories or dilators can control it. To keep him breathing, because he can’t get rid of the carbon dioxide, he would have to be put on a respirator. I guess where he was, there was none available.
The boy’s clothing had been sealed in plastic bags: T shirt, jeans, briefs. Gap items. No nametags. Together with the shroud, and the Nikes, the clothing was still being analyzed. He hoped for something, he didn’t know what. Maybe a lot identification that would indicate origin of shipment.
At eight the next morning, Molloy went back to the Rose Garden and stood looking at the White House from where the orchestra platform had been. Fifty feet away and somewhat to the side was a staked ribbon to show the body’s position. He wondered when a wrapped body could have been brought into the tent so that it would not be noticed by any one of hundreds of people until the groundskeeper came to work the following morning. Conceivably, it could have been brought in after the concert was concluded and everyone had left and the lights were turned off—but that was a scenario he didn’t want to think about. It meant he would need to direct his