The Intern: Chasing Murderers, Hookers, and Senators Across DC Wasn't In The Job Description by Dale Wiley Read Free Book Online Page A

was
the winner by a first-round knockout.
    I gunned the Toyota and threw it into reverse, nudging the
car behind me. I had to eek back and forth twice before getting out of the
space, knowing that a cop would probably be coming at any moment. I screamed
down the block, barely even noticing the stop sign, realizing that, counting my
grade school fights, I was now 3-0 in my boxing career and wondering what in
the hell I was going to do for the rest of the night.

Chapter
----
    Six
    I t was, I admit, a rather strange
decision, one born of the strange existence I was beginning to lead. I chose it
because my friends were out of town or incommunicado, I had no way of getting
the numbers of my co-workers, my apartment had been broken into, and I was
involved in some sort of deadly game. Most importantly, I was probably now a
wanted fugitive, and I knew being hauled into jail was absolutely the last
thing I needed.
    So I went to the Watergate. It seemed the thing to do when
one was just getting embroiled in some amazing Washington scandal. You don’t
hide out at the Hampton Inn; you go straight to the source, the same place
Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy did.
    There were other reasons for choosing the Watergate as well.
I didn’t want to drive far and increase the chance of being pulled over and
found out. Even if I had wanted to drive, I didn’t know the suburbs that well,
and the hotels probably weren’t that much cheaper anyway. I knew of hotels I
assumed to be cheaper in the city, but they were in such wonderful
neighborhoods that I didn’t want to take the chance of avoiding my pursuers
only to succumb to some random mugging. I also knew right where it was and
could get there without wasting a minute of time. I had been to the Watergate
once before, to drink with my college friend Susan, so, along with remembering
their overpriced gin and tonics, I knew it had a parking garage the size of
Philadelphia, which would probably keep my car from being discovered during the
night. And, most importantly, I thought it would be really cool to stay at the
Watergate.
    However, I was no dummy. Careful to avoid the pitfalls made
both by Nixon’s plumbers and by the various characters in John Grisham novels,
I withdrew a good bit of my money—most of what was left of my graduation funds,
$350—from an ATM and decided I would check in under an assumed name. I got the
money out of the machine, some three blocks from the hotel, and was scared to
death I’d be mugged.
    I got back into my car unscathed and drove the remaining
distance. I took a ticket from a silly-looking machine, found a suitable spot
in a dark corner, and proceeded to the front desk, my heart still pounding. I
merited a couple of looks—I wasn’t dressed well, and Lord knows what expression
was on my face.
    I asked the desk clerk how much a room was. She had short
red hair and a stern face, and she stared at my left elbow. She said $150. I
asked her if she could rent me one of those that she knew she wasn’t going to
rent for the night, the kind that would really be a shame if it had to go
without someone to sleep in it, and handed her a twenty while doing so. There
was no one else around. She smiled. “Oh. That kind of room. That kind is $100.”
This was at least a little more reasonable, or it seemed so at the time. I
nodded, not wanting to press my luck.
    I checked in as Benjamin Braddock. The woman wanted to see
some ID, but I flipped her another five and said I didn’t have any. This
satisfied her. It nearly killed me to give anyone any of my money, let alone
twenty-five bucks, but it had to be done. And, despite her dour expression, she
genuinely seemed to enjoy being bribed.
    The woman showed me on a map where my room was, and I
glanced around at the hotel before making my way up. It was still swank, in a
very 70s meets the 1800s kind of way, with lots of burled wood and brass. The
ghosts of Haldeman and Ehrlichman probably still came for cocktails once in