I have a friend who owns a restaurant. I gave her the boxes of garbage bags. Each Monday night, I would stop by and pick up four full bags of garbage. Then I would, anywhere between one and five in the morning, drive up the alley behind Haupmann’s house. I took his garbage and put the restaurant garbage into his cans. If there were only two bags of garbage, I’d leave two. There never were five bags. After one of them leaked and soaked the floor mat of my car’s trunk, I bought some large plastic containers to put into the trunk. The containers were originally too tall to close the trunk lid, but that was easily fixed with a power saw.
I also began following him. That was harder than one might think, for even though the alleys were barely wide enough for a single truck to drive down them, they weren’t officially one-way streets. If I got close enough to the alleyway to see his garage, I was easily within spotting distance. Fortunately, most people are creatures of habit and Haupmann was no exception. He always entered the alley from one cross-street and left it from the one on the other end of his block. After several days of watching, I saw that everyone else drove the alley the same way. Even the garbage truck did. So while the alley wasn’t a one way road, it was by custom.
Haupmann was kind of boring in his routine. He left his home at a quarter `till eight each day, varying by no more than five minutes. He took the same route to the embassy. I was able to fall back some distance and still keep a tail on him. He had enough rank to park in the embassy’s lot. Some days he had meetings or conferences at office buildings in the city center. A couple of times, he went into one of the Senate or House office buildings. When he went on those trips, he took a cab. That put me at a disadvantage, as he could just hop out while I had to find a place to park my car.
After work, he normally went home. Sometimes, he’d go to restaurants. A few times, I was able to see him and his dinner mates. A few I recognized. When I got into this case, I looked up who were the power players in the regulation of foreign capital and banking matters.
If I could have gotten closer, I might have been able to see who picked up the check. That’s a good indication of who wants what in this town, for those asking for something always pay the check. Politicians never do. It’s probably a union violation for a senator to pay for a meal at any place other than Chuck-e-Cheese’s Pizza. And it’s hard as hell to find out afterwards who paid, as the restaurants are notoriously closed-mouthed about that. If their patrons found out that the staff had been indiscreet, the restaurant’s business would have disappeared in very short order. You would have better luck finding out which politicians boarded private jets at National Airport. I sometimes wondered why reporters never thought about checking into that angle.
Haupmann’s garbage, so far, wasn’t yielding a lot of clues. From the food garbage, it seemed that somebody was a decent cook, if only because of the lack of takeout containers, pizza boxes and tin cans. He had some concern about personal security, for most of the papers in his trash had been run through a cross-cut shredder. Maybe the feds could have pieced them back together. I didn’t have the ability to do that.
What I could see is that either Haupmann was so boring that he could have been a spokesman for Wonder Bread or, if he was doing something bad, he had the skills to hide it. Or he was just lucky, for I couldn’t sit on him every damn hour of the day. If he snuck out for a few hours in the middle of the night, I was going to miss it.
I called Hauger and asked to meet him. He agreed, but he didn’t want me coming to the embassy. Fine with me, we met about 7:30 the next morning at a coffee shop near the Rosslyn Metro station. He looked indistinguishable from the rest of the businessmen who were buying their cup of morning joe. Except for his eyes, for he quickly glanced at everyone who came bear our table. He probably could have described them all to a police sketch artist.
I told Hauger what I had done to try and find out what Haupmann might be up to. That took a lot longer than giving him the results.
He sipped his coffee. He didn’t say anything.
After a few minutes of silence, I said: “Any thoughts on the prospects of bringing a major-league ball club to RFK Stadium?”
Hauger said nothing.
“If they do, what do you like for a name? The old team was ‘the Senators’, but I think they should come up to the times and be called ‘the Lobbyists’.”
“All right. What do you recommend?
I spread my hands. “How far do you want to take this feeling of yours?”
Hauger looked at me. “I still think there is something wrong.”
“Yeah, but what? You’ve seen his financials, he gave you disclosure forms. Does anything show up?”
“Nothing other than what you’ve already discovered.”
“Are you satisfied that his background is good?”
Hauger nodded. “We checked him out pretty thoroughly. He’s not a plant.”
“I can’t wiretap his home. I can’t get the Post Office to monitor his mail. I might be able to get copies of his phone records from C&P Telephone, which will be illegal as all hell, if you care.”
“I don’t.”
“OK. Can you at least get a log started of when he arrives at the embassy, when he leaves and if he goes out for lunch or meetings?”
“That may be possible,” Hauger allowed. “It may be time for the embassy to begin a formal check-in and out process.”
“That would help. I can continue checking his trash. As for tailing him, that’s hit or miss, unless you want me to bring in help. Do you still want me to put a priority on being covert?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So, that means I can’t go check out his house and search his home office,” I mused.
“I would prefer that you stay as discreet as possible.”
“What’s going on that bothers you? Unauthorized use of copiers? Classified documents are missing for short periods of time, only to be found again? Somebody found film boxes or canisters in the trash?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Then like what, Mr. Hauger? Come on, you’re killing me, here.”
He smiled at that. “I know that this is, as you say, like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”
I shook my head. “No, it isn’t. At least I’d know I was looking for a needle. This is more like a snipe hunt.”
“What is a snipe hunt?”
“Looking for something that isn’t there. You’re asking me to prove a negative, that Haupmann isn’t dirty.” I drank some of my coffee. “Hey, let me ask you this: When did you stop beating your wife?”
Hauger looked offended. “I have never hit my wife.”
“But that’s not the question and how would you prove, sitting here, that you’ve stopped beating her?”
“I take your point.”
I looked right at him. “Just to be clear, Mr. Hauger, I have no problem with taking your money and following this guy around, or using some of your money to have other people follow him around some of the time. While rummaging through other people’s garbage isn’t my idea of fun, it’s part of the job. But if there’s nothing to find, there’s nothing to find. And even if there is, I don’t have the resources to have eyes on him every minute of every day. Catching him doing something wrong’ll be a combination of luck and a misstep on his part.”
“I understand. Please keep working on this task,” Hauger said. He stood up and left the coffee shop without another word.
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