Charlie Sheen, who likes to say, “I’m an F-18, bro,” was moving at a decidedly subsonic speed Tuesday evening as he motored to Washington from Dulles International Airport. Still, 80 mph in a sport-utility vehicle is pretty fast. 
 
 At the time, Sheen was running nearly an hour late for his stage show, “Violent Torpedo of Truth: Defeat Is Not an Option,” at DAR Constitution Hall. 
 
 But you might wonder: Who authorized the D.C. police escort — at least two marked cars with emergency lights blazing — that helped the fired sitcom star and his entourage hurry into the District? 
 
 How important or famous must one be — how much tiger blood and Adonis DNA must one possess — to rate a police motorcade in the nation’s capital? 
 
 How is such a thing arranged? And what does it cost? 
 
 You’ll have to wonder awhile longer: As of Thursday, 48 hours after Sheen had come and gone, no one in his camp or the police department would publicly explain the deployment of law enforcement resources. 
 
 “Citizens of the District don’t want to see their police force used to escort private citizens and that Charlie Sheen, of all people, is getting a personal escort,” said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the committee that oversees police. 
 
 Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier did not reply to e-mailed questions. Sheen’s publicist and tour promoter said they had no answers. And a spokeswoman for Constitution Hall said the venerable venue had nothing to do with the actor’s commute. 
 
 “This entire matter is under investigation,” D.C. police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said Thursday, declining to answer questions about the escort. 
 
 Such a murky affair. Try to follow along. . . . 
 
 Although the D.C. police Web site describes how the department deals with visiting dignitaries, nothing could be found on it explaining how, say, a Hollywood celebrity running late for a stage gig can arrange a high-speed motor escort. 
 
 “From what I know right now, I have asked internal affairs to investigate,” Lanier told reporter Paul Wagner of WTTG-TV (Channel 5) outside the city’s John A. Wilson Building. “Because, from what the allegation is, it is not something that’s authorized by the Metropolitan Police Department.” 
 
 The department provides police escorts in “limited circumstances . . . based on security needs, and there are protocols to be followed,” the chief said. “We don’t do escorts for celebrities.” 
 
 The department’s special events branch works on “planning, developing and executing escort and security support,” but only for “distinguished guests of the federal and municipal governments,” the site says. 
 
 The phone in the special events branch rang and rang Thursday. No one answered, and there was no voice mail. The branch is part of the police homeland security bureau, which is commanded by Assistant Chief Lamar Greene. 
 
 Greene said Thursday that he had not personally looked into the Sheen matter. “I know, of course, there’s a lot of inquiries floating around about it,” he said, adding that the department “has put together a fact sheet that will pretty much answer any- and everything you guys need to know.” 
 
 Was the escort proper? “Oh, yes,” Greene said without elaborating. 
 
 Asked about the fact sheet, Crump said: “Oh, that’s an internal document. That’s not something we’re putting out. . . . It’s part of our investigation.” 
 
 Sheen, who was busy in Los Angeles with two court hearings Tuesday morning, including a child-custody dispute with estranged wife Brooke Mueller, arrived at Dulles that night on a private jet. It was still unclear Thursday whether the escort began at the airport in suburban Virginia. 
 
 Mendelson said Lanier told him that the escort started outside the city. He said the chief was “very clearly caught off-guard” by news of Sheen’s ride. 
 
 “[I]n car with Police escort in front and rear!” Sheen, 45, said in a message posted to his Twitter account (@charliesheen) as he and his posse were headed to the city in two SUVs. “[D]riving like someone’s about to deliver a baby! Cop car lights #Spinning!” 
 
 Accompanying the tweet, which appears to have been deleted, was a photo taken in the SUV carrying Sheen, showing the speedometer needle at 80 mph, with the flashing strobe lights of the lead police car visible through the windshield. Sheen was quick to tell reporters about his fast ride into the city when he arrived at Constitution Hall. 
 
 The show, scheduled to start at 8 p.m., was delayed for 57 minutes. “I just landed,” he told the waiting news media at the stage door. “We had a police escort, and we ran more red lights than Brooke Mueller heading to a pawn shop.” 
 
 On Wednesday, when asked about the police cars, Crump described the deployment as routine. “This escort was handled as a reimbursable detail,” she said in an e-mail. “This means the government was reimbursed for the services provided.” 
 
 The department’s Web site defines a “reimbursable detail” as one in which on-duty officers are posted at public events such as festivals and parades to direct traffic, control crowds and “ensure the safety of public patrons.” 
 
 An event organizer is required to sign a letter of agreement beforehand, promising to reimburse the department for the cost of deploying officers. 
 
 When Crump was asked how a TV star’s drive into the city from an airport fit the definition of “reimbursable detail,” she would only say that the matter is being investigated. 
 
 Bren Landon, a spokeswoman for Constitution Hall, suggested that questions about the escort might best be put to Sheen’s handlers. 
 
 “Constitution Hall operates under a four-wall rental, which means a promoter rents the venue, books the act, and then is responsible for all aspects of the show, including security, ticketing, ushering, etc.,” she said in an e-mail. 
 
 Sheen’s tour promoter, Joey Scoleri of Live Nation, had no answers. “Please deal with Larry,” he said in an e-mail referring to Sheen’s publicist, Larry Solters. 
 
 Solters was also no help. He said he was in Los Angeles on Tuesday. “I am in LA and was not aware of any arrangements,” his e-mail said. “Will check with our on site reps.” 
 
 Then later: “Haven’t been able to get any info on this.” 
 
 The mystery endures. 
 
 Tuesday’s Washington performance marked the halfway point of Sheen’s 20-city show tour. On Thursday night, he was set to rant at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. It wasn’t clear how fast he got to the stage door. An Atlanta police spokesman said the department “has not been asked to provide any escorts.” ||||| Correction: Earlier versions of this article misspelled the name of reality-TV personality Tareq Salahi. This version has been corrected. 
 
 A couple of thousand people were held hostage by Charlie Sheen’s ego Tuesday night in an auditorium named after the female descendants of the American Revolution, half a mile from the World War II Memorial in the capital of the free world. This prompts an icky existential question: If the abusive ex-star of a CBS sitcom can compel a legion of citizens to pay $104.25 apiece to be doused in cultural bile, is the free world a little too free? 
 
 The answer, of course, is no. Mostly no. No, except for the five seconds after Sheen seemed to imply that he believes President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, triggering boisterous applause from the mostly young, near-capacity crowd at the 3,700-seat DAR Constitution Hall. Sheen seemed to toy with the idea of running for president (with Nicolas Cage) and noted that his birth certificate was not “Photoshopped.” 
 
 The man has become so unreadable that it was hard to tell whether he was joking or serious. He was, though, noncommittal about running and occasionally circumspect. 
 
 “Every day is just one day,” Sheen said at the top of the show. “Tomorrow is not here yet.” 
 
 It was the end of a long day for Sheen, who deployed his lawyers to two court hearings in Southern California on Tuesday morning, charioted himself in a black Rolls-Royce to the Van Nuys Airport that afternoon, and blazed across the continent in a private jet to walk onstage 67 minutes late for his show in downtown Washington, the halfway point in his 20-city tour titled “Violent Torpedo of Truth: Defeat Is Not an Option,” a kind of Sherman’s March of the male libido. 
 
 Washington as a whole greeted Sheen with a feisty, inebriated bear hug, but there was some wonky thoughtfulness in the crowd. 
 
 “I came here to see Charlie Sheen on an extended loop and be both horrified and entertained,” said a 34-year-old lobbyist who declined to give her name because she’s a “professional girl” who “cares about my future.” 
 
 “Not often can you see a public figure implode in front of your eyes — usually you can only see that through the media,” said her 40-year-old lobbyist friend, who was also too embarrassed to be identified. 
 
 “We perpetuate this image that is fake and a lie, and we put it on television,” railed a TV reporter into her cellphone — presumably to an editor — as she prepared to do a spot from outside the venue before the show started. “That’s how I feel as a journalist.” 
 
 Me, too, but here’s the straightest scoop deliverable: The show began with a stream-of-consciousness monologue about Sheen’s hatred of ex-wives and his failure to secure sole custody of his children earlier in the day. It lurched onward to a dry sit-down interview — led by much-booed WBIG (100.3 FM) host Tommy Griffiths — about the first time Sheen met Marlon Brando. The crowd quaked with catcalls whenever Sheen wasn’t talking about doing drugs or manhandling women. 
 
 “ENTERTAIN US,” boomed a male voice as Sheen waxed philosophical on the hard living of Dennis Hopper. 
 
 “SHUT THE [EXPLETIVE] UP AND SAY SOMETHING WEIRD,” demanded another. 
 
 It has been less than two months since Sheen outed himself as a warlock who is capable of ingesting “epic” amounts of cocaine, vanquishing addiction with his superhuman mind, shrugging off his nearly $2 million-an-episode job with Warner Bros. and orating on national television about the vague, seemingly mutable bylaws of nature and space-time (Google “winning” and “tiger blood” and “Adonis DNA” and so on). 
 
 In the first week or so of his renaissance (or breakdown, depending on your standards), it seemed as if Sheen was onto something, as if he were imbued with a spiritual clarity reserved for prophets, as if he were pulverizing and remolding the very notion of celebrity. 
 
 That notion of celebrity now seems to belong to his audiences — or at least the one at DAR, whose restlessness guided the rhythms of the show and whose outbursts were often more entertaining than the ramblings of Sheen or his better-received guest, stand-up comic Jeff Ross. 
 
 “Curiosity about exploitation” was why 33-year-old Arlington salesman Johnny Champane came with three friends at the last minute. “Exploitation of himself. Of us. We bought tickets, didn’t we?” 
 
 Since this was Washington, Griffiths asked Sheen how he’d handle Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi (“I’d make him marry [my ex-wives] Brooke and Denise”) and about what he’d defund to balance the budget (disband the Fed and “send the IRS to prison”). The crowd veered between boos and applause so frequently and quickly that one was indistinguishable from another. 
 
 “Geez, you guys hate everything,” Sheen said at one point. 
 
 Recognizable Washingtonians in attendance included Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the infamous White House gate-crashers and erstwhile reality-TV personalities, who signed autographs in the lobby, where they inadvertently created the event-horizon of a cultural black hole.
– Charlie Sheen stirred up another controversy while in Washington, DC, on Tuesday night: He somehow managed to snag a police escort so he could book it at 80mph to his show, for which he was running almost an hour late. The Washington Post looks into the matter, but no one will say exactly how such a thing was arranged or who paid for it. A police spokesperson says it's "under investigation." Griped one DC council member, "Citizens of the District don’t want to see their police force used to escort private citizens and that Charlie Sheen, of all people, is getting a personal escort." Meanwhile, as Sheen himself told us, he’s “not bipolar,” he’s “bi-winning.” But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about those who are bipolar: He is donating $5,880 to the Calgary-based Organization for Bipolar Affective Disorders, the New York Daily News reports. That amount matches the amount his fans donated during an odd and somewhat controversial charity march Sheen staged in support of the group last week in Toronto, during which he sported a hat that said, “I’M NOT BIPOLAR.” A rep for the group calls the hat insulting, but says, “We’re happy to receive the funds.” (Click to read what Sheen announced he'd do if he was elected president.)