Murder at the Kennedy Center (33 page)

Smith sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Whether I did or not, Leslie, doesn’t seem to be terribly important. This really isn’t my business.”

“I disagree. I think it is very much your business. You have taken a leave from the university to help us, and if I remember correctly, the rule always was that your attorney must know everything.”

“I’m no one’s attorney, Leslie,” Smith said. “I’m just a friend.” He stood. “I have to leave, but there is another thing I would like to air before I do.” He was happy to have something else to talk about other than their personal problems. “Lots of people presumably had reason to kill—or at least could rationalize killing—Andrea Feldman. If she were double-dealing Kane, he certainly wouldn’t be a fan. Do you think she might have been murdered by someone at Kane’s command, as you say Stuart Lyme’s son was?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Ewald said, still glaring at his wife.

Smith took them both in slowly before asking, “Is there anyone within
your
circle—family, friends, household staff, campaign staff—who you think might have killed Andrea Feldman?”

“No,” Leslie said without hesitation.

“Ken?” Smith asked.

“No, of course not. It was obviously someone connected with that madman Kane, maybe somebody from Morales’s band of thugs, maybe even the Manning White House.”

There was a knock at the door. Three members of the Watergate’s catering staff had arrived for the meeting. “Come in, please,” Leslie said pleasantly, a large and winning smile on her face, a triumph of muscle control.

“Thanks for your time,” Smith said.

“Are you going home?” Leslie asked.

“No, I think I’ll stop in the suite we’ve taken here in the Watergate. I have some details to take care of.”

She stepped close to him and said, “I don’t know why you’re staying involved, but I am very glad you are.” She kissed his cheek. He looked at Ken over her shoulder and saw a stone face. “I’m staying involved, Leslie, because I want to know what happened. Just that simple. I
need
to know what happened.”

As Smith left the suite and waited for an elevator to take him to his floor, the young Panamanian sat alone in yet another suite in the Watergate, booked and paid for by the Reverend Garrett Kane. Earlier, Colonel Gilbert Morales had been there. Now, Miguel sat on the couch, a soft drink on the table in front of him. Around the glass were various pieces of metal. He picked up a few and began to assemble them. The Pachmayr Colt Model 1911 modular pistol had been delivered to him earlier in the day by one of Morales’s aides. It had cost four thousand dollars, and could be configured to handle .45, .38 Super, or .9 mm ammunition. This model was set up for .38 Super.

He’d taken the sophisticated weapon apart and put it back together again a number of times. Each time it was fully assembled, he couldn’t help but smile at the feel of it. It weighed only sixty-four ounces. The trigger had a light, crisp pull.

“Bueno,”
he said. As he slowly began to take it apart again. “
Guapo
. Beautiful, beautiful.”

“Sure you’ll be all right?” Annabel Reed asked Tony Buffolino after he’d settled into the Watergate suite late Thursday afternoon.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Where are you guys going, out to dinner?”

“No, I think we’ll have dinner at my house, make it an early night,” Smith said. “Are you sure you’re well enough to stay here alone?”

“Hey, come on, take a look.” Buffolino pushed himself up from the chair, slipped his crutches beneath his arms, and moved quickly—too quickly—across the vast living room, losing his balance near the kitchen table and grabbing it to keep from falling. Smith and Annabel started toward him, but he said, “No sweat, just have to go a little slower.”

“Why don’t you call one of your ex-wives and invite her up for dinner?” Smith said.

“That’s not a bad idea. Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.”

“Well, good to see you back, Tony,” Annabel said. “Don’t forget you have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.”

“I won’t forget. You’ll be by here in the morning?”

“No, I’d better put in some serious time at the gallery.” Smith said he’d drop by first thing.

They were almost at the door when the phone next to Buffolino rang. “Hey, Joe, great to hear from you. How goes it? Yeah, great, I’m doin’ fine. You heard about what happened to me in Frisco. You’re where, downstairs? Sure, come on up. Love to see you.”

He hung up and told them that Joe Riga had stopped by to see him.

“That’s nice,” Annabel said, pleased that he would have company. She didn’t have much faith in his ability to coax his ex-wives there on such short notice.

“See you tomorrow,” Smith said.

Minutes later, Buffolino and Joe Riga sat on the terrace, drinks in their hands. Washington was clear and balmy.

“How long you figure this will go on?” Riga asked.

“What, this case?”

“Yeah, and everything that goes with it. You’ve got a good deal here.”

“You’re telling me. This is the best gig I’ll ever have in my life. They broke the mold when they made Mac Smith, believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you, Tony. I always got along good with Mac. He was a tough defense attorney, but he played fair, gave the profession some class. You should see some of the whack jobs we deal with now. Tell me more about this crazy woman who shot you. You say she was Mae Feldman’s landlady?”

“Yeah, old buddies. Feldman’s probably as flaky as Madame Zaretski.”

“Madame?”

“That’s what I call her. She acts like a queen, only she ain’t. She says she had this big opera career going till she lost her portamento.”

“Her what? Who did it?”

Buffolino explained as though the term were old hat to him.

Riga said, “Oh, portamento.
That
portamento.”

“Yeah, that one.”

“So, Tony, things are good with you,” Riga said.

“Yeah. You?”

“Nothing changes with me, Tony. The sun goes down, the honest citizens skip the city and the cockroaches come out. You pick up a bunch of the cockroaches, and the DA or a judge tells you to let ’em go. So you let the cockroaches go, the sun comes up and they sleep, the good people come back into the city, and sun goes down and it starts all over again.”

Buffolino laughed. “Yeah, I guess nothin’ does change.”

“I heard how you pulled that old photo routine with Morse out at the Buccaneer Motel,” Riga said. “What’d you show him, a picture of Mickey Mouse?”

“Van Johnson.”

“Who’s he?”

“An actor. Come on, Joe, you heard of Van Johnson.”

“Nah, I don’t go in much for the movies. Sometimes a good cop movie, something like that.”

“How come you showed the old guy a picture of Paul Ewald?” Buffolino asked.

“Why not? She had a key to the motel in her purse, and Ewald was the prime suspect. We figured they might have been out there together, so I asked Glass in Rosslyn to run a photo by the owner.”

“He lied, right?”

Riga screwed up his face. “No, he didn’t lie. A cop shows him anything, he agrees. We could’ve shown him a picture of Hitler and he would have agreed Hitler shacked up there that night with the deceased.”

Buffolino laughed. “You still looking close at Paul Ewald?”

Riga nodded.

“I don’t think he done it.”

“Well, that settles it then. We’ll drop him from the list.”

“Don’t be a wise-ass with me, Joe. Hey, whatever happened to Garcia, that dirtbag who set me up?”

Riga shifted position in his chair. His brow furrowed. He touched Tony on the knee and said, “You know, Tony, I never had anything to do with that. It was IA all the way.”

“I know that, Joe. You never did nothin’ to me but good. What about Garcia? He went back to Panama, I heard.”

“Right. After you took the fall, some of us decided that Mr. Garcia was a stud who shouldn’t be left walking around. We put the arm on him and convinced him he ought to get out of the country, get out of the business. Between you and me, he left in a lot worse shape then you’re in. Last I heard, he was still in Panama.”

“Too good for him. Guys like that, even if you bust them up, keep the dough and live the good life, while we …”

Riga grabbed Tony’s arm and shook it. “Hey, you look like you’re doing pretty good. This ain’t exactly skid row.”

“No, but I’ll be going back to skid row, Joe. This thing can’t last long. Why should Smith hang in?”

Riga thought for a moment. “There is still the question of who murdered Andrea Feldman. Knowing Mac Smith, I figure he wants to be the one who finds out before he packs it in.”

Riga’s words seemed to buoy Tony’s spirits, which had visibly sagged. “Yeah, I bet you’re right. Besides, you know what he told me before I went to Frisco?”

“What?”

“He told me that when this is over, he’d try to get me a good job. How about that?”

“That’d be nice,” said Riga. “You know, Tony, I don’t have much more time till I retire. Maybe he could help me out, too. Maybe you put in a word for me. Would you do that?”

Tony silently resented what Riga was asking. He wasn’t proud of what he was feeling, but it was there. Just like Washington, he thought, everybody always looking out for themselves. He mumbled something unintelligible and sipped his drink.

After Riga left, Tony sat on the terrace until he fell asleep in the chair, his heavily bandaged leg propped on the table. Riga had made him another drink, and that empty glass joined others on the green Astroturf beneath his chair. He awoke at midnight to the sound of a low-flying commercial jetliner on its approach to National. He was drunk, but managed to make his way to the bedroom, where he flopped on the bed, fully clothed, and fell back into a fitful sleep.

* * *

Rufus, the giant blue Dane, stretched out across the foot of Mac Smith’s bed, forcing the human animals in it to retract their legs into the fetal position. Smith grumbled, got up, and went to the kitchen, where he turned on the coffee, squeezed fresh orange juice, retrieved the paper from the front steps, brushed his teeth, assured Rufus he’d be walked in short order, and climbed back into bed. “Coffee’s ready in a minute.”

Annabel stretched, cooed, and turned over. Smith smiled as he looked down at that mass of hair covering her pillow. He was filled with love, which soon blossomed into lust. Moving over her, he transmitted his feelings, but she said through a yawn, “Mac, be civilized. Go get the amaretto gop you call coffee.”

He swung out of bed again, went to the kitchen, and returned with their breakfast on trays, flipping on the TV as he passed. “Breakfast is served.”

“Oh, God, you are a brute,” she said, pushing up against the headboard and running long fingers through her hair. “Turn off the TV. TV is for nighttime.”

“Morning TV is important,” he said. “The world might have blown up overnight.”

“Good.”

“You wouldn’t say that if we were blown up with it.”

“We weren’t. We’re here, in bed, with the world’s biggest dog.”

They watched the news before the entertainment portion of the Friday edition of the morning show resumed. As a young, pretty actress whom neither Mac nor Annabel knew chatted with the host about starring in her latest motion picture, Smith said, “I’ve been doing some thinking, Annie.”

“About what?”

“About this whole adventure we’ve been on. I thought about it a lot last night. I think it’s time to get out of it.”

She was gripped with a set of immediate and conflicting feelings. On the one hand, she was relieved. On the other, she was disappointed. She said, “Why this sudden change of heart?”

“I don’t know, I just wonder what’s to be gained by hanging in. Leslie Ewald asked me last night why I was still involved,
and I gave her one of those precious existential answers—you know, an I-want-to-climb-the-mountain-because-it’s-there kind of thing. Who am I kidding? I realized last night that I’ve been staying with this because it makes me feel important. I don’t need something outside of myself to feel important, never did. It’s time to wind things down and get back to the life of the unimportant college professor.”

“I wouldn’t argue with you about that, Mac. Whatever you say is fine with me, and you know it.” She kissed him gently on the lips. “Tony will take this hard,” she said.

“I know. I told him I’d do my best to find him a job when this was over, a job where he’s not expected to scale tall buildings. Maybe at the university. Besides, he’s made some decent money already, and I’ll see to it that he gets a healthy bonus out of what Leslie has paid me.”

They watched television until Annabel asked, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

“No, I’m not sure, but a decision has to be made. As they say, any action is better than no action.”

“Okay, then let’s get the morning going,” she said, jumping out of bed and touching her toes. “I have to get to the gallery, and you told Tony you’d be by to see him. Shall we have dinner out tonight to celebrate our return to the mundane?”

He started to say yes, but hesitated. She picked up on it; he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to drop everything, and she could understand his ambivalence. She wouldn’t press. Let the day go by and see what it brings.

Herbert Greist stood at the dirt-crusted window of a room in a hotel on West Forty-seventh Street. He wore his black suit pants and a sleeveless undershirt. His socks were light gray silk; a large hole allowed one of his toes to protrude.

He looked at Mae, who was awake but still in bed. A succession of noisy encounters in the next room between a prostitute and her Johns had kept them awake most of the night. Mae was on her back, her eyes fixed on the peeling ceiling. Greist picked up a cigar butt from a full ashtray and, with some difficulty, lighted it and looked out to the street again.

“It won’t work,” Mae said, only her lips moving.

“You never know,” he said. “We asked too much. He doesn’t want this kind of thing spread around, not with running for president. A hundred thousand, that’s all. We can leave the country, go somewhere safe and have enough to live on for a while.”

Mae Feldman pushed herself up against the leatherette headboard and said, “You always say things will work. You always say not to worry, that you have it figured out. It doesn’t work. It never works.”