Murder at the Watergate (2 page)

Elfie’s lifestyle reflected her money and position. Her Georgetown home, adjacent to the lovely grounds of Dumbarton Oaks, was the scene of some of the city’s most lavish parties. Her approach to entertaining ran contrary to that of Washington’s former hostess-with-the-mostest, Pamela Harriman, now deceased. Harriman believed that every social event should be driven by a “serious agenda.” Elfie was more in tune with Sally Quinn’s advice: “If you don’t care about having fun, then have a meeting.” Extravagant parties were also routinely held at her other homes, one in London, the other in San Miguel de Allende, nestled in the mountains of old, colonial Mexico.

Elfie Dorrance was many things, including an inveterate flirt.

“If I were to fall off the Washington Monument, Elfie Dorrance would be after you in a second,” Annabel said to Mac on more than one occasion.

“She is interesting” was his usual reply.

“Beautiful and rich and cunning,” Annabel said. “But I suspect she’ll be married again before I ever take that fall, so I really don’t worry about losing you.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

What Mac didn’t say was that Dorrance’s beauty, and charm, and money, and access to places and people unavailable to mere mortals, gave her the sort of allurement with which lesser females simply couldn’t compete.

“Must run, God’s work awaits me,” Elfie said, laughing. “The catering staff at the hotel is top-notch, but you still have to oversee every detail. At least I do.”

“Which is why your affairs—events—always come off
without a hitch,” Annabel said, wishing she hadn’t used the original term. Elfie’s wide smile, exposing as fine a set of teeth as one was likely to see in Washington, said she’d picked up on Annabel’s inadvertent indiscretion.

“I love the fact you’re living here,” she said. “Having a Watergate address simply suits the two of you. The apartment is lovely. Your decorator did a superb job.”

“You’re looking at the decorator,” Mac said, indicating Annabel. Their only help had been suggestions from friend and art connoisseur Bill Wooby, of the Washington Design Center.

“Wonderful to see you, Elfie,” Mac said. “Thanks for gracing our little housewarming.”

“And I’ll be seeing you in a few hours at the hotel. I thank you in advance for gracing
my
little drumbeater for the next president of the United States.”

Annabel walked Elfie to the elevator. When she returned, she went directly to the kitchen to answer the ringing phone.

“Annabel. It’s Carole.”

“Hi. How are you?”

“Fine. How’s the party going?”

“Good. About to break up. Elfie Dorrance just left. All set for the big evening?”

The wife of the vice president, Carole Aprile, said she could do without it. “Fund-raisers always set me on edge. Not a good thing for a politician’s wife to admit.”

Annabel laughed. She and Carole Aprile had been college roommates, and had kept in touch through the years. Becoming the second lady of the land had cut seriously into the time the two friends could spend together in Washington, but they kept in frequent touch by
phone, and enjoyed what opportunities they could to see each other.

“I’m dying for you to see the apartment, Carole. We’re still adjusting to posthouse life, but it’s shaping up nicely. The one having the biggest problem is Rufus.”

Now, a giggle from Carole. “And how is your Great Blue Dane, the world’s biggest dog?”

“Still sniffng out his new surroundings. At least he hasn’t decided yet to stake out his territory with a lift of the leg. It’s actually harder on Mac. We used to just let him out into that postage-stamp backyard we had on Twenty-fifth Street. Now—”

“Mac?”

“No, Carole, Rufus.” Both women giggled. “Mac walked him sometimes but that backyard was a godsend. Now he has to be walked all the time. But Mac puts a positive spin on it, says it gets him out a little more.”

“I won’t keep you, Annabel. Love to Mac. See you tonight?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Mac and Annabel had been enthusiastic boosters of Joe Aprile when he was chosen as running mate to the now sitting president. It was a second term for both men, which meant the president could not run again, leaving the field open for his capable and popular vice president. The Smiths’ support, modest financially, intensely ideological, had far more to do with their belief in the administration than their personal friendship with Joe and Carole. The administration had taken the country in the right direction in general, they felt, and they supported it without
hesitation or reservation. That their good friend might one day sit in the Oval Office was a heady contemplation.

The last of the guests departed, leaving Mac and Annabel alone on the terrace. Hand in hand, they looked out over the darkening Potomac.

“Successful party,” he said.

“We always have successful parties,” said Annabel. “We’re the perfect host and hostess.”

“I wouldn’t argue with you, although I’d hate to do it for a living. I don’t know how Elfie does it, a party every night, sometimes three a day.”

“It’s in her genes. She has party DNA. She thrives on it.”

“Well, I don’t. I think I’ll take Rufus for a walk, then get dressed for the gala.”

“It’s not a gala, Mac, just five hundred rich people wanting to press Joe’s flesh and shove money into his pockets.”

“You have a wonderful way of summing things up. Joe wants me to meet him at his office before the party. How convenient, a one-minute walk, underground if it rains. We’ll catch up in their suite.”

“Right.”

Mac returned to the living room, where Rufus was napping noisily in front of a couch. “Come on, big guy, let’s take a walk and have a talk. But no politics. And no comments about not being able to use the terrace in summer, or jet noise. Not if you ever want to eat again.”

The Secret Service had designated the Fairfax Room, one of the hotel’s fourteen private conference rooms, as its command post for the evening. Because it was adjacent to the ballroom, the larger space created by rolling back partitions between the Monticello, Continental, Chesapeake, and Mount Vernon rooms, it was a perfect location for an ops center, and had been used as such for many events.

In charge of the detail that evening was veteran Michael Swales, who’d been providing security for presidents and vice presidents for fourteen years. He’d seen the nation’s leaders in every aspect of their lives, including moments of intense private vulnerability. He had tales to tell but never did, unlike some of his colleagues, who, when off-duty, couldn’t resist swapping stories about the families they served, confident their words would remain between them.

Swales had just returned to the Fairfax from a walkthrough when a voice said into his ever-present earpiece, “We’ve got an alert on Straight Arrow.”

“Explain,” Swales said into his tiny lapel microphone.

“Intelligence report from the Company. Out of Mexico City. Pigeon says there’s a plot to attack Straight Arrow.”

Maybe the CIA was onto something, Swales thought. You couldn’t always depend on “the Company’s” intelligence but you couldn’t ignore them, either.

“Tonight?”

“Not clear. It just came in.”

“More details?”

“Negative. Kick security up a notch. That’s from the boss.”

“Roger. Add personnel?”

“Being dispatched now. Ten minutes.”

“Okay. Straight Arrow’s heading for his office in the six hundred, then to his suite. I’ll send some additional bodies up. Have the new troops report to me in Fairfax.”

“Shall do.”

“Always some nut out there,” Swales’s second-in-command said. And indeed there always seemed to be, in one place or another, some plot or other, some storm brewing.

“Mexico City,” Swales muttered. “The veep doesn’t have a lot of fans there these days.”

His colleague smiled. “And they let you know how they feel. Pitura said this morning that the two most popular Mexican sports, after bullfighting, are kidnapping and assassination.”

Swales, an inveterate animal lover who owned three dogs, all strays rescued from the city’s mean streets, said, “There are hobbies a lot more civilized. Any loose ends?”

“No.”

“There’s Mexicans on the kitchen and serving staffs.”

“All cleared. Police checks on everybody. You know how this place operates, Michael. They run a tight ship.”

“Check the route in again from the entrance to the ballroom,” Swales said.

“Okay. Think he’ll make it?”

“Who? Make what?”

“Straight Arrow. Think he’ll be president?”

“Probably.” And he muttered to himself, “As long as we keep him alive.”

Chris Hedras was groggy, felt like roadkill.

He’d been up all night with strategy planners for the Aprile for President committee, and had continued working throughout the morning and early afternoon. Finally, a chance for some sleep, if only a few hours.

Although Joe Aprile had not officially declared himself a candidate, only the most naive of Washingtonians didn’t know that he intended to seek the nomination. It was never too early to put a campaign into motion, even for an undeclared candidate.

The topic of fund-raising had dominated most of last night’s skull session. Hedras, thirty-five years old and arguably the handsomest member of the president’s inner circle
—Washingtonian Magazine
had recently crowned him that—stood in his bathroom and brought his face closer to the mirror. The dark circles under his eyes were real, as though ink had penetrated the skin from beneath. He knew when he’d accepted the president’s call to become deputy chief of staff that it would be an exhausting four years, assuming he lasted that long.

It hadn’t been an easy decision for him to make. He’d carved a nice niche for himself in Boston’s Democratic machine, parlaying a sterling academic record at Harvard, natural charm and good looks, and his father’s few remaining contacts into positions of leadership, to the extent of even running for office himself one day, perhaps.

It was when he accepted the post of state chair for the president’s second run for the White House that the name, face, and potential of Christopher Hedras became known outside of Massachusetts. Although no one expected the president, a Democrat, to lose in liberal Massachusetts, the margin of his victory stunned even the most jaded of political pundits. Chris Hedras was a rising star, the sort of young man this president liked to have around.

“Deputy chief of staff? The White House?” Hedras’s girlfriend of the moment exclaimed after he’d told her of the call from Washington. They’d met for drinks at Brandy Pete’s before heading for dinner at a friend’s house.

“
A
deputy chief of staff,” Hedras corrected. “Not
the
deputy chief. Not yet, at least.”

“You’re going to accept?”

“Sure. And if you treat me right, I’ll invite you to stay over in the Lincoln Bedroom. I always wanted to make it in a place like that. You know, the middle of Grand Central Station, first class on a plane, the White House.”

She laughed, but knew he wasn’t saying it in jest. With all his education and privileged upbringing, there was a Rabelaisian streak in him that sometimes caused her discomfort. But not that night. The sexual aggressiveness he
demonstrated later, back at his Cambridge apartment, was welcome, and encouraged.

She was one of but many young Boston women in Hedras’s life who, once he left for Washington, became just vague, pleasant memories, replaced by Washington’s glut of single women. Finding suitable female companionship was easy for Chris Hedras. It was carving out time for them that posed his biggest problem. Despite knowing what he was in for when he agreed to come to Washington, he’d never dreamed the work would be quite this relentless, this all-consuming.

He groaned as he raised his hands high above his head and stretched. He didn’t need a lot of sleep, but two hours didn’t do it. “You need your beauty sleep, baby,” he said to his mirror image, again scrutinizing the effects a chronic lack of sleep was having on his square, planed face, topped by a shaggy helmet of black curls. Working for any president was a young man’s game, young woman’s, too, unless you were a senior advisor type, who caught plenty of sleep in airplanes while traveling the world giving advice to leaders who didn’t want it, and cozying up to those to whom you wouldn’t give the time of day if your job, and the nation’s well-being, didn’t demand it.

He tossed his blue terry-cloth robe onto a stool and was about to step into the shower when there was a knock on the bathroom door.

“In a minute,” he said loudly.

The door opened and a fine, aquiline nose led a pretty face through the gap.

“I’m leaving.”

“Yeah,” Hedras said, not attempting to shield his nudity from her. Why bother? They’d been naked in bed for the past three hours, one of which he was awake for and remembered.

“You’ll call me?”

“Yeah, only not soon. Craziness for the next couple of weeks. I’ll call you at the office.”

She formed a kiss on her lips and made a loud smacking sound.

“Take care, Cindy. And tell that guy from Agriculture to stop hitting on you or I’ll punch him out. Stay away from farmers—they’re always looking for more support.”

She groaned and closed the bathroom door. A moment later he heard the door to his apartment open, and shut.

Cindy was a junior partner at a DC law firm. She and Chris had met only a week ago, but it hadn’t taken even that long for them to fall into bed. Hedras appreciated women like Cindy. She was as caught up in the whirl of the nation’s capital as he was, didn’t make demands, and was willing to engage in a relationship dictated by respective schedules and needs. No time for developing a relationship even approaching meaningful. You caught your intimacy in short bursts and when you could, like grabbing a catnap between meetings.

A half hour later, he stood at his living room window and looked down at Virginia Avenue. Across the street was the Howard Johnson’s Premier Hotel, where lookouts for the Watergate burglars had hunkered down in Room 723 to peer out at the 2600 office building. Located adjacent to Hedras’s apartment building, it had been home to the Democratic National Committee and target of the Liddy-Hunt-McCord break-in team that
broke in, bungled, and was discovered, providing reason after the cover-up for President Nixon to resign.