Murder at the Watergate (8 page)

At eleven that morning, Peterson and Jenkins sat in the homicide day room and sipped tepid coffee. Peterson held four Polaroid pictures of the deceased taken at the Watergate crime scene. One showed his full face.

The second was of a tattoo on his right forearm. The third photo was of a three-inch-long scar on the left side of his neck. The fourth picture was of his right ear, one of the body’s most distinguishing features.

“What do you figure him for?” Peterson asked his partner.

“I peg him as Mexican.”

“A Juan Doe.”

“Yeah.”

“Robbery?”

“Or a hit. Man, that was a clean shot to the back of the head. Perfect spot. And close. Singed his hair.”

“You know what doesn’t speak to me, Wendell?”

“What’s that?”

“Why the guy was where he was.”

“The Watergate? Maybe he was heading for the thing at the Kennedy Center.”

“Nah. He had no car. They’ve all been accounted for.”

“What gets me was that his body was right outside the door leading up into the office building. Was he trying to get in there? You have to have a key for that.”

“Maybe he did.”

“And what? The shooter stole the key, too?”

“Sure. Maybe he figures to come back and use it, rip off the offices upstairs.”

Jenkins said, “Doesn’t figure. If I had a bet on the line, I say he was whacked.”

Peterson pondered what his partner had said. “A Mexican mob hit?”

“Our Latino friends from the south are getting more active here in DC every day, Joe. Vicious bunch, huh? Bad as the Jamaicans and Russians.”

“I’ve got a Mexican family on the block. Nice people. Quiet, you know? When they moved in I figured all-night parties with those—whatta you call them?—those bands.”

“Mariachis.”

“With the big hats.”

“Yeah. They don’t?”

“What?”

“Your neighbors. Wear big hats and sing all night?”

“No. Like I said, real quiet.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Forensics will ID him. All those gold fillings, the scar. You notice his hands?”

“Small.”

“Very. How come the shooter didn’t take the two rings off him?”

“In a rush.”

“Probably. I’m outta here,” Peterson said. “My daughter’s coming over with the grandkid. Cute little guy. Only a year old but smart.”

Jenkins grinned. “I’ve got two married kids but no grandchildren. My wife is getting impatient. Wants to be a young grandmother in the worst way.”

They signed out and went to where their cars were parked.

“Enjoy, man,” Jenkins said. “See you Tuesday.”

“Yup. Glad tomorrow’s off. You know what?”

“What?”

“I think it
was
a hit. Take it easy.”

The ladies were to meet for lunch in the salmon-pink River Restaurant of the Savoy hotel, overlooking the Thames. Previous luncheon gatherings had been in that same hotel’s Savoy Grill, but it was the ladies’ consensus that the grill’s food and service had slipped of late, and so they changed venues to the larger, more genteel River Room.

Elfie was, as usual, late.

“I don’t care what he claimed, Constance, I never trusted him,” Phyllis Vine said of Elfie Dorrance’s second husband, Dieter Krueger, a German industrialist who’d prospered during the war as a supplier of die-cast metals to the Nazi military effort. Ms. Vine was a big woman in all ways, whose square jaw moved curiously sideways when she spoke, accentuated by too much, and too red, lipstick.

“Elfie obviously believed him when he said he was never a Nazi sympathizer,” said Constance Dailey, a tiny, sparrowlike woman whose pretty face had a gray cast
that almost matched her suit. “Good Lord, Phyllis, I mean, after all, she did marry him.”

Phyllis’s nose moved. “He claimed his company—which I understand was very successful before the war broke out—was conscripted along with other German manufacturers with products useful to the paperhanger’s military machine. Typical story, I’m afraid. No German knew what was going on, of course.”

“Of course.”

“What Elfie ever saw in him is beyond me,” Phyllis said.

Constance guffawed. “Deutsche marks, Phyllis, and plenty of them.”

“Yes, quite. She was terribly young, wasn’t she, when she married him? He was twice her age, at least.”

“At least. She’d had that failed first marriage, which I understand was sordid but mercifully brief. Has she told you about it?”

“Well—just the bare bones. Where is she? Perhaps we should order. The usual?”

“I suppose so.”

“We really shouldn’t question Elfie’s motives, should we? I mean, she isn’t here to defend herself—the way he died was so shocking—it must have been—oh, there’s Elfie now. I will say one thing about her, Constance, she’s aged gracefully.”

“Elfie, darling, we were worried about you.”

“And dissecting me, I trust,” Elfie said, sliding into the chair held out by a waiter.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” her companions said, almost in unison. “The usual?”

“Yes,” Elfie said. “I’m afraid I’m a bit rushed today. I’m having tea this afternoon with Laughton Starkgrave.”

“Oh? Brown’s?”

“Home. Waiter, we’re ready to order.”

Elfie’s multiple marriages provided plenty of grist for natter, as gossip was known to the British, and Elfie knew it. She wasn’t bothered by it; it was her opinion that being discussed was infinitely better than being ignored.

Truth was that Dieter Krueger had not been a Nazi sympathizer. Like other business owners with a product useful or convertible to Hitler’s war effort, you went along or …

He’d considered at one time injecting deliberate glitches into his production lines to hamper output. But pragmatism overruled that, and he rode out the war meeting his quotas and waiting for the inevitable collapse of the Third Reich, which came to seem more certain with each passing month.

When the war ended, Krueger Industries was a sturdy, viable company, poised to expand to other European nations in desperate need of rebuilding. Krueger took advantage of it, beginning with Great Britain, then France, the Netherlands, and into Scandinavia. By the time he met the vivacious and charming Mrs. Dorrance-Robinson at a London party, he was a multimillionaire, a widower, and a prize catch among Europe’s eligible bachelors. That he was twice Elfie’s age—he fifty-nine, she thirty—only added to the newsworthy aspects of the relationship.

There were those who preferred to view the marriage of Elfie Dorrance to Dieter Krueger as a classic pretty young thing snaring the wealthier older man. There was
a modicum of truth to that; Elfie would never have married Krueger if he hadn’t been wealthy. But she was hardly an impoverished waif, or a predatory gold digger. She brought to the marriage a trust fund, albeit a modest one, established by her deceased father, Malcolm Dorrance, who’d done well as a New England real estate developer. Created and funded when Elfie was in her teens—her formal given name was Elfreda, after her paternal grandmother—the terms of the trust stipulated that as long as Malcolm Dorrance was alive, the trust’s funds were unavailable to his only daughter if she married someone of whom he disapproved. That certainly applied to Elfie’s first marriage at the age of twenty-three to Wayne Robinson, an aspiring alleged artist who swept Elfie off her feet and whisked her away to Paris, where they immersed themselves in the West Bank’s bohemian life. It lasted a year.

Elfie knew when she married Robinson that he was a drug user and heavy drinker. But she had neither the wisdom at that age, nor the inclination, to look ahead at what it might mean in terms of his treatment of her. His physical abuse and multiple infidelities led to their separation and divorce.

A month after the papers had been finalized, Elfie’s father died of a stroke. Elfie and her trust fund had been liberated, and she took full advantage of both.

Elfie and Dieter Krueger took up residence in his handsome home in Munich. But she hated Germany and its granitic culture, its harsh, impenetrable language, and Third Reich ghosts. Because her husband spent considerable time in Great Britain tending to business, she easily persuaded him to find a house there: “All those expensive
bills from the Savoy and the Ritz,” she told him. “It would simply be good business to have a permanent place in London.”

The house, in the elegant Belgravia section of the city, on Eaton Mews, was a three-story white stucco home of terrace design. It was love at first sight. Its Belgravia address certainly was appealing. Developed in 1825 on 150 acres taken from the Grosvenor estate, and encompassing Belgrave Square, Belgravia was, from its beginnings, a desirable area of the city in which to live. From the moment they took possession of the house on Eaton Mews, and the interior designers had worked their magic, Elfie considered it home, her only home. Her trips to Munich became increasingly infrequent; she and Dieter spent much of their marriage apart, he devoted to addressing the myriad demands of his business, and Elfie remaining in London to nurture her flourishing social status.

Although she regularly assured Dieter that she missed him during their long separations, she was aware that his absences were in certain ways beneficial. Krueger was handsome and socially adept. With exceptions. He was also a German; how many guests at their dinner parties laughed at his witty, worldly remarks while remembering the V2s raining down on their city, thousands killed, babies rushed from hospital delivery rooms to basement shelters, rationing and deprivation and fear and loathing of the crazed nation on the other side of the channel?

Elfie had awoken that morning in the five-foot-wide Victorian brass bed she’d shared with Dieter and two subsequent husbands—and others. She’d arrived in
London the night before, her circadian rhythms out of sync and destined to remain so for at least a few days.

Her housekeeper, Julie, served her toast and tea in the sun-flooded sitting room at the rear of the house, overlooking a lovely garden surrounded by a beech hedge dressed in its autumnal reds and golds. She handled correspondence for the remainder of the morning, showered and dressed, met her friends, Constance and Phyllis, for lunch, then returned to the house to await the arrival of Laughton Starkgrave, a member of the House of Lords and briefly a British ambassador to the United States during the Nixon administration. He arrived precisely at three-thirty and was ushered to the library by Julie.

“You look in fine fettle,” he said after taking one of two Queen Anne armchairs. They were separated by a fine, small table set with early Staffordshire china. A fire spat in the marble fireplace behind them. Observing their meeting from the walls was a collection of sepia prints of members of William I’s court.

“Feeling fine, Laughton. Being in London lifts the spirits. Anything new and exciting?”

“Personally or politically?”

“Start with the personal.”

“Not much to comment on there. I’ve sold the Cotswolds house—getting too old to make that trip often enough to justify holding on to it—the prime minister continues to lead the Laborites but acts like a Tory—better that, I suppose, than acting out his liberal inclinations—no Iron Man, he—but that isn’t personal, is it?—feeling quite well aside from the hearing loss and …”

Elfie had become sufficiently Anglophilic to understand most of Lord Starkgrave’s mumbled comments, words being swallowed or lost in a rumble of amused chuckles at what he was saying.

“What’s the hot debate these days in the House of Lords?”

“Rather dull, actually.”

Always dull, Elfie thought.

“… and we’ve imported the debate about doctor-assisted suicide from you people in the States. They’d bloody well better make up their minds soon if I’m to take advantage of it.… ”A loud laugh this time, setting the pouchy cheeks of his bland, bloodless face into motion.

Starkgrave had not aged gracefully. When ambassador to the States, he’d cut a dashing figure in diplomatic circles, promising to become overweight but successfully containing it, bright-eyed, and very much on top of things. In his dotage, he’d allowed nature to override his resolutions and had become flabby and even somewhat slovenly, seemingly no longer concerned with his physical appearance or the clothing he chose to accompany it. His blue tie was stained, his fingernails less than pristine. Perhaps if his wife had lived things might have been different.

One thing hadn’t changed about Starkgrave, however, and Elfie knew it only too well. He may have reached a point in his life where his outward appearance was that of a cartoonish character, the tottering old man dozing in his club chair while younger members waited for him to die and vacate it, but his mind was as sharp as it had ever been, and his contacts within his government—other governments, too—were vast and secure.

Julie served their tea, and thin sandwiches of cucumber, salmon, and cheese. Starkgrave sipped noisily, sitting back and resting his cup, held in both hands, on his belly.

“Enough about me, Elfie,” he said. “Let us hear about you and your latest Washington escapades. Your friend, Mr. Aprile, appears to be unbeatable next time round.”

“No one is unbeatable, Laughton. He’s certainly the front-runner, but you know how fickle politics can be.”

“Quite. Yes, yes, know it well. He seems like a decent chap, although looks can be deceiving. Is he? A decent chap?”

“Yes. A good man. I’m very fond of him, although he does have certain views that can be—how shall I say it?—can be disconcerting at times.”

Laughton nodded. Julie reappeared with a three-tiered silver tray of scones, clotted cream, jelly, and assorted miniature pastries. Starkgrave filled his small plate. Elfie declined with a wave of her hand.

“You were saying?” Starkgrave said through a cream puff.

“I was saying that the vice president holds certain views that make me uncomfortable.”

“Oh? Domestic or foreign?”

“A little of both, although one looms largest in my mind.”

“Lovely pastries. From the Ritz?”

“Pâtisserie Valerie.”

“None better. Which of your friend’s views bothers you most?”