Murder in the White House (Capital Crimes Book 1) (12 page)

“And the ways in which he was not may well have gotten him murdered,” Ron said grimly.

Sir John looked at him, his expression altogether diplomatic. “Perhaps…”

The Oval Office, Friday, June 15, 7:05 PM

The retiring president of the Inter-American Development Bank had kept his six-thirty appointment and had met with the President immediately after the President’s return from Michigan and the funeral of Lansard Blaine. It was a courtesy call, which had ended short of the thirty minutes allotted to it, and the President had
summoned Fritz Gimbel to the Oval Office at six forty-five. Ron Fairbanks had the seven o’clock appointment, and Gimbel was still with the President when Ron was admitted to the office. Ron would have preferred not to report to the President with Gimbel there, but after a few minutes it became apparent that the President meant to hear his report without dismissing Gimbel. Ron had no choice.

The President had left a stack of files on his desk—apparently what he and Gimbel had been discussing—and had sat on one of the couches near the fireplace. He had ordered drinks, and their conversation remained casual until the butler brought the tray. Gimbel smoked. He was one of the few people who would smoke a cigarette in the presence of the President, who had made it plain to the White House staff that he did not like it.

“I’m pleased you haven’t generated any more flak than you have,” President Webster said to Ron. “You’ll have to talk to the media people, though… sooner or later.”

“I’ve nothing much to tell them—”

“Then make up something,” Gimbel said.

Gimbel’s tone brought no reaction from the President. He’d said of Gimbel many months ago, in Ron’s hearing, that though Gimbel was an exceptionally able man in many areas he had absolutely no sense of public relations. The man was blunt, all edges.

“Maybe a press conference…” the President said. “Maybe tomorrow—”

“I’ve no idea who killed Blaine,” Ron said, blunt as Gimbel.

“Well, do you feel you’re making any progress?” Webster asked.

“I’ve learned a lot about Blaine…”

The President drew a deep breath. “Such as?”

Ron glanced at Gimbel, then spoke directly to the President. “The way he lived… the way he spent money. The stories about the women he slept with are true. He—”

“Does any of this have anything to do with his death?” the President broke in.

“Probably. He spent more than he earned. Much more. It’s obvious, and anyone who does any accounting on it is going to figure that out. The problem is, I don’t know precisely where the money came from. But it’s pretty clear that he took bribes—”

Gimbel grunted in disgust. “Fairbanks, you—”

“Do you think that has anything to do with his death?” the President interrupted Gimbel.

Ron nodded. “I think it’s likely. And whether it did or not, the investigation—either our investigation or one by some reporter—is going to bring it out. I think we have to be prepared to deal with it.”

Ron noticed that the President and Gimbel exchanged glances. “I have to ask you something, sir. Blaine was opposed to the trade agreements, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The President frowned and once again glanced at Gimbel. “The classic liberal… free trade. All that. The usual arguments.”

“Suppose I told you,” Ron said carefully, “that Blaine received a hundred thousand dollars from an overseas industrial corporation to exert his influence with you to abandon the multilateral trade negotiations, or at the very least to exempt what this corporation makes.
Suppose also I told you he was to receive a great deal more if he succeeded in so influencing you.”

“‘
Suppose
,’” snapped Gimbel. “Dammit, Fairbanks, let’s not suppose.
Did
Blaine get a hundred thousand or
didn’t
he?”

“I’ve some evidence of it—not enough to prove it, but enough to make it seem very likely.”

Gimbel shook his head.

“I’m not entirely surprised,” the President said. He stood and walked across the room to the windows behind his desk. He parted the curtains between the gold drapes and looked out on the cloudless, golden June evening. “I’d begun to suspect something like that.”

“I wonder how widespread the suspicion is,” Ron said.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly.

“How did you come to suspect?”

The President let the curtains fall together and sat behind his desk. “He knew my policy about international trade… that I was committed to a departure. He knew my mind was made up. Still, he continued to argue, and toward the end of the arguments became more and more vehement, until they weren’t arguments at all, close to just angry harangues. He stopped being rational on the subject—Lansard Blaine, who had always been the
most
rational of men…”

“Some people stand to make and some people stand to lose millions through the trade agreements,” Ron said.

The President nodded. “It balances out equitably among nations but not necessarily among industries and certainly not among individual corporations. German and British and Japanese automobile manufacturers…
but our automobile industry will be strengthened and will survive, and it’s
essential
to our economy.”

“Did Blaine argue for an exemption for automobiles?”

“For a partial exemption.” The President abstractly tugged at the fringe on the presidential flag to straighten it. “Is that who you think bribed him? Automobile—?”

“Great Britain-Hawley-Burnsby.”

“God!” The President shook his head unhappily. “And others?”

“Probably. I haven’t found out yet.”

“And you think,” said Gimbel, interjecting a louder, more impatient voice into the conversation, “that the people who may have paid him bribes are the ones who may have killed him?” He got up, took up the President’s glass of scotch and carried it to him at his desk. “It could be a lot of people then. The investigation widens considerably, doesn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” Ron said. “In fact, it narrows it. How many people with access to the White House at night are also involved in potentially vast profits or losses from the trade agreements?”

“Profits?” the President said.

“Well, someone who stood to profit from the trade agreements may have killed Blaine to shut up an influential voice against them…”

The President got up to stand behind his desk. “I think you’re on the right track, Ron. People who try to bribe… you follow me? They’re capable of other crimes. And you’re right, there’s profit and loss involved in these trade agreements. People working for foreign governments, or for foreign business corporations… concentrate on them.”

“Well, there’s still a problem in the theory, Mr. President. Whoever killed Blaine had access to the second floor of the White House after eleven at night.”

“Someone who could pay Blaine a hundred thousand to try to talk me out of the trade agreements could also buy someone with that access… household staff… even a Secret Service man… Concentrate on that, Ron. Concentrate on that.”

“I will, sir. I’m not sure we’ll find our murderer that way but…”

“What else, Ron? What else do you have in mind?”

Ron shook his head. “Nothing else, Mr. President, not really—”

“Spit it out, Ron.”

“All right.” Ron glanced at Gimbel. “I found it out too easily. I mean, that Blaine was taking money. Someone else must have known, it opens up all kinds of possibilities—”

“Even that the President might have killed him, right?” said the President. “Or that he conspired in it. Even that, hmm?”

“I’m hardly thinking of you, sir.”

“Concentrate as I told you. If that doesn’t produce anything, then look where you think you have to. I told you there is no limit on this investigation. Look where you have to, Ron.
Everybody’s
a suspect.”

He nodded vigorously, as though to convince all—including himself—of his sincerity.

The Blue Lagoon, Friday, June 15, 10:45 PM

Barbara Lund smoked a joint of marijuana and sipped only occasionally from the bourbon and soda Ron had
bought for her. She sat at their table—with Ron and Gabe Haddad—in her stage costume: fringed white bra top, matching fringed briefs. She laughed at the suggestion she knew anything about the murder of Lansard Blaine.

“Hey, fellas,” she said languidly, “I hardly knew the man.” She used her left hand to brush her long bleached blonde hair back from her bare shoulder. “I mean, what he was to me and I was to him didn’t have anything to do with politics.”

“How do you suppose I found out you knew him at all?” Ron asked.

“I’d like to know.”

“The FBI told me.”

Her smile vanished. “FBI…? How’d they know, what’d they know?”

“They know you spent the night in his apartment several times.”

“Why? Why’d they know that?”

“They were keeping a tab on him, not on you,” Ron said. “That make you feel better?”

She nodded, “It makes me feel better. Y’ know, I’m just a Kentucky girl come to the big city to make a little money. No reason the FBI’d have any interest in me.”

She was, as Ron judged, about thirty years old. She had a small, dark blue tattoo on the inside of her right thigh just below the fringe of her briefs; below the tattoo on her leg was a larger dark red bruise. She was tall, fleshy—a big woman. She talked hard. Her face was pretty; it had a delicacy and innocence incongruous with the rest of her.

“How did you meet Blaine?” Gabe Haddad said.

“Here, he came in here one night.”

“And you hustled a drink from the Secretary of State, and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship?”

“I don’t care what you believe.”

“We can have you brought in to talk to us.”

Barbara Lund was not frightened. “But you’d rather come in here and get a look at me,” she said.

“Okay, where did you meet Lansard Blaine?” Gabe persisted, secretly admiring her starch.

She glanced from him to Ron, back again to Gabe. “You really have to know, huh?”

Gabe nodded. “We really do.”

“I was at a party, I was the entertainment. He was there.”

“Whose party? Where?”

“In a suite at the Mayflower. Some English character gave it. I don’t remember his name.”

“Jeremy Johnson?” Gabe asked.

“Yeah, I think that was it… hey, you guys know everything, don’t you?”

“The circle closes a little,” Ron said to Gabe.

“Johnson hired you to entertain Blaine, correct?” Gabe said to her.

“He hired me to entertain at a party.”

“Just dancing?”

She sighed. “Come on.”

“Johnson hired you for Blaine,” said Gabe.

“Whatever you say… Listen, I got to put on a show. You want me to come back afterwards?”

“Yes,” Ron said. “We’ll buy you another drink.”

“Thanks, big spender.”

A girl had just left the stage—a raised square platform in the center of the room. Barbara Lund stepped
up on the platform. She stood in the center for a moment under bright pink lights, all but ignored by the twenty-five or thirty people at the tables around the platform. She called a word to someone behind the bar and the music began again. She danced.

Ron watched. It was a sad performance. The men at the tables stared dully. They did not change their expressions when she took off the fringed top. They did not change when she slipped down the briefs. She danced through four records. Between the records she stood nude in the middle of the stage. Waiting. No one applauded. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and waited until the music started again. When she took up her bra and briefs off the stage railing and stepped down to the floor, a few actually clapped. Big spenders.

She returned to the table where Ron and Gabe waited for her, tossed the bra on the table and bent forward and pulled on the briefs before she sat down. She picked up the drink she had only sipped before and gulped it down. She snapped her fingers at a waitress, pointed at her empty glass. Finally she picked up the fringed white bra and put it on again.

“Jeremy Johnson’s an operator,” she said quietly to Ron and Gabe. “I’ve worked for him a few times.” She looked down at her hands on the table. “I’m a hooker,” she said, looking up into Ron’s face, then into Gabe’s. “I don’t want my mother to know it, but I’m not ashamed of it and I’m not telling you anything you haven’t figured out. It was business with me and Blaine. Johnson paid me to be with Blaine… three, maybe four times. Then Blaine paid me himself. He liked me.”

“He had more girls than one man could handle,” Ron said, “and he didn’t have to pay them. Why did he pay you, do you suppose?”

She shrugged. “He never came in here. He never saw me… dance. I put on my act in his apartment for him. I guess it sort of interested him. Everybody asks, but he talked to me about it a lot. He was interested. Maybe it turned him on, the idea. One time he asked me to dance for some friends of his. I don’t know who they were. I did it. In his apartment. And so forth. So what’s that got to do with his being murdered?”

“When did you see him last?” Gabe asked.

“A month ago, I think.”

“I want the names of anyone else you saw at parties Johnson gave for Blaine,” Ron said. “If you have to think about it and write them down for me—”

“Honey, c’mon. People don’t
introduce
me. I didn’t know who Blaine was the first night. I mean, I did the whole thing and didn’t know who he was. Look, I’m a nude dancer in a crummy joint, and I’m a prostitute. I mean, not knowing who anybody is, is part of my game. Besides, who’d introduce me? At parties the boys that carry off the dirty dishes got more standing than I’ve got, even if I do make ten times their money. Honey, Barbara’s part of the damn
furniture
.”

Apartment of Commander and Mrs. George Kingsley, Saturday, June 16, 10:15 AM

Martha Kingsley knew he was coming—on the telephone she had said she had been wondering how long it would take the chief investigator of the murder to get to
her—but she opened her apartment door wearing a bra, a half-slip, no shoes or slippers, and, inviting him to her kitchen to sit down at her kitchen table for a cup of coffee, she did not pick up a robe. The coffee was ready. She offered him a croissant with English marmalade.