Murder in the White House (Capital Crimes Book 1) (13 page)

He accepted. “Are you moving?” he asked. The apartment was crowded with taped boxes, the shelves were empty, nails stuck out of bare walls from which pictures had been removed.

“Don’t you know?” She stood at the kitchen counter spooning marmalade from a jar into a small dish. She was an exceptionally attractive dark-haired, brown-eyed young woman—beautiful was not too strong a word for her. “My husband has been assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. We’re moving there next week.”

“Did Lansard Blaine arrange that for you?” Ron asked bluntly.

She looked away from her marmalade to him and smiled. “Knowing him didn’t hurt,” she said.

“I don’t have to ask you what your relationship with Blaine was,” Ron said. “The FBI has filled me in on that.”

She smiled again. “The FBI tells you I stayed all night in his apartment and that he stayed all night here—both more than once. What we were doing, the FBI does
not
know, let me remind you. We might have been working on his stamp collection.”

“Did he have a stamp collection?”

“No.”

He sat at her round glass-topped table and watched her prepare a tray of coffee cups, cream and sugar, butter and marmalade, croissants. Barefoot, in her half-slip and brassiere, she was confident and comfortable—if
anything, amused by the contrast between herself and him in his proper dark blue suit, striped shirt, necktie.

The FBI had furnished him a dossier. Maiden name, Koczinski. Native Washingtonian (rare), twenty-nine years old. She had worked as a secretary at the law firm of McIntyre & Drake, later as secretary-aide to Representative William Horner—working her way through George Washington University, from which she graduated with a degree in English literature. After graduation, public relations writer for Air Transport Association. Married for three years to Commander George Kingsley, Annapolis graduate, career naval officer.

The FBI dossier was assembled because of her association, not just with Lansard Blaine, but with a variety of prominent people. Her marriage seemed never to have interrupted her active and varied social life. While her husband was away from Washington, on sea duty or otherwise, Martha continued to travel a circuit of cocktail parties, dinners, out-of-town weekends, concerts, and shows with senators, congressmen, diplomats, judges, lobbyists, wealthy businessmen. A report in the dossier described an evening and night spent on a yacht with the press attaché of the Soviet Embassy and a visiting associate editor of
Izvestia
—the same week when she spent a night in the apartment of Secretary of State Blaine. It was this coincidence and several others like it that had moved the FBI to open a file on her.

Martha Kingsley put the tray on the table, then the coffee pot. She sat down and poured. “It’s a tragedy about Blaine,” she said. “He was a rare man.”

“The FBI seems to think you’re a rare woman,” Ron said.

She broke a croissant. “Don’t be unsubtle, Mr. Fairbanks. Or too subtle. Anyway, what could the FBI know about rare women?”

She had her point, Ron thought. “When did you last see Blaine?”

“Two or three weeks ago.”

“What was the occasion?”

She smiled. “I spent the night with him in his apartment.”

“Blaine had a variety of young women available to him, as I think you must have known, and you had your other male friends. So why you and Blaine or the night together? What was the nature of the relationship beyond sex?”

“It was highly personal. We
liked
each other.”

“Let me explain something to you,” Ron said. “Discovering the nature of the relationship between you and Blaine is part of the investigation into his death. It may have no relationship to his death. I hope it doesn’t. But I’m going to find out. If necessary I’ll block your husband’s transfer to Paris and keep you in Washington until I find out.”

She flushed with anger. “Do you have that kind of power, Mr. Fairbanks?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t at ease saying it.

“Well, then… just what do you want to know about my relationship with Lansard Blaine?”

“Look, Mrs. Kingsley, I don’t like the role of inquisitor, holding a secret-police dossier on a person and confronting you with that kind of advantage. Believe it or not, I’m opposed to it. But I’ve got a job, I have the FBI file on you, and it’s complete with details—”

“Voyeurs…”

“Maybe. At any rate I have a good deal of information about you and I’ve drawn some conclusions. The file says, to be frank, that you sleep in a lot of beds. The way I read it, though, I don’t think you do it without motive. You didn’t sleep with Blaine just because he was Secretary of State. That made a big impression on a lot of little girls but I don’t think it did on you. So, why, Martha Kingsley? Why Blaine?”

She sighed. “How well did you know him? He was a Renaissance man, Mr. Fairbanks. It could have been… I could have fallen in love with him. I really could have—”

“He didn’t slow you down,” Ron said.

She winced. “That’s hard talk.”

“At the time when you were sleeping with Blaine you were sleeping with a variety of other men,” Ron said. “I’m not quite prepared to accept that you were in love with Blaine.”

“I didn’t say I was in love with him. I said he was worth it.”

“Well, then?”

She held her coffee cup in front of her in both hands. She had regained her composure. She smiled. “Your FBI file really doesn’t suggest why I slept with Blaine? It doesn’t suggest why I entertain—or am entertained by—a variety, as you put it, of men? Really, Mr. Fairbanks, isn’t there a word in there?” She sighed again, this time with impatience, “Prostitute, Mr. Fairbanks,” she snapped. “Prostitute.”

“No,” he said quickly, “no, it doesn’t say that. And I didn’t draw that conclusion either.”

She laughed quietly. “I’m a very expensive, very high-class call girl, Mr. Fairbanks. I’ll slip in the bedroom for an
hour with you right now, if you like, for, say, a hundred dollars. Or I’ll spend a night with you for a minimum of five hundred. I am employed by people to entertain them. Sometimes I am employed by people to entertain other people. How could you and the FBI miss that?”

“Paris…?”

“That’s my retirement.”

“Your husband knows?”

She shrugged. “He’s a good but naive man. He knows, but he doesn’t know everything. He’s also lazy and willing to let his wife procure a good job for him. He’s also charming, and he doesn’t get in my way.”

Ron poured himself more coffee. “That explains why you… It doesn’t explain why Blaine… Are you telling me he paid you?”

She nodded. “He did, or someone else did, every time.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Why? Because he had his little girls any time he wanted them? If you’re that naive, Mr. Fairbanks, I can see why it’s hard for you to understand. Look, I demand, and get, five hundred dollars minimum for spending a night with a man. There are plenty of young women in Washington, just as good-looking as I am, who will do the same for fifty or a hundred. I have two or three appointments a week at five hundred each. Don’t you really know why? It’s not because I’m better in the sack, I’ll tell you that. Any of them can do anything I do. Lansard Blaine and I… well, let me explain it this way. Do you remember the story about Louis XV? One of his mistresses died, and he wept—he wept, a man who could have his pick of any woman at court or the little girls in the Deer Park. He wept, and he said,
‘Who now will tell me the truth?’ I do what I do in the classic tradition, Mr. Fairbanks. I’m a professional listener, a professional sympathizer, a professional propper-up of sagging egos. Lan was a satyr, but he didn’t have a wife. I’m not sure he had a friend. I spent many quiet hours with him, talking about all kinds of things. I could hold up my end of a conversation with him. Many people couldn’t. We talked. Sometimes we didn’t even talk when he was tired or troubled. The sex part of it wasn’t very much, usually. He never omitted it, but it was not the major part of our relationship. He certainly could and did have that cheaper.”

Ron wasn’t too sure he believed all this, and said so.

“Suit yourself.”

He watched her for a moment as she spread orange marmalade on a piece of croissant and nibbled at it, looking away from him, looking out the window at the single leafy limb that intruded between her window and the white-painted brick wall of the neighboring building.

“When did you meet him?”

“A year or so ago,” she said, still looking out the window.

“How did you meet him?”

She glanced at him but looked out again. “I was employed to entertain him.”

“By whom?”

She shook her head.

“Sorry, but I have to know.”

She sighed shortly. “I was paid by the Spanish Embassy.”

“After that?”

“They paid me once more. After that Lan paid me himself.”

“Did he ever suggest a different relationship?”

“He was Secretary of State. I was, am, a call girl, which is known to a great many people, even if the FBI seems to have overlooked it.” She shook her head. “There was no way we could have a relationship other than… occupational.”

“Even so, your relationship was very confidential,” Ron said. “Do you have
any
idea who killed him, or why?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I have no idea.”

“We believe he took bribes. In fact, you say he accepted a gift of your services.”

Martha Kingsley frowned. “Lansard Blaine,” she said intently, “was a
very
complex man, Mr. Fairbanks. It’s difficult to apply simplistic rules of right and wrong to him. I’m afraid he did play a dangerous game. I heard some hints about it.”

“If what you’ve told me is true,” Ron said, “you spent more hours in intimate conversation with him than probably anyone else in Washington. I’m going to have to review all of that conversation with you. Before you leave for Paris we’ll need to have another talk, longer than this one and on the record. I want you to think about it. Reconstruct some of the talk. You may know more than you think. We need to know. Think, Mrs. Kingsley. You’re a bright lady. Think very hard…”

She looked at him for a moment, then slowly nodded.

Special Investigation Office, The West Wing, Saturday, June 16, 2:00 PM

At 1:00 PM Ron gave a briefing to the newswires, TV networks, and reporters from the newspapers who had
people on duty at the White House on Saturday afternoon. He had chosen early Saturday afternoon as a time when not many would be available, a time when the networks and newspaper offices had slowed down for a lazy, late-spring, weekend afternoon. He told the reporters little… he had no solid leads as yet about who had murdered Blaine. The briefing over, he had returned to his office before some of the more aggressive reporters, hastily summoned from their homes, arrived at the White House. They were denied the opportunity to question him.

In his office at 2:00 he received a call from the Navy, a call arranged for two o’clock by a demand he’d made on the duty officer before noon. Captain Frederick Elmendorfer, Special Counsel to the Secretary of the Navy, had returned from Alexandria to check some files and call Fairbanks.

“Frankly, Mr. Fairbanks,” Captain Elmendorfer said—his voice was hard and resentful—“you put the Secretary on a spot.”

“Frankly, Captain, I don’t give a damn. I’m asking you to read me the contents of a file. If what’s in the file puts someone on a spot, then maybe someone has made a mistake. I don’t care about that. I don’t mean to make an issue of it but I intend to know what’s in that file if I have to call the Secretary off the golf course and back to his office this afternoon to read it to me.”

“It’s highly confidential—” He’d fallen back on his last line of defense.

“Not to the President, and I’m acting for the President.”

A sigh. “Okay, Mr. Fairbanks…”

“Commander George Kingsley, what’s the file got?”

“Graduated from Annapolis Class of ’68, he’s served in Panama, the Mediterranean, most of the time at sea. Nothing much on his record, actually. No bad reports. He’s second officer on the
Spruance
—or was until he was assigned recently to the United States Embassy in Paris.”

“Is there anything in his education or record that suggests embassy duty?”

“No. And nothing that suggests he’s not qualified for it either.”

“Does he speak French?”

“The file doesn’t say so.”

“Is it customary to assign officers to diplomatic duty in countries where one of the major languages is spoken if they can’t speak that language?”

“No, sir.”

“Who appointed him?”

A pause. “The Secretary.”

“Personally?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On whose recommendation?”

A longer pause. “Secretary Blaine’s…”

“He was assigned by the Secretary of the Navy on the recommendation of the Secretary of State?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want that file, Captain. Have it sent by messenger to my office this afternoon.”

***

Jill, who had been sitting on the couch listening all during the conversation, grinned and shook her head. “You talk pretty tough, Mr. Chief Investigator.”

“A pose,” Ron said. “Sometimes you need it with the career people.”

“Don’t forget you’re talking to a career civil-service employee.”

“I’m sorry… I just don’t think I could make a career there.”

Her grin turned bitter. “Maybe you had a choice.”

***

He had, indeed. When he graduated from Stanford Law he had offers from both California and New York firms, in addition to the offer of a clerkship with Justice Friederich. These offers had come to him in recognition of his promise as an exceptionally able young lawyer. His personality had been shaped by the recognition he had always had as a bright young man who would go far in whatever career he chose. He had been shaped, too, by the acknowledged envy of his peers.

But Jill’s point was valid. He had had a choice. He still had a choice. He had told President-elect Webster that he would not, probably wasn’t able to, commit himself without reservation. He had a choice.

Service in the White House, though, had amended his sense of himself. The President thought well of him, respected him as a young lawyer. Still, being a bright young lawyer on the White House staff did not afford him power or even much influence. His perspective changed. As he approached the point where ability like his might realize its potential, suddenly the doors did not any longer open so easily, and being the bright young lawyer did not count for so much.