Murder Inside the Beltway (13 page)

He bounced around the country doing odd jobs, stealing when he thought he could get away with it, conning a few old ladies with his boyish, freckled face, curly red hair, and engaging grin.
What a nice young man
, these older women believed until they realized that their bank account was bare and Charming Billy was gone. They never knew his real name; he had an array of aliases, and forged documents to support them. He ran afoul of the law on a few occasions, but wasn’t punished for his misdeeds aside from a two-month stint in a small town Oklahoma jail, where the jailer’s wife was so taken with him that she saw to it that he was well fed.

His break into the “big time” came one day in Baltimore, where he’d ended up selling chimney repairs to senior citizens whose chimneys worked just fine. He’d been on that job for only a week when he befriended Augie, a fellow salesman with big ideas. Augie had recently come out of prison, where he’d served a sentence for running an escort service in Baltimore. He’d been caught in a sting. He’d sent two of his girls to hotels to meet with clients who’d phoned for their services. The problem was that the men were undercover vice squad cops, who arrested the women for solicitation. One of them turned state’s evidence against Augie as the brothel’s owner in exchange for probation.

“It’s a good business, Billy,” Augie told him over beers one night, “only you’ve gotta be smart and clever, figure out ways to beat the cops.”

“Maybe I’d like to take a crack at something like that,” Billy said.

“Not in this town,” Augie counseled. “This new mayor’s on his high horse, man. He’s some kind of evangelist or something. D.C. is better. I got a friend there who runs a service, rakes it in. A cash cow. The cops look the other way; like, you pay them off and they’re cool about it.”

“So, how come you don’t go there and hook up with your friend?” Billy asked.

“Him and me had a falling out, so I stay clear. Besides, I don’t need the aggravation. The biggest problem ain’t the cops, Billy. It’s the girls. They can drive you nuts.”

Billy smiled. “I never have any problems with women,” he said.

“Yeah? Maybe you should take a shot at it, then. Hell, you make a go of it in D.C. and I’ll come see you, maybe hook up with you someday.”

“Maybe so,” Billy said. “How do I get hold of this friend?”

A few weeks later, Billy presented himself at the office of Beltway Entertainment and Escort Service, located in a one-story yellow building with peeling paint, and weeds growing in a bed where flowers once flourished.

Augie’s former friend, Luke Gardner, sat behind a scarred desk, a phone pressed to his ear. Billy was surprised at how old he was; had to be damn near seventy, was Billy’s guess. He wore a large cowboy hat and a silver-tipped string tie over a plaid shirt. “Believe me,” he said into the mouthpiece, “we’re not like other services, no extra charges, no games.… Sure… How do you spell that?… She’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

He looked up at Billy. “What can I do for you?”

“My name’s Billy McMahon. An old friend of yours, Augie, told me to look you up.”

The man guffawed. “That lowlife? Why’d he tell you to look
me
up?”

“Augie’s a jerk,” Billy said with a wide grin, taking the room’s only other chair. “Forget him. I ran some escort services other places, Oklahoma City, Chicago, Baltimore, and figured you might be looking for some help. Believe me, I know how rough this business can be, keeping the broads in line, handling the phone, stuff like that.”

“Tell me about it. What’d you say your name was?”

“Billy. Billy McMahon.” He stood and extended his hand across the desk. “What do you say, Mr. Gardner? Give me a try. You won’t be sorry.”

Gardner sat back and clasped his hands behind his head. “Yeah, I could use an extra hand. You from around here?”

“Just arrived in D.C. The heat was on in Oklahoma City, so I figured I’d head east. From what I hear, D.C. is wide open, everything’s cool with the cops.”

“We get along.”

Their conversation was constantly interrupted by the ringing phone, and the man’s calls to his stable of women, assigning them to various hotels, offices, and homes. Billy was impressed. If this afternoon was any indication, Beltway Entertainment and Escorts was a thriving business.

During a momentary lull, Gardner said, “Maybe it was good you stopped in. I’ve been thinking about hiring someone to take the pressure off me, and you having experience in this business is good. Sometimes I think I’m getting too old for this. When can you start?”

“Right now,” Billy replied. “No time like this time.”

After a hurried briefing on the way things were run at Beltway—the johns pay $250 an hour, sixty percent to the company, forty percent to the girls—Gardner gave Billy a trial run at taking incoming calls and arranging for the callers’ “dates.” He passed muster. Gardner offered him a salary of $600 a week, and told him he would work the slower day shift. “Not too slow, though,” Gardner said, shaking his head. “These high rollers got needs any time of day.”

Things went well over the next year. Billy was in his element. Gardner taught him everything he needed to know about running an escort service, including which members of MPD’s vice squad were on the take in return for looking the other way. Gardner started spending less time in the office and rewarded Billy’s longer hours with raises, enabling him to buy a used silver-gray Audi, and to move from the rooming house in which he’d been staying into a downtown apartment. Although the job didn’t provide perks such as health insurance or a 401K plan, there was the added-value attraction of Beltway’s working women, who provided Billy, albeit reluctantly, with plenty of sex to supplement what he enjoyed from a girlfriend or two.

But Augie had been right. Keeping the “girls” in line was the hardest part of the job, and Billy soon found himself having to get tough with anyone who strayed from the party line. That included an occasional beating, which he enjoyed administering. One escort who’d tried to increase her forty percent take from the tricks she turned ended up with a bloody lip and broken nose, compliments of Billy’s fists. She got his message. Once healed, she never tried to rip them off again.

Gardner suggested to Billy that his tactics might have become too harsh, and that he should try to cajole the women into playing by Beltway’s rules. Billy said he would. But he quietly dismissed the older man’s protestations as a sign of weakness, and used an iron hand from time to time to keep everything running smoothly.

As months went by, the day-to-day running of the business fell more heavily on Billy’s shoulders, and he began to resent his salaried status. He broached the subject of becoming a partner with Gardner, one night over dinner at a local restaurant. To Billy’s surprise, Gardner wasn’t averse to the notion.

“I’ve been thinking that very same thing,” Gardner said. He’d been drinking more lately, and his speech and gait testified to it. Still, Billy knew he was a tough old bird, with leathery skin, a broad chest, and muscled arms. “You know, Billy, I sometimes think of you as a son.”

Billy beamed. “And I’ve been thinking about you, Luke, like the father I never had.”

“What happened to your dad?” Gardner asked.

“The law. He spent practically his whole damn life in prison. He died there.”

Billy McMahon had been lying for so long about so many things that the truth was forever blurred.

“That must have been tough on you, Billy.”

“Yeah, it was. On my mom, too. She was a saint, raising me and my sisters and brothers alone,” Billy, an only child, said.

“You’ve been doing a good job, Billy.”

“Thanks. That means a lot coming from an old pro like you.”

“You know, Billy, I’ve never lost a night’s sleep doing what I’m doing. The government’s got no business telling grown men and women what to do when it comes to sex.”

“I agree with that, Luke, one hundred percent.”

“So here’s what I’m thinking, Billy. I’d like to take more time off, get down to Florida, where I’ve got a house, spend more time with my two daughters there and the grandkids. I’m ready to make you a partner in Beltway.”

“I’d be real flattered, Luke. Real flattered, and grateful.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t want to go too fast. What I’m suggesting is that as my partner, you take a fair share of the profits. Say, twenty percent.”

Billy didn’t allow his disappointment to surface. He’d kept a close eye on the profits. Twenty percent wouldn’t give him much more than he was currently making in salary. He forced a smile and said, “That’s real generous, Luke.”

“Of course,” Luke said, “once I’m gone, the business will be yours.” He laughed. “I can’t leave it to my daughters, now, can I?”

“No, I suppose you can’t, Luke.”

Three weeks later, after the attorney for Beltway had drawn up partnership papers between Billy and Luke Gardner, Luke was run down and killed by what a witness thought was a silver-gray sedan.

The driver was never found.

Beltway Entertainment and Escorts now belonged to Billy McMahon.

“B
eltway. You’d like to book a date?”

“No. I’m looking for Billy McMahon.”

Billy paused.
He smelled trouble. He usually could
.

“Are you Mr. McMahon?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Detective Jackson, Washington MPD.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m speaking with Mr. McMahon?”

“That’s right.”

“We’d like to meet with you, Mr. McMahon.”

“What about?”

Billy went through a fast mental calculation.
The payoffs to the vice squad cops are up-to-date
.

“About the murder of Rosalie Curzon. When’s a good time for us to get together?”

“I don’t know. I run a busy business and—”

“We can dispatch officers to bring you here to headquarters,” Jackson said. “Or we can talk to you at your place of business. Your choice.”

“I don’t know anything about a murder.”

“Ms. Curzon worked for you as an escort.”

“She did? I don’t remember her.”

“Shall I send officers to pick you up, Mr. McMahon? Or—?”

“All right, all right, you can come here. How about tomorrow?”

“How about in an hour?” Jackson said.

“An hour? Jesus, I—”

“A half hour,” Jackson said.

“You’re breakin’ my chops over nothing. Yeah, all right, an hour.”

Hatcher walked into headquarters as Jackson and Hall were winding up their conversation with McMahon. They filled in the senior detective on what had transpired, and also told him of their telephone conversation with Craig Thompson, and of Jackson’s chance meeting with the owner of the Silver Veil, which revealed that Thompson had lied about when he’d last seen Rosalie Curzon.

“We’re heading over to interview McMahon,” Mary said.

“Okay,” Hatcher said. “Give me the contact info on Thompson. I’ll take a shot at him.”

“How’re you feeling, Hatch?” Mary asked.

“Good. I feel good.”

Which was true in a relative sense. His headache’s severity had lessened, but was still there, and waves of nausea came and went, like the tide.

“What about Patmos, Senator Barrett’s chief-of-graft?” he asked.

“I couldn’t reach him yesterday,” Mary said, “but I’ll try again later.”

After another fifteen minutes of conferring, Jackson and Hall checked out an unmarked vehicle and headed for the offices of Beltway Entertainment and Escorts.

“The fact that Curzon worked there doesn’t mean much,” she offered as they sat in a traffic jam created by a disabled truck.

“Except that Micki Simmons told me that the owner was furious with Curzon for leaving the agency and taking clients with her. She claims he threatened to kill her.”

“We all make angry threats once in a while,” Mary said.

“I never have.”

“You’ve never been mad enough at someone to say you wanted to kill them?”

He shook his head.

“Well,” she said, “I have, but I didn’t mean it literally. It was just a figure of speech.”

“Yeah, but the way Micki Simmons put it to me, this McMahon character wasn’t into figures of speech. He meant it.”

“We’ll see,” she said.

Billy McMahon sat behind a desk, wearing a wireless telephone headset. Next to him was a middle-aged woman logging in calls as they were received. Ordinarily, Billy wore jeans, sandals, and a T-shirt of various bright colors to work. But knowing he would be receiving a visit from cops, he changed into a dark blue suit, white shirt with an open collar, and black tasseled loafers he kept in a locker. He was in the midst of a call when Jackson and Hall entered. They waited patiently just inside the door for him to acknowledge their presence. He mumbled something to the woman to his right, indicated with a finger that he would be with them in a moment, removed the headset, handed it to the woman, and stood.

“Welcome to Beltway Entertainment,” he said.

“Mr. McMahon?”

“That’s right, William McMahon.” He came around the desk and extended his hand, first to Mary, then with some reluctance to Jackson. “You must be the detective who called. Like some coffee, soda pop, maybe something stronger?”

“Where can we sit down and talk?” Jackson asked.

“How about my conference room?” Billy suggested, leading them through a door into a small office that contained a rickety card table and four chairs. “Pardon the mess,” he said, “but I’m just in the process of moving the offices downtown, a nice high-rise, as high as you can be in this town.” He laughed. “They have a law that says no building can be taller than twenty feet higher than the width of the street it’s on. Bet you didn’t know that.”

“It’s a 1910 law,” Jackson said. “Before that, no building could be taller than the Capitol Building.”

Mary smiled and looked to McMahon for a response.

“Looks like you’re a history buff,” McMahon said to Matt. “So am I. I love history.”

Jackson and Hall sat and stared at him. He, too, took a chair.

“Now, what can I do for you gentlemen?” he said. “Oops, ladies and gentlemen.” He gave them a toothy smile.