Murder Inside the Beltway (15 page)

He drove from the garage and navigated traffic to I-95, careful to keep his speed below that which would attract police attention. He headed north into Maryland until the turnoff onto Route 32, toward Columbia. Fifteen minutes later he pulled into the parking lot of a Federal period mansion, once a stately home that had been rebuilt in 1890 after a fire, more recently a popular restaurant, the Kings Contrivance. He took note of other cars in the lot. One, he knew, belonged to Deborah Colgate. Another contained two young Secret Service agents, who’d been told to wait outside.

He entered the old house and told the hostess that he was meeting someone in the Columbia Room, one of several small, intimate spaces that could be reserved for private meetings. Deborah sat alone at a large, circular table set for two. Rollins nodded to the hostess, who smiled and closed the door behind him.

Seeing that the drapes were drawn over the room’s only window, he kissed her cheek.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

He sat next to her. “You sounded… well, you sounded upset,” he said.

“I was. I am.”

Her hands were splayed on the crisp white linen tablecloth. He covered one with his own. “What’s going on, Deb? What’s the problem?”

She withdrew her hand and stiffened her spine against the chair’s back. “I can’t do this anymore, Jerry. That’s what’s going on.”

“The campaign,” he said flatly. “It’s getting to you.”

“It’s gotten to me ever since it started,” she said. “There comes a point when no one should have to be subjected to what I’ve had to endure.”

He drank from his water glass. “You aren’t considering dropping out, are you?”

A laugh burst from her. “Considering it? Come on, Jerry, you know I’ve been
considering it
from day one.”

“Considering is one thing, Deb. Acting upon it is another.” He wasn’t sure of the next thing to say, so he suggested they order lunch.

“Drink?” he asked.

“No.”

He summoned a waitress: he considered having a single malt scotch—the restaurant was noted for its collection of single malts—but thought better of it and seconded her iced tea order. Each opted for rockfish filets stuffed with crabmeat over bok choy.

They said little until drinks and salads arrived.

“Bob spoke with me a few days ago about the situation,” Rollins told her.

“What situation?”

“The rumors about his alleged adulteries, and your refusal to address them.”

“God, you
are
a lawyer, aren’t you,” she said. “ ‘Alleged’? You know as well as I do that he’s been sleeping around for our entire marriage.”

Rollins knew she was right, of course, but didn’t confirm what she’d said. There was nothing to be gained, and he had become adroit over the years at withholding comments that didn’t promise a benefit, just as he’d honed his ability to lie when an occasion suggested or demanded it—usually small white lies, lies of omission, mostly in a professional context, but sometimes personal, too. He didn’t consider having told Sue that morning that he was having lunch with Scraggs to be a lie. It was simply pragmatic. To have said that he was driving to a romantic inn in Maryland to have lunch with Deborah Colgate would have created an awkward moment. Awkward moments with Sue were best avoided.

Rollins considered his next words. “Let’s say that’s true, Deb. I would never, could never, condone that. But if it’s been going on for as long as you say—and you’ve been aware of it for all those years—then why choose this pivotal moment to take action? I know you’ve never been a fan of politics, and you know that I haven’t been either. But to bail out on Bob now seems to me to be—”

“To be what, Jerry? Unpatriotic? Disloyal?”

“Those are your words, not mine.”

The serving of their lunch interrupted the conversation. With the waitress gone, Deborah said, “I’m afraid, Jerry.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything blowing up in my face, a revelation from the Pyle people, a bombshell of some kind, photos, another bimbo rising out of the gutter…”

He cocked his head waiting for her next words.

“A revelation about us.”

They’d discovered that their feelings for each other ran deeper than close friends shortly after Bob Colgate announced his run for the presidency. Of course, they weren’t strangers meeting on a train, or falling into each other’s arms on a business trip. They’d known each other for a long time, from her husband’s days in the Maryland senate.

Back then, Rollins was an up-and-coming D.C. attorney who’d been recommended to Colgate’s recently formed special task force on a banking scandal that had rocked the state’s financial institutions. The governor and Rollins quickly forged a close working relationship that morphed into a personal friendship despite their obvious differences.

Colgate was as gregarious and impetuous as Rollins was reserved and calculating. Physically, they were opposites, too. Governor Colgate was a tall, solidly built man who was forever dieting to thwart a tendency to pack on weight. He had a mane of sandy hair with just the right tinge of gray at the temples, and a ruddy complexion. Rollins was slender, and shorter than his powerful friend. His complexion was as gray as his outlook, his silky dark hair thinning, off-the-rack clothing drab in comparison to Colgate’s custom-made suits and shirts from Savile Row.

It was their differences that brought them increasingly close.

Rollins’s thoughtful nature, honed by his law training, balanced Colgate’s penchant for shooting from the hip and the trouble to which it occasionally led. And Colgate’s loose style provided Rollins with, by extension, the excitement lacking in his day-to-day life.

As their working relationship solidified, their families grew closer, too. Sue, Deborah, and Deb’s college roommate, Connie Bennett, became a threesome, although Deborah’s duties as Maryland’s first lady often limited her availability to socialize with them. Still, there were plenty of occasions when they hooked up for a shopping spree, a girls’ night out, or a lengthy gabfest during which they exchanged views of virtually everything, including their love lives.

At parties enjoyed by the couples, spirits were high and laughter reigned. Spirits of the other kind flowed freely at those soirees, loosening tongues and lowering inhibitions, although never to the point of waking up in the morning embarrassed at what had transpired the previous evening. But after Bob Colgate left the governor’s mansion and started laying plans for his run at the White House, the tenor of the parties changed, at least for Deborah and Rollins. They would find a quiet corner away from the festivities and engage in long, private conversations. At first, their spouses made jokes about it: “Hey, you two, what the hell are you plotting over there? Come on, join the crowd.”

They would mingle as prompted, but after participating in the gaiety, would gravitate back to that more secluded space, where they would pick up their conversation.

Sue Rollins was the first to question her husband about those moments.

“What do you and Deb talk about?” she asked, easing into what was really on her mind.

“Talk about? Politics, how the Redskins are doing, Washington gossip. The usual.”

“I’d almost think you were planning an affair.”

“Oh, come on, Sue, that’s absurd.”

“No it’s not. People are talking.”

“Who’s talking?”

“Others at the parties. Marcia Davis wondered whether you were bored with our friends.”

“Hardly, but you know I’m not much for social chitchat. I love our friends. It’s just that after a while, I like to find some quiet.”

“With Deb.”

“I suppose she’s looking for quiet space, too.”

“I just don’t want to see a nasty rumor start, that’s all, with Bob running for president and—”

They were sitting next to each other on a glider on their screened porch when Sue raised the topic. Rollins put his arm over her shoulders and pulled her close. “Sue, my darling, Washington, D.C., is the capital of nasty rumors. You know that. The last thing I would ever want is to end up on the receiving end of one of those rumors. Tell you what, at the next party I’ll wear a lamp shade and—”

“That’s not funny, Jerry.”

“No, I guess it isn’t. What I mean is that Deb and I both enjoy finding some space at the gatherings, that’s all. But if you think it’s inappropriate, that’s the end of it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

But it wasn’t the end of it.

They began finding that “quiet space” away from the parties, away from everyone, including their spouses. Their growing infatuation with each other moved slowly, and involved only spasmodic meetings, on a park bench on a sunny day, or lunch outside the Beltway at a nondescript, sparsely populated restaurant. There was no physical intimacy during these initial days, aside from kisses on the cheek, and hugs when leaving. It was all talk, a sharing of views, and the recounting of stories from their pasts. She was taken with his quiet, thoughtful demeanor and clearheaded take on issues large and small, while he responded to what he perceived as her innate decency, and easy acceptance of ideas other than her own.

At times, of course, the topic turned to their respective married lives and spouses. Neither was harshly critical of their mates, although an undercurrent of dissatisfaction was usually present. For Deborah, of course, the allegations of Bob’s infidelities were at the root of her disenchantment with her marriage, and Rollins’s ear was forever sympathetic to her obvious pain. His discontent had nothing to do with Sue. Had he a complaint about her, it was that she tended to be jealous, the irony of which wasn’t lost on him as he sat holding hands with one of Sue’s best friends. For him, it was more a matter of a vague restlessness that butted heads with his buttoned-down, pedantic approach to life. He was, he told Deborah, a classic Apollonian personality, a person who acted upon what his head told him, rather than his heart. “I sometimes wonder what it would be like on the other side,” he told her.

“The other side of what?” she asked.

“The Dionysian side,” he explained, “the side where the heart rules and you’re free to be naked and ride bareback through a field at night, like the character from
Equus
.” They’d seen a revival at the Kennedy Center, and their reaction to the play and its message had dominated much of their conversation in the days following.

Rollins got his chance to taste the “other side” a few weeks later. Bob Colgate was preparing for his first primary debate, with four other candidates, and had dispatched Deborah as his surrogate to Philadelphia for a meeting of Pennsylvania campaign strategists. Jerry decided to drive the Porsche, and invited her to join him. Bob Colgate kidded with them before they left: “Keep that thing under ninety,” he said, “and get the future first lady back here in one piece.”

“Not to worry,” Rollins said.

His departure from his home hadn’t been quite as sanguine. Sue expressed her displeasure at both his driving there in the Porsche and his taking Deborah with him. “She should be traveling on her own,” Sue offered, “and have Secret Service protection.”

“It’s too early in the primary for protection of spouses,” he explained. “Besides, it’s a chance for me to open up the Porsche a little. Since I’m driving there anyway, it just makes sense for Deb to go along.”

Sue didn’t pursue her objection. After all, there had never been any tangible evidence to support concerns about her husband having an affair with anyone, much less the wife of his best friend and one of her closest chums. Still.…

Rollins’s jump to the other side occurred during that trip to Philadelphia. He and Deborah had adjacent rooms in the hotel. Late the first night, after an all-day round of meetings, they relaxed in his room with a drink. Ending up in bed just seemed to happen, no preplanning (although both obviously knew that it was in the offing), no seductive choreographing, no losing decorum because of too much liquor (a single drink each), no excuses.

It just happened.

And would happen again over the coming years, not often, always circumspect, the secret theirs, too much at stake, families to be destroyed, reputations to be upheld—and a future president of the United States being cuckolded.

Was there guilt?

Lots of it for Jerry Rollins. Less so for Deborah Colgate. At one point, she told him that she considered their affair to be retribution of a sort for all the cheating her husband had done over the years. For the logical Rollins, that smacked of illogic. It also caused him to wonder whether she’d used him to extract revenge on her husband, hardly the sort of stuff Dionysian dreams are made of. He considered breaking off the relationship many times, usually the day after they’d ended up in a tangle of hotel sheets after meetings to advance Bob Colgate’s presidential aspirations. There was something wrong with it, he felt.

But it was too sweet to end it, the smell and feel of her, and the roar of his Porsche’s mighty engine, his lifelines to the other side.

They left the King’s Contrivance separately, she first, he following fifteen minutes later. Nothing had been accomplished. Their lunches sat barely touched, appetites suppressed by more pressing needs. Nothing had been decided. Like Connie Bennett, he’d persuaded her to step back and disengage from the day-to-day rigors of the campaign, to get away for a few days, take a deep breath, and clear the turmoil assaulting her mind.

But he knew she wouldn’t follow that advice, and the contemplation of having her running loose, her nerves frayed and reasoning powers compromised, sent a shiver up his spine. More than anyone, he knew what that could mean.

H
atcher reviewed Jackson’s notes on Craig Thompson, paying particular attention to the apparent lies Thompson had told about when he’d last seen his former girlfriend, Rosalie Curzon. Nothing gave Hatcher more pleasure, gave
any
detective more pleasure, than catching a potential suspect in a lie. Liars were stupid, like trying to cover up a crime was stupid. Hatcher had worked hundreds of cases over his career in which the cover-ups and lies were more damaging to the suspect than the crime itself. Politicians were the dumbest, as far as he was concerned. Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton. You’d think they’d learn.