Paramour (28 page)

He pulled open the door and broke into a run.

The woman ran after him, dropping her grocery sack. "Help, police! Help!"

At the corner, Powers entered the Metro entrance and ran down the stairs. At the first landing, he hurried to a ticket machine and purchased a subway ticket. Stepping onto a down escalator, he jogged right and left as he moved past other passengers. Reaching the lobby below, he turned and glanced toward the top of the escalator.

The woman in the red dress and two tall DC policemen were standing looking down, scanning the lobby crowd. Powers turned away and felt his breath quicken. He strolled over to three businessmen chatting near the rest room. Standing near them with his back toward the escalators, he hoped he would look like part of the group. After a minute or two, one of the men stopped chatting, looked at him strangely, and nodded to the others. They turned to look at him. Powers gave a wan smile and moved on.

Moving quickly, but not so fast as to draw attention to himself, Powers walked to the rest room entrance and pushed through the swinging door. Stepping into one of the twenty toilet stalls, he pulled the letters from his pocket and sorted through them. They were all mail advertisements except for Marilyn Kasindorf s August telephone bill. He shoved the bill in his trouser pocket, tore the ad mail into small pieces, and flushed them down the toilet.

Shrugging off his jacket and removing his tie, he checked to make sure there were no laundry tags. Then he stepped out of the stall. There was no one else in the rest room. He shoved the jacket and tie into the trashcan. The woman and the cops wouldn't be looking for a man wearing an open=collared white shirt. Quickly surveying the room, he could see the mirror over the sinks provided a view of the entrance door. By standing at a sink he would be shielded from the view of anyone entering, at least until they turned past the metal partition between the door and the sinks.

At a sink, he turned on a faucet. Using the mirror to keep an eye on the door while listening intently for the sound of an arriving train, he rubbed his hands together under running water to avoid being conspicuous to the passengers moving in and out of the rest room. He figured he would stay that way until the train arrived. One of the policemen entered through the swinging door. Without drying his hands, Powers moved directly out the exit swinging-door. The woman from the apartment house was standing just outside the rest room, and he almost walked into her. Thankfully, she was staring at the train platform. Keeping out of her line of sight, Powers walked the opposite way, back toward the escalator. There were about twenty passengers waiting on the train platform, but still no train. Powers considered making a run for the escalator but decided against it, figuring the other cop was waiting at the top of the landing in case he doubled back.

There was the sound of a train in the tunnel.

The policeman came out of the bathroom and spoke with the woman. She made shrugging motions, probably to say she couldn't imagine where Powers had gone.

The train slowed as it approached the platform.

Powers knew that if he didn't make it onto the car, there would be no way to avoid being discovered when the train departed and the train platform and lobby cleared.

Someone touched his shoulder. Powers felt a cold shudder pass through his body. He turned. It was an elderly black woman carrying a shopping bag. Powers let out his breath.

"Where do you get the tickets?"

Powers pointed up the escalator. The woman moved away.

The train car pulled to a stop at the platform. Its doors opened. The officer and the woman walked onto the train platform. Believing there was nothing else he could do, Powers joined the crowd of passengers hurrying toward the platform. His heart was beating wildly. Though he didn't turn his head to look, he had the feeling that he might have actually bumped into the policeman as he edged his way through the crowd and into the train. The woman and the policeman were still looking about.
What's holding up this goddam train?

The woman was looking in his direction. She pointed and said something to the policeman. The policeman headed toward the car.

The doors of the subway car closed. As the train pulled away from the platform the cop pulled his radio from his belt and transmitted. Because he knew policemen weren't stationed at every subway stop, when the train car came to a halt at the next stop, Powers ran out the door and across the lobby. Breathing hard, he ran up the moving escalator, bumping past passengers. At the street, he shouted down a taxi and climbed in. He was back at his apartment a few minutes later.

Sitting at the dinette table in his apartment, Powers unfolded Marilyn's telephone bill. Though there were nineteen calls listed on the bill, there were only eight different telephone numbers dialed. Of these calls, only one, which had been called four times, bore a long-distance prefix. Though the billing period covered the entire month of August, there were no calls made after 7 A.M. Monday, August twelfth.

Since Powers knew that government employees made most of their personal telephone calls and certainly all of their long-distance calls while at work from a government phone, he didn't consider the paucity of calls on the bill unusual. Civil service workers considered the use of the government phone lines while at work an added perk. One by one, Powers dialed the numbers. By the way the phones were answered or by asking a few brief questions he determined the numbers were registered as follows: (1) CIA Headquarters, (2) the White House, (3) La Serre restaurant, and (4) a French laundry located near Scott Circle.

The one long-distance number was 415-926-8319. If he remembered correctly, 415 was the area code for San Francisco. Checking the dates on a calendar, he determined that all four calls were made after 7:30 P.M. on week nights.

Powers dialed the number. It rang twelve times. He set the receiver down.

He considered phoning someone at the Secret Service field office in San Francisco and asking them to check the number in a reverse telephone directory, but he was no longer a Secret Service agent.

So he phoned Sharon Fantozzi. She answered on the second ring.

"It's Jack," he said. "I just got your message."

"You're such a liar, Jack."

"I've been out of town. Didn't you get my postcard?"

"I love the way you lie. I think it's cute. Where were you--or is that some deep dark secret?"

"Europe."

"That narrows it down to a continent, anyway."

"How are things at the phone company?" Powers asked.

"Boring. Why don't you come over and cheer me up?"

"I need a favor, Sharon."

"You know I'm always good for a favor."

"Seriously. I need subscriber information on a San Francisco number."

"I could lose my job giving out subscriber information."

"I'm involved in something very important and I need this."

"You sound uptight, Jack. Is everything okay?"

"Of course. It's just that I'm working on an investigation that doesn't allow me to go through regular channels."

"I guess I should have figured you weren't calling to take me out to dinner."

"As soon as the case is over I'll take you to Duke Ziebert's . . . or anywhere you name."

"I'd settle for having you over here to jump my skinny little bones."

"Do you have a pencil handy?"

"Okay, smooth talker," Sharon said sarcastically.

Powers read off the number and she read it back.

"I'll see what I can do," she said.

The back yard of Landry's newly built home in Fairfax, Virginia, a patch of grass surrounded by a neat grape-stake fence, was like all the others on the block. The development was called Keyboard Estates, and the signboard advertising the tract depicted a piano keyboard street between palatial homes.

Powers, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, sipped a beer as Landry tended his homemade barbecue, a hundred-gallon steel drum on welded steel legs. Wearing a butcher's apron, Landry turned barbecued sides of rib with a long fork. His six-year-old-son, Reggie, wearing a soccer uniform, stood next to him, dutifully extinguishing flames when needed with a clear-plastic squirt gun.

"In her apartment there was an electrical outlet with the face plate removed," Powers said.

Landry hung the fork on a hook on the side of the barbecue. "Reggie, why don't you see what you can do to help your mom? If there are any more fires, I'll let you know."

"Okay, Dad," Reggie said. He rushed toward the house.

"The CIA probably rented the apartment for her while she was assigned to the White House," Landry said, using a basting brush to apply barbecue sauce to the meat. "When she defected, they sent some clean-up folks to make sure there was nothing of theirs left in her apartment."

Powers reached into his pocket for the tiny length of insulated wire he'd found in Marilyn's apartment. "What about this?"

Landry examined the wire closely. "Antenna wire. Patterson might have suspected her of working for the other side and had the apartment bugged."

"The CIA suspects her of espionage and continues to allow her access to Top Secret papers? I just can't see it."

"Maybe he gave her access to planted papers ... a disinformation operation. Patterson loves that kind of doublethink bullshit. Or maybe he was just trying to record some sweet talk between her and the man: political blackmail. Maybe he's waiting to leak the story to the press. A Director of the CIA who wants to make the President look bad might do anything."

Powers nodded. "Ken, you should have been a politician."

At dinner, Doris Landry, a pixyish woman with light brown skin and shiny corn-rowed hair, was overly solicitous to Powers. A former career-minded Secret Service headquarters secretary who understood the politics of the Secret Service as well as anyone, she had opted for being a full-time housewife after her marriage to Landry. Though she frequently spoke disparagingly of the Director and his staff of "Beltway bandits," as she called them, during dinner she'd been careful not to touch on anything that would lead to the topic of Powers's resignation or even the general subject of the Secret Service. This made Powers uncomfortable.

With the meal finished and Reggie and seven-year-old Tisha having cleaned off the table, Doris brought out coffee and filled cups. She sat down next to Powers and took his hand. Landry met her eyes with a frown.

"Ken isn't going to like me saying this, but I believe in speaking my mind. As far as I'm concerned, you're one of the best Secret Service agents ever."

"Thanks, Doris, but you don't have to-"

"Ken isn't very good at expressing his deepest feelings because men are just that way," she said, with tears in her eyes, "but both of us want you to know that you've always been a fine friend and a wonderful man . . . and I think you got screwed by the President. I would tell him that to his face."

Powers put his arm around her. "Thanks, Doris," he said, feeling a lump in his throat.

Landry turned away and wiped his eyes. He grabbed his cup and saucer and took them to the sink.

With the tension broken, the rest of the evening proceeded cordially, as had so many others he'd spent with them, usually accompanied by a date to whom he'd invariably have to explain the Secret Service inside jokes.

Later, as Doris put the children to bed, Powers and Landry sat down with more coffee in the kitchen. Using the wall phone, Powers dialed Sharon Fantozzi.

"I phoned your apartment. Where are you, out dipping your wick?"

"Just having dinner with a pal."