The President's Killers (17 page)

SEVENTY-TWO

Slowly Meesh let her breath out. “My heart’s doing a jig!”

To their amazement, when she pulled over to the side of the road, the blue state trooper’s car had zoomed past them and shot up the highway ahead of them. The uniformed officer at the wheel didn’t even glance in their direction.

“Look how my hand is trembling,” she said.

“You were great, babe! Everybody thinks I’m alone. And nobody knows we’re in this car.”

As they drew nearer to the Beltway around Washington, Denny studied a map of the metropolitan area on her laptop. Thirty minutes later, they entered Falls Church, the town shown on Lott’s driver’s license as his place of residence.

They found East Street, a commercial strip, and started down it, hunting for the street numbers on the buildings. There were no homes or apartment buildings, only store fronts.

“It should be right here somewhere,” Meesh said.

“I don’t see — “

“There! Look, 1844.”

She pointed at a gas station on the corner.

“Oh, great. And you can bet Lott’s name is just as phony as his address.”

Disappointed, they decided to follow Arlington Boulevard into Washington, turning onto F Street near its western terminus.

According to the map, F ran east for a few blocks until it reached the Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House. The street resumed again on the other side of the White House, just beyond the Treasury Department Building.

Huge, squat government buildings lined the street. Meesh drove slowly, uncertain what they were searching for.

At 18th they passed an enormous granite building, the General Services Administration Building. Just ahead of them, at the end of F, was the side of a big, ornate gray building.

“That must be the old Executive Office Building,” Meesh said.

They drove up and down the area for several minutes, peering at the buildings.

“Look over there!” he said.

“What?”

“On the right. See the red canopy?”

On the ground floor of one of the buildings was a swanky-looking restaurant. In elegant white script on the wine-colored awning was its name:
Patrice’s
.

The softly lit barroom was completely round. Except for the bartender and a lanky patron with a deep suntan seated at the bar, the room was empty.

Denny and Meesh chose a table near the floor-to-ceiling windows. Just beyond the sheer white curtains, people hurried past on the sidewalk. The rush hour was beginning.

They glanced around the room. On each table there was a pink carnation and sprig of baby’s breath, along with a small bowl of popcorn. The background music was Mozart.

“Lovely place,” she said.

He nodded and inspected the salmon-colored matchbook in the ashtray. Patrice’s address and phone number were stamped on the cover, beneath a sketch of the restaurant. The last three digits of the phone number were 039, the same numbers on the slip of paper they had found in Lott’s wallet.

“Look at this,” he said.

She examined the matchbook and squeezed his hand. “I think this is it.”

“So do I.”

SEVENTY-TWO

They ordered beers and picked at the popcorn.

A few minutes later, two young women entered and sat down at a table next to them.

The waiter, a swarthy Middle Eastern type in a black bow tie, introduced himself as Manseur.

“Are you a regular waiter here?” Denny asked him.

“Yes, sure I am.”

“Do you know a guy named Jerry Lott?”

The waiter screwed up his face. “Lott? No, Mr. Lott I don’t know.”

“How about McQueen? Know anybody named McQueen?”

Manseur shook his head.

“In his fifties, silver hair?”

“No. Maybe they come here and I don’t know them. Is possible.”

They turned their attention back to the bowl of popcorn as a large, immaculately dressed older man entered the bar room and joined the young women at the next table.

The plump one twisted around and sat with her white-stockinged legs towards him. With her short plaid skirt pulled up tight across her upper thighs, the view was intriguing and she knew it.

From the bits of conversation Denny could hear, it was clear they all worked in the same Government agency, the older man at a higher level than the young women.

Before long, every table and every stool at the bar was occupied.They watched people come and go until almost eight o’clock.

“We need to find a motel,” Meesh said.

“Let’s give it another ten minutes.”

When they finally left, the bar room and adjacent dining room were filled, the noise level had risen sharply, and the legs of the plump young woman next to them and her older male colleague were firmly intertwined.

When Special Assistant to the Director Bambrick opened the door of his Madison motel room at 6:30 the next morning, the
Wisconsin State Tribune
was lying on the carpeted hallway floor outside the room. He knelt on one knee to pick it up and glanced at the front page as he rose.

There at the top of the page was a large, four-column headline:

DOES FBI BELIEVE ASSASSIN

IS HIDING OUT IN MADISON?

“Shit,” he muttered. “There goes Kinney and here come the goddamn media!”

SEVENTY-THREE

Their suspicions about Patrice’s were confirmed the next day.

After a fruitless two-hour lunch at the place, Denny and Meesh came back in the evening to sip beers in the bar room. Denny had used his crutches at lunch, but abandoned them when it became apparent they attracted too much attention.

Again there was no sign of McQueen, but before they left Meesh went to the rest room. When she returned, Denny saw the excitement in her eyes.

“How about this?” She showed him a sheet of peach-colored paper with Patrice’s letterhead at the top. “There’s a stack of them on a table by the maitre d’s stand.”

The sheet contained a menu for a special vintner’s dinner. It was the same type of paper as the scrap they found in Lott’s wallet.

“Same zip code, too,” she said.

“This is it, it’s got to be!”

They returned each day just before the dinner hour. On the fourth evening, their persistence paid off.

Across the room from them, on the opposite side of the bar, was a group of four men and two women. Manseur had pushed three tables together, and as the hour grew later the size of the group kept growing.

“Want a refill?” Denny asked Meesh.

“No, I’m fine.”

He pushed his chair back. “Afraid I’ve got to use the boys’ room.”

He left the bar room and walked alongside the open dining area, past the maitre d’s stand, to the rest room.

Before returning, he checked his appearance in the men’s room mirror, running his hand over his bare scalp and adjusting his wire-rimmed eyeglasses. His nerdy appearance still embarrassed him.

He left the rest room and retraced his steps. As he walked past the mustachioed maitre d’ near the main entrance, his blood leaped.

Less than twenty feet in front of him, two men were entering the building. One was McQueen.

He looked directly at Denny.

SEVENTY-FIVE

Denny turned towards the maitre d’, bracing himself for an outburst of excited shouts.

The maitre d’s teeth flashed beneath his bushy mustache. “Yes, sir.”

There were no shouts. No commotion.

“Where’s the rest room?” Denny said.

The maitre d’ pointed to the sign.

Out of the corner of his eye, Denny saw McQueen and his companion, entering the bar room. They were being greeted by the group crowded around the three tables.

McQueen had looked right at him without recognizing him. Denny returned to the table where Meesh was sitting.

As soon as she saw his face, he could tell she knew. “Is that…”

He nodded.

They sat staring at the silvery head across the room. It was the same impeccably dressed man who’d grilled him at the Short Hills Inn. When Manseur reappeared, Denny nodded towards McQueen.

“The guy over there with the silver hair looks very familiar. Do you know who he is?”

“Yes, sure. Mr. Crittenden.”

“Crittenden?”

Manseur nodded.

“Who is he? Is he with the FBI?”

“Oh, no, no. The ones who guard the President.”

SEVENTY-SIX

He did exactly what they expected.

When Crittenden left Patrice’s he came out onto F Street and walked west, away from the old Executive Office Building.

Denny, sitting motionless in the Taurus, watched the dark figure with silver hair cross the intersection and head north on 18th Street. The sky was nearly black, but the street was well-lighted.

Meesh had stayed in the bar room to keep an eye on Crittenden while Denny got their car. When she came out and spotted Denny, Crittenden was already halfway up the block.

She slipped behind the steering wheel. “Where is he?”

“He just went into that parking garage. Let’s get up by the next intersection.”

She drove past the garage and parked just short of Pennsylvania Avenue. Since Eighteenth was a one-way street, Crittenden had no choice but to come up to Pennsylvania.

They waited only a few minutes. Then a dark Mercury emerged from the parking garage. As it glided past them, they could see the silvery head behind the steering wheel. He was turning left onto Pennsylvania.

They followed, keeping almost a full block behind him.

“He’s probably going to Georgetown,” Meesh said.

The Mercury turned onto M, then onto Wisconsin Avenue. They trailed it into Georgetown’s quaint business section. At the next intersection, he went through a yellow light.

“Oh, oh!” she said. The red light came on, and she braked to a halt. “Damn!”

She had no choice. Getting pulled over by a cop for running a red light could be disastrous.

“Come on, come on,” Denny urged the traffic signal. “Turn, dammit!”

Ahead of them, Crittenden was drawing farther and farther away.

A few moments later, they lost him.

“I don’t see the car anymore.”

“Me either.”

When the light finally changed, Meesh tried to make up the lost ground but other cars kept blocking their way. They crept past foreign restaurants, the Georgetown Inn, expensive apparel shops, and fancy food markets.

When they reached the end of the business district, they drove along Wisconsin for several more blocks, but saw no sign of Crittenden’s car.

“Why don’t you try one of the side streets?” Denny said.

Meesh turned onto a dark cobblestone street lined with trees, red-brick sidewalks, and pastel-colored brick row houses. Stubby, turn-of-the-century street lamps created dim pools of light at the end of each block.

She drove up and down several residential streets intersecting with Wisconsin, but they saw no one getting out of a car, no one pulling into a garage. The streets were empty, the lighted houses still.

They checked Georgetown phone numbers on her laptop, but found no listing for Crittenden.

“Damn!”

“We blew it,” she said.

Gazing at the Washington Monument glistening in the dark sky in the distance, Meesh said, “Isn’t it beautiful? Let’s go past the monuments.”

She drove up and down Constitution Avenue and around the Tidal Basin. They gawked at the lighted Washington and Lincoln monuments, at the memorials to the Vietnam and Korean War veterans, at the gracious Jefferson Memorial.

Even at that hour, they could see the dark figures of a few tourists.

“Everything is so beautiful, isn’t it?” She looked at him. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t have a clue,” he said.

SEVENTY – SEVEN

At breakfast the next morning in the motel’s coffee shop, Meesh had an idea.

As a high school senior, she had once worked as a volunteer at a polling place on election day. The experience suggested a ruse they might try.

“Who knows?” Denny said after hearing her out. “It’s worth a try.”

“Do you think I could pull if off?”

“Sure you can. You’re a very, very formidable person. And not too bad in the sack either.”

She dipped a finger into her glass of water and flicked it at him.

They waited until nine-thirty. Then they went to a pay phone in the hotel lobby. With Denny standing beside her to shield her from two white-haired women on a nearby sofa, Meesh punched the main number for the United States Secret Service.

“Mr. Crittenden’s office,” Meesh said.

“One moment, please.”

She heard a woman’s voice. “Archives, Susan Rogan.”

“Is this Mr. Crittenden’s office?”

“Yes, it is. He’s away at the moment. May I help you?”

“Yes, please. I’m Mrs. Hart with the Elections Board. We’re checking our records. Does Mr. Crittenden live in Georgetown?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Oh, good. Some of our old records are so fouled up. And what is his current address?”

“He lives on Ogden Place — 2101 Ogden Place.”

Meesh shot a triumphant look at Denny. “Great, that’s the address we have. 2101 Ogden.”

Denny blew her a kiss.

“Thank you very much,” Meesh said.

Back in their room, they whooped and hollered, then flopped onto the bed in each other’s arms.

“You’re so clever,” Denny said, massaging her neck.

She giggled. “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”

After eating lunch in the motel coffee shop, they went out onto the street to hunt for another pay phone. They found one near a bus stop.

It was 2:20 P.M. when Denny called Crittenden.

SEVENTY-EIGHT

The interruption annoyed Crittenden. He had better things to do than to make small talk with some fool he hadn’t seen for thirty years.

“He won’t give you his name?” he asked Susan.

His secretary shook her head. “Just says he’s an old classmate. He wants to surprise you.”

“All right,” Crittenden growled, picking up the phone. “Hello.”

“Hi, Mr. Crittenden.”

The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

“Or,” the voice on the line said, “should I call you Mr. McQueen?”

He snapped upright in his chair. “Excuse me?”

“You sound surprised.”

That fool Kinney knew who he was?

“Who did you say you are?”

“You guys have gotten me into a little jam.”

Crittenden could hear traffic noises in the background. With every law enforcement officer in the country hunting for him, Kinney was crazy enough to phone him at his office?

“I’m sorry. I don’t recognize your voice.”

“Cut the bullshit, Crittenden. You got me into this. And you’re going to get me out of it.”

“What is this all about? How can I help you?”

“I’ve got your buddy Groark’s voice on my voice mail. I can prove he and I are very good friends.”

The fool kid knew Groark’s name, too? Where was that idiot Groark, anyway? Why hadn’t he heard from him in all this time? They had to find Kinney. Snot-nosed punk.

“I need you to meet me, Crittenden.”

“Of course. I want to get together with you.”

“Meet me tonight. At ten. By the Reflecting Pool.”

“Between the monuments?”

“Right. Just the two of us. Nobody else.”

“Can you tell me what this is about?”

“Save the bullshit. At ten o’clock, start walking from the base of the Lincoln Monument towards the Washington Monument. Go slow, really slow. Walk along the north side of the Reflecting Pool.”

“But —.”

“Alone, Crittenden. Nobody else.”

“All right.”

“If you’re not alone, you’re not going to see me. I’ll just slither away. And, oh yeah, leave the radios and the night-vision goggles and all that crap home. I see any of that, I’m gone. You understand?”

“No problem.”

“If I don’t make contact with you the first time, just walk the same route again. Keep doing it until you see me.”

“All right.”

“It’ll be very dark, Crittenden, so I’m going to put a piece of white tape on my back. Why don’t you wear a white cap?”

“Okay. Sure, I’ll wear a white cap.”

He waited until he was sure Kinney had hung up. Then he buzzed Susan to pick up. “Who the hell was that? I have no idea who he is. He didn’t identify himself?”

“No, he just said he was an old classmate of yours.”