Murder at Union Station

THIRTY-FIVE

Washingtonians awoke that morning to thunderstorms that dumped torrential rain on the nation’s capital. It wasn’t an unwelcome event. The downpour broke the intense heat wave that had gripped the city the past week and boosted spirits, although that didn’t apply to Geoff Lowe and Ellen Kelly. He sat in a chair by a window and watched the rain cascade down the panes. Ellen sat up in bed. Next to her was an advance copy of Rich Marienthal’s book, which Lowe had taken from Senator Widmer’s office the previous night.

It was now a little after six A.M. They’d been up since five arguing.

He turned in the chair and said to her, “Don’t you get it, Ellen? How many times do I have to explain it to you?”

She bristled at his tone, but said nothing. He’d been ranting since they awoke, pacing the floor, standing over her, yelling, lowering his voice to an almost inaudible level for effect, slapping his hand on the nearest surface, chopping the air with open hands as though the gesture would cut through what he considered her denseness.

“Okay,” he said in a less strident voice, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking her hand, “we have got to find Rich and the tapes. It’s just that simple.”

“Maybe we don’t need the tapes or Rich,” she offered tentatively, “now that we have the book.”

“Oh, man,” he said. “Don’t you get it? The book only has what Rich wrote, what he claims Russo told him. But Russo saying it on tape in his own voice is something else. Come on, Ellen, get with the program. Christ!”

She wished she were back in her own apartment, away from him, away from Washington and politics and senators and hearings, all of it. “Don’t you think I would do something to help if I could?” she said.

“The Dems on the committee caucused late last night,” he said. “They’re holding a press conference this afternoon condemning the hearings in advance. They’re dismissing the charge against Parmele as nothing more than a writer’s unsubstantiated claims in a book. Somehow they got their hands on a copy of his contract with Hobbes House. The contract is for a novel. They’re using that to claim the book is fiction, made up, his imagination.”

“But Rich can testify to the book being true, Geoff.”

“Jesus, you still don’t get it, do you?” he said, repeating what had become a mantra that early morning. “Read my lips, Ellen. The Dems will destroy Rich and his credibility. Widmer made it plain to me last night that unless we have Russo’s own voice implicating Parmele in the Eliana assassination, there’ll be no hearing.”

“Maybe that’s just as well.”

“No, Ellen, Widmer’s not saying he’s willing to call off the hearing unless we find Rich and the tapes. What he is saying is that if he has to call off the hearings because I fell on my face, I can kiss my job goodbye. So can you.”

Lowe wasn’t aware as he uttered this threat that losing her job with Senator Widmer wasn’t an unpleasant idea for Ellen at that moment. She’d considered resigning for weeks, not only from her job with the senator, but from her relationship with Lowe, too. She’d discussed quitting with her father, a former mid-level corporate executive who’d been downsized out of his job and was currently selling cars to make ends meet. His advice: “Never leave one job until you’ve landed another, Ellen.” His words made sense, but did the same wisdom apply to leaving boyfriends? Looking for a new job while accepting a paycheck from a current employer smacked of disloyalty, although it was done all the time. Shopping for a new boyfriend while sharing a bed with the current one didn’t sound any more admirable.

What’s a girl to do?

Lowe left the bed and stood in the center of the room, hands on hips, jaw jutting out, a commander about to launch his troops into battle. His pillow-disheveled hair and frayed yellow terrycloth bathrobe detracted from the image.

“Look, Ellen, here’s what we do. I’m going to take another crack at Mac Smith. There’s no sense in me trying to get through to Kathryn. She sounds like a broken record: ‘Rich is off on a research project and I don’t know how to reach him, etc., etc.’ Yeah, right! I never liked her. What Rich ever saw in her is beyond me. She’s dumb as hell. But maybe she’ll open up to you, huh? Woman to woman. Get hold of her and tell her Rich’s life is in danger. Tell her that all we want is to keep him safe and at the same time help him promote his book. She’s obviously nuts about him, although why I don’t know. What a pair. You tell Kathryn that the best thing she and Rich can do is to give you the tapes and notes and whatever else he has.” He stepped toward the bed, as though what he’d just said was an especially intelligent breakthrough. “That’s it. Tell Kathryn that once we have the tapes and stuff, it’ll be out in the open and Rich won’t have to worry anymore. Who do they think they’re kidding with him hiding out? He’s not on any goddamn research trip. He figures if he’s not available for the hearings, they’ll be canceled and he’s off the hook. That means you and I are on the hook, Ellen, big-time, strung up by Widmer and left to dry.”

Ellen swung her long, shapely legs off the bed and shook her tangled mass of carrot-red hair. She wore a short pale blue nightgown. Lowe plopped down next to her and began to knead her neck. “You can do it, baby. I know you can. Get her at work or the apartment, wherever you can. Come off sweet and caring-like you are naturally.” He grinned and pressed her neck harder to reinforce his words.

“Easy,” she said, pulling away, standing, stretching and heading for the bathroom.

Lowe went to the window and looked out. The rain continued to fall, hard and wind-driven. He’d pull this off. He had to pull it off. Once it was over, maybe it was time to move on, use the leverage of his position with Widmer to land a bigger and better job on the Hill. Hell, once Parmele lost his bid for a second term and a Republican was in the White House, there might be a spot there for Geoff Lowe. The new president would know it was the Widmer hearings that brought down Parmele, and that Geoff Lowe was the brains behind it.

He’d been pursuing a dream of having political clout since high school, where he was elected senior class president, not an especially impressive victory considering the caliber of the opposition, but heady nonetheless. In college, at the University of Wisconsin, he majored in political science and became active in a small but growing student Young Republicans’ Club, practicing the art of shaping the message and getting it out, proselytizing the party line, and basking in the satisfaction the wielding of power inevitably delivers. He returned home to Orange County, California, where he’d been born and raised, and worked on the campaigns of a variety of county and statewide Republican candidates, learning as he went and establishing a name for himself as a tireless, committed campaign worker with bedrock Republican beliefs. There was a time early in his life when he aspired to elected office for himself. Pragmatically, however, he soon realized that his political future lay not with running for office, but with pulling the strings behind those better suited to the more public act of asking for votes-and for money. Surprisingly-and it surprised even him-he developed a scorn for politicians and their need to straddle fences, abandon core values in order to win, and promise but only sometimes deliver on those promises. Public service? Self-service was more like it. But such occasional contradictory thoughts never dampened his fervor for the political process. It was all about power, and power was Geoff Lowe’s aphrodisiac. Ask his former wife, whom he married a few days after graduating college. That marriage lasted four months; her parents managed to have it annulled.

His first job in Washington was as an aide to a right-wing California congressman. When that pol lost his reelection bid, Lowe accepted an invitation to join the staff of Alaska Senator Karl Widmer. Lowe’s seeming tirelessness and commitment to the senator’s agenda impressed the aging Widmer, and promotions came quickly. Lately, he wondered whether Widmer was becoming senile, so intent was he on his crusade to deny Parmele a second term to the exclusion of myriad other legislative concerns. That was all that seemed to matter these days to the silver-haired Alaskan-destroying Adam Parmele, which was okay as far as Lowe was concerned. He didn’t carry a brief one way or the other about the president. What was important was that if Widmer, and by extension Geoff Lowe, succeeded in the effort, he, Lowe, would see his stock rise within Republican circles, leading to bigger things.

If there was one political operative Lowe admired, it was Parmele’s political guru, Chet Fletcher, and he enjoyed projecting himself into Fletcher’s role with a Republican president, the power behind the throne, the consummate insider, the one the president of the United States turned to in his darkest hours.

That was power!

He heard the shower go on and pictured a naked Ellen Kelly soaping herself. No doubt about it, she was a great-looking fox. But she was wearing thin, like Widmer and his tantrums. It would be time for a new job and a new fox, somebody with more sophistication. He smacked a fist into the palm of his other hand, stood, and nodded in self-affirmation.