Murder at Union Station

FORTY-ONE

Kathryn Jalick was up before the sun after lying awake in bed for what seemed an eternity, and debated going back to work. There was a ten o’clock staff meeting at the Library of Congress she knew she should attend; seventeen boxes of material left to the library by the widow of a prominent nineteenth-century Washington physician. Their contents chronicling the doctor’s life in D.C.’s social circles were to be opened and catalogued.

A palpable excitement always accompanied the opening of materials from the library’s vast storage areas in which more than twenty million items awaited perusal and cataloguing. The occasion marked an opportunity to peer through a window into the private lives of others, a legal voyeuristic experience that was both valuable to the understanding of history and titillating.

On the other hand, Kathryn wasn’t anxious to face questions from her colleagues about Rich, his book, or his disappearance. She’d received a number of calls from fellow workers since the news broke, friendly inquiries in search of firsthand inside information to share with the curious.

A call shortly after seven made the decision for her.

“Hey,” a voice said.

“Rich. I was hoping you’d call.”

“I’m in a booth, can’t talk long. Look, I’ve decided what to do.”

She sighed with relief. It didn’t matter what decision he’d made, as long as it resulted in some sort of action. As the shrinks say, “Any action is better than no action. At least you have a fifty-fifty chance of being right.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll fill you in when I see you. You going in to work today?”

“I haven’t made up my mind.”

“Go. I’ll contact you there this afternoon. Can you get out early?”

“I suppose so. Rich, what’s going on? What have you decided?”

“I’m going to New York.”

“New York? When?”

“Later today, after you and I do a few things. Look, I have to run. Call you.”

He hung up.

As she showered, the FBI agent monitoring the tap on her phone cursed under his breath. He’d picked up only the last few words of the conversation, not enough to nail down the location from which the call had been placed.

When the second call came moments later, she’d emerged from the shower wrapped in a terrycloth robe, her wet hair secured with a towel. The phone tap was working fine.

“Kathryn, it’s Ellen.”

“Hi.”

“So what are you and Rich going to do?”

“I don’t know, Ellen. Rich just called and-”

“He did? Where is he?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Kathryn, for God’s sake, Rich has to turn over those tapes.”

“Ellen, I can’t help you or Geoff. Please try and understand. Look, I just came out of the shower and have to go to work. When I talk again with Rich, I’ll tell him how much you and Geoff want to speak with him and urge him to call. Okay?”

“It doesn’t look like I have much of a choice, does it?” Ellen said, not sounding happy.

Tim Stripling checked in from home with the Com Center at the Hoover Building and was told of the conversation between Kathryn and Ellen Kelly. The botched pickup between Kathryn and Marienthal wasn’t mentioned. Stripling told them he’d be available all day, his cell phone on. After going through a pot of coffee, he abandoned an earlier plan to hang around the house and decided instead to get in the car and cruise the neighborhood surrounding Union Station, where the previous call from Marienthal had been made. If Marienthal called again, he wanted to be able to respond as quickly as possible to the location.

He called Mark Roper from the car.

“Where are you?” Roper asked.

“In my car.”

“Make something happen, Tim. Your client is getting nervous.”

“Who’s my client?”

“Timothy, just resolve this as quickly as possible. There’s a lot riding on it.”

“If I have to go beyond simply coming up with the tapes, I’ll expect the usual fee.”

“We can discuss that later.”

“No, we can discuss it now.”

“I’m hoping it won’t be necessary to go beyond that.”

“So am I. But if I do-”

“Yes, the usual fee.”

“More later,” Stripling said.

Ellen Kelly’s call to Kathryn Jalick had been prompted and monitored by Geoff Lowe, who stood next to her in their apartment.

“What did she say?” he asked.

“She heard from Rich.”

“Where is he?”

“She doesn’t know. She said she’s going to work today.”

“At the library?”

“That’s where she works, isn’t it?”

He walked away from her and paced the room. “Maybe he’s going to meet her there,” he said into the air.

Ellen picked up her briefcase and went to the door. “Coming?” she asked.

“No, you go ahead. Tell Widmer I’m running down the tapes.”

She dropped the briefcase. “No, Geoff, you tell him. I’m not in the mood to be yelled at this morning.”

“I’ll call.”

“Good.”

She was out the door.

Lowe followed soon after. He climbed in a cab parked at the corner and told the driver, “The Library of Congress.”

The driver’s expression said it wasn’t familiar to him.

“Independence and Second Street Southeast,” he growled. “Christ, you never heard of the Library of Congress?”

The driver heard the tone. He slipped the aging taxi into gear and lurched from the curb, forcing Lowe against the rear seat.

Mac Smith taught his class that morning. He returned home immediately following it and called Frank Marienthal’s room in the Watergate Hotel.

“Anything from Richard yet?” Marienthal asked.

“No,” said Smith. “Nothing on the machine. Where will you be the rest of the day?”

“Here. I’ll stay close. I could wring his neck.”

Smith ignored the comment. “I’ll be here at the apartment most of the day,” he said. “Annabel’s at the gallery but should be home early afternoon. We’ll let you know the minute we hear anything.”

Smith turned on the TV to CNN to catch up on the news. Rich Marienthal’s book and its charges against President Parmele continued to lead the newscast despite there being nothing new to report-no statement from the White House, a press release from Senator Karl Widmer’s office repeating the senator’s intention to hold hearings into the “Parmele matter.” The anchor ended the segment reporting that reliable sources had informed CNN that the president’s trusted political adviser, Chet Fletcher, was close to tendering his resignation to return to private life, in order to spend more time with his family. No confirmation from Fletcher.

Interesting, Smith thought as he turned off the set and went to his office, where a sizable pile of paperwork awaited him. He’d never met Chet Fletcher, but from what he’d heard about the man, he wasn’t the sort to run from a fight, to bail out when the going got tough. To spend more time with his family. Where had he heard that before?

The large reel-to-reel tape recorder in the FBI’s Com Center turned slowly and often for the next few hours. Every call to Marienthal’s apartment was dutifully recorded.

Simultaneously, calls to and from Mac and Annabel Smith’s Watergate apartment were taped. Intercepting calls involving an attorney was problematic, should any of the conversation involve the discussion of legal issues. The agents on duty had been warned to turn off the recorder and their earphones in the event that happened. Whether those monitoring the calls would heed that admonition was conjecture.

Tired of looking for Marienthal on the streets surrounding Union Station, Stripling dumped his car in a parking garage and entered the station, where he took a small table in the bar area of America, a street-level restaurant affording a view of the front of the station on Massachusetts Avenue. He ordered a burger, fries, and a Coke and gazed out the window at people milling about, mostly tourists from the look of them and their silly hot-weather clothing, taking pictures of each other in front of the Columbus statue or the large yellow fountain, whose dancing waters had been turned off for reasons unknown. Fountains in Washington, D.C., seem always to be off on the hottest days.

He’d just finished his lunch and ordered a triple-scoop butterscotch sundae when the cell phone on the table rang.

“Yeah?”

“We have an address for you.”

He wrote down the house number on upper 16th Street and other information, pressed End, and asked for a check. Minutes later he was on his way out of Union Station and headed for the garage, the sundae just wishful thinking.

Stripling wasn’t the only one with upper 16th Street as a destination.

Kathryn Jalick had just started removing materials from the first box of the physician’s papers at the Library of Congress when a colleague summoned her to a phone.

“Kathryn, it’s Rich. Can you leave now?”

“I-I’ll just have to. Where are you?”

“At Winard’s house.”

“Is that where you’ve been all along?”

“Yeah. He left on a tour with a band. Can you come right now?”

“Yes. He’s on Sixteenth, right?”

“Right. You’ve been here before.”

“I know where it is. What are we going to do?”

“Fill you in when you arrive. Make sure nobody follows you.”

“Follow me? I don’t think-”

“Just be sure nobody does. See you in a few minutes.”

She went into her director’s office and announced she had to leave.

“Is everything all right?” the director asked.

“Yes, I’m okay,” Kathryn answered.

“Does it have to do with Richard and his book?”

Kathryn nodded. “It’ll be over soon.”

“I hope so. Take care, Kathryn.”

“I will. And thanks for understanding.”

Geoff Lowe’s level of understanding of anything had reached its nadir. Upon arriving at the Library of Congress, he’d taken a seat at a table in the main reading room and looked for Kathryn Jalick to emerge from behind the scenes. He saw her a few times as she passed from one area to another, and covered his face with a magazine he’d taken from a rack. Although the air-conditioning was welcome, he was uncomfortable sitting there in the midst of a hundred people buried in books. Weirdos, he thought, taking in those in his immediate vicinity, some of whom looked strange-were different-in how they dressed and allowed their hair and beards to grow wild.

He made frequent trips to the men’s room or outside to escape the reading room’s atmosphere. He couldn’t justify being there like some hotel detective hiding behind potted plants in search of straying spouses, but he didn’t know what else to do. Ellen had been unsuccessful in convincing Kathryn to lead him to Rich. Senator Widmer had become irascible, even by his standards, and most of his wrath was directed at Lowe. He understood the senator’s anger to some extent; the whole idea of hearings into Parmele’s days as CIA director had been Lowe’s, prompted by his having met Richard Marienthal. It was like handing Widmer a prized political gift, the sort of scandal that despite its origins had legs, would capture the media, and by extension sway public opinion. Was it true? It didn’t matter. This was politics. Indeed, this was war, and Lowe viewed himself as a consecrated combatant.

All he wanted that day was to get lucky, to see Marienthal walk into the library to meet Kathryn, carrying a bagful of tapes. If he didn’t listen to reason about handing them over-he’d use his best “It’s for the good of the country” speech-he’d hit him over the head and just take the damn tapes, run back to Widmer’s office and present them to the old bastard like a sacrificial offering: “Here! I offer you this young virgin! I came, I saw, I conquered! Reward me!”

He was sitting on a low concrete wall outside the library, tie pulled loose, collar open, sweat running down his face, watching people come and go, when Kathryn Jalick emerged through the main entrance after having offered her handbag for inspection by security guards inside. Keeping employees and visitors from leaving with purloined books was as pressing an issue at the Library of Congress as guarding against the unbalanced entering with guns.

Lowe turned so that his back was to her as she ran past thirty feet from him and waved down a taxi.

“Damn!” Lowe said as he got up and watched the cab with Kathryn in it pull from the curb and go to the corner, where it stopped for a red light. Another empty taxi approached from the same direction as the previous one. Lowe stepped into the street and stopped it, climbed in the back. “See that cab up there at the light?” he said to the driver. “Follow it.”

The driver, a burly black man with a beard, turned and frowned. “Like in the movies?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Lowe. “Just do it, okay? I’ll take care of you.”

Rich Marienthal anxiously awaited Kathryn’s arrival at Winard Jackson’s apartment. After having contacted her at the Library of Congress, he’d placed a call to the family home in Bedford, New York.

“Mom? It’s Rich.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“We’ve been so worried about you,” she said. “You’ve been on the news. No one knew where you were. Your father is furious. He’s in Washington looking for you. He’s with Mackensie Smith.”

“I know. I spoke with him there. He didn’t tell you?”

“No. Richard, what is going on?”

“I’ll explain it all later, Mom. Look, I’m sorry about what’s happened, but it’s all going to work out fine. Just fine. I’m coming to New York.”

“When?”

“Today. Tonight. I’ll come to the house.”

“Thank God you’re all right,” she said, and started to cry.

“Come on, Mom,” he said, “no tears. You’ll make me feel guilty.”

“I know,” she said. “I don’t mean to-”

“I have to go now,” he said. “See you later.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

His next call was to Greenleaf at Hobbes House in New York.

“Sam, it’s Rich Marienthal.”

“Jesus, where have you been?”

“Staying with a friend.”

“I don’t mean where you were. I mean, why did you disappear? The book’s just coming out. The media’s going nuts wanting to interview you. Geoff Lowe-”

“How is my buddy Geoff?”

“Rich, what about the tapes and the hearings?”

“What about them?”

“Don’t get cute with me, Rich. You may be enjoying your reclusive little game, but I’m not. There’s a lot riding on those Widmer hearings. The Democrats are already spinning the hell out of it, claiming the book is nothing but the figment of Russo’s overactive imagination. They’re saying you’re afraid to face the media because you know it’s all fiction. It’s time to step up to the plate, Rich, get out there and use the tapes to validate the book.”

“I’m not sure I want to do that, Sam.”

Greenleaf’s voice rose in volume. “Now, hold on, Rich, and listen to me. You entered into a deal with us, and that included cooperating with the Widmer hearings. Russo getting killed wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t control that. But you can control the tapes and how they’re used.” He paused for breath. “I’m getting the impression that you knew all along that Russo’s claims weren’t valid, that you conned us.”

“I didn’t con anybody,” Marienthal said, feeling his own ire rising. “It doesn’t matter whether I believed Russo or not. All I did was write a book based on what he told me, and that’s what you bought, nothing more, nothing less. You’re right; Louis Russo’s death was beyond my control. And you’re right that I can determine what happens with the tapes. I’m sorry if things haven’t turned out the way we all wanted them to. I still haven’t decided what to do with the tapes, but I’m getting close.”

Marienthal could almost see Greenleaf in his office chair, willing himself to become calm and to inject reason into the argument. Judging from Greenleaf’s revised tone, that’s exactly what he’d done.

“Okay, Rich, let’s approach this in a reasonable, rational manner. There’s an opportunity here to salvage the book and see it achieve the sort of success we all envisioned for it, especially you. I must admit that I don’t understand why you’ve adopted this protective attitude toward the tapes. All they represent is what Russo told you, true or false. Playing them for the public at the hearings is the fair way to go-the American way to go, it seems to me. Let people hear what the man had to say in his own voice, and make up their own minds about his veracity.”

The American way, Rich thought. A nation ruled by the political sound bite.

Senator Widmer would proclaim in stentorian tones that the American way did not include assassinating visiting foreign leaders, and that those responsible were not fit to hold high office.

The White House would disperse its cadre of talking heads to the Sunday morning talk shows to accuse Widmer and his Republican supporters of blatant political motives in an election season, and to brand Russo and Marienthal as kooky pawns of the right wing.

Either way, and no matter how the public reacted, this was not the end result Richard Marienthal intended when he set out to write a best-selling book, his breakthrough, his claim to fame, his credential for a long and lucrative writing career.

“I’ll get back to you no later than tomorrow,” Marienthal said.

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah, tomorrow.”

He ended the conversation and waited for Kathryn to arrive.

Stripling parked across the street from the building in which Winard Jackson’s apartment was located, and where Rich Marienthal had been holed up. He’d received another call on his cell phone from the Com Center in the Hoover Building, advising him that intercepted messages indicated that the subject had announced his intention to go to New York later that day, and that the subject did in fact have in his possession certain tapes.

He wasn’t sure what his next step should be. He had no way of knowing how many people might be with Marienthal inside the building, and was reluctant to attempt to confront the writer there. Marienthal was going to New York-which meant he’d be coming out, hopefully soon. Better to wait for that to happen, and trust he’d be alone. He pressed his elbow against the Smith & Wesson in its holster beneath his arm, comforted by its presence, although confident he wouldn’t have to use it. Marienthal was a writer, probably effete, lightweight-a lover, not a fighter. The worst that could happen was that he’d have to display the gun to show Marienthal that he meant business. “Don’t be stupid, kid. Just give me the tapes and go write a poem somewhere.”

A taxi arrived. Stripling slid lower in the seat, but not so low that he couldn’t see the attractive young woman in a short skirt and wearing large glasses get out of the cab, pay the fare, and go to the building’s front door.

A second cab came around the corner and pulled up to the curb a half block from the first. A short, stocky young man wearing a suit got out and leaned through the open front passenger window. Stripling couldn’t hear the words, but it was obvious the passenger wasn’t flattering the driver. He shoved his hand in the window and backed away; both cabs drove off.

The woman with glasses read names on the intercom panel, pressed a button, and spoke into the panel. There was the faint sound of a buzzer; she pushed open the door and disappeared inside.

Stripling returned his attention to the short, stocky guy standing on the sidewalk. He’d moved behind a tree, shielding him from view of the door through which the woman had entered.

Who’s he? he wondered. Who’s she? Must be Marienthal’s live-in girlfriend. Nice legs. She could do better than get involved with a writer. With so many more single women than single men in D.C., women must get desperate, he reasoned, more or less.

What’s the stocky guy going to do, just keep standing there behind the tree? Is he waiting for the writer, too, or has he got the hots for the leggy gal with the big glasses? Was he the writer’s buddy? That could complicate things.

Nothing to do but wait.