Murder at Union Station

FIVE

UNION STATION

Joe Jenks had been shining shoes at Union Station for three years. If you were going to shine shoes for a living, you couldn’t pick a better spot than the hundred-year-old beaux arts landmark, created in 1903 by an act signed by President Teddy Roosevelt, falling into disrepair over the ensuing years, but restored in the 1980s to an even greater architectural monument than it had been in its previous splendor. The working philosophy of its original architect, master builder Daniel H. Burnham, was “Make no little plans.” Had Roosevelt known that the Wright Brothers would prove man’s ability to fly a mere ten months after he’d put into motion the lavish plans for this centerpiece of rail transportation, he might not have called for such a grandiose design.

Working there as a bootblack was a dream come true for Jenks, who’d plied his trade on the street for too many years. It was comfortable working inside the sprawling station, now bright and beautiful, with all its shops and movie theaters, restaurants and services-a pleasant, fancy setting for spit-shining the shoes of important men and women passing through on their way to other cities and other business.

“Back when it opened in nineteen and eight,” Jenks’s grandfather, who had worked there as a Pullman porter, often told him, “old Union Station had some mighty fancy restaurants, like the old Savarin. My goodness, anybody who was anybody in the city dined there at the Savarin. Barbershop had a dozen chairs and a bootblack and a valet to press your clothes all nice and fine. Back then, Savarin was the only real decent place in all of D.C. where a white man could dine with a black man and nobody seemed to notice. Nobody seemed to care. Way it should be.”

Although Jenks was the oldest by far of the three bootblacks at Exclusive Shoe Shine, his was the shortest tenure, so he worked chair 3, alongside the two younger men who didn’t demonstrate the same sort of reverence Jenks had for the station. Once he’d started working there, he’d read up on the station’s history and enjoyed it when a customer, usually an out-of-towner, climbed into his chair and asked questions about Union Station. That was when Joe Jenks shined, in both senses of the word.

His customer, a tall, slender, light-skinned black man dressed impeccably in a well-tailored tan suit, white shirt, and muted patterned green tie, and carrying a tan trench coat over his arm, had immediately pulled out a pair of half-glasses and opened a newspaper; no historical chitchat with this dude, Jenks knew. The man’s shoes were expensive two-toned leather, pointy and with perforations across the toe. Jenks pegged him as an outlander, a visitor to D.C., his judgment helped by the New York Times in the man’s hands.

The customer looked up occasionally from the newspaper to check the arrivals board.

“Meeting somebody?” Jenks asked as he put the finishing touches on the mirror shine he’d accomplished with his polish and brushes and rags.

“No. What do I owe you?”

Uppity, Jenks thought. Probably owns a couple of slums. “Six dollars, sir,” he said.

The man stood, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. Jenks went to give him change, but he’d already walked away in the direction of gate A-8, where the Metroliner from New York ’s Penn Station would be arriving.

“What he give you, man, four bucks?” asked a younger bootblack who’d watched the transaction.

“Yeah. Sometimes you can’t figure a man up front, you know? Sometimes the really talky ones stiff you.”

“I’d like to catch me about ten or twenty a those today,” the younger man said with a laugh.

Jenks ignored him and watched his generous customer saunter toward the arrival gates. What’s he all about? he wondered. Then passersby diverted his attention. That was one of the pleasures of shining in Union Station. Seventy thousand people passed through every day, a fascinating parade of humanity, and Joe Jenks had a front-row seat.

“You available?” a casually dressed white man asked.

“Yes, sir, jump right up in the chair.”

“Been working here long?”

“Three years,” Jenks said, pulling out the appropriate polishes.

“What’s the best restaurant?”

“Oh, now, let me see. Lotsa good ones. Got about fifty casual places, you know, and seven or eight places for finer dining. You know, gourmet-type food. Back when it opened, there was the Savarin Restaurant, where… ”