Murder at Union Station

FORTY-THREE

The taxi carrying Kathryn Jalick and Geoff Lowe from Union Station pulled up at the entrance to Mac and Annabel’s Watergate apartment building. Kathryn had taken money from her purse prior to arriving and handed it to the driver. She opened the door on her side. Lowe opened his and grabbed the handles of the shopping bag. So did Kathryn.

“I’ll carry it for you,” Lowe said.

“I’ll carry it myself,” she responded angrily.

They entered the lobby, where Kathryn gave her name to the uniformed man behind the reception desk and said she was there to visit with the Mackensie Smiths.

“Yes, Ms. Jalick. Mr. Smith told me you’d be coming and said to send you right up.” He pushed a button behind the desk that activated the lock on a set of glass doors leading to the inner lobby and elevators. Lowe headed for them with her.

“Sir,” the lobby guard said sternly.

“I’m with her,” Lowe said.

“No he’s not,” Kathryn said, pushing open the doors.

“I’m on Senator Widmer’s staff,” Lowe said.

“I’ll call Mr. Smith,” said the guard.

The doors closed behind Kathryn, and Lowe watched her enter a waiting elevator.

Mac Smith answered the internal call from the front desk.

“Mr. Smith, there’s a Mr. Lowe here who accompanied Ms. Jalick. He wishes to come up.”

“Have him wait,” Smith said, “until Ms. Jalick arrives. I’ll ask her.”

A few minutes later, Smith called back. “Tell Mr. Lowe he’ll have to wait until Ms. Jalick says he can join her.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lowe visibly fumed. “Senator Widmer won’t like this,” he told the guard. “Somebody’s going to answer for this.” He paced the outer lobby while pulling out his cell phone and calling information in New York City. A minute later he was connected with Sam Greenleaf at Hobbes House.

“Rich Marienthal is on his way to New York,” Lowe told Greenleaf. “He has the tapes.”

“He’s coming here?” Greenleaf said.

“Where else would he be going?”

“His parents live in New York” was Greenleaf’s reply.

“That’s right. But why would he take the tapes to his parents’ home?”

“This whole project is becoming nightmarish, Geoff. Pamela’s on the warpath and-”

“Who’s Pamela?”

“Pamela Warren. My publisher. We’ve gotten a couple of early notices already. They’re dismissing the book as the figment of the old mobster’s imagination. One reviewer is labeling it a hoax.”

“Don’t blame me,” Lowe said. “Marienthal’s the one who’s screwed everything up.”

Greenleaf abruptly ended the call.

Mac and Annabel Smith greeted Kathryn at their apartment door and led her to the dining room, where she placed the shopping bag on the table. “The tapes,” she said.

“The tapes,” Smith said, emphasizing the words. “Rich gave them to you?”

“In a sense. He’d had them in a public locker at Union Station. He gave me the key before taking the train to New York.”

“He’s on his way there now?” Annabel asked.

“Right. He’s going to visit his mother and go to Hobbes House at some point.”

“Why is Mr. Lowe with you?” Mac asked.

Kathryn explained, ending with a rueful laugh. “He thinks Rich has the tapes with him. If he only knew they were in this shopping bag that he was sitting next to in the cab.”

Kathryn removed the plastic bags containing the tapes and Rich’s handwritten notes from the shopping bag and laid them on the table.

“Have you heard them?” Mac asked.

“No,” Kathryn said, “and I don’t want to. You can listen if you’d like.”

“I have no interest in hearing them,” said Smith. To Annabel: “You?”

She shook her head.

“What does Rich want you to do with them?” Annabel asked.

Kathryn inhaled and blew air through pursed lips. “He told me to ask for your advice, Mac.”

“He did, did he?” Smith said. “What if I don’t have any advice?”

“That would be a first,” Annabel said, playfully.

“Let me explain,” Smith said. “These tapes-or more accurately, the use they might be put to-have significant political ramifications. If they end up with Republicans like Senator Widmer, they’ll be used to attack a sitting president, who, I might add, is doing a good job in my opinion. But what if the charges made by Russo on the tapes are true? What if the president did order the assassination of a visiting head of state while CIA director? Hardly the sort of thing a president of the United States should have on his résumé.”

Annabel went into the kitchen to get something to drink and returned with a pitcher of iced tea she’d prepared earlier. She poured three glasses, handed them to her husband and to Kathryn, and raised her glass in a toast. “To the famous tapes,” she said, adding, “are you interested in my opinion about what should happen to them?”

“Of course,” Mac said.

“The question is whether the man on those tapes is telling the truth. Unfortunately, he’s dead and can’t vouch for what he told Rich. It’s my understanding that Rich never came up with any corroborating evidence to support the claims about President Parmele. Am I right? Mac, you’ve read the book.”

“Skimmed it,” he said. “No, there doesn’t seem to be anything to corroborate Mr. Russo’s story.” He looked at Kathryn: “Do you know of anything, Kathryn? Has Rich indicated any supporting evidence he might be sitting on?”

“No,” she said, sipping her cold tea. “He said a few times that he wished there were some hard facts to back up Louis Russo.”

“Well, Kathryn,” Smith said, “the only advice I can give you is to do with the tapes what Rich wants done with them. After all, they do belong to him.”

Annabel chimed in: “Has Rich told you, Kathryn, what he wants done with them? Has he instructed you what to do with them?”

“He told me-”

“Yes?”

“He told me that if you didn’t feel strongly about the tapes going to someone-to the president or Senator Widmer-that I should use my own judgment.”

“I’ve thought recently,” Smith said, “that another option would be to donate them to an institution for safekeeping, not to be opened to researchers for a specified period of time.”

“But does it matter how much time passes,” Kathryn asked, “if what’s on the tapes isn’t true?”

Neither Mac nor Annabel replied.

“I think I’d better go,” Kathryn said, “but I don’t want to bump into Geoff Lowe again if he’s still downstairs.”

“No problem,” said Annabel. “We’ll leave through the garage. I’ll drive you.”

“Oh, no, there’s no need to-”

“I insist,” Annabel said.

Kathryn put the tapes and notes back into the shopping bag, and Mac walked her to the door. “I wish I had some wisdom to dispense,” he said, “but somehow I know you’ll do the right thing without anyone’s advice.”

“I’ll try,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

When they were gone, Smith called down to the desk. “Is Mr. Lowe still there?” he asked.

“Yes, he is, Mr. Smith.”

“Send him up.”

Lowe’s first words upon entering the apartment were “Where’s Kathryn?”

“She left,” Smith said.

“Left? Where did she go?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Lowe. We haven’t been formally introduced.” Smith extended his hand, which Lowe took weakly. “Iced tea?” Smith asked. “My wife makes very good iced tea.”

“No. Thanks anyway,” Lowe said, looking past Mac into the apartment’s recesses.

“I told you she’s not here,” Smith said. He walked to the open sliding glass doors to the terrace and looked back. “Join me, Mr. Lowe?”

They stood side by side, their hands on the terrace’s railing, their attention on the Potomac River. “I’m well aware, Mr. Lowe, why you and Senator Widmer would like to have those tapes. Your hearings won’t have much bite without them.”

“We can do without them,” Lowe said, his voice betraying his true feelings.

“Perhaps,” said Smith. “Let me ask you a question. There’s considerable doubt about the veracity of what Mr. Russo said on those tapes. What I don’t understand is why you and the senator would want to hold a public hearing based upon allegations that can’t be substantiated.”

Lowe’s hands in motion substituted for words. “The book, the taped voice of a dead man, the questioning. It’s politics,” he said finally.

“Politics,” Smith repeated, not trying to keep scorn from his voice. “The game of politics. Well, though everybody seems to say it is, I don’t consider politics a game, Mr. Lowe. Politics are more important than that. Is winning the political game that vital to you and your boss, Mr. Lowe? Are you and the senator really willing to destroy a president of the United States in order to win what you consider a game?”

“Parmele doesn’t deserve a second term,” Lowe said.

“Isn’t that for the voters to decide?”

“As long as they have the facts.”

“The facts as you perceive them. Mr. Russo’s claims don’t represent facts. They might be true, but there’s not a shred of evidence to back them up. I’m a lawyer, Mr. Lowe. I deal in evidence. I deal in the facts. And one fact, as far as I’m concerned, is that you and others like you don’t belong in government on any level. I find you despicable. I think it’s time you left. Thanks for stopping by.”

“You’re part of this, aren’t you?” Lowe snarled. “You’ve been helping Marienthal hide those tapes all along. Well, Smith, you and anybody else involved in this cover-up will answer to Senator Widmer and the committee. We’ll drag you in front of it and make your life miserable.”

Smith left the terrace, went to the apartment door, and opened it. Lowe glared at him from the terrace, fists clenched at his sides, his face red and sweaty.

“Good day, Mr. Lowe,” Smith said from the door.

Lowe stormed from the terrace and pushed past Smith, his shoulder bumping him. Smith watched him go down the hall to the elevators and disappear into one.

Smith went to his office, where he called Frank Marienthal’s room at the Watergate Hotel to tell him what had transpired.

“He’s gone to New York?” the father said. “What’s he doing there?”

“Visiting Mary, according to Kathryn, and then having a meeting with his publisher.”

“I will never understand that boy,” Marienthal said. “I will never understand any of his generation.”

“Well, Frank,” said Mac, “I suppose they’ll never understand us, either. Look, I suggest you grab a flight back home and catch up with Rich there. In the meantime, Kathryn will decide what to do with the tapes. That’s the way it should be.”

Kathryn Jalick entered the apartment she shared with Rich Marienthal. She changed into shorts and a Library of Congress T-shirt. She poured a glass of wine and put a Buck Hill CD on the stereo. She sat on the couch, the bag of tapes at her feet, leaned back, closed her eyes, and thought of him, of what they’d been through since he started the book. Was it all behind them now? She hoped so. She wanted things to be the way they were when they first met, easy and loving, finding the time to draw upon that love. She was deep in that reverie when the phone on the table next to the couch rang.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Hi. Where are you?”

“On the train. You’ll never believe what happened. We were pulling into the Baltimore station. I had this sudden urge to go to the bathroom and went. I left my shoulder bag on my seat. When I came back, it was gone.”

“Somebody stole it?”

“Yeah. Can you believe it?”

“What was in it?”

“Socks, shorts, a toothbrush, my overnight kit. Why would anybody want to steal stuff like that is beyond me. How are you?”

“Fine. I saw Mac and Annabel.”

“And?”

“Mac said the tapes belong to you and that you’ll have to make the decision about what to do with them.”

“After what I’ve put you through, Kate, they belong to us. Like I told you before I left, if Mac didn’t have any definite ideas about what to do with them, I leave it up to you. Yours is a good, clean, clear mind.”

“That’s a heavy burden. I know how hard you worked to get them.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore. Have you heard from Geoff?”

“Oh, yes, I certainly did.” She told him of the confrontation at Union Station and what occurred after that.

Marienthal laughed. “He was sitting in a cab with you right next to the tapes and never knew it.”

“The irony wasn’t lost on me. You’re breaking up.”

“Batteries are low. I’ll call you from Mom’s.”

As she twisted on the couch after hanging up, her foot caught the shopping bag, tipping it over and spilling its contents on the rug. She picked up one of the plastic bags and removed tapes from it. Rich had written on them in ink: Russo, where the interview took place, the date, and a few words to describe the contents. “Assassination” appeared on some of them.

She got up, turned the air-conditioning control on the window unit to its coolest setting, grabbed old newspapers from the kitchen, balled them up and placed them on the floor of the fireplace. She added kindling and logs left over from the previous winter that were stacked next to the fireplace, and lighted the paper. The orange flames were comforting; she and Rich had spent many nights together with the fire going, discussing their dreams-and each other.

One by one, she fed the tapes and Rich’s handwritten notes into the flames. When the last tape had been consumed, she returned to the couch, raised her wineglass, and said with a satisfied smile on her lips, “To you, Louis Russo. May you finally rest in peace-wherever.”