Murder at Union Station (26 page)

He pulled his cell phone from his jacket, dialed the number of the Lincoln Suites, and asked for Sasha Levine, who was on the phone instantly. The sound of her voice startled him. He was sure she wouldn’t be there.

“Ms. Levine. Bret Mullin here. The detective. Remember?”

“Of course I do.”

“I got tied up today and forgot to call. There was a—my partner got shot and—”

“How terrible.”

“Yeah, it was. But he’ll be okay. It was his leg. He’ll be fine.”

“I am glad to hear that.”

“I was wondering whether you were available for dinner, like we discussed.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Good. Did you catch up with that writer friend of yours, Mr. Marienthal?”

“No. I called, but there was only his machine that answers.”

“How long ago did you call?”

“This afternoon. I tried two or three times.”

“Tell you what. How about you try again? Maybe he’s home by now.”

“All right.”

“If he’s home, bring him to dinner with us. Don’t tell him I’ll be there. My treat.”

“I don’t think—”

“I’m serious. Happy to get you two together.”

“I will try.”

“Good. I’ll pick you up at the hotel, say, in about an hour? Hour and a half?”

“An hour and a half would be better.”

“You got it. See you then.”

The vodka burned his throat and stomach as he downed it in a single swallow.

“Another?” the barmaid asked

“No, thanks, sweetie. Got to run.”

He intended as he got in his car to go home, shower, and change clothes. Instead, he drove to the Eastern Market area and pulled up in front of the address he’d been given for Richard Marienthal. He turned off the ignition and pondered whether to see if Marienthal was home. That could be awkward, however. He’d already arranged with Sasha to invite the guy to dinner. Still, he didn’t want to wait that long. If Bret Mullin had any virtues, patience wasn’t among them.

He was about to leave the car and approach the building when the front door opened. A nondescript middle-aged man wearing a suit and tie stepped through it and stood on the set of six steps leading down to the sidewalk.
Is that you, Marienthal?
Mullin wondered. Too old, he decided. A better look at the man’s face confirmed it wasn’t the person in the artist’s sketch and computer-generated photograph. He took note of a leather catalogue bag dangling from the man’s hand. Judging from the way he carried it, it didn’t have much in it.

Come on, come on,
Mullin silently said.
Move! Get going!

The man looked left and right before slowly descending the steps. He went to a car parked at the corner, tossed the bag into the backseat, climbed behind the wheel, and drove off—but not before Mullin scribbled down the make, color, and plate number. He waited a few minutes before going to the building, entering the foyer, and checking the names on the intercom board. He pushed the button for the apartment in the name of R. Marienthal and K. Jalick. Nothing. He tried again. And again. He pushed the button for the super’s apartment.

“What do you want?” a man answered in an East Indian accent.

“You the super for this building?” Mullin shouted to be heard over the sound of a TV in the background.

“No time now. Go away.”

Mullin felt his anger rise. “Hey, I’m the police. I need to talk to you.”

“The police?”

“Yeah, the police. Come on, I don’t have all day.”

The superintendent came through the door separating the foyer from the building interior.

Mullin flashed his badge. “I’m looking for these people, Marienthal and—” He looked at the intercom board again. “And K. Jalick.”

“I don’t know nothing about them,” the super said, making a move to retreat back inside.

“Hey, buddy, hold on a minute. They live here. Right?”

“Yes. I have to go. I am busy.”

The super’s overt nervousness caused Mullin’s antennae to go up. Sure, people got uptight when confronted by a cop, especially foreigners. But this guy looked like he was about to race from the foyer.
What’ve you got going inside, baby?
Mullin wondered.
Illegal alien? A few bags of crack? Running some broads?

“Calm down,” Mullin said. “I just want to know where these two people are. Marienthal and this K. Jalick.”

“I don’t know,” the super said in his singsong voice. “At work. They work.”

“He’s a writer. Right? He works at home. Right?”

“She works someplace else. The library. She is a nice lady.”

So Marienthal is a heterosexual,
Mullin thought.

“What library?”

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”

“You seen them today?”

“No. I have not seen them.”

“All right,” Mullin said. “Maybe I’ll be back. That okay with you?”

“Yes. Yes. Okay with me.”

“Good.”

He sat in his car another five minutes before deciding to head home in preparation for dinner with Sasha Levine. Had he stayed another five minutes, he would have seen Kathryn Jalick walk up the street and enter the building. And if he’d been there five minutes after that, he would have seen her exit the building, a frantic look on her face, a cell phone to her ear.

Her first thought upon entering the ransacked apartment had been to call the police. But she stopped herself and decided instead to leave the apartment and go outside, where she called Rich at the River Inn.

“Somebody trashed it?” he said.

“No. I mean, nobody damaged anything. But whoever it was went through everything, the dresser drawers, the desk, pulled stuff out of the closet.”

“They take anything?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I saw my jewelry still on the dresser. The TV’s there, the radios.”

“How’d they get in?”

“The door seems okay. My key worked. I checked the windows. They’re locked.”

Rich fell silent.

“I don’t want to stay here tonight,” Kathryn said.

“Yeah, I understand. You want to come here?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Go back upstairs, pack some clothes and a toothbrush, and head over. I’ll be here.”

“One for dinner?” a hostess asked when Tim Stripling entered McCormick & Schmick’s on K Street N.W.

“I’ll sit in here,” he said, walking along the 65-foot bar already crowded with after-work revelers, and found a small table in that portion of the restaurant. It was still happy hour; for $1.95 he could have ordered a giant hamburger to go with the dry Rob Roy a waitress brought him. But he wasn’t in the mood for a burger. He ordered a Crab Louis salad—“Extra Russian dressing on the side,” he said—sat back, and took in the noisy scene. Conversations drifted his way along with smoke from the bar. A young man trying to impress a leggy brunette told her how important he was to his employer, the Department of Agriculture. Another man, older and sitting erect on his stool to hold in his developing paunch, told dirty jokes to two women whose laughter was more polite than authentic.
The world’s oldest game was on,
Stripling thought, breaking off a piece of bread. An expensive game, all those drinks, and dinner, and maybe tickets to the Kennedy Center or Blues Alley, all in the pursuit of a warm body for the night.

His “game” was also expensive, he mused as he ordered a second drink. It was good Roper had agreed to the raise. Peck had hit him up for seven hundred at lunch, and the superintendent at Marienthal’s apartment building haggled until agreeing to accept two hundred to let Stripling into the apartment. A waste of money; there was nothing of interest in the apartment. You couldn’t hit a home run every time out. Ask the men at the bar who would empty their pockets and go home alone to lick their wounded egos.

“Dessert?”

“What’s on the ice cream menu tonight?”

“Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry.”

“Whip me up a hot fudge sundae with vanilla ice cream. Add an extra scoop, huh. My sweet tooth is aching tonight. Oh, and a couple of extra cherries, too.”

THIRTY-ONE

P
resident Adam Parmele and his entourage of advisers and aides, accompanied by those members of the press corps privileged to travel with him—and whose boredom at being on yet another campaign trip was evident—sat in the massive 747 waiting for it to touch down in Miami.

The president was not his usual gregarious and available self this day. On previous campaign flights, he’d ingratiated himself with reporters, making frequent forays from his private airborne quarters and office to the press section of the aircraft, joking, replying to questions, playing his practiced ability to schmooze with them to good effect. This day, however, he kept to himself, disappearing inside the president’s space with his political adviser, Chet Fletcher, and congressional liaison Walter Brown. His wife, Cathleen, who had been scheduled to accompany her husband, canceled at the last moment: “The first lady regrets that she will be unable to accompany the president to Miami,” read the short, bland press release from her office.

The reporters in the rear did what they usually do on these flights, filled up on food served by White House stewards assigned to the plane and swapped the latest political jokes and D.C. rumors. Those who’d covered previous presidents had learned to be circumspect when the jokes involved chiefs of state. Parmele was different. He laughed heartily at humor in which he was the target, and often repeated what late-night talk-show hosts had quipped about him during their opening monologues.

“Must be something heavy-duty going on up front, huh?” a wire service reporter said.

“Maybe he’s planning to invade Mississippi, punish them for not voting for him.”

“He doesn’t want to answer questions about his wife,” someone else offered.

“Mississippi, hell. If he’s going to use the military to get anybody, it’ll be Senator Widmer.”

“What’ve you got on those hearings coming up?”

“Nada. Zip. I’ve seen a tight clamp on hearings before, but nothing like this. Even the best leaks aren’t talking. What are we coming to?”

The press representative from the
Washington Post
had chosen a seat apart from his colleagues. One called to him: “Hey, Milton, you pick up anything new on the Widmer hearings?”

“No,” Milton said, and went back to a magazine he’d been reading.

The reporter who’d asked the question leaned close to the ear of a correspondent from CNN. “Widmer’s got some surprise witness,” he said.

“Yeah, I heard that, too.”

“Got something to do with that murder at Union Station.”

“Get outta here! Where’d you hear that?”

“I’ve got a source who—”

Robin Whitson’s sudden entry into the press section from where she’d been sitting midships brought the conversation to a halt.

“Hey, Robin, come sit here,” someone suggested.

“In a minute,” the press secretary said, plucking a sandwich from a tray being passed by a steward and bantering with reporters nearby. A few minutes later, she slipped into an empty seat next to Milton from the
Post
.