Murder at the Library of Congress (15 page)

“Are you gonna turn me over to the cops?”

“Depends.”

“On what?” Munsch asked as they walked away, the two men flanking him.

“On what our client wants to do with you.”

Munsch’s waitress shouted after them in Spanish.

“He didn’t pay,” Jose said.

“You didn’t pay, Warren.”

“Screw you, Smitty. You pay.”

Smitty nodded at Jose, who returned to the table and handed the waitress money. As he did, Munsch asked Smitty, “What’s in this for me?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I’m gonna talk to this so-called client of yours, I want to get paid.”

Smitty grinned. “I like your style, Warren.”

“How’d you find me?” Munsch asked as they walked to where the private detectives had parked their car.

“Jose has contacts all over the city, Warren. Took about an hour to learn where a fat gringo named Munsch checked in. You are checked out?”

“Yeah, I’m checked out. I’m paid in full.”

“Good for you, Warren. Hate to see you stiff any of our friends south of the border.”

18

“Mr. Driscoll on the phone, Dr. Broadhurst.”

The Librarian of Congress picked up his phone: “David, good to hear from you again.”

“I assume with murders taking place at the library, you’ve been distracted.”

“A fair statement.”

“There’s been little written about the incident here in Los Angeles. Have they apprehended the killer yet?”

“No, but they continue to investigate. Odd case. Upsetting. About your previous call, David, concerning the Las Casas diaries. We’ve been putting out discreet feelers on the Hill, and I’ve had preliminary conversations with private donors who’ve offered generous support in the past. Is there any news on your end? Have the diaries in fact been located, and are they for sale?”

“There is a good chance that Las Casas’s diaries, in one form or other, might become available. I’m flying to Washington tonight. We can meet in the morning.”

“I have a—yes, of course. I’ll wipe the slate clean. Anyone else you’d like at the meeting?”

“No. Let’s keep this between us for now. The others you’ve contacted, are they likely to make this public in some way?”

“I asked them not to.”

“Do they know I’m the source?”

“No, I didn’t mention you by name. I kept it on a hypothetical level, a what-if sort of thing.”

“Please keep it that way, Cale.”

“Of course. What time tomorrow?”

“Eight?”

“Here?”

“My hotel. I’m staying at the Willard.”

“I’ll be there.”

Broadhurst immediately called General Counsel Mary Beth Mullin.

“Mary, you haven’t indicated to anyone you’ve spoken with that Dave Driscoll is the one who’s raised the Las Casas issue, have you?”

“No. I referred only to a wealthy collector.”

“Good. I’m meeting with David in the morning. He’s flying in tonight from California.”

“Want me there?”

“Driscoll asked that only he and I meet. I’ll fill you in after the meeting.”

A minute after their conversation ended, Mullin called back. “Cale, sorry, but I realize I did mention Driscoll to Senator Hale.”

“Is he likely to spread that in the Senate?”

“I’ll call and ask him not to.”

If it isn’t too late, Broadhurst thought.

It was vitally important, he knew, that things be done exactly as Driscoll wanted them done. David Driscoll, a rich man by virtue of the brokerage firm that carried his name, was as prickly a personality as Broadhurst had ever encountered. It was said that Driscoll handled big things with aplomb but tripped over bobby pins and paper clips. A tall, imposing, patrician figure, he’d starred in his own commercials for Driscoll Securities, steely eyes peering into the camera, frosty-white shirt pulled tight around his tie beneath his Lincolnesque face, his
voice passing through what sounded like restricted nasal passages: “Other brokerage firms
handle
your investments. At Driscoll Securities, we
nurture
them. You have my word on that.”

He’d retired from active leadership of the brokerage house a dozen years ago and traveled the world with his wife, mostly to Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, where he added to what was a superb collection of Hispanic and Portuguese art and artifact.

David Driscoll was a man to be reckoned with, which Cale Broadhurst was perfectly willing to do in order to sustain his generous interest in the Library of Congress. The LC depended upon two types of books: the millions of them in the collections, and the double-entry type that tracked the millions of dollars needed to keep the institution afloat.

Annabel and Lucianne Huston returned to the library after lunch. Lucianne went to the public affairs office, and Annabel to her desk to do some more reading before her appointment at three to go to Michele Paul’s apartment.

“Look,” Lucianne said to Joanne Graves the minute she was inside and had shut the door, “I need to interview some people from the library. Trying to keep this under wraps is stupid.”

“We’re not trying to keep anything under wraps, Lucianne,” Graves said, her words wrapped in exasperation. “What I am trying to do is approach this in an orderly fashion. And that means no special treatment for individual journalists. You’ll just have to wait like the rest of your breed.”

“Well, that’s just perfect,” Lucianne blew up. “I’m sent here on a wild-goose chase by that idiot boss of
mine, and now some twerp of a librarian tries to keep me from
my
story.”

“If you’re going to take that tone with me, I’ll have to ask you to leave my office. Or else I could have security—”

“Fine! I’ll leave. But you’ll hear from me again,” Lucianne said, stomping out of the office. “And from your boss,” she added, echoing the slamming of the door. Frustrated, she decided to corner Cale Broadhurst; maybe he’d have something useful to say.

Annabel sat at her desk in the Hispanic section and found that she couldn’t keep from staring at the empty seat to her right and thinking what an abrupt end Michele Paul’s life had come to. And in another hour she would be going to his apartment to, in a way, plunder the bounty of his research for her own article.

She decided to get some air. On her way out of the library, she ran into Lucianne. “Hi again. Did you learn anything new from public relations?”

“No, not a thing. I asked about the John Bitteman disappearance, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Said it was never officially labeled a murder.”

“Consuela told me a little about him and his disappearance. Do
you
think there could be a connection between Michele’s murder and what happened to Bitteman?”

“I don’t know. Bitteman and Michele were rivals, I’m told, both trying to be the first to land the Las Casas diaries or the map. They barely spoke.”

“Did Bitteman leave a family?” Annabel asked.

“They say he was openly homosexual. The police theorized it might have been a gay love affair gone awry.”

“I was hoping to see Bitteman’s files on Las Casas.”

“Good luck. Paranoia seems to run in Las Casas scholars. Bitteman took most things home, too, like Michele.”

“But surely he left something.”

“Check with your buddy, Consuela. Sure you want to go rummaging through a dead man’s apartment?”

“Not on my wish list, but sharing a cramped space with someone who’s murdered two days after I got here wasn’t either.”

19

The two MPD officers who picked up Consuela and Annabel were talkative types. The driver was in uniform, the other in plainclothes. Getting into a marked police cruiser was unsettling for both women, but the officers’ banter soon made them forget what was painted on the vehicle’s doors.

They pulled up in front of the Bethesda apartment building that had been Paul’s home until his murder, one of hundreds of such buildings in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, all so similar that they might have been designed and built by a single individual.

The plainclothes detective found the super, who led the officers, Consuela, and Annabel to the top floor, where he let them into Paul’s apartment. The super, a portly gentleman who spoke with a Slavic accent, lingered.

“Thanks,” the detective told him. “I’ll let you know when we’re leaving.”

“Do you know who killed Dr. Paul?” the super asked on his way out.

“No,” the detective answered, “but you’ll be the first to know.”

“It’s a lovely apartment,” Annabel said, going to sliding glass doors leading to the terrace.

Consuela agreed.

“You knew this man pretty well,” one detective, Simmons, said.

“Yes,” Consuela said. “We worked together.”

“He was what, a professor?”

“A researcher. Hispanic and Portuguese history.”

“Impressive,” Simmons said. “Looks like it pays pretty well.”

“Where do we start?” Annabel asked.

“In here.”

Detective Simmons led them into the largest of three bedrooms, which Paul had set up as his office. On their way, Annabel glanced into the other two smaller bedrooms. One had obviously been where Paul slept. The other served as a storeroom of sorts, with floor-to-ceiling steel shelving on which at least a hundred file boxes, labeled with an electronic labeling device, were neatly arranged.

“Do you think that’s all library materials, too?” Annabel asked Consuela.

“We’ll have to see.” She looked to Simmons: “Can we examine what’s in this room, too?”

“Sure. My orders are to let you look at anything you want. We’ve already gone over the apartment.”

“It’s going to be awhile,” Consuela said.

“Take your time. You’ve got us for the rest of the day, whatever’s left of it.”

“Where do we start?” Consuela asked when she and Annabel were alone in the office.

“Those four two-drawer file cabinets, I suppose,” Annabel said. “We’re looking for anything bearing upon or belonging to LC?”

“Uh huh,” Consuela said, opening the top drawer of one of the units.

Annabel pulled out another drawer. Five minutes after she’d begun, she said to Consuela, “Everything in here is
related to his research. I assume the police removed anything of a personal nature for their investigation.”

“Looks that way,” Consuela said, opening another drawer. “Let’s see if we can arrange to have all this shipped back to the library. We’ll be days if we have to go through it here.”

While the Hispanic division chief conferred with Simmons, Annabel went into the storage room and perused the labels on boxes. It appeared that everything in that room was linked to Michele Paul’s professional life, too.

“What did he say?” Annabel asked when Consuela returned.

“He said that’s up to us. I’ll call Helen Kelly and see if she can arrange for a truck and personnel to get everything out of here. In the meantime, we might as well go through what’s in his office. The most recent work he’d been doing is probably there. We can carry some of that back to LC ourselves.”

They worked silently, examining each file folder in the drawers, occasionally commenting on what they’d found, and placing selected folders on the floor next to them. One file labeled
SEVILLE-REYES
caught Annabel’s eye. She took it to a black leather sling chair in the corner and began reading.

“What do you have?” Consuela asked.

“Handwritten notes, in Michele’s hand, I assume. It’s about some artist from Seville named Fernando Reyes.”

“Not familiar with him.”

“I don’t think I am, either, although for some reason his name rings a bell. That’s why I picked it up.”

“What’s it say about him?”

“Sort of a biography, a list of paintings attributed to him, family background, influences, that sort of thing. Looks like Michele did this research fairly recently when he was in Seville, according to dates in his notes.”

“He spent a lot of time in Seville over the past couple of years,” Consuela said.

“Makes sense,” said Annabel, continuing to read. “Michele seems to have gotten most of his material about the artist from someone he refers to as Sebastian. Familiar?”

“No.”

“Look at this.” Annabel handed Consuela a group of papers attached to one another with a paper clip.

“A list of paintings by Reyes.”

“Yes. And a second list of paintings by others, all depicting that famous scene where Columbus presents his Book of Privileges to Fernando and Isabella.”

Annabel laid the folder on the floor and went to the living and dining rooms, where the walls were covered with Hispanic art. “There’s no painting in the apartment depicting that scene,” she said when she returned to the office.

“It says Reyes painted in the nineteenth century,” Consuela said. “Aside from the scene, I can’t imagine what it would have to do with Las Casas.”

“I can’t either,” Annabel said, inserting the list she’d given Consuela into the folder and adding it to others on the floor.

At five, Annabel took out her cell phone. “I have to call Mac.”

“Where are you?” her husband asked. “I called the library. Someone in Hispanic said you’d left for the afternoon.”

“I’m at Michele Paul’s apartment.”

“Why?”

“Going over materials he had here that should be returned to the library. I’m with Consuela.”

“How long will you be there?”

“We’re about to leave. Consuela and I are carrying
back some of the files. They’re sending a truck tomorrow for the rest. There’s a room full of file boxes.”

“Home for dinner?”

“Yes. I’d say about six-thirty.”

“I’ll have it waiting.”

“Don’t fuss. How was school?”

“Pretty good. I’m impressed with some of my students this term, at least I was today. Tomorrow’s another matter.”

“And how’s your knee?”

“It’s, ah—hurting today. I took a wrong step leaving the building. Must have twisted it.”

“Stay off it. We’ll order in from the hotel.”

“I’ll play it by ear. Or by knee. Safe home.”

Annabel and Consuela, each carrying an armload of file folders, were driven back to LC by Detective Simmons and his uniformed colleague. They went directly to the Hispanic and Portuguese section, where they spread the folders on a small conference table in a room adjacent to Consuela’s office.