Murder at the Pentagon (31 page)

“Sandwiches I can always get. How much?”

“A hundred.”

“A hundred and a half.”

“Whatever you say.”

Charene Maize did what she did every weekday morning after getting up at six. In bathrobe and slippers she went to their large kitchen that overlooked a small Japanese garden, made coffee, squeezed oranges, and split two English muffins in preparation for toasting. She turned on a tiny television set, not because she was interested in the financial program that aired each morning at that hour but because the voices kept her company.

Such routine, she thought. She glanced at the clock: six-fifteen. Fifteen minutes before her husband, Joe, would get up at the buzz of a second alarm setting. She would hear him walk heavily from bed to bathroom, her signal to put the muffins in the toaster oven.

The routine seldom varied, even when he’d come home late and drunk as he had last night, too tired to brush away the heavy odor of alcohol from his mouth, stumbling as he tried to get out of his pants, cursing, and then attempting to slip into bed so as not to awaken her. Which, of course, he always did.

She heard the alarm’s second buzz, automatically reached for the muffins, and listened for his footsteps. None. She put the muffins in the toaster oven, listened again, then went outside to retrieve the newspaper from the driveway.

Back inside, there was still no sign that he’d got up, and she was gripped with a spasm of fear. Her husband had been told by their family doctor two years ago that he perfectly fit the medical profile of a potential coronary victim. He had to lose a lot of weight, the doctor had said, and cut down on his drinking and smoking. Work less and learn to relax. Joe Maize hadn’t done any of those things, and Charene had tired of nagging him.

She went up the stairs and looked into the bedroom. He was on his back in bed. His eyes were open, hands folded on his chest. A coffin pose.

“Joe, the muffins are on,” she said.

“Later, maybe,” he said, not moving.

She approached the bed and looked down at the face she’d awakened to all these years. He could infuriate her, and often did, but he’d been a good husband, and a good father to their grown children. She could be angry that he stayed out too many nights and drank too much, but she also knew it went with the territory. Hard drinking. Male bonding. Buyer-seller. Contacts. Vestiges of a lifestyle that had pretty much gone by the boards in this day of bottled water and skinless chicken. She loved him.

“Joe, are you feeling okay?”

He’d been staring at the ceiling. Now, he moved his eyes to take in her. “I thought I’d take the day off,” he said.

She hadn’t heard those words in years. “Why?” she asked, realizing the question in no way reflected what she was feeling. How wonderful. Maybe they could take a drive, or do some gardening. The garden certainly needed it.

He derricked his bulk up against the headboard and rubbed sleep from his eyes, then ran his fingers through tousled hair. “Just tired, that’s all. The muffins are in? I’ll be down in a minute.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and placed her fingers on
his folded hands. “Sleep as long as you want. No rush to get up if you’re not going to work.”

“I can’t sleep,” he said. “Don’t let the muffins burn.”

They sat in a sunny nook in the kitchen.

“Want part of the paper?” Charene asked.

“No. Doom and gloom. That’s all they write about these days.”

She judged his mood. He was quiet, somber, but not angry. “What did you do last night?” she asked. “Who did you go out with?”

He named colleagues from the Pentagon. “I stayed too long,” he said. “Had one drink too many.”

Three or four too many, Charene thought. It remained that, an unstated thought.

Were there other women? Probably not anymore. There had been some early in their marriage, flings when out with the boys, nothing more serious than that. They’d had bitter words about it early-on, but then profound pragmatism set in. So what? she’d decided. She would be perceived with scorn for carrying that attitude into the era of feminism, but, again, so what? Charene Maize had never carried a brief for the feminist movement. She did carry a brief for survival.

“What do you want to do today?” she asked.

“Hang around. I thought I’d see if I can get the model working again.”

He’d become interested years ago in flying radiocontrolled model planes. He’d got good at it, and had spent many weekends at local aerodromes putting his pride and joy, a red-and-white model Cessna 172, through its graceful airborne paces. Sometimes when Charene went with him, he’d allow her to take the controls. She knew she would never be as skilled as he, especially at landing it in one piece, but she loved being with him at those times. He was always so relaxed. And enthusiastic. A boy again.

Which was why she was disappointed a few years ago when he’d lost interest, and relegated the model to a workshop that took up half of the garage.

“That’s a great idea,” she said. “We out for an early dinner? Nothing fancy.”

“Sure. Okay.”

He dressed in old clothes he’d worn when painting the house; large dabs of color testified to his amateur standing. “More on you than on the wall,” Charene had kidded. He hadn’t lifted a paintbrush since.

He went to the garage-workshop, and Charene cleaned up the kitchen, then showered and dressed. She had nothing special on the agenda, although she had tentatively accepted an invitation for lunch at the home of one of her friends. Just a gabfest, woman chatter—“Can you imagine what my husband did yesterday?” Much giggling. She would cancel that plan if Joe showed any last-minute interest in their having lunch together.

At eleven she decided to pay him a visit. She made more juice, his favorite beverage after scotch and bourbon, and loaded a plate with cookies she’d bought the previous evening at a church fund-raiser. She stopped to admire plantings in the garden, then looked toward the garage; the door to the workshop was closed. It was a beautiful Friday in Washington; why hadn’t he left the door open to allow the pristine air to circulate? As she approached, a tray with the juice and cookies balanced in one hand, she noticed that the door was open a few inches. Had she been wearing shoes, the click of her heels on the flagstone walk would have been heard inside. But she still wore her slippers; her steps were cushioned silence.

She paused at the door. Ordinarily, she would have pushed it open and walked in, but she suffered the same feelings she’d had earlier when he hadn’t got up. Instead, she placed her fingertips against the door and slowly pushed. Her husband was seated on a stool at the workbench, his back to her. Next to the red-and-white model plane was a shotgun, its barrel propped up on books so that it was pointed at his face. He held the weapon down tight on the books with one hand, and was extending a piece of wood toward the trigger.

“Joe!” Charene screamed. The juice and cookies fell to
the stone walk. Her sudden presence startled him. The shotgun fell off the books, and he almost fell off the stool.

“Joe. What are you doing?” A rhetorical question. He was about to kill himself.

She wrapped her arms around his large frame, nestled her lips to his neck. Tears ran freely down her cheeks. “Honey, honey, what’s the matter? What could be so bad that you would want to …?”

She felt his body heave, and she pressed tighter, as though to draw him inside the protective shell that was her. “Joe, Joe, Joe,” she repeated. “Tell me. Please, oh God, tell me.”

He said through labored breathing, “It’s over, Charene. It’s all over.”

“What’s
all over?”

He went to the far corner of the workshop and placed his beefy hands against the wall. She maintained the distance between them. Eventually, he turned and looked at her with the eyes of a small boy asking forgiveness of a parent. “They know,” he said.

“Know what?”

“They know that I’ve been—that I’ve been taking payoffs from Sam Caldwell to doctor the audit reports on Safekeep.”

She asked, “What are you talking about?” Because she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Charene,” he said, extending his hands, “I took money from Caldwell. I took the money because—because, I wanted us to have more.” He stepped outside into the garden, which he embraced with extended arms. She followed. “I wanted good things for you and the kids,” he said. “It’s so expensive. Putting them through college. Cars. Vacations. This house. I wanted better things.” He turned. “I’m a liar. Not just for you and the kids. I’ve been a fraud my whole life. I wanted better things for
me
. I’m a goddam civil servant. There’s so much money being made in defense. So much money, Charene, going into people’s pockets instead of building better weapons. Payoffs passing hands every minute of every day of every goddam year, and I finally wanted some
of it. That’s all. Just some. Not much. A tiny portion for you, for me. And—they know. It’s over.”

Charene put her arm over his shoulder and shepherded him into the house. The big man who had been her husband for so many years was now reduced in size, as though a leak had developed. He slumped at the kitchen table.

“I’ll be right back,” Charene said, going quickly to the bar in the den, where she poured a glass of bourbon. She handed it to him. He looked up, managed a small smile. “I don’t need this,” he said.

“Take a sip. It will calm you.” He did as he was told.

They said nothing to each other, birds feeding outside the window the only sound. Finally, she said, “You didn’t have to do it for us, Joe. But most important, you don’t have to end your life because of it.”

“I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to disgrace you and the family. Joycelen had been feeding the Wishengrad committee everything about the project for a long time. They know—every thing.”

“So what?”

He couldn’t help but laugh, but it was mirthless. “So what? Do you realize what this means? I’ll go to jail.”

“We’ll fight it. People in this rotten city break the law every day and don’t go to jail. Presidents. Cabinet members. Advisers to the high-and-mighty. We’ll fight it with everything we have, Joe. We’ll fight it, and we’ll win. When we do, we’ll sell this house and the Japanese garden and the cars, and we’ll go someplace simple and plain, a place the Washington phonies don’t even know exists. You’ll fly model airplanes, and I’ll plant a garden with vegetables. We’ll eat them instead of having them cooked by a fancy foreign chef in a fancy foreign restaurant.” She took his hands in hers. “Ending your life is not the answer, Joe, because if you end your life, you end mine. I need you.”

That evening, they went to dinner at a neighborhood steak house. “Order the biggest steak on the menu,” Charene said. “Tomorrow, we’ll start a whole new life. We’ll eat healthy,
take long walks, and enjoy being alive. You hear me, Joe? Alive!”

Later that night as they sat up in bed, Maize said, “I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be,” she said.

“Not about being charged with a crime. I think Joycelen was murdered because of this.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Caldwell.”

“Stay away from him. Go over to the other side. Who can you talk to about providing evidence in return for immunity, protection?”

“I have no idea. I should get a lawyer.”

“Then get one. Get a good lawyer and have him approach whoever is in charge of this investigation. Tell them everything. Do whatever you have to.”

Smith had called Margit and suggested she come to his house that evening at seven, which didn’t pose a problem for her. She’d spoken with Jeff Foxboro the previous night and had said she needed Friday to herself. Would they attend the dinner-dance at Andrews Saturday night? They’d agreed they would, although she now questioned that decision. Had she had more time to think it out, she probably would have canceled, but her total focus was on the previous meeting with Smith and Buffolino, the realization that she was being followed, and the urgency in Smith’s voice when he asked her to come to his house this evening.

She was late. Buffolino and Smith were seated at the kitchen table. A large envelope was in front of Tony.

“Drink?” Smith asked.

“Glass of water, please, Mac.” She looked at Buffolino. “You’ve already come up with something?”

He gave her his best toe-in-the-sand expression. “I got lucky,” he said.

She sat next to him. “What do you mean, you got lucky?”

“First of all, I started the ball rolling with this Dr. Marcus Half in New York. I got a friend up there who—”

“Not that Peterman,” Margit said.

“Nah. A guy who used to be a shrink. He got bagged for hitting on his female patients, which didn’t go over big with the AMA. Anyway, he does work for malpractice lawyers and knows his way around the medical business. I’ll run up there tomorrow and see what he comes up with.”

“Fine,” said Smith.

“It won’t cost much. The plane, a lunch. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

“Okay,” Margit said. She tapped the envelope. “What’s this?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know whether it’ll help or not, but maybe it will. I figured I’d show it to you and let you decide.”

“Fill me in,” she said to Smith as he placed a glass of water in front of her. “What’s going on here?”

Smith sat on the opposite side of the table. “Tony went to Joycelen’s apartment last night after he left us. He talked to a neighbor, who told him that a young man had visited Joycelen with surprising regularity. Every Tuesday at midnight. Tony, being the inventive person that he is, went back there today with a composite-sketch artist from the police department. The neighbor gave what Tony says was a hair-by-hair, pore-by-pore description of this regular midnight visitor, and the artist drew the sketch. We thought you should see it.”

Margit stood and paced the kitchen. Were she truthful, she would have admitted that she did not want to see it. The reality was—and it caused an ache in her belly—she was afraid it would be a picture of Robert Cobol. The possibility that Cobol had lied to her, and had, in fact, a homosexual relationship with Joycelen, had occurred to her. That would be a blow she wasn’t sure she could weather, not after all she’d committed to in the interest of clearing his name. She said to Smith, “I’m not up to surprises, Mac.”