Murder on the Potomac (17 page)

“Just like that,” he said.

“No, not just like that. I’ve been putting my neck out for you for months now. Every week that I pick up a package in New York, I feel like a criminal, like the FBI is going to jump out of the bushes and arrest me.”

His smile was a slight imperfection. “You’re being dramatic again, Suzanne.”

“The hell I am. Look, I don’t care what kind of scam you’re involved in. That’s your business, and maybe Sam’s Tankloff’s. Should it become Daddy’s business, too?”

There was no smile now. His face was granite. “You aren’t threatening me, are you?”

“Call it what you will. I want my money. It’s that simple. I promised Arthur Saul in New York that I’d have it. He’s going to put me in a play. Damn it, Sun, I want it now.”

“I don’t have it now.”

“What did you do, drop it all in Atlantic City?”

He didn’t respond.

“Please, Sun. It’s my big chance. I’ve been writing this one-woman show for a year. Arthur says he’ll produce it and turn it into a real showcase for me. You know Daddy won’t give it to me. I asked him six months ago, and he laughed. He just looked at me and laughed. What do you think that did to me, made me feel? When I told you—”

They were interrupted by a young man who asked Cheong how he was doing. “Fine,” Cheong responded. The young man slapped him on the shoulder and continued to the bar. “When I told you, you seemed to understand,” Suzanne continued. “So I started doing the pickups for you in New York, when you told me it would be worth a hundred thousand dollars for me.”

His black eyes darted back and forth. Confident that they weren’t being overheard, he leaned closer. “I don’t want to argue with you, Suzanne. I’ll give you the money, but it will take me a week or two. I’m going to the Cayman Islands with Sam on business. While I’m gone, I expect an infusion of cash. When I get back—and if the cash is there—I’ll give it to you. I can’t do more than that.”

Her face brightened. She placed a small hand on his chest and smiled. “That’s all I wanted to hear. I’ll call
Arthur and tell him it’s set so he can get the ball rolling. What else can I say except thank you? I knew you wouldn’t let me down the way Daddy has all these years.”

“I have to go,” he said. “I have an appointment.” He strode purposefully from the room and into the hotel lobby, leaving Suzanne alone with her thoughts—and dreams.

She went to a public phone and dialed Arthur Saul’s number in New York. His assistant answered and told her he was busy.

“Put him on,” she said with conviction. “I have very good news for him. For us.”

The Next Morning—Thursday

Because Mackensie Smith was obsessive-compulsive when it came to office neatness, he seldom had the courage to visit the office of his friend Professor Monty Jamison, whose office of solid toxic waste was infamous at the university. “Monty will die in there, and we won’t know for days and won’t be able to find him for a month,” a colleague liked to say. One thing for certain, Mac thought, he won’t be found under
J
.

Jamison’s office was twice the size of Smith’s but seemed considerably smaller because of its immense clutter. Most of the space was taken up with books and papers in what seemed to be leaning towers, some reaching from floor to almost ceiling. A narrow path wandered from door to desk, with an even narrower black hole circling the desk to allow Jamison access to
his chair. He claimed to be able to put his finger on any document there, and Mac Smith didn’t doubt it. A psychiatrist at a party once told Smith that people with organized minds didn’t need external order to function. Translation: Smith’s need for external order meant that his mind was disorganized. Just another flawed Freudian theory, he told himself after finding an excuse to escape the shrink. He’d once heard Dr. Joyce Brothers on a TV talk show explain that men who needed to arrange throw pillows in a neat row on a couch had a breast fixation. The pillows on Smith’s couches were
always
neatly lined up. He’d asked Annabel about it, and she’d assured him that his appreciation of the female breast was well within normal limits.

Jamison had multiple research projects going at once. Few were completed because his initial enthusiasm usually waned when a new idea captured his sizable imagination. Recently, he’d told Smith that he was in the process of studying the background of Amila Bloomer, a nineteenth-century leader of the temperance movement and inventor of women’s “bloomers”; George Washington Plunkitt, a New York politician at the turn of the century who’d proudly differentiated between honest and dishonest graft and who claimed that the sort of “honest” graft he practiced was good for society; and, of course, there was always another Washington murder in the past to which the American history professor was lending his insatiable curiosity.

Smith knocked on Jamison’s door that morning, heard a gruff “Come in,” and pushed open the door as far as it would go, which wasn’t far because of books piled behind it. Jamison was leaning back in his chair reading.

“Bad time?” Smith asked.

“Never for you, Mackensie. Come in, come in. Sit down.”

“Where?” Smith asked. Night-vision goggles were needed to find the furniture.

“Over there.” Jamison pointed to a straight-back chair that had miraculously avoided becoming a repository for books and papers.

Seated, Smith apologized for barging in. “I thought you might have some material on Clement Vallandigham.”

Jamison’s eyes lighted up. “Of course I do. The original Man Without a Country.” He got up from his chair with considerable difficulty, stood on tiptoe to reach a book buried under papers on a high shelf, almost fell into a pile of documents, steadied himself by grabbing the windowsill, and handed the book to Smith, who’d jumped to his feet when Jamison had begun to topple.

“Lost my balance,” Jamison said.

“Yes.” What Smith was thinking was that Jamison had, indeed, put his finger on the book Smith sought.

“Sad case, Vallandigham,” Jamison said. “Shot off his mouth too much about Lincoln being a despot and was banished to the Confederacy. But they had no use for him and sent him back. Wandered about till he shot himself.”

Smith browsed the book as Jamison capsulized the life of its subject. It was exactly what Smith needed to prepare a class, offering Clement Vallandigham as a possible example of excessive punishment for loyal opposition.

Jamison returned to his chair, picked up what he’d
been reading when Smith arrived, and held it up. “Fascinating story here, Mackensie,” he said.

Smith looked up. “What is it?”

“A biography of sorts of Pauline Juris.”

“Where did you get
that
?”

“From Wendell, last night, at his house. We were going over some last-minute details for Saturday’s production. When the others left, he handed this to me. You can imagine how I responded, being a journal keeper myself.”

“It’s her journal? A day-to-day account of her life?”

Jamison’s laugh was a low rumble. “No, nothing like that. Pauline’s family goes back to the Revolution, and she’d evidently assumed the role of family historian. Nice assortment of characters. Soldiers, rogues and criminals, merchants large and small, even a woman from her father’s side of the family who was a labor organizer in Massachusetts textile mills.”

“Another Mother Jones,” Smith said.

“Exactly.”

“Why did Wendell give it to
you
?” Smith asked.

“He thought I might be interested from a historical perspective, hopes I’ll volunteer to edit it and seek a publisher. It was very touching, Mac. Wendell had tears in his eyes. He said he thought its publication would be a fitting tribute to Pauline. I certainly agree.”

“Is it good enough to be published?” Smith asked.

“Not in its present form, as much as I’ve read. But with an astute editor’s touch it could be. Care to look at it?” Smith took it from where his friend plopped it on the desk and was surprised at its heft. It had been his experience that people who threatened to write family
histories usually quit after page twenty. Pauline’s efforts had resulted in more than three hundred pages.

He fanned through the manuscript. “Funny. Pauline didn’t seem the sort of woman who would be interested in history,” he commented. “I perceived her as strictly here and now. And Wendell, moved to tears?”

“Exactly my perception. What a pleasant surprise to see another dimension to her.”

“Have you read much of it, Monty?”

“No, and don’t think I will for the next few days, not with the Sickles-Key reenactment this weekend. You and Annabel will be there?”

“Yes. I’d be interested in reading this.”

“Ho-ho,” Jamison said. “The professor of law about to intrude on the history professor’s turf.”

Smith laughed gently. “Wouldn’t think of it, my friend, but I do have more free time than you do.” And more air, Mac thought, claustrophobic in the overwhelming office.

Jamison squared his chair and leaned elbows on the desk. “Nothing in there, Mac, that will shed light on her murder. History pure and simple. I read the last few pages. She brings the history only up to 1921.”

“I’m not looking for clues, Monty. I’d just enjoy a leisurely stroll through someone else’s family.”

“Then take it. It’s yours.”

Smith considered handing the manuscript back. Tierney had given it to the professor, not to him. “Sure it’s okay to have me read this?” he asked.

“Of course. Wendell considers you family.”

Hardly what Mac Smith aspired to. “I’ll tell him I’ve read it,” he said.

“By all means,” said Jamison.

“Everything shaping up for Saturday?”

Jamison’s sigh was big enough to threaten a paper earthquake. “Yet another miracle if it goes off as planned,” he said. “This is the biggest production we’ve ever mounted. So many things to go wrong, so many people to appease.” He said with gravity, “It was the Bard who first suggested we kill all the lawyers. Correct?”

Smith smiled. “Yes, although I have a problem with that, despite Shakespeare’s many followers.”

“Well, I say, Mackensie Smith, first kill all the actors and actresses. They are the most self-centered, difficult, whining, infuriatingly frustrating people on earth.”

Smith stood and tucked the manuscript and book beneath his arm. “Time to leave, Monty. I have a dentist’s appointment in half an hour. I’m sure everything will go splendidly on Saturday. Thanks for these. I’ll return both on Monday.”

As Smith turned to leave, Jamison said, “Terrible what happened to that dental student last night.”

“What dental student?”

“The one who was killed. Incredible coincidence. I just sent out a Tri-S flyer in which …”

“Another time, Monty. My dentist has a rule. If you’re late, you get root canal whether you need it or not. See you Saturday.”

Dr. Bernard Kirshbaum, Mac and Annabel’s dentist, maintained elaborate offices in the Watergate complex. His patient roster read like a Washington
Who’s Who
list. It included familiar names from the Pentagon, State, the CIA, media, and the Washington Redskins. The hallways were lined with autographed pictures
from patients, Kirshbaum’s personal rogues’ gallery: “Worst impacted wisdom tooth I’ve ever seen”; “Took three bullets in Nam but freaks out when the needle comes out”; or, “Spends most of the time in my chair taking calls from NATO and the White House.” He’d been after Smith to provide a photo, but Smith had balked. For Smith, cavities, like domestic quarrels, political preferences, and Oreo-cookie binges at midnight, were private affairs.

Smith settled in Kirshbaum’s high-tech chair. An assistant secured a bib around his neck. Smith did not have an undue fear of dentists. What bothered him most was that he invariably sat with mouth filled with cotton, plastic strips, and metal bands while the dentist chattered on about everything from Madonna to
Monday Night Football
. It wasn’t fair. The most Smith could manage was a grunt or a hiss, neither of which contributed to the conversation.

This visit was no different. Mouth chockablock with paraphernalia, he listened to a detailed accounting of Kirshbaum’s recent fly-fishing expedition to Nova Scotia. He held some photos from the trip in front of Smith, who did a lot of nodding, hoping the movement of his head wouldn’t disturb what was going on inside his mouth. Dr. K. worked, and rambled on.

“Read about that dental student being murdered last night?” Kirshbaum asked as he mixed a gooey substance on a glass plate.

“Uh-huh,” Smith managed.

The dentist continued mixing his potion with his right hand as he picked up a piece of paper from the counter with his left and handed it behind his back to his patient.
Because he wasn’t wearing glasses, Smith had to hold the paper at arm’s length. It was a newsletter that had obviously been created on a computer. Across the top in blood-red letters was
THE SCARLET SIN SOCIETY
.

Ah, the joys of modern technology, Smith thought. It was the sort of document that could be personalized—send one batch to area dentists, another with different information to accountants, maybe send some in the hope of recruiting taxidermists.