Murder on the Potomac (19 page)

“I’d never do that to you, Mac.” A few surreptitious glances around the bar. “I want you to know, Mac, that if you tell me to get lost, I’ll understand.”

“Why would I do that, Tony? What’s in the envelope?”

“Something you want very much.”

“A winning lottery ticket.”

“I wish, you wish. I have in this envelope copies of some very important letters.”

“How did you get them?” Smith asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Wrong. I want very much to know.”

“You won’t be happy.”

“I’m not happy now. They
are
Tierney’s letters?”

“Copies.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay. I have this nice young lady who does work for me part time. She’s also a writer. Magazines, poetry. Not very successful but maybe someday. Anyway, I kind of figured out how the letters got leaked to the press. A cop named Frank Chester. A loser, been in charge of the Evidence Unit for years. I heard stories about Chester, how he’ll play with evidence for a buck. So I figured I’d take a shot. I had my friend contact him, say she was writing a story on Pauline Juris and wanted to know what was in the letters. Chester tells her he can’t help—until she casually mentions her budget on the story is five grand, with two grand for ‘research.’ Chester still balks, but my friend is v-e-r-y persuasive, very charming. She keeps talking, and finally Chester agrees to meet her but only to discuss the matter. Well, Mac, they meet tonight for dinner, and when they finish up apple pie and coffee, my friend has copies of the letters, which Chester ‘just happened to have brought with him.’ ”

Smith stared at Buffolino.

“Here they are.” Buffolino shoved the envelope across the table.

“You bribed a police officer with two thousand dollars?”

“A grand. It only cost a grand.”

“I don’t care how much they cost, Tony. You’ve broken the law.”

“I didn’t do anything. My friend did.”

“On your instructions.”

“I didn’t tell her to pass out money. But she knew how much I—you wanted to see the letters and—”

“You mentioned me to her?”

“Not by name. I called you an interested friend.”

“I see. You do remember, Tony, that you almost went to jail for accepting a bribe.”

“That was for drugs. These are just letters. Nothing got taken. The originals are still sitting in Evidence. Copies. Just copies.”

Smith didn’t know whether to walk out of the bar or to reach across the table and strangle Buffolino. He did neither. “You laid out a thousand dollars for these?” he asked.

“Yeah. I figured Tierney would be happy to reimburse me. He’d like to see the letters. Right?”

Smith couldn’t argue that point. He also asked the logical question: “Why am I sitting here? Give the envelope to Tierney.”

Buffolino shook his head. “You give the letters to him.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause he won’t question you about how you got them. Me, he’ll question, maybe even get mad. Like you told me, sometimes I go too far.”

“Sometimes. This is one of them.”

Buffolino sat back, hurt on his craggy face. “Look, Mac, I’m sorry. Maybe it was a mistake. We all make mistakes, huh?”

Smith picked up the envelope. “Has anyone else seen these?” he asked. “Aside from your lady friend?”

Buffolino’s face brightened. “Not even her, Mac. The
envelope was sealed just like it is now when Chester gave it to her. I told her maybe she should have checked, but she said she was so happy being given the envelope, she didn’t want to queer the deal.”

“So maybe what’s in this isn’t the letters after all,” Smith said. Buffolino started to protest but stopped. He knew how Smith’s mind worked. He’d take the envelope and check its contents because he didn’t know for certain what it contained. A real lawyer, Buffolino thought.

Smith waved for the check. A large man in a gray suit and flushed drinker’s face pawed a young woman at the bar. She giggled. Smith paid the tab and walked outside with Buffolino. “Don’t ever do this again, Tony,” he said sternly. “Don’t ever act on my behalf without checking with me first.”

“You got it, Mac. You will talk to Tierney about getting me back the grand?”

“Go home, Tony.”

“Hey, you, too, Mac. Love to Annabel.”

When Smith walked through the door, Annabel was reading in their study. “I was worried about you,” she said.

“You got my note?”

“Sure. Why did you have to meet Tony at this hour?”

He held up the envelope.

“What’s in it?”

“I’ll find out when I open it. Why are you up? You were asleep when I left.”

“Got restless, came into the kitchen for a glass of water, saw your note, and thought you might be meeting that mysterious lady on a street corner.”

Smith said, “I have some reading to do.” He’d been reading Pauline Juris’s family history when Alicia Buffolino called. Now there were the letters, too.

“Can’t wait?” Annabel asked.

“The reading? Sure it can. Why?”

“Because I think we’ve forgotten something.”

“What’s that?”

“A few days ago you made amorous advances to me, which I summarily dismissed. I said that it might be wise to try another day.”

Smith struck a heroic pose in the middle of the room and looked down at her. “I take it this is that other day.”

“Unless your clandestine midnight meetings have taken it all out of you.”

“We’ll see.” He reached out, took both her hands, and pulled her from the couch. They embraced. He whispered into her ear, his breath sending shivers down her body, “I adore you.”

Minutes later they were tangled in bedclothes and each other. It was a night not made for reading.

In Seymour Fletcher’s apartment in the Adams Morgan section of the city, he sat staring blankly at an old movie on the television set in his little living room, wearing only boxer shorts. Suzanne Tierney emerged from the kitchen. She was now fully dressed. She’d resisted coming home with Fletcher because she
did
have to catch an early-morning shuttle to New York. And that was the problem. Fletcher had pressed about going to New York. It wasn’t the day of her acting lessons with that charlatan Arthur Saul, he’d said.

After the sex that had proved unsatisfactory for both, Suzanne told Fletcher that she’d raised money and was
giving it to Saul to mount her one-woman show in New York.

He was furious and felt betrayed, he told her, after having helped shape her show and career. Which was only part true. He had made two suggestions after reading her script and had given her leading roles with the Potomac Players, including Tri-S productions.

“It’s New York, Sy,” she said, trying to reason with him.

“And you’ll be lost there. Do the show in D.C. Then bring it to New York. I know you. That fraud Saul is no director. I know how to get the best out of you.”

“You didn’t know how a few minutes ago,” she said. The argument escalated until, with one toss of a heavy vase into a mirror, he ended it.

“I’m sorry, Sy,” she said, standing at the door. “I just think New York is right for me.”

“Do what you want,” he said, his eyes not leaving the flickering TV screen. “Spend Daddy’s money any goddamn way you want.”

“It’s not my father’s money. It’s—good-bye, Sy.”

Still seething with anger, he dressed to go out for a drink at a neighborhood bar. “Damn!” he said. He discovered the ring which held the keys to the basement rehearsal rooms in the church was not with his other keys. Must have left them at the church, he decided. The hell with them. The hell with everything. “That should have been mine,” he mumbled as he left the apartment. He meant the money.

That Same Night—the Cayman Islands

The club was a two-story, pristine white building on the grounds of a private resort at the northern end of Grand Cayman Island. In the daytime, sun worshipers who hadn’t heard of melanoma, couldn’t spell it, or didn’t care turned copper on the primeval beach while scuba divers and snorkelers sought the abundant, colorful life beneath the tranquil turquoise water.

At night the water was black except for ripples sent dancing by the moon. Above, palm trees illuminated by powerful floodlights gently danced, too, set swaying in the sweet evening breeze.

The club’s dining room was as white as the building’s exterior, its starkness broken by carpeting, wall accents, and table settings of the same color as the water in daytime. This night it was virtually empty. Diners were
outnumbered three-to-one by waiters and waitresses wearing uniforms so heavily starched they appeared to be made of cardboard. The restaurant’s service was seldom criticized by the club’s board, although the merits of the wine cellar and quality of the food were constantly debated. A private club, no more, no less.

Sam Tankloff, Sun Ben Cheong, and John Simmons occupied a window table. They’d finished dinner and lingered over coffee, glad of the room’s sparse clientele.

“I still don’t get it,” Tankloff said, referring to the discussion earlier that evening—a bank account established in the islands by Sun Ben Cheong in the name of, and for the benefit of, the Tankloff Investment Advisory Group.

Simmons, a patrician gray-haired lawyer, deeply tanned and professionally manicured, sat in the same steel-rod posture he’d maintained all evening. He smiled brilliantly and said in tones that seemed never to need modulation, “There is nothing untoward about your account here, Sam. When Sun Ben and I set it up, we followed the letter of the law.” Simmons had flown in that day expressly for the dinner meeting. He lived and practiced in Miami, specializing in creating offshore bank accounts for wealthy clients.

Tankloff grimaced, vigorously rubbed the back of his neck, then dug his little finger into his right ear. “If that’s so,” he said, “why am I being investigated?”

“You aren’t exactly being investigated,” Simmons replied. “A routine inquiry. Mr. Carvella from Treasury made that clear when he spoke with Bob Chalmers at the bank.”

Tankloff turned to Cheong. “I thought one of the advantages of opening an account here was secrecy.”

Simmons’s laugh was this side of patronizing. “Sam, one of the appeals of banking in the Caymans is still secrecy. Congress, with some prodding by the IRS, has been trying to penetrate that secrecy for a long time. It hasn’t gotten very far. Carvella made his approach under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. The treaty gives him the right to do that, but there’s no teeth in the law to make anyone here comply. You really shouldn’t be so concerned. Things are in good order.”

Tankloff finished his cognac, looked up at two waiters hovering at the table, and pointed to his empty snifter. “It isn’t legality I’m concerned about, John. It’s just that offshore banking and secret accounts go against my grain. Hell, I’m supposed to be pretty smart when it comes to investing money. I see a good deal, and I go for it. Simple. I review somebody’s plans for a new shopping center or office building, like what I see, advance the money, and get rich on the payback. When Sun Ben suggested we open an account here to avoid certain taxes—and remember, we opened the London office just to give us an international basis for banking abroad—he said it would reap big rewards for me and the company.” Thinking he might be sounding harsh concerning his young financial genius, he gave Cheong a warm, friendly smile. “Not that I doubted you for a minute, Sun, and I’m not doubting you now. But I’ve wheeled and dealed for years without the government sniffing around. I like it that way. Aboveboard. Doing business in the daylight. But now a probe by the Treasury Department
and
the IRS. I don’t like it.”

Cheong said, “John is right, Sam. There’s no probe. This is just a routine visit by Treasury. My contacts tell me there are going to be a lot more of them in the future.
It’s already happening in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, even Nauru and Vanuatu. But just routine. If we had anything to hide, you’d be justified in your concerns. But we don’t. So my suggestion is that we forget about it and let John handle things.” Simmons gave another tiny smile and sipped his coffee.

Tankloff squeezed his eyes shut as though attempting to conjure a final, reasoned decision. He opened them. “I suppose you’re right. Hell, John, that’s what I pay you for.” To Cheong: “Just some irrational worries by an old-fashioned businessman. You’re meeting with Chalmers, John, and the guy from Treasury in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“Want me with you? I’m booked on the first plane out, but I could postpone.”

“No need,” Simmons said. “Frankly, it’s better when clients aren’t present. Like an IRS audit. You never know what a client is going to say to get himself in trouble. Are you flying back together?”

“No,” Cheong said. “I’m staying until afternoon. I have other business to tend to.”

“What’s her name?” Tankloff asked, his laugh a knowing one.

“A favor for my brother.”

“I forget you have a brother,” said Tankloff. “John. Isn’t that his name?”

“Yes.”

The three men stood outside beneath the swaying palms and inhaled the fragrant, humid air. “Lovely night,” Simmons said.

“Pretty place,” Tankloff offered. “Wouldn’t mind moving here someday.”

“To be close to your money,” Simmons said.

“To get away from winter ice storms in D.C.,” Tankloff replied. “And other kinds.”

They walked together until reaching a point where the fieldstone path forked in three directions. Each had a bungalow on the beach. Simmons wished them a good night’s sleep. He said he probably wouldn’t see them in the morning but would call from Miami to report on how the meeting had gone. He strolled casually to his cottage. Cheong and Tankloff had adjacent cottages in the other direction.

“Nightcap?” Tankloff asked Cheong. “I have scotch in the cottage.”

“No, thank you, Sam. I have a lot of reading to catch up on. This is a good time and place to do it. Not only do I have to keep abreast of what’s happening in the financial world, I now have a class to prepare for.”

Tankloff slapped him on the back with his large, hairy hand. “I think it’s terrific you taking that adjunct professor’s job. Share a little of that financial genius with others. Maybe you’ll spot a couple of winners and recruit them for us.”