Immaculate Deception

by Warren Adler

  “Especially the pregnancy,” Congressman Rome said. “The media would have a field day with it. Above all, we wouldn’t want Frankie’s name to be dragged through the mud. Hard to tell if there’s any real political fodder in this for the pro-lifers. I suppose both sides can twist it to their advantage. My own call on this is that the faster we get it behind us the better.”

  “Exactly my sentiments,” the mayor said.

  “If we had more time. More manpower,” Fiona said.

  “More manpower. More people know. More people talk. More media action,” the mayor said. “I’m afraid I won’t have that.”

  “I just feel . . .” Her frustration was stupefying.

  “That’s the point, sergeant,” the mayor said. “Feeling. Emotion.” He slapped the desk. “I won’t have it. Bring me valid murder, complete with suspects or drop the damned thing.” He looked toward the congressman who nodded and stood up.

  He shook the Eggplant’s hand.

  “You are to be commended, captain.” He looked at Fiona and Cates. “All of you. Believe me when I say your work is well appreciated. But I tend to stand with the mayor on the issue. I know you’re trying your best to get to the bottom of this terrible tragedy. But murder is a very serious business. We must be absolutely certain. Absolutely.”

  He shook hands all around. His flesh felt strong, warm, reassuring. Everything about the man seemed reassuring.

  The mayor waited for him to leave before turning to face the remaining group. His pose of solicitation had disappeared.

  “I don’t appreciate this, Luther. When you requested this meeting, I thought you had something a lot more definitive.”

  “I just wanted to leave the door open to other options.”

  “Bet you’d just love this to be a nice juicy murder. All that hot dogging on the tube.” He looked at Fiona.

  “And you, woman. There’s no case here. I told the congressman you had a case. I looked like a goddamned fool.” He bore in on the Eggplant and pointed a dark longnailed finger at him. “You got a week. That’s about it. The media will be on our ass by then, so nothing, nothing comes from you or me other than: We are in the process of confirming suicide. I don’t want them to get the murder bug up their asses. Hear?”

  “I hear,” the Eggplant said.

  “And another thing . . .” the mayor began. But he looked at Fiona and Cates. “If you both don’t mind I’d like to have a little private conversation with Captain Greene.”

  It was definitely a signal to leave. Fiona felt humiliated. She had been so sure that they would be able to convince the congressman and the mayor. Then, as she expounded her theories, her own confidence had wavered. Perhaps that’s why they had not been persuasive. The failure was definitely her fault. Worse, from their point of view, she probably had made the case for suicide.

  “In the absence of any real evidence it’s tough to make a case of it,” Cates said. “Sorry, Fi. But you know where I stand.”

  “Can’t fault you for being a good soldier, though,” Fiona said as they stood in the corridor waiting for the Eggplant to come out of the mayor’s office.

  “You can try. I’ll say that.”

  “I can’t much blame them,” Fiona sighed.

  “You were terrific,” Cates said. “It was the case itself, I’m afraid.”

  “I feel like a damned evangelist,” she sighed. “Trying to make people believers on faith alone.”

  “Well nobody can cry cover-up. Can’t say we didn’t touch the bases.”

  “Must be something we missed,” Fiona said.

  “I doubt it.” He smiled. “I won’t throw in the sponge, though. Not until you do. Until then, I’ll try to keep an open mind.”

  “Loyal to the end.”

  “For better or for worse,” he joked, looking at his watch. “I’m still beating leather for the cause. Got more appointments on the Hill.”

  She began to pace the corridor, wrestling with the problem. A missing link. There had to be. But why? Her confidence level moved like a pendulum. She sensed Cates studying her.

  “I want to go back to McGuire’s apartment,” she said.

  “Flanagan’s been through that with a fine tooth comb. The Eggplant’s sent him and his crew back three times. Nothing.”

  “We’ll sit there, soak it all up. Maybe something will come to us.”

  “Doubtful,” he shrugged, “but I’m game.” Again he looked at his watch. “Take me about three, four hours. I’ll meet you there, say, three.”

  “Got a deal,” Fiona said.

  A few minutes after Cates left, the Eggplant came out of the mayor’s office, tightlipped and obviously unhappy. Probably had a real old-fashioned dressing down from hizzoner, she speculated. Nor could she deny what she felt for him now. Pity. Genuine pity.

  “Time for a cup of coffee?” the Eggplant asked awkwardly. He was always uncomfortable socializing with the troops, although he had on occasion joined them for working lunches or dinners. Every year on New Year’s Day, he and the formidable Loreen had “open house,” a stiffly formal up-tight event in their large house on Sixteenth Street.

  It was dress-up and egg nogs with finger sandwiches and quiet talk. Loreen was a part of the closed black society of Washington that had had debutante balls for a hundred years. The Howard University crowd, sometimes referred to as black snobs, but very much the elite. Poor Loreen had married the promising black law student Luther Greene, only to discover that he preferred police work to law, a move for which she never forgave him. Or so the story went.

  To be appointed police commissioner was the only way he could ever satisfy Loreen and pressure at home was explanation enough for his occasionally hostile attitude, crankiness and the need to build around himself a great wall of protective ego.

  They went across the street to the coffee shop of the new Willard Hotel.

  “I don’t know what to say, captain,” Fiona began as they slid into a booth in the rear of the coffee shop.

  “Not your fault,” he muttered.

  “It’s not?”

  She had already worked herself up to a dressing down.

  “You were great in there.”

  “But I didn’t do you any good, that’s for sure. You’d think they’d be proud of the way we did business. Not going off half-cocked. Bet he really roasted you back there.”

  “He roasted me all right.”

  The coffee shop was practically empty. There wasn’t much activity at that hour. Another half hour it would begin to fill up with the luncheon crowd.

  “Tired of playing it safe, I guess,” he said. The waitress came, took their order, and went off.

  “You realize, of course, that they’re right. We have been playing this case with our guts.”

  “It’s the subconscious at work, FitzGerald. A lot more logic than meets the eye. Sometimes you find out why much later.” He watched her through his dark cryptic eyes, offering a thin smile. He had brought her there for a reason and she waited for it to be revealed. The waitress brought their two coffees. He took a deep sip of his.

  “My nose,” he said. “That’s what told me for sure. I smelled it on her that first time, but I couldn’t place it. Not until I was sitting there, taking the man’s shit. Amazing isn’t it. Proves that instinct has a reference point. Who knows why? Loreen wears the same perfume. Goddess. I hate the shit. Can’t wait until it goes away. Takes about three hours. I actually timed it once. Nor would Benton have picked it up since it was already gone when he got to her. But I could still smell it when I arrived and it must have lodged in my memory bank. I’m not saying it’s not possible for a woman on the verge of a planned suicide to put on perfume. But my limited experience suggests the lure and lust department.”

  “She put it on for some man,” Fiona said.

  “Doesn’t seem like the act of a woman on the verge of suicide. But then a smell doesn’t make a case.”

  “But it does explain your gut reaction,” Fiona said. S
he wished she could explain her own so candidly.

  “There must have been something in your subconscious that made you believe that Beatrice was telling the truth. That’s a helluva leap of faith. After all, you put her at the scene within a couple of hours of McGuire’s death.”

  “I believed Beatrice,” she said. She wanted to say something about the intuition of sisterhood, but held her peace. It was no time to test his understanding. “And you believe me,” Fiona said.

  “She could have done it, though,” he mused. “All she had to do was get past the desk man on the way out, which is likely considering the sloppy security in that place.”

  She watched the Eggplant sip his coffee. He was unusually subdued. The fact was that Captain Luther Greene had been put down in front of his subordinates. For a man of his ego, this had to be almost unbearably painful.

  “That woman was murdered, FitzGerald,” he said after a long silence.

  “My sentiments, exactly.”

  “And I think we got it close to right.”

  “So do I.”

  “A man and a woman as secret lovers, they leave tracks, something. The whole world isn’t blind. Somebody knows something.”

  “This is the kind of thing the media are good at. Getting the word out.” She lowered her voice. “We could always leak it. See what bubbles out of the sewer.”

  The Eggplant lifted his lugubrious eyes and laughed. It was an empty hollow laugh.

  “Plenty I’ll bet. You heard them. Paranoid about the media.”

  “Nobody can be in politics for more than ten minutes without getting that disease,” Fiona said.

  The Eggplant finished his cup of coffee. A waitress came over and gave him a refill. Fiona refused. She was agitated enough. Caffeine would make it worse.

  “I didn’t take over homicide to call murders suicides,” he muttered, peering into the dark shiny coffee. Then he looked up suddenly, as if someone might have heard. “I can understand their point of view. I really can. Nothing to go on.”

  “Nothing but our expertise,” Fiona said. “And that should be enough.”

  He sighed.

  “No skin off my tail if they call the damned thing a suicide,” he snapped, mostly to himself. “Not worth blowing my future over it.”

  “Definitely not worth that.”

  “Except it’s right. The right thing.” He lifted his cup and looked over the rim. “Like you said about the lady. She did the right thing.”

  Which was really what he had brought her here to say. A little sob bubbled in her chest.

  “Be careful, chief,” she said, feeling the rush of sentiment. She felt her eyes grow moist.

  “Hell, the old Eggplant knows how to play the game,” he chuckled, smiling broadly. She blushed and he must have seen her discomfort and he quickly changed the subject.

  “That Rome is a cool one.”

  “As soft and smooth as olive oil,” Fiona said.

  “Son of a bitch is playing his own political game. Probably sees any blow-up of the situation a negative for his side.”

  “Just remember, chief. Everything a politician does is all political. He pees, it’s political. He snores, it’s political.”

  The Eggplant nodded, then finished his coffee and slapped the cup back in the saucer. Lifting his hand he signaled for the waitress and mimed a writing gesture for the check.

  “Well, FitzGerald. We got a week. You better get the lead out. We either wrap it or dump it. Right or wrong. Gut feelings or not.”

  “Might as well be a year,” she said. It was her experience that cases either moved fast or withered. The longer a case stayed open the better its chance of being frozen in place. Interest wavered. Leads got cold. Indifference set in.

  The waitress brought the check and the Eggplant looked at it and whistled.

  “I just wanted coffee not a major investment.” The check came to five dollars.

  “You want a fancy hotel,” the waitress said, turning snotty, “you got to pay for it.” She was white, red-neck southern with a hairdo to match. They both knew where she was coming from.

  “Too bad fancy service don’t go with it,” the Eggplant snapped. He gave the waitress a five dollar bill with the check. She could tell he wasn’t going to leave a tip.

  “You people,” the waitress muttered. “Run everything now. Take our women.”

  “You ain’t had black dick, you ain’t had nothing,” Fiona sneered, enjoying the woman’s reaction. She had opened her mouth, but no words came out, then she turned on her heel and flounced away.

  “You didn’t have to do that. It’s not your battle.”

  “She insulted a cop. That’s family.”

  Again he smiled broadly.

  “For a senator’s daughter you got a mouth on you.”

  “It wasn’t meant as a compliment to you and your macho brothers,” she snapped. “Just a put-down for the lady.”

  “Same old FitzGerald,” he laughed.

  “Same old . . .”

  “Eggplant.”

  They walked out of the restaurant, went out the Pennsylvania Avenue side and got into the Eggplant’s car. They headed back to headquarters.

  “Back there,” Fiona asked as they drove. She had been curious. “The mayor really blasted you.”

  “Comes with the territory.”

  He had thrown up his guard again, the tough gruff unfeeling Eggplant.

  “I’m sorry, chief. I really am.”

  It was the second time she had apologized.

  “Want to know what he said?”

  She nodded.

  “Said I was pussywhipped.”

  “That sexist bastard.”

  He turned to look at her.

  “He was right,” he said. He did not smile.

  19

  There was a message on her desk from Greg when she got back to the office.

  “Confabulation necessary. Got to talk,” the message read. He had been calling her more frequently than ever during the past few days and she had been deliberately cutting the conversations short, blaming it on her “busyness” which was half-true.

  But evenings, when she had finally let go of her work and was left to her own thoughts, it was harder to keep him out of her mind. Was she or wasn’t she pregnant? Obviously it was too early to tell, nor would she allow herself to take a do-it-yourself test. And she rejected the idea of seeing a doctor at this stage. Not yet.

  Perhaps this reluctance had its roots in her early Catholic training. Concepts like God’s will be done were ingrained, programmed into the mind, impossible to extract by a mere exercise of logic and scientific proofs. Not that she had any illusions about the technology of conception. But the randomness of fertilization did provoke ideas of mysterious forces at work, like fate and destiny. If it was meant to be, she had decided, then so be it, notwithstanding the fact that she had helped the process along. She would, therefore, await the decision of fate. It would come soon enough.

  She had, however, made one decision out of pure reason. She would not tell him. It was a complication she did not wish to confront or burden a child with. Therefore, she knew that, if she were pregnant, she would have to wean herself from him. He must never know he was the father of her child. Never.

  She was certain that she had thought it through. He was not divorced, nor did it seem that his wife would ever allow it. Aside from the woman’s religious convictions which mitigated against divorce, being married to an important lawyer like Greg gave her a certain legitimacy and prestige. Washington, like all places where power counted, was a bad place for ex-wives of important players. No, she decided, even if bells clanged for Greg, his wife would never release him without a horrendous struggle.

  Nor did she wish, under any circumstances, to be part of a closet family. Not that it was uncommon these days, but it was not her style to be a closet anything. Besides, the pressure on Greg would be destructive. He had his two young sons who were always on his mind, guilt trip enough
for one man. It would have to end badly, she had decided.

  On the other hand, the importance of fathering, she presumed, was not to be dismissed. Surely it had made a great impact on her life. Perhaps some day she would meet a man who would marry her and perform that function. But it was certainly unfair to both natural father and child to bring them together in a relationship that could be debilitating and destructive.

  Therefore, she had assured herself, it was better to have the child by herself, mythologize the father in the child’s eyes and bring it up as if she were a widow. In the black culture that surrounded her, it was a common practice to raise a fatherless child. It was, of course, economically foolish for those poor black girls, but emotionally, their argument that a woman alone needs a child to love was not without truth. Simplistic, she knew, but she had determined that it was also valid for her.

  She, too, needed a child to love and the biological window of opportunity was closing fast. And, unlike those black girls, she was not impoverished. Her inheritance was substantial enough for her to properly raise and educate a child. She would not have to worry about day care or proper help.

  She had prided herself on her independence and had always tackled the world on her own terms. Her choice of profession, her financial independence, her sophistication and her ability to choose her lovers were the envy of many of her peers. If she had not found a man to share her life forever, she supposed it was partly her own fault. This was the downside of the female mystique.

  Her mother would have called this idea of being a single parent self-willed and impractical. But then she maintained a slavish belief in convention and appearances.

  “I’d say I was married, Mother, and wear a wedding ring, for crying out loud,” her inner voice said in its endless debate with her mother, a constant echo in her mind. “Besides, it’s too late. I’ve already done it.”