A Murder of Justice

by Robert Andrews

  “Have a seat.” She aimed the pencil at an L-shaped leather sofa. Janowitz settled down, pulled a Palm Pilot from a jacket pocket, and began tapping with a stylus. Jose picked out a Reader’s Digest from a nearby magazine rack, while Frank found an issue of People.

  “These guys must get their reading material from my dentist,” Jose said. Marge rewarded him with an acid look.

  By four-thirty, Janowitz had finished tapping the Palm Pilot, but he held it anyway, apparently unsure what to do with it. Frank dozed, his chin dropped to his chest, the People open in his lap to a spread on Madonna. Jose sat with his eyes fixed glassily on a seemingly paralyzed wall clock.

  Suddenly Frank awoke, snapping his head up, momentarily confused about where he was. His head cleared. “Why don’t we come back tomorrow?” he asked Janowitz.

  “Rhinelander won’t be here.”

  “What?”

  “He’ll be back in his district,” Janowitz explained. “Congress usually breaks for the weekend Thursday evenings.”

  “Come back Monday, then.”

  Janowitz shook his head. “They usually don’t start up again until Tuesday morning.”

  “Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,” Jose said in wonderment. “How’d I ever miss out on something like that?”

  “You live in the District,” Janowitz said. “Foreigners, felons, and D.C. residents can’t be elected members of Congress.”

  “I guess we wait,” Jose said unhappily.

  Another half-hour passed. The hands on the clock had slowly, almost painfully, crawled toward five.

  Marge’s phone chirped once. She answered, listened, and eyed Frank, Jose, and Janowitz.

  “Yes,” she said, “they’re still here.”

  The Rayburn Building’s architect had attempted to graft the ornate nineteenth-century decor of the Capitol onto Frederick Rhinelander’s mid-twentieth-century office. The expensive operation had failed. Heavy velvet drapes, patterned carpets, and faux plaster crown moldings clashed with modern windows, fluorescent lighting, and government-bland pseudo-Danish teak furniture.

  Frederick Rhinelander sat at his desk, the only genuine antique in the room, a massive piece with a sweeping, flaring grain that looked crafted from a solid block of oak. On the desk, a richly embossed leather-trimmed blotter, a Cross pen-and-pencil set, and a brass banker’s lamp with a green glass shade.

  Rhinelander, a man of medium build, wore his dark hair short and neatly combed. He had on a well-tailored dark blue pin-striped suit, a snowy white shirt with an English spread collar, and a silver-gray silk tie.

  Frank’s first thought was that Rhinelander looked younger than in his photographs. But that wasn’t it. In some indefinable way, Rhinelander looked more juvenile. As though he didn’t quite fit into the adult costume he was wearing. And there was an alertness about him, as though he was constantly sniffing the air for danger.

  Al Salvani sat in an armchair to the side of his desk.

  “Congressman Rhinelander,” Frank said, “I’m Detective Kearney, and this’s my partner, Detective Phelps. Detective Janowitz is working with us on the Gentry case.”

  Frank and Jose offered their credentials. Rhinelander took them, examined them, then handed them back. He pointed to three chairs that had been drawn up in front of his desk.

  “Please, gentlemen.”

  Rhinelander spoke with a studied, careful enunciation. His New England accent carried a foppish nasal overlay of Old England.

  “Please don’t think me brusque,” he said, “but there’s going to be a vote on the floor any moment. If so, there’s no telling when I shall return. So… shall we cut to the chase?” He touched his fingertips together, making a tent of his hands. “Detective Janowitz has already had access to Kevin Gentry’s appointments calendar.”

  “Yes,” Frank said.

  “But now he wants to go fishing in the subcommittee’s financial records.” Rhinelander spoke as though Janowitz weren’t in the room. “This line of investigation is presumptive of a motive for Mr. Gentry’s death arising from the subcommittee’s activities.”

  Jose got through Rhinelander’s bureaucratese before Frank did. “Nobody’s presuming anything, Congressman. We want to know what Mr. Gentry was doing and why he was doing it. If we know that, we might find out who killed him. We’d appreciate your help to establish what Kevin Gentry was doing before he was killed.”

  Rhinelander smiled condescendingly. “Very well put, Detective Phelps. And that means precisely… what?”

  “It means we want to find out who he was dealing with and what the dealing was about.”

  Rhinelander’s smile disappeared. “And that means…?”

  Irritated over Rhinelander’s none-too-subtle baiting, Frank cut in: “That means we need access to people and records so we can build a timeline for Gentry’s activities.”

  “You don’t believe that it was a case of Kevin being unlucky?” Rhinelander persisted. “Someone with a gun looking for any available target?”

  “That’s only one possibility,” Jose said.

  Rhinelander, his face a flat, expressionless mask, stared steadily at Jose. “I am the first to appreciate the value of good police work,” he said, with a righteous air. “Some of my colleagues complain to me that they’ve seen too little of it here in Washington. But I support your efforts fully. I’m inclined to have the subcommittee assist you. I hope you appreciate that.”

  Rhinelander looked expectantly at Frank, Jose, and Janowitz.

  “Well?” he asked. “Do you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Frank said. “Do I… what?”

  “I didn’t hear you say that you appreciated it… that I’d have the subcommittee assist you.”

  It took Frank a moment to realize what Rhinelander wanted. “Yes. Of course, Congressman, we appreciate it.”

  Rhinelander almost purred. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

  “If you have a moment?” Jose asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Gentry… could you describe your relationship with him? He was your staff director for, what, four years?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was less than four years,” Rhinelander said emphatically. “Three months less. And a couple of days.”

  “Okay. How was the relationship?”

  Rhinelander cleared his throat. “If it had been anything but excellent, Detective Phelps, Kevin wouldn’t have stayed on as staff director. He was very industrious… and very loyal.”

  “What was the social relationship?” Frank asked.

  “Socially?” Rhinelander asked. “We weren’t social… friends.” He leaned forward. “We had a splendid working relationship. I’m certain Kevin had friends. But I never met them.”

  “In an interview after his death,” Frank continued, “you said that you saw him a little less than an hour before he was shot.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he seem worried? Distracted?”

  “Worried-no. Preoccupied-yes. We were getting ready for the annual District budget hearings. He had a lot on his plate.”

  “The preoccupation… do you think it was about getting the work done? Or something to do with what he’d found out?”

  Rhinelander held up a hand in a “Stop” motion. “That is so speculative that it’s ridiculous. I’m not going to answer.”

  “I know the difference between fact and speculation, sir,” Frank said, feeling his face warming. “What someone like you thinks can be of help. That’s what I’m asking.”

  Rhinelander stiffened slightly, then put on a small, patient smile. “Very well, Detective Kearney, my best speculation is that Kevin was harried by the amount of work. That’s not unusual. If a staffer isn’t overworked, he isn’t doing his job.”

  A hidden loudspeaker buzzed angrily. Rhinelander’s eyes jumped to the clock on his wall.

  “Ten minutes to get to the floor, gentlemen,” he said, standing, and shooting out his shir
tsleeves so that his heavy gold cuff links shone in the late-afternoon light. “If you’ll excuse me…”

  Jose’s mouth tightened. “Mr. Congressman Rhinelander’s used to talking down.”

  “Don’t you appreciate that?” Frank bantered.

  “Appreciate my ass,” Jose said sourly. “Like he was holding up a doggy bone and wanting us to roll over. Did you get the impression he was trying to put some air between Gentry and himself?”

  “The bit about ‘three months less’?”

  “Yeah. And when you asked him about a personal relationship with Gentry… he acted like you’d asked him if he sat in the back of the bus.”

  “Or drank California wine.”

  “A place for everybody, and everybody in their place.”

  “You guys finished up here?” Janowitz asked. “I’ll get to my cubicle and start.”

  Frank shook his head. “Are for now. Wish we were for good. Hoser and I have a dinner date.”

  “Sexy chicks?”

  “Not our luck, Leon,” Jose said. “Two hairy-legged guys from the Bureau.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Robin Bouchard met Frank and Jose at the corner of Ninth and D, across from Bureau headquarters.

  “When he heard about Pencil skipping, Atkins asked me if there was anything we could do to help,” Bouchard explained. “I suggested he have you guys over, he could ask you himself.”

  “And so dinner,” Frank said.

  “And so dinner.” Bouchard motioned to a nearby doorway.

  Jose did a double-take. “The Caucus Room? I can’t float a second mortgage.”

  Bouchard shrugged. “Atkins has a slush fund, and the Bureau cafeteria has rats.”

  “Nice of him to worry about us,” Jose said.

  Bouchard did his wise-guy grin. “Atkins isn’t doing a Dudley Do-Right.”

  “He getting heat?” Frank asked.

  “Probably.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Bouchard shook his head. “I’m not on his share-my-soul list.” He paused at the door. “Matter of fact, this is the first time I’ve been here.” He pulled the door open.

  Inside, a hostess in something very Italian and very expensive smiled as though greeting an afternoon lover. Bouchard mentioned Atkins’s name. The hostess’s smile grew wider.

  “The Roosevelt Room, gentlemen,” she purred.

  She led the three down a lushly carpeted corridor past larger dining rooms, to a mahogany door with heavy brass fittings.

  Jose whistled softly.

  “I’m impressed,” Frank said.

  The private room resembled a Victorian library: leather-bound volumes in walnut bookcases, green shaded reading lamps beside morocco-leather club chairs, a massive globe in a bronze cradle near a coal fireplace. Oil portraits of the Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin, bracketed the fireplace.

  Near a set of double doors that apparently led into the kitchen, a slender white man in a severe dark suit whispered to a young black waiter. Frank couldn’t hear what was going on, but from the body language, he guessed the two were getting their signals straight for the coming dinner crowd. The waiter’s eyes shifted to Robin, Frank, and Jose, and the suit turned around.

  “Gentlemen?”

  “Here for dinner with Mr. Atkins,” Robin said.

  The man came closer, and Frank could read his silver name tag: “Thurmond.”

  Thurmond then led them to a table closest to the window.

  “Mr. Atkins,” Thurmond said, “likes to sit facing the door.” With that, he walked to the waiters’ station and returned with three menus. “Dobbs will take your orders when you’re ready.”

  Bouchard took a seat that covered the door, with Frank and Jose opposite. “A menu for Mr. Atkins?”

  Thurmond tilted his chin upward and smiled. “I know what he wants.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Baked scrod, new potatoes and spinach, iced tea.”

  “Scrod a house specialty?” Bouchard asked.

  “Ah… no.” Thurmond said it as though concerned he was revealing a secret. His voice dropped to the confiding whisper of a Frenchman offering dirty postcards. “Beef… and coconut cake.”

  Bouchard grinned. “Helluva combination, Mr. Thurmond.”

  Thurmond returned a conspiratorial smile. “A combination to die for.” He paused, then turned and disappeared through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

  “We got a choice,” Bouchard said. “We suck up to Atkins and order scrod, or we go with the house.”

  “Scrod taste better than it sounds?” Jose asked.

  “Has to, Hoser,” Bouchard said.

  A moment’s silence as the three men looked over their menus. Frank glanced up from his and found Jose and Bouchard, their menus closed, eyes on him.

  Bouchard signaled to Dobbs, who came over and took their orders. Then he turned to Frank and Jose. “So what’s new?”

  Jose told him about the meeting with Cookie, how Pencil had been fingering Zelmer Austin for Gentry’s killing.

  Bouchard listened intently for a few moments before he raised one hand an inch off the table and nodded toward the door.

  From behind Frank and Jose came Brian Atkins’s voice. “I invite you to dinner and I’m late.”

  Bouchard, Frank, and Jose started to get up, but Atkins waved them down.

  “You guys looked at the menu?”

  Bouchard nodded. “We’ve ordered.”

  Atkins grinned. “Hope you went with the beef. My cholesterol’s got me stuck with the scrod.” He made a face. “An acquired taste.”

  Bouchard gestured toward Jose. “We were just catching up.”

  “I was telling Robin about a meeting,” Jose said.

  Atkins nodded. “Go on.”

  Jose backtracked, working his way through the meeting with Cookie. In the middle of it, Dobbs brought Atkins’s scrod, New York strip steaks for Frank and Bouchard, and a Delmonico for Jose.

  Atkins looked longingly at the steaks, then sipped his iced tea. “So Pencil dropped the dime on Zelmer Austin? That Austin did Kevin Gentry?”

  “And now, Pencil’s split,” Frank said.

  “You think it spooked him, hearing that the same weapon that killed Skeeter killed Gentry?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “Where does that lead?” Robin asked. “Is Pencil afraid that the same guy who did Skeeter is going to come after him?”

  “You’ve got to remember,” Jose said, “two years ago, Pencil was pushing the story that Zelmer Austin killed Gentry. Now Pencil finds out it isn’t so… or that other people know it isn’t so.”

  Frank cut in. “Then again, we don’t know for sure that Zelmer didn’t do it. Just that the admin case against him doesn’t hold up.”

  “I’m getting an overload,” Bouchard said. “What all this boils down to is… what?”

  “Finding Pencil,” Atkins answered. He turned to Frank and Jose. “I know you guys are already working that. Could we help?”

  Frank paused. He felt Jose’s shoe nudge his.

  “Emerson wanted to set up a task force,” Frank said, searching for a graceful out, “but Jose and I wanted to keep it small. It’s just us and another detective.”

  Atkins nodded emphatically. “I think you were right. I wasn’t envisioning a bureau pile-on. No publicity. Just one person.” At “person,” Atkins put his hand on Bouchard’s shoulder.

  Frank and Jose exchanged glances. Both nodded.

  “Deal,” said Jose.

  Neither Frank nor Jose said anything until they were on the sidewalk.

  “What about that?” Frank asked.

  “Great coconut cake,” Jose replied.

  “No… What Atkins was up to?”

  “They want in,” Jose said. “Atkins was nice about it. But we’d said no, he would have gone to Emerson…”

  “Who’d have folded like a cheap suitcase…”

  “And probably gone ahead with that b
rain-fart of his about a task force. At least we got Robin and no publicity.”

  “We got Robin,” Frank amended, “but I’m not betting on no publicity.” He paused, playing out possibilities in his head. “Yesterday afternoon, Rhinelander calls Atkins. Whines about having us on his ass…”

  Jose picked up. “… Atkins sees an opportunity to get the Bureau in on the case…”

  “… and score points with Rhinelander at the same time,” Frank finished.

  Ahead, down Pennsylvania Avenue, windows shone on the Capitol’s West Front, and the dome glowed white against a dark velvet-blue sky.

  Nothing in this town works along a straight line. Everything moves along a curve just in front of you. And you can never see around the curve.

  Frank pointed toward the Capitol. “Tomorrow morning, why don’t we drop up and see how Janowitz’s doing?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Gentry’s personnel file… nothing in it but his resume, pay records, and a couple of letters of commendation.”

  Leon Janowitz pushed the folder across the table to Frank and Jose. Meeting in Janowitz’s cramped cubicle was impossible. It was Friday, the cavernous subcommittee hearing room wasn’t being used, and so the three men huddled at the witness table. Before them, a semicircle of raised seats from which subcommittee members could look down on those testifying and into the cameras. Centered on a low wall below the seats, the crest of the House of Representatives marked where Frederick Dumay Rhinelander would preside.

  Looking up at the crest, Frank remembered a vacation in Rome when he and Kate had toured the Colosseum. He had stood in the arena and had looked up toward where, with a roll of the hand, emperors had once decreed who would live and who would die for the entertainment of the crowd.

  “ROTC at UCLA,” he heard Jose reading off the resume. “Lieutenant, Southern Command…”

  “I’ve asked for his service records,” Janowitz said. “They have to send off to St. Louis.”

  “Law school, NYU,” Jose picked up. “Then State Department, Western Hemisphere Affairs…”

  “I’ve had a few of those,” Janowitz murmured.

  “Those… what?” Jose asked.