Now, after unpacking in a small, cramped room above Tierney’s garage that contained a single bed, a stall shower in need of a scrubdown, toilet, sink, and a metal cabinet that functioned as a closet, Buffolino came down into the courtyard created by the outbuildings and walked the grounds. After chatting with three guards he’d assigned to the overnight detail—one on disability, one retired, and one working the MPD day shift but needing extra money—he came around back again and paused next to a small screen porch directly beneath the master bedroom. The first thing he heard was a woman crying. “Please, get hold of yourself,” Wendell Tierney’s voice said. Buffolino stood silently and controlled his breathing.
“You have disgraced this family,” the woman said loudly, her crying partly under control.
“I can’t control what other people do,” Wendell Tierney said. “I did not write those letters. And I am furious that they’ve gotten to the goddamn press. But I can’t control that, Marilyn!”
“But you could have controlled yourself with that woman!” A different female voice. Buffolino tried to place it, decided it belonged to the daughter, Suzanne.
“I suggest you shut your mouth,” Wendell Tierney snapped.
“And maybe if you shut your fly, we wouldn’t be in this embarrassing position,” Suzanne said.
Silence. A door slammed. Buffolino visualized the room upstairs and figured Suzanne had left.
“She’s right,” Marilyn said.
“She’s nothing but a little tramp, and you know it.”
Marilyn’s cruel, strangled laugh. She said, “Speaking of tramps. The least you could have been was discreet. Sleeping with Pauline was one thing. Writing her sophomoric love letters was stupid.”
“I told you I did not write any letters. And I did not sleep with Pauline. Christ, Marilyn, this thing is hard enough without you jumping all over me. Can’t you give me the benefit of the doubt?”
Mrs. Tierney’s voice lowered, now barely audible to Buffolino. He cocked his head and cupped one ear. “I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt for years, Wendell. I have put up with your arrogance and your out-of-control libido. I can’t do it any longer. I won’t do it any longer.”
The door slammed again. Ear to the sky, he did not hear Chip Tierney approach the porch. The Tierney son cleared his throat. Buffolino turned, grinning. “Good morning, Chip,” he said. “Looks like … well, it’s going to be a nice day.”
Tierney said nothing.
“Are your folks home?” Buffolino asked.
A sardonic smile crossed Chip’s lips. “I think they are. Excuse me.” He disappeared through the back door.
The sound of tires on gravel caused Buffolino to turn to the driveway. A car parked, and two men who were to relieve the night shift got out. There were supposed to be three. Tony asked where the missing guard was. One of them said, “We swung by to pick him up, but his wife said he wasn’t going to work today.”
Buffolino muttered something under his breath. That was the trouble with taking on security assignments that involved other people. You couldn’t trust them. Even cops. Especially cops.
He went to the front of the house and asked the guard who’d been there all night if he would pull a double shift. He groaned, rubbed his eyes, stood, and stretched. “Time and a half,” Buffolino said.
“Yeah, okay, Tony.”
Buffolino returned to the courtyard and entered the house through the back door. He’d been told he had the run of the house, although he knew that offer came with restrictions. He picked up a telephone and dialed Mac Smith’s number. Smith answered on the first ring. “Been sitting there waiting for me to call, huh?” Buffolino said.
“No. I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out why they’ve raised the taxes on my house, and reading this morning’s jaundiced article about the letters they found in Pauline Juris’s apartment. Where are you?”
“At the Tierney residence.”
“Any reaction from your client about the letters?”
“A little. A lot.”
“I imagine. Enjoying your new job?”
“Sure. This is a very nice position, and I figure I can’t thank you enough for introducing me to my new client. Only I think it’s overkill. The security system here is better than Fort Knox.”
“Have you told him that?”
“Whatta ya, crazy? Whatta you have planned for today?”
Smith’s conversations with Buffolino were infrequent and usually short in duration. But this morning the private investigator came off like an old friend inviting a buddy on a golf date. “Why do you ask?” Smith asked.
“I thought you might want to take a ride with me.”
“A ride? Where?”
“Up the river. I’ve got all my men in place, so I figured I’d kill a couple hours in the boat. Maybe have lunch up the river at one of the waterfront joints. Restaurants.”
He is inviting me on an outing, Smith thought. “As it turns out, Tony, I have nothing to do today except a little shopping for dinner, maybe work out at the gym, maybe—maybe—pick your brain about the Pauline Juris case.”
It was a Buffolino cackle. “So you are Tierney’s attorney.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I heard.”
“Heard what?”
“That you’re back in the saddle.”
“Where the hell did you hear that?”
“All over town, Mac. You know Washington. Anyway, I would be honored to have you aboard. Meet me at Tierney’s house at ten?”
Smith felt like a plate of iron filings being inextricably drawn toward a powerful magnet. He didn’t want to go. Somehow, based upon his upbringing, “goofing off’ in the middle of what was a workday for most people was anathema to him. He often vowed that one day he would go to an afternoon movie but never had. It didn’t matter that he might spend the time napping in his La-Z-Boy recliner, or killing an afternoon thumbing through catalogs and newsletters. For some reason, those activities seemed justified. But a movie in the afternoon? A trip up the Potomac with Anthony Buffolino?
Why not?
Suzanne Tierney stormed from the house and sat in her car for what seemed a long time. She hated her father, but not the car, a Chrysler LeBaron convertible he’d bought her two months ago. He was so controlling, so domineering. How could her mother have put up with it for so many years? His insistence that everyone in the family toe the line and do things his way was bad enough. Now there were the letters to Pauline Juris.
She was glad they’d surfaced. It was about time the sham was exposed. Everyone knew about her father and Pauline. You’d have to be blind and deaf to miss it. Which no one in the household was. Her mother put up with it and turned the other cheek because she liked the money and the house and the expensive furnishings and the trips to Europe and South America. She’d sold out. How could anyone sell out that way?
She’d implored her mother to leave her father dozens of times. It wasn’t worth it, she’d told her, the humiliation of playing dutiful hostess to his friends and business associates, watching him come home at three and four in the morning without explanation of where he’d been or with whom. In moments of candor her mother would tell her that the family was more important than her individual pain. Crap! She loved her mother but knew the woman was tethered to her husband by money, pure and simple. What a way to live. At least she’d had the gumption to walk away from it. Drive away from it … in the latest new car he’d provided.
She slipped the automatic transmission into Low and deliberately spun the rear tires on the gravel as she left the compound. Next to her on the seat was a large, shapeless, empty canvas bag zippered across the top. She parked at National Airport and barely made the nine o’clock shuttle to New York.
The standard surly cabdriver drove her from LaGuardia to the Saul School of Dramatic Arts on lower Broadway. She tipped small, which prompted a string of obscenities—his best English—from the Arabic driver.
S
he bounded through a door, took a flight of noisy, graffiti-marred stairs two at a time, and stepped into the main rehearsal room where thirty other aspiring actors and actresses awaited the arrival of the school’s founder and guru. Suzanne knew many of the young men and women in the room and greeted them, hugged a few, punched a young man in the chest in response to a flippant comment.
And then he entered.
Short, face pockmarked, black curly hair hanging in irregular strands from the sides of his head, black eyes glistening behind oversized wire-rimmed glasses, scripts cradled in his arms, Arthur Saul strode past his students and took his Customary seat in the center of the makeshift rehearsal hall.
Standing next to him was his assistant, a tall, younger man with white-bleached hair who wore his homosexuality as a badge and who surveyed the gathered like a shepherd choosing the first sheep for slaughter. He hissed a name: “Suzanne Tierney.”
“I have to be first?” Suzanne said nervously to those around her. She was about to request that someone else be chosen but remembered the last time she’d done that. It had raised Saul’s wrath to an intense level: “Yes,” he’d said, leaping to his feet and closing the gap between them, “tell the director you aren’t ready, my pretty little rich bitch.”
And so she climbed the three short steps to the stage, went to its center, and looked down at him.
He smiled. “And how is Ms. Tierney this fine day?” he asked.
“Fine, Arthur. I’m fine. I flew in this morning.”
“On Daddy’s private jet?”
Her face turned red. Embarrassment. Anger. She said, “No. On the shuttle like everyone else.”
He quietly clapped his hands. “How plebeian,” he said. “And how are your rich mother and father?”
She looked left and right, fists clenched at her side. Finally, she came to the stage apron and asked, “Why do you keep bringing up my family? I am here to learn acting. I wish to be a good actress, that’s all. Why do you harp upon my background? I can’t help where I came from. I only know where I am and where I want to go.”
He clapped a little louder. “Breaking the chains that bind you?” he said, eyebrows arched inhumanly high. “You seem agitated, Suzanne. Trouble at home?”
She drew a deep breath and shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. After looking at the floor for a moment, she brought her head up and said, “Yes, I am angry.”
“Good,” he said. “Can you inject that anger into the scene you’ve prepared for us?”
“I think so.”
Saul leaped to his feet and came to the apron. “Finally, Suzanne, you might have gotten what it is I’ve been preaching all these months. You have anger inside you. You have love, sympathy, bewilderment. But it’s all worthless if it remains inside. You wish to act, to assume the role of a character created by a mad artist in a garret. He creates a character who is angry. At what? Politics? His wife? World hunger, surly waitresses, his mother and father? Can you take your anger—and I have no doubt it is directed at your rich and overbearing parents—and bring it to another person, another character?”
She replied simply, “I would like to do a scene from Glass Menagerie.”
“Splendid,” Saul said. He turned to face the others. “I ask that you give your undivided attention to Ms. Tierney, who obviously has flown here from our nation’s capital seething with hatred and disgust for her privileged lifestyle and those who created it for her. How fortunate we are to see this metamorphosis from little rich girl to waif.” To Suzanne: “I salivate with anticipation.”
Suzanne stumbled through the scene. She couldn’t control her nerves; her hands trembled, her voice quavered. Saul and the students were silent. Some winced and squirmed in sympathy. Others took pleasure in her pain. When she finished the scene, a few in the audience applauded. Saul did not join them. He slowly climbed onto the stage and stood next to Suzanne, looking at her with a patronizing smile. “You hate them, don’t you?” he said softly.
She looked at him in a puzzled way.
“You hate your parents. If you could only channel more of that hatred into a performance, you might actually succeed in becoming an actress.”
All the emotions boiling inside of her that she’d kept from spilling over now gushed out in a torrent of tears. She wrapped her arms about herself.
Saul put his arm over her shoulder and pulled her close. He said to his assistant, “Rehearse the improvisational pairs until I return.” He led Suzanne from the stage, out of the room, and to his office, where he closed the door, sat on a small leather couch, and patted the empty space next to him. “Come, sit.”
She did. His arm went over her shoulder, and he said in soothing tones, “I know you think I’m too hard on you, Suzanne, but I must be if you are ever to realize your true potential as an actress. I want you to be angry. I want you to cry.”
Her crying was now reduced to an occasional whimper. Her eyes were red; a large tear streaked one cheek.
“I also told you last time that it’s necessary for me to establish control in front of the others. I also don’t want them to think I’m showing favoritism—to one of my best students, someone who will achieve stardom one day but only if she continues to work with me. To listen to me. To believe in me.”
She looked into his face with pleading, vulnerable eyes. “You say that all the time, Arthur, but then you’re so cruel.”
“And you are so talented—and so lazy. And so lovely. Trust me, Suzanne. I know how to bring out the best in you.”
He stood, locked the door, and unbuttoned his shirt.
Suzanne did not return to the theater where the other students were being put through their paces. She walked up Broadway, stopped to admire a pair of shoes in a window, bought them, tossed her purchase into the large, empty canvas bag and continued uptown. She picked up a Greek salad from a take-out place and went to the newly renovated Bryant Park, where she ate her leafy lunch. She checked her watch: one-thirty. Just enough time.
She walked farther until reaching a tall office building. In front of it were low marble walls and planters where people sat enjoying the sunshine. Suzanne stood at the corner and waited. A lean young Hispanic man carrying a large package wrapped in brown paper and secured with string entered the corporate courtyard. He sat. Suzanne made eye contact briefly. He waited thirty seconds, then walked away, leaving the package on the edge of a planter.
Suzanne moved to where he’d been sitting and observed those around her. No one seemed to have noticed. She placed the package in the large canvas bag and zippered it shut.
An hour later she was on a shuttle back to Washington, the bag securely wedged beneath the seat in front of her.
17
10:00 A.M. That Same Morning
Tony Buffolino was waiting when Smith pulled into the gravel courtyard at the rear of Tierney’s house. He’d abandoned his yachting uniform of Saturday for black slacks, a heavy knit olive-green sweater that might have been snatched from a U-boat commander, and a black beret frequently seen on paratroopers.
“Glad you could make it, Mac.”
“What are we going on, a commando raid?”
“When the man hires me for security work, I want to look like security. Makes him feel … well, more secure.”
“Nice day for a ride on the river,” Smith said.
Buffolino led them to the front of the house and down the long set of wooden stairs to the Tierney dock where the four vessels—the Marilyn, the Aquasport utility boat, the bass boat, and M.O.R., the sleek red-and-white Cigarette racing craft—bobbed gently, a small flotilla.
“Are we taking the yacht?” Smith said smiling.
Buffolino did a double-take. “Don’t think I could handle it?” he asked.
“Just kidding, Tony. Besides, you’re not dressed for it. What are we taking?”
“The Aquasport.” Buffolino pointed to the twenty-two-foot, center-console craft rigged with canvas to provide shelter.
“Pretty
snazzy,” Smith said, indicating the Cigarette.
“Ain’t that a beauty?” Buffolino said, shaking his head in awe. “Do a hundred wide open.”
“The Aquasport will be fine.”
Buffolino noticed a small point-and-shoot camera hanging from a strap around Smith’s neck. “You taking up photography?” he asked.
Smith thought of an obvious wisecrack, said instead, “I thought I might snap a few.” He raised the camera to eye level. “Let me get one of you, Captain.”
Buffolino grinned. “Sure.” He started toward the Aquasport, but Smith suggested he stand in front of the Cigarette. “More befitting your soldier-of-fortune look,” he said.
“I probably look more like there was a sale at the army-navy store.” Buffolino posed, and Smith pressed off three shots. They climbed into the boat, and Tony started the larger of two outboards attached to the transom. He neatly coiled the mooring lines inside the boat, then steered it away from the dock and out into the center of the river. Smith stood next to him at the console and drew a deep breath. He was glad he’d decided to take Tony up on his offer. Although he hadn’t been especially busy these past few weeks, he’d been busy thinking about being busy. So it felt good to be away from such burdensome thoughts, from daily routine, from the classroom and the grading of papers at home, from anything that might be considered a typical day. Buffolino glanced over and smiled. “Nice, huh?”
“Better than that,” Smith replied. “You look like you’re enjoying this assignment.”
“Hell, yes, only Alicia isn’t happy. Tierney wanted me to move in, so I did. She figures I’m out messing around, which is the way I guess women always figure. But she should know me better than that. Right?”
“Right, Tony.”
Tony advanced the throttle. “Want to take it?” he asked.
“Sure,” Smith said, pulling his GW windbreaker around him as the boat’s increased speed created a parallel pickup in the wind.
“Just keep us going in this direction,” Tony said. While Smith held course, Buffolino pulled out a nautical chart and studied it.
Murder on the Potomac Page 10
