Murder on K Street

by Margaret Truman

  “And how many deals did he have to cut to get that legislation through?” she asked angrily. “How many bad bills did he have to sign on to get what he wanted?”

  “That’s politics, Polly,” said Rotondi, pulling up a chair on the opposite side of a glass coffee table. “Compromise and negotiation. In its purest sense, it’s—”

  “Purest sense?” she said. “Come on, Phil, you know there’s nothing pure about politics. My mother really respected you, maybe even envied Kathleen for having you as a husband. You did what you wanted on your own terms, no compromise, no negotiation, just honor.”

  “You give me too much credit, Polly. There’s been plenty of compromise in my life.”

  She ignored what he’d said. Instead, she said, “Look at Neil. All you have to do is pick up any newspaper on any day and read about the lobbying scandals, the payoffs to politicians, the fancy junkets, the sleaze. I don’t think Neil ever wanted to take that job with Marshalk, Phil. It was Daddy who pushed him into it because it would help feather his own nest on Capitol Hill.” She paused, head raised, index finger to her lips as though a sudden thought had come to her. “When Neil was a little boy, he wanted to be a garbageman.” She laughed.

  “Did he?”

  “Yeah. Looks like he got his wish.”

  Rotondi let it go and sipped his lemonade. “Mind a bit of a history lesson, Polly, about lobbyists?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Lobbying—in its purest sense—I know, there’s the purity thing again, but many things start out pure and get corrupted along the way. Back when Ulysses S. Grant was president, he’d stroll over from the White House, sit in the lobby of the Willard hotel, enjoy a brandy and a cigar, and—”

  “And be approached by men who wanted something from him,” Polly said. “Grant called them lobbyists because they hung around the lobby waiting for him. Neil told me that when he took the job at Marshalk. I think he was trying to justify what he’d done, make it sound, well…”

  “Pure.”

  “Yeah, pure. Neil gave me the standard speech that lobbying in its purest sense was an important part of the political process, that lobbyists help elected officials understand different points of view about a pending bill, that they bring expertise to politicians that the pols don’t have time to research and understand. Poor Neil. He wants so much to be his own man, but he’s never been allowed to. Politics! Purity! What a bunch of hogwash.”

  “Look, Polly,” Rotondi said, “this is not the time to argue it. You and your dad and Neil have to pull together in this.”

  “To make it look like we’re the all-American family? We aren’t.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said, standing with the help of his cane. “I have to go. I told Neil I’d call him once I hooked up with you. Take my advice. Cool your jets when it comes to whatever hasn’t been right between you and your father. Your mother deserves that.”

  She walked him to the door. He kissed her cheek. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tight. “I’m so glad you’re my father’s best friend, Phil. I think you’re the only true friend he has.”

  He left wondering whether she might be right.

  SEVEN

  Everything about the Marshalk Group’s offices was modern, including the support staff. Secretaries and administrative assistants had to possess the requisite skills—word processing, data input, filing acumen, and other routine office responsibilities. But they also had to be young, nicely made up, and with it—a 34-D cup wasn’t overlooked when hiring took place—or young and handsome, slim, well groomed, and impeccably dressed among the men. Dark, wavy hair seemed to prevail; anyone who might accuse the firm of age discrimination, however, had only to look at some of the principals to be disabused of that notion. Those men and women had been recruited from the senior ranks of House, Senate, and administration staffs with the allure of big salaries—the average starting pay for a midlist lobbyist was three hundred thousand. Those who’d been there longest, and who had the most clout with their previous government employers, enjoyed multimillion-dollar paychecks along with hefty bonuses. Some were short and pudgy, others sported shining heads. There were the tall, slender patrician types whose gray hair indicated that they were of the age to have their prostates checked regularly, and middle-aged women who could afford tummy tucks and Botox injections, and for whom visits to the city’s multitude of plastic surgeons were de rigueur.

  What they all had in common was access to the most powerful of lawmakers in the House, the Senate, and the administrations. Access was everything in the lobbying biz. Those who had it—really had it—were aggressively recruited by the city’s largest firms like star college athletes being drafted by professional teams. Some received so many offers once they’d announced that they were leaving government service, they hired attorneys to act as their agents, sifting through the pay and benefits packages and negotiating their deals. There are more than thirty-five thousand registered lobbyists in Washington, and more than enough special-interest cash for all.

  The Marshalk offices occupied three floors in a steel-and-glass building on K Street, which had become known as Lobbyist Boulevard. The décor and furnishings matched the contempo style of the support staff, all chrome and leather and vivid modern art on the walls.

  But there was another Marshalk “office” that wasn’t quite as contemporary, a three-story row house on Eighteenth Street, a few blocks from the main office. The Marshalk Group had purchased it in 2004 for $2.6 million and turned it into a retreat in which to entertain clients and prospective clients, as well as lawmakers seeking to get away from the scrutiny of Capitol Hill. Decorated by a former girlfriend of Rick Marshalk who billed herself as an interior designer, it had what some in the firm said was the look of an eighteenth-century brothel, with its bloodred wall coverings and gold sconces, the furniture heavy, the artwork on the walls fox hunts and bistro scenes usually associated with restaurants attempting to establish a period mood. Interior design aside, it served its purpose.

  This day, it was the scene of what Rick Marshalk hoped would be the final, definitive meeting with representatives of Betzcon Pharmaceuticals. Six months ago, the drug company had fired its D.C. lobbying firm and made it known that it was shopping for a new one. Although considerably smaller than Merck, Lilly, or Pfizer, Betzcon had aggressively carved out a larger and larger niche in the intensely competitive pharmaceutical industry. Its commitment to, and funding of, research was well acknowledged, and had paid off recently in a breakthrough drug for the treatment of high blood pressure that was already changing the medical landscape. Once the FDA had approved it, Betzcon launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to win over physicians. A TV and print advertising blitz had patients pressing their physicians to prescribe the drug for them. The campaign succeeded. The drug, Aorstat, was rapidly becoming the prescription of choice for cardiologists, turning Betzcon from a midsize upstart to a company with bulging profits and a bright future.

  But while Betzcon’s bottom line was fattening, trouble loomed in the halls of Congress.

  “I know it’s an understatement to say how shocked everyone is at the murder of Senator Simmons’s wife,” Rick Marshalk told those gathered in the town house’s velvet-draped living room. With him were two other senior lobbyists from the Marshalk Group; Marshalk’s administrative assistant, a stunning blonde who sat with long legs crossed and a notepad on her lap; and the group’s vice president for security, Jack Parish. Representing Betzcon Pharmaceuticals were its governmental affairs VP and four of his staff. The only intrusions came from the house’s elaborate kitchen, where three of Emma Churchill’s catering staff ran Screwdrivers, coffee, and sandwiches to the living room. Emma had been there earlier but left to oversee another luncheon. Churchill Catering catered all of the Marshalk Group’s business and social affairs, although as far as the IRS was concerned, there were no such things as personal and social gatherings. It was all business, all the time.

  Marshalk continued: “We’v
e arranged for a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to her killer. As you know, her son, Neil, our president, won’t be with us today for obvious reasons. Neil and his dad, Senator Simmons, are devastated by this horrendous loss, and the Marshalk Group stands ready to help in any way we can.”

  A few questions were asked about the crime and its investigation, and Marshalk turned to Jack Parish for the answers. “Jack is a former MPD detective,” he told the Betzcon people, “and has maintained links to that agency. He’s the one with the answers.”

  Nondescript was the appropriate description of Parish, average and medium in all ways except for a mouth that wasn’t exactly straight-and-level. It started low on the left and slanted up to the right, giving him a look of perpetual skepticism. “There’s not much to report,” he said. “It’s too early. But I have been told that they have a few suspects they’re looking into.”

  “I hope whoever did it fries,” a Betzcon executive said.

  “Not here in D.C.,” Parish said. “We don’t have the death penalty.”

  “You should have,” the exec snarled.

  Marshalk had been sitting. He now stood and commanded the room. He was a large carton of a man in his early forties, his bulk mitigated by the cut of his custom-made British double-breasted suits. He was of mixed heritage; a swarthy complexion and coal-black hair honored his deceased Cuban mother. His father, a Caucasian American, had been a successful liability lawyer in Miami until dropping dead one sunny afternoon on a golf course at the age of fifty-six.

  Their only child, Rick, graduated from Cal State with a degree in general studies, and went on to study screenwriting at UCLA. He found minimal success in Hollywood. Two of his scripts sold for the Writers Guild’s minimum but were never produced. He had screenwriting credit on one film that actually made it to the silver screen, a low-budget horror movie that faded from public view within a month of opening.

  But his time in Hollywood wasn’t wasted. It was there that he’d learned a valuable lesson: Networking was everything. Who you knew paid bigger dividends than what you knew. The problem with applying that philosophy in Hollywood, he reasoned, was that once you met the right person, you still had to deliver a workable script. Better, he decided, was to be in a position where you were paid simply for bringing people together, without the need to deliver anything after that.

  Who needs what? And who can deliver it?

  He’d forged friendships with people in Washington, D.C., and made a series of visits to them. Their tales of how lobbying had made countless millionaires of former government employees intrigued the ambitious Marshalk. Business needed access to politicians to head off legislation that would be injurious to their companies, or to encourage laws favorable to their bottom line. Politicians needed money to win elections and to sustain their power bases. It was as simple as that. He picked up stakes in California and headed east. He never looked back. Washington was where he belonged, a place ripe for the picking for someone with his savvy.

  The Marshalk Group was born.

  Not that Rick Marshalk was the first to discover that becoming a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., could make a man rich. Influence peddling in the nation’s capital had been alive and well for centuries, dating back to when President Washington traveled to Suter’s Tavern in Georgetown to negotiate with local landowners the purchase of the properties on which the new “seat of empire” would stand. A century or two later, there were plenty of rich lobbyists in town. When Marshalk arrived, men—and some women—who knew their way around and were skilled at funneling money from clients into the political coffers of elected officials were ubiquitous. But he decided that he could, and would, do it better than they did. History proved him right. The Marshalk Group grew quickly and now occupied a preeminent position on K Street, which was why Betzcon Pharmaceuticals sat with Rick Marshalk and his colleagues that day in the red-and-gold town house.

  “It should be obvious, Rick, that we’ve pretty much decided to go with Marshalk as our Washington lobbyists,” Betzcon’s VP said. “There are still a few loose ends to be tied up, which we can do here today.”

  “Need I say that you’ve made the right choice?” Marshalk said, laughing. “There’s never been a more important time in our history for a company like Betzcon to have its voice heard in the halls of Congress and in the Oval Office. We know four or five months in advance of every bit of legislation that’s apt to be introduced. Our intelligence is the best in town. And of course, the access we have to the right people is no secret. We’ll put all of our resources to work for you to ensure that upcoming legislation not only doesn’t hurt the company, but actually enhances your future growth and profitability. For example, we know that certain legislators in the House and Senate are considering introducing bills that could have a devastating effect on your pricing of Aorstat. We managed to head off in the Senate the previous attempt to force the Health and Human Services secretary to negotiate drug prices for the Medicare prescription drug plan. The House passed it, but through our efforts, primarily for your industry’s trade associations, it stalled in the Senate. Now they’re back on the case. This time, it will take an even bigger effort on our part to see that the bill never reaches the president’s desk. We’re poised to do that, but it will take every ounce of influence we have, to say nothing of money, to accomplish that goal.”

  “It’s nonsense,” said one of the Betzcon executives. “Screwing around with the free market is just plain wrong. It’s—”

  “Un-American,” Marshalk said. “You’re damn well right it is, and we have the clout to make sure that enough members of the Senate and House see it that way. I’ve already gone over how we plan to proceed. The writers we have on staff will begin turning out articles for medical and scientific journals, along with consumer magazines. We’ve established an impressive network of doctors and scientists who are willing to put their bylines on those pieces, giving them the credibility they need. There’s nobody in town who’s as good as we are at helping shape public opinion. I should also mention that there are members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions—HELP. Neat acronym, huh?—who are facing tough reelection races, and their hands are perpetually out. You met one of them in Santa Domingo at the medical conference we hosted last month. We’ve already started providing them with the funds they need to beat back their opponents. All perfectly legal, I assure you,” he added. “Our network of nonprofit organizations is solid and growing every day. The money you provide to help these deserving friends passes through those groups without a hitch.”

  Marshalk again sat. “Any questions?” he asked.

  There were many, the answers to almost all of them satisfactory to the Betzcon questioners.

  Dishes and glasses were cleared as the meeting was about to break up. There had been discussion about the fee Betzcon would pay to the Marshalk Group—forty-five thousand dollars a month—as well as contributions Betzcon was urged to make to some of the dozen nonprofit groups established by Marshalk, through which funds for “our friends on the Hill” could be dispersed. In addition, Betzcon’s executives had agreed to pay fifteen thousand a month to a public relations firm recommended by Marshalk—and in which he was a silent partner.

  “I would suggest that you make a donation to the fund we’ve established to find Mrs. Simmons’s murderer,” Marshalk told Betzcon’s VP as they gravitated toward the door. “We’re offering it through one of our affiliates, the Center for American Justice. Senator Simmons—he chairs HELP—will surely show his appreciation when we let him know of your generosity in helping find and convict his lovely wife’s killer. We’ve offered fifty thou. If you could come up with half, it would be a welcome and much-appreciated goodwill gesture.”

  “We can do that.”

  “Great,” Marshalk said, slapping him on the back. “I’m really excited about working with you to keep Congress on the right track. Ciao, my friend. And don’t forget the golf trip to California. Th
at’s coming up in a couple of months. Senator Simmons has committed to joining us. This tragedy might change that, but I’m assuming he’ll be ready for some R-and-R once the murderer is found and things get back to normal. Sorry Neil couldn’t be with us today. I’ll fill him in on everything.”

  With the Betzcon executives gone, Marshalk’s administrative assistant dispatched back to headquarters, and the catering staff busy packing up in the kitchen, Marshalk sat with his colleagues in the living room. He punched the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. “Damn, that went well. Let’s step up the pressure on those HELP committee pols.” He said to his security chief, “Get me some inside info from the MPD that I can pass on to Simmons. I want to be his best source of information on the planet. Got it?”

  Jack Parish stood, stretched, yawned, and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” The man with the crooked mouth left the room, his exit from the house heralded by the tinkling of a bell attached to the front door.

  EIGHT

  That afternoon, a group of MPD detectives gathered in a large, scarred room at police headquarters on Indiana Avenue, Charles Chang among them. Morris Crimley led the meeting. Behind him was a blackboard. Earlier that day, a female officer had written notes on the board pertaining to the Jeannette Simmons case. Working from a yellow legal pad containing Crimley’s handwritten comments, she was chosen for the task because of her neat penmanship. Besides, she was the only one on the Simmons task force who could decipher Crimley’s scribbles. Her future at MPD was bright.

  One section of the board contained the names of every possible suspect in the murder. In this early stage of the investigation, no one was excluded—for any reason. Senator Lyle Simmons led the list, followed by his son, Neil; daughter, Polly; Jeannette Simmons’s sister, Marlene; the housekeeper, Gina; the senator’s driver, Walter McTeague; some of the Simmonses’ neighbors; a handyman who often did work at the house; a slightly demented homeless man who’d found a space beneath a small bridge a few blocks from the house to his liking (he’d been picked up early that morning and was being held on a vagrancy charge to make sure he stayed around); and a dozen others, none of whom was a viable suspect but all of whom had had some connection, however tangential, with the deceased.